Update #3, I'm on a roll! Soon I may actually be keeping current.
Friday was a good day, which is curious because I suspect that I may come to have an opposite view of weekends than at home. That is to say, at home I look forward to weekends as a time of indulgence and fun with friends. Here weekends will certainly still be interesting, but they'll also be long spaces without a friendly westerner to talk to. It'll be interesting.
This is an entry about my friday though, not my entitled self pity blog. That one's still under construction. Friday was the day of the ISDSI (I love that its a palindrome, by the way) trip to a sustainable fish farm. On thursday our fearless leader Ajaan Mark told us we would be waist deep in fish ponds rife with fish shit. I suspected him to be guilty of exaggeration. I was certainly wrong. It got up to neck deep once we were pulling a seive net.
I should proceed chronologically though: first we had to get there. So at 8:00 we were gathered at the ISDSI campus, a marvelously air conditioned two level with a pair of patios on each side, in order to leave for the fish farm. The lot of us piled into several luxurious vans and set off. Our mighty chariot was an 11 seater with a tv and largwe number of karaoke songs. Sadly we are not yet as talented at thai as to easily sing their tongue twisting tunes, so we switched to a movie. I don't know you (or maybe I do) but if you haven't seen a Tony Jaa movie the rest of this paragraph is of vital importance. Who is Tony Jaa, you may be asking yourself. Tony Jaa is everything that chuck norris should be, including being an actually asian martial artist. I'm not saying that white guys can't do kung fu, I'm just saying that given the relative numbers of the asian and caucasian martial arts communities there are probably better asian ones than audience friendly white ones. Anyway, Tony Jaa is the highest profile practitioner of muay thai, a position he gained because of an epic movie called Ong Bak: Thai Warrior. Summarized, Tony Jaa kills everyone. It's a great film and if you haven't seen it you cannot obtain a visa to Thailand. The movie we saw on the trip there and back was another instant classic. In America it was called the protector, I believe. The name in Thailand translates to spicy shrimp soup, the spicyness foreshadowing the burning ass-whupping to come. There is a five minute scene of hime breaking dozens of arms in different ways. There are only 6 people who are a significant challenge to Tony Jaa, and of them one is a Thai ladyboy criminal mastermind and 4 are his/her enormous redneck minions who he fights with the bones of his slain elephant strapped to his arms. If you don't want to watch this you are probably made of tofu. The drive was fun to say the least.
On arrival we strapped on water shoes and listened to an informative lecture on northern thai fisheries and the tilapia fish from a genial expat named Randy. Ajaan Randy then led us out to the hatchery, which sits in the midst of eight or so fish ponds. Apparently the fish babies get an extra bit of testosterone in infancy, making them physically male, in order to prevent them from getting randy and disrupting the efficiency of the process. hurhurhur
The day was not about mental education though, it was a object lesson in learning about how fish farms work. And learn we did. The first hour or so was spent emptying nets in one of the ponds and transporting the fish to another home. The ponds become deoxygenated in time and also require periodic cleaning and digging out. Not to belittle the difficulty that the actual farmhands who do this daily, but we had a lot of fun in our one day. A lifetime may not be quite so fun. We must have looked a funny sight though: one of the bus drivers spent the day in a hammock photographing us and laughing.
In brief, this is how you empty a net: first you run a bamboo pole most of the net, herding the fish into a small area. Then you get a bunch of small, hand held nets and start scooping. Once you empty it you take out the poles holding the net in place and drag it ashore. There are maybe 16 nets to a pond. To do all of this you have to get real wet though, because the fish pond is a big damn pond and decently deep. The smell could dishonestly be described as loamy, but soggy manure is sometimes closer to the mark. It really depends on the pond.
It was while we were emptying the nets that Randy pointed out the shrimp: there were hundreds of shrimp clinging to the insides of the nets (which are the normal crinkly blue tarps you find in the US). Apparently they're called dancing shrimp, and a great delicacy in a number of countries. Then he grabbed and ate one. Out of the fish pond. The fish pond full of fish shit, to be precise. And then we did it too. It actually wasn't bad, just sort of tasteless and crunchy.
Then came seive netting. Seive netting is the second stage of clearing a pond of fish, because some always get out of the nets and Randy maintains an polyculture (multiple fish in the pond) to keep everything balanced. In seive netting the net is stretched as far across the pond as it can go, and then pulled the length of it... like a giant seive. In order to catch the fish people hold the net as low in the water as possible. It gets interesting because those people are in the firing line of the escaping fish. Have you ever felt fish, some of them large, squirm between your limbs and across your stomach? It's freaky, notably so. They also jumped with every once of desperate fish might. Ironic and stupid, given that they were "escaping" to a soon to be drained pond and an early death. Let's keep it light though.
Seive netting turned up some interesting fish. There were some big snakehead fish, an air breathing fish that crawls on the land to reach new ponds, and an enormous, beautiful red carp that was round with baby fish.
We ate the fish for lunch, did some more sieve netting, and then got to check for eggs. Egg checking is really fun. You grab fish and look in their mouths, and if there are eggs you steal them! Some may have found my methods... objectionable, but they are weak and their fish farms would fail! Regardless, it was absurdly fun and undoubtedly the best school day ever, ever.
Oh, and Randy collects Thai musical instruments which some people played at lunch and the girls danced. It was awesome!
That's all for friday, the weekend will be a double entry 'cause I'm writing this in one day. I never write like this unless there's a grade on the line.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
A day at the market
Another update, another caveat about the blog. I'll try to update frequently but if you are reading this you know I'm extremely perezoso, so I guarantee at least one post a week. As is I'm facing a major update deficit as every other day features a mind blowing, perspective changing, beautiful life experience. Currently, for example, my host mother is driving us to an elephant park. They play soccer, paint, and give rides.
But I'll write about what has happened, as I'm much clearer about that than the future. So for starters, on wednesday there was a school trip to the Chiang Mai art and cultural center and the got luang, the huge ass chinese/thai market in the middle of town. Five floors in two buildings crammed with stalls back to back are the epicenter of the market but it stretches multiple blocks, god only knows how many.
The Art and Cultural center was a little underwhelming, or perhaps just overshadowed by the market. I'd already visited briefly on my first day in Chiang Mai, but this time we were sent out on a scavenger hunt for things written in Thai. We can't read thai yet but we've been taught to ask what is this/what is this called. So Andrew (my co-scavenger) and I set out. Andrews a fun musician who rocks just a little harder than my fat indie-ass.
What can I say about the market? Having been conned in the grand bazaar of Istanbul I'd think I at least would be a little blase about these things, but it's unlike any place I've ever been. For one thing, it's a carnival of smells, not all of them pleasant. One of the enormous buildings is primarily a food market and of that food primarily aquatic, formerly living food. Mostly formerly living at least (seeing hundreds of eels squirming in buckets makes me wish more of the food was dead). While the reek from the stalls is objectionable, the place is a feast for the eyes. I saw more species of squid for sale in an hour than I've seen in my life. Dried out, inflated puffer fished hanging from stalls looked really cool. We weren't required to buy fish though, so we only stopped to ask directions to our next goal. Beyond the sea of dead fish is the flower market (market is Da-lat in thai, by the way). The flower market is outside of the shelter of the warehouses, so a motley of different tarps and canopies do there best to keep out the elements. Water drips down unpredictably everywhere, but the flowers and flower arrangements are beautiful. I'll have to go back for pictures. After being pointed a dozen different ways we get single , beautiful petal of some strange flower. Kelsey thinks it looks like a four pointed ionic column head but I think it looks more art deco. I digress. Other things purchased at the market: strange, dubious sausage; fried mealworms which taste mainly of salt; skirt like things for changing clothes in the jungle; delicious rambutan fruit (a beautiful red bodied ovoid that fits in your hand and has green hairs all over, the locals call it gnok); and perhaps a few more that are more mundane. There's all sorts of things in the market though, like multiple firework stands selling munitions grade bottle rockets. Everything is so cheap that I can't tell if I'm being screwed or not because the screw the foreigner price is about half the cost of the item in America. God I love the exchange rate.
Another post to follow, concerning fish farms and dancing shrimp
But I'll write about what has happened, as I'm much clearer about that than the future. So for starters, on wednesday there was a school trip to the Chiang Mai art and cultural center and the got luang, the huge ass chinese/thai market in the middle of town. Five floors in two buildings crammed with stalls back to back are the epicenter of the market but it stretches multiple blocks, god only knows how many.
The Art and Cultural center was a little underwhelming, or perhaps just overshadowed by the market. I'd already visited briefly on my first day in Chiang Mai, but this time we were sent out on a scavenger hunt for things written in Thai. We can't read thai yet but we've been taught to ask what is this/what is this called. So Andrew (my co-scavenger) and I set out. Andrews a fun musician who rocks just a little harder than my fat indie-ass.
What can I say about the market? Having been conned in the grand bazaar of Istanbul I'd think I at least would be a little blase about these things, but it's unlike any place I've ever been. For one thing, it's a carnival of smells, not all of them pleasant. One of the enormous buildings is primarily a food market and of that food primarily aquatic, formerly living food. Mostly formerly living at least (seeing hundreds of eels squirming in buckets makes me wish more of the food was dead). While the reek from the stalls is objectionable, the place is a feast for the eyes. I saw more species of squid for sale in an hour than I've seen in my life. Dried out, inflated puffer fished hanging from stalls looked really cool. We weren't required to buy fish though, so we only stopped to ask directions to our next goal. Beyond the sea of dead fish is the flower market (market is Da-lat in thai, by the way). The flower market is outside of the shelter of the warehouses, so a motley of different tarps and canopies do there best to keep out the elements. Water drips down unpredictably everywhere, but the flowers and flower arrangements are beautiful. I'll have to go back for pictures. After being pointed a dozen different ways we get single , beautiful petal of some strange flower. Kelsey thinks it looks like a four pointed ionic column head but I think it looks more art deco. I digress. Other things purchased at the market: strange, dubious sausage; fried mealworms which taste mainly of salt; skirt like things for changing clothes in the jungle; delicious rambutan fruit (a beautiful red bodied ovoid that fits in your hand and has green hairs all over, the locals call it gnok); and perhaps a few more that are more mundane. There's all sorts of things in the market though, like multiple firework stands selling munitions grade bottle rockets. Everything is so cheap that I can't tell if I'm being screwed or not because the screw the foreigner price is about half the cost of the item in America. God I love the exchange rate.
Another post to follow, concerning fish farms and dancing shrimp
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Thailand Ho!
Alright, I meant to post something sooner but the five page entry I wrote seemed trite and dull. I typically find blogs to be an exercise in ego and I doubt I'll buck that trend but it seems there's some demand so here we go.
A week ago I took 25-ish hours of flights from Boston to LA, LA to Bangkok, and Bangkok to Chiang Mai, the ancient capitol of the Lanna kingdom and the second city of Thailand. Over the course of several days of insomnia and late night bathroom trips my body got used to being here. The program I'm here with, ISDSI, has put me with a host family in the heart of old Chiang Mai, possibly because of the dozens of references I made to loving history in my application. If so, kudos to you ISDSI.
My host family is incredibly nice, to the point of threatening my already dubious health. You see, in Thailand it's a sign of the ability of a mother that her children are fat. A good mother can make her children fat by virtue of her cooking. This is the opposite of what I'd been hoping for, but the food is too good to gripe about. The ladies of our group were understandably scandalized when our program director told us that we should expect to be weighed at some point soon. The mothers take their jobs seriously.
That's a decent first post, more to come soon about a trip to the Da-lat.
A week ago I took 25-ish hours of flights from Boston to LA, LA to Bangkok, and Bangkok to Chiang Mai, the ancient capitol of the Lanna kingdom and the second city of Thailand. Over the course of several days of insomnia and late night bathroom trips my body got used to being here. The program I'm here with, ISDSI, has put me with a host family in the heart of old Chiang Mai, possibly because of the dozens of references I made to loving history in my application. If so, kudos to you ISDSI.
My host family is incredibly nice, to the point of threatening my already dubious health. You see, in Thailand it's a sign of the ability of a mother that her children are fat. A good mother can make her children fat by virtue of her cooking. This is the opposite of what I'd been hoping for, but the food is too good to gripe about. The ladies of our group were understandably scandalized when our program director told us that we should expect to be weighed at some point soon. The mothers take their jobs seriously.
That's a decent first post, more to come soon about a trip to the Da-lat.
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