Another episode of bathroom battles. On this week: Toilet Hose VS. giant lizard

Exhibit A


exhibit B















So last night I came home from Chiang Mai. I had wanted to take a shower and Eleanor was in the bathroom looking under the water basin. I thought... oh no, now whats in my bathroom. I started to take a shower and nothing came out from under the basin, so I just forgot about it. This morning I had to drain the basin, as sometimes dirt deposits start to form at the bottom...when a lizard, refer to exhibit B, about a foot long pokes his head out from under my water basin. Im was not sure how I was going to get him out of my bathroom. So I do the first thing that comes to my head. I get my toilet hose, refer to exhibit A, and moved the water basin a bit. I started spraying water everywhere trying to get this thing out of my bathroom. Finally, after about a half hour I manage to corner the lizard. I carefully open my bathroom door and blast it until it crawled into my kitchen. I then closed the bathroom door hoping that it wont be able to get back in. Final score: Toilet Hose 1, lizard 0.

My Grandma dances Hip Hop

Last week I had just sat down to a nice steaming bowl of mama noodles when my Yai, the Thai word for Grandma, came over to give me a bowl of fruit. I had just come back from Bangkok and had bought the new CD by the hip hop artist Fergy. She has this popular song out right now called fergilicious. Its a bit obnoxious, but I really like it. I think the title fergilicious should say it all. Anyway, I had just started playing this cd and she comes over and says " Oh I love to dance", walks over to my cd player and starts grovering her behind and waving her arms to the song fergilicious. Now she has come over to my house and started dancing before, when I had music playing, but this time it just seemed really funny. While trying to hold in my laughter, I wipped out my camera so I could get a picture of her while she was dancing.She may really annoy me sometimes....but she will often do something like this that will really make me smile! The funniest part is...she wasnt half bad. For an old lady, she can get jiggy wit it.

Sex and Juice Boxes

Advertising in Thailand is sometimes a little strange. Sometimes they just aren't sure of their clientele. Take this advertisement for instance. Its up all over the country advertising a juice box. In America we would generally advertise for juice boxes with a cute little kid with maybe a grape juice smear over their upper lip. Not so in Thailand. Here they advertise it with three sexy women in sexy dresses seductively drinking out of their juice boxes. Ladies....when was the last time you went out to the club and ordered up a nice apple juice box?

Doi Suthep

The last day I was with my parents we did something every tourist to Chiang Mai does. We went to Doi Suthep. This is a mountain with a famous temple on top of it. To get to this temple you take a long winding song tau ride up the mountain. Doi Suthep is known for its famous snake stairs made of ceramic tile. Once you get to the top you climb these stairs up to the actual temple. There is a picture of my Mom and Dad in front of one of these snakes. Notice the many heads. There is a snake on either side of the stairs and its body winds all the way up the staircase. You see this type of snake on many temples around Thailand. Once in the temple there is a giant golden chedi and a model of the Emerald Buddha. There is also a beautiful view of the city of Chiang Mai from the top. My favorite picture is of my Mom in front of the Mom statue. There were these strange giant lizard statues in the temple that had a sign below them that read Mom. My Mom decided to bend down and make a face just like the lizzard. Luckily, she doesnt have to try to hard to look just like it! Haha just kidding...I love you Mama!

The Pad Thai Cookery School

While in Chiang Mai my Mom and Dad and I took a cooking class at the Pad Thai Cookery School. There we learned how to make traditional Thai food such as mangoes with sweet sticky rice, pad thai, cashew chicken, green curry, and spring roles. For the vegetarians they taught us how to exchange all of the meat for extra vegetables and tofu and what you can exchange for flavor substitutes. We started out by going on a tour of a Thai market. This wasn’t especially interesting for me, as I do this all the time, but my parents enjoyed it and I did learn a few new things I didn’t know previously. Then we came back and spent the day cooking with an assortment of people from all over the world and two quirky and very funny Thai chefs.

Royal Flora Ratchapruek

This year is a very special year for Thailand. Not only is it the 60th anniversary of the king’s accession to the throne, but last week it was also the king’s 80th birthday. In honor of his birthday they are having a flower show called Royal Flora Ratchapruek in Chiang Mai from November to January. If there is one thing that Thai people are really good at, it is flower arrangements and horticulture. This show is amazing! Everyone in Thailand is talking about it. Every school and office are organizing trips to Chiang Mai so their employees can go and see it. This past weekend was a three day weekend and more than 60,000 people went to Chiang Mai this weekend alone to see it. If any of you are from Columbus and can remember AmeriFlora, it is comprable to that only bigger. My father absolutly loved this show and must have taken hundreds of pictures here alone. My favorite part was the topiary winding purple dragons in the third picture. This flower show is a real life seussian world come to life.

Mae Hong Son

A week before my parents left we all went up to the city of Mae Hong Son in the northern province of Mae Hong Son. Mae Hong Son is located about 6 hours, through the winding mountains, from Chiang Mai and about 11 hours from my site by bus. Mae Hong Son is a really beautiful province as it is set in the beautiful mountains of Thailand. The architecture here is a bit different. Many of the buildings have tall steeples with terraces that get smaller and smaller climbing to a point. You can see a great example of this in my first picture. The second picture is of the most famous temple in Mae Hong Son. It is set around a busy night market, selling beautiful hill tribe goods, over looking a beautiful lake.

Hill Tribes of Mae Hong Son 1

While in Mae Hong Son my family and I got to do something I had wanted to do since I arrived in Thailand. We went to visit some traditional hill tribe villages. Hill tribe people are not actually Thai. They live in the mountains of Thailand, Burma, and Laos. They are a distict group of people that typically only live in the mountains. Now they are gaining citizenship, if born in Thailand, and many are moving out of the villages. There are still many villages that function just as they traditionally always have. These people are very happy and choose to live this life style. This set of pictures is of a Meo village that builds their houses off of the ground on stilts. We got to sit and chat with a few of the women in this village. After that they sold us some of their handmade crafts. As is everything, this village is globalizing and developing. About 3 years ago this village got electricity for the first time.

Hill Tribes of Mae Hong Son 2

This tribe is a Meo tribe that builds their houses directly on the ground with dirt floors. The first picture is of a school. It was so beautiful as it was on a mountain cliff over looking the village. Even though the hill tribes each have their own language, while going to school they are taught in Thai. The second two pictures are of some hill tribe children. Traditionally you will see children carrying their little brothers or sisters on their back like this girl. The fourth picture is of the inside of one of their houses. The 5th picture is my favorite. Our tour guide said he wanted us to meet a very close friend of his. After being invited into his house this old man pulled out a gigantic bong and began to smoke marijuana in front of us. The last picture is of a Meo woman making some of their traditional cross stitched goods.

Hill Tribes of Mae Hong Son 3

The last part of this trip was my favorite, We went to visit the village of the Long Necked and Big Eared Karen. These people are actually refugees from Burma living in Thailand because they can make a better living for themselves here. There are two reasons that the women will put so many rings around their necks, but no one knows the true answer. One is that they said traditionally it protected them from tigers biting their necks. The second, and probably the more realistic, is that it shows off their beauty and differenciates them from other tribes. It also is to show how much wealth a family may have. These rings are made of very heavy brass. I love the picture of my mom and the girl. She had my mom dress up like a traditional long neck Karen and then pose with her. This trip was absolutly amazing. It was so interesting to learn about a very interesting and totally different aspect of Thai culture.

Close Of Service Conference

This past week my Peace Corps group had its close of service conference. Im not coming home until March so why am I having it now in December? Its basically a time to reflect back on your service and start preparing for when you come home. It was really nice to see all of my friends. The second picture is a group picture of us all. Sorry its so blurry, but it was taken at night. The last picture is after a dinner we all got together to play a game of taboo. This was a very unique experience as I would like to direct everyones attention to the couple dancing in the background. The hotel seemed to be crowed with Norwegian tourists on holiday. This paticular group sat behind us and sang, with no music, and waltzed for the entire time we played our game...which was about an hour.

Parents drilled for questions

The week my parents came to stay at my site with me I took them to school with me so they could see where I worked. This gave my students a great chance to meet some of my family and also interact with other native English speakers. I had the students think of questions for my parents to answer. The average questions consisted of "What color do you like, what animal do you like, or what is your name?". My Moms favorite question was " Who do you love the most?" While she was in the room with both my Dad and I she kind of fudged her way through that question.

Hell Fire Pass and the Bridge Over the River Quai

During my parents and I's tour of Kenchanaburi we went to see Hell Fire Pass and the Bridge Over the River Quai. During WW2 the Japanese took over parts of Thailand and captured thousands of prisoners of war from Thailand, America, Australia, England, and sevearl other countries. They forced them to build a railroad over an ubelievable stretch of land in the hot, mosquito infested jungles of Thailand to ship cargo to other Japanese forces in remote areas. During this time thousands upon thousands of POW died from exastion and disease as the prisoners were only fed two small meals of rice and vegetables a day. It took over 20 months to build this railroad and it was used only for 17 months because it was bombed. In my pictures you can see actual railroad tracks built and the hardest part to build known as Hell Fire Pass. This is the ravine of rocks you see above that was pretty much chipped away by hand. You can also see the famous bridge of the river Quai. This was also built by the POW. Although, I dont know why people really flock to see this bridge because in all, its just a bridge. I really enjoyed this experience because its a part of history that we as Americans dont really learn about in our school history classes.

Erewan waterfall

While in Kenchanaburi with my parents we went on a tour that took us to some very beautiful waterfalls called Erewan. It is named after a three headed elephant because one of the waterfalls at this park looks similar to an elephants head. This place was absolutly amazing. It is the cleanest place in all of Thailand as when you walk into this national park you have to give a deposit of 10 baht for any waterbottles you have and you get the change back when you come back. This is so you dont throw your trash on the ground, which is common for Thai people to do. This waterfall had 7 different tiers. You hike along this path to see the different tiers of waterfalls. The water was so clear and crystal blue. It was amazing. You can even go swimming at the waterfalls. My Dad and I went swimming at the one called " The big breasts". You cant see it very well in my picture, but this waterfall is composed of two big rocks that look like breasts. My Dad and I had fun sliding down them as they made great natural water slides.Unfortunatly all of the pictures of him sliding down them are on my Moms camera. You will have to ask them to see it for more pictures. There are also lots of fish living in the pools of water. They kept nipping at my feet when I would be waiting around the rocks. My Dad liked this, but I didnt at all.

On a side note...there will be lots of pictures from November to come. I have so many that I dont want to overwhelm everyone with all of the cool things I got to do with my parents. So keep checking my blog because I plan to update it about twice a week for the next couple of weeks.

The noodle festival

In my town there is a new festival every few months. Most festivals revolve around the one thing Thai people like to talk about the most....food. Examples of festivals are the banana, vegan, fish, som tom, or chili pepper festivals. Thai people like to talk about food so much a common question from perfect strangers, while I am eating, is " is it delicious?". I have become very careful of my answer to this question because if I say yes I may wind up with whatever it is I am eating as a gift everyday for the next few weeks. While my parents were visiting my "Yai", the Thai word for grandmother, brought my family and I at the minimum of 5 plates of food a day. This usually consisted of fruit or some kind of Thai sweet. My mothers comment was " does she think we can actually eat all of this?". Right now my town is celebrating the noodle festival. I love this festival because it means lots of my favorite Thai food...Pad Thai. Pad Thai is a fried rice noodle dish made with eggs, sugar, long beans, and dried baby shrimp( but I have them make mine without that). The middle two pictures are of a pad thai stand at the festival. The top picture is of a holding case for ingrediants at a typical noodle stand. Inside you will see red pork, tofu, vegetables, and various types of rice noodles. The last picture is of the festival itself. I took this picture in the early afternoon so there arnt really any people there yet. In the evenings it is packed with people, sellers, noodles, loud live music, and traditional Thai dancing performances.