I woke up and had some bread for breakfast. I spent my whole morning chilling out and catching up on my blog. I still have a month of Nepal to write about, which I am concentrating on for the next week or two. I'm slowly making progress.
It was time for lunch. I took the rear and walked out along the lakeside. How gorgeous is this view? I don't think anyone can ever get bored of this. It was so lovely walking through this peaceful park. You see locals hanging out with friends, a group of dogs that runs a muck, older people doing tai chi or even people playing golf on the neatly groomed grass, sometimes I forget I'm in Thailand.
I've read up about 'Salween River Restaurant and Bar' online and it has been highly recommended by many tourists who have been in Mae Hong Son. Located about 100meters from the guest-house, I dropped in this nice cosy bamboo stilted restaurant. They have a book corner where they do book exchanges (one for one) and of course, kindly accept book donations. The staff are all courteous and friendly and spoke excellent english. The menu covers Thai, Burmese, Shan and European food. They even have organic and vegetarian food. I ordered an iced lemon tea, tom yum and stir fry chicken with basil leaves - the food was so tasty bursting with unbelievable authentic Thai spices. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach when it comes to ordering food. I literally rolled out of the restaurant.
I am teaching at Wat Kam Ko temple. The temple was built in 1890 AD and like all temples in Mae Hong Son, is distinctly designed and decorated in the Shan style with delicate 'doily' like fretwork. The most unique feature of the temple is the covered walkway, leading from the lion-guarded entrance to the sala. The entrance to the walkway is toped with an elaborate multi-tiered roof. Walking through the temple with many pairs of eyes staring at me made me feel a little uneasy and also due to the fact I was the only girl. But the stylish worn orange robes really fascinated me. I was introduced to the Thai teacher - Arjan Chatchawan (Arjan means teacher in Thai) who I will be teaching alongside with. Hans' teacher had gone to Bangkok for a few days so he had no class to teach today, he decided to sit in my class. I introduced myself to the class and they asked me many questions about myself. The boys in my class were aged 15-21 years old so their level of English was quite good. We started talking about random things during this introduction and one of the boys asked if we knew about a country/island called Sealand. Hans and I looked at each other with puzzled faces. The boy continued to tell us that there are only 4 people who lives in this country/island which is near England. I had to take out my phone and jump on Google. The boy was right - there is a country/island called Sealand that really exist (I still can't distinguish if it is a country or an island). Sealand is an unrecognised entity, located on HM Fort Roughs, a former World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea 13 kilometres off the coast of Suffolk, England, United Kingdom. It has been reported that it has an area of 550 sqm and a population of 4 people. This was a very interesting fact for Hans and I. We were curious to how this boy knew of this country/island - he simply replied he read it somewhere. We spent the whole hour talking about very random things. It was nice to practice on conversational skills. After school, the boys took off in their bright coloured orange robes and blue bags and headed back home or to a temple where they stay - this is something we need to find out. Where do all the monks sleep during their postulancy?
On the way back home, I couldn't help but notice the beautiful blue mountains covered by the clouds and the vibrant green trees reflecting in the lake water. It was a picture perfect moment. A very gorgeous view that I am grateful of being conveniently located just 5 steps from my room. This photo has not been filtered so what you see in the photo is really what you see with the naked eye. We stopped to adore the view for a few minutes.
We went to the night food market where there were many choices of great food to choose from. I tried a bit of everything. I bought different skewers - pork sticks, sate chicken and thai sausage as appetisers. For my main, I bought a flat rice noodle dry dish mixed with mince pork and lemon (I don't know what this is called in Thai, as I bought it because I saw it displayed on the table). It was wrapped in banana leaves in a pyramid form.
We took our food home and sat at our porch and devoured into our food. During dinner, we had 3 dogs sitting nearby us patiently waiting to be fed. I found this very cute. Hans is a very interesting man. We talked for many hours about so many different things such as the Australian demerit point system, politicians and travels - just to name a few. Time passes by so quick when I have Hans' company. I learn so much from him. It is really nice having Hans around. After our long conversation, I went off blogging and reading a little before hitting the sack.
Good night world.
XOXO
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