Thailand's Glass Temple

I knew I wanted to see this place when I saw images of the intricately woven mosaic tiles on my sister's Instagram. I mean, who doesn't have Thailand on their bucketlist? But this temple - The Glass Temple - isn't one I'd seen along Bangkok, Phuket and other favorite places in this area of South East Asia. Luckily for me, the itty town of Phichit sits pretty closely to this marvel, making it an easy Saturday day trip.

The girls and I got up early, and hopped on bikes to ride through the still snoozing Phichit, past the Pad Thai place, over a narrow bridge suspended over chocolatey brown water to the old train station. A ticket that was real-life punched by a man in a conductor's uniform got us to the metropolis that is Phitsanulok. Now, this made tiny Phichit look even smaller. Though it was still early, rows of shops bustled, huge outdoor fruit markets were flooded with customers man handling tiny bunches of bananas and a glittering row of colorful tuk-tuks honked their horns, eager to zoom through traffic to get you to  your destination. We hopped into one and rode to the bus station, where a good deal of charades (and showing a few people a string of Thai instructions - or so we were told) got us onto the right bus. It was a sleepy ride out of P-lok. The 3 hours passed quickly, distancing ourselves from the city and passed little hut-like shops on the outskirts of town selling a menagerie of snacks. These faded quickly too and our tired sounding bus trekked higher into incredibly green mountains as passengers got on and off and seemingly random and unplanned stops. Mountain villages were few and far in between and we'd passed into another world but I felt we were getting close to Nai Mueang. Showing our driver the Thai instructions, we were told to get off here so we did. 

Apparently, "here" was the split between 2 major freeways; not exactly where I figured the Glass Temple would be. Luckily 2 men were there to negotiate a tuk tuk ride up to the temple. It took some time to negotiate how long we wanted him to wait up at the temple and how much we were willing to play - this gambling game is just that, a total game. Our driver spoke only Thai and unfortunately, the second man wouldn't be coming so we were eager to make our demands clear. Success. We piled into the tuk-tuk, knees bent and humidity curled tendrils whipping across our faces as we made the windy road into the mountain, the tip of the stacked white Buddha Temple peeking between the emerald hills. 

And we were there....I knew I'd have a difficult time describing this place and I hate to be one to say "you just have to see it for yourself" but you just have to see it for yourself. We decided to overwhelm ourselves first with the Buddha Temple, first taking off our shoes so our feet could step across the swirling mosaic flooring. As if that wasn't enough detail to take in, the massively stark Buddha's framed against the mountains was something else to take in. I had to tear myself away, being told by the girls that the other temple was way - way - better.

Oh they were right. The circular patterns on the ground, the plates and crushed tea sets set into columns that melted into more intricate swirls, huge pillars, rainbow mosiacs creating a staircase into more tiny and tiled patterns that folded into winding corridors. All of it, every single inch, was covered in hand laid mosaics. 

It was mesmerizing. 

It was absolutely mesmerizing. 

And our pre-negotiated 3 hours seemed more like 30 minutes and we were already well overdue, so we met our agitated tuk-tuk driver and made the ride down the hill where he dropped us off in the middle of an interstate. It was an adventure getting back to Phichit; Apparently the bus we had taken up there was due to come in about 40 minutes, or not at all. We met a man with an empty pickup truck who was willing to take us to to P-lok for about 3 times as much as we had paid for our bus ticket up here. The lack of windows, doors and places to sit made that a tempting offer. Luckily our bus did arrive at the unceremonious interstate stop (the same bus actually, driver and everything) and we all snoozed through a odd Thai film that seemed to straddle the line between horror and comedy. We made the best of our evening in P-lock, taxi'ing over to the crowded walking street to pick up *real* Adidas sweatshirts and all manner of street food. A late night train ride got us back to Phichit where a ride through the dark streets (all while avoid the dogs that keep watch) got us to our school, where we talked, snacked and laughed...and still marveled at the Glass Temple until about 3 AM.

Phichit's Pad Thai

I'll spare you the agony of explaining every single moment that happened the week I spent in Phichit, Thailand, but I'm showing no mercy when it comes to the Pad Thai. You've been warned. 

The girls and I bid goodbye to the island of Koh Chang (aka, dreamy paradise land) and boarded the bus to Bangkok which would drive through the night and drop us all off where my sister had called home for the past 4 month; the itty bitty town of Phichit. It didn't look like much around 3 AM but the sunrise quickly brought me to my senses. Consensus? It's adorable. Day one was spent recuperating from my travels while the girls taught - but of course I bolted upstairs to see a classroom of cuties during their "milk bread" the second I got the text. Um...imagine dozens of little Thai kids just hanging out, drinking cartons of milk. Dy....ing. It was so adorable. After class was over, it was really time to crack down and see the highlight reel of Phichit. The girls would all be leaving for America at the end of the week and needed to hit their favorite spots just one more time and we had a lot of cram in. I was only so happy to agree. 

So that's what happened that week. I wandered around the grassy grounds of the school, peeking into banana laden wheelbarrows while the girls taught, then we would snag the rusty bikes parked under the trees and wave at all the locals as we rode into town, determined to eat as much food as possible. We stopped at roadside stands and slurped up "yellow noodles", finishing them off with scoops of ice cream before shopping for dozens and dozens of socks (my favorite pair I purchased is adorned with dragonfruits. I adore dragonfruits). There were several 7-11 runs made (purchasing 5 Baht candies, these ice cream cones I was infatuated with in China and to snag bottles of chocolate milk and containers of the microwaveable lava cake. Sevey is life). Restaurants serving plates of cashew chicken and lemon chicken encircled by fried kale were devoured. We peeked into shops and stalls, searched through flea markets and wandered our way through vendors selling piles of old sweat shirts, mingled with stalls laden with fried bananas, next to creaking tables piled high with mysterious to me soups sold in bags. I love it here. 

The bike ride into town was both cute and a bit rough in the heat, though I'm told December is the nicest month to visit Thailand - we whizzed past the little roundabout, chatting about life in Thailand while pointing out favorite haunts while locals shouted out "hellos". Just cute, cute, cute. The real obsession though for me was the cocoa and the Pad Thai. And the roti. And just all the food in Thailand, but I digress. I'd heard about the magic of cocoa from Laura for months and was just itching to get my hands on a bag of the stuff. I drank my weight of that stuff in a very short amount of time. Embarrassing? Nope. I even made the mistake/excellent life choice to start the day off with both a bag of cocoa AND a bag of Thai tea. It must have amounted to about a full can and a half worth of sweetened condensed milk and I downed both.  Ah...and I digress again  Onto cocoa: It's rich - a velvety chocolate that's bitter and biting, mellowed out by the silky and sweet condensed milk that is stacked in pyramids at every reputable establishment. There's a splash of evaporated milk too that adds a creaminess, all poured over ice. It's yummmm. 

And to make things even better, the best cocoa place is right across the street from *the best* Pad Thai in Thailand. I didn't even need to take a bite before falling in love. Someday I'll speak as fondly about a person than I do about this Pad Thai. Possibly.

 It's the classic Asian situation where rickety plastic chairs surround rickety plastic tables and you walk in, and the cute lady at the wok just smiles and nods before cracking eggs expertly into the fired steel rim. Rice noodles are tossed in along with a range of other ingredients, all quickly stirred together into a steaming mass and divided up onto plates. Top liberally with crunchy and fresh bean sprouts, douse in a squeeze of lime and sprinkle with crushed peanuts. Unreal. Wash it down with a chilled Thai Tea and be sad that nothing else you could ever purchase or make will be as good as the Pad Thai here. Needless to say, we went many times before hitting up the 7-11 on the way home again, before stopping off to get roti. 

Trust me, there was more things going on besides eating...but not much.  The girls and I would stay up late in the evenings, talking and laughing and attempting to put off the inevitable task of packing. Oh and the kidsssssssss. I loved them oh so much after only one week and watching the teachers say goodbye only brought memories of the sob-fest which happened after a semester in China.  But who wants to read about that? (If you do, check out this post and get tissues) but we are all here to hear about more food. So onto the roti. Again, a favorite I'd been hearing about and I wasn't shy about ordering. Round 1 and I got 4 of these beauties and ate myself sick. It's a thin dough, slapped and rounded out till paper thin before sizzling in a liberal pool of bubbling fat on a flattop — the start of something good. The edges get folded in, crisping up in the fat before it is flipped and drizzled liberally with sweetened and condensed milk. Fold up in a wrapper that starts to bleed a lovely oil sheen before you can even get your hands on it, then take a bite. It's crunchy, sweet, toasty warm and leaves a lip-gloss shine behind and I obviously was too infatuated to take  a proper picture of it. Oh well. 

It's a good thing there was a lot of biking involved this week, because there sure was a lot of eating. 

Scoot-Scoot Sisters in Thailand.

You know you are living life right when you change into a still salty swimsuit before even meandering down to breakfast. A wooden table perched on the upper deck of a small neighboring restaurant provided a glimpse of the sea (and limitless cocoa and pineapple) which was fine in my book. After breakfast, I caught Clem by the pool, who had rented a scooter to find a bungalow where she could spend the rest of her week in Koh Chang. We said our goodbyes and promised visits if we were in each other's neighborhoods. I'd love to visit Spain and let Clem know I'd send her a message if I was in her neck of the woods. 9:00 AM seemed the ideal time to park it on the sugar sand and meet some hermit crab friends before Laura and her other teachers would be arriving. I poked around at the little bistro type restaurants that stretched across on side of the beach and opted to camp out in the opposite and commercially abandoned side of the beach, by a little islet that was cut by a deep channel before the ocean shallowed out on a sandbar. It was gorgeous which was good, because I was dying for Laura and her little entourage to finally get here. 

I got antsy and decided to wait by the hostel's pool and before I knew it, there they were! Aw, sisters in Thailand. The girls got all checked in and I gave them the grand tour; Adorable hostel, cute pool, rad music playing, shaded 1 minute waltz to the beach, then paradise itself. They were tickled. And on the calendar? Nothing but sun and sand. We all made camp at the deserted side of the beach where we collected sand dollars galore and McKenzie and Kelsi (Laura's little group of 3 she's been partial to since Day 1 of teaching) filled me in on who was who. It was a delight to put a face to the names I've been reading/hearing about for the past semester. 

You can only take so much sun before rinsing off and keeping your salt swirled curls while you search for dinner; and we were in luck. The 7-11 (a favorite haunt) had the cutest little kabob lady right there which you just can't say no to. Royally purple cabbage, crisp cucumber and pops of orange carrot kept things fresh, a spicy sauce mellowed out by a creamy mayo smoothed over the crunchy ends of the shaved spit of chicken all wrapped in a blistered tortilla type wrapper. Addicted to Thailand's Kabobs at first bite.

We wouldn't dream of missing the sunset so it was back to the beach before getting dinner (more curry please!) at our breakfast place and staying up late (poolside of course) that evening before planning on Sunday's itinerary: scooters.  

Pinapple, toast, cocoa, noodles and repeat was breakfast before hopping 2 to a scooter ($3 each) for the whole day. Zoom, zoom and Laura and I were off, zipping passed roadside signs, brightly colored in Thai, down steep (crazy steep) and windy jungle roads, blitzing past 7-11's and a Chinese Temple. The wind that whipped our hair drowned out our conversation, meaning I could really catch up on who was who. We all stopped to fill up on water and ice creams at Sevey before finding another good beach. We turned down narrow roads to find a red sand beach which was good, but we were looking out for something...something else. When peeking down a sharp dip down (which was actually a road) a man in a truck pulled us over and said "If you have fear, do not go. But it is a beautiful beach." That was our something else. Leaning back and heavily on the brakes, Laura and I made our treacherous way down a pothole riddled road that spilled out into a pool of asphalt, creating a break in the jungle. Then, a little path opened up to my favorite beach to day. 

Koh Chang's white sand beach is just everything you wanted. Fringed with dense greenery, glittering waters seamlessly melted into truly sugar sandy shores. We all bought tons of these elephant printed tapestries to nap on before venturing out to find lunch. Hopping on scooters let us find a noodle house (Pad See Ew, always) right next to passionfruit and mango smoothies for around $1.50. Have I already mentioned how perfect this day has been so far? We ventured into a bayou-like Lagoon before going to our beach for the sunset..then off to more food.  A long scoot back to the food street let us walk down while drooling and wanting to taste all the things. 

Smoky stalls swirling woks full of thick noodles and oyster sauced vegetables, kabobs studded thick with chicken and vegetables, quail eggs carefully cracked and skewered, noodles swimming in a soup  — sold in bags, mind you...oh, and ice cream. We fell in love with this lady who made massive amounts of Pad Thai for around $1 and we made short work of it and got more smoothies on our walk back, of course. Next up was shopping; discovering last minute trinkets the teachers were collected before going back home. After things stated closing down, me, Laura and Kenzie piled on one scooter (Asian Style) and I held on by my legs, laughing the whole scoot home which didn't stop once we got to the pool to talk and laugh some more. Not bad, Thailand. Not bad at all.

Hello, Thailand

As it so happens, my sister Laura has been teaching English in Thailand for the past 3-4 months and as you may know, it is loads cheaper to fly to Thailand from than it is to fly from the States. Go figure. So that was the plan; hop over to Thailand for 2 weeks to see what life has been like for the little sister (pull my arm, right?) And let me tell you, life in Thailand is an absolute dream.

It was a tiny bit of a hassle to actually get there; an early flight from from Singapore to Bangkok where I picked up some Thai Tea before waiting for my tiny airplane to take me to the tiny airport of Trat, Thailand. The customs line was stuffed with a bunch of partying teens waiting to wreck havoc on Bangkok and I was all too happy to be bused onto the tarmac to board this itty-bitty plane to a more remote place in Thailand. The flight was brief and gorgeous; glittering rice patties faded once you hit the ethereal cloud layer before landed besides the jewel tone ocean. Seriously, the Trat airport can't really even be called an airport; a stretch of road cut away from the jungle made the runway where a wooden platform and covered roof created the terminal. Oh, and topiary elephants adorned the entrance. So. Cute.  A bus took me to the ferry over to the island of Koh Chang where I met the lovely miss Clementine; French-raised and Spain-resdeint, Clem has literally been everywhere. The kind of traveler whose well worn passport flips open to show double stamped sections and visas from around the world. Okay, I'm only a teeny bit envious.

We actually were staying at the same hostel (the adorable Pajamas Hostel) which doesn't seem too much a coincidence because if you have the chance to stay at a hostel called "Pajamas" that boasts both a pool and a 2 minute walk to white sands, why wouldn't you stay there? After the ferry salty breeze properly got my curls all out of order we bused through the jungle to the hostel and settled in to paradise- I mean, our rooms. It was reminiscent of Mikanos, the white washed walls painted with deep blue shutters which is never a bad thing.

It didn't take long to wander off to find the beach and 2 minute advertised walk was an exaggeration. A paved suspended walkway opened to white sand and Instagram-worthy water, dotted with sailboats and fringed by dense foliage's mine in less than a minute. Beachside mango smoothies were then in order, of course, before the warm sun melted into a creamy orange before dipping into the sea. Next up, checking out the local restaurant scene for yellow curry and papaya salad while chatting about adventures. There is something about talking with someone who craves that same sense of adventure and excitement from being thrown in a completely new culture that you look for.  Despite the sparkling conversation, I'd been up since 4 AM and called it an early night, slipping into white sheets listening to the sharp squawking jabs of the local birds that peppered the evening's oceanic soundtrack. No surprise, I woke up feeling like I was still dreaming.

Singapore's Joss Sticks

I'd been feeling a little reminiscent of China being here in Singapore but couldn't really put my finger on it. Then it hit me; I'd recently spent months and months in a country that had thousands — thousands — of years of history. Weekends were filled exploring neighborhoods that were encircled with a city wall that had withstood dozens of attacks over the hundreds of years. Pagodas had been burned and rebuilt and burned and rebuilt again. Everything was so old, so ancient and so embedded with a sense of history. Singapore has many things, but it doesn't emit that cultural history like China does.

So imagine my delight when my church planned an activity to explore one of the only lasting arts this country has to its name; joss sticks. These incense sticks are commonly found in countries all over South East Asia, India and mainland China but underwent a transformation when brought to Singapore. This man's store front is found in one of the industrial neighborhoods, a cab dropped my off where I wove my way through storefronts crowded with engines to be repaired, furniture to be mended, and motorcycles to be fixed until I knew I was in there right place. Intricately carved six-foot tall incense sticks were sort of a dead giveaway.

Tay Guan Hong's workshop was dusty; various tools you'd expect and other you wouldn't, hung from various hooks and strings from the ceiling, where bags of a rich brown clay lay wrapped in a thick plastic. Various wire forms were halfway formed into a man carrying baskets of fish or about to artfully blow into a flute were strewn about, carefully drying and waiting until they were completed.

Tay did a careful demonstration and explanation of his craft; the clay he uses is simply ground cinnamon bark and water, that's it. This tradition has been in his family for generations, who brough and elaborated it from Mainland China. Tay carves various figurines, Christmas ornaments and gingerbread houses for the Christian population, and of course the enormous Joss Sticks. He used mostly his hands in the demonstration, and the only tools he did rely on can be found at any fast food spot. A straw helped him carve out details with a flick of his very experienced wrist. He carefully formed a hand, then snipped 5 fingers before deftly folding a thick pancake of clay into a beautifully draped sleeve and robe. It was ah-mazing to watch. 

I left still feeling nostalgic about China. I'm probably due for another lunch of tomato and eggs in Chinatown.