Saturday Market

We live on the edge of a medium sized city. We are about 10 km from downtown Phitsanulok and about 1 km from Naresuan University, a large modern government sponsored university with well managed faculties in all the disciplines, particularly medicine, engineering and agriculture. We have enjoyed treks into the city and just today we spent very interesting hours at the Textile Museum on the Naresuan campus, an extremely informative description and history of the cotton and silk cloth manufacture that has been notable in this region.

However, the highlight of our week always seems to be the Saturday morning market, a very rural and very community centered event that takes place at a crossroad about 2km from our house. The event starts about sunrise and goes till about 9:15 am. We have been there as early as 6:45 and everything is in full swing already, but at 9:15 things just disintegrate and everyone is cleared out within 15 minutes. It all happens along the roadside at a crossroad. The people who sell there are mostly farm folk and I am sure many of them grow their produce. There is no formal organization but everyone just seems to know what is expected and it happens.

The event seems like a cross between a community yard sale, a country fair and a neighbourhood barbecue. You weave your way between people, bicycles, dogs, motorbikes, trucks, and even the local bus that rumbles down the street at 7:15. No one seems surprised at what turns up, except for the two white people, Jo-Anne and I. This is not tourist country and the local people do not see many whites, especially white women. They have a category for the few white men who live in the area with their Thai wives, but a white woman is a rarity.

There is an abundance of delicious fresh vegetables, much of which we are not familiar with, but we are learning, and have found numerous items that we really love. By the way, notice the bunches of fresh asparagus in front of the lady vendor. It is delicious and cheap, cheap, cheap, so eat your heart out, you snow bound northerners.

Jo-Anne likes to buy vegetables from this lady because she always has plenty of high quality produce and she  is always talking. We only wish we knew what she was saying. She is very friendly and always helpful and happy to serve us so we look forward to getting good food from her.

After a little squeamishness we have ventured to buy pork (and chicken) at the street market, and we haven't suffered any ill effects yet. I am sure Agriculture Canada would have some questions if you tried to do this in Canada, but the pig in the picture seems quite content to have given his head to the cause. By the way, we haven't ventured to buy a pig's head yet, and most likely won't. Also, notice the eggs, they are not refrigerated in Thailand and are sold either singly or in multiples of 10.

You can also buy many varieties of fish, either alive, dead or cooked. One day we even saw a whole tub full of big live frogs, quite a lively show.

You can also buy lots of fruit, clothing, dishes, hardware, shoes, and many kinds of prepared foods, especially deep fried, barbecued and baked items.

When we go home I am sure we will always feel a little disappointed with Superstore. They just won't have the drama of a Thai country market.

Rustic Thailand

Last Friday we drove about 50 kms out in the country to visit Yo's elderly uncle and auntie. Yo wanted us to meet them as we had not met them before. Also they have lived all their lives beyond the end of the electrical line and have basically raised their 4 children and lived off of the produce of their land. An interesting anomaly is that auntie does have a cell phone which she charges at the neighbour's generator. The yard was shaded by huge mango trees which were planted when the couple first went to live on their farm.

We were welcomed with great hospitality and made to feel very much at ease.

Uncle and Aunties' house. Living space is all on the second floor. Chickens and farm implements occupy the ground level.

Yo and her auntie who is her mother's elder sister. Notice the charcoal fire pot behind Auntie.

Uncle and Auntie were gracious hosts for a meal they prepared for us. Traditional Thai style is to sit on a low table with the food in bowls in the middle. Eating is done with a combination of fingers, spoons and chopsticks, everyone picking food out of the various bowls. Auntie and uncle had already eaten so they were sitting on chairs hosting us. The table was in the front yard under the mango trees.

The meal was a delicious mixture of bowls of fish, ground pork, jackfruit, cooked with various herbs from the yard such as basil, morning glory and a couple of other unnamed plants. There was, of course a bowl of hot Thai pepper sauce. This was served on a bed of rice. Rice is the base of every meal.

It was a day of contrasts that we will not forget.

English Class

On Friday our friend Noy asked us to help teach an English class. A group of Naresuan University students had a project to teach a class of 11 to 12 year-old children some basic English conversation. Two of the students picked us up at Noy's office and drove us to the school. There were about a dozen university students and about 25 children waiting for us. We were asked to fill one hour. Most of the university students had very limited English except for one girl who acted as our interpreter and did her job with great enthusiasm. The children were very shy and with the exception of one or two, were very reluctant to say any English words.

We ended up singing a lot of action songs with good vocabulary in them, like father finger, mother finger, and one little, two little, three little elephants. This broke the ice with the children and the university students really got into it also. We went back on Saturday morning for another hour and mostly reviewed and taught some sounds that are in English but not in the Thai language, the r sound and the th sound. I don't know how muchEnglish the children learned from it but they had fun and really participated in the activities. One of the girls from the university said, after our last class, I am so happy. When we asked her why, she said because the children and her classmates had fun learning.

We had a big surprise today, Sunday, when a bunch of the students and 10 of the children showed up at the church where we have been going. Just as we were leaving on Saturday Jo-Anne told them where we were going to church on Sunday and invited any of them to come. So a bunch of them showed up. We did an impromptu little conversation class with them for a half hour, then they joined the church service for about forty-five minutes. We hope it left a good witness with them, especially the university students. You never know what a day will bring.

Children and university students

Jo-Anne and Jim with Faa and An our two student drivers

I continue to be impressed with the congested traffic and drivers in Thailand. Although Phitsanulok is not as busy as Bangkok the downtown area has a lot of narrow streets and busy intersections with cars trucks, buses, and motorbikes all clamouring for space. There are some traffic lights but lots of them don't work. After watching An navigate through what to me looked like traffic gridlock I have come to the conclusion that Thai drivers use fuzzy logic in their driving, and they use it quite successfully. Fuzzy logic works on the assumption that there are definite rights and wrongs but within each right and wrong there is a range of probabilities. Fuzzy logic is used in computer control systems, if you don't understand it check it out in Wikipedia. There are traffic rules on Thai city streets but if you obey them righteously you may never make it across an intersection. This is where fuzzy logic enters in. If, at a congested intersection or round about you judiciously nudge your way in between vehicles on the probability that the next vehicle will let you in you will most likely get in. In fact if you sit and wait for your turn you will most likely frustrate all the other drivers. They are expecting you to push in. Yes, there are some fender-benders, but, so what, we have them in Canada too.