i'll be alright, just not tonight, someday

happy friday everyone! :) sara bareilles came out with a new video for "Gonna Get Over You" and i love it. enjoy! :) 

"Gonna Get Over You" 

Goodbye
Should be sayin' that to you by now, shouldn't I?
Layin' down the law that I live by,
Though maybe next time

I've got a thick tongue,
Brimming with the words that go unsung
Simmer then the burn for a someone,
A wrong one

And I tell myself to let the story end,
My heart will rest in someone else's hand
My 'why not me?' philosophy began,
And I say

Ooh, how'm I gonna get over you?
I'll be alright, just not tonight
Someday, oh I wish you'd want me to stay
I'll be alright, just not tonight,
Someday

Maybe is a vicious little word that can slay me
Keep me when I'm hurting and make me,
Hang from your hands

Well, no more,
I won't beg to buy a shot at your back door
If I make it at the thought of you, what for?
It's not me anymore

And I'm not the girl that I intend to be,
I dare you darling, just you wait and see
But this time not for you but just for me,
And I say

Ooh, how'm I gonna get over you?
I'll be alright, just not tonight
Someday, oh I wish you'd want me to stay
I'll be alright, just not tonight,
Someday

Say it's coming soon,
Someday without you,
All I can do
Is get me past the ghost of you,

Wave goodbye to me,
I won't say I'm sorry,
I'll be alright
once I find the other side of someday
Oohoohooohoohooh...
Oohoohooohoohooh...

Ooh, how'm I gonna get over you?
I'll be alright, just not tonight
Someday, oh I wish you'd want me to stay
I'll be alright, just not tonight,
Someday

look mom, i'm a big kid now!

as of this morning around 8:45am, i am officially a graduate student! i will be pursuing my master's of education in curriculum and instruction: reading with an emphasis in elementary education through grand canyon university; which is based out of arizona. 

since i am currently in south korea, i will be doing classes online through their online program. once i make it back to the states, i have the option of continuing and finishing my degree online, or i could always move to arizona and finish up my classes in an actual class on campus. right now, i have no idea what i am going to do come 5 months from now. i am just going to deal with what i have on my plate right now and go from there. 


my program should take me between 17-18 months to complete. i have 9 classes or 34 credits to complete over the course of that time. all of the work is done online, posting my assignments, sending my homework, interacting with the other students and even the practicum class i am required to take at the end. i was told if i wanted to switch to the campus after i come back to the states, i can also do that. so there would be an option to move to arizona if i wanted. 


as of right now i should be starting my classes next thursday. pending my account being set up and my transcripts from pacific showing proof that i hold a bachelor's degree already. 


cue freak out: omg i'm starting graduate school next week!! eek! 


this is really happening!

why you gotta? why you wanna make me keep wanting you?

i am afraid i might be getting my first cold in korea. i woke up on sunday feeling sort of achy, a little bit of a sore throat, and just all around tired. i felt extremely tired all day, but forced myself to go out and do a small hike with stephanie and then a hour bike ride. after that, i was exhausted. 

side note: not riding a bike for close to 2 years and then going riding for a hour is probably not the best idea... my butt hurts. 

i am refusing to get sick, mostly because my immune system is total crap and when i get sick, i stay sick for what seems like FOREVER. granted i do have health insurance over here, so if i do get sick, i will be able to go to the doctor and hopefully get something. but i really don't want to take my chances. so i will be hopefully going to bed at a decent hour, attempt to get plenty of rest, fluids, eat right and take my theraflu and hopefully that will be enough to overcome this cold by this weekend. me getting sick also means i don't have an appetite. which i guess might be seen as a good thing and might not. it does mean my co-teachers are going to give me even more crap at lunch for not eating. today i threw half of what i took away because i just couldn't eat anymore.

this weekend is the last long weekend we have. we have next monday off. it's national foundations day, whatever that is. this marks the last holiday we have off until winter vacation in january. yep that's right, no days off in november or december this year for me. i will be working on thanksgiving this year and no days off for christmas your new years. christmas falls on a sunday this year and i will be starting my first day of winter camp the following day. 

it's going to be really weird not having the holidays off while everyone at home does. thanksgiving will also mark only 3 more months that i have left in korea, so i know that when that time comes, i am not only going to be freeeeeeeezing, but i will be missing home and not wanting to be in korea. i already talked to stephanie about this yesterday, but we are going to have to go out and do things, even if it's cold. because i refuse to stay cooped up in my apartment by myself and be mopey. that will just not end well for anyone. 

okay back to this weekend... stephanie, clara and i are going to be going to andong for the international mask festival. after that we will be going to jinju for the lantern festival. it should be fun. thus why i must get better and not be sick. 

it's fall. i love fall. i love that it's not disgustingly hot and humid. i love that it isn't pouring down rain for days, even weeks, on end. it's nice and crisp in the morning and then relatively warm in the afternoons. this also means i get to start wearing scarves. i love scarves. :) plus tv shows are back now too. so i have something to do when i have to desk warm.

what i am not looking forward to... winter. i am going to freeze. last winter was apparently the coldest winter korea has had in 30 years. with this year to probably be the same. i. am. going. to. freeze. to. death. seriously. i am slowly starting to gather winter clothes, which means i am going to have to do a little more shopping. i might be purchasing a warmer peacoat. plus about a million long sleeve shirts. i am going to hate winter even more than i already do. 


this weekend i also ordered and picked up some burritos. there are two "waygooks" or foreigners who make homemade burritos in the area and sell them. i'm pretty excited, because these are going to be the most legit burritos that i have had since being in korea and till i get home. 


i'm thinking it's a burrito and salsa kind of night for dinner. let's just hope i have an appetite.

i'm turning off of real life, drivin' that's right, i'm hittin' easy street on mud tires

"you aren't a terrible teacher. you are doing good things. you are doing the best you can." 

i feel like this saying is on repeat in my head for 40 minutes everything tuesday and thursday. or at least it should be. someone should record it so i can listen to it the entire time i am attempting to teach my 6-7 class. i know i have complained about this class before, but me venting here for all of you to read is far better than me taking it out on my kids. trust me... i've come close a few times. 

as of today i have already kicked two kids out of class. we have yet to do an extra activity (usually a review game at the end of the lesson) that i have prepared because when we start it, the class becomes complete and utter chaos to the point that i can't even hear myself think. i don't know how many times i have to stop in the middle of my lesson to get them to be quiet; they are constantly talking. or throwing something. or poking each other. or slapping each other. or trying to pull each other chairs out from under them. or something else equally has frustrating. there have been multiple times where my korean co-teacher has pulled one of them to the back of the room, placed a blindfold on them and told them to stand there in silence with their hands up. (punishment in korea is way different than the states. check this out.)

punishment, of any kind only works for a small amount of time with these kids. on tuesday of last week, i was fed up with all of the noise, yelling, not following directions and me attempting to shout over them wasn't working. i was fed up. so i turned off the game that we did for a whole 4 minutes, told them to get out a piece of paper and a pencil. they were going to write lines in English. after an outburst of complaining in korean, whining and angry faces; everyone had a piece of paper. i wrote the sentence they were going to write on the white board and told them they had to write it 30 times. they had to number the sentences 1-30 and it had to be in hand writing i could read, or they were going to start over. there was about 12 minutes left of class. no one was allowed to leave until it was turned into me and i approved it. as i was writing the sentence, i heard the word, "fuck" and then a bunch of korean. my co-teacher took over from there. she pinpointed the kid who said it and it was all downhill from there. thus the second student getting kicked out of my class.


last semester was a bit stressful at the end with these students, but i never had to result to making them write lines or sit there with their eyes closed in silence, which is what happened on tuesday of this week. my co-teacher made them close their eyes, put their hands behind their backs and sit there in silence for the last 7 minutes of class. i was told that the 2nd semester was going to be rough, but i wasn't prepared for this. 


when i have to result to making them write lines or sit there in complete silence with their eyes closed, i feel like a terrible teacher. i feel like i am just giving up and instantly going towards negative punishment. but i honestly don't know what else to do with these terrible, awful, horrible, no good, very bad students. 


i learned today, well not learned, but was reminded that i am not the only teacher that cannot stand this class. last semester i was informed that this class is notorious around the school as THE WORST CLASS EVER!  any subject teacher, including me, the PE teacher, and the music teacher to name a few, absolutely hate this class. the entire lunch session today was devoted to all of the teachers complaining about the students. the PE teacher said that the boys weren't listening or lining up, so the girls got to go first, resulting in the boys complaining for the rest of class. another subject teacher said when she asked the students a question, their answer, no matter the question was always, "oma" (which is mom in korean). the entire class period, this is what they did. 


i have 13 more weeks of teaching this class until the end of the semester. and i am already completely and utterly fed up with them. my fear: that i am not going to be able to contain my frustration when i teach them and a minor explosion ensues in the middle of class. 

"you aren't a terrible teacher. you are doing good things. you are doing the best you can." 
(if i just keep telling myself this over and over, everything is going to be okay.)

I wish i was cold as stone, then i wouldn't feel a thing

so it's official... i have applied to grad school. 2 actually. 

here's a timeline of what made me come to this decision: 

july/august: i got another "birthday email" from TSPC (i have gotten this same email since i became a licensed teacher in the state of oregon) informing me that i have until my birthday of 2012 to meet the requirements to renew my teaching license. after looking at the requirements, in order to renew my current Initial 1 Teaching License from the State of Oregon; i am required to have at least 3 semester hours towards my master's degree. i have known this information since i first received my license back in 2009, but have put it off (procrastination at it's finest) until now. it wasn't so much procrastination, but money. after finishing undergrad, i was in debt too much already and didn't want to jump right into grad school until i knew i was ready. 


beginning of august: major panic attack about what i was going to do about this. i only had 1 year left basically till things had to be done and i was worried since i am here in south korea. i then refused to think about it before/during my 2 week vacation in thailand. i told myself to put it out of my mind till after i came back from vacation. i didn't want to be stressed about it while on vacation. 


september: returned from vacation... still not wanting to think about it, but forcing myself to. so began the research of where i wanted to look at going. at one point i had 8 different tabs open on my laptop of different schools. 
one of the requirements that i wanted was that they have an online program. i was hoping to start my classes while i was still over here in korea. and then if i moved back to the states and decided that i might want to take classes on the campus i could have that option. (though i don't know if that would actually happen) 
after plenty of research, a few freak out moments, some stress induced tears, i have narrowed my choices down to 2. grand canyon university out of arizona and ashford university out of iowa. (i have a few friends who are currently doing their master's degree's at each school and they have all said they enjoy it) so i decided to apply to both programs to see what happens.


currently: as of now i have applied to both and now have to do my FAFSA... oh fafsa how i hate you. i need to narrow it down and pick one school so i can move forward and get started. i'm not entirely sure how i really feel about all of this, but i know it's the right step. (plus i don't think i can put it off much longer) 


the next big decision i am going to have to make is what i am going to do come next march. stay in korea, go somewhere else and teach, go back to the states, if i got back to the states; where to go. and of course the job aspect. and a car. which would require me to get my driver's license renewed since it expired on my birthday in august. so many things to think about...

and i'll be brave...

i have returned from my 2nd vacation of the last 2 months. first was 16 days in thailand. second was chuseok vacation. what is chuseok you ask? it's basically the Korean Thanksgiving. so i was given friday, monday, tuesday and wednesday off for the holiday. dani paid for both of us to go down to busan, which is at the southern tip of Korea. which equals, warmer weather and the beach and that means relaxation. overall, it was a great trip. it was nice to get away after 2 weeks of stress. 

and now to the point of this blog. the stress. first let me just say, being an adult is sometimes overwhelming and i really despise making adult decisions. it's frustrating and stressful. and drives me crazy. but it must be done. 

so it's the start of the 2nd semester of my teaching here in korea. i came back from vacation to the same 5th and 6th graders, only they are more eager to be done with school now. it's the 2nd semester, the 6th graders have already taken the national exams, which means they don't care at all. overall, my classes are fine. my 5th graders are still great and actually keep me pretty entertained. my after school 1st/2nd graders are still adorable. six out of my seven 6th grade classes are pretty good. but then there is the lone 6th grade class that i loathe seeing twice a week. 


this class has been terrible all year long. there are a total of 8 children in that class that are all equally terrible. and they just feed off of each other. and just make teaching that class complete torture. i have had my fair share of brats and devil children over the last 2 years of teaching, but this class takes it to an entirely different level. to the point that i have already kicked a child out of my room because i couldn't handle him anymore. it didn't help that he told me to "go screw yourself". yeesh!


the biggest thing for me is that english isn't their first language. no this isn't something that is news to me as i have been dealing with it for 6 months now, but because english isn't their first language; i struggle with classroom control with this class. this isn't something i have had a big problem with in the past. when i did my student teaching, i had the 6th grade class from hell. chair throwing, students cussing at me, students trying to break other students arms; but i was able to keep them under control. this class is a struggle. 


they refuse to listen. they refuse to stop talking. they refuse to participate. there have been many times where i have been forced to chose students and i have to go stand by them and sometimes physically stand them up in order for them to participate. there is no point in yelling at them, because they either a: don't understand or b: don't listen or c: don't care. it's only the start of the 3rd with with them and i am already ready to be done with them. i am at a loss as to what i am supposed to do with these children for the rest of the semester. any advice would be greatly appreciated. 


i am bracing myself for tomorrow already. they are the only 6th grade class i teach this week as tomorrow is thursday. they are ahead of all the other classes, so that means i am reviewing with them so they stay in line with all my other classes. thankfully i will have my coteacher with me this time.

the final leg of thailand... phuket

this is the final post about my wonderful two week vacation to thailand... phuket! 

so where did we leave off... oh yes getting stuck in the chiang mai airport. how do you ask, did we end up missing our flight from chiang mai to phuket. sheer stupidity. i looked at the paperwork and i pretty much read it completely wrong. instead of reading that our flight left at 1:10 from chiang mai and arrived in phuket at 3:15pm; i read that we were leaving from chiang mai at 3:15. completely and utterly wrong. what. an. idiot. 


we left the airport for a bit after checking in and once we got back we had missed the plane by 5 minutes. once the lady found us and told us we missed it, we instantly started freaking out. i instantly got upset and started crying. they pulled our bags off of the flight, so we were able to get them. we then had to go to the airasia counter and proceed to buy a new ticket. not what we wanted to do, but really the only option. 

by this time it was about 2pm... the next flight wasn't leaving till 10:45pm. that's basically 9 hours of doing nothing but sitting in the chiang mai airport. this is how we spent monday. sitting in the airport. after a couple hours, i wasn't so upset with myself, just really annoyed with the situation as a whole. after reading for a while, we moved and got food at the thai restaurant in the airport. from there we moved to the waiting area and i *thankfully* was able to download some free games for my kindle. after a while, we moved downstairs to hopefully check in. after waiting for an hour, they were starting to check people in. we checked in again and made our way to the departure gate. 

found this in chiang mai. for all my portland loves :)

finally after waiting for 8.5 hours at the airport and the 1.5 hour flight, we finally arrived in phuket around 12:30. after getting our bags finally, we moved outside to find our transportation. thankfully he was standing there with a sign with our name and hotel name on it. after a 45 minute drive, we finally arrived at our hotel. so after a very long day around 2am, we finally were checked into our hotel and situated in phuket. it was time for bed. 

hello bed... goodnight world.

waking up the next morning, the first thing we set out to do was find a place to get my hair cut and a place for stephanie to get a bikini wax. you would think the later would have been easier to find... not the case. we found a place to cut my hair, directly across the street from our hotel. the lady, ray, was soooo nice. she complimented the color of my hair probably about 15 times throughout the cut. she did a pretty good job, managed to cut all the dead split ends away and fixed my terrible bangs. from there we went on a hunt for stephanie to get her bikini wax. finally after walking around for an hour we found a place. 

the area around our hotel

from there we went back to the hotel, packed up the necessary things and headed to the beach. we spent the rest of the sunlight laying on the beach enjoying the weather. which turned out to be a good thing, because the weather didn't quite cooperate with us and wasn't the greatest for most of our trip south. 

we finally made it to the beach

relaxation at it's finest

working on our tans

the south part of our trip was basically for relaxing, which is exactly what we did. we relaxed, slept in, ate so much amazing food, went out dancing/for drinks at night, met some awesome people from germany and iran, a little souvenir shopping, walked along the beach, ate more amazing food, indulged in many massages, a pedicure and manicure, got a little sunburned. oh and did i mention we ate good food. seriously that's how we told time... by the time that went by in between us eating. rather ridiculous, but so so so good. 

a night out in phuket

after one of our many delicious meals

ladyboys EVERYWHERE...

the german couple we met

another night out in phuket

"we're on vacation!"

shafa, our friend from iran

shahriar, our other friend from iran

saturday we checked out of our hotel, left our bags there and headed out to enjoy our last full day. we started with lunch. we were starving. we walked a little ways down and found a restaurant. it turned out to be only okay. this wasn't the greatest pad thai i had on the trip, but it was decent. then we had a 2.5 hour massage that included a foot massage, a thai massage and then a oil massage. it was wonderful. overall out of all the massages we had, i would have to say that one was the best. when she got to my back, we really worked on my shoulders, which was great, because that is where i keep all of my stress at. so my knots were huge. i felt wonderful afterwards. from there we walked around for a good 3-4 hours. we ended up running into our iranian friends for the 3rd time on our trip. after that we came back to the hotel and read on the couches in the lobby for a while. from there we ordered dinner in again. then made our way into town again and got our last thing of mango and sticky rice for dessert. it was wonderful! 

our driver picked us up at 11pm and we made our way to the airport. after getting our bags checked in and making it through customs and security, all we had to do was wait. 2am flights are terrible. terrible terrible terrible. we left on time and again had to fly through shang hai... curse you shang hai and your stupidity. 


after not sleeping at all on the 5 hour flight, we arrived in china. went in through customs only to pick up our bags and then checked our bags again to head to incheon. only to then walk out through customs again. (i will never ever understand why you have to go in through customs only to turn around 20 minutes later and walk out through customs again while you transfer flights. dumbest thing ever.) we grabbed food and then made our way to our gate. we would have left one time, expect them moved another flight to our gate, making our boarding time get pushed back. after finally being able to board and a 2.5 hour flight, we arrived back in incheon around 4pm. we found our bags, exchanged some of our money, and caught the bus home. 


those 16 days of vacation were much needed and were absolutely amazing! so far, best vacation ever! as of right now it's looking like indonesia for winter vacation in january with dani! i'm pretty excited for this. it's going to be amazing. 


first up though is this coming weekend... next monday and tuesday is chuseok, korean thanksgiving, so we have vacation again. my school is awesome and has given me not only monday and tuesday, but the wednesday after AND the friday before. so from friday the 9th until wednesday the 14th i will be on a 6 day vacation. for 4 of those days i will be in Busan! i'm pretty excited.

so much incredibly delicious thai food

it's been a few days... i got back to korea, and instantly got super busy. with getting back in the routine of waking up to an alarm, teaching classes, and having a set schedule for most of the time. i believe there is only two more blogs left of my trip to thailand... this one about the food/amazing cooking class. and then phuket. sooooo... thai food and a cooking class. 

saturday night after the thai boxing, steph and i went to a restaurant to get a beer to bring in my birthday. 24th birthday in thailand... awesome! we signed up for a cooking class that our hostel lady, Nine, insist that we do. she said it was the best cooking class out of all of them, so we did it. TOTALLY WORTH IT! so sunday we woke up early, got ready and were downstairs waiting for our ride. 


when our ride arrived, we met lucia, who we spent the day cooking with. she was from argentina, had been working in new zealand and was on vacation with her boyfriend. our first stop was the open market. our two awesome teachers, pot and siam, showed us around for a bit, quizzed us on some of the vegetable we would later be cooking with and let us explore for 10 minutes on our own. the color was so overwhelming. all the fresh fruits and vegetable everywhere. 

fresh veggies at the market

cutting fresh mushrooms

cutting fresh mushrooms

from there, we were taken to Siam Rice Thai Cookery School, which we later learned was actually the home of Pot and Nancy, the owners and cooks of the school. they run the school out of their own home. it was awesome. the three of us were seated at the table, given a brochure and told we were picking our own menus. since we chose the full day, we would be making a total of 7 courses; including a soup, a pasta dish, 2 appetizers, stir fried vegetables, our own curry paste which we would use to make curry and a dessert. we could each choose our own. so i choose the following: 
- Pad Thai
- Chicken and Coconut Soup
- Spring Rolls
- Papaya Salad
- Chicken with Cashew Nuts and Fried Vegetables
- Massaman Curry (with the curry paste we each made from scratch) 
- Sticky Rice with Mango
(In the pamphlet about the class, it says "DO NOT EAT BREAKFAST!" so so so true. there was so much food and so many leftovers. 




after that we went straight outside to the kitchen area and got down to business. first lesson we learned, "move your body" in everything we did, weather cutting, frying, stirring... anything, you had to move your body. we first were introduced to Nancy, who is absolutely amazing. she has so much passion for cooking and she loves to share it with other. her personality is hilarious and working with her didn't feel like a class, but like she was a friend showing us how to cook. we all felt so incredibly comfortable being there. it was great. 

first we made the pasta dish and soup. pretty easy. i chose to make pad thai and chicken and coconut soup. they were both pretty easy to make and were wonderful. after finishing those, we moved the finished food into the dining area and came back to make the spring rolls and papaya salad. we all chose to make these two appetizers. they were delicious. and while making the spring rolls we learned out to properly fold/roll the spring rolls. after those were done, we moved them into the dining area and were told we could eat. first round of food was delicious. thankfully we were allowed to have leftovers. they boxed and packaged all of our leftovers up so we could take them home. 

chicken coconut soup

my soup and pad thai

yay for awesome friends and cooking class!

papaya salad and spring rolls

 after this, we were told we had a bit of a break. so we made our way to the covered gazebo area and relaxed. stephanie, lucia and i were talking about all sorts of things, including our ages. lucia asked me my age and i told her that today was actually my birthday and i was turning 24. nancy overheard me say this and said, "It's your birthday? Happy Birthday! Why didn't you tell us earlier that it was your birthday?" i didn't think it was important, so i didn't mention it. after our break, nancy came over with a plate of carrots and potatoes and told us we were going to learn how to carve vegetables into flowers. (while we were doing this, the second half of our group showed up. they were just taking the afternoon class). 

after 3 different attempts, my final product

i bet you can guess which one was done by the professional?

 vegetable carving.... yah that went over terribly. we carved the carrots into flowers and the potato slices into leaves for our flowers. it went over so terribly that i had to start over not once, not twice, but THREE times! it was terrible. terrible terrible terrible.


after the other part of our group finished their first part of cooking and vegetable carving, we moved back to the kitchen area and started with the fried vegetables. i chose the chicken with cashew nuts and fried vegetables. this was exciting because we got to use the wok and basically create fire. it was awesome. below is a video! again, nancy made everything so easy and it turned out great. after putting it in the dining area, we moved onto the curry paste. 

oh curry paste... you are such hard work to make. after putting all of the ingredients in the giant mortar, we took the giant pestle and went to town on pounding the ingredients into a paste. pound pound pound on and on. while we were doing this nancy told us in thailand, a way to tell if someone is going to make a good wife or husband is if they can make good curry paste. sooooo.... i was the first one to finish and as nancy was scooping out my paste into the bowl, she smiles at me and says, "You will make an excellent wife. good curry paste." and then proceeds to say, "i have a son. he is young, will you wait for him?" i laugh. just about that time a small child runs through and she points to him, "that's my son. he is 2. will you wait for him?" that became the joke for the rest of the day. 

curry paste before...

curry paste after...

vegetables and massaman curry

such good curry

 after the curry paste, we moved right into making our curry. i chose the massaman curry, because it wasn't too spicy and was a little sweet with the cinnamon in it. excellent. after we moved the curry into the dining area we went back to making dessert. 


mango and sticky rice is very high up on my list of favorite desserts of alllllllll time! sooooo good. we didn't make the sticky rice, it was already prepared, because one of the steps is letting it steam for 6 hours. so after the rice was prepared we put it in the pot with coconut milk and a little palm sugar. after we were finished, we went into the dining room and started eating again. so much food. 


as we were winding down, they brought out our cooked desserts. so so so good. while we were all talking and saying how we were all full, i heard the workers say my name and talking in thai. 

remember how i nancy overheard me talking about my birthday... well they went out and bought a small birthday cake for me. they put candles on the cake and everyone sang happy birthday for me! :) it was so incredibly sweet. 

happy 24th birthday to me!

we were each given a recipe book of all the recipes we cooked and they included the ones we didn't choose as well. we were also given a certificate of completion for the class! after we ate some cake, we packed up our very large amount of leftovers, said our thank you's and were driven back to our hostel. it was the greatest birthday i could have asked for in thailand! (at night we went to the night market and went shopping for gifts and things for ourselves. so much good stuff! ) 


i know i have said this about a lot of things, but if you ever get the chance to go to chiang mai, first you should stay at The Green Tulip House and you should definitely take this cooking class. it was amazing and totally worth it!

Chiang Dao Nest Trek Experience

When we started planning this entire trip to Thailand, there were originally going to be 3 of us, but because of extenuating circumstances, it ended up just being stephanie and myself on the trip. Our friend clara had found a website for a company who did treks up in the Northern part of Thailand. We decided as a group to go on a 3 day/2 night trek, where we would be hiking a lot, staying in 2 different local villages, seeing beautiful mountains and so much GREEEEEEEN! 

We booked our trek through The Chiang Dao Nest which is a small resort area in the Chiang Dao region of Northern Thailand that also provides tours and trekking. We chose a 3 day/2 night trek, in which we we would enjoy the following:

- Experience life in hill tribe villages
- Visit a number of different ethnic groups
- Nice Elephant ride
- Peaceful bamboo rafting
- Enjoy great hospitality
- Stunning mountain views
- Explore two remote caves
- Nature walks
- Demanding Trekking
- Visit a beautiful waterfall
- Clean, comfortable accommodation
- Very few visitors go to the villages we visit on the first two days and sleep in overnight both nights. 


Wednesday morning, Stephanie and I were picked up from our hostel in Chiang Mai and taken to the Chiang Dao Nest. It was about a 45 minute car ride in the back of a "mini bus", which is basically a truck with a covered area on the back. Once at the Nest, we were given breakfast. Thankfully they had a spare backpack lying around, because neither Stephanie or I had one. We packed our backpack and headed out in the back of another pick-up towards the beginning of our trek. 

our before picture... we didn't bother taking an after.

stephanie's excited face!

a bit of the greenery we saw the whole trip.

 We started out at the top of a very steep and muddy road that led to a Lisu village. Our tour guide, Nata, guided us down the hill and through the small village; which is actually his village. We went through the village and started trekking through the hills and hills of mountain rice. We arrived at the first of the two caves we saw on this trek. We were given hard hats and flashlights and went right in. 

the beginning of the Lisu village. That is Nata, our guide!

A Lisu house

Lisu Village

This cave was pretty cool. Though there were some parts I was hesitant to go through because they were so small, but I braved my claustrophobia and made it to the end of the cave. We did get the pleasure of seeing a few bats along the way as well. 

After the cave, we hiked back to the village, where we ate a pre-packed lunch for us. This is where we tried the Lisu whiskey for the first time. We all know how I feel about whiskey... gross... so again I was hesitant to try it, but made myself do it. It was actually really good. It didn't taste like American whiskey usually tastes. It was pretty good. After finishing lunch, we headed out again, this time to find the waterfall... This is where it got interesting. 

While eating lunch, it started to rain pretty good. Thankfully it slowed before we left, but that left the ground super muddy and slippery. And considering I am the world's biggest klutz, I was worried about injuring myself. (side-note: Mark informed me I had a minimum quota of at least 1 injury, but of course I was going to go over. After that I made it my goal not to injure myself as much as possible.) We made it to the waterfall in one piece, just covered in mud. We played in the waterfall for a while and then headed toward the other Lisu village we would be staying at for the night. This is where the injury came in. We were crossing a rock wall, my foot slipped on the wet rock and i slid down the wall a little before Nata grabbed me. I sliced my leg pretty good, causing it to scar later on. After slipping in the mud a few times, even causing Nata to go sliding down the hill at one point, we finally arrived at the Lisu village. We were fed delicious dinner, drank a bit more Lisu whiskey and called it a night.   

my *only* injury of the entire 16 day trip. i'm pretty proud of myself.

good good food

Nata, our guide.

 The beginning of the second day started with breakfast with a pretty view. From there, we were given walking sticks and set out for our 11km of hiking from the Lisu village to the Karen village we were staying at the 2nd night. We were led by San, a Lisu man from the village we stayed at. This trek, while it was much longer than the 1st day, involved me falling way less. There were parts that I slipped and overall I only had one big fall. 


From the village, we trekked to another small Lisu village and met the shaman, who blessed our trek. We then trekked for a few hours, until we came to the second cave we were going to explore. This cave was much bigger and more wide open. It did not involve any crawling in small spaces. After the cave, we hiked a little while longer and then came to a stopping point. There was a small covered hut area to sit. Stephanie and I instantly sat down in exhaustion. We watched as San and his son pulled out cooking supplies and made a bushman style lunch right there in the middle of the forest. San's son had cut down some bamboo earlier on the trek. Here he split it open, cleaned it out and those were our serving dishes that we ate out of. Pretty awesome. 

Shaman's House

Exit of the 2nd cave

San making the fire for lunch

Our lunch. Yep we ate out of bamboo!

From there we trekked for a few more hours until we finally arrived at the Karen village. When we arrived, we went into the school that they have and talked with the teacher there and looked as the children were finishing their school day. Afterwards, we went down to our hut we were sleeping in for the night and unpacked. Our hut was located right in the front of the river, which at one point, Stephanie fell into and screamed for me to come quickly save her. Probably one of the funniest parts of the whole trek. We were given dinner and then enjoyed the rest of the night in the hut to ourselves. There was no electricity, so we had to do everything by candles... including trekking to the toilet together in the middle of the night because we didn't want to go alone. 

our sleeping hut for the night

the river we were next to

writing by candle light

We were up and out of the hut bright and early on the 3rd day. We started up a large hill, which was probably 75% going uphill and about 15% going downhill with the rest of the 10% being flat. After close to 2 hours of hiking uphill, we made it to the top of the road, where a pick-up was waiting to take us back to The Chiang Dao Nest resort area. Once we made it back there, we were able to finally take somewhat of a legit shower and able to dispose of some items, including my tennis shoes. Because by this time, they were completely trashed and ruined. 


We then set out to walk through some more villages that weren't in the mountains. We drove for a bit and then we stopped. We were told to get to the first villages we were going to be riding an elephant through the hills. Other than my fear of heights kicking in a little bit, it was awesome. We then walked through a Akha, Lisu, Palong, and Karen village. From there we were driven down to the Ping River. After waiting a little bit, we were given life jackets and led to a very large bamboo raft. For the next 30 minutes or so, we floated down the river on the raft, enjoying the peace and quiet and the view. 

Elephants!!

Atop the elephant

Our view from the elephant ride

i couldn't resist taking a picture of some of the children. they were just so cute.

After the bamboo raft ride down the river was over, we were driven back to The Chiang Dao Nest. We collected our things and made the hour drive back to Chiang Mai. 


Overall this was the greatest experience over our entire trip through Thailand. We were able to experience new cultures that we would otherwise not have seen. The views of the land were gorgeous, even through some of the rain. Our tour guides were amazing! The staff at the Chiang Dao Nest was so helpful. 


If any of you ever get the chance to go to Thailand, make sure you make it to Chiang Mai. And definitely book a trek through The Chiang Dao Nest. You won't regret it!