Day 3

We woke up to the sound of roosters, but then fell right back asleep. Ms. O kept on telling us to wake up, but we only did until the host came upstairs with breakfast. We scrambled to get ready and the smell of food rushed us even more. We were served the really good soup from last night, eggs, toast with jam, and this delicious green mango, my absolute favorite fruit in the world. And we even had some Ovaltine, but I mixed mine with some instant coffee. It was really, really cold, I loved it so much and which Singapore could steal their weather. At 7:45 we were told to meet down at the bottom of the hill and get ready for the exciting day ahead of us. Saying thank you and goodbye to our host was challenging and we depended our life on this little notebook that had translation. When we got down and was ready to go we had to put harnesses on again, at that point I was getting really sick of them. The instructors that we had for the Flight of the Gibbon were really funny, nice, and fun to hang out with. At first it was super scary; can you imagine jumping off a 40 meter tall tree? The instructors just said ‘okay, bye’ and that added more fun to it as well. In total there were 15 Zip Wiring stations. There were so many different styles. There was the usual one where you just zipped from one tree to the other, and then there were huge and extremely long ones where you could do 180, or 360 flips. Another type was a sort of belaying style. It goes vertically down, and that is really scary. My favorite type was the ‘superman’ jump. You attached yourself onto a wire that was a little bit taller than average, and for a split second you feel like you’re flying or dying in the air. Then when you reached the other end you had to grab a net so you didn’t have to come all the way back, or even get stuck in the middle as what happened to Craig. I thought the Zip Wiring was so much fun and was as much fun as the rock climbing and the abseiling, maybe even more so. When we were done we had cold water waiting for us, something at that time was a scarce object. So everybody gulped it down quickly. We came back for lunch and had really good Thai green curry along with some nice vegetables, and that really good fish sauce.


After that day, we were even more tired than usual but really wanted to go to the market. When we got there, it was completely the opposite as to what I thought it would be. There was a butcher shop which was not very pleasant to look at; they even sold frogs and bugs to buy which I thought was pretty cool. I went around looking for that really good green mango that the host at the house served us, but couldn’t find the right one, so instead I bought a bag full of rambutans and knew Ella would eat them all. After wandering around somebody found this person who made a Thai version of a slush puppy. He grounded up the ice by hand and put the liquid over it, as well as condensed milk. It was so refreshing and good, most people had to but I just stuck with one. When we got inside the van we were all ready to get back to the Prem Center and jump in the pool. In our van Simon, Akash, and Bandera were sitting with us, Simon bought a watermelon and I thought that was pretty funny.


We finally arrived at the Prem Center, but Theresa, Erica and I just ate food in our apartment until we were allowed to go to the pool. The second we jumped in, it felt so nice. That day we were so muddy and sweaty and jumping into a freezing cold pool was just what we needed. We swam in the pool for a couple of hours until the other groups arrived. We were so happy to see them. We told each other about our trips and wish we had stayed longer to enjoy everything. That night we had a very special Khantoke dinner. I loved it so much, we got the chance to eat with our hands, and Ella and I took every advantage that we could of it. We had this really good slightly sweet chicken, and then minced up chicken with pork and this amazing spicy sauce, as well as delicious vegetables, along with sticky rice. Overall I just loved that dinner. Afterwards we got to watch many different cultural dances, there were really nice. There were several different dances with several themes. One was a music dance, another a candle, dance and my favorite was the umbrella dance.




It was the last night there so we were all really sad, but looking back on the trip, it was the best excursion week there possibly could be.

(All photos are credited to Erica Dauzacker)