I think we gain the most appreciation for things when we go without them for awhile.
For my first six months in Thailand, I was the only teacher my company placed in my province. The closest foreigners I knew were over 2 hours away. This helped me in many ways; it necessitated my learning Thai, figuring things out for myself, and truly immersing in the culture here. However, I must admit, at times I felt very lonely.
In my second term teaching in Thailand, things changed. My company partnered with two other schools in my city, and suddenly an influx of foreign teachers ensued. I met up with two of them and we became fast friends. They are a couple of my favorite people on earth, and they have so enhanced my time teaching here for the past few months. In this post, I will document some of our adventures, along with some of the reasons that I have come to deeply appreciate finding like minds while so far from home.
Meet Genie and Amanda, a lovely couple from Minnesota, USA.
They moved to Thailand in May, about seven months after I moved here. They are teachers in the English Program at a nearby high school.
We first met in late May, as soon as I had recovered from my bout of illness (read about that here). This is the first photo of us together, from the night that we met! This was a Saturday, the day of the weekly night market by the river. This night market became a ritual for the three of us to attend together every week following this one. We love to get an array of foods and drinks to share.
Already together again the next day, at the huge walking market in town, $0.60 popsicles in tow.
One of my favorite things about having friends here now is, although it was fun to explore my town on my own and discover its many gems, it adds a whole other layer to get to share the experiences with others. Bringing them to my favorite temple, the naga statues, the markets, and the river that I had become so used to at this point made these things new again for me. I got to see my town through the eyes of people who had never seen it before. This has been more enriching than I can explain in words.
In addition to sharing things I have already experienced with my new friends, we have also ventured out into unexplored territories together, such as the Sunday night market by the railroad.
Here we found sweet puppies up for adoption, eager for pets and love (and we were more than willing to oblige!).
Another week, with even smaller puppies:
At one of these night markets, an idea was born - we decided to create a joint Instagram account for photos of all of the delicious Thai foods we were enjoying together!
The account is called @thaifoodobsession on Instagram. Have a scroll through and follow if you like looking at pictures of food as much as we do!
Another majorly cool benefit of having friends here: I've finally gotten to try a bunch of the foods that have looked good to me for months, because I actually have people to share them with! Our typical pattern is to buy a ton of food and just split it all three ways. It's excellent.
An example of a night market haul: sushi, pineapple, sandwich, lychee, 3 bobas, a pancake on a stick, and mango sticky rice.
Our favorite way to get our sushi fix: this night market stand which offers 11 pieces of sushi for 50 baht - that's about $1.60 USD.
Check out the variety!! My personal favorites are the plain salmon sushi and the quail egg-topped delights (back left).
Also crucial to every meal possible: Thai pineapple. These are nothing like pineapple I've had in the States. This type of pineapple is very small, sweet, and not so acidic that it makes my mouth numb and painful (US pineapple = OUCH!). The vendors at the Saturday market have the best of the best. I can confidently say that this is one of Genie's favorite foods in Thailand.
One of our favorite places to eat is at my student PP's family's restaurant. Right on the river, this is just such an enjoyable place to dine. Also, PP and his family are so lovely and welcoming every time! Not to mention that the food is DELICIOUS. Pictured above: fish salad, stir-fried morning glory, and khao jee tod (sticky rice patties fried in egg).
A boon of having friends: I got to try the restaurant's famous barbecue dish! It's quite the experience. They bring a fire pit to your table and set you up with seafood and meats and vegetables to cook on the barbecue top or in the broth bowl surrounding it. It is divine.
Another time, we tried the tilapia soup (soup made similarly to barbecue above, but in a large bowl instead of with a barbecue top). This was the best tilapia any of us had ever tried.
Here's us with PP, my darling sixth grader student. His mom gifted us some dragonfruits! I am so grateful to this family. They have taken care of me throughout my time in Thailand, and now they take care of my friends as well.
Moving on from food for now...
Amanda and Genie had the brilliant idea of trying out the 99 baht ($3) 45-minute foot massages at the Saturday night market. This is now a part of my week that I look forward to without fail. (A few weeks in, we also added on the 99 baht 30-minute back/shoulder massages... $8 including tip for 75 minutes of riverside massage bliss.)
This is Chan, the incredible painter in our town who sells his art at the Saturday market. Amanda and Genie bought one of his most beautiful pieces, a naga (Nong Khai/Buddhist mythology sea serpent) in the Mekong, the river we live by. We have since purchased 3 more paintings of his... they get more and more discounted every time! We love Chan!
Now for some specific stand-out days with my two dear farang (Thai word for foreigner) friends:
Genie's Birthday
Genie's birthday fell on a national holiday in Thailand, so we had the day off (on a Tuesday! Woo-hoo!) and boy did we make the most of it!
We started the day with breakfast and coffee by the river.
We then visited the Sunken Stupa, a pagoda (pointed temple) that tipped over and collapsed into the river almost 100 years ago. See the bottom corner of the stupa sticking out of the water in the middle of the river? We joke that the stupa now has dual citizenship, as it is about equidistant from the Thailand and Laos shores of the river.
Happy girls and a sunken stupa on a gorgeous day!
This temple was built following the collapse of the stupa, to honor and commemorate the fallen Buddhist monument. The girls and I were blessed by a monk inside, signified by the yellow strings on our wrists.
Our next stop was Sala Keoku, the sculpture park in our town (I wrote a full post about it some months back; see more of this awesome place here!).
It was so fun to revisit this magical place with people who had never seen it before. This was my fourth visit, but seeing it with Genie and Amanda made it feel new to me, too!
Every time I visit this park, I see new elements that never cease to amaze me. This nagi (female naga) has hair entirely made up of snakes, and she has 13 smaller nagis wrapped around her tail!
A highlight of the visit was of course feeding the giant catfish in the many small lakes in the park.
They were hungry, and we had an entire loaf of bread to offer!
We saw this awesome giant soft-shelled turtle swimming in the lake. I've never seen one of these at Sala Keoku, and this day there were many! We fed a smaller one some bread later on.
After touring around the rest of the park, we took some obligatory photos. Genie and me...
...me and Amanda...
...and the three of us!
Next, we did our classic "3 girls 1 moped" all the way across town, to the Nong Khai Aquarium.
We've gotten quite good at this! 3 girls, 1 moped is our specialty. (When solo, I ride a bike, and the girls share this moped; once we figured out that we could all 3 fit on the moped, the game was changed!)
The aquarium was very cool. I had never been here before, so it was new to all of us! Check out the handsome Queensland Grouper above.
Genie got along well with this Mekong catfish, from the river bordering our town!
We enjoyed this immersive tunnel very much.
Ah, to see the world through the eyes of this sweet baby!
We were there during feeding time, meaning that there was a diver with a basket of sliced bananas swimming through the huge tank feeding the fish and delighting all onlookers. This was an awesome feature of the aquarium visit!
On our way out, we saw some very neat spotted sting rays. The aquarium was only freshwater fish, so it didn't have the same variety as aquariums I've been to near the ocean, but it was a very cool experience and I'm glad that we went!
For dinner, we went to none other than PP's family's restaurant.
I brought birthday candles, which we put into khao jee tod and Genie's favorite fish salad!
Another friend of ours, who is also a teacher at their high school, joined us for dinner, where he revealed that this day was also his birthday!! He didn't want a big deal made of it, so I discreetly stuck a candle into his food and we did a very sneaky/quiet rendition of "happy birthday" for him.
I don't have a picture of it, but PP's family bought Genie a jello birthday cake, which they surprised us with at the end of our meal! They are simply the sweetest.
Check out Genie's blog post about this day here!
Movie Outing Day
One Saturday, we decided to venture to a neighboring province to see a movie in English!
We went to the huge mall complex in Udon Thani, about an hour drive from where we live. (We took a van for this outing - too far for 3 girls, 1 moped!)
The mall had a fully functioning Toys R Us inside!!! I was shocked; these are completely out of business in the US, so the inner child in me was thrilled to see this.
There were also music stores, clothing stores, tech stores, makeup stores, everything one could desire in a mall! It was five stories and massive. I have never been in a mall so large!
Next, we found gelato. Look how many flavors!! I felt like a kid in a candy shop for most of this day.
We got hazelnut, mint, and cappuccino.
Happy girls, blissed out in air conditioning on skin and ice cream in hand!
Genie then gave me space buns and I became a true child again. We visited this store called Moshi Moshi, filled with adorable Japanese things, like this wall of stuffed toys!
Then, we made another sensible adult food choice when we found churros. Served with sweetened condensed milk and chocolate sauce for dipping!
The highlight of the day was the movie we saw: The Lion King, in English with Thai subtitles. The Lion King is one of my favorite things ever and it had been at least a decade and a half since I'd seen the original movie, so this just made me so very happy. The soundtrack to the Lion King musical is my all-time favorite. I cried four times during this movie, no shame.
The last photo from this day is of a shop name that simply tickled me: "Oh! My cheese! By Arthur."
Aside from ending the day in a bit of a sugar coma, this was a simply fantastic adventure.
Nong Khai Photo Shoot Weekend
On another, stormier weekend, we did a fun photoshoot around our town of Nong Khai. First stop was my favorite temple and the naga statues.
Me with my handsome Buddha boyfriend!
Next was Doichang Cafe, a delightful coffee shop where we had a yummy squid rice dish and some essential caffeine. It was the owner's mother's birthday, and they shared her cakes with all of the customers for free! So sweet, literally and figuratively.
Fed (and WAY too caffeinated... but that was just me), we went to Nong Thin, a beautiful park that we go to almost every day to exercise.
We had always seen these cement log-like things from afar, but none of us had explored them up close. I, extremely caffeinated (as mentioned), went sprinting through the park to reach these quickly and get out some energy. Unfortunately, I got a bit tangled up with some horse flies... literally, they got caught in my hair... and got myself a NASTY horse fly bite on my arm.
This was by far the most painful bug bite I have ever had, and I have had a lot of bug bites. Can you see it, on my upper bicep? It swelled up massively and I was in severe pain for quite awhile. Thank goodness I know how to act, so I could smile for some photos and pretend to be distracted!
Genie's confidence enticed me to climb up on the logs, but only to the lowest ones. I'm a scaredy cat. She's not.
We did get some terrific photos on the bridge!
Life hack to get the best laughing pictures: get yourself some photographers who genuinely crack you up.
I really love these humans. Aren't they gorgeous?
Last stop was the night market for massages and good food. Genie captured me and Amanda, blissed out. I had taken some painkillers at this point so I was feeling better from my fly bite enough to relax.
The next day, we continued our cafe exploration of Nong Khai. We visited Cake at Toey's and enjoyed the most delicious carrot and toffee cakes.
We decided to drive on the riverside road for kilometers further than we had ever gone, and we happened upon this awesome temple.
Monday was a holiday, in honor of Mother's Day and the Queen Regent's birthday. We went to my favorite vegetarian restaurant for lunch, where they were serving free food to honor all mothers! It was delicious. (They tried to feed us for free too, but we're not mothers, so we slipped some money to one of the girls that works there.)
The cafe mission continued! This time we went to a shop that has a stop sign reading the word "coffee" outside it. We do stop for coffee, so we could not pass this up. Amanda got a butterfly pea milk tea, I got a milo bomb (basically chocolate milk), and Genie got a blended matcha. We also shared a slice of light and fluffy Thai custard cake.
All-in-all, a wonderful weekend with such wonderful people.
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This wraps up my post about my "foreign friends," Genie and Amanda, with whom I have had the pleasure of spending the past few months in Nong Khai. It has been such a pleasure to share so many experiences with like minds from a like culture. We appreciate things in a similar way, and man do we enjoy our time exploring, learning, and growing together.
3 girls, 1 moped forever!!
Until next time...
J’adore tes histoires! Bon Voyage! Quelles aventures!!! 💖 Madame
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