A Road Trip in Asia [Jacob Burke]

A Road Trip in Asia

Here in Thailand I have been lagging behind on my journal entries. It’s partly because I haven’t been doing too much, and partly because I couldn’t find my journal. Well, here is my story:

Have you ever been on a road trip for 7 days, and in a tiny car that is so stuffed it can’t even fit a hat in the trunk? Well, I have. The first 2 days of our trip we spent going to Ubon from Phuket.

On the way we stopped at many temples and gas stations. We also stopped at the Surin Elephant Camp. That place was devoted to giving elephants better treatment in captivity. At Surin, a while ago, my mom volunteered to help the elephants. While I was there, I rode some elephants, went to an elephant history museum, went on a walk, and visited some of my mom’s friends. The elephant ride was fun, and it was my third time riding an elephant.

When we finished doing our stuff at Surin elephant camp, we drove to Ubon Ratchathani. We eventually arrived to the hotel that we reserved after a long car drive.

The room we got was on the very last floor and had the highest number in the entire hotel. My parents were expecting a small room (we only got 1) but it was a fairly good size for the price. There were only two beds, so Josh had to sleep on the mattress we had brought and James had to sleep on the couch. I got my own bed, and Dad and Mom slept together on the other bed. Also, there was a singing electric kettle.

When it was night, we went to the dinner buffet. There, I ate papaya salad, some rice, and more.

Next day, we woke up in time for the breakfast buffet. At that buffet, I ate so much food that I don’t think I could write all of what I had in this blog entry. When my stomach gauge changed to full, I left and went to the mall.

At the mall, I got a pair of pants and a swimming suit. I also ate some donuts. When I had finished shopping, I went to the 5^thfloor for a swim in the pool.

The pool that was there had two sections. There was the toddler section and the regular pool. They were connected by a line of water long enough to stretch you arms in. There was also were a few waterfalls coming off of greenish-gray rocks. After I played in the pool for a while, I got the card for our room from Dad, and left.

Mine and James' puppets

A wax float at the judging

Some of the delicious food 

Later, after I took a shower and got dressed, I went to the Ubon Candle Festival. The festival was very exciting. There were lots of stands selling everything from fried insects to puppets. There were a few rides, too. While I was waiting for the judging of the floats to begin, we played on a trampoline, got some beverages, and rode a Ferris wheel. I even got a puppet.

After we finished playing in the fair, we went and watched some

of the floats. The floats were coming one at a time, for it was not the parade. The parade was tomorrow morning. My dad said they were getting judged. The floats were almost completely made out of wax, and had delicate carvings of the Buddha and more. The judging of the floats seemed to be going on forever, and it was very late, so Dad ran into the middle of the street to get a taxi motorcycle. My entire family was able to shove themselves in the motorbike’s sidecar and we got to ride the down the back alleys to get quickly home.

Tomorrow, in the morning, we set out to get a taxi for the parade. We were early, so we got some drinks and played on the same trampoline as last time. When the parade started we got some seats, and watched the show.

My brothers and I playing

dancers

A wax float at the parade

The parade had many wax floats. There was also fingernail dancers and marching bands. My favorite dancers was a group that signaled the “eat”, as I heard from the Thai speaker (I speak Thai). They would wave their grass around and dance to some music. The music came from a speaker being pushed behind them.

After some of the parade, Dad got another taxi motorbike, and we set out for our hotel. When we arrived at the hotel Joshua and James left to go to see Lambang, while I stayed home.

The next day we set out to Bangkok. On the way we tried to go into Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. Unfortunately we decided not to go because I wasn’t feeling to well and we couldn’t bring our rental car. Late that night we arrived, and we went inside to the hotel we had reserved. We immediately fell asleep in our beds, for we were tired.

Next morning we woke up and went to the mall next to the hotel we were staying at. In the mall, we went to Kidzania, a place where kids learned how to do occupations. Kidzania is a city built inside a building. It is in an enclosed area with a ceiling made to look like the sky. The currency there was kidzos, and you earned kidzos by doing the many different jobs there.

I am going to name some of the jobs I did. The first job I did was a Canon Photographer in which I went around the busy streets of Kidzania and took pictures of specific memorials and statues. Another Job I did was a veterinarian, where I took care of some animals (not real). I spent some of my Kidzos on an eyesight test so I could do my driving test. The driving test had a driving simulator that was actually quite hard. I made one mistake on the driving simulator, and it was passing the red light. After I passed the driving test I got to drive a mini car around on a mini road.

When we finished in our jobs, we went to the department store. Inside the department store, there was super expensive stuff. The most expensive thing was a scooter, which cost 20,000 Kidzos. I only earned 94 so I would have had to come about 199 more times to get it.

When we exited Kidzania I went to a restaurant where you cooked your own food. There, we had various meats, seafood, and vegetables.

When we finished our meal, we went to the shopping part of the mall. There, my brothers and I looked at Legos.

After we finished shopping, we went back to our room. I shall now describe it.  My family got two rooms. A door connected them. Our room had two beds. James slept on the floor with our mattress while Joshua and I slept in the beds. There was a TV too. Inside the bathroom there was an electric toilet that washed your posterior for you.

On the next day in Bangkok we went to the immigration center, for Mom needed a new visa. The immigration center was huge. One of the coolest things about the immigration center was this room in the middle of it. The room was an immense amount of space with barely anything in it.

After a while of waiting, we left mom and went to explore the city. We walked through a street that had tons of people selling fish. There were a lot of types of fish. We also went to the mall and got haircuts.

When we got a call from mom we went to go pick her up. When we got her, we immediately went back to the hotel. When we arrived, we swam in the pool there.

Next morning we left and traveled back to Phuket. On the way we stopped by a farm and feed the sheep.

Thanks for reading   Jacob

Ubon Ratchathani Candle Festival [Joshua Burke]

This weekend we decided to go to Ubon to go see a candle festival that was going on there. Ubon Ratchathani is a city that is in NE Thailand and is 1400 km (875 miles) from Phuket. We were going to go by plane but by the time we were ready to book the flight there, the plane was already filled up. The candle festival only lasted for two days, Friday and Saturday, so we decided to go by car. The trip took 25 hours in the car and I could barely sleep for most of the trip. 

We did stop at a couple locations on the way and one stop was a Buddhist park. It had tons of temples and Buddhas of all sizes. I learned there that the reclining Buddha is the symbol of Tuesday. My favorite stop however was the Surin Project. The Surin Project is a project to help better the living conditions of the elephants in captivity. There, I got to ride on elephants, which is always a ton of fun. 

When we finally arrived at Ubon we went to our hotel room, and I immediately took a shower. Our room was pretty nice, and had tons of room. When we were all settled we had a delicious dinner buffet. The food was Essan food, which is ultra spicy. I probably threw down about 10 full glasses of water.  

The next morning we had a breakfast buffet before heading off to the hotel’s swimming pool to take a swim. Mom also took a well-needed sauna and had a massage. We wanted to see the festival tonight, so we arranged for a cab to pick us up at the hotel. It was getting dark by the time we arrived by cab. The festival was amazing and stalls were selling all kinds of items from street food to clothes. Jacob, James, and I also went on a Ferris wheel. We defiantly got our money’s worth because we went around about 15 times, non-stop! Seeing the people on the stands holding the candles as the floats went by was pretty cool.

Cooked bugs for sale.

Bird puppets that James and Jacob bought. 

The candles

On the ferris wheel. 

We woke up early to go see the parade at the candle festival. To our luck we found seats high up in the stands along the road. The floats were amazing, Buddhist carvings made out of wax that were 5 meters (15 feet) high went along. The parade also included finger dancing and musicians. It was a lot of fun. The heat though was immense and it felt like I was going to melt. After the parade we looked at some more stalls before leaving.

Some finger dancers.

And some more finger dancers. 

Having some fun. 

My favorite Muai Thai trainer Lambang, left Phuket to go to Ubon, his home, to spend some time with his family before going to Australia. We were able to track the gym that he was working at and I got to train with him one more time. I had a good workout and learned some new moves. Special thanks to Mom and Dad for setting that up.

Training with Lambang at the gym. 

That’s it for now

Joshua

Tiger Kingdom [Jacob Burke]

a tiger

Have you ever pet a tiger? Well I have. It happened on my 12^thbirthday on June 2014, in Phuket, Thailand.

A 30-minute drive in our rental car and we arrived at our destination, Tiger Kingdom. I was astonished by how many cars were parked in the parking lot. I suspected there wasn’t going to be many, for it was low season. There was such an enormous amount of cars in fact; we had a bit of trouble finding a parking spot.

When we entered Tiger Kingdom we saw that it was packed with tourists. There was a lot of racket from all of the people inside the building talking in their different languages. After looking at the sizes of the tigers on computer screens for a small amount of time, we bought our tickets for the size smallest. Any larger size tiger you would have to be 15 years old.

The size smallest was quite small, but they were not babies. They were at least 1 – 2 years old and were about the size of me. When we got our tickets, we headed down to the space where the tigers were held and waited for our turn. The cage for smallest had a smooth floor and little wooden fences. There was

no mess because the trainers cleaned everything up.

Me cuddling with our tiger

Joshua, James and I with our tiger

 While we were waiting for our turn, we took pictures of ourselves. When it was time for us to come in, we read the rules, washed our hands, put on some sandals (we couldn’t wear our shoes inside the cage), and entered. I was amazed by how domesticated all the tigers were. The tiger we got was very calm and was absolutely OK with us petting him. I got to lie with, cuddle, and pet him a lot. He especially liked it when my dad rubbed his belly. He rolled around and purred like it was very comfortable. We got a lot of good pictures with him. After about thirty minutes we had to leave. I was unhappy to leave my friend but I felt my birthday present was one of the best.

 When we left the tiger we were petting, we instantly started washing our hands. While that was happening some of the smallest tigers started play fighting together. They were rolling around and growling. After that we looked at the other tigers.

Smallest

Mom and I with our tiger

Small was a bit bigger then the Smallest by about 1^1/2 of a foot and were 2 – 3 years old. The Mediums were a bit smaller then my dad and the big were bigger than him. Those large tigers had big grassy terrains with a pool unlike the smallestwho has the same habitat as the small. There were people petting the bigs and it was pretty funny because the Thai people were very small compared to the big tigers. After we finished looking at all the tigers we went out of the tiger zone and into the gift shop. In the gift shop I looked at some things and decided on getting a cool and realistic tiger t–shirt. When we left we took one last picture in front of a sign with my new shirt.

Thanks for reading   Jacob

Inner Thailand Trips [Joshua Burke]

This last Sunday we decided to go on a tour to ride elephants, go river rafting, visit the tsunami museum, and to visit a monkey temple. These attractions were not in Phuket, but in the province to the East. It only took an hour and a half to get there by van and they were all very fun. We had nice tour guide and the tour group planned the entire day out.

The misty landscape

Our guide telling us about the tsunami. 

The first thing that we did was to go to the tsunami museum. In 26/12/2004 an earthquake that measured 9.3 on the Richter scale triggered a tsunami that hit Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, Malaysia, Burma, Bangladesh, Somalia, Tanzania, and Kenya. It left about 300,000 people dead. In Thailand alone 5,321 people were killed and 8,457 people were injured. The wave was over 10 m (30ft) high and caused may billions of dollars of damage. It swept boats all the way inland and destroyed towns.          

A police boat that was swept in all the way to here by the tsunami. 

The elephant camp was out in the jungle and luckily it had just stopped raining hard so we didn’t get wet. As we were riding on the elephant, it would stop and take huge palm fronds off trees and snap them in half with its trunk, and then eat them. I thought it was amazing how strong their tusks are. Riding on an elephant is a lot of fun, and especially when you get to feed the elephants bananas. When we were all done riding the elephants James gave 100 baht to a baby elephant, and it went to the counter and bought bananas for its self. It even played the harmonica as a thank you.

Me at the elephant camp. 

On the elephant.

Me feeding the elephants bananas

James on the baby elephant 

After riding the elephants we took a break and had some lunch at a local restaurant. As soon as we got under the roof, it started raining like crazy. When the rain stopped we then proceeded to the bamboo rafts that we were going to take down a river. It then started to rain again, but luckily our tour guide gave us ponchos so we weren’t soaked. It is currently the rainy season here so the river was higher then usual and the current was stronger. Unfortunately we didn’t see monkeys, or any wildlife for that matter. They were probably all hiding in their homes. When we arrived at our stop by the river we walked up a path to these amazing limestone caves. They looked pretty old and there were people’s signatures on some parts of the limestone. We didn’t get to explore the caves which was too bad. But our rafter boiled some water in bamboo and made tea with it. They then served it with bamboo cups.

Our last stop was the monkey temple, which had tons of monkeys. They were so hilarious. We bought some food for them and fed them bananas, peanuts, and corn. I threw some corn up and they caught it in midair hanging upside down from a tree branch. The temple is inside a cave formation and there was a big, reclining Buddha inside. On one part of the cave’s wall there were signatures of the Siam’s (Thailand’s) kings. The oldest signature went back to 1827.

Yum!!

The reclining Buddha

Thanks for reading and for all the comments via Facebook. 

Joshua