Thailand 1

Thailand 1 - Khon Kaen and Surrounds

We came into Bangkok and then had a hop flight to Khon Kaen. The total trip was ~24 hours, with all the plane changes and lay-overs. By the time we got to Khon Kaen, we were pretty much wiped out! However, our hosts (La-orsri and Niwat) convinced us that we should accompany them to a wedding in a city 1.5 hours from Khon Kaen. Amazingly enough we didn't fall asleep on the ride, and once we got to the wedding, we were happy we did! We had some of the wildest food we had in Thailand (10,000 year old eggs, swim bladder soup, a lychee nut thing and various raw things that we avoided!) and was interesting to see how they celebrated marriage!

La-orsri put us up in the Sofitel Hotel in Khon Kaen. It was a wonderful, 5-star hotel and we felt like royalty! This is the view out our window on the first morning after our flight in. Khon Kaen was interesting. You can see modern building intermixed with shacks all over town. We were actually awoken at down by a cacophony of roosters!

The first day we had an opportunity to walk around the hotel. We stumbled across this open-air market, which was just so cool! Notice the various piles of hot chili peppers!

This is La-orsri showing us her lab set up for raising fairy shrimp. La-orsri has pioneered methodology for rearing large quantities of native Thai fairy shrimp to use instead of imported brine shrimp, and is quite famous in Thailand for her efforts!

Here is one of the options at the open air market - live water bugs! These guys are about 2-3 inches long and are apparently considered a delicacy? When Steve was thinking he was adventurous, he asked La-orsri which insect he should try (they eat ants, various grubs, and these water bugs), she suggested these were the best, "especially the females who are packed with eggs!" Needless to say, Steve weenied out on the insect trying option! Other strange things (from a Western point of view) were live small frogs, scorpions (not live) and small freshwater eels. The eels are actually bought to release into the local rivers as a sort of "pay back" to the cosmic good; Buddhists believe that releasing an animal that might have otherwise been killed increases one's karma and thus helps one to do better in one's next life!

So, here's a glimpse of what Steve does for "collections" of his shrimp. The shrimp produce eggs that can dry out and then sit dormant in the dirt until the water returns. Steve is here with La-orsri's graduate students collecting soil samples from various rice paddies near Khon Kaen. Steve then takes the samples back to Akron to hydrate and see if they contain the clam shrimp. In this case, he brought back soil from 9 pools and found clam shrimp in 4 of these (which is a good proportion relative to other samples he's made!).

On the trip back from the collections, we stopped in at a silk factory. It was one of the most colorful places we have ever seen!. On the back wall of this picture you can see some of the silk samples and the foreground shows these colorful silk pillows.

This woman is weaving a large silk sheet. She works the loom with her feet and passes a wooden piece back and forth among the silk threads as the loom is worked with her feet. Quite the amazing process to watch!

Scattered all across Thailand are these amazingly colorful Wats (a Buddhist's version of a church). This is one that was across the street from one of the sites Steve was collecting soil. This one was especially cool because of the golden turtles!

After Steve's various activities at KKU, La-orsri and Niwat were kind enough to accompany Steve and Claudia on their trip to Chang Mai and then down to Bangkok. They were also kind enough to drive us! This is La-orsri at the beginning of our car trip offering us some sweetened "sticky rice" (a staple of the eastern part of Thailand) that is roasted inside a piece of bamboo! You peel the bamboo to get to the sticky, sweet insides - YUM!