Last weekend I went to Chiang Mai with 11 other volunteers for the Lantern Festival called Loy Kratong. We left on Saturday evening around 22:00 and we were told that it would take us 10 hours to get there. We were told that the minivan was big and comfortable but I'm pretty sure that was for Thai standards. Luckily I had the best seat of the house which allowed me to stretch my legs alongside the chair in front of me and I had nobody next to me. The roads are horrible in Thailand. I have never had so many bumps and jumps in a car ride before. Our driver was probably anxious to know what it feels like to drive a F1 car and drove very fast. We made like 4 stops on the way there. I don't know what for, but it woke me up every time. Nevertheless, I was able to catch a few hours of sleep in the van. We arrived a lot earlier than we were told, namely at 05:30. After half an hour at the McDonalds and a piece of pineapplepie, we decided to go to one of the famous tempels in Chiang Mai. We drove up the hill/mountain and stopped at a viewpoint along the way. I was able to get some nice pictures Chiang Mai by sunrise. After the short stop, we went onwards to the temple. It was nice and quiet since we arrived so early (07:00). There was a huge stair in front of the temple, known as the Naga stairs. At the beginning, there was a big statue of a dragon on both sides and the railing of the stairs was shaped as dragonskin to end in a dragontails at the top of the stairs. The temple was nice to see and the guide told us that this was the no 1. temple of its kind in Thailand (there are 10 spread over the country). The Thai believe that visiting the temple gives you luck. From the temple, we had a magnificent view over Chiang Mai. After visiting the temple, we went to check in at our hotel. We arrived around 10:00, which was too early to check in. I had some breakfast at the hotel and slept for an hour in the lobby until we could check in. After a shower I crashed into the bed to sleep for another 4 hours since the guide told us to be up and running at 17:00 to go to the festival. Everything went differently than planned from that point. The bottomline is that there was a misunderstanding with the guide which made us guideless for the rest of the night. We went into the city on our own but weren't able to find the field where the ceremony would take place. Unfortunately, we missed the amaying view from the Youtube video I posted in my most recent blog. It was very beautiful to watch but I expected a lot more lanterns in the sky than I saw that night. That was a disappointment, but we had a nice evening. I let up a lantern of my own, watched others do the same and was lucky enough to be able to get to Chiang Mai to witness the festival. I bought myself a Muay Thai short for in 3 weeks (Muay Thai training week) and we ended up at the barstreet. Together with Roos and Khira I partied until late in the night and the music stopped. On the way back we stopped at another temple, the no 2. temple of the 10, which was quite nice to see. I don't know how to describe it otherwise since the temples look similar to me. But the weather was nice, the temple was nice, so it was nice :) After another stop at a market and several stops at the gasstation we finally arrived at the Twinhouse on Monday evening around 19:00. After a shower and some time in the WiFi zone I went to bed to prepare for the week of clayhouse construction. On Tuesday morning, I was picked up by Egg (the coordinator of the clayhouse project) together with Nathan, Lauren and Maya. We drove for 5 minutes and arrived at the construction site. We were starting on a new house and needed to outline the walls of the house first. We needed to saw boards and branches at a certain length. After we did that, we made sharp points at the end of the branches with a machete. We hit the branches in the ground and nailed the boards onto them to make them stand up straight. In the square we made a smaller square in a similar manner. We dug up clay from the construction site which is a very nice thing to do on the middle of the day in like 35 degrees. Luckily we only needed 10 buckets and after that we needed to mix it with water. When we finished mixing it, we put the clay in the holes between the boards and the ground. The next day we made cement with sand, cement mix, water and small stones. After digging up the sand, we mixed it with the cement mix and we put water in afterwards. We needed to mix it with a kind of shovel which made it quite a physical task to do. After adding the stones, we put the cement in the gap of the wooden boards. When the cement was dried up, we started building the walls with a lot of clay and bricks made out of clay. We ran out of bricks quite quickly so the rest of the day was used to make new clay bricks. Obviously, everything took a lot more time than when you would do it in Europe. This made the week a very special one to experience. The houses are build for the monks to meditate in. Although it takes like 4 weeks to finish a house, I was able to view a finished house that stood next to the one we were working one. While we were waiting for the cement/clay to dry, we made several windows and a door for the other house from branches and leafs. All and all it was a great week. I learned that I should not buy a house that needs a lot of construction to be done but I did a decent job for a clayhouse haha. On Wednesday afternoon and Saturday I relaxed at the swimming pool in Singburi and tomorrow I will travel to Umphang National Park to work with the Elephants for two weeks. The journey starts at 19:30 and will last 14 hours... Can't wait to get there!