October 17, 2019
Well, it's been quite a week and I'm currently running on what may be the weirdest sleep schedule of my life (and that's saying something). It's currently 1:22 AM, and I think it's safe to say that I've done a lot in the past week or so.
First off- I went out of town! And not just to the next city over. I actually went near Pattaya, and the biggest tragedy there is that I even saw a Starbucks but wasn't able to get anything. My host family brought me there to visit some friends (fellow exchange students) for a few days, and needless to say, the trip did not disappoint.
We started off by heading to a resort of some kind. One of my friends, an exchange student from Belgium, is living there. We met up with several others, including two other exchange students from Oregon, one from Wisconsin, and their respective host families. We took a boat from Pattaya Beach to an island, where we spent the majority of the day on the beach. Despite it being somewhat cloudy, I got pretty sunburned despite reapplying several times. We went on a banana boat ride as well, in which we ride an inflatable boat towed by a motorboat driven by a guy who really wants us to capsize.
And we did.
Afterwards, we headed to Terminal 21, which is an enormous mall in Pattaya that's supposed to be somewhat similar to an airport. It has the same style as an airport, with gates and terminals and even planes or stacks of luggage, but it's filled to the brim with different restaurants and stores. Each floor was supposed to represent a different destination- if I remember correctly, there were six floors, and I remember visiting Italy, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Paris, among others. The best part of the whole thing was going to an Italian place after shopping and getting some actual pasta. I haven't had good pasta with good sauce in what seems like way too long (the tomato sauce here is usually the equivalent of watery ketchup and I feel like the Thais are missing out), so it felt nice to have some familiar food.
The next day, the other inbounds and I took a class on how to make ลูกชุบ (Luk Chup), a Thai dessert made from a type of bean paste. It's made by molding the dough into a desirable shape, usually a fruit, which is then painted. To finish it all off, the dessert is covered in gelatin to give it a shiny shell, and after that, leaves or other decorations can be added. The class ended sometime around 2:00, and after that, one of the host moms decided to take us to see some monkeys. I had seen a few on the buildings near where we were working, but I had never seen any up close.
I have now.
There was a mountain and its roads dedicated specifically to viewing monkeys. The whole thing is almost like a safari, where you stay in your car the entire time and drive around with the animals coming to you. There were vendors at the gate, selling various foods for the monkeys (mostly fruits and nuts), and the host mom was generous enough to buy some for us. After that, we drove up the mountain with the windows cracked slightly open and holding food outside the car window. Monkeys were on the road, in the trees, and practically everywhere- it wasn't long before they were sitting on the car, taking one peanut after another as we just drove along with monkeys on the roof. We stopped at some point to take pictures, and having to walk mere feet away from them was more terrifying than I thought it would be. They watch your every move, trying to figure out if you have food on you. And if you do, you won't for long.
But hey, at least they're cute.
Two more things happened that night. The first was meeting up with the inbound from Brazil- he spoke English relatively well, and we all had a good time laughing and talking at dinner. I think there may have been a few bits of conversation lost in translation, but for the most part, everything was really calm and nice. But afterwards, his host family decided to take us all to Pattaya's somewhat famous Walking Street. And it was insane.
Before I left, I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to visit Pattaya, just out of curiosity. She responded by telling me that it was like the "Las Vegas of Thailand," and I didn't really understand what that meant until now.
The entire place is just strip clubs. I honestly don't know why I went there, and it was definitely uncomfortable to say the least. There were so many flashing lights and an insane amount of people, and in the middle of it all were five exchange students who had no idea what they were doing. People even offered us entry to clubs even though we were clearly underage, it was insanely loud, it was hot, it was crowded, and there was probably a very large amount of alcohol in close proximity to me... I didn't really like it. In a way, I'm glad I went there, just because now I know what a lot of tourists do in Thailand. But I really prefer my experiences in the much smaller town of Chanthaburi where there are little cafes everywhere and lots of riverside restaurants.
I think we got back to the resort some time past midnight after that, which is when my weird sleep schedule started kicking off. We woke up a little bit late the next morning, and then we were carted off for some lesson on coconuts.
I'm not joking. Almost my entire day was dedicated to coconuts. It was like a day camp. The guy running the whole thing described his little town as a coconut community, since the entire town's existence was based on coconuts. He talked about coconut farming, uses for coconuts- one thing that I found to be interesting was actually the solutions for pests. He said something about blackhead caterpillars, an invasive species that eats the mature leaves of the coconut tree. It results in the tree dying due to lack of sufficient energy via photosynthesis. As a solution, some farmers drill holes in their trees and put the pesticides into the tree itself. It's absorbed into the tree's sap, and then into the leaves where it kills the blackhead caterpillars. Thanks to that, I now wonder what I'm eating when I have coconuts. The other option for pest control was actually a wasp, which eats the pests that cause the problem.
The guide was honestly really passionate about his job. He taught us about tamarind and tamarind trees, and he told us some story about how miscarried babies would be buried at its roots. It had nothing to do with coconuts, but it was interesting. And then they gave us tamarind juice (or maybe it was just tamarind infused) after telling us about the miscarried babies, which would've been uncomfortable if the juice hadn't been so delicious. We went on to learn more about the community, followed by projects based on coconuts like making coconut jelly and planting coconut trees. In all honesty, it would've been nice if the whole lesson had been a few hours. But the program dragged on for something like six or seven hours, and by the time it was over, we were all hot and tired and feeling gross and sick of coconuts. To end the day, we headed back to Pattaya beach for another banana boat ride before heading back.
After that, I left Pattaya to go to Sattahip with a friend of mine. I stayed there for two days, and we went to the Cartoon Network water park for both of those days. The only things I remember about that are weird food, a ton of water slides, and a couple of cool people that we met. I met a former exchange student who went from Australia to France for a year, followed by him moving to Thailand. He spoke fluent Thai and just seemed really nice in general, and I'm glad I met him. I also spoke with some of the workers, mostly because they thought I was Thai. They would ask where the other exchange student was from, and I would always tell them that we were both American exchange students. I actually held a few conversations with some of them, explaining where I was from, where I was staying, and of course, why I looked so Asian (I'm not joking, they asked me that every time). After two days in Sattahip, I headed back to Chanthaburi for a single day of rest. It's now 2:20 A.M., and I'm leaving Chanthaburi in about two hours. I'm too tired to post pictures, so I'll put those up once I get back because I'm about to head to a camp in Korat. We'll see how that goes.
First off- I went out of town! And not just to the next city over. I actually went near Pattaya, and the biggest tragedy there is that I even saw a Starbucks but wasn't able to get anything. My host family brought me there to visit some friends (fellow exchange students) for a few days, and needless to say, the trip did not disappoint.
We started off by heading to a resort of some kind. One of my friends, an exchange student from Belgium, is living there. We met up with several others, including two other exchange students from Oregon, one from Wisconsin, and their respective host families. We took a boat from Pattaya Beach to an island, where we spent the majority of the day on the beach. Despite it being somewhat cloudy, I got pretty sunburned despite reapplying several times. We went on a banana boat ride as well, in which we ride an inflatable boat towed by a motorboat driven by a guy who really wants us to capsize.
And we did.
Afterwards, we headed to Terminal 21, which is an enormous mall in Pattaya that's supposed to be somewhat similar to an airport. It has the same style as an airport, with gates and terminals and even planes or stacks of luggage, but it's filled to the brim with different restaurants and stores. Each floor was supposed to represent a different destination- if I remember correctly, there were six floors, and I remember visiting Italy, Tokyo, San Francisco, and Paris, among others. The best part of the whole thing was going to an Italian place after shopping and getting some actual pasta. I haven't had good pasta with good sauce in what seems like way too long (the tomato sauce here is usually the equivalent of watery ketchup and I feel like the Thais are missing out), so it felt nice to have some familiar food.
The next day, the other inbounds and I took a class on how to make ลูกชุบ (Luk Chup), a Thai dessert made from a type of bean paste. It's made by molding the dough into a desirable shape, usually a fruit, which is then painted. To finish it all off, the dessert is covered in gelatin to give it a shiny shell, and after that, leaves or other decorations can be added. The class ended sometime around 2:00, and after that, one of the host moms decided to take us to see some monkeys. I had seen a few on the buildings near where we were working, but I had never seen any up close.
I have now.
There was a mountain and its roads dedicated specifically to viewing monkeys. The whole thing is almost like a safari, where you stay in your car the entire time and drive around with the animals coming to you. There were vendors at the gate, selling various foods for the monkeys (mostly fruits and nuts), and the host mom was generous enough to buy some for us. After that, we drove up the mountain with the windows cracked slightly open and holding food outside the car window. Monkeys were on the road, in the trees, and practically everywhere- it wasn't long before they were sitting on the car, taking one peanut after another as we just drove along with monkeys on the roof. We stopped at some point to take pictures, and having to walk mere feet away from them was more terrifying than I thought it would be. They watch your every move, trying to figure out if you have food on you. And if you do, you won't for long.
But hey, at least they're cute.
Two more things happened that night. The first was meeting up with the inbound from Brazil- he spoke English relatively well, and we all had a good time laughing and talking at dinner. I think there may have been a few bits of conversation lost in translation, but for the most part, everything was really calm and nice. But afterwards, his host family decided to take us all to Pattaya's somewhat famous Walking Street. And it was insane.
Before I left, I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to visit Pattaya, just out of curiosity. She responded by telling me that it was like the "Las Vegas of Thailand," and I didn't really understand what that meant until now.
The entire place is just strip clubs. I honestly don't know why I went there, and it was definitely uncomfortable to say the least. There were so many flashing lights and an insane amount of people, and in the middle of it all were five exchange students who had no idea what they were doing. People even offered us entry to clubs even though we were clearly underage, it was insanely loud, it was hot, it was crowded, and there was probably a very large amount of alcohol in close proximity to me... I didn't really like it. In a way, I'm glad I went there, just because now I know what a lot of tourists do in Thailand. But I really prefer my experiences in the much smaller town of Chanthaburi where there are little cafes everywhere and lots of riverside restaurants.
I think we got back to the resort some time past midnight after that, which is when my weird sleep schedule started kicking off. We woke up a little bit late the next morning, and then we were carted off for some lesson on coconuts.
I'm not joking. Almost my entire day was dedicated to coconuts. It was like a day camp. The guy running the whole thing described his little town as a coconut community, since the entire town's existence was based on coconuts. He talked about coconut farming, uses for coconuts- one thing that I found to be interesting was actually the solutions for pests. He said something about blackhead caterpillars, an invasive species that eats the mature leaves of the coconut tree. It results in the tree dying due to lack of sufficient energy via photosynthesis. As a solution, some farmers drill holes in their trees and put the pesticides into the tree itself. It's absorbed into the tree's sap, and then into the leaves where it kills the blackhead caterpillars. Thanks to that, I now wonder what I'm eating when I have coconuts. The other option for pest control was actually a wasp, which eats the pests that cause the problem.
The guide was honestly really passionate about his job. He taught us about tamarind and tamarind trees, and he told us some story about how miscarried babies would be buried at its roots. It had nothing to do with coconuts, but it was interesting. And then they gave us tamarind juice (or maybe it was just tamarind infused) after telling us about the miscarried babies, which would've been uncomfortable if the juice hadn't been so delicious. We went on to learn more about the community, followed by projects based on coconuts like making coconut jelly and planting coconut trees. In all honesty, it would've been nice if the whole lesson had been a few hours. But the program dragged on for something like six or seven hours, and by the time it was over, we were all hot and tired and feeling gross and sick of coconuts. To end the day, we headed back to Pattaya beach for another banana boat ride before heading back.
After that, I left Pattaya to go to Sattahip with a friend of mine. I stayed there for two days, and we went to the Cartoon Network water park for both of those days. The only things I remember about that are weird food, a ton of water slides, and a couple of cool people that we met. I met a former exchange student who went from Australia to France for a year, followed by him moving to Thailand. He spoke fluent Thai and just seemed really nice in general, and I'm glad I met him. I also spoke with some of the workers, mostly because they thought I was Thai. They would ask where the other exchange student was from, and I would always tell them that we were both American exchange students. I actually held a few conversations with some of them, explaining where I was from, where I was staying, and of course, why I looked so Asian (I'm not joking, they asked me that every time). After two days in Sattahip, I headed back to Chanthaburi for a single day of rest. It's now 2:20 A.M., and I'm leaving Chanthaburi in about two hours. I'm too tired to post pictures, so I'll put those up once I get back because I'm about to head to a camp in Korat. We'll see how that goes.
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