The Suphanburi historical museum was vaguely interesting, although I wondered why the school selected Suphanburi as a field trip location. It’s namely an industrial province, and relative to other provinces it doesn’t have much in the way of ancient ruins or a gripping history. Suphanburi’s one claim to fame seems to be that much of the famous national poem “Khun Chang Khun Phaen” takes place in that province.
“Khun Chang Khun Phaen” is a long epic about two men, Khun Chang and Khun Phaen, who are in love with the same woman, Wanthong. The two men essentially spend the entire story fighting over Wanthong, kidnapping her, watching her sleep, marrying other women, trying to kill her child... when the love triangle debacle is brought to the King, he orders Wanthong to be executed for having two husbands. They chop her head off, while her son watches in horror. Great ending. Our coordinator seemed to think it had a good moral lesson, I decided to keep silent about my opinions regarding this tale.
We also went to a fun, crowded and busy market called Samchuk, where my students kept handing me a variety of unrecognizable foods and insisting “try it, teechur.” My one downfall was having too many sweets (sticky rice, jelly candy, sesame chews, a cherry coffee beverage, the list goes on), and I suffered the first stomachache I’ve had since arriving in Thailand.
We attended some sort of water buffalo show, which was narrated in Thai so I failed to understand its premise. The students were laughing, however, so I assume the storyline was amusing. The water buffalo performed a few tricks, including lifting their legs and smiling (I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a water buffalo smile, but it’s pretty awkward). Once midgets began dancing on the water buffalo and bounding from back to back, I decided to stop trying to gauge the academic value of this sight and just enjoy the absurdity. I can now also add water buffalo to my list of random animals I’ve ridden in Thailand.We went to several cultural monuments, including a couple locations where the students and Thai teachers prayed. As Americans we debated whether we should join them, but I decided it would be more disrespectful of me to pretend to pray than to watch silently.
Once the field trip was over, we were told the school would provide a van to Bangkok, and that we’d arrive by 6:30pm at the latest. Of course, in true Thai style we ended up taking a bus, to a van, to a cab, to the skytrain, and I arrived in my destination past 8:00pm (which was regrettable considering I’d made dinner plans with my cousins at 7:00pm). My cousins were very understanding, and we went out for a tasty dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Fuji. I spent the evening at the home of my cousins, Jeff and Prapassaree, and their small but mighty dog, Dobby.
The Satit Kaset school fair kicked off on Saturday morning at the Bang Khen campus, where we performed our line dancing routine with our students in front of parents and school administrators (an embarrassing video of this is soon to come). Our students looked great with their little cowboy hats and bandanas, and they were so full of energy—I had my first feeling of pure teacher pride, and now I hope it will carry over to something a little more scholastic than the Cotton Eyed Joe.
Afterwards we grabbed lunch at the busy Kaset fair, and I wandered Bangkok a little on my own. I spent some time looking for a cell phone (yes, I lost it already) and then just enjoyed the experience wandering through the city. I stopped every once in a while to buy random street food, and practiced haggling for clothing (I pulled the teacher card again, and a vendor bended from 220 baht to 150). I was losing steam after walking almost 10 BTS stops on foot—this distance won’t mean much to those of you who have never been to Bangkok, but it’s a fair amount to trek with a full backpack. Sarah, another teacher from my school, invited me to her uncle’s really nice apartment in the city, where he greeted me with a taste of home with some California dried figs and raisins.
That evening we went out to a swanky bar called the Sky Bar, which overlooked the entirety of Bangkok. Drinks cost almost 500 baht, which for Thailand currency is really steep, but it was worth it for the view and ambiance. I got a drink called “Air” made with Grey Goose and real peach puree, with lychees floating on the bottom. The temperature was perfect, we had live jazz in the background and the city sparkled below us. We went out to an Irish Pub afterwards, but I called it a night pretty soon afterwards because I was tired of paying the cost of a five-course meal for a beer.
On Sunday we took a trip to the National Museum, where we saw, well, a lot of Buddhas. Old Buddhas, newer Buddhas, Buddhas Subduing Mara, Buddhas standing with their hands out, Buddhas with four arms, Buddhas with two arms…. The list goes on. There were also several ornate cabinets I wished I could take home with me, and a tablet engraved by the inventor of the Thai alphabet. I learned a little more about Thai history, although I’m not sure if many of the names stuck.
I also experienced a brief bout through Chinatown, which was so packed with stands, people, vehicles and food we could hardly move. Stores were crowded between buildings and almost spilling onto the street, and they offered anything from Chinese calendars to an entire cooked pig. We were traveling in a rather awkward crowd of seven, and I decided that next time I would only go with one other person, just for the sake of squeezing through stands and finding somewhere to sit.
I finally caught a bus back to Chonburi, my home sweet home where a gecko greeted me at the door and my bathroom was flooded from a leak. How I missed it!
Teacher photo of the week:
Thanks for another weekend adventure and story!
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