Couldn't sleep this morning. So I got up at 5:30 and ended up at the morning market not much later. I love the morning market. It's not a whole lot different from the evening market, except that it's two streets over. The morning market consists of lots of old ladies sitting on stools 4 inches off the ground, or on the ground, and selling fresh veggies or fruits on wooden boards 6 inches off the ground. You also have some carts where people have huge bowls of "gop khow" or 'with rice.' It's the food you will eat with your plate of rice- curries and fried veggies and soups and noodle dishes. And then you have people with buckets of flopping fish for sale. Also at the morning market you have a few stalls of places to get yummy noodle soup or rice soup.
I got a few veggies, some wonton skin- as I plan to attempt fried wontons today, knome crook- my favorite coconut treat, some masaman curry paste- also plan to attempt masaman curry, chicken, half a kilo of jack fruit, and a bag of peeled garlic. All for less than 2 dollars.
I also saw my som tam lady friend. So I sat down on her bench and chatted with her as I ate my knome crook. We chatted about the world cup, as Thais are huge soccer fans and think all farangs are huge soccer fans too. I helped her pull the leaves of the green leafy veggie 'fuck tong.' Yes it's really called that. And she put me to work sitting on one of those 3 inch benches washing tomatoes.
It's been nice to be in my town the past few weekends. Before that I was in Bangkok and went to the North East to Nong Khai to meet up with friends. Next weekend I have to go to Bangkok again for my GAD GID (Gender and Development group which is a Peace Corps Global Initiative Group). Then after that we have a long weekend and I'm headed to Pataya beach with my friends.
Kong Khai was a really cute town and we had an adorable guest house right on the Mekong River across from Laos. Nong Khai has a great market along the Mekong which I walked down with AJ. But it was so hot we all mostly just sat around at the guest house. My Bangkok weekend was lots of fun too. One night we went out to 'ride the bull' -a mechanical bull. Duh Rachel. We had about 10 or so volunteers, as many of our nights go. Started at Cheap Charlies- an outside bar where we sit on stools on a side street and any drink is 50 or 60 Baht ($1.25-$1.50). The night was a celebration for my friend Dan's last night in Thailand. He has been a volunteer here for over 3 years!
Bangkok, and Thailand, has a reputation for it's sex industry which isn't unfounded. And there are certain areas where it's all very blatant. Unfortunately that's where the fun mechanical bull is. So we went to aforementioned bar which also happens to have pole dancing women on a stage. They are sort of off to the side and easy to ignore. We were happily taking turns on the bull- trying to beat 60 seconds and get a free drink- when at one point they turned off the bull and wouldn't let us go. Turned out it was show time on the stage. And there wasn't much else to do but watch. Two women were dancing on the stage in what was supposed to be a sexy routine, but they looked so bored, as I'm sure they do this routine 5 times every day. The cool thing is that it was actually raining on them! They had a rain machine on the stage. Maybe some of the guys would debate with me that that was 'the cool thing' about it.
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