Rao Len Game (we're playing a game)

Most unusual sighting of the day

Riding on a Tuk Tuk with my partners

This weekend we went to NKP (Nakhon Phanom) for a little funtivity of a scavenger hunt. We had a checklist of about 20 things to find and see around the city. It was quite an extensive list from going to the bus station, hospital, police station, post office (which my group passed at least 3 times and had no idea!), the World Teach office (it’s out in a neighborhood and so hard to find), the WT library in the governor’s mansion, a fishing boat, the SP hotel, a fruit we have never seen and the list goes on. My group was the Pineapple group or sap bpa roht as we like to call it here on the other side of the world.  We could have nicknamed our selves the tortoise group because we were the slow and steady group that got second place but should have gotten second because we were the only group to find a water buffalo. It wasn’t alive, it was a skeleton on a person’s house, but still we were just really creative. It was actually quite an exhausting day because we had to find all the places just in our small group of three people. We had a vague idea of some of the places but no idea for many others. Trying to ask Thai people for directions was darn near impossible because 1) their streets aren't named 2) they don't speak English 3) we speak little Thai and the little we do know is pronounced all wrong because Thai is a tonal language 4) our talking dictionaries don't talk correct tonal Thai either leading to lots of frustrating times that ended in lots of laughing and no progress toward knowing where to go but miraculously we accomplished our task for the day.

On our way home we all packed into a sawng tao (directly translated as 2 benches because there are 2 sometimes 3 benches, so should be called saam tao, in the back of a truck acting as the bus) that left 30 minutes late. We turned into the 4:50 and the 5:20 ride back to Pla Pak. This meant we had to fit double the load of people into the truck. We tried counting all the people on it and got to about 28 which I believe we may have missed a few buried heads. None the less it was quite the comical and tight ride for us farang (white foreigner).