I tried to pack accordingly for wat and water fight plans. Sunday I woke up and was ready, bag in hand, by 6:50. I waited, and waited, by 7:20 I started to worry. Songkran wasn't actually going to start until Monday so she probably meant 7 PM. I Skyped home and chatted with the family + other Belisle cousins/Auntie/Uncle. Then I just hung around wondering what I was going to do for the rest of the day when Khun Iad and Khun Oy appeared at the door at 8:10. So the time was in the morning not the evening! We all piled in the car and had 45 minutes of forced 2-year-old level conversation in half English half Thai. I found out that we were going to the floating markets (Talatnam Lampya) along with K. Chin (K. Iad's hubby), K. Bob (K. Oy's 16 year old nephew) and K. Iad's brother whose name I forgot.
An hour into the drive the Belisle-genetic-Thai-driving-induced motion sickness set in. My mind was consumed with the thought of throwing up (which I did twice when motion sick in Sapa!) I explained to the ladies: wani ca-fey mak, puad thong, mai pen rai, sabai. That translates to today I had a lot of coffee I have a tummy ache, it's okay now, i'm fine. That was the only way I could explain my motion sickness with my little Thai: blame the coffee. I told them partly in hopes that they wouldn't make me eat a lot of crazy food. It kind of worked.
Immediately when we got to Talatnam Lampya K. Iad grabbed my camera from me. She wanted pictures of me next to any and everything. I don't love being in pictures so I wasn't a huge fan of it. Eventually I got the camera back, but then she would point to things and make me take a picture of it. She would ask to see it after every picture, so I could never pretend to take one. Needless to say I ran out of new batteries after one day and needed to buy more because I didn't bring my charger. At the end of the blog I will post some of the pointless pictures I was forced to take (some of the ones that I didn't end up deleting that night).
At the floating markets there was food everywhere. It was a Thai--not tourist--style market. No souvenir stands, no Westerners, just a lot of food that I couldn't identify if you paid me. We walked up and down a center wooden aisle and boats were pulled up next to it selling things, mostly food. I have now been to three floating markets in Southeast Asia and all three were drastically different. Anyways, we walked around for at least 30 minutes while K. Iad and K. Oy picked up bags and bags of food. They even offered to get me french fries--I declined.
We got on a boat at 10:00 for a ride down the Thajean River. We had a table at the front of the boat and spread out all of our food. Time to eat! With my tummy ache comment I still was offered all the food, but was given the mai pet (not spicy) versions. What did I eat? :
"pig balls" (pork meat balls);
"fried fish" (sure didn't taste like your average fried fish);
"banana" (opaque goo wrapped in a banana leaf);
"pig satay" (pork satay);
"ice" (red flavored popsicle);
"bird egg" (a small hard boiled egg cut in half, not a chicken's egg);
"sticky rice" (rice in a bag that everyone grabbed with their fingers straight from the bag and popped it into their mouths);
...and something that they couldn't explain and I still can't. It tasted like rice mixed with some sort of salty meat and spices formed into a small ball and cut in half. I only tried that once, no seconds for me!
The many bags of food and all of their contents! Plus our napkins=roll of toilet paper (that's what napkins are at most restaurants here!); The "banana" goo. That was rough to force down, but I had to!
After I took a bite of each thing all five of them would look at me until I said the obligatory alloy mak (delicious). There was no way of hiding my dislike for the "fried fish" though. Finally K. Iad's silent brother said, in very well-spoken English "You eat everything!" I don't think he talked again for the rest of the trip. That prompted the K. Iad's-cooking-is-delicious-and-she's-making-me-fat conversation where I may have accidentally called them all fat instead. Oh the fun of being a foreigner!
The ride along the river was great and refreshing--a nice breeze on a 90 degree morning! We passed by all sorts of houses, some were very nice ones while others were shacks. The conversation was always confusing and ended up being a lot of laughter. That's always the easiest thing to do when everyone is confused.
After about 30 minutes the boat stopped at a different dock in front of a wat. I followed the group out and we went to a table filled with flowers, candles and incense sticks. We paid our 20 Baht (60 cent) "donation" and grabbed the flowers, candles, incense and pieces of paper. I just followed suit and let K. Oy and K. Iad lead me around everywhere. They were very eager to show and teach me everything!
K. Oy and I; K. Bob ad I with flowers and incense outside the wat
Step 1: Light the incense from a communal pot of incense.
Step 2: Perform a wai (hands together with a small bow) and pray.
Step 3: Put the flowers in a big vase, put incense in communal pot, light candle and add it to pot as well.
Step 4: Perform wai and bow, nose to the floor, three times.Step 5: Take papers to a line of 5 Buddhas. Inside each paper is a little 1cm x 1cm square of gold leaf. Stick one square of gold leaf to each Buddha, wherever you want, and perform a wai after each one. (No picture, you'll see the same thing in the part 3 blog).
Step 6: Grab a tube of sticks and shake them until one falls out. That stick has a number on it. Go get a sheet of paper that corresponds with that number. The sheet has a fortune written on it for you...in Thai. K. Bob tried to translate mine for me, but he got very awkward/embarrassed and could only tell me I "have a happy good day." (Look in the background of the other pictures to see the red tube of sticks)
It was a very cool experience and I'm very lucky that K. Oy took some pictures at the beginning and K. Iad showed me how to do everything. They're great! We left the incense-filled temple and went back to the dock to feed some fish and got back on the boat.
When we went back to the car I assumed we were headed back to K. Oy's, but instead we made a stop at the Air Orchid Flower Market. I was forced to take a lot of pictures here! Mostly of me with orchids. It was a beautiful place though. They have orchids in every color/color combo imaginable. At about minute 40 it started to feel like every summer with my mom stuck at Linders in intense heat...but it was still really fun and I'm glad they took me there! As we left, there was a Buddha statue that we took turns cleansing with water in honor of the Songkran holiday.
We went back to K. Oy's house after that and I got the full tour. The tour included pictures of me in K. Oy's room, in her front yard, in her back yard, fake sleeping on a lawn chair, 4 pictures of me walking into and then sitting down in a backyard furniture structure. Then the boys all drove back to Suphan Buri and the girls just hung around, watched Look Who's Talking 2 with Thai subtitles and took a little catnap. At one point K. Oy showed me 30 photo albums. It was all pictures of her doing various non-interesting things. Like standing in an airport, standing at the luggage belt at the airport, sitting for a taxi outside the airport. And I understood that they just LOVE to take pictures of every single step of any vacation, including the non-interesting things. When we woke up from our nap it was time to get ready for dinner...and on to part 2 of 3 in my blog series!
Pointless pictures I was forced to take Day 1:
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