Hill Tribes and Sunday Markets

So, I’ve moved rooms again, just across the courtyard to 2A which is a single room for 150B ($5.10) per night. The only real difference is that the bed is a single. But it’s a fairly big single anyway.

I bought a camera today. I really really want an Olympus Tough 3000, this brand new camera they’ve just brought out which is monsoon proof (in fact takes photos up to 3m under water), shockproof to 1.5m, freeze proof to -10 degrees, and charges by USB (so great when you’re travelling and have a laptop). Unfortunately none of the shops have got it over here yet. So I settled on a Kodak M341, which only cost me just over $150. It’s little and light, takes decent photos, does image stitching on board, charges by USB, and doesn’t really matter if I kill it since I didn’t break the bank on it. So get ready for full colour photos of every stupid little thing I think is funny people :-).

Yesterday (Sunday) I went to the Sunday Market with my crew of Americans (some of Lenore’s people have showed up). It was HUGE! It was centred around the Tha Phae Gate in the eastern old city wall, but extended far into the old city. Each intersection I reached I could see the market lights stretch on as far as I could see! These people are industrious! There were all kinds of crafts, amazing amounts of food, from fried pork and rice sausages to papaya chilli salad, sweet jellies, fried rice and noodles, wholesale fruit, homemade ice cream, fruit smoothies, steamed dumplings, spiral hot chips on a stick carved from a single potato!!! Amazing! Incredible amounts of fabric were on show, from their famous silk scarves, rough cotton shirts, entire bed sheets of hand embroidery, beautiful teak Buddhas and figurines, the most amazing bowls and plates made from mango wood which looks like they were carved from deep dark chocolate swirled together with caramel and set rock hard. There were wooden instruments and tops, the list goes on and on. And every few meters there were buskers, from a child playing a local kind of fiddle with a bow, an old woman dancing to the music of her husband plucking on a lute, to western circus performers who spoke less Thai than me. It was an amazing experience. I can’t believe how big it was and that they do it EVERY SUNDAY!! They truly do know how to have fun. That night the 3 Kings Monument (a statue in a courtyard with a museum behind) had an exhibition showing which seemed to be about an ancient saffron robed monk. I wonder whether he had perhaps died recently. There were hundreds of photographs, some of what looked like a pyre, and movies showing some large congregation of people, and images of this monk were everywhere. It was quite amazing. Unfortunately I was insanely tired that night, and by the time I was stumbling through the exhibition I’d been walking around for hours, had lost my posse and could barely see straight; so I hightailed it home and lay in bed for a while listening to the end of my audio book of Eldest (The Eragon guy).

The day before that I went to an exhibition inside the museum at the 3 Kings Monument which was showcasing Hilltribe artefacts, clothing, and culture. It was quite amazing, put together by a woman who has been living amongst the different hill tribes for years, recording what she can learn. I believe this was the first exhibition of her studies, with kind lending of some of the artefacts (instruments, weapons, clothes, tools etc.) from the hill tribes themselves. It was very interesting, and actually far more real than the “hill tribe” trek I did last time I was here which left me with a dirty taste in my mouth. Despite being indoors at a museum, this was informative and respectful, and very beautiful. Outside what’s more they had some of the hill tribe people showing their crafts outside. I think most of the people there probably lived in the city or surrounding towns, but the one we talked to the most (through the aid of a beautiful older Thai woman who had studied western music in America in her younger days) had at least lived amongst her tribe when she was younger. She was weaving on a back strap loom and was happy to talk to us about her time then and now, how they make their traditional dyes (she buys some of the colours now) etc. That too was very interesting. An old man played a crazy tune on a pipe made from a gourd, bamboo, and beeswax, and showed us how to weave mats out of thin strips of bamboo.

Here is an image of my humble abode (made using my new camera’s image stitching function):

Here is a photo of my golden booty (6 mangoes cost me $1):

And here is a photo of my toilet. Notice the lack of toilet paper, and the squirt gun. Once again I say: the way of the future it is. The shower is just to the left so the toilet is self cleaning. Notice also that it’s waterproof floor to walls, so the whole place can just be sprayed down by the shower. The showers over here are always those little hand held showers, so they always reach the toilet fine. These guys know bathrooms; I really don’t understand how Australians can be so blindly non-functional in this area.