LFOD

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I'm a good cook. I hope none of you laughed after you read that. Today, my cooking skills were put to the test as I prepared a traditional Thai meal. Our buddies led a Thai cooking class and showed us how to make green and red curry chicken, papaya salad, pad thai, and TubTimGrob (funny name). It was so fun! Now I can take these recipes over to the U.S. and make them for all my friends. I'll make sure to add a bunch of Thai chilis so that they can feel the burn. Not really, I made the papaya salad today, and I put half a small chili in and people still thought it was spicy. Papaya salad includes garlic, coconut sugar, green beans, chilis, tomatoes, lemon juice, fish sauce, and shredded papayas and carrots, topped with peanuts. It was really good! All the Thai people thought it tasted boring though, because they usually put 2-6 chilies in, not a wimpy half of one. TubTimGrob is a dessert that was also delicious. It's fresh water chestnuts colored pink and then covered with tapioca flour. It's then boiled until the water chestnuts float. Then they are strained out and put in ice with coconut milk, and viola! A refreshing dessert. The drink was also a good recipe to take back. Butterfly pea juice as they call it. It's these purple flowers soaked in water and then mixed with sugar and lime juice. Before the lime juice, the drink was a bright blue color, and once we put the acidic lime juice in, the color changed into a bright purple, it was so cool! I was super proud to be able to make some classic Thai dishes and actually have it be edible!

After lunch we packed in the van to go to another hot spring and the umbrella factory. At the hot spring, I boiled some eggs! Like actually, basket of raw eggs in a natural hot pool of water. It cooked, but I didn't leave it in long enough, the eggs were still pretty raw. My teacher slurped them out of the egg shell, which was pretty gross. Then we spent some time soaking our feet in the hot spring mineral water, which felt delightful. My feet are silky soft now, I'll be parading around these toes to show off. The weirdest thing I've seen in Thailand so far was probably the small prairie dog on a leash at a hot spring. I kid you not. A prairie dog. Not sure why or how, but he was there, and I touched it. Another thing crossed off my bucket list.

Last stop was the umbrella factory. This place was so cool. You know those traditional Thai umbrellas? Like the little ones you see in fun drinks. There were huge ones everywhere, and artists were painting beautiful pictures on the umbrellas in front of our eyes. They did so much more than umbrellas too. Tourists would give their purses, shirts, shoes, and phone cases to be painted on. I got these beautiful white elephants painted on the back of my phone case, and I love it. There was also an umbrella festival going on in the streets, and there was music and dancers and street vendors everywhere. It was so beautiful to see all the paintings drawn on any canvas in the area. I actually bought a lot of stuff, surprisingly, and my arms were going numb from the weight of the things that I bought. You'll never guess what I saw. As we were walking through the streets of Chiang Mai, a street vendor had a bunch of thrifty shirts on display. And you'll never guess what caught my eye. A pretty pink New Hampshire shirt that said LFOD (live free or die). I was shook. How crazy is it that all the way across the world, I see a t shirt of my little tiny state in America, embellished with the phrase that I say so much my friends get sick of it.. LFOD. It was hilarious, I didn't buy it though because I can get a shirt like that literally anywhere in my state and I'm not a huge pink fan but it was still so cool. Pretty psyched about my new wooden cutting board though, I know it sounds random but everything is so cheap here so if I find something useful I like, I gotta buy it. I also had some lasagna at the market, I know it sounds weird but it was actually good, I was craving some pasta at that point. Then I saw some cheesy french fries, which were so tempting but I held myself back. As we came near to the end of the night, ready to head back, we heard some Thai musicians singing the American lyrics to "God is so good", and it just topped off the whole night. Being in a 95% Buddhist country and still being able to hear Christian music in the streets surrounded by hundreds of people is truly a testimony and and of itself. We finished the night on a high note and I have a feeling it'll only get better tomorrow.

Until next time,

Molly

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