These final weeks have been great I’ve been able to go visit
Khon Kaen a city 2 hours north of Korat, which was really cool as they have a
nine story temple with a great view of the city and the lake at its
center. I also had my first traditional
Thai massage while there and that was absolutely awesome as they stretch out
every part of your body and massage out any knots you may have, so during it
may be slightly painful but about 20 minutes afterwards it feels absolutely
amazing. Though the best part was it
that it was only 10 dollars for a two hour massage!
Friday May 24th was a huge Buddhist celebration
as it was Buddha’s Birthday, his day of enlightenment and the day he died. That evening we went to the temple which was
all decorated with the Buddhist flag and flowers. At the temple we all sat while the monks
prayed, then we walked clockwise around the temple three times holding flowers
and incense and left the flowers and incense as offerings to Buddha. The interesting this is that you have to rock
clockwise because you only walk counter clockwise around the temple during a
funeral and you carry their body with you.
During this celebration at the
mall in my town they had a convention room set up for this festival and you
could go in and they had the history of Buddha’s life as well as famous monks
came in and answered questions. This
continued on for the entire week.
I also had the opportunity to a mushroom farm as well as the
national park and hour away from my city with my host mom’s family. The mushroom farm was really neat as you
could walk around where they grew the mushroom but they not only sold fresh and
dried mushrooms, but they had mushroom salad cream, hand lotion, ice cream and
more. The national park near my city is
one of the only places you find uninterrupted green space so that is always wonderful
to see, we also stopped at the Khao Yai
(name of national park) Castle which is actually a hotel but has been in a lot
of famous Thai movies, as well as many other places to take pictures.
I had my last Rotary meeting here in Thailand yesterday and
it feels surreal as I really believe that I will be back in Canada in a few
short days, but I couldn’t have asked for a better end to my exchange then the
one I have had.
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