Taking Thailand Home

By Tom

Pai, Thailand

One of the major goals of this trip for Julia and I is to learn about different ways of living, eating, worshiping, and celebrating from different cultures around the world   We then want to integrate the things we like into our own life when we return home.  There has been quite a bit in Thailand that we will be excited to bring home with us.

Want a plate of pad Thai?  How about 50 of them? 

First, it would be hard to disagree that one of the best things about Thailand is the food.  Instead of paying $12-35 like in the U.S., here great Thai meals, from soups to curries to stir-fry noodles are available everywhere you turn for around 65 cents.  And not just traditional Thai meals.  The Thai people seem to be able to cook other ethnic cuisines just as well as they do their own. Fruit here is so fresh (the best smoothies I've had anywhere in the world!), when you order something with fruit, I swear they go out back to pick it.  Although not all food here appeals to us.  See below. 

Not quite like the fried calamari you get in the Italian restaurants in 'Jersey

Deep-fried cockroaches, anyone?  No?  How about some salted silkworms?  

Another great thing about Thailand is the attention to beauty and aesthetics.  Gardens are decorated with beautiful lanterns, houses are surrounded by pretty flowers, and food frequently comes garnished with orchids.  Even a trip to the bathroom is sometimes an enjoyable experience, with polished river stones and fragrant flowers.  (This is in stark contrast to the "hold-your-breath-and-hurry" technique we had to employ in  bathrooms in India and Nepal).

Ohhhh so good, fresh fruit smoothies

Lanterns in the garden of our lodge in Chaing Mai

Gearing up for the festival of lights, "Loi Krathong"

Thailand is blessed with striking natural beauty and it seems that the people here truly appreciate nature and the outdoors.  The consistently warm weather makes it easy to eat and relax outside, and to make open air buildings.  We visited the huge, lush Chaing Mai zoo on a Saturday and found it filled with Thai people excited by the wildlife.  It is one of a handful of zoos in the world with giant pandas and was recently one of the only zoos ever to successfully breed the threatened species

The beautiful countryside of northwest Thailand

The Chaing Mai zoo's newest mother, Lin Hui

Thailand has allowed us another chance to explore Eastern religion and Buddhism.  In Chaing Mai, we were visiting our friend Steve (made famous in the previous blog post "Buddhism 101") who has lived here for the past seven years and teaches Buddhist ethics at a university for monks.  Steve graciously allowed me to sit in on one of his classes.  The classes are taught in English because many of the students come from neighboring Burma, Laos, and Cambodia and do not speak Thai.  In addition to furthering our education on Buddhism and Thai culture over meals, he was also nice enough to show us around a few of the Buddhist wats in Chaing Mai and to explain some of their history.  

A dragon standing guard outside a Buddhist temple or wat

Touring some temples in Chaing Mai

And of course for me, the best thing about Thailand is the person I get to share it with.  She's the thing that I'm most excited to bring home from this experience and incorporate into my daily life. 

The best thing currently in Thailand

...but I have to say, in my defense, I wasn't going to just put the bar of soap in the washing machine, I was going to get some water and  scrub the bar soap onto the clothes, thus saving us the need to buy a packet of detergent for just one wash.  See?  That makes sense, right?