Siam tulips (July 6)

I had thought that the party would be in the evening, but it actually started around 5:30 in the morning (that is when the music started, rather than pop music it sounded more like traditional/religious music this time). We arrived around 7am, and were shown into a room to watch the monks eating. Monks in Thailand rely on food that is donated to them by the community. They are not vegetarian, although I think that you are not supposed to kill an animal specifically to feed to a monk. However, they killed several ducks last night for the party (fortunately I was inside when that happened), so I’m not sure how that wasn’t killing an animal to feed a monk. After they finished eating, we headed into another room to eat breakfast, which consisted of about 10 dishes (all the food the monks had not eaten).  I was told that they started cooking at the uncle’s house at 4am, so that must have been a short night for them. There were probably about 20 people at the party total. A group of men started doing karaoke around 9am, which they must really like, because I think they were doing that for most of the day.

However, we headed back to Bu’s house after awhile, and her sister Kob arrived to visit for the weekend (she lives about a two hour drive away). Then we drove up to the mountains to see the Siam tulips, which are pink flowers that bloom here in July-August (and are only found in Chaiyaphum province). The drive through the countryside was quite beautiful, although the road was bumpy in places and with two women and 2 kids in the back seat with me (I think I was the only one in the back wearing a seatbelt), I was definitely ready to get out of the car when we arrived. Then after taking a short bus ride up to the top of a hill, we took a path down, which included a couple impressive overlooks and then seeing fields of the pink flowers. Very beautiful! Right when we finished the walk, a downpour started. On the drive back, we stopped to pick up some snacks and fruit. I got a fresh coconut and drank the water inside with a straw, which was very tasty! I will definitely try to have many more coconuts during the rest of my time in Thailand.