Thursday, March 15
Since there was nothing else to see in Nan due to all of the smoke, we left town and headed back south, Our next stop was Lampang, another favorite provincial capital of mine. On the way into town, we stopped at the amazing Wat Phrathat Lampang Luang, which is perhaps my favorite temple in all of Thailand. I think this is my 4th or 5th trip to see this temple, and I always am very glad that I came.
At night, we headed to the river for some excellent grub at the Riverside Restaurant. The band playing here also was dipping into the 70s material, as usual, but with a more mellow tone. We heard at least one Carpenters song. (See a pattern here?)
This morning we woke up and hit the road again. On the way out of town, I pulled off the main highway to visit Baan Samkha (Three Leg Village). I came here in January of last year to visit the school to learn more about their government-sponsored e-Learning projects. Since I am starting to build out my e-Learning company, I thought I should visit them again to see how they were doing.
The next hour or so was a lot of fun for all three of us (Todd, Jason, and myself). We hung out in the amazingly well-equiped (for a small village school) computer room, where the students were playing with the infamous one-child-one-laptop machines from MIT. Of course when it was my turn to try the tiny green computers, the first thing I did was view this website. I was very happy to see that it looked great!
Todd and I ended up teaching the kids a few English songs: "Jingle Bells" (by request) and "Row Row Row Your Boat". The latter was a popular choice, especially the line, "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily", which was sung with great enthusiasm, morphing into more of a "MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW!"
Life is but a dream, indeed.
Jason just happened to take a video of the scene, and he posted it to YouTube. If you want to hear my beautiful voice singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat (with a loud MEOW chorus) then click on the video below. Check out the cool green MIT laptops as well.
Update 4/4/07The Thai government has decided to ban YouTube from Thailand, and so for now there is a big white space here where the video should be. Sorry about that!
Update 8/31/07Almost five months later, YouTube is back on in Thailand. Yay!
Unfortunately, we had many more miles to go today. I promised I would return someday with e-learning games to teach English to the students. I am not sure exactly how I am going to pull that off, but I am going to give it a try.
The road south was uneventful. We headed to Sukothai for the night, but after seeing that all of the guesthouses were full of farang backpackers, we decided that one more night in Phitsanulok (just 45 minutes away) was much preferable. Tomoorw, we will visit the ruins at Sukothai. But tonight, there's a beer garden with Christmas lights on the Nan River calling our names.
