Monday 16 July 2007

Destined never to sightsee!

Woke up this morning, Monday 16 July, wondering where we were. Realised it was Chiang Mai and we were due to move on to Pattaya tomorrow, we were a bit underwhelmed with the thought of more change. Pattaya for us was meant to be 3 days relaxing in a resort, resting. But here in Chiang Mai, we can still be around the Burmese community a bit and we are really missing Mae Sot and our friends and the school so we decided to stay here till we leave.

We cancelled the next hotel, booked this one and changed our flight to Bangkok.

Then we set off to the Teacher Training Centre for Burmese Teachers & Migrant Learning Centre (www.educationburma.net) in our hotel minibus, much to their amusement as they are more used to folk going off to see a big wat (temple) or some other tourist spot, especially 'shopping'.

There we met and were given a lovely meal by the Principal Sai Hsai Lum Kham, Thein Win, Sai Som Pong, Maram Roi Ji and Kyaw Kyaw Min Htut. We had a great discussion about the situations of the Burmese people in Burma, Mae Sot, Chiang Mai and about educational methodology. Unfortunately we missed meeting the students cos it took so long to change flights, hotels etc so we will go back on Thursday night to meet them.

Murray Forgie, our Edinburgh mentor, had emailed us about the biggest exhibition of Burmese Art in North Thailand, which was being shown at the Chiang Mai University Art Museum. Our TTCBT friends put us in a songthaw to go there. Unfortunately they thought we wanted to go 'shopping' and dropped us off at a mall! We walked and we walked and we sweated then we walked some more, all round the university site. We saw their agriculture centre, their cropping centre, their language centre, their Thai Art building.... everything except their art centre. All the time we were thinking sweet thoughts of Murray (NOT!). Eventually with swollen hands, feet, legs, burnt backs of necks cos the sun was so hot, we found it......

.... and it's SHUT ON MONDAYS!! First time Sheila has sworn since she got to Thailand. We hailed a songthaw who took us straight through the exhaust fumes for about 20 mins, cough cough to .... the wrong hotel! Dying by this point, he proceeded to pick up 6 girl guides/schoolgirls who squeezed in beside us and finally dropped us at the hotel, 2.5 hrs after we left TTBT! This sightseeing doesn't work for us. Give up!

Are we going back to the exhibition, Murray? Eh NO!

3 comments:

Lorna said...

Hi Sheila,
What a journey you are on.... And to think the Nemo story makes me cry!Found an inflatable globe at the bottom of the boys swimming bag- its yours. Take care -look forward to hearing all about it in the flesh.

Forthview said...

Lovely to hear from you Lorna.Glad you found a globe. Geoff reckons we need it as we have just got lost for the second time today! Already wondering how I share this with Forthview staff. I think a staff visit to IT room on 13 August so they can look at our posts over this last weekend may sum it up well. We'll see. Hard to imagine going back to normal Scottish life.

lyn said...

I can understand your frustrations, especially trying to communicate in a different language. Does Geoff ever get in a flap?

It has been really interesting to read of your daily exploits. Have you both been writing them? I think I have picked up Geoff's style in some of them!

Haven't had an email from Geoff yet.