Exploring old Bangkok (July 31)

This is my last day in Thailand, and I finally made it into old Bangkok! I took a skytrain to the river, and the switched to the Chao express boat for a ride up the Chao Praya river to the Grand Palace. The highlight of the ride was going by Wat Arun (temple of dawn), this is the temple that often occurs on the covers of guidebooks to Thailand. 

Wat Arun

The Grand Palace is the official residence of the Thai king, although he lives elsewhere now. The Grand Palace was very impressive, as was Wat Phra Kaew (wat = temple), a temple in the Grand Palace compound which houses the emerald Buddha image, the most sacred Buddha in Thailand. The temple had statues and paintings of many fantastical creatures, here are pictures of a couple of them:

Guarding the entrance to Wat Phra Kaew

With some of my favorite creatures that I met at Wat Phra Kaew

Wat Phra Kaew

View from the outside

 I spent a couple hours there, and then took a walk down the river, picking up some snacks for lunch on the way, to Wat Pho, which is another large Buddhist temple. Wat Pho is a large temple complex with many buildings, but it is most famous for the 46 m long and 15 m high reclining Buddha figure, which is covered in gold leaf. 

Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

After the temples, I hopped back on the river boat, and rode down to Chinatown. I wandered around and looked at various shops selling all kinds of things. Chinatown is famous for having some of the best street food in Bangkok, but unfortunately there was some kind of event today, so many of the vendors weren’t there. I was getting pretty tired by this time, so I headed back to the hostel and got dinner nearby. Then time to pack up and get ready for my early morning departure from Thailand.

Looking back on the past five weeks, it has been a great trip. It was fun and relaxing going to the beach and seeing the sights in Bangkok, but I think that the time in Chaiyaphum was the highlight because of the great people I met there and the chance to really learn about the community and culture there. Hopefully I’ll be back soon sometime!

Bangkok malls and eating street food (July 30)

After an “American breakfast” at the hotel, which consisted of fried eggs, hot dogs, and wonder bread (fortunately I had some other snacks I had brought in my hotel room to fill up on), the van picked me up a bit after 9 and we started the drive back to Bangkok.  Due to the traffic, we got back into Bangkok around 12:30 or 1. After getting some lunch, I edited a physics paper for a while, and then I headed out to see the Siam center area. I had stopped by here briefly earlier in the trip to pick up some books. Siam center is the closest thing Bangkok has to a “center,” and it is filled with many shopping malls. Some of them, like the MBK mall, which I visited during my first day in Bangkok to get my cell phone, offer lots of small shops, fake goods, and low prices. The fanciest mall, the Siam Paragon, is filled with various international brands. Gap (surprise!) was having a sale (50% off) but I didn’t buy anything there, although I did get a new shirt at H & M. The square between the Siam Paragon mall and the Siam Discovery mall had a couple multi-story flatscreen TVs featuring advertisements, the atmosphere was similar to some of the busy shopping areas in Tokyo that I experienced. After exploring for awhile, I headed back to the hostel area for dinner and picked up food from my favorite street food stands since I only have a couple more nights to enjoy them—pad thai, grilled mushrooms with chile sauce, pearl milk tea, and fruit. The street food is one of my favorite things about Bangkok. In the area around the hostel, tons of stands set up in the evening (and some are there all day) to sell various foods, as well as a variety of other stands selling clothes, purses, etc. It can make the sidewalk crowded and hard to navigate at times, but there are so many tasty snacks to try! Some of my favorites are the fruit stands, which are open all day, so it is really easy to pick up fruit for a snack. A common thing is to get slices of a more sour, firm fruit in a bag with a stick, and then a second bag with chile-sugar mixture to dip the fruit in. I’m not sure what some of these fruits are, but they are tasty!

Suranaree University of Technology (July 29)

This morning I headed out to Khorat to visit Non, who was a student in ZX Shen’s group, and is now a professor there at the Suranaree University of Technology. Khorat, which is the nickname for Nakhon Ratchasima, is the capital of the province of the same name, which is the largest (by area) province in Thailand. It is about 3-4 hours (depending on traffic) northeast of Bangkok, so it is in the Isaan region like Chaiyaphum (which is about 1-2 hours away from Khorat). Since I was going to give a seminar, Non organized a van to pick me up in Bangkok and take me to the University. The van looked like it could hold about 10 people, but the driver and I were the only ones in it, so it was a very spacious experience, the opposite of the trip to the floating market. When we got to the university, I met Non and we went for coffee and chatted for a bit. Then he showed me to the seminar room and I set up my computer. I talked about my quantum Monte Carlo project on phase competition on strongly correlated systems, this is also what I presented at my thesis defense so I had lots of practice. I think the talk went well, and a few professors asked quite a few questions, I couldn’t quite tell if the students there were following or not.

After the talk, two of Non’s students took me to see a silk weaving shop. We picked up one of the student’s four year old son on the way, who is in a bilingual Thai/English kindergarten. I was impressed with his level of English already, he was much more advanced than the students in Chaiyaphum! Both of the students had studied through a master’s degree, worked as lecturers teaching at a university for about five years, and then started their Ph.D. The Thai silk was really beautiful; it is a handicraft that this region is famous for.

After the silk, we drove to a restaurant for dinner and met Non there, one of his sons, and Mike, who is also a professor at the university. He is Canadian and married to a Thai woman, and interestingly, my advisor Tom was on his thesis committee when he did his Ph.D in Toronto. It is a small world!

At the restaurant, the waitress seemed quite concerned that the food would be too spicy for me, although when I was in Chaiyaphum people did not seem to be concerned about this. The Isaan region has the spiciest food in Thailand, so Non, who is from Bangkok, says that he always has to request that they make it less spicy for him. We got a variety of dishes, including pla pao (the fish dish that I had in Chaiyaphum at my farewell party), sweet and sour veggies, tom yam soup, and som tam (spicy unripe papaya salad, which is one of the most famous Isaan dishes). I quite liked the less spicy version of som tam at the restaurant, when I had it before it Chaiyaphum my mouth always felt like it was catching on fire! 

Dinner in Khorat

After dinner, the students took me to see the statue of Thao Suranaree (also known as Yamo), who is the local heroine of the city and the university was named after her. We paid respects to the statue by purchasing some flowers to hang near her, and some little gold squares which we then stuck on the statue. This is also how you pay respect to a Buddha statue at a temple. After this, we stopped by a stand on the street for a snack of dried squid, and then they took me to the hotel.

With the statue of Yamo in the center of Khorat

Amphawa floating market (July 28)

The hostel was organizing a trip to the Amphawa floating market outside of Bangkok today, so I decided to join. There were about 25 travellers from the hostel who went, so it was quite popular! We walked to a minivan station near the Victory Monument and caught a van for the 1-1.5 hour ride. My van was slightly larger than a supershuttle, but there were 17 people in it (4 people per row)! It was not the best organized trip, so after we were dropped off at the bus station near the market, we had to wait for about an hour until the guide from the hostel came to meet us. Eventually, we walked to the market and had some time to explore and eat lunch. There were many stalls, the unique thing about the floating market being that the market bordered a canal, and some of the stalls pulled up on boats. At these stalls, they would cook food on the boat, and then either hand it ashore in a basket or have a guy who would wade out to get it. Their specialty was seafood. 

Floating market

More floating market

Lunch!

After lunch, we got onto a long tail boat and road down the canal out to a larger river. We spent a couple hours motoring down this river and stopping at three Buddhist temples on the way. In particular, we stopped at one that is one of the oldest in the region (older than any of the temples in Bangkok), it was a relatively small stone building, but it had many trees growing on/around it, so it looked like part of an enormous tree. 

Riverside house

Buddha statue in one of the temples

After we finished going to the temples, we had a bit more time at the market, and then we caught the van back to the hostel. While I would have liked a little more time seeing the market and a little less time waiting during the day, it was fun to meet travellers from many different countries on the trip.

Trip back to Bangkok and Chatuchak market (July 27)

Got up early to go for one more swim in the rooftop pool. I thought that I would eat breakfast at the tasty fruit salad/granola place, but it had not opened yet so I had leftover snacks from yesterday’s street market instead. It was lucky that I had bought way too much food! Then at 8:30 I caught a taxi to the Ko Samui airport. Upon landing in Bangkok, I took the airport train and skytrain back into the city, and returned to Hostelling International Mid-Bangkok, which is located in the Ratchathewi district, very near the Victory Monument. This monument was constructed in 1941 to celebrate the Thai victory in a brief fight with the French.

Ratchathewi road, the hostel is on a side street off of this

Victory monument, with very busy surrounding traffic circle

 This was my third time arriving in Bangkok during the past month, and this time I will actually be staying to explore it. The lady working at the hostel suggested that I go see the Chatuchak weekend market in the afternoon. To get there, I hopped back on the skytrain and rode to the last stop, Mor Chit, where I caught the bus to Chaiyaphum when I first arrived. The market started basically right next to the skytrain station, and it was enormous! I read that it is one of the largest markets in Asia. There was a largish path that went around in a circle, and it was surrounded by buildings housing an enormous number of stalls, with narrow paths leading between them. Some of the inner areas seemed quite stuffy, because not much fresh air could get in, so I tended to stay near the outer ones, or the areas that weren’t as packed. There were stalls selling basically everything one could think of, including clothes, soaps, food, statues of Buddhas and elephants, lamps, handbags, souvenirs, etc. I purchased a couple things, and also bought some coconut ice cream, which was served in a half coconut with peanuts, green sticky rice, and pumpkin as toppings. Arroy! (delicious!)

Coconut ice cream

Part way through my exploration of the market, a tropical downpour started and everyone ran to get under the roofs of the shops. It seemed to continue for the rest of the afternoon, with periods of downpour interspersed with times with no or light rain. Unfortunately, right when I was heading back to the skytrain station, the downpour started again, but since the street was so crowded no one could move very fast, and I was soaked by the time I got to the station. Luckily, since it is always warm out, getting soaked was not a big problem. When I got back to the hostel, I went to my favorite pad thai stand for dinner, which I found on my previous night here.

Second day in Bo Phut (July 26)

I found a very nice restaurant for breakfast (menu partially in French), and got a very tasty fruit salad with yogurt and granola, orange juice, and latte. After relaxing in the room for a bit and finding a place to stay in Bangkok for the weekend, I headed out on a run down the length of Bo Phut beach. Then I took a leisurely stroll back, taking a swim whenever I got to warm (which meant that I went for four swims). Once back at the hotel, I went for another swim at the rooftop pool. I then relaxed on my balcony and finished my mango and sticky rice from the night before, and headed out to get some lunch. I knew that there would be a night market in Bo Phut in the evening, so I decided that it was ok to eat just fruit and dessert for lunch. I got a mango smoothie at the smoothie stand, although it was not as good as the coconut one yesterday. I also got a “banana pancake.” There are a lot of guys around with mobile stands that say “banana pancake” on them, and I hadn’t tried one yet. The guy stretched a piece of dough very thin and started frying it in a wok. Then he added a sliced banana, coconut, and raisins in the middle, folded the dough around it, and added more oil to the pan and fried it until it was crispy on the outside. He then cut it into bite sized pieces and poured sweetened condensed milk over the top. It was very tasty, but probably not that healthy!

In the afternoon, I sat on my balcony and worked on editing a paper from Stanford that we are trying to get out soon. Then I went for one more rooftop swim before heading out to explore the night market. There are a huge number of stalls, and they had shut down the roads in Bo Phut to cars, in order to accommodate all of them. There were a mix of stalls selling food and other stuff like t-shirts and souvenirs. There were also a number of stalls playing loud music and selling mojitos and other drinks. Some of the bartenders would do sort of a dance while preparing the drinks, so they were fun to watch. Fortunately, after extensively exploring the market, I found that the best food area was right near my hotel, so I bought some fish cakes, kanom tien, and coconut/corn cakes wrapped in a leaf for dinner. I also saw a lady making a new dish that looked intriguing, so I bought one of those as well. She was making very thin omelettes, and then filling them with bean sprouts and a fried coconut/peanut mixture. It also came with a bag of pickled cucumbers and chiles. When I first bit into it, the coconut mixture tasted sweet, but then the spiciness hit me and I realized it also had a lot of chiles in it. In my experience the last few weeks, Thai chiles have a longer delay time than I am used to: when I first bite into a food, it doesn’t seem spicy, but after a couple seconds the chiles hit me and the spiciness lasts quite a long time before it subsides—and water doesn’t help! I think that milk is the best way to get rid of too much spiciness, but usually that is not available when I am having a meal.

Last day relaxing at the beach, tomorrow I head back to Bangkok!

Bo Phut (July 25)

It turned out that the hostel I had reserved in Bo Phut was not very nice, and also the location was not good (somewhat isolated and far from the beach), so after spending one night there, I decided to find a new place to stay for my last two nights on Ko Samui. I started walking down the road, and found a nice restaurant serving breakfast by the beach, so I stopped there to eat and use their wifi. The breakfast was very large and tasty, consisting of two poached eggs with toast, an enormous bowl of fresh fruits, yogurt, and granola, orange juice, and coffee. Then I caught a taxi into the main part of Bo Phut and walked around searching for a new hotel. I found a hotel called L’Hacienda, run by a French/Thai couple, which seemed like the perfect place to stay. They offered to drive me back to the hostel to pick up my bags, so I wouldn’t have to pay for a taxi, which was nice. The hotel is quite small, maybe 8-10 rooms, and my room has a balcony overlooking the ocean! Also, there is a swimming pool on the roof with a wonderful panoramic view of the beach and ocean to one side, and the town and jungle/coconut covered hills on the other side. I was very happy that I had switched to this new hotel. 

My room at L'Hacienda

View from my balcony! The island in the distance is Ko Phangan.

Rooftop pool, a great place to swim and enjoy the view

Elephants guarding the pool

By this time, I was getting hungry for lunch, so I walked down the main street in Bo Phut and bought a coconut smoothie from a roadside stand. The lady took a large knife and chopped it open, Chaiyaphum-style, and used the entire contents of the coconut for my smoothie. It was delicious! Bo Phut is also touristy, but in a much nicer way than Lamai was. It seems like Bo Phut is dominated by French tourists, and people often talk to me on the street in French. I think that visiting Ko Samui is a bit more like visiting Hawaii than visiting Thailand, because there are so many foreigners here. The main thing is enjoying the beach and the beautiful islands and views, rather than experiencing Thai culture. I am certainly enjoying my week here at the beach, but if I go to the beach in Thailand again sometime, I think I would choose a location further off the Western tourist track so it would feel more like I am in Thailand.

After lunch, I went down to the beach and read for a while and went for a swim. The views from Bo Phut beach are very stunning, because you can see Ko Phangan (the second biggest island in this region), and a variety of smaller islands off in the distance. When I got back to the hotel, I went for another swim in the hotel pool and enjoyed the view.

Then I went out to find dinner. I found a mango and coconut sticky rice stand, so I bought some of that for dessert. Mango and sticky rice is relatively expensive here right now, because mangos are out of season in Thailand (apparently June is the time to come if you want to eat mangos). As a result, the seller told me that they have to import mangos from Vietnam at Cambodia and this time of year, which increases the price. I didn’t know that the climate in Vietnam and Cambodia was so different from Thailand, but maybe they get their rainy season at a slightly different time? Anyway, this guy was very careful about making his mango and sticky rice, so he cut open about three mangos to find the perfect one. Actually, I think that I ended up with around 1.5 mangos in my dessert, and the mangos here are big! There must be a rule here limiting the roadside stands, because it seems like the only stands around sell desserts, smoothies, and fruit. While I certainly wouldn’t mind living on this, I figured it was better to eat something else for dinner, so I got an overpriced Indian meal at a touristy restaurant.

More Chaiyaphum photos

This is a little out of order, but finally posting some more photos from my time in Chaiyaphum!

My bedroom at the homestay

The living room

Dining room table. The big basket is for covering the food, while the small basket is for storing sticky rice.

Piano with Kanom mok. Yum!

Bu's grandfather's house, a few minutes away from where I stayed

A classic Chaiyaphum view: rice paddies and mountains

One of my favorite market stands: rambutans!

Buying pineapples at the market

Bu, Piano, and Goh visiting a temple

Eating hot pot

Making kanom tien

Kanom tien ready to be steamed

Some 5th graders. Rujira, on the far right, is probably the student with the best English at the school.

Kai prepares some coconuts

Making a coconut dessert!

Coconuts in the backyard, waiting to be harvested

Anthong Marine Park (July 24)

I got up early to pack up my bag, eat breakfast, and be ready to leave at 7:15am for my day of kayaking. Not many people seem to use the gym here, so the hotel manager asked me at breakfast why I did not go to the gym this morning. I ran into a Swedish solo traveler at breakfast from Dalarna (where they make the painted horses). I talked to him a bit while I was waiting for the shuttle for kayaking to arrive, and he showed me some pictures from a hike to a waterfall that he had done. Once the shuttle picked me up, there was about a 20 minute drive to the southwest corner of the island where we met our ferry. It was nice to get out of the touristy areas on the eastern part of the island, the scenery on the drive was much more similar to what I was used to from northeast Thailand. Once we got to the dock, we boarded the boat and started traveling out to Anthong Marine Park, where we would be kayaking. Our guide for the day was Markus, from Germany, who, with lots of tattoos, a long beard, and big earrings, seemed like the type who would like living at the beach. The tour was very professionally run. Markus explained everything in both German and English, since about half the people on the boat were German, we were split into two groups, the German group and the “everyone else” group. The ride out to the islands was pretty bumpy. It had actually been raining when I got up in the morning, but fortunately that had stopped and there were just low clouds.

Arriving at our morning kayaking location

Once we got to the islands, the Germans went kayaking first, while my group went snorkeling. The visibility was not great, so the snorkeling wasn’t too impressive, but I saw some fish. I also managed to stab my thumb on some very sharp sea urchin. Next it is our turn to go kayaking, which I enjoyed much more than snorkeling. I shared a kayak with a woman from New Zealand. We kayaked along some rocky islands, and also did some kayaking into caves! We went in one place where we kayaked through a small tunnel, which then opened into a big pond surrounded my rocky cliffs. Then we got back on the boat, and ate lunch while we motored to the other end of the marine park for the afternoon’s kayaking. The Germans went kayaking again first, and the rest of us hopped onto a longtail boat that took us to the shore and we did a short hike up to a viewpoint. On one side, you could see the islands in the Marine Park spread out, while on the other side, you could look down to the Emerald Lake. This lake is where part of the movie The Beach was filmed, I have not actually seen it, but many people have mentioned it to me. After the viewpoint, we climbed down to the lake and then back up again and returned to the beach for our turn kayaking.

View from top of hike

Another view, with our boat

At the emerald lake

 The second kayak trip was similar to the first, lots of rocky coastlines and some cave kayaking. Then back to the boat, and we motored back to Ko Samui. The weather was overcast for most of the day, which meant the colors weren’t as brilliant as they might have been in the sun, but it was nice because it was not too hot. I think that the hike was the highlight for me, but I also really enjoyed the kayaking. Once I got back to the hotel, I picked up my bags to head up to Bo Phut, a town on the northern part of the island, for the second part of my stay on Ko Samui.

Thai cooking class (July 23)

I went to the gym in the morning before breakfast again. Then I got ready to go to my Thai cooking class in Chaweng, which is the biggest town on the island and about a 15 minute drive from Lamai. There were about 15 people in the class, and besides for a Scottish couple, a Canadian girl, and a Japanese girl, everyone else was from Australia and New Zealand! First we learned how to make green curry paste, which was fun. 

Ingredients for green curry paste

I learned that Thai ginger tastes very different from regular ginger (it is much spicier), so substituting regular ginger is not a good idea, which I had done before when I tried making Thai food. We then used the curry paste to make green curry, and we also made sweet and sour vegetables with tofu and a glass noodle salad. The green curry wasn’t my favorite (we used coconut cream, which the teacher said was better for curries than coconut milk, but I thought it made it too rich). We only had curries with coconut milk a couple times when I was in NE Thailand, and there the coconut broth was very thin, which I liked because it was much lighter. However, both the sweet and sour vegetables and glass noodle salad were really good! The class lasted about three hours because the teacher gave lots of explanations and details, which was good. Then we got to eat lunch! 

Preparing a glass noodle salad

After that, I was extremely full! I walked around Chaweng a bit, but it also seemed pretty touristy, so I caught a taxi back to the hotel fairly soon. Then I headed out for a swim, and this time there was not a downpour. However, I was still too full to run on the beach, so I took a leisurely stroll instead. The water was really nice and warm! Interestingly, the waves here are really small, probably smaller than the waves on Bainbridge Island, so the beach feels surprisingly quiet. I wasn’t really hungry for dinner, so I just bought some fruit at a stand near the hotel.

Exploring the beach (July 22)

Today I took it pretty easy. I went to the hotel gym before breakfast and got some exercise, which was nice, as I didn’t get much exercise in Chaiyaphum. I had tried running a couple times during my first week there, but there were a lot of dogs who would be barking and approaching me. I didn’t want to risk getting bitten when I was out there, so I decided to take a break from running (also it was pretty hot for running). Then I had breakfast and relaxed in the room for a while, before taking a walk in to Lamai town. I stopped at a Tesco Lotus, which is a big Thai supermarket chain. Besides food, they also stock clothes and various household goods, and they also have a food court and a number of other restaurants/shops inside. I stopped at “Black Canyon coffee” for a latte, and then walked through the main street in Lamai. In general, the town seemed too touristy for my taste. I didn’t see a really great looking place for lunch, so I bought some snacks and had a picnic on the beach instead. One of the common flavors of yogurt here has a picture of corn and kidney beans on the container, I had been curious what this flavor was, so I decided to try it. It was a sweet (maybe pineapple?) yogurt, with kidney beans and corn kernels mixed in, and I don’t think I will have it again. Speaking of familiar foods with a new twist, last week I had some Lays potato chips for a snack with Bu. However, these ones were larb flavored! (larb is a very popular spicy meat salad in NE Thailand). I then headed out and walked the length of Lamai beach and back to the hotel, which took awhile because it was pretty long.  Once I got back, I changed into my swimsuit and thought that I would take a run about 10 minutes down the beach to the nicest part and go for a swim. However, just when I stepped out of my room, a tropical downpour started! I decided that running on the beach in a tropical downpour would be kind of difficult, so I decided to swim in the hotel pool instead. The pool is right next to the beach and is one of those infinity pools, so that if you are in the pool and look out, where the edge of the pool stops, you can see the ocean keep on going. So swimming in the pool wasn’t too bad at all!

Ko Samui (July 21)

Got up early and headed back to the skytrain station with my luggage. I rode the skytrain one stop and then transferred to the airport rail link, which is also elevated, so it offered a nice view of new Bangkok on the way out to the airport. At the airport, I enjoyed a latte in the food court while I waited for my flight. It seemed like most of the people on the flight were European. The flight from Bangkok to Ko Samui in southern Thailand took about one hour, and there was a nice view of some islands as we landed. I had decided to stay in Lamai, which is the second biggest town on the island, and is on the southern end. I caught a taxi and checked into the hotel. The towels were folded into elephants on my bed, which was cute!

Towel elephants

Then I headed out to explore. I passed some massage shops, so I decided to get a 1 hour Thai massage which was quite relaxing. Then I walked down the beach towards Lamai town. On Sundays, they have a big “Walking Street,” where much of the downtown is closed to traffic and lots of streetside stalls are set up. There were a lot of stalls making various kinds of foods, some fruit stands, and a bunch of stands selling t-shirts and souvenirs. I picked up some fresh fruit and some pad thai and mango sticky rice for dinner. However, I think I had become a bit spoiled by the quality and number of fruit stands in a Chaiyaphum market, this one seemed a bit lacking in that regard.

Actually, it was a bit of a reverse culture shock getting to Ko Samui. There are so many foreign tourists here! During my three weeks in Chaiyaphum province, I had only run into another foreigner once. I wasn’t used to seeing farang in a Thai market! (farang = western foreigner in Thai, if I heard that in Chaiyaphum, I knew people were talking about me :)) I think that the French, Germans, and British are the largest groups of tourists here, followed by Scandinavians and Australians. I have not heard many American accents, although I did see a couple other American passports getting on the plane.

Trip back to Bangkok (July 20)

At 7am, Bu, Piano, and I left to take food to the monks at the local temple. The town’s temple has three monks (these were the same monks who came to the merit making party during my first weekend here). The monks can only eat before noon, and they get all their food from donations. In some places in Thailand, the monks walk around in the morning collecting food, but at this temple, people brought the food to the monks. There were about 6 other people bringing food for the monks, and each person had around 3 or 4 different dishes, so the monks had 20-25 dishes to choose from! Some of the ladies had stackable containers that then conveniently fit into a carrying case, they seemed to be designed just for this purpose. In addition to the Bua loi kai wan, we also brought some steamed vegetables, rice, and a chile sauce. Everyone moved their food onto large platters, and then these plates were offered to the monks, who were sitting on a low platform at the front of the room. The monks then took the food they wanted, and we put handfuls of sticky rice into their rice baskets. They then handed the platters back to us, and everyone packed up the remaining food to take home. There was then a short ceremony where the monks said a blessing as everyone there poured water into a container. All of the monks took a bowl of bua loi kai wan, so they must like that! (There wasn’t any to take back home, although we had left some of it at home for us).

Once we got back we had breakfast and I finished packing up. I really tried to not bring much on this trip and travel light, but that didn’t last for long, because Bu’s family gave me about 10 lbs of Thai rice (that they had grown) as a present, and also 7 fresh coconuts. They boiled some of the coconuts, which makes them last for 2-3 months, whereas the unboiled kind lasts only a month. However, there was not time for the coconuts to cool before I had to leave, so I had to put several steaming hot coconuts in my suitcase with everything else. Needless to say, after that I had to air everything out when I got to the hotel that night! On the way to the bus station, we stopped at a market so that I could buy a steaming basket for making sticky rice and also a rice serving basket. I am now prepared for making northeast Thai food!

It was sad to say goodbye to the family after the past three weeks. I really hope I can go back again sometime! Kai also tied a good luck bracelet on me, and gave me several good luck charms to keep in my purse. The bus was a double decker one, and I was really lucky because my assigned seat was at the very front on the second floor, so I had a great view of the countryside while we were driving. Since I caught this bus in Patanna town, it took a different route than I did on the ride out to Chaiyaphum. We headed west through Phakdi Chumphon district, which is the westernmost district of Chaiyaphum province, and is quite mountainous. There was a lot of corn and yams growing on the steep hillsides. I didn’t expect it, but corn is pretty popular here. For example, eating an ear of corn at breakfast is fairly common, and it is also a popular roadside snack. The yams aren’t like American yams, but are white and are more similar to the yams I had in Japan. After awhile, the farms stopped, and then we were just passing through hills covered with jungle. Riding this enormous bus on curvy mountain roads made for a great jungle tour! After awhile, it flattened out, and the countryside was then fairly flat all the way to Bangkok, and the towns gradually got bigger and bigger until it finally turned into a sprawl. The traffic was pretty bad as we got closer to Bangkok, so what should have been a 5 hour bus ride actually took 6.5 hours.

Before I had even stepped out of the bus at Morchit bus terminal, some guys started yelling at me and trying to convince me to take their taxis. I knew not to take a taxi with one of these people, because they would overcharge me, and instead I proceeded to the metered taxi stand. However, it was kind of stressful trying to find the taxi stand with all these guys yelling at me about taking their taxis, but I found it within a minute or so. Of course, they weren’t bothering the Thai people getting off the bus!

I then rode the taxi to the skytrain station and then took the skytrain to my hostel. It was definitely a workout hauling my rice- and coconut-laden bag up and down the skytrain stairs! I stayed at “Hostel International Mid Bangkok,” and it was one of the nicest hostels I have stayed in. It was very new, my room was nicely decorated, and the staff was friendly. After dropping off my stuff, I hopped on the skytrain again, and rode to Siam Square, which is shopping mall central in Bangkok. I had read in lonely planet that the largest bookstore stocking English books was in the Siam Paragon mall, and I wanted to stock up on books for the rest of my trip. The Siam Paragon mall was extremely upscale, probably the fanciest mall I have ever been in. The bookstore had a really good selection, their English language section was about the size of a medium sized American bookstore, so it was easy to find three more books to read. It would have been nice to browse the bookstore more and check out other shops in the mall, but I didn’t want to get back to the hostel too late, so I hopped back on the skytrain after I found the books and rode back to the hostel. On the walk from the skytrain station back to the hostel, I bought some Pad Thai for dinner from a streetside vendor for $1, it was probably the best Pad Thai I have ever had! I picked up an ice cream and some snacks at a 7-11, and then I headed back to the room to figure out my plan for Ko Samui this week. I took my first warm shower in three weeks, it felt like a weird sensation at first, but it wasn’t too hard to get used to it again.

Last day at Banpatannasamakee school (July 19)

I taught pratom 4 and pratom 6 today. The teachers had a special lunch in honor of my last day at the school, they had asked me previously what I wanted, so I requested the fish dish that Bu had made earlier in the week. So tasty! I definitely enjoyed eating that dish again.

 One of the teachers gave me some bananas that her husband had just harvested in her yard, I tried one and it probably was the best tasting banana I have ever had! Then after lunch, each teacher tied a good luck bracelet on my wrist, so I should have very good luck during the rest of the trip with all the bracelets. 

Fish lunch and amazing bananas!

Teachers at my farewell lunch

After lunch, the school was going to the Buddhist temple because there is a holiday. All the students assembled in the main school yard, and then were sent off by class to walk in groups to the temple. The teachers followed last, it was about a 2 km walk from the school to the temple. We were walking through Patanna town, which was bigger than I had thought (I had previously only been to the part on the main road by the school). There was a mixture of houses, from quite new and modern looking houses, to more humble places. When we got to the temple, we all sat down on the floor facing two monks who were sitting at the front. The students led some prayers, and then there was some chanting by the monks, followed by some more chanting where the monks would lead and then we would repeat what they said. Most of the students there were from Banpatannasamakee school, but there were some high schoolers there as well (there is a high school across the road from Banpatannasamakee school).  Two high school boys gave two huge (~ 3 feet) candles to the monks as part of the ceremony. When I have better internet again, I will need to look up this holiday and the significance of the ceremony in the temple, those topics are a little too abstract to discuss here. Afterwards, the teachers waited in the shade under a tree while the students each lighted a stick of incense and one of the monks led them as they circled the temple about 3 times. Then they scattered around the temple grounds to collect trash, which they then lit on fire. The students lined up again to walk back to school, while the teachers drove back. 

Walking to the temple

Monk leading the students in circling the temple (building on left)

Bua loi kai wan (this pic is from the first time I made it)

When I got back, a number of students came to say goodbye to me. Some others had also said goodbye earlier in the day, and had brought me some flowers.

Then back to the house. We are going to the temple tomorrow before I catch the bus, so Bu wanted to make some Bua loi kai wan to donate to the monks. I am getting a lot of practice at making Thai desserts! We followed the usual first two steps: making coconut milk and making blue liquid from the flowers. Next it was time to roll the dough, which is made from rice flour, into tiny balls, which takes a long time! This time we not only had blue dough, we also had some pink and orange dough (I think they just used a food coloring for the pink and orange). We made a lot of rainbow balls, by rolling all three colors of dough together. Then cooking the balls in coconut milk/sugar mixture and adding eggs. We had dinner, and sampled some of the bua loi kai wan for dessert. Afterwards, I packed up my bag so I would be ready to go early in the morning.