New Friends and a Zipline Ride

This weekend, some girls came riding up on their motorcycle to come visit the farang girl. I was excited. Where I live, there aren't many people my age. I now have some new friends! Their names are Ning and Amp. They are my host dad's nieces, so they are my "cousins." They speak English pretty well, and I can get by in Thai, so we communicate fairly well. We went riding around our town and got some treats.

That day, my dad showed me the chabaas growing in our yard. This is the flower I'm named after!

The next day my Thailand group and I got to ride a zipline course through the jungle!! It was crazy fun and kind of scary. It wasn't just ziplines. There were all kinds of crazy thin bridges we had to cross and there were times when the workers had to drop us down from high platforms onto lower ones many, many feet down. They did a good job of giving us a thrill while keeping us safe. The best thing I can use to describe it would be the Rocket at Lagoon, or a free fall sort of ride. Then we rode really long ziplines over the treetops and to our next destination. If you ever go to Thailand, I would highly recommend it. The view of the jungle from above is beautiful. There are rivers and waterfalls and many kinds of crazy trees.

Keara has an Australian friend who is helping out at the farm where she volunteers. Her name is Amy. For some of the ziplines, there are two wires right next to each other, so two people go at once. Amy and I held onto each other as we went down, and at the exact same moment and in the exact same pitch, we yelled like Tarzan. No joke, we did not plan it. It was hilarious.

At the end of the zipline course was the biggest drop out of all of them. It also happened to start raining, and hard too. It was pouring on us. We were scared that it wouldn't be safe in the rain, but it was just fine. The guys who were our guides helped us through the entire course, and at the end, they didn't seem nervous. We screamed though as they dropped us. They slowed us down and we landed softly on a cushion below. Then we used banana leaves as umbrellas. That's something I can say I had never done before.

 

 

When we got back to Chiang Mai, we went to the mall. While the rest of the group went to see Spiderman, Erin and I got massages. Guess what we saw on the way:

 

A pretty cool way to advertise a sale, I think.

 Because some of us wanted to go shopping with friends at the Night Bazaar and we didn't have a way to get home that late, we decided to stay in a guest house. Depending on what type of room you get, it costs 100-150 baht a night. That's about three to five dollars. It doesn't come with air conditioning, but it does come with a nice fan that keeps you cool and a bed with a really soft mattress. I was highly satisfied. If you need somewhere to stay in Chiang Mai, let me know and I'll hook you up.

At the end of the weekend, I came back home and met up with my new Thai cousins again. They took me around town on their motorcycle. We went to a coffee shop and I got a chocolate drink, and then we got some cake. They needed to run some errands for school, so I tagged along. We took an alternate route home, and I was reminded of what it was like to be in a place where no white people go. Many people we drove past were staring at me and smiling, so I yelled "hello!" In the back of a pickup truck was a big group of people shouting "Farang!" So I waved at them and they waved back. If you need a confidence boost, come to Southeast Asia. People will shower you with attention.

I'm going to spend the next five days in Laos with the group. We will be celebrating Amanda's birthday and also the Fourth of July there.


Until next time.