The Hungarian Padthai

 Yesterday I went out to celebrate the real Loy Krathong which is basically the celebration of the river. All the people are floating different ornaments on it, wishing good luck and thanking the river at the same time for bringing them water and thus food. The little ornament - as you can see - consists of natural materials: banana leaves and flowers. Then incent sticks are put into it with a candle to light it up. It's really beautiful.  As you can see from the picture, the whole riverside was closed down so that no cars could enter, the streets there were made into pedestrian streets. There were huge ornaments, too - made by the municipiality I guess - which were probably flown down later on that evening. It truly had a spiritual mood! :-) It was really a pleasure to check that out.  I went there with a new friend around 6-ish and left around 7, but later on at night, I got back to the place and it was - by that time - stuffed with people already! Anyway. Here are some...

Needless to say that it was very difficult to get used to waking up at 6 am again and going to school. Luckily, on the first day, (26th of October), we only had teacher training day, and on Thursday and Friday this week, we had Thai Days - because of the Loy Kratong (coming up this weekend). We had an active 2 days! :-)  (On another note, on the teacher's day we had a lot of meetings, plus, two fun games periods, where we played touchball and then volleyball. About the volleyball: well, the others played it, I didn't. I really don't like to play volleyball..... :PPPPP as it's very hurtful.) Okay, so anyway, on the thai days, there were no teaching hours, only the Thai teachers organized different programs! :-) We were assigned to different groups of students and the leaders of the group were from my homeroom.  On Thursday, we had two stations: first, we learnt how to make traditional Thai desserts: the first one was Chup Luk:  which is basically beanpaste with some obvi...

  After the long cave-trip, we decided to go on short trips every day! Already on the next day - Thursday, we visited Wat Huay Mongkol. Mongkol was a famous monk, who lived for many years and this is his biggest statue of him in the country! It was beautiful! It was about a 30-minute drive from Hua Hin.It was not only about this statue though - which is the biggest pilgrim-place in the country, but it had different activities to do. First, if you are with a little child, you can buy a fish for 100B and set it free (like a good luck fish). I, on the other hand, went wandering around the floating floor. I found a small sanctuary of the monk. I bought some flowers and lit some incense: I meditated for a bright future. Then left. When I saw a big ole' Buddha just out in the nowhere! :-O It was really unexpected and beautiful! :-)  On Friday (our last day), we visited the Royal Summer Palace. If you're from Europe and you got used to the residences like Schönbrunn, Vienna, don't...

  My Hungarian friends invited me to their autumn holiday - and since I don't have a driving licence, and also had no plans (remember, I've just got here), I accepted this invitation. We left Saraburi and we drove 5 hours to arrive at Hua Hin. On the first couple of days, we really didn't do anything - just lying on the beach, walking up and down in town, eating and sleeping a lot. It was necessary, as I was quite knackered from school, to be honest. (I love my job, but it's a challenge sometimes, so it's nice to switch off. :-) )  On Tuesday, we started to make little trips. First, we went to the 'Monkey Hill', where I didn't take many pictures, as this hill is inhabited by wild monkeys - even one of them, as I was trying to put my camera into my bagpack, heard the noise and wanted to look into it if I had some foods for him. Here are some pictures though, from the safe area:  Buddha... Buddha everywhere...  There is a crack in everything. That's wh...