"I have a bug in my ear"

Last night was so hilarious. So there I am trying to get to sleep for an early morning start and Holly starts screaming. She wriggling around holding her ear. I'm like 'What's the matter, i'm trying to sleep?' She says there's a scratching noise in her ear and its really painful. She said it felt like something has got in her ear from her headphones. So while she's squirming around, I google 'painful scratching noise in ear'. Top of the list is 'How to get rid of a bug in your ear'. She matches all the symptoms and Holly starts freaking out. Did I mention that about 10 minutes earlier we went downstairs to steal pieces of chocolate from the fridge. Karma? So anyway the page says use warm mineral oil  and pour it into your ear to drown the bug and wait 5 minutes for it to float to the top. I check about 5 other websites, they all say the same thing. She's still madly in pain and moaning but we where the hell do we get mineral oil from? The whole house is sleeping so there was only one thing we could do- Vegetable oil. We go downstairs and get the vegetable oil but it said warm. So we bashed it in the microwave for a few seconds before pouring it into a juice bottle. Next thing Holly is lying on the sofa while I am pouring warm vegetable oil into her ear. Her ear starts bubbling! There I am just waiting, waiting for some ugly cockroach or drowned ant to surface. Its tense ...but a few minutes pass and nothing. The oil just slowly drains into her brain. Not sure what to do, we give it a second attempt with not much luck. Holly still complains that her ear is sore but worried that I'm going to drown her in vegetable oil, we had nothing to do but wake up our host family. We probably should have done that at the start. I knock on their door and try and explain what happened, full hand actions and everything. They understand so its not a problem and to the hospital we go. We get to the hospital and they put Holly into a wheelchair! For an earache?! Ok dramatic!
No one speaks English and communication was a struggle but the doctor was available quickly. There we are,  Thai Mum and Dad and me all staring while the doctor shines a torch into Holly's ear. She looks puzzled and checks her other ear. Going back to the sore ear she says she can see something. We're all eager to find out what it is. A nurse passes over some extremely long tweezers and in she goes. A few seconds later she pulls out the specimen and places it on some tissue. We all go in and examine it. It was about half a cm wide, round, yellow-brown ..... it was earwax.
Tense moment over ..even though Holly still thought she had a bug in there and she still does! She moaned that it still really hurt so the doctor prescribed her some medicine. Holly still in her wheelchair, we waited at least 15 minutes for this medicine. Finally we could go home and I could go back to bed! Even after treatment, Holly was still wheeled out of the hospital! Service or what? In the car we open the miraculous medicine we waited ages for, to find the doctor had given paracetamol and ear wax remover - brilliant!

1 week in Nakhon Sawan, my legs are covered in mosquito bites.

It has been a week now since we have been in Nakhon Sawan but it feels like a month. Everyday is so long and we do so much. There is just far to much to talk about and one of my friends just told me that I'm not very good at writing so instead I'll show you a few photos of what we have been doing. We now have more information on our project though. We are going to be teaching in 8 schools which are ran by the government of Nakhon Sawan. We will spend a month in each school and I think and once a week we go and teach at a novice monk school called Killiwong school which is a school for boys who come from poor backgrounds so they become monks in order to get access to education.It is supported by the SET Foundation who also pays our wages-6250 baht a month which works out at 125 pounds. We haven't started teaching yet just observed lessons and how things work. 

As they say, pictures speak a thousand words so here we go:

Monks at Killiwong sleeping in the library.

 Our living room at our hosts. On the walls is our new family. The kids when they were young.

 Our Home for another week.

 Can't see very clearly here but mad downpour when we went out for dinner. The are frequent out bursts of crazy raining here.

 We were invited to a thai wedding which was nice. Here the bride and groom sit while guests pour water over their hands as a sign of good luck.

 As foreigners me and Holly are treated like VIPs and here we are enjoying a nice frappucino!

 Some excited thai kids at a private school that we went to observe

Sports day! The students put on a show and showed us their dancing. 

Rode an elephant today! Was so exciting but pretty scary I must admit!

Me and my thai brother- Time (and Holly in the background)

The ruins of Ayuttaya 

So that's our week so far. We start teaching on the 10th and move into our flat on the 8th. I'll update you soon. Also forgot to mention our thai Mum is very Mumsy and likes to do our hair in the morning hence in every photo my hair has some kind of ornament in it!

Anyway its getting late now, so goodnight. 

Nakhon Sawan

So we got the train from Bangkok to Nakon Sawan. We were told we were in 3rd class with wooden benches and with chickens. I wasn't looking forward to it to be honest. Instead we got upgraded to second class as third class was full-hurrahh! It still wasn't great though. No air con what so ever , it was so hot-not a great atmosphere to nurse a hangover either. We slept the whole way and arrived in Nakhon Sawan at about 5pm. Nakhon Sawan is where we are going to live for the next year. It will be home. Apparently we have a 2 bedroom apartment fitted with air-con waiting for us but for now we have a host family. It is supposededly the fifth biggest city in Thailand too but descriped by a Thai guide book as an 'unwelcoming sprawl' that interrupts the beautiful countryside. We were greeted by Peter, a man who apparently pays our wages and another teacher who looks after us. We have a host family for 2 weeks who are really nice. They even bought us flowers with our names on. Our host family is a family of 4. Our thai mum and dad have 2 sons-Time and Thame. Thame is 12 and Time is either 7 or 8 (he keeps changing his answer) They are really sweet and let us use their laptop and tablet. Today we visited an aquarium and watched a crocodile show. One of the highlights of the show was throwing money into the crocodile's mouth and seeing that they didn't eat it. Thai people are clever, they know how to get money from you! Anyway its been a long day and me and Holly are meeting the Lord of Nakhon Sawan tomorrow so I best get a good nights sleep and look my best, night! 

Sa-wat dee ka! ; Bangkok Buzz

Finally made it to Thailand. This year that I have waited for couldn't have come soon enough. But these past few days have been crazy, I don't even know where to begin.
Ok I set off from Heathrow and flew to Amman airport before catching a connecting flight to Bangkok. Total travelling time-14 hours! Royal Jordanian airline isn't bad, in fact I would recommend except DO NOT GO TO THE BAR IN AMMAN AIRPORT. 3 mango juices cost about 25 pounds!
Ok we landed to Bangkok and were met buy Peter and Lucie our reps! Guess what? Peter is a home boy- he was born in LOUTH! So so crazy and he also recommends the Thai Silk back home which I have never step foot in, perhaps when I come home. We went out for dinner and then we hit the famous Bangkok nightscene. The receptionist at Malaysia hotel, where we were staying, recommended to go to Silom road so that was where we went. Little did we know that was Bangkok's red light district. Before we had even got out the taxi, we were called for 'ping pong ping pong' 700 baht (14 pounds) they tried to charge us, so we said no and ended up paying 250 baht each at a different club. Perhaps you get what you pay for as all the women in the club were about over 40 with no underwear on or definitely thai lady boys. As we walked in a fat, 45 year old looking Thai woman, who looked bored as ever was pulling the longest garland of flowers out of her you-know-what. That wasn't the weirdest thing either- I saw bananas inserted and shot out, CIGARETTES!! She was even able to puff some smoke. Also one woman was firing darts at balloons making them pop, and one of the darts landed on my friend Alex's leg. He was horrified and all night worried he had caught aids. Don't worry he's fine though!

Day 2 we went to MBK shopping mall and I now have a thai sim card if anyone wants to contact me 0860127953. We had our last Mcdonalds and then went back to the hotel. The others were heading off to their projects so we said out goodbyes (See you all in Chiang Mai) before getting ready for our second night in Bangkok. We hit up Khao San road, market stalls and bars lined the street. One drink lead to a few and a few to many. Next thing, we were all pretty drunk and the we lasted to the early hours in the morning. On our way home in a tuctuc  ( Thai's most unsafest mode of transport) we got stopped by police asking for our passports. They were in the hotel of course! They then started sniffing our drinks for drugs and searching our bags. They come across Holly's proplus and we start to panic. Realising that caffeine may be hard to convey and carrying class A drugs is a death sentence over here, we try and pass it off as birth control pills so there we are at 5 in the morning in the middle of Bangkok acting out the words 'birth control'. It worked!! In the end we were all together laughing and we made it safely back to the hotel! Happy days.

The next morning we woke up late as usually and it was a rush to pack our things. We  were heading for the train station and onwards to Nakhon Sawan. That was the end of our time in Bangkok but its only the beginning of things to come....