Monday 28 September 2009

I lost my songs down a Khao Yai waterfall











Not a translation of a popular Thai folk song translated into English with my newfound Thai interpretation skills but the reality of going up country and down waterfall with an ipod in your trouser pocket.

D and I went all 'Deliverance' again and attempted to tame nature until it unexpectedly fought back.

Many of the 'tachers' were off to the Khao Yai national park (where St Steve's sister school is) the following weekend to hike, play tennis, swap resources and talk shop about nailing kids for forgetting their Lacrosse sticks, but not for D and I- we were going all Burt Reynolds, sans 'tache, and Jon (how the hell did he produce such a cracking daughter) Voight again in the wilderness early. Seeing as D has a hairier chest than me and can recite all the lines from the 'Smokey and the Bandit' films and I have 'a real purty mouth' she got to be Burt and I was Voight.

Luckily things didn't get too macho and there were no potential male rapists (only Graham from Cornwall, where sodomy is a given) as we were aided by some familiar faces, daring Thai guys and a French character from the Tricolore French text books-

'Ou est Pierre?'

'Pierre est falling down a waterfall in Thailand!'

wasn't one of the usual grammar exercises one found in the '80s, but it fitted here.

We were told to prepare for something a little more daring than the last adventure, perhaps Corrin's translation skills aren't as perfect as we thought as none of us knew what was about to befall us:

1. A 70 foot drop without safety rope that the SAS would've been proud of and overhanging cliff into a lagoon just as it started raining
1a. A tree crashing down into the valley floor just after we'd departed

2. A short abseil down the middle of a slippy waterfall (where the ipod got ruined and because of the last harddrive refusing to work we can't reload them onto a new ipod!)

3. Lunch in a cave consisting of the tastiest chicken I've had in Thailand yet and some sticky rice

4. Another terrifying waterfall abseil where it was impossible to know which way was up and which way was down (see the video of Corrin in perhaps the scariest and most amusing thing I've seen in a long time holding his breath while decending like Mr Bean)

5. Fun on a Tarzan swing

6. A hike on your hands and knees down a fast flowing river which took about 3 hours!

7. A final mini abseil into a boat where you had to row your way to civilisation!

All this of course while being filmed by a Thai TV crew for Channel 7 TV- perhaps they'll name it 'When thick Farangs go bad' or something...

They seemed disappointed that none of us fell to our deaths I think- it would've boosted the viewing figures no doubt!

The canoeing on the Sunday was laughably tame in comparison.

It's a few quiet weekends now before our first visitors arrive for October half-term, sorry mid-term break, and we work out how to send some money home.

Laew phop gan mai








4 comments:

  1. Whoa! Brave Booth of The Jungle! Next week Brave Booth will walk on fire... or is it water? Glad to see you had lots of marking and preparation to do that weekend!

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  2. Wow, super impressive! I think I would be too scared to do just any of that, aside from eating chicken.

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  3. It wasn't exactly pleasureable for either of us and was one of those moments where you just want to get to the bottom.

    Due to the steepness of the valley there was only one way out once you had gone over the first ledge, you couldn't climb down or back up so you just get on with it.

    Puds- there's no extra-curricular marking to do at all- I get at least 2 hours off a day (mostly 3) for PPA. Comparisons with the 2/3 periods a day in the UK isd laughable.

    It makes it a long day 7:15-16:15 some days but a lot less stressful- and the evenings and weekends are completely our own- apart from the Founders Day Fair coming up (Saturday) and the recent 'Meet and Feast' with the parents in which in the middle of there was a torrential rainstorm!

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  4. I meant 2/3 periods off a week in the UK of course.

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