Monday night was Loy Kathong, a fantastic festival in Thailand that signifies the repentance of a nation. The streets of Pattaya started to fill up on Friday and it wasn’t long that it appeared the whole of Bangkok had come on vacation for the weekend. Traffic was atrocious, forcing us all to motorcycles, and the sheer mass of humanity that filled the city was astounding. Pattaya is a relatively small city, with a labyrinth of little streets (called sois). As you head down toward the water and into the downtown area of the city near the beach these streets are literally bar after bar, with nothing in between, and girls lined up selling themselves to the night. There are thousands of girls in this small city. Loy Kathong marks the beginning of the tourist surge for Pattaya. As the Christmas season approaches the city nearly doubles in capacity and sex tourism becomes a very lucrative business for these girls. Girls who come from rural villages in the North East, where people live off of 3 dollars a day if they are lucky and have little hope of ever ending the cycle of poverty, have little other opportunity handed. These girls are often no older than 16 or 17 when they first come to the city. Impressionable young minds hoping to make something of them self and help to support their families become trapped in a web of exploitation and shame. Even in the crazy world of clashing cultures and sex tourism that Pattaya is, the night of the festival gave a real sense of deeply ingrained Thai traditions and respect for the culture.
The Loy Kathong festival is an amazing spectacle of traditional Thai dress and floating banana boats. Nearly everyone in the city sits down the day of the festival and makes small floating boats out of banana tree trunks and leaves, adorned with orchids and other flowers and a candle. As darkness falls there is an exodus of the city to the beach where thousands of people light their candles and launch their symbols of repentance into the sea. Many of the girls and even some men wear in the traditional Thai dress which is a colorful sparkling spectacle! Absolutely Beautiful. Even along Walking Street, Pattaya’s main drag of bars the city seemed to sparkle and take on a new identity for the night.
Look at my beautiful banana boat! ;)
5.11.09
Ging Cow (to eat rice)
yes, thats a chicken foot in my soup...The delights of Thai cuisine are far from what you might expect from the tastes of your local Thai food restaurant. On the menu this week was:
Crispy Duck Beak
Chicken feet stew (I didn’t realize there was a chicken foot in my soup until I’d already tucked in)
Whole fish (eyeballs and all)
Rubbery Squid
Fungi of all sorts
And to top it off bugs for a midnight snack
Needless to say it’s not quite as palpable or easy to eat as you might like. Never the less Thai food is tasty as all else if you can wrap your head around foreign textures, new flavors and a heat that would burn through metal. Suffice it to say always ask for mai pet (not spicy). In Thailand not spicy means just about right for a western pallet, it’s got some heat but you can feel your mouth after you eat. Most of you know that I’ll eat just about anything or at least try it, and I have to applaud myself for my attempts to eat a lot of things here. Bugs are something I just can’t even think about putting in my body, dog is another, though dog isn’t common in Thailand unless you are Cambodian, or extremely poor. And I have to say that most of the time I really enjoy the food here. I’m definitely not going to waste away into nothing and die of starvation. On the other hand there is a big part of me that can’t wait to get home and gorge myself on western food until I’m sick. Just the idea of familiar flavors that don’t make my nose wrinkle occasionally will be fantastic! There is another side to Thai food that you don’t really think about when you think of the delights of the orient. How the hell am I suppose to order what I want. Nothing comes with a label on it that allows for ease of ordering, especially when you’re out at the market or getting from your local street vendor. It’s so much harder than you would expect and this leads to eating a lot of fried rice for the lack of ability to get your local vendor to figure out what it is that you’re after. I tend to try to keep the communication to a minimum and therefore end up eating lots of things like meat on a stick and soup of which I’m never sure what exactly is going to be in it. It is getting better though and my Thai is coming along… slowly but surely, thanks to the diligent Thai staff that I work with (they really are so patient and good teachers) and the urgings of my boss. Where is that Rosetta Stone when you need it?
Well that’s all I have to say about food for the moment its crazy weird but somehow I enjoy it.
Crispy Duck Beak
Chicken feet stew (I didn’t realize there was a chicken foot in my soup until I’d already tucked in)
Whole fish (eyeballs and all)
Rubbery Squid
Fungi of all sorts
And to top it off bugs for a midnight snack
Needless to say it’s not quite as palpable or easy to eat as you might like. Never the less Thai food is tasty as all else if you can wrap your head around foreign textures, new flavors and a heat that would burn through metal. Suffice it to say always ask for mai pet (not spicy). In Thailand not spicy means just about right for a western pallet, it’s got some heat but you can feel your mouth after you eat. Most of you know that I’ll eat just about anything or at least try it, and I have to applaud myself for my attempts to eat a lot of things here. Bugs are something I just can’t even think about putting in my body, dog is another, though dog isn’t common in Thailand unless you are Cambodian, or extremely poor. And I have to say that most of the time I really enjoy the food here. I’m definitely not going to waste away into nothing and die of starvation. On the other hand there is a big part of me that can’t wait to get home and gorge myself on western food until I’m sick. Just the idea of familiar flavors that don’t make my nose wrinkle occasionally will be fantastic! There is another side to Thai food that you don’t really think about when you think of the delights of the orient. How the hell am I suppose to order what I want. Nothing comes with a label on it that allows for ease of ordering, especially when you’re out at the market or getting from your local street vendor. It’s so much harder than you would expect and this leads to eating a lot of fried rice for the lack of ability to get your local vendor to figure out what it is that you’re after. I tend to try to keep the communication to a minimum and therefore end up eating lots of things like meat on a stick and soup of which I’m never sure what exactly is going to be in it. It is getting better though and my Thai is coming along… slowly but surely, thanks to the diligent Thai staff that I work with (they really are so patient and good teachers) and the urgings of my boss. Where is that Rosetta Stone when you need it?
Well that’s all I have to say about food for the moment its crazy weird but somehow I enjoy it.
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