Thai Food

(Very long, but mostly pictures.)

Thai people eat almost everything. For a most part that's a really good thing. Food here is delicious, and unlike anything I've ever eaten before. Thai people use tons of spices in their cooking, and the combinations of flavors are bizarre and extremely good.

FRUIT

The fruit here is incredible. There are literally dozens of fruits that I'd never seen or heard of before coming here, and they are almost all wonderful. Thailand is very tropical, and they grow almost everything here. Bananas and pineapple, in particular, are so good here. I don't even like those fruits back in America-- the flavor and texture is very different here. And here in Somboi, we are absolutely drowning in bananas, coconuts, and millions of mangos. All of those are growing in trees in my backyard right now!

They also have these apple-like fruits that I love.

Mmmmmmmm..coconuts:

I don't have pictures of the other fruits, especially the mangos. We eat yellow, ripe mangos (YUM - my new favorite fruit) and green mangos. The greens ones are pretty sour, and we eat them with a mix of sugar, salt, and chili. Sometimes we add fish sauce to the mix. I won't lie - I'm not crazy about this strange dip, but I eat it. It's growing on me.

MAIN COURSES

3 kinds of pork with a sweet and sour sauce, with soup:

They think this is like Chinese food. It's not, but it is good. Noodles with a sauce. If I was even a little bit of a cook, I could probably describe the taste a little bit, but I'm at a total loss. Come and taste it!

This is either chicken or pig blood. The particular animal that the blood comes from isn't too important though. They boil the blood until it becomes a solid. It's like jello. Blood jello. (Yes, I did eat it!)

Squid (yes, I ate this too; it's very chewy):

Somdom is a staple food here. It's made from papaya (not similar at all to the fruit we have in the States), fish sauce, chili, tomato, peanuts, lemon, and sugar. You eat it with sticky rice, and it's really delicious! Very spicy.

I cooked this meal with P'Pawn older sister. The pumpkin dish is one of my favorites. Americans don't make very good use of pumpkin...

On a raft on the river with my uncle, aunt, and cousins. You buy food on the shore, they bring it to you in intervals, and you can just sit and relax for as long as you want. Lots of people swim in the river too. It's so much fun!

Eating a slightly Thai version of Chinese food, where you put raw meat and vegetables into boiling broth and it cooks. That's Palm and her dad!

KANOM (Thai for deserts, treats, snacks, etc. Basically anything that's not a meal.)

The banana-leaf wrapped things are great, but the pink milk is NOT. Thai people love to drink this stuff that they call "Red Water" but it's actually this thick sugary syrup that they add to water. It's bright red, and tastes exactly like cheap cough syrup. Mixing it with warm yogurt-milk doesn't help.

Very thin rice cakes, but the picture is mostly here to show the preferred cooking method here in the villages.

That's a cup! They put tea or coffee or whatever you want in it, and you get to keep it. But if you're thinking the twine might come out and the clay cup might shatter all over the ground, you are right. If you are white, it draws even more attention, and the story is told for the rest of the day.

(No explanation needed.)

That's ice cream, with corn on it! It was weird at first, but that's because it was my first encounter with veggie-deserts. They put corn and beans in ice cream, yogurt, cakes, etc.

That's a fried doughy thing with sugar and condensed milk inside. Horribly unhealthy but so good...

MY FAVORITE FOOD!!!!!!!! Mango with sticky rice and coconut milk. Doesn't sound like much, but it's oh-so-good.

OTHER ODDITIES

I went out to eat with my first host family (in Bangkok). They told me it was a typical American me. On that table, we had:

 - pizza

 - breadsticks

 - onion rings

 - french fries

 - spaghetti

 - mozzarella cheese sticks

 - garlic bread

 - ham and cheese bake

No wonder they think Americans are all fat!

This picture isn't much, except the scene of a story I want to tell. This was on my vacation with my boss a few weeks ago. We were eating dinner with about 10 people, and there was this dip for the sticky rice. Most people eat sticky rice with their hands, so that's was I was doing. I got some dip, and took a bit. Not bad. A little spicy, but nothing I can't handle. Then I looked at the clump of rice in my hand and there was a giant red ant on it! I panicked because I had almost eaten it, but my next thought was how to get rid of it without calling attention to the fact that there was a bug in their dish. So I played it cool and just set the whole thing down on my plate. I got some more rice, and went for more dip and then I saw. The whole dip was red ants. There was some chili paste mixed in, and a few vegetables, but it was a huge mass of giant dead red ants.

I emphasize the word dead there because this is what I was served a few days later:

I'm sorry to report that I just couldn't put the giant moving bugs in my mouth and crunch down. I did eat large ant larvae though! They pop, like grapes.

So that's a pretty good summary, I think! The food is really different, but most of it isn't too weird. I just don't take a lot of pictures of the normal stuff.

I'm going to Bangkok tomorrow to renew my visa, so I won't be online or near a computer until next week Wednesday or so. I'm trying to take more videos though, since people seemed to like that.

Love,

Alex

Leia Mais…

Monk Parade

This is during a parade about a week ago, for the baby monks pictured in the last post. It's kind of a good view of Thai culture, and of my village, Somboi. Mostly I'm just testing to see how a video will work though. I'll find some better things to upload later.

Love,

Alex

Leia Mais…

Songkran Festival

One of the biggest holidays of the year is about wrapping up here in Thailand. Songkran is the Thai New Year's celebration. It's most well known for getting to soak everyone with water all day! I think it started with using water to cleanse the body and spirit for the new year. It's also a huge family holiday, so people flock back to their hometowns to celebrate. I've heard Bangkok is a barren city during this period.

I didn't get to play with water though, because I was invited to participate in the Miss Songkran parade. I would have rather not, but it was a good way to meet new people in the village, so I did it anyway.

Getting ready in the morning (makeup):

Getting my hair done:

With my friend, waiting for the parade to start:

With my host mom:

This is a ceremony where everyone pours water into the older people's hands. The older people wish you happiness, luck, health, or whatever good things they want.

I mostly got people saying (in English): "Happy, happy, happy" but my uncle told me that he wishes me to be happy and healthy because he cares about me like his own daughter.

On my "float" (back of a pickup truck):

I'm not sure who the two kids are, but they were only 5-years old, and no reasonable person would expect them to be able to sit still for 2+ hours (the time it took us to go all around the village). So I played games with them and we sang and danced. Sitting still was too much for me too. All the other contestants just sat and smiled!

Everyone that wasn't in the parade stood by the road and played with water.

Baby monks (boys who become monks for a few weeks):

So that was my weekend! There were at least 20 people at my house this weekend, so it's been a little nuts. But everyone has been great, and they are really excited that I can speak Thai somewhat. They leave today though, so I should get back to them.

Happy New Year!

Love,

Alex

Leia Mais…

My first day on the job

Here’s a picture of me and a toad. I used it to produce girly screams from a few of my coworkers.

Today I had my first day of classes. I actually taught one impromptu class on Friday, but today was official. But I’ll talk a little about what I’m doing first.

I came to Somboi right as their summer break was starting, so that immediately ruled out any in-class work I could do. So we did a little brainstorming and decided that I could teach my own English class at the administrative office a few times a week. Of course, only if there was enough interest from the students.

We sent the word out, and the first day, 89 students signed up. Over the next couple days, I topped out around 130 students. I also offered to teach an adult class once a week, and I’m not sure how many people will come to that (on Monday).

Basically, they told me that I have any and all resources at my disposal, and I’m in control. It’s been crazy. I spent an entire day typing the students’ names into my computer (harder than it sounds: they were all scribbled in Thai) and dividing them into class. I ended up with 6 classes, and each will meet twice a week. It’s a total of 16 hours a week.

My bulletin board with class lists:

My classroom:

So I had a class of 12-year olds this morning, and 15-year olds in the afternoon. The 12-year olds were great. After they relaxed a little bit, they spoke out and were really interactive. I just talked about the class, how important it is for them to tell me if they don’t understand something, and introduced myself. Then I played a “game” with them where they’d stand up or do some other motion if a statement applied to them. Things like, “Stand up if you like to eat windows” or “Raise your foot if you have a younger brother.” We had a really good time.

The 15-year olds were a different story. Almost everything I tried to say was followed by whispers in Thai and lots of giggling. It was actually really annoying. I’m going to try a different approach on Friday. I think maybe they’d be interested in learning some English songs, and that can help them with phrasing, pronunciation, and vocabulary. We’ll see…

Teaching here is a huge challenge. Last week I asked to meet with some of the English teachers so that I could get an idea of what these kids are learning in class. I found something very shocking: the English teachers cannot speak English! They know the rules (I’m assuming), but our meeting was mostly conducted in Thai because they could neither speak nor understand English.

It seems to me that there is something seriously wrong when an American and an English teacher can communicate more effectively in Thai than English. Especially considering I’ve only studied Thai for a few months, and my Thai is mediocre at best.

Here are a few more pictures of the past week or so.

Me by a river with my boss's friends and family:

The admin office:

My giving food to the monks at the funeral of a person in Somboi:

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the end of winter!

Love,
Alex

Leia Mais…