Rakhi: It's been a momentous day here in Takhli. Within an hour, our lives were transformed by two essential things: the purchase of a motorbike and the connection of the internet at home. We no longer have to be dripping in sweat by the time we have reached Point B on foot and we no longer have to deprive poor little kiddies of a computer in the school resource room. Hzar!

Our motorbike is pretty cool. It's a Honda and it's red and that's about all I can intelligently say on that matter. Joel seems to have picked things up fairly quickly but we're definatley going to be taking things slowly on the road. We also invested in two sturdy helmets which we'll keep on our heads at all times, safety first and everything. Tonight, I was Joel's first passenger as he took me out for dinner. Just driving along I realised that things aren't as far away away from us as it first seemed. It's great to have the freedom of our own vehicle and not have to rely on the teachers at our school to get around. Best of all, the wild dogs don't seem to hound you so much when your on a motorbike!

Last Friday we met up with a couple that we bumped into at the market. The girl is Thai but has been living in England for the last 10 years. They were in Takhli catching up with family friends and since she is pretty wealthy by Thai standards, and certainly by this families standards, she threw them a party. One reason for the party was a house blessing and another was to celebrate the reunification of a man and woman who had been seperated for 25 years. When we saw her at the market she kindly invited us along to see the traditional Thai ceremony. Early Friday morning (we had a bonus day off because of a training session at school), Joel and I walked to the bus station where we had arranged for them to pick us up. We were then driven to the village where the family live. It was only about 20 mins away from us and there were six shacks/houses in total. Surrounding the tiny area was lush vegetation and sugar cane fields where lots of snakes live, apparently. On the way, they pointed out some of the sights of Takhli including a temple with 3000 monkeys and a series of caves, we'll definately go back to visit the two now we have our bike.

The house blessing was very interesting. A group of nine monks came along, sat inside the house and chanted for a while. Once they had finished, we were given rice to dish out into silver bowls other plates of food to give to the monks. All the villagers were very friendly and kindly allowed Joel and I to take part at various points of the ceremony. We gave food out to the monks and flowers and we were blessed by them also. It really was compelling and we had to be accutely aware of everything we did so as not to offend the monks. Once the monks had eaten, there was more chanting and a senior one got up and blessed the house by painting a design on the inside and outside. Then it was our turn to eat; all the villagers had clubbed together to cook us a feast with the fresh produce they had purchased at the local market at 3 that morning. Truly delicious!

The house warming finished for us at about 3pm when we were driven back into town for the second leg of our journey that day. We had arranged to go to Lopburi to meet up with some teachers of the training course. It only took an hour by train but immediately it felt very different. Lopburi is civilised, it's big, there are farang (foreigners) there and there's lots to do- a million miles from Takhli. Oh, there are also LOTS of monkeys. They are everywhere, hanging from telephone wires, all over the streets and pestering tourists at the ancient ruins dotted around the city. I've heard countless warning about how dangerous they can be and how they might snatch anything from you. In fact, Joel and I saw one monkey dart up to an overhead wire clutching a bottle of pop. As soon as he got comfortable, he started swigging away at it, cheeky things!

We had planned to stay in Lopburi for the night, have a look around on Saturday then head home to watch the footy. However, we met a bunch of foreign teachers who said that they were going to Bangkok to watch the FA cup so we decided to tag along with them. I wish I hadn't bothered now. Not only was I reccommended a Chelsea pub to watch the boring match but the club that we went to after was raided within five minutes of our arrival. Curfew in Thailand is 2am and it's hard to find anywhere that stays open past that. The lads that we were with though knew of a club, 'Spicy,' owned by the police and raided and shut down by the police. I don't fully understand but this country is known as the land of contradictions.

So, my introductory class at school where I told all my students that I support Man Utd has backfired on me now. All day I've had to put up with 'Chelsea' being shouted at me across the school amongst other taunts, as if it wasn't bad enough!