Tiny Bubbles

At the midservice conference Merissa and I decided to go for a swim in the very lavish and beautiful pool at our hotel. Afterwards, we were going to shower off. Since neither of us have really seen or used a bathtub since we have been in Thailand...and since our hotel had bathtubs...we decided to take a bubble bath. Do you like our bubble hats?

Nuns Praying

I thought this was just a cool picture. This monk is leading these buddhist nuns in prayer.

Giant Reclining Buddha

This is probably the most treasured reclining Buddha in all of Thailand. It is just massive. What makes it so special are the feet. The feet are made with mother of pearl. This Buddha can be found at Wat Po in Bangkok.

Giant Statue

This is me at a very famous temple in Bangkok called Wat Po. I am beside a giant chinese statue. This temple is full of them. They were used to balance out the weight of ships when importing things to Thailand from China.

Karaoke

A lot of towns in Thailand may not have a market, any restaurants, or a place to find the necessities of life. But one thing every town in Thailand does have is a Karaoke bar. Thai's are crazy for Karaoke. This past week I had my midservice conference. Often times we had free nights. On one night we found this lovely bar strung with christmas tinsel and Karaoked it up! Here we are singing to the old favorite Desperado.







Here my friend Katie and I are singing along to Under the Board Walk.

Parade of Buddhas 1

This past weekend I went to Chiang Mai for SongKran, the Buddhist New Years. In Thailand the way they celebrate SongKran is with a national water fight and Chiang Mai is the most popular city for this fight. They do this because SongKran takes place in April the hottest month in Thailand. The streets were filled with people throwing water on each other with buckets where they pulled water from the canals or using water guns. Trucks were packing the roads with people riding on the back with big barrels of ice water throwing it at people. Needless to say, I was wet all weekend. You couldnt leave your house without getting completly soaked. This is usually just a one day holiday, but in Chiang Mai it lasts all week! Unfortunatly my camera died this weekend, so I only got pictures of the opening parade...the parade of Buddhas. This is where all of the Buddha statues from every temple in the province of Chiang Mai are taken and put on floats for the parade and people throw perfumed flower water on them. It was really beautiful and amazing!


In Thai this water is called Nahm Ope. This is water with flowers and perfumes in it. This is the water they were throwing onto the buddha statues.











People on the bridge in Chiang Mai playing water. Elephant heads are on poles spraying everyone with water.












This monk is doing what is called prohm nahm mohn. This is where he sprays people with holy water for good luck and blessings.

Parade of Buddhas 2

Parade of Buddhas 3

The big brick wall in this picture is called Tai Pae Gate and is the old city gate.

Sweet Garlic Basil Chicken/Tofu

So In my immense free time I have been doing a lot of cooking and experimenting with food. I havnt been overly succesful in my tries, but I made a dish recently that is sooo yummy delicious I wanted to share it with everyone.
This should serve 1 to 2 people depending on how much you eat.
Ingrediants:
1 yellow bell pepper
1 block of tofu, or a chicken breast or thigh or whatever, or tofu chicken( I have used tofu and tofu chicken for this recipe, but chicken will work just as well for you meat eaters. They have an amazing selection of fake meats here that are very realistic)
1 large handfull of fresh basil
3 large slices of garlic( you know how a clove breaks into slices, thats what I mean)
2 tsps of sugar
1 dash of salt
1/2 cup of mushrooms
enouch oil to cover the bottom of your wok
brown rice

Directions:
Put 1tsp of sugar a half a handful of the basil and the garlic diced into the oil. Stir fry for about half a minute. If you are using tofu drop the block in the oil and stir fry until it is golden brown. If you have never cooked with tofu before be careful as it burns easily. Then take it out and slice it into cubes. If you slice it into cupes before hand I find they generally crumble and it isnt as pretty. The tofu will take on the flavor of the rest. If you are using chicken you can just leave it in there until finished. Then put in your mushrooms and diced yellow pepper and stir fry until cooked. Then add the rest of the basil, salt, and sugar. Dont cook the remaining basil for too long as you want it kind of leafy. Then take everything and mix it up and put it over brown rice(as thats healthier than white). Make sure you taste this before you are finished because you may want to add more salt or sugar. If you are worried about sugar content only put one tsp of sugar in at the end and taste it before to see if you need to put anymore in. If you need more flavoring sprinkle garlic salt over the top when finished. Enjoy!

Good Bye Kanome and DaoHoo

This past weekend Kanome and DaoHoo went to their new homes. Kanome is the girl and it is the Thai word for sweets. The boys name was going to be Stevey, but their is no "v" sound in the Thai language. I suggested we changed his name and we thought DaoHoo was really cute, which is the word for Tofu in Thai. Giving them up was a lot harder than I thought, as I have really gotten attached to them. It made me think of giving up my own cats, when I leave Thailand, and that will be even harder!





Here I am with Kanome and DaoHoo on my shoulders. I liked to walk around with them on my shoulders a lot.












Here is Julia with her new child Kanome. She is one of the new volunteers in my province. She is living in the city of Klong Kloong, which is about a 45 minute drive from me...she is really great and I know we are going to become great friends!











Here is Bom with his new child DaoHoo. At least I can visit them when I want to. Goodbye...you will be missed!

Fruit Carving

Fruit Carving is a very big artform in Thailand. They have contests all over the country for it. You always see beautifully decorated fruit and vegetables at nice resteraunts. Since I am on midterm break, and have a lot of free time on my hands, my friend Bom taught me the basics of fruit carving. I learned how to make flowers at least.













Here is our final product. This was a watermellon. Im going to try and practice this so I can get really good at it.

My House 1

This is my house. I decided to do a series of pictures of my house, since many people have not seen it. Its a really big house, a little too big actually. Its very safe though. Its surrounded by a gate, I have a guard dog, and bars on all of my windows...bars are normal to have on windows in Thailand.









These next three pictures are my living area. Its a really big space. See my refridgerator. This is the typical size of a fridge in Thailand. Everytime I see a big one I am so overwhelmed and just think they are huge. I also keep all the pictures anyone sends me above my fridge.

My House 2

This is my bathroom. Notice the water heater I didnt know how to work for the first 8 months I was in Thailand and how the water just goes right onto the floor. This is a typical Thai bathroom, accept I dont have a squat toilet (Thank God!)















This big basin is the bucket bath. This is what I use to wash my face, brush my teeth, to flush the toilet with, and to wash myself with when my shower doesnt have water, which is frequently. I just use the bucket and dump water over my body. Notice the lack of sinks in my house anywhere! Also notice the spray hose by the toilet. Thai people dont use toilet paper, and in above average bathrooms(in below average there is just a basin of water and they use their hands) they have these to wash their bottoms with, Im totally installing one of these into my bathroom when I get back!


These bottom two pictures are my kitchen, or what I like to think of as my kitchen. Notice the garuage like doors. I use these doors to dump my water out of after I wash dishes or my bucket for rinsing things fills up.











Notice the orange and yellow tubs on my table. This is how I wash dishes. I keep my dishes in them and then haul water into them and wash them. That door is also where I come in and out of.

My House 3

My Buddha table I painted!
















These next two pictures are of my bedroom.



























This room is dubbed the cat room. Its kind of a scary room and the only ones that actually use it are my cats, as thats where I keep their litter box. I also use this room for storage.

My House 4

This is my ironing room and where I keep some of my clothes. This room also has bats in the wall. I can hear them crawling up and down the walls when I walk in it. I can also see them flying in and out of the house at dusk from my balcony.













This my balcony that is connected to my ironing room. I really love the view off of my balcony. Notice the blue trashcans at the bottom of the picture. In Thailand you have community trash cans, not individual house ones, and everyone pays a fee for them. There are also people that come on a daily bases and hunt through the trash for recyclables, that is how they make their living and it helps reduce the trash in Thailand considerably.










These last two pictures are of my upstairs..lovely fake wood plastic panneling isnt it.

Elephant Crossing Signs Needed!

I would like to draw attention to a fact that everyone already is aware of: I am not a good driver, thus I am not a good cyclist. This is a fact I am aware of and try to work on. Because of this fact, and because I am required by Peace Corps to ride a bicycle, and because I live in a city with busy streets I like to keep my eyes directly on whats in front of me. So like I said, today I was riding my bike home from aerobics and out of the corner of my eye I see something huge. I quickly turned my head, and in what seemed to be slow motion a large adult female elephant was heading straight at me. The roads here are not that wide and the traffic was rather busy so it was doing a good gallop towards me. As I hear the trainer riding on it yell something at me in Thai, my years worth of building up my leg muscles from having to ride a bike kick into action and I rode my bike like never before, almost riding into a motorcycle that didn't see me as it was trying to get around the elephant as well. Luckily, I am still alive to write this story, I am not kidding, this has literally been one of the scariest moments of my life. Thus, I have decided to try and install elephant crossing signs into the streets of Kampangphet. This has been a true story of when elephants go wild.
Yours,
Wesley
PS...If anyone could find the statistics of how many people are killed by elephants or how many elephants are killed in accidents a year in Thailand, I would be most interested. Thanks!

Weekend Market 1

This is my weekend market...meaning its only open on the weekends. I always go here even when I dont want to buy anything because its one of my favorite places to be in my town. It has such personality and so many interesting things to look at and buy. Here are a few examples...









Grilled baby bird...This one made me so sad when I first saw it...but they eat everything in this country. I mean if they eat grilled field rat and bugs...why not baby birds. One time I saw deep fried baby chicks.










Curry and chili pepper pastes...this is called Nam Prick in Thai. They use it on vegetables and foods when it doesnt have as much flavor as they want...very good, but very spicy!

Weekend Market 2

Interesting foods














Live frogs...they sell them in my regular market all the time, sliced open so you can see their insides for cooking












Fresh flowers...how BEAUTIFUL!
















Live Bugs...yummmy...someones soon to be snack...sure not mine!

Weekend Market 3

Live Catfish














Whole Grilled Catfish on sticks.












Dried fish













Some sort of red fish...very popular here














Eel... I aslways love watching these when I come to the market, sometimes they try to escape haha!...sometimes they have baby ones in individual plastic bags