2 Canucks in Thailand: Class trip to Thongsomboon club with Grade 7

Each December the Middle School (grades 6-8) split up and go on a trip called Explore The Kingdom (ETK). This experience is to help with team building friendships although I think the original goal was to get to know Thailand a bit better. In essence, the 250 students and teachers head into the countryside for 3 days.

I was responsible for organizing the grade 7 trip and we immediately ran into the difficulty that the place they usually go to was closed. Khun A and Khun B (sounds like a Dr. Suess title) are two brothers who run an amazing outdoor camp for kids called Pang Nam (or something like that) but due to some issues (they didn't actually own the land they were on?) they had to relocate. So, for this year we head to a new place called Thomsomboon Club which turned out to be an antiquated fun park with a theme of the wild wild west....and in American West. Kids slept in Teepees, Chuck wagons....everything you can imagine.

Well, the amazing thing about MS teachers and kids is that we can pretty much have fun wherever we go and whatever we do. With the exception of one broken leg, we faired okay and have lots of stories to tell. The broken leg also involved an ambulance ride at 140 km/h with sirens blaring and lights flashing for 1.5 hrs. I was one of the adults (the other was Thai which makes sense) on the ride and figured that if you are going to travel at high speed it might as well be in an ambulance.

Here's the main entrance.....I have to say that they did serve up an amazing latte!

To give you an idea, this was the Luge run.

The start is a little scary. Instructions are....use both brakes. Later in the day it was 7 teachers, no brakes careening down the zigzag pathway.

The only way up is using the "Sky Fox" which was just about as slow as the old Mont Joye chairlift but not as cold.

The local pig added to the Wild West theme.

There was a lot of property and nice to be in the mountains. We had to take the wagon each day to the rides etc.

Lots of roaming horses.

I still don't know what this was.

Stuck on the chair lift.... I guess we likely upped their capacity by 700% and tripped a few breakers.

I'm not sure how it happened but somehow I ended up in the "Rolling Ball" which was really against my better judgement. Kaitlyn (Ethics teacher) and I were strapped in on opposite sides of an inflatable ball and pushed over the edge.