An hour and a half later I woke up and my host mom was bringing in bananas and long gong [an AMAZING tropical fruit]. We sat on the floor and ate the fruit out of a bag – classic Thai. Then we ate more: somtam, noodles, a rice dessert, more bananas and long gong, another rice dessert with beans and nuts. The somtam was way too spicy to eat, my mouth burned for hours afterwards from only just tasting it. I usually order somtam with very few chile peppers, if any. This one had been ordered “extra spicy”, just for me. I politely refused and after we ate we headed home. I had time to shower and cool off in my room and then I went to their house to pick up my sisters for dinner. They took me to the school to eat ahan J and then we went to had smoothies. They are really nice girls, but sometimes it is hard to talk to them because they speak almost no English, and I don’t know what to say to them in Thai.
Wat in the wilderness... I forget the name
LING!! He reminds me of Jumanji
That's right, I fed a monkey a banana.
Cows (:
The view of the lake and wat from the center of the lake.
On Sunday my host parents took me to Sakon Nakhon for the day. I took the day off from eating J because it was going to be the only time I would have the choice to have ahan falang for a long time. We got there and went to lunch at a really nice restaurant where I had steak, fries, coleslaw, garlic bread and a cappuccino. My parents ate rice, naturally, since they are Thai. We bought a lot of things from the bakery downstairs too: bread, cake, cookies, desserts, croissants and rolls. They showed me that the bus station is just across the street from this restaurant – I guess that means that they allow me to come here with my friends if I would like. We picked up my Khun Paw’s brother at his house and he took us on a long car ride into the countryside. The entire way there I talked with Khun Mae about the Canadian healthcare system. She was very interested and now wants to move to Canada. I told her she could live with me (: Finally, civilization, in the form of the most beautiful Wat on the edge of a crystal clear lake. Apparently people who have cancer are brought to this Wat to become healthier and relax. I can see how they would relax here, everything is so beautiful and natural. The Wat itself was beautiful, but it wasn’t anything special compared to other Wat’s I have seen. The foliage of the site was breath-taking though, giant palm trees, banana trees, vibrant pink flowers and red leaved bushes. There are many buildings on the site; the houses of monks, smaller shrines, buildings where the patients stay and finally the pathways that led straight out into the lake. One of them went right out into the middle of the lake and you could feed the carp if you bought fish food from the old woman sitting on a bench nearby. Then there were the animals. We were about to get in the car to drive to another one of the shrines on the lot when Khun Paw came running up from a hill.
Khun Paw: “LING! LING!”
Emma: “OMG?! LING?!!!!!!”
[Emma running after Khun Paw]
Ling is Thai for monkey. I had wanted to see a monkey since I got here, it only made sense that a jungle country would have monkeys. There were four of them in a cage [I guess the monks wouldn’t appreciate it if there were monkeys running all over the place] but they were SO cute and the stuck their arms out of the fence and let me hold their hands. It is so crazy how similar their hands are to human’s. They have long fingers and wrinkly palms. Their arms are slightly hairier but it was amazing just the same. One of the monkeys reminded me of the monkeys in Jumanji. I definitely imagined a herd of elephants, zebras and rhinos running through the forest and crushing our car. Khun Paw is terrified of monkies. Actually, he’s terrified and hates all animals, so he kept yelling “GLOO-AH! GLOO-AH!” [scared, scared] when I would put my hand out and stroke their arms or hold their hands. Then a man came over carrying a bunch of bananas [yes, monkeys eat bananas, it is not a lie].
One of the most valuable lessons I have learned from being a Rotary exchange student is “Always ask”. So I did, and I ended up being able to feed the monkeys bananas from my hands and take pictures with them. Other than the monkeys I saw swans, peacocks, cows, frogs, snakes and carp. It was like the African lion safari… at a temple.
After we left we went to “The Big C” where I got to eat KFC (: The colonel must not have liked me that day though because within 20 minutes I felt sick as I was wandering the department store searching for marshmallows and oatmeal. I returned to the cafeteria and my host parents told me they were going to take me to Swenson’s, a real treat. Swenson’s is a big ice cream store with some of the BEST ice cream ever, and it is very popular in Thailand. Unfortunately since my province is the size of Burlington with the population of Grimsby, we don’t have one. This would be my one chance to have ice cream this good for a while. I kept feeling sicker by the minute, but my host mother seemed so excited for me to try “the big one” so I tried to suck it up. I told her I felt sick but she looked so disappointed so I told her I would be fine and went to the washroom before we ate. I threw up. Enough to make me feel a little better, but not enough that I would be able to eat ice cream right after. I did anyways. It was delicious. Rocky road with chocolate sauce, peanuts, REAL whipped cream and a chocolate covered cherry on top – The Big Rocky Mountain. I felt fine after drinking a glass of warm water and taking some medicine, but as soon as I stood up and started walking to the car I got major heart burn and I felt sick again. I threw up in a garbage can at “The Big C”. Classy. By then my host parents were worried and insisted we go to a doctor, or the hospital. I assured them it would be fine, it was just a stomach ache, probably from eating so much meat after barely eating any protein for 3 days. I just needed to sleep.
In the car Khun Mae whipped out her Magic Asian Oil. That’s what I like to call it. She offers it to me for everything – mosquito bites, stomach aches, head aches, colds, nausea, cramps, sore joints. It reminds me of the man in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who insists on putting Windex on everything. She sat in the back seat with me, had me roll up my shirt and for the entire 20 minute drive she rubbed her Magic Asian Oil all over my stomach and stuck it under my nose to inhale the fumes. It smells like vicks, but surprisingly it made me feel better. During all this magic we doctor’s office hopped but there were too many people ate all the offices. I couldn’t help but physically laugh out loud at the situation. Me sitting in the back seat like a pregnant woman with my host mom rubbing and massaging my stomach while we pulled up to doctor’s office after doctor’s office – slowing down, muttering in Thai that there were too many people and then pulling back into the driving lane.
After dropping off my uncle we headed back to Nakhon Phanom, with me sleeping in the backseat. I was under the impression we were just going to go home and I would head to bed, but when I woke up we were at the hospital. It didn’t take long, about fifteen minutes and I found out that:
a. I have lost 4 pounds since I’ve been here
b. I have something called dyspepsia from eating extremely spicy food and changing my diet habits so drastically. The spicy somtam from Saturday gave me massive heartburn and the fact that I ate so much meat after not eating protein for a while made my stomach upset. Nothing medicine and sleep won’t cure.
This past week I have been recovering, though now my lips are swollen and dry [which apparently is also from the somtam] and I sometimes feel sick randomly. These past few days have been boring, Monday I stayed home all day and played guitar and ate. Tuesday I ran a bunch of errands with my host parents and went to the opening of the festival. I started Thai dancing again, which I try to avoid most of the time and have been going to drink coffee by myself a lot during my lunch breaks. It's not too bad going alone, I have invested in a fond friendship with the women at Meurang and today they asked me "Emma, would you like the same as yesterday?"
The festival is amazing, though I was extremely disappointed on Tuesday when I went and my mystery jacket was not there. For those of you who I haven't told, the story of the mystery jacket goes like this:
Every month we have a big market that comes to our province for a week and sells stuff from all over the country but the stalls are different at each one, sometimes they even change up during the week. One day Suzanne and I were wandering said market and I had noticed a couple days before a tent with a bunch of colourful military jackets. As I walked by them I said, I want one of those. So when Suzanne and I walked by the same tent we decided to try them on. Now these were not average jackets. First of all they were military style, with the small buttons all the way down that don't do up, and a collar [not unlike that of a Burlington Teen Tour Band uniform]. They were also made up of cotton and silk fabric patches, sewed together all over the outside in a mosaic of colour and design. I found one particular jacket that I tried on and I loved. It's kind of like something that Phoebe from friends would wear, she can wear it and it looks nice but if you saw it in a mall you would think that whoever made it was on acid when they came up with the design. It is the kind of jacket that everyone looks at and thinks.. good god I would NEVER wear that, but as soon as someone who can pull it off puts it on, it's amazing. I could pull it off. I don't know why, or how I could possibly have been blessed with such a dream jacket but it looked good, and I wanted it. The only problem was that it was 1300 baht. That is just over 30 dollars, which is NOT expensive for a jacket like that. But because I am now practically Thai, I think that is expensive and I want to bargain. The only problem is that I still need some practicing with bargaining so I decided I would come back with my host mom and she could bargain for me. I came back the next day with my host mom and they were gone. Disappeared from the face of the earth. My host mom reassured me that when the festival came they would be there selling them, becuase everyone comes to the festival to sell their items. The festival is here, I have lurked every corner of the fair and they are not here. My mystery jacket is gone forever, and I do not even have a remote idea of where I could buy one. It's funny, because when I first tried it on, it looked nice but it wasn't anything special. If it was amazing I wouldn't have cared about the price and just paid for it. But I didn't LOVE it; now i do. It's crazy how that happens, how you don't realise how much you love something until you can't have it. Or how you don't notice how much you miss someone until they're gone.
Kind of like people.
“You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”
PS. I have started to upload some of my videos onto youtube.
If you want to look at them the link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPLfQvxP8pA
You can just go over to "More from: emma1elizabeth" and a bunch of them are up there.
<3
1 comment:
Youtube videos?!! VERY YES!!!!
Post a Comment