SIGHT: It looks like the Jungle. Driving on the way here I was watching the power lines swoop from pole to pole. The closer we got to our host, the more covered with vines and leaves the lines became. Everything I a verdant green. Southern Thailand is one of the largest rubber producing regions in the world. There are rubber plantations everywhere you go. The rubber tree is tall and slender. Some of the plots have bare ground under the trees. Some have soft green grass that gives the grove an ethereal look as the sun filters to the ground.
There are also mountains in the region of Thailand that I am in. They aren’t huge, but they are beautiful and covered in the same green carpet that covers everything else. In the mornings the clouds are still hanging around the tops of the mountains. It seriously looks like something out of BBC’s Planet Earth.
SMELL: Durian. It is a fruit that is grown and eaten in abundance here in Thailand. If you have ever smelled during your nose just crinkled. It smells terrible. My team has tried to pin it down, and the closest we’ve come is a mixture between bug spray, popcorn and cat pee. And yes that is another scent combinations that has graced my nose this month. The other most common smell that I have encountered is that of sweaty children. One of my best friends is a teacher (shout out Jordan Inman!) and has complained a time a two about how bad kids smell. I never got it until this month. They. Reek. And so do I. And all my clothes. And everything in my backpack. It has permeated everything that I own.
TASTE: Thailand is famous for it’s food. And rightfully so! But most of those famous flavours are in the well cultivated Northern Provinces of Thailand. We are not there. We are in a coastal province southeast of Bangkok. The majority of the food here is seafood. Finding Pad Thai was like pulling teeth! The green curry is good, but surprisingly hard to find also. There are a lot of dishes that remarkably resemble Pho. I’m sure they are all very different but to me it is all noodles in soup. There are just different floaty things. In addition I have eaten more rice in the last five months than my entire 23 years put together.
TOUCH: High Fives. It’s like a reward system. You get an answer right, you get a high five. A student wants to say hi? They ask for a high five. You’re leaving the school and waving goodbye? Unintentional high five request that is eagerly obliged by half a dozen students.
Muggy. Thankfully Thailand is not as hot as Cambodia. But as a compromise it rains every day. We arrived just as the rainy season was beginning so we had a few sunny days at the beginning of the month. But now it rains pretty much every afternoon and every night without fail. 100% humidity what’s upp!!! This has made drying clothes an ordeal. Even if we hang them up to dry outside we could leave them for a full 24 hours and they would still not be dry. There is simply too much moisture already in the air.
Windy. I spend a lot of my time in the back of a pickup truck. That has been our transportation for the month. I have really mastered that windblown looks. It gets interesting when it starts to rain…
SOUND: Like your sound machine next to your bed. If you put on the ‘night noises’ app on your phone and selected thunderstorm, rain, crickets, frogs, and birds that’s what Thailand sounds like. There have been multiple nights where I go to sleep to the sound of rain and cicadas. It’s amazing.
Squealing. Bugs are a REAL thing here in the boonies of Thailand. If you want to know more I wrote a blog about it. Go check it out. When you put 7 girls in a house with a variety of flying and non flying insects there are bound to be a number of vehement outbursts of disgust.
