Phuket Trip!!!

My first real "Rotary Trip" happened from October 10th till October 15th.  We were going to Phuket to celebrate their Vegetarian festival for four day's and then spend the last day in Nakornsrithammarat.  I'll give you a little background information on the Vegetarian Festival, because it is quite an interesting event.  Before I do that, I will describe what we did before that, because we only really participated in the festival for one day (where we were a part of the procession) and then the other days we were doing other activities around Phuket. 

October 10th. 
    My day started by getting up and heading into Surat Thani (I have been staying in Don Sak because school is out for midterm break :) ) I then boarded a bus and drove a long four hours till we finally arrived in Phuket.  I had a slight scare when I got off the bus, because I had no idea where I was supposed to go, or if anyone was meeting me.  So I did the smart thing, and called Tanit, the Phuket Rotarian saying I had arrived.  He then asked me where I was....and I didn't know.  I asked a lady that was beside me where I was, and she gave me a very concerned look and said..."You are in the city of Phuket." I wanted to laugh, but I didn't because that would have been rude.  I then asked her if she would talk to Tanit because I didn't know how to describe where I was.  About five minutes later Tanit arrived, and we headed off to another bus station to pick up a few other people.  We headed out for icecream, before heading off to our first destination-the Bang NIA Shrine.  This is more a Chinese shrine, then a Thai shrine, but that makes snese because this festival is more based on Chinese traditions than Thai, but the Thai have adopted it as their own, adding their own renditions. 

 These are some chairs that are going to be used later in the festival (I'll show you picutres and explain it later) but in this picture you can actually see the chair.  There will be a group of men carrying these chairs through the procession, and then people who are on the sidelines will throw firecrackers at the chair, and they will go off. 

 A side view of the Bang NIA Shrine.  There were a lot of these "chairs" there, lots of people wearing white (That's the color you had to wear in order to celebrate the festival, and then lots of colorful flags. 

 Another picture of the "chairs" that will become important later on in the blog. 

 This is the entrance to the shrine.  We got to go in and take part with all of the praying, and burning of incenses.  There were nine stations that we got to go to, but I only got to go to six because in order to go to three of the stations, you had to be wearing white, and I wasn't wearing white-gray capris and a hot pink shirt, doesn't really scream "white colors".  It was here that I found out how painful burning ash can be, as it fell on my leg and feet multiple times.  Luckily it brushed off, but it was still slightly painful.  After laying the incense down at the different stations, we went to burn money.  They had given us this Chinese money (not real, don't worry) and then we would throw it in the fire to help pay our respects. 

 A group shot of all of us outside the shrine.  There were quite a few weird looks that we got due to the fact we just whipped out this giant sign, and then had what seemed like a hundred pictures taken. 

 Emi from Japan (who was going to be my roommate for the trip), myself, and PaDee.  Padee was our "host mom" for the time that we spent in Phuket.  Instead of us all staying at a hotel, we got to stay with other Rotary members.  Emi and I got to stay at her bed and breakfast, so it was technically like staying in a hotel. 

This is a shot of the entrance to the shrine area.  All of the people that you can see here were setting off fireworks.  I tried to get a picture of the actual fireworks going off, but that didn't work to well because they were mostly firecrackers, and just made a bang. 

October 8th Festival

My host mom took me to a festival that was located at the local temple in Don Sak.  This festival had us celebrating sending the spirits back up to their heaven.  I'll explain, because that sounds confusing.  About a week before (October 1st or 2nd-I don't remember the actual date) there was another festival where we fed the monks, and then the spirits of the dead would come down from the heavens (with the help of the monks) and then they would spend the next week living among the...living.  Now that their week was over, we had to send them back to the heavens.  It was quite beautiful, the monks chanted for a long time, and we did a lot of things that were unique to the area.  I met another farang-foreigner, who was a teacher at the school.  He wasn't very sociable, so we left him and headed off to celebrate the festival. 

 My host mom and I praying at the alter that was set up.  We got some flowers with a part of a palm leave behind it along with our insensce to burn while praying.  We then had to leave the flowers, but they were so pretty I wanted to take them with me.  But I didn't because I knew I would get some weird looks for that. 

 The top of the alter, (we are praying below it).  As you can tell from the background, there are a lot of people here.  From what I could see, there was at least one person from every family in all of Don Sak. 

 Putting my incensce in the sand in from of the alter.  My host mom is watching to make sure I do it right.  Haha or at least to make sure I don't burn myself.  I have dont that before, when the ashes fell on my hand, and let me tell you....it hurts!

 A food statue.  This is a statue that is actually made of of food.  It is a type of kanom (sweet) but it works like fabric.  It is thin and woven, and you can use it to make these different decorations.  Each one of the statues had a different meaning, and you would add your money to it to give thanks, or if you wanted something.  This one is supposed to be a Dor-cha-dar (a Thai headress for Thai dancers), but I am not sure of the meaning of any of them. 

 Me behind the food carvings.  The one that is on the left side of the picture is another Dor-cha-dar, and the one on the right of the picture is a boat.  The boat holds special meaning, because the monks travel on them during certain festivals, and are always beautifully decorated.  There were about 8 of these food statues in total. 

 Now this is something that I am not totally sure how to explain.  It is a platform, where you can stick money, food, anything you want, as offerings to the gods.  But later in the day, they will set the firecrackers off that are located beneath it.  Then the people will start tossing the stuff off the top of the platform to the waiting crowd.  I'm not sure the meaning of it, but it sure was amusing to watch. 

 Setting the firecrackers off from under the platform, and all of the people waiting to attempt to catch something that is thrown from the platform. 

 After the fireworks were done exploding, the children would all run up and climb on the platform trying to get something...if they didn't like what they grabbed, they would just go and throw it into the crowd.  There were a variety of different things that I saw being thrown-kanoms (sweets), fruit, I'm pretty sure I saw a pineapple go flying by.  Lots of different things, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it. 

 This is another even that happened at the temple.  There was a big pole, and at the top of the pole there was about $500 baht.  You could climb the pole, and then if you could grab the money, you got to keep it.  I saw a bunch of older men try, but no one could get up the pole.  Then these younger boys decided to give it a shot.  There were three of them, and they decided to climb one on top of the other in order to get to the money. 

They eventually did get the money, but the guy on top ended up standing on the second guys head.  The crowd cheered for them, but I felt bad for the two guys on the bottom.  The very bottom guy had two boys standing on him, and the middle guy had someone standing on his head.  I don't think that bothered them, because they were 500 Baht richer.  Haha

Before heading home, we headed to the shrine for my host mom's family.  We prayed to them, and left them some incense, as well as cleaned up the shrine area-free of leaves and dirt.  

Don Sak, and Surrounding Area!

Nana, one of my host moms friends, has the tendancy to "kidnap" me.  Now, that sounds bad, but its not.  She takes me to places, and most of the time I have no clue where I am going, but its an adventure, and I always make it back.  So technically I can't call it kidnapping, but more of her taking me around to visit the different sites.  We went to this small town of Ban Laem Luen.  It is a small fishing village that is located on an island about 10 minutes from Don Sak. 

 Two little houses perched on the rocks in the small town of Ban Laem Luen.  It's a fishing village, as I've mentioned before, and you had to go over a extremely large bridge in order to get to the place. 

 Looking back at the boardwalk that goes all the way around the island.  The right side is a few houses.  When the tide is up, the water will go right up to the houses, and thats why they are built on stilt type things.

 Looking back at the village.  We were moving, so it made it extremely hard to get a picture of it, but I think I got a bit of the town.  We didn't stay here long, but Nana did talk to just about everyone that we passed.  I was the main topic, they all wanted to know where I came from, who I was, where I was staying, and lots of questions like that. 

 This is the road into Don Sak.  The hill is actually pretty steep, but you can't really tell that from a picture.  The sports area is to the left of the picture.  There is a track, an field with a few small soccer nets, and then an outdoor excersize gym that I have used once....for about 10 minutes...and then I got bored, and we headed off to do something more interesting...

 On our little excursion around town, we passed a cow.  So I took a picture of it.  I miss eating beef, because my host family doesn't eat beef.  I haven't had any beef since I left Canada, and I know that I could go out and eat beef, but I don't really want to.  My host family has made the commitment not to eat it, so I made the decision to honor their way, and not eat beef as well. 

 My host mom, host aunts, Nana, and a few other people all went to this little beachside restaurant, and this is a view of where we ate.  This is looking to the left of where we sat.  The "beach" was covered in cracked shells, I tried to find a few that I could keep, but for the most part they were all broken. :(

 This is the scene to the right of where we ate...I don't know what to say about it.  I just thought it was a really pretty place, and I enjoyed looking at it.  While we ate, we could see the little fishing boats putter back and forth. 

 My Favorite Meal! I have no idea what it is called, but this is definately one of my favorite meals that I eat here.  How do you make it? Well you take the leaf, and fold it into a cone shape.  Then you take some coconut shavings (the far blue bowl-the one without the spoon and brown liquid), then add some peanuts, some dried shrimp, some ginger chunks, onion, and lime.  Then you add the sauce.  If you wanted you could add some chilli's but I find them too spicy, so I just put everything else in, minus the chilli's.  You then shove it all in your mouth at once.  Your mouth gets assaulted with a variety of different flavors, and its sooo good!!!! I love it, and when ever we have it, they all laugh at how much I eat.  I will try to get the recipe, but I don't know if we have those leaves in Canada, so we wouldn't get the entire flavor. 

 Another one of my favorite meals that I eat here.  This is a fish, but the "meat" has been dried and ground up so its all smooshed together.  Then its stuck back in the fish, and papaya, chilli's, cucumbers, cashews, and a variety of other things are added on top to eat with it.  Even though I hate to admit it, I actually like the fish, and this meal is really good. 

Looking down the beach at where we had lunch.  The building on the right is the type of building that we had lunch in :)

Nakorn Sri Thammarat

There was a Rotary District Meeting that my host mom took me to, but because it would involve me sitting in a room for a good 8 or so hours, my host mom didn't think that was fair to me, so I was allowed to go sightseeing.  Two of my other Rotary Exchange friends were there, so we got to hang out for a bit and see the town. 

Our first stop was at this temple.  I wrote the name somewhere, but I can't find it at the moment, so you will have to bear with me.  Um...not much to say about this picture, its the the big pointy thing in the background is the main part of the temple, we got to go up it and do all sorts of things-I'll explain a bit later. 

 Inside the building that has the staircase leading to the big pointy thing in the above picture.  This was a Buddha statue, and I know its somewhat rude of me to get my picture taken like this, but it was really tempting.  I didn't notice the monk behind me, but Fernanda (the girl who took the picture for me) said that he looked at me with a slight look of disaproval, so I felt a bit bad about that. 

The staircase leading up to the main part of the temple.  It's kind of a trippy picture, but we wanted to get all of the staircase in, and this was the only way we could get it all in.  There were lots of different decorations up and down the side of the staircase, featuring dragons, giants, and Buddha's.  The staircase itself was pretty impressive. 

Emi from Japan, Fernanda from Brazil and myself posing infront of the wall at the top of the temple.  It was really sunny, so I had to wear my sunglasses :).  The orange "blanket" in my hand is actually a part of a monks robe.  Fernanda wanted to keep hers, but we wouldn't let her because that wasn't really proper. 

 On our first trip around the top of the temple, we got to ring the bells that were everywhere.  If you rang every set of bells, you would have good luck.  Just about everything you do here gives you good luck, or something along those lines.  You have to walk around the temple three times, and then your wish would come true, or it would start to come true....something along those lines.  It was quite fun, but the ground was extremely hot due to the sun, and the fact that you had to take your shoes off before you entered the temple.  Bad day to wear flip flops.  haha

 A side look looking down one of the roads within the temple.  Not much to see here, and we were on a time limit, so there wasn't much time to go explore every nook and cranny of the temple. 

We did some other sights, like take in a zoo, lunch, and market, but they weren't all that special.  We were supposed to go elephant riding at the zoo, but the zoo wasn't running their elephant rides that day, so I will have to wait until December to ride my elephant. 

 Our next stop was at the Phromlok Waterfall.  If we had brought our swimming suits, or at least a spare set of clothing, we could swim, but because we didn't know this, we didn't get to swim.  We did however, get to climb all over the rocks, to get some pretty cool pictures.  I got stuck a few times, due to my insanely short legs (I blame moms genes, haha just kidding, I love you mom :)) The other people who were with us, were more than willing to help me get across, with a few short jokes made in between. 

 Fernanda, one of the guides, and myself, with the waterfall in the background.  It was a pretty nice waterfall, and it felt awesome dipping our hot feet into the cold water :)

 A picture of the actual waterfall, or at least part of it, without many people.  The second tier from the top (behind the dark pointy triangle rock) is where the majority of people swam.  We didn't go up that far because we were feeling lazy, and didn't want to climb that long distance :)

And this is a long shot of the entire waterfall from where we were standing.  It was an awesome day, but getting home late made us pretty tired.  This all happened on September 25th, 2010.

The Collection of Shrimp!

There are a lot of pictures about shrimping, so I decided to break it into a few seperate posts, so that you don't have an extremely long post on shrimping.  This next set of pictures is located at another location-a friends shrimp farm. 

The Collection of Shrimp!

 How do they collect shrimp? Well I wondered that very question, and my host mom was nice enough to go show me how they do it.  This is the guy pulling the boat that is filled with netting.  What they do is create a big circle with the netting, and then slowly bring the netting in closer, until the shrimp are all contained. 

 The starting of the circle.  It's quite big, but they do collect a lot of shrimp.  I felt bad for the guys because thy were literally swimming with the shrimp. 

 Starting to bring the net in closer to shore where the shrimp will be put into baskets, to be transfered back to the sorting area. 

 Did you know that shrimp can jump? Well...I certainly didn't until I saw it with my own eyes.  A lot of shrimp attempting to escape the net by jumping over it.  The water is all in a turmoil because of the amount of shrimp attempting to get out of the net at once.  Some of the men got smacked in the face by shrimp, causing me to chuckle a few times. 

 Once they get the net into a small enough area, they stick baskets in the water, and pull out the shrimp.  They did this for a long time, just taking out basket after basket of shrimp.  I was actually amazed at the amount of shrimp that would come out of the net. 

 Sticking the water into the shrimp buckets.  I don't think I have a picture of this, so I thought I'd show you it. 

 A really bad picture of how big a unit is.  This one is empty, but normally its full.  It was supposed to be a panorama shot that would show the entire thing, but it didn't really.  There isn't actually that middle line in it, but I guess it shows how big it is.  And don't forget there are 60 of these in one farm...that's a lot of shrimp.  You can't tell in this picture, but the entire unit is covered by red string.  There is a pole in the middle of the unit and then there is red string that goes off of it creating a canopy type thing to keep the birds out. 

 We stayed there until the sun started to set (around 6:30 7:00ish.)  and I got to witness a beautiful sunset.  I took this picture because it showed the start of the sunset as well as the unit.  The little flowery things that you can see in the picture are used to mix up the water, putting oxygen in it so that the shrimp don't die. 

 A picture of the sunset over another unit.  Not much to say, but the colors of the sunset were pretty spectacular. 

This is me attempting to be creative, taking a picture of the sunset and the reflection of it in the water of one of the units. 

So that is another set of pictures about shrimping, this time showing a differnt aspect of it.  Hope you all liked it. 

Shrimping!

My host mom's family owns two shrimp farms.  GN 1 and GN2.  Each shrimp farm has 60 units (and a unit is pretty big).  So in total they have 120 units of shrimp.  Due to the fact that there were midterm tests, and I didn't have to do the tests, my host mom needed something to do with me, so she took me to her place of work. 

 One of the ladies who works there sorting the shrimp into big and small.  I found out that it isn't all that easy to differentiate the sizes because as far as I can tell it isn't based on size, but on color, and other features.  They could do it extremely fast, and I couldn't do it at all, i honestly couldn't tell the difference, and they laughed, and attemped to help me, but eventually decided I would be better situated with a different job. 

 The same lady attempting to teach me how to tell what shrimp was what size, without much success.  There were a lot of shrimp to do, and I kept getting it wrong. 

 A picture taken by one of the workers of me sorting shrimp with my host mom (in the orange shirt) and some of the other people. 

 Loading the baskets of shrimp into the back of the truck.  Each basket would have 20 kilos of shrimp.  They would dunk them in water, and then stick them in large barrels, packed with ice and water to keep them cool. 

 One of the workers emptying a basket of shrimp onto the sorting table. 

 Dumping the shrimp from the collection barrel into another bucket.  These shrimp will then be put in a basket and sent over to the sorting tables. 

 Throwing the baskets of shrimp to the sorting table.  Not exactly a gentle proccess, more of a "let's get it done, and not dilly dally" kind of process.

 A view looking at all of the shrimp, eventually this table will be baren of shrimp.  I was amazed at the amount of shrimp that were sorted and stuck into a truck.  It's not unusual for there to be over 200, 20 kilo baskets put into a truck. 

 Looking down the original sorting table and some of the workers.  Here the shrimp will be sorted into: big, small, soft, and other piles, and then sorted down to be more specific at a different table. 

 The process of putting the shrimp from the baskets into the trucks.  As you can see there are a lot of baskets that have been sorted.

The end of the day.  Everyone had a different way to get home.  Some rode their motorcycles/scooters, others got in their truck, or in the worker truck (sitting in the back of a big truck)(kind of like a cattle truck, but not really).  Then there were these people.  There were about 10 of them who all piled into the truck, a few in the front, and then the rest of them smooshed into the back of the truck.  This is actually a common way for people to travel, and you can see them like this all over town, even in the larger cities.