Beautiful Thailand

Sai Yok Waterfalls

Even after almost a full year in Thailand there are lots of beautiful spots to discover. Together with the interns Emily und Koen (America and Belgium) plus two friends of Khwan, Tan and Of, we enjoyed a weekend in the West of Thailand, near the border to Burma.

Highligths:

Huge graveyard on our way to the waterfalls. Thousands of British, Australian and Dutch soldiers were killed by the Japanese during their WW2 invasion.

Hot springs. The water in these basins is REALLY hot, after 10 minutes you’ll feel like dying, burning or sleeping. Fortunately nearby there was cold river to cool down.

We spent the night on a ferry and had truly delicious food for dinner, unforgettable!! And…..into the water!

Khwan looks like enjoying, doesn’t she..

Random pics

Tuesdays and Thursdays: Board gaming in the Mc Donalds near Chit Lom, huge fun even though mostly in Thai. These gamers seem to have played every single game ever produced, in every single edition.

Visiting Coca Cola Thailand together with Andy.

Huh?! Who’s that? Visit from Muenster, Germany: Basti, Nat’s boyfriend and Liza, fresh from Germany as well. After eating delicious Guai Diau, we headed over to an indie film festival. If you get bored in Bangkok, you are boring!

Wojciech, one of our interns from Poland after a bad motorcycle accident in the hospital.

One of our last meals in my old messy home. Now I live nearer to the city center and it has been taken over by 2 Indians and a Polish guy..

10 days conference in Hyderabed, India, with 700 delegates from more then 100 (!) countries. My roommates were from Malysia, Tanzania and Kenya. One highlight: Global village, all countries presented themselves at a booth and showed a typical performance.

Sightseeing in Hyderabad later on. Yet more crowded then Bangkok, most of the inhabitants are Muslims, celebrating Ramadhan in the picture. (Edit: Hyderabad expert Dave just told me that this is bullshit: The major religion is Hinudism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabad,_India#Demographics)

Mumbai from the airplane.

With Khwan at the amazing Kao Yai national park. We saw not only monkeys, deers and elephants, but also a huge cobra that seemed to be quite angry and ready to bite. Luckily we could start the motorcycle quickly enough to escape!!

Yet another visa-run to Loas. I visited my Japanese friend Yuki there who used to work in AIESEC Thailand and works now for ODOP (one district one product). One example of a product is this delicious snail on the picture, supposed to taste great!

Recently I went to Loei, in the North of Thailand, on a 7 days mediation retreat. It was an experience I really don’t wanna miss. Even though we had to wake up 5 am and couldn’t eat at all after 12 pm!! The day included 4 hours of self development sessions and 5 hours of meditation. Compared to others this was quite a soft retreat (a friend from Alaska told me he was on a 10 days retreat with 10 hours mediation a day and complete silence!) . The area was in a peaceful valley surrounded by pure nature.  We had two teaching and mentoring monks from the Netherlands and UK (both could speak Thai fluently. Believe it or not since then I’ve been meditating every day! You should try it out, it’s a nice way to attain happiness ;)

With Khun Ittipat, a thoughtful and empowering friend