Party in Phitsanulok

My last night in Ayutthaya was not a pleasant experience. This was soley made up by the fact I ended up in a room, where while I was sleeping, I was awoken by a ridiculously large disgusting cockroach walking accross my face. At first I thought I was brushing off a fly but when I swatted my face and opened my eyes I saw this monstrous thing fly accross the room. I immediately jumped out of bed to work out what the hell I was gonna do. I had to get it in a good place to swat it and finally, when i could, I hammered that thing hard with my sandals. It was nasty!

Having sorted out a contact for some teaching work later in my travels I went to the train station to head north 4 hours to find my friends at Phitsanulok. Later that evening we headed to the night market, picked up a t-shirt then hit the waterfront where there was a strip of little bars. The place we sat down at was great, it was full of Thais not a single foreigner or "farang" as we are known. The table next to us was a family having a birthday party, there was a live band playing Thai hits which were very good. When certain songs came on all the kids at the table went mad, they all got up started dancing and clapping so we all got involved too. They absolutly loved that we joined in and I ended up practising some Thai with them, thier English was very minimal so it made for an interesting experience; they were very impressed with my efforts. A little while later we saw a boy who could only of been around 5 years old at most. He was with his mum selling roses and was absolutly fascinated when he spotted us. He came over and started pulling on our t-shirts wanting to be picked up, he was eager to see who these strange white people were. He ended up sitting at our table for a while getting in our pictures and trying to converse with us, we ended up taking two roses from him and he showed us all the money he made. He was absolutely chuffed to bits when we gave him a small empty chocolate box with a maget lid to put it all in, he ran off down the road with the biggest smile on his face. The evening continued, we ended up talking to lots of diffrent Thais who again had poor english but none the less they were very happy welcoming people, it was a great experience for all.

This morning we hit some more temples and I was very lucky to be blessed by a famous Tibetan monk. I knelt before him where he took some string and ran it through my hand muttering some words, he then tied the string to my wrist and with one last tap he was finished. I felt a positive sensation running though me after that. It was special.

Tomorrow we head further north again, to a place called Sukothai. Lets see what that has to offer.