a soggy end to the rainy season

Each Sunday morning I walk the 25 neighborhood blocks from my house to the home of one of my fourth grade students. I tutor her, her father and her little sister in English conversation for a couple of hours each week.. it's great getting to spend some time with a Thai family at home, playing with the little girls, talking with the parents (as well as is possible with their limited English and my severely limited Thai) and taking advantage of the tasty treats they share with me. (this week it was thick slices of dense, chewy Chinese moon cake filled with a sweet bean paste.)

The girls' parents told me this week that apparently it's supposed to be the end of the rainy season now in Bang Phli, an occasion marked by the Rap Bua festival today. The monks at the temples, they told me, are required to stay within the temple walls during the entire rainy season... this festival, then, celebrates the day when they're allowed to roam free again. Apparently they're not allowed to walk around during rainy season because there are so many sprouting plants and little animals and insects crawling around on the ground that it's impossible for them to walk on the ground without accidentally killing things. at least that's what I gathered from our broken English/Thai conversation. The main event in the celebration is loads of boats floating down the river, into which all the people lining the banks of the river throw armloads of lotus flowers so that each boat ends up stuffed full of flowers and each boat's lone passenger (a big buddha statue) is essentially buried.

Well, I'm unconvinced that this is the end of the rainy season. It has been raining harder and more often than ever here lately. The neighborhood streets are more like canals these days and I never leave the house without an umbrella and a change of dry clothes. On more than one occasion walking home from school these past couple of weeks I've taken off my shoes and waded (almost knee-deep at some points) down the street, watching all sorts of interesting objects (a sofa cushion, piles of trash, a couple of school notebooks, chopsticks...) lazily float past my legs. At night the rain pounding on the roof, the cars, the banana leaves on the tree outside my window, is often so deafening I can't listen to my beloved npr podcasts or watch the arrested development dvds amelia brought me.. I can't even talk on the phone it's so ridiculously loud. To be honest, though, I find the stormy weather exciting most of the time. as long as I'm not caught outside in it, wearing my thin white work shirt, carrying my computer and cell phone, 30 blocks from home, without a motorbike in sight. (this has happened)

วัดบางพลีใหญ่ใน: wat bang phli yai nai

sdf
There's a beautiful Buddhist temple perched on the bank of a canal near my neighborhood. I have to pass it on my way to Bangkok or just about anywhere outside of my province, but I had never bothered to visit until a few weekends ago.

The temple, itself, is small but spectacular - delicate, intricate detail covering walls and doorways, rows of beautiful golden statues, immense crystal chandeliers. I visited on a Sunday, so the place was packed. I, the towering caucasian, made a weak attempt at blending with the crowd. glancing around awkwardly, taking cues from the women beside me...

ok, take shoes off here, i guess. nope.. don't take them off yet... ok, here. now ladle some of this hot mystery liquid into this bowl thing.. ok, now put money in this wooden thing and light this stick on fire. alright..

15 minutes of this and I was able to finally sneak around to the back and take some pictures...

a side entrance to the main room of the temple

photo: courtesy of NZ Chong - thanks NZ!

incredibly colorful main room

(i suppose there's probably a more correct term for this place) of the temple

flags of Thailand and of the king fly at the temple
over the masses of vendors selling foods, clothes, drinks, jewelry, brooms, false teeth, etc.

a man, floating down the canal by the market,
with a makeshift wood burning grill in his wooden boat cookin up meat-on-a-stick,
selling it to passers-by

Adjacent to the temple is the Bang Phli Old Market, which is housed in the strangest building... From the temple's walkway of umbrellaed vendors, you have to shoulder your way through the throng to get over a short narrow pedestrian bridge which spits you out at the structure's dark wooden mouth. Stepping over the threshold, i had to give my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim,brownyellow light before I could see that I'd just entered a narrow corridor stretching for as far as I could see. There are few to no windows here so the only light comes from bare bulbs overhead, hanging every few feet from fraying, sagging electric cables. The place has an overwhelming, not unpleasant, musty smell. sort of like atool shed filled with ancient rusting tools, old wood and pain thinner. Lining the rickety wooden walkway are a hodgepodge of vendors with their wares stacked on carts, shelves, the floor, crates, bed frames -whatever's around. They sell everything here.

toiletries, milkshakes, extension cords, grilled meat-on-a-stick, blue jeans, hammocks, school supplies, hair driers, pet rabbits (looking absolutely ridiculous dressed up in tutus with bows strapped to their ears), diapers, bicycles, giant wooden altars, cookies, briefcases, books, cell phones, mushrooms...

view of the exterior of the market from a bridge over the canal

end of the bridge descending into the inky (and, i should add, economical) abyss that is the
Bang Phli old market

flags, flags, flags!
sdf

dental decay in a bag and to do lists

kj

I always have great expectations for my weekends here. Not important social engagements or spectacular nights out in Bangkok. No, I have grand visions of completing detailed lesson plans for the remainder of the term, of sweeping, mopping, disinfecting and waxing the floors, of finally deciding what I want to study in graduate school, of mastering 10 new songs on the guitar and preparing myself a fabulous dinner. and that's just Saturday. I keep thinking i'll learn to drastically lower my expectations but somehow, as each friday afternoon creeps up on me, I look down to find my hand scribbling out another ridiculously unrealistic list of Weekend TO-DOs!

Some weekends are more successful than others, though all are ultimately failures when viewed in terms of [# of items actually completed] as a percentage of [total # of items on list]. Last weekend I did manage to eradicate my house's rapidly multiplying ant population (for now, anyway), create a good two days' worth of lesson plans, and floss my teeth twice a day on Saturday and Sunday. These two days were a relative success compared to this weekend, as far a productiveness goes. Midterm exams are coming up next week and I have to submit my exams to my supervisor by Wednesday. nine exams to write. at least 50 items each. it is Sunday night and i have completed about 50%.. of one exam. This will be a busy week.

Friday night I stayed up late with a group of the Thai and Filipino teachers, taking part in that beloved Asian tradition: awful karaoke (i realize this description is redundant but the karaoke is especially awful when I'm holding the microphone). Waking up later than I'd hoped yesterday morning and feeling an utter lack of motivation, I started my day with 2 hours of half-assed pilates and lazy yoga poses while listening to reruns of Car Talk. On days like yesterday when I can feel impending unproductiveness, I end up including things on my long ambitious lists like, "take dirty dishes downstairs," "eat breakfast - eggs expire 7/26!" "take shower - remember: behind ears!" and "get dressed [white stain t-shirt and brownish shorts?]" just so I'll have something to cross off.

Aside from spending hours writing useless TO-DO lists for myself, I went to the nearby Buddhist temple to check out the weekend scene there. I'll post about this trip in the next couple of days, but for now I'll just mention the bag of sugar water I bought on my way out of the gates this afternoon...

I saw a man by the road feeding giant spears of sugar cane into this shiny metal contraption. Out the other end of the machine came the squashed remains of the spears and from a tube on the side flowed a stream of cloudy yellowish liquid. The tube deposited the liquid onto a cheesecloth filter, which was suspended with clothespins over a bucket that looked just like the ones we use at home to store laundry detergent and wash the cars.

the juicer

To serve the sugar cane juice, the man scoops a few handfuls of ice into a small plastic shopping bag, ladles in a few cups of juice from the wash bucket and sticks a straw in it. Its flavor isn't particularly good nor interesting but it sure is sweet.

final, cavity-inducing product
.