Uthai thani

So I woke up at half 5 today and after getting ready and making sure our room was clear Alex and I headed to 7/11 to top up our sim cards.

Today Alex and I were heading to Uthai Thani whilst everyone else was taking a train straight to Chiang Mai. Alex and I were the only ones heading to our project because our host P'Ae insisted that we needed to sign some documents ASAP. Which I was totally fine with. I couldn't wait to get to Uthai Thani and meet everyone!

After everyone else had left in taxis to the train station, Nici (our representative) took us to a bus station. When I say bus station I mean a ticket booth under a bridge with a minibus which leaves whenever it fills up.

The bus journey was 3 hours long and relatively cramped as I had both my suitcase and my handbag down by my legs.
About half way through the journey we made a pit stop and for some reason everyone had to get off the bus. We were so confused and just spent about half an hour sitting in the bus station petrified that the bus was somehow going to leave without us!

Anyway, we made it back onto the bus and we carried on our journey.

We stopped at Uthai Thani bus station where P'Ae greeted us with a hug, lots of pics and food.

We drove to Uthaiwitayakhom school (where we'll be teaching) and we were greeted by the other members of the English department. Everyone was amazingly kind to us and we were given more food!(Bearing in mind that Alex and I had stocked up for our bus journey and we hadn't finished the food that P'Ae had given us). They had also put our pictured up on the doors to the English department along with a sign saying 'Welcome to Uthaiwittayakhom School'. Which was so sweet, but it was a really awful photo of me taken just after the ferry ride on my selection course! As P'Ae was sorting out a load of our documents, one of the other farang English teachers took us on a mini tour around school. The school is huge, there's teacher accommodation, a massive 'area' with a roof (which is still being built), 4 department buildings, a cafeteria, a shop, a pool, a gym and a load of other buildings. We also saw a students who looked about 13 riding motorcycles without helmets - which is apparently very normal here!
After signing loads of documents we left the school with P'Ae and Ong (a student and Pe Ae's nephew). They took us to get lunch which consisted of French fries, rice and onion rings!

The next stop was the bank to sort out our Thai bank accounts. Ong and P'Ae had to translate for us and the whole ordeal took well over an hour - staying awake is an incredibly hard thing to do when you're sitting in silence in a quiet place whilst jet lagged!

Finally, we were able to visit our host family's home. We are staying with P'tong (who is a teacher at our school), his nephew Tos, the grandfather and Kao. Almost as soon as we got there P'Ae explained that we were incredibly tired so we were shown to our room and fell straight asleep!

When we awoke our host family took us up to the nearest major town - Nakhon Sawan which is apparently where everyone from Uthai Thani goes for fun.

Here, P'tong very kindly bought us both a T-shirt and me some flip flops before taking us to Swensens for ice cream!
That day was the first day that I tried durian ice cream and it was delicious (although Alex wasn't too keen)!

Then, we want out for dinner, right after finishing our ice cream. We drove to a restaurant which seemed to be cowboy themed as it was wooden and there were people in cowboy hats singing on stage. There wasn't a lot of veggie food here so Alex and I settled for a salad.

On the way home we saw loads of dogs sleeping on the road which is common - apparently they do have owners but they're mostly left to the own devices outside.

The next morning P'Ae and Ong came and picked us up to drive us to the train station. At this time Alex and I had just finished breakfast (which had consisted of some sort of watery rice, eggs and chives). So we rushed to brush our teeth before saying thank you and rushing out the door.

Our train arrived at 11:50 and P'Ae seemed to know the conductor as he helped carry out bags and made sure we were okay.

The train journey was meant to take about 6 hours but it ended up taking 10. At some point there was a problem with the train and we ended up going backwards for about 30 mins - 1 hour back to the previous station where another engine connected to us and drove us.
There was food given to us on the train but I think I was shrimp so we just left it - thankfully we had an abundance of snacks to keep us going!

We arrived in Chiang Mai at about 9 o'clock, and I'll update you all about it in my next post!!