It’s Lynchee Season

Samut Songkhram Province is a great place to be for lynchee season. There are groves of Lynchee trees everywhere including on the grounds of the resort where we are staying. Needless to say we’ve enjoyed eating lynchees every opportunity we get. On Saturday, Karl had arranged to rent a motorcycle and spent most of the day riding around the area looking for photo opportunities. He returned with a bag of Lynchees and the announcement that Lynchee season had just begun!

That evening we went to a night floating market in a nearby town. Samut Songkhram is a favorite weekend destination for people escaping Bangkok’s heat and the streets were really busy. At the market there was actually more vendors on the streets than in the canal but tourists still crowded the foot bridge that spanned the canal to take pictures of the boats. There were also a lot of boats taking people on tours of the surrounding area and promised firefly sightings. I suppose fireflies are a novelty here, when we lived in Virginia we had them in our backyard every summer evening. Because the area was so crowded we were happy to find a restaurant that offered an upstairs balcony where we could eat. At the restaurant we met a group visiting from Bangkok and they shared with us their perspective of the Iraq War. They felt that it had precipitated some of the increased violence in southern Thailand and they were very adamant for us not to travel there. We assured them that we had no plans to do so. They were concerned about what would happen as a result of the recent detention of British marines by Iran. I found the conversation interesting because they were so aware of American politics. In America we don’t really hear much about other countries unless it has some bearing on American interests and then it may only be a five minute blurb in the newscast. I don’t think that before this trip I truly understood the impact America has on other countries; politically, economically and culturally. I think it is a responsibility which we should take seriously because the actions of our country can either help or hurt people around the world.

Thailand has three seasons: the cool season, the hot season and the rainy season. We are officially in the hot season. The Thai people deal with the heat in the same way that we did while we were in Cambodia. Just after lunch the streets are very quiet as everyone who can is inside where it is cool or in the shade taking a nap. We are also scheduling our activities for the morning and evening and staying in during the middle of the day. So, Sunday morning I bravely agreed to join Karl on his motorcycle tour although I’m not exactly sure why because the ride to the floating market the night before had been nerve-racking with all the traffic. Karl kept his speed down and we checked out a few of the temples along the Mae-Klong River. We stopped for some time at Wat Bang Kung which was an army camp in the 1700s and then restored in the 1960s as a Boy Scout Camp. Now it’s a tourist attraction with dozens of life-size replicas of Thai warriors. The most interesting part of the temple is a sanctuary that is almost completely engulfed in trees. Only the back wall remains mostly free of the tree roots and branches. On the upper part of the back wall you can see the faded remnants of the carved stucco embellishment. Many of the windows are framed by or partially obscured by the trees which provided for some interesting picture taking opportunities. The doorway to the sanctuary was kept free from tree branches but was filled with tourists going in and out; paying their respects to the Buddha inside.



My courage has its limits and Sunday afternoon I opted for the comfort of the air-conditioned internet café while Karl rode around town. I wasn’t there very long when Karl returned because he had made arrangements for us to take a boat ride through the canals. As Karl usually does, he had made friends with Mali the boat’s owner and got a reasonable rate for an hour ride. The evening turned out to be a good time because many people were out enjoying the day as it cooled down. There were a lot of kids in the water and I’m sure this was supposed to be their evening bath. There was so much laughing and playing that it didn’t really seem like a bath at all! As we rode along we got calls of “Hello” from adults and children alike, to which we happily responded. We also saw a lot of boats starting their shrimp fishing for the night. The shrimp boat was identified by the plastic basket (usually blue) that allowed water in but didn’t let the captured shrimp out. A long bamboo pole that was much longer than the boat was also an indicator of a shrimp boat. The pole was used as an anchor by jabbing it into the river bottom and holding onto it while they fished.

Monday morning I spent some time sharing some western recipes with May and his sister Mod. Their family owns and operates Banthip Suanthong Resort and we met them at a party for Mod on the evening that we arrived. Their father invited us and proudly announced that Mod had recently received a scholarship from the Thai government to go to college in England. Both May and Mod like cooking and were interested in the recipes that I had brought along on my computer. May would like to become a chef and help carry-on the family business. He particularly likes cooking Italian pasta dishes but laments that good Italian cheese is very expensive in Thailand. Both May and Mod speak English very well and since Karl wasn’t needed as a translator he was off taking pictures. The heat eventually forced Karl to return and he shared a few photography tips with May.

We didn’t venture out until later in the afternoon when it was time for us to take another boat ride. We’d liked the ride Sunday evening so much that we had scheduled to go out again. This time we were joined by Mali’s dog Nam-dahn, which means sugar. She is a very smart dog and had been trained to carry a little cooler onto the boat. Nam-dahn seemed to enjoy sitting at the front of the boat and sometimes Karl had to tell her to “come here” (in Thai) so that she was out of the way when he wanted to take a picture. Occasionally, dogs on shore would see Nam-dahn and run out barking, safely on the boat Nam-dahn didn’t even seem to notice them. We were also joined by a lady who owns a home stay and wanted to practice her English with me. I took the opportunity to ask her the names of the flowers that I saw growing along the shore. She didn’t know the English name of my favorite one, which I was later told is called Bird of Paradise. She did tell me that it represents the god that brings the rains and ensures a good crop. While we were exploring some of the smaller canals, Karl spotted a huge lizard swimming to shore. We caught a glimpse of it as it crawled out of the water into the brush and we think it was a monitor lizard. We were pretty excited to see some wildlife!

When we returned to Mali’s house, we spent some time chatting with folks that lived on that part of the canal. We learned that one of the gentlemen was the math teacher at the village school. He was very interested in the fact that we had been teaching English in Thailand. He offered to let us stay at his house if we’d come back next year and teach at his school. I’m sure that if it weren’t the summer break, he would have had us teaching the very next day!

We started our day early on Tuesday and gave food to the monks. The alms giving is similar to what it was in Luang Prabang only here the monks come one by one in small boats. After you give each monk the food you have prepared, the monk will offer a prayer for you. There are only three monks who come by the resort opposed to the 300 in Luang Prabang. Karl got this picture of one of the monks as he approached. The little boats are just big enough to accommodate the monk and a few dishes for the food they receive.

After a quick breakfast we met up with our friendly math teacher who had agreed to take us to the salt fields. Karl wanted to get some interesting pictures of the people who worked in the salt fields. I thought it was interesting the extent that some of the women would go to protect their skin from the sun. They were completely covered including their face! All I could think when I saw them was how hot they must be. As we went around to the different salt fields, we got to see each step of the salt production process. First, you have to fill up shallow ponds with salt water. Then you let the water evaporate and the salt collects on the bottom of the pond. Next you scrape the salt off the bottom and pile it into little salt pyramids. The little salt pyramids are scooped up and carried closer to the road where a big salt pyramid is made. Finally, you hire a truck to come and pick up the salt, which is loaded onto the truck using baskets. At some of the salt fields, they had stands set up where you could buy all bags of salt in varying sizes. I’m not sure what someone would do with a 20 pound bag of rock salt but it is available if you want to buy it. You can also buy little souvenir packets of salt. They were a tempting purchase but I refrained!

We actually didn’t do much the rest of the day and by Wednesday morning Karl was anxious to get out and take some pictures. Fortunately for him, it was the second occurrence of the Tha Kha floating market. The schedule for this market is based on the lunar cycle so you have to plan your visits accordingly. Karl opted to take the motorcycle this time because renting the long tail boat is more expensive. I was an reluctant participant but I thought I was doing pretty well when I could find the humor in the misspelled street sign “Charp Curve” instead of worrying about the results of rounding the curve too quickly on a motorcycle. I followed Karl around for the first couple of hours as he talked to the vendors and occasionally bought something as a way of getting permission for a photograph. Since I usually ended up carrying the purchases because Karl needed his hands free, I finally decided to find a place to sit and wait for him to finish. It wasn’t such a bad setup. Karl had bought lynches and some Thai sweets so I was quite happy sitting and munching. Occasionally, Karl would bring by some more goodies that he had purchased. The lady who sold the Thai sweets actually remembers us from our visit three years ago. I sat next to where she had tied her boat off so she and Karl talked each time he stopped by. We finally left around noon and most of the vendors had left as well. By then I think I’d had my fill of Thai junk food. The first picture is the lady who sold us the lynchees and the second picture is our friend from three years ago who makes really good Thai sweets. This last one is another lady at the market and I just liked the picture.

On the way back home we ended up going the wrong direction and got lost. In getting lost it seemed we went around a lot of “charp” curves and I didn’t find them so humorous. Karl said it was because I was carrying a bag of lynchees from the market. Whatever the reason, I was glad when we finally figured out where we were and got back to familiar territory. We did see another monitor lizard and Karl was able to get a picture of this one!