When you give a kid a candy cane

A couple weeks ago I attended the teachers’ New Year celebration party. As a foreigner, there was no way out of singing karaoke so I joined the two British teachers and together we sang Imagine by the Beatles. It was one of the only English songs the band knew. Our performance was rather ridiculous, but the beautiful thing about Thai culture is that it doesn’t matter. They loved it anyway, and the director of the school was so impressed he gave each of us 100 bahts.

The night continued with singing and dancing and whoever danced was gifted with laundry baskets, water pitchers, cups, food storage containers, and other plastic items. These gifts then became props and the dance floor looked like a wild Tupperware party. I had to laugh when one teacher reached for a chopstick and started playing the cutlery sorter like a drum. It was great!

The next day I set off to find myself a nice Saturday morning coffee. Although Thais wake very early, coffee shops here in Tak do not seem to open until 10am, or even sometimes 2pm. On my walk I could smell the now familiar scent of incense burning for the spirits and chili peppers being fried for breakfast. It was a typical Thai morning, but I was just craving the smell of coffee. I arrived at one place where I had often seen people sitting and drinking coffee and was happy to see that they were open. After going in, I realized it was not a coffee shop at all, so I asked the lady to tell me about her business. They sold shampoo, toothpaste, detergent, soap, sunscreen, water purifiers, and all sorts of other products. There was however, no coffee, so I left and continued the hunt.

As is usually the case, I stopped often to ‘chat’ with the local people. We always have a good laugh together at how little we understand each other. At one house I wished the family, a Happy New Year (Saa-waa-di-bi-mai), and gave the little boy a candy cane. He was some excited! By now it was 11am and I was still coffeeless so I turned to head back and decided to get breakfast instead. I passed many restaurants but pork on rice was just not too appealing that day. I settled for slices of freshly fried banana which is sold by a lady not far from my apartment. Not a caffeine fix, but it was a nice Thai treat. As I headed home I noticed a petit elderly lady standing by the road. I could tell she was waiting for me. In her hand she held a string with two coconuts. Through motions she explained that had seen me give the little boy a candy cane and had gone to cut the coconuts from the tree in her back yard to thank me. The Thai people are so kind and so generous.  

In recent news, Connor and I went to Chiang Mai! He wrote about our stories from that trip so have a look at his post to hear / see more about our adventures there.

Cultural Tidbits:

-Popular yogurt flavour: sweetened vanilla, red kidney bean and corn.

-National Teacher’s Day is November 16^th. To celebrate, they cancel school for the day.

-Buddhist weddings in Thailand happen any day of the week, so long as the date is an even number as uneven numbers are seen as unlucky. The ceremony takes place in the morning and the party in the evening. The afternoons are too hot for celebrating. During July, August, and September it is very rare to have a wedding as this is the rainy season and will supposedly bring bad luck to the marriage.     

Random Photo conglomeration this week. Hope you enjoy! 

A delightful Thai dessert stand 

Freshly made $0.17 deliciousness called rotee

Church in Tak

Students playing tradition Thai instruments

Have a listen:

Traditional Thai dancers

These students performed wonderfully

Thai BBQ at our New Year's party. There is one on each table and you cook your food together. The BBQ has an outer ring in which you place water to boil the vegetables and herbs you want to cook.

I believe this bag is meant to say:
Cool bag
Do you love any koalas?
Cool bag cool bag cool bag cool bag cool bag cool bag cool bag cool bag

20 C is a bit too chilly for the dogs in the morning

My red kidney bean and corn yogurt

In Chiang Mai we ended up at an orphanage

Enjoying the kiddos
(The Thai word for 'enjoy' is "sanook")

And the next day we visited the zoo

Pretty and pink

I really wanted to give this koala a hug

Hornbills are amazing

This was a grumpy monkey

Me in a tree

Trip to Chiang Mai

January is winter in Thailand. Finally mornings are a nice and cool 20̊C. One morning my job was to welcome the kids to school. To my surprise the students showed up freezing. Many of them were actually shaking they were shivering so violently. One adult told me he was so cold the night before he’d slept under his three warmest blankets and still couldn’t get much sleep. I told him I’d had a similar problem the night before. I couldn’t sleep because I was too hot so I’d turned the air conditioner on.

Some of you may be unfamiliar with the ladyboy part of Thai culture. Ladyboys are males that take estrogen tablets to make them more feminine. The pills cause various lasting changes that make them appear and act like girls. Many of the guys in school do it to get attention. The more feminine they are the more attention they get. I thought I was used to this aspect of Thai culture until I went to Chiang Mai where some North Americans have become ladyboys. I was at one place where a 60 year old white man wearing a dress started hitting on me. This apparently was too much for my insides and I had to leave really fast to avoid throwing up.

Chiang Mai is a city in Northern Thailand that is full of tourists. I knew I was in a tourist city for a couple reasons. First, nobody stopped what they were doing to stare at me, which was a nice change and secondly lemon flavoured ice cream was yellow again! Thais don’t seem to understand that lemons and limes have two different flavours so everything lemon flavoured in Tak is green.

Finding a guest house in Chiang Mai was a lot more difficult than expected. Heather and I booked a guest house but when we arrived it didn’t have two rooms so we figured it would be easy to find another and went looking. Ten full guest houses later we went to an internet café to phone about vacancies.  It was a brilliant move we made a reservation at the nearby Gusto House no problem. On google maps it was literally right beside the 7th century guest house. We found 7th Century but Gusto wasn’t there. We asked the owner of 7th Century where Gusto was but he   had never heard of it. Heather and I had tripled checked its location on google maps so we knew we’d arrived at the right place. The owner phoned Gusto for us and found that is was on the other side of town, so he gave us new directions. It was almost 11 PM when Heather and I set off following his directions. This time we ended up at Mountain View guest house. We asked this new guest house if they’d ever heard of Gusto, they hadn’t. Exhausted, we asked if they still had rooms available. They did; so we slept there, unaware that our stay would radically alter our Chiang Mai experience.

In the morning, Heather and I found out that we coincidentally were staying at a Christian run guest house. We also bumped into a group of Canadians that were on a mission’s trip from Steinbach Bible College in Manitoba. They invited us to join them on a trip to an orphanage, so we spent the day with them and had a great time.

As you can see Gusto is no longer beside 7th Century on google maps.
Don't know what happened  that night in Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai skyline

This monument depicts the three kings that worked together
 to lay out the city of Chiang Mai.

Rats!

Ronald McDonald giving the traditional Thai greeting.

I'm not at a temple, I'm at the Chiang Mai zoo.  

Monks at the zoo

The photos are of animals native to Thailand.
These are Asiatic Black Bears

A Gavial 

The Great Hornbill

White-Cheeked Gibbon

Wreathed hornbill

Indian Rhino

Siamese Crocodile

Sun bear

Orphanage for children with Aids

Hockey in Thailand. 

What's with the bike in the middle of the mini-stick game?

Snow Globes

Well it is good to be back writing again. In the past few weeks I’ve had my first and hopefully last exotic illness of the trip which was followed by my first Christmas and New Year’s abroad. For Christmas I wanted to buy Heather some yarn for knitting but I couldn’t find any. There weren’t many people in the store so I asked an employee where I could find some yarn. When he understood what I was asking he laughed because I was unable to communicate that it was a present.  Instead of helping me out the employee went and told about nine other staff that the foreign guy loves knitting. I know this because he spoke to the staff than pointed at me and said “knitting” and then everybody was laughing at me.

Thais absolutely love getting gifts and Thailand is very much a gift giving culture. For Christmas I gave the two Thai teachers that I work with snow globes from Canada. It caught me off guard how happy they were. They took pictures with the snow globes, started dancing with the snow globes and assured me they were going to tell their children all about the snow globes.

For New Year’s we stayed with some missionaries that Heather knew from Prince Edward Island. They live in Ban Tallot, a rural agricultural community in the province of Chaiyaphum. They treated us incredibly well and made sure that we had a relaxing break from teaching.

While in Ban Tallot we had a New Year’s dinner with a bunch of other foreign English teachers. It was nice to hear stories from others that are experiencing life in Thailand as well. Before I share one of their stories here is some information about monks. They are only allowed to eat between dawn and noon and they are not allowed to cook or store food for themselves overnight. They rely on the people to provide them with food. In the mornings they walk around and the people make merit offerings by giving give them food. One British fellow left his house while eating toast.  A monk was walking by, saw him, and stopped. He stood there clearly expecting to receive some food. The Brit didn’t have any food on him but the monk kept looking at him expectantly so he gave the monk his half eaten piece of toast.

One of the people whom Heather and I had the privilege of meeting was a Thai lady who lives next to the dump. She has a fascinating story. Her entire lower body was paralyzed and so for years she sat in her hut unable to move herself around. Then the missionaries from PEI arrived in Ban Tallot and eventually made their way to the dump where they met this crippled woman. That night the dump lady had a vision where Christ came to her in bright white robes and she asked him to heal her. He said it would happen but she would have to wait a little longer. The next day the missionaries returned and prayed for her. After the prayer they could hardly believe their eyes as the dump lady got up and started walking.
This story happened less than a year ago and the lady has been walking ever since. The lasting memory that I have of our meeting was the passion she displayed often by raising one hand high into the air and praising Jesus Christ her saviour.

The card and the tree made it feel a bit more like Christmas.

 The monks came to school to bring in the New Year with prayer, chanting, and speeches from the Dharma (The teachings of Buddha)

Students giving monks food

I was sitting in my chair with the sun beating down on me wondering how I could possibly survive another few months of this heat when this kid appeared in a parka!

A white elephant monument in Phitsanoluk. White elephants are considered sacred animals in Thailand. Monarchs would give white elephants to favoured subjects but the animals weren't allowed to work  and cost loads to keep. Hence the English saying I was given a "white elephant."  

Buddhist Art

Sweet elephant battle

Ban Tallot

Brahman Cow

Ban Tallot is so small it hasn't yet made it to google maps but it still has a beautiful temple.

Elephant tracks by my apartment. 

Thailand's 4 Great Kings
1. King Ram Khamhaeng (r.1279-1298) Shrine in Sukhotai. He established Buddhism
as Thailand's religion and sponsored the creation of a Thai alphabet.
2. King Naresuan (r.1590-1605) Shrine in Phitsanoluk. He freed Siam from Burmese rule.
3. King Narai (r.1656-1688) Shrine in Lop Buri. He reigned during a time of prosperity.
4. King Taksin (r. 1767-1782) Shrine in Tak. He liberated Siam from another Burmese occupation.

A mural re-enacting Taksin the Great's battle against the Burmese.