Thainapped in Chantaburi

Thainapped in Chantaburi

Last weekend I had an experience of Thainapping, the word that Peace Corps volunteers use when hustled off somewhere by Thai friends on short notice, usually without explaining where or why.  My host sister had told me we were going “to the sea” on Saturday.  Okay, I said, sounds good.  Shortly before we left she mentioned that we’d be staying over one night, so I stuffed pajamas and a clean skirt into my bag. With my host sister and me, there were six of us in Kruu Thanchanok’s Mitsubishi Triton Plus. It was a tight fit for the four in the back seat. We coped by taking turns scooting forward so the person next to us could lean back.

We headed south via Bangkok and down through Chonburi Province, where our first stop was Pattaya, one of Thailand’s most popular beach resort towns. But we didn’t go to the beach. My travelling companions wanted to go to “Paradise,” which bills itself as The World’s Largest Art Illusion Museum. It gives visitors almost unlimited photo ops with images of famous people, places, and works of art.  Below are just a few examples; you get the idea. If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen some of these photos already.

Me and Host Sister, Kwanta

Kruu Jiraporn, Kruu Yupin, and me

Camel Ride

It's not a mirror . . . 

Bird Woman

After“Paradise,” we went to the so-called floating market – many cities have these. They aren’t really floating, but constructed on bridges and piers over the water. From there, we headed further south through Rayong Province, where we did stop at a beach. There are many jettys such as the one in the photo below, so you can walk out to get great views in all directions.

Kruu Ampai taking photo of Kruu Thanchanok

Sadly, the views of the beach also included an over-abundance of litter, mostly plastic bags, as you can see in the next picture.

But it was getting late and the sun soon went down, so the litter was out of sight. Here are a couple of photos of the sunset, taken from the table where we had dinner outdoors, with delicious food from a street vendor.

Sunset in Rayong

After dinner we drove about 3 more hours to our destination in Chantaburi Province. Somewhere along the way I had learned that the niece of Kruu Jiraporn was getting married on Sunday and we were going to the wedding. We spent the night at a nice mountain resort, our rooms presumably paid for by the bride's family. 
Here are a few pictures from the balcony.

Balcony outside my window

View from balcony

This guy held out the hope of coffee, but alas, he was just another photo op, as you can see with Kruu Ampai. The coffee shop was closed.

 The wedding was at the home of the bride’s parents. When we got there, everyone was eating breakfast (without coffee) – a meal for those who’d had to get up really early, and also to keep us occupied until the wedding started at about 9:30am. 

This wedding included a ritual I had read about but not seen before: The bride and groom must pass through lines of people holding little chains to block their way, and the groom must “pay” to be allowed to pass.

Children holding chain

Jiraporn and me holding a chain

It’s hard to see in the photo, but he’s handing me a red envelope with 100 baht inside. (30 baht = $1 US)

Inside the house, other rituals took place, to formalize the marital union and convey blessings and good wishes from the families and friends. The ritual pictured below was fun to watch.  You can see that the man in the picture below has fanned out 1000-baht bills to form a wreath on the floor.

Next, he spreads out gold chains and hoops in the circle; the groom will later put the chains around the bride’s neck.The woman in the white lace blouse to his left is the wedding planner, keeping a watchful eye on everything.

In the next video, one of the grandmothers sprinkles flowers, rice, and tua ngawk (mung beans) over the whole thing, so that all together, it represents wealth, love and commitment, good health, and many children.

Below is a picture of the wedding banquet, which included the usual six courses and bottles of Hong Thong (whiskey) on each table (we didn’t partake). Since most every dish had meat in it, I took the opportunity to work on my chopstick skills (which are lame at best) by picking up peanuts, one at a time, from the seafood salad appetizer. (There’s no video of me doing this, you’ll be glad to know).

The bride and groom making the rounds of tables

After the wedding, which ended before noon, we were invited to visit the fruit orchard owned by Kruu Jiraporn’s family. They raise durian and rambutan. Durian (or turian in Thai) is a fruit that seems to have worked very hard to evolve a form that will deter people and animals from eating it. You can see one hanging from the tree in the picture below.

Hold it carefully.

And on the left you see the owner holding a durian by its stem, to keep from being stabbed by the sharp spike-like thorns on the shell.

In Thailand, durian is known as the King of Fruits. Here’s a picture of a durian cut open, so you can see what the edible part looks like:

I think it looks like a little purse of yellow dough. It’s soft to bite into, not crunchy or juicy like most fruits. To me, it tastes mildly of onions that are just beginning to rot. However, many Thais say it’s their favorite fruit, so don’t take my word for how it tastes, but ask around for other opinions.

The other fruit raised in this orchard is rambutan (ngaw in Thai). It has a tough shell covered with little wavy fringes. When you cut it open, there is a firm, translucent fruit inside that is similar in texture to a lychee, one of its close relatives. Rambutan is less juicy and less sweet than lychee.

Yu Pin, Thanchanok, Ampai, Kwanta, me

Kruu Yu Pin and rambutan

Kruu Jiraporn with Rambutan

We left the orchard with the back of our vehicle filled with fruit.

So there you have my experience of Thainapping in Chantaburi – not too much beach, but quality time with several of my fellow teachers as well as Art Illusion, wedding, and orchard more than made up for that.

Pst: I’m not much of a beach person anyway. Remember, you heard it here.  

Cooking Blossoms

Cooking Blossoms

At Ban Rang Krathai School

Returning to the theme of cooking lessons at our school, this post describes only one dish made with actual blossoms. However, another recipe calls for making flower-shaped kanom and, as our students’ knowledge of traditional Thai recipes is continuing to blossom, I couldn’t resist the word play.

Banana Blossom Fritters (glua tawt hua pee)

Banana trees produce not only flowers that turn into bananas, but also a big pinkish purple blossom that doesn’t yield a fruit. Those blossoms are used as a vegetable in quite a variety of recipes. Here is a link to a site with pictures of banana blossoms and other information.

http://thaifoodandtravel.com/blog/banana-blossom/

Our students made banana blossom fritters a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I was late getting to the lesson so I didn’t get pictures of all the steps. The blossoms are sliced, mixed with a spicy batter, and deep-fried.

Fritter frying

Student sampling fritter

The fritters are spicy and yummy. The blossoms are light and crisp in texture. I can’t think of a way to describe the taste. The younger children, who don’t take part in preparing the food, do their part by showing up with 5 baht apiece to buy a serving of fritters for a welcome afternoon snack.

Kanom chaw muang

These beautiful little snacks (kanom), made in the shape of a rose, are a dish for royalty. The Thai name refers to the shape (chaw means cluster or bouquet) and the color (muang means purple). The kanom are made, however, in several colors besides purple. They are a kind of dumpling with either a savory filling of minced pork, chicken, fish, or shrimp, or a sweet filling of coconut, nuts, and sugar.

Here you see students preparing ingredients for the fillings.

Here a student is kneading the dough, coached by Kruu Yu Pin, science teacher at Ban Rang Krathai School. The dough (like the dough for bua loy, floating lotus) reminds me of play doh in texture, but is a little stiffer.

The dough is formed into little balls, and filling is inserted into each ball of dough.

Each rose is painstakingly shaped with tweezers.

And here is a perfectly shaped rose.

The finished roses are steamed, then cooled on banana leaves and arranged attractively on a plate to be served.

Kai nok grataa (deep-fried sweet potato balls)

These cute little kanom are a type of donut. Their Thai name means quail egg (kai=egg, nok=bird, grataa=quail),; presumably this refers to the size and shape of the kanom rather than the ingredients. Again I was late to the lesson so missed the ingredients for the dough, but here is a link to a recipe if you are interested.

http://allrecipes.asia/recipe/3428/kai-nok-grataa--fried-sweet-potato-balls-.aspx

This recipe seems to be quite easy to make. Here is a picture of students making the dough.

And here are students making balls of dough for frying.

Here you see a student pushing the balls down into the hot oil so they will puff up while frying and be hollow inside.

The hollow inside is a nice surprise when you eat the kanom. There is nothing unusual about the taste -- as noted above, similar to donuts, only cuter.

Khaao kriab pak maw (steamed rice flour dumplings)

These are trickier to make. The so-called dumplings, which to me look like thin, stretchy pancakes or crepes, are made one at a time from a runny rice flour batter that is poured onto a hot cooking surface and covered with a lid, as you see in the video below.

When the dumpling or crepe is sufficiently steamed, a spoonful of filling is plopped in the middle and the sheet of dough is wrapped around it.  You can see that the crepe is both stretchy and sticky, but Kruu Thanchanok has the moves down perfectly.  

As with many other Thai kanom recipes, the filling can be either sweet or savory. Our students made both kinds and were generous in handing out samples. Kanom khaao kriab pak maw are delicious, but the texture of the dumpling “skin” takes a little getting used to – it’s chewy and a bit tough, with not much flavor of its own. These snacks are widely sold in open-air markets and by street vendors in Thailand.

I hope you enjoy these recipes half as much as our students enjoy making them – and I enjoy taking the pictures. For future blog posts about recipes our students make, I’ll take more still images as well as videos, so you won’t have to open so many videos to see what’s going on. The students of course love to see themselves on video, which is one reason why I take so many. The other reason is, I’m saving all the photos and videos as slide shows for my colleague Kruu Bussara, who is in charge of the cooking classes. At the end of the term, I’ll give them to her on a flash drive to show the committee that funded the cooking program – in the hope that they’ll want to fund it again next year.

Wat Tham Sua

Visit to Wat Tham Sua

Visakha Bucha 2014

Visakha Bucha commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death, which all happened on the same date. Visakha Bucha is a public holiday in Thailand. It takes place on the full moon day of the sixth lunar month. Last year I wrote about how Visakha Bucha Day, which fell on May 24, was celebrated at my school in a northeastern Thai village. This year, the full moon was on May 13^th, before the summer school term had started, so Visakha Bucha wasn’t celebrated at Ban Rang Krathai School in Kanchanaburi Province.

Since it was a holiday, members of my host family took me shopping and then to Wat Tham Sua (tham = cave; sua = tiger). It’s a beautiful temple complex on a hill not far from Kanchanaburi City, and close to the Mae Klong Dam, built in the 1970s to facilitate irrigation of crops in several provinces.If you're on Facebook, you've seen some of these photos already, but not all.

  Arriving at the site, you see these stairs leading up to the temple complex. Or, if you like, you can take a cable car.

The temple complex consists of a plaza-type area with several buildings and a large Buddha statue ensconced in a sort of half-shell structure.

Below is a partial view of the plaza to give you an idea of how it's laid out. You see the chedi on the left and a Chinese-style pagoda straight ahead. The pagoda isn’t part of the temple complex, but adjacent to it.

Just for fun, here’s a close-up of some details of the ornamentation on one of the buildings. I have no clue what story these figures are telling, but there they are.

The next photo is a picture of the chedi, which you can enter and climb seven flights of stairs to view statuary, images, altars, and relics housed inside. 

 The photo below is a close-up of some of the ornamentation on the outside of the chedi.

 Here are a couple of views of the beautiful countryside, taken from the level of the plaza.

Here is the tower of one of the plaza buildings taken from several flights up inside the chedi.

Below you see the peak of the Buddha’s half-shell, ss seen from inside the chedi, with the mountains in the distance.

Inside the chedi, near the top, is this shrine (on the left) where visitors can make offerings and pay respect. The photo below is a close-up of the ornamentation on the shrine.

 Below is a view of the pagoda from inside the chedi, at the top

Heading back down toward the stairway you saw at the beginning, I took this video not for the picture, but so you could hear a tiny snippet of the music that floats through the air, seeming to emanate from the peaceful atmosphere.

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Scary chicken-tail guy

Back down at street level, here are a couple of the scary characters who guard the place

Scary red and gold guy

And let's not forget the tigers – it’s Wat Tham Sua, after all.

Me and host sister Mew with tiger

To my knowledge, most of the Wat Tham Sua buildings date back to the 1970s, so it’s not an ancient institution. As for the cave aspect: there are caves in the mountains, probably formerly used by tigers and certainly used by people for various purposes, including meditation. Today, the caves are closed to the public.

If you’re thinking that this post doesn’t exactly convey the religious or cultural significance of Wat Tham Sua, you would be right, because I don’t pretend to understand it myself. But it’s a beautiful place that literally sparkles in the sunlight and gives the surrounding countryside something to, um, surround.

And what about Visakha Bucha Day? One of my host sisters asked me to go with her to the temple that evening to observe Visakha Bucha (yes, the temple with the bunnies in front, seen in a recent post). When we arrived, vendors were waiting to sell us, for a few baht, the flowers, candles, and incense sticks needed for the service. Inside the building, people sat on the floor chatting while waiting for the monks to arrive and begin their chants. When the chanting paused, everyone went outside, walked around the temple three times, and went back in. Presumably the three rounds signify the three events, birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha. After more chanting, the head monk sprinkled everyone with water and we went outside to lay our flowers down on one of the little altars, light our candles and joss sticks, and leave them burning with everyone else’s. In all, it was a very modest and low-key service – casual, but respectful.

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P.S. Note for anyone interested in more information about the Tiger Cave Temple: If you google Wat Tham Sua, you’ll learn that there’s another temple complex with the same name in Krabi, a favorite tourist destination in Thailand – confusing at first glance. As far as I know, the Krabi temple has no connection to Wat Tham Sua in Kanchanaburi Province.