This week, our eyes were opened to the majestic ancient world of Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya being the capitol of the Ayutthaya Kingdom that spanned from 351 to 1767. There were many ruins that included many Pegotas and stupas. The first day we arrived from an overnight bus and promptly rented bikes and were guided By blake to several ancient ruin’s including the famous reclining Buddha and three identical stupa’s that… Read More
When we arrived at the Dream Weaving for Peace foundation, we were greeted by several enthused youngins. Upon arriving, we were given the grand tour; what an amazing place. Almost all the plants on the property are used as food, they have large ponds for catfish, and they have frogs for food as well. They also have turtles, but they are just pets. We were all assigned by our leaders… Read More
This past week we headed north for a Buddhist retreat at the Pleekwiwek Dhamma center. We had no idea what a treat this would be! It was a week packed with activities, most of which involved hanging out with the novice monks. At the center, there were about 15 novice monks aged 11 to 18; they were some of the best kids we’ve worked with. Every morning we tried our… Read More
Our adventure continues. We departed from our friends at the Mirror Art Foundation and embarked on our long and treacherous journey through the dense, overgrown jungle until we reached our destination, the Lahu hill tribe. We were fortunate to have such perfect weather for the six hours of trekking; a majority of our time in the village was rainy and overcast. Much of our time was spent inside by the… Read More
Hi again!
We have just wrapped up our week at Pun Pun Organic Farm, which is located around an hour outside of Chiang Mai. Overall we all had a wonderful time. The farm itself was beautiful. It was green and lush, and in the distance massive haze-covered mountains stretched as far as the eye could see. Living conditions were rustic but comfortable; the students all were living in a treehouse-like… Read More
Greetings from Thailand! We are now back in Chiang Mai, after a fun two weeks with our home stay families. This past week we continued to practice our Thai language skills, rao puut passaa Thai dii maak. Which mean we speak Thai very well. Apart from our lessons, and spending more time with our families getting to know them better. Our teacher ajhan Petchara gave us a mini cooking class,… Read More
Hello to everyone back home, this is Blake from the SE Asia group. At this point we’ve been in Thailand for almost 2 weeks now.The first week we were traveling through Chiang Mai, adventuring through the city. While we were there we saw some amazing wats (temples where the monks study) went to incredible night markets and even munched on some fried crickets and worms! Yum!
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Hello everyone,
Our journey to Thailand was very long and tiresome. 14 hour flight to Hong Kong, 9 hour layover before our flight to Chiang Mai, and other 3 hour flight to Chiang Mai. I think we all had the best night of sleep ever our first night here. We are all so excited to be here, and we have had an amazing time in the short time we… Read More
Hi everyone,
So far Thailand is rad. It’s hard to believe we’re all finally here–and even harder to believe we’re going to be here for the next three months! Life here is so different from what we are used to back in the States.
The people are so friendly; we’re having fun practicing our newly learned Thai vocabulary with the locals. It is so humid and hot, we’re all sticky… Read More
We are now all in Chiang Mai. At the moment we’re all on a scavenger hunt through the city, finding interesting places and meeting new friendly people. It’s a whole different experience and truly another side of the world here. So far it’s been refreshing to be away from cell phones and other technology that we rely on. Everyone in the group is excited to be here and ready to… Read More
We’ve received word from the fearless leaders that the SEASIA group has landed safely in Chiang Mai. They’re getting some well-deserved rest after traveling half-way around the world. Future entries on this site will come straight from the students themselves.… Read More
The Carpe Diem Southeast Asia group has successfully assembled at the San Francisco airport and checked in for their long flight to Chiang Mai. Stay tuned to hear of their adventures from Asia.
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The excitement is building here in Portlandia. Late nights and early mornings. Bottomless cups of coffee fuel a circus-like atmosphere of dream weaving merriment. Visions of new adventures bounce about our intrepid brains during brief and precious moments of much needed rest. And we weave together a strong foundation.
It is a special time for us now. As Overseas Educators, we have very little time to engage with our extended… Read More
It’s now 82 days into the Fall semester of the South East Asia 2012 trip and literally we have been busy almost every moment of the past few days. Even the last few weeks have been jam packed with a multitude of awesomeness. Sounds like I’m over exaggerating, but I’m not. We started free travel heading out from Ho Chi Mihn city down the Mekong Delta on a tour that… Read More
Since leaving the Dharma Center we went far South and a little east and ended up in a little town called Ayutthaya. It was really hot. We rented bikes for the day and rode around to all the old temples. After an exhausting day we went to the hostel expecting to sleep but unfortunately for us they played live music downstairs until 12. The next morning we had to catch… Read More
Our stay at the Dharma Center was eye-opening. Our guide, Laurie was a very nice, funny, wise, old man from Australia. It was our first time with an English translator at a temple so it was inspiring to learn the history and true methods of Buddhism.
The first day we traveled to the border of Burma and learned about the history of conflict between the different villages. We saw… Read More
So this blog post is a little late. but we spent a week at the Sam Fan Orphanage with some orphans from Thailand. They were all great kids and have very bright futures. they are getting valuable life skills from living there. We helped the kids every morning doing their chores, making compost and playing with them. One day we went on a hike up a creek to a place… Read More
Hey everyone! We just got back from our week at pun pun farm, doing various acts of volunteer work for the farm. We learned a lot about eco-friendly farming and recycling various sorts of resources to save money and help the environment. It was a cool experience and we got to talk with a lot of people who have been working with these sorts of things for their entire life. … Read More
sorry for this late blog post but for some reason it didn’t get posted and we lost it 2 weeks ago
Sa wat dii kha!
We are now back in Chiang Mai about to leave for Pun Pun to volunteer on an organic farm for a week. The past week has been amazing! We’ve been living with the hill tribe people in the Jafu-Jaka village. We made a 15 mile… Read More
