Blogs from Phrae, Northern Thailand, Thailand, Asia

An amazing ceremony with thousand of people chanting together on New Year Eve. with each head tied with white thread all linked skyward, connected like a weaving web, and amplified their prayer with their bonding spirit. since my new year eve for the last decade had been submerged only by thundering crackers and war zone fire work in China. last night was like a fresh breeze and drizzle on the arid skin! Phrae is an relaxing little city with very little western tourists, even the number of Thai tourist are not significient huge. like all places in Thailand, temples are the main sight, put aside which is the oldest, the grandest, the holiest relics from buddha....voted with my own liking. I would pick the Burmese style teak wood temple Wat Chom Sawan, and the Wat Phrathat ... read more

It has been an amazing summer so far, and it's going to be incredibly hard to leave my friends and coworkers behind. In a happy coincidence, our August staff appreciation party falls on the day before we depart. I have officially wrapped up my project work, and am in the final stages of handing everything off to others. I leave at 9 am tomorrow for Chiang Mai with Jessica, Laith and Rose, spend one last day in one of my favorite cities, and then catch the night bus to Bangkok to meet Wes, Liv and David. Of course, a whole new adventure starts then, so I can't complain too much. This morning I said my goodbyes to Auntie Aomdoi. It was hard, and I must confess that if you looked closely you'd find a hint of ... read more

The reason we had a long weekend was in honor of a Buddhist holiday on Thursday and Friday. In order for the non-Thai staff at Warm Heart to learn about the Buddhist traditions. Now that we are well into the rainy season, the monks stay at the Wats until the season ends, so we decorated a 3 month candle to give to them to use for light during their long stay inside. It has been great to participate in some of the religious ceremonies here, as it lends a lot of insight to the people here. The holiday weekend caused us to give up on work by 2:30, and we were off to Chiang Mai to catch our (my friend Huyen was traveling with me) bus to Bangkok. Since we left 3 hours earlier than anticipated, ... read more

Tonight was an exciting evening. Last night we had met a few of the local policeman and chatted with them and the Aomdoi owners and staff. It was a lot of fun, with much poorly spoken Thai on their parts, and a lot of understanding on their part when someone would butcher a word so badly that it was accidentally now a dirty word. Good times! But the best part was that we convinced them to teach us how to cook Pad See-ew tonight. Pad See-ew is a wide noodle dish that is sweet, sour and spicy all at the same time. Tasty! To start, we learned how to cut the noodles from large sheets of rice noodle. The cut noodles were mixed with a thick black sauce. Then you heat up oil in a wok ... read more

The Thai market, while not unique as far as markets go, is a wonderful experience. There are rows and rows of fruits, vegetables, clothing, cleaning supplies...anything you could possibly need. Like most towns, Thai has a permanent market that is open 7 days a week. This is the market that we visited on Sunday night. Rose, Gaudhi, Andy and I were taken into town by a friend of Rose's friend. We gave her a list of the things we needed, and she quickly and efficiently led us through the stalls, taking us to the locations with the best bargains. Dish soap here, toilet paper there, fresh fruit across the way. It was fun to race through the maze picking up our items as quickly as possible. Better yet, we were treated to Thai teas and then ... read more