Another Useless Wendy

I feel like I make far too many of these posts where I apologise about the lack of posts over a certain period of time, but in all honesty I have been INCREDIBLY busy at work, then had to spend a week in Cambodia in order to get a new visa, which in itself is a whole separate post, words can’t describe the fuss that goes into obtaining a visa from an Embassy!!

So please take this as my official apology for being useless, I would have posted more whilst I was in Cambodia but had very limited internet capabilities; but I am mostly sorry for being useless.

Expect usual postings from now on though as even if it kills me I am going to stick to posting at least three times a week. But if I can’t manage to do that for whatever reason then the very best way to keep up with what I am doing is too take a look at my Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram pages, no matter how limited my internet is, I will always manage to update one of these pages at least once or twice a week.

So let’s crack on with the regular scheduled programming 😀

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A Questionable Wendy

Seeing as 99% of people who read my blog don’t know me and I am terrible at writing a bio I thought I would do one of those old Facebook question note thing instead 🙂 I found this on my own Facebook from nearly five years ago and cringed at the answers I gave 55

Enjoy 😀

Pick out a scar you have and explain how you got it – When my face gets wet you can see on my left check that there is a lot of scar tissue that came from a very bad ice skating accident with me being the only girl playing British Bulldog. Needless to say, I went about 6 feet on the ice, on my face, because a boy couldn’t face being beaten by a girl 🙂

My resulting face – beautiful right

What is on the walls in your room? – I don’t actually have anything on the walls in my room at the moment, I am going to be filling them with all of my Thai language revision though

What does your phone look like? – It is a 64GB white iPhone 5 in a green edged case with a lots of blue heart stickers that Nikki gave to me yesterday

What music do you listen to at the moment? – I have developed a huge love for Thai and Asian music in the last few months

Bodyslam, possibly the most famous band in Thailand

What is your current phone lock and home screen? – At the moment my lock screen is Rainbow Dashs’ cutie mark from My Little Pony, and my home screen is the reflection of water on a thatched roof at my friends lake house.

My lock screen

Home screen

What do you want more than anything in the world right now? – To be fluent in Thai

What time were you born? – I think it was some time in the mid afternoon

What are you listening to right now? – Kook Kao by Cocktail (click the name to check them out, they are really good; I promise)

Are you scared of the dark? – I am scared of the dark when I am inside but outside doesn’t bother me

What colour hair/eyes do you like on the opposite sex? – I have no real preference but everyone knows how much in love with Asian boys I am 555

Coffee or energy drinks? – Energy drinks, but I would always choose an ice smoothie over anything else

Cats or dogs? – Dogs are number 1!

What is your favourite pizza topping? – I can’t get pizza in Thailand sadly, but my favourite in England was the Chicken BBQ with bacon, sweetcorn and onion with a BBQ sauce base and stuffed crust. God I miss pizza!!

If you could eat anything right now, what would it be? – Well now I am desperate for pizza

Do you speak another language? – I am getting pretty damn good at Thai now

What was the last gift you gave? – I bought my big brother a crate of beer the other night

Are you double jointed? – In my thumbs I am yes

Who is the person you call the most? – Nangfa

Miss her face so much!!!

What annoys you the most? – That it isn’t ok in Thailand to tell someone when they are being prat; sometimes people just need to be told that!

What is your biggest weakness? – That I am probably the most stubborn being on the planet

What is your favourite Western and Thai holiday? – Oh this is an easy one, Western holiday has to be Christmas and favourite Thai holiday is hands down is Songkran – the worlds biggest water fight

What were you doing before writing this? – Writing even more blogs 🙂

What do you get complimented on the most? – Thai people are obsessed with my skin being white and girls are always telling me how jealous they are! Western people always say I have nice eyes

What do you want for your next birthday? – I would really love a pair of high tops, sometimes I get tired of wearing flip flops and want to wear socks

Who are you named after? – I’m not so much named after anyone, it was just that my mum never knew a Wendy. My Thai name, Rung, is because I always have rainbow hair

Worst habit? – Definitely that I stay up for way to long on an evening

Where is your second home? – My big brother, Dooks house

My big brother Dook and his beautiful niece, Per-sia

What was your favourite toy as a child? – It would have to be my stuffed lamb, very aptly named Lambsy

Most treasured memory? – I think that it would have to be when my sister and her family and my best friend, Aron, and my mum came to the airport to see me off. Everyone was in tears and I have never not wanted to stop hugging someone so much. My sister gave me a note that I read whilst waiting for the plane that made me bawl my eyes out!!

Best live music you have seen? – Speed hahaha But I think it would have to be Atreyu, they were so good, and made a huge effort to talk and interact with so many of their fans

Do you have any pets? – I did have a beautiful puppy called Skylar for a month or so but then was told I wasn’t allowed to have her anymore, definitely one of the worst moments during my time in Thailand.

I miss my baby, Skylar, SO much!!!!

What is your favourite colour? – Always has and will be, green

What was the last book you read? – I have recently read every Game of Thrones book, which makes it very confusing for me when I periodically hear about events on the TV show and knowing that far worse things happen later on

What was the last thing you ate and drank?-Me and a volunteer called Alice went to Swensens, a beautful ice cream company, for dinner last night. The last thing I drank was water 🙂

Who was the person you spoke to on the phone? – I am always on the phone with Nangfa!!!

Do you believe in love at first sight?– I believe in love at first sight with Thai boys haha

Best present you have ever received?  – Even though they came from an idiot, the best present I ever got was my CCM Ice Skates

Do you have any siblings? – I have a beautiful older sister called Emi. A younger brother called Josh and my Dads wife is currently pregnant with a baby girl 🙂

Sibling in progress

Baby brother Josh

Big sister. Emi, and her son, Reuben

What colour hair do you have? – I have every hair colour!

What was the last thing you watched? – I have been obsessed with Jeremy Kyle lately haha

Summer or winter? – I adore Winter but now live in a constant Summer state

What is your favourite movie? – Tangled is by far the best movie of all time, oh and Josie and the Pussycats, and Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves!

Have you met any life changing people in the last year? – I think my two best friends in the world Aron Jackson and Anya Gartside would be at the top of that list, closely followed by my big brothers Dook and Tee.

Aron on his recent volunteering trip to Africa

My homeslice Anya

My brothers, Tee, the one on the left, and Dook on the right

Morning or night? – Always night

What is your full name? – Wendy Ann Victoria Reece

If you could be an animal for a day, which animal would it be? – It would have to be a snow leopard as they are the coolest animal on the planet!

You get granted one superpower, what do you choose? – I think teleportation would be the best thing in the world, I could go to all the places I have always wanted to go!

What is your favourtie smell? – Bacon. Bacon and bacon.

Hopefully these silly questions will give you a bit more of an insight to me and my life and will mean that you understand my madness a little better from now on 😀

If you want to volunteer with a mad woman then take a look at the Starfish Website and the Starfish – Volunteer Thailand Facebook page.

You can also always check out my Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram pages for more of my silly antics!

Build. Protect.Teach. Care. – The Starfish Motto

A Very Speedy Wendy

I know this is super late but I have been crazy busy lately! Pretend it is New Years for me for a while and read this blog with that in mind 😀

Not only is today New Year’s Eve it is also my friend Kim’s birthday so it is looking as though tonight will be a rather splendid celebration indeed!!!

One of my favourite couples ever!!

This morning Kim’s boyfriend Arm, who is also a coordinator with me, called me and asked for my help in organising her a surprise birthday cake, which I was more than happy to help with, even if the whole thing relied in part on me keeping a 6 year old quiet which was not an easy task!! Why is it that when they have to be quiet that they aren’t, but when they are doing something they shouldn’t then they are quiter than James Bond in a Russian Military Base??

This cake was pretty amazing I won’t lie 😀

Me and Arm lit the candles on Kim’s cake and walked from my office to Arms house, which luckily is just around the corner, followed closely by Arms son Ing who was carrying Kim’s present. We got to the house and definitely surprised Kim with her beautiful cake and gift which Ing was more than happy to help open!

Later in the evening me, Arm and Kim met up with a friend of hers who lives near us and got a taxi, probably the only real taxi In Surin, to a very local Thai bar, where the staff and the customers were throwing cherry bombs and exploding sparklers everywhere; I do so love how much people are considerate of health and safety in Thailand 😀 One of the guys who worked there even got a slingshot from somewhere and decided that loading it with a lit cherry bomb and launching it in the air blindly was a marvellous idea with clearly no health and safety concerns!! Needless to say I had to be talked out of doing the exact same thing!

There is, at times, no health and safety in Thailand and luckily in my experience it has always led to some fantastic memories and meeting new friends that I otherwise might not have met; like the crazy cherry bomb guy.

Look how amazing this straw is??? Who knew this was possible!

After crawling a few of the local bars me, Arm and Kim ended up in Speed 3, which I hope you all know by now, is my favourite night time haunt in Surin, and I can safely say that I have never seen any bar as full as it was on New Years; you could barely move for the amount of people that were there, I have two videos that I will post that show just how busy and mental it was for New Year. The manager of Speed 3 had put on a HUGE new show that my performer friends told me they had to practice 6 hours a day for two days to get ready for; and there is me who has complained about getting beaten up by a baby elephant!! It was certainly worth the 2 days practice as it was amazing and I even got to join in!! I wasn’t on the stage or anything (sadly) but my friend Beer who is the drummer with the house band, gave me his can of silly string and told me to let loose at midnight with the rest of the performers.

The closest thing I could get to a full shot of the craziness that is Speed 3 at New Years

It is certainly a huge perk of my nightlife to be friends with the performers at Speed 3 as it means I get a lot of free drinks but also get to have them come and give me hugs whilst they are on stage, much to the distaste of the Thai crowd as they don’t get to huge the ridiculously attractive staff every night; at times is it the best to be the palest person in the room.

Needless to say Kim had a wonderful birthday and I had an equally as wonderful New Year. We have already planned for a very big night out when I return from my trip to Cha Am for our Staff Meeting followed by my stay in Bangkok to pick up my first ever group of volunteers who I shall be taking to the elephant village. It should make for a very fun few days having my first ever group of volunteers who are properly relying on me to be their coordinator!! We shall see if it is as fun as I hope and if I manage to epically screw up this amazing job I have been so lucky to get.

Anywhom!!!

I am finally back in bed after my New Years night out and I am getting sleepy so shall post this and then get the videos up as soon as my Internet will allow me to; mobile Thai Internet is always amazing but sometimes my wifi decides that we aren’t friends anymore and refuses to let me so much as update my Facebook status; seems you just can’t keep everyone happy now a days!

I shall be getting the night bus to Bangkok tomorrow, well today actually I suppose, and it shall be a very long six to seven hour drive I can tell you, especially as I KNOW that Tuk and Al will have been celebrating New Years all day, and probably up until we get on the bus; many apologies to the poor Thai people who have to sit with us for the entire journey 😀

Sleepy time for Wendy!!!

//

A New Year A New Wendy

So this is the first New Years I have spent not being in England, and as you can probably guess, I am spending it in Thailand. And in Thailand they don’t just celebrate New Years on December 31st they spend the whole week having parties in their village, at their local bar and with their families; right now for example it is the 29th of December and I am sat in my friend Tuks village and we are watching the village girls practice a dance they have just taught themselves which they plan to perform at the huge village party on New Years Eve.

Yesterday however wasn’t such a calm affair!!

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Me, Tuk, Al, Arm and Arms girlfriend Kim went to a party/celebration at the bar at the end of my street and stayed there from about 5pm to 2am!! The best thing was that I arrived late and Tuk and Al had been at it with the locals since around midday; I just don't know how Thai people can drink so much and throw up so little!! I have worked in a bar so know how much people need to drink to reach their limit and here they just don't seem to have that limit so Thai people are still partying like crazy at 5am everyday!!

You can go hard or you can go home – a quote fitting Thailand more than perfectly

The other thing that Thai people adore apart from parties is football, and I don’t mean Thai football I mean English football!!! Thai people can tell you more about football, it’s rules, it’s teams and who is being sold and bought than anyone else I know; especially the English people. Even right now I am watching the local guys play football and they are all wearing an array of English football team shirts, I can see Manchester United and City, Arsenal, Leeds and even Tottenham Hotspurs!! I don’t even know who they are but one guy in the village can tell you everything you could ever want to know about them.

I can honestly say that even though I don’t speak as much Thai as I need to in order to understand everything they are saying I know enough to know how much Thai people love their football, and it doesn’t matter if it is hot, cold, raining, light or dark, Thai people will always find an area big enough to have a kick about in.

I love Thai people’s relaxed approach to everything, they will work all day and then always find enough time to relax and have a fun game of football or a drink or seven; because alcohol is like Pringles out here, once you pop you just can’t stop.

Wow that came out far more corny than I intended it too………

Back to the festivities!!

I mentioned earlier how Thai people celebrate New Years for around a week instead of just on the day and I can safely say that I am certainly enjoying the party atmosphere and especially the food it brings with it as well!! Thai people cook more food for one celebration than I think I have ever eaten in my entire life! Food is so beautiful here as well so I have absolutely no idea how all Thai people are so tiny!! And how the men are so muscly as well! Half of the boys have just taken their shirts off to play a game of shirts and skins and their is not one woman in the village that is complaining about that I can tell you!!

I am certainly looking forward to actual New Year’s Eve and the crazy party that will be back in my town of Surin. Me and some friends are going out to my favourite haunt which is Speed 3 of course! December 31st also happens to be the birthday of one of the coordinators girlfriends so we are going to be having even more of a party for that as well, all in all it is looking to be one of those nights where I take a lot of photos that end up on Facebook and everyone drinks their own body weight in whiskey; Thailand’s beverage of choice, except for me of course as I would rather drink the blended entrails of a unicorn than whiskey.

It seems as though my presence is required at the cook fire so I shall hopefully be back in a little bit to tell more of my Thailand New Year; my resolution of which is obviously to learn more Thai, probably the only resolution I have ever actually wanted to really get on and achieve.

I’m back 🙂

Well that was certainly an interesting few hours!! I was walking with my friend and fellow coordinator Worn around his village and he offered to take me to where the locals were preparing a pig that they had killed earlier in the day.

For all of those with a gentle disposition this next bit might not be for you!!

There were around 10 villagers sat on a large table/bench that are everywhere in Thailand, all swat with a very large knife and a chopping board made from a slice of tree. Some were chopping up the larger pieces of the pig such as the legs and the torso, removing the skin, placing it into one bucket and the separating the remaining meat into smaller chunks which were then taken by other villagers and me, in order to chop them into finer, smaller chucks which were then, for lack of a better word, tenderised with incredibly sharp knives in order to make them into a sort of chunky paste that we then being fried up by the cooks. It was a task that I undertook for around two hours and it was so amazing to sit with the locals, with no translator, and see how they all worked as a group.

The men were the ones to chop up the larger pieces of the pig with the women undertaking the chopping and tenderising activities. They were all talking and joking and seemed to be very excited to usher in the new year and the huge feast that they would be having the next, thanks in part to me 🙂

In terms of my cultural experiences in Thailand I have been exceptionally lucky, I have attended a wedding, a funeral, several local parties, many different religious festivals and events and I have also been invited into so many kind people’s home to celebrate something as small as a birthday. Many people and especially foreigners are never as lucky as me and I have Starfish to thank for my experiences, if it weren’t for them and their staff, I would never have attended the events I have.

But, as always with Thai culture, simply driving home from preparing the pig for the next day was not as simple as I thought. We stumbled upon a party in another part of the village and so in the spirit of the New Year we all jumped off our mopeds and joined in. It turned out that another coordinator was already at the party so we set up camp with him and soon were surrounded by friendly faces I had met over the last few days, one in particular called Mon who in his very drunken state professed his love for me on several occasions 😀

I, however, had found an adorable puppy that was more than happy to be cuddled up to me with its paws around my neck giving me the snuffliest cuddle ever!! I always seem to find the cutest puppies in Thailand that I want to take back to my house, and if you follow me on Instagram you will regularly see the photos of these adorable and loving creatures I find!

After staying at the party for a few hours I was absolutely exhausted, as was my friend Tuk, so we both went back to her house to sleep, and as always when I stay in a village I was sleeping with the Mosquitos as well as Tuk; but like I have said before, Mosquitos gotta’ mosqueeeet!! The other amazing thing about staying with Tuk was that two of her dogs had just had 12 puppies between them so I spent several hours health checking them, noting the sexes and markings on them so that Tuk knew how many boys and girls she was going to be having around in the next few weeks. I am still in the process of convincing Lek, who is the maid for the volunteers houses, who lives with us at the office, to let me have a dog. I have another seven weeks to convince her as then the puppies will be old enough to come away from their mothers and I know that I would do a much better job of caring for them than anyone else as everyone who knows me knows how much I ADORE dogs and puppies.

Especially ones this cute!!!

Sleep is calling me so I shall sign off and blog about Part 2 of my Thai New Year soon.

Happy New Years Eve Eve 😀