Touch, sight, smell, taste and sound…our five senses…mine all got a workout this afternoon…
As part of our pre-set package with Joy’s House, we receive a one hour Thai Massage…I know, it’s tuff but someone has to do it…
I get a massage every second Monday at home, so there is no concern about being touched…but my masseuse is Chinese, so I assume my remedial massages are Chinese…so I was interested to see what the difference is between Chinese and Thai.
To start with, my usual massage requires, me to take off my belt…today I had to take off all my clothes, all of them…and put on a shirt and pants that were very generously sized…
My masseuse was a lady who I would guess was about 40…she was clearly very experienced and had no problem finding every little sore spot or tight muscle in my body…and no hesitation to dig her thumb, elbow or knee into it to work the knots out…however when she was done, I was wishing I had opted for the 2 hour session instead of 1 and felt very relaxed and not sore at all….
Every culture has it’s own way of celebrating events. Here at Joy’s House, the anticipation is building as preparations step up in readiness for a festival that is to take place tomorrow. I found Jarm and Em making paper flowers to go on the ‘donation tree’. Being a keen crafter, I jumped at the chance to sit and chat and make little paper flowers…it feels satisfying to make something with your hands. We only made some simple ones, though some that we already on the tree looked quite complex….Jarm said she didn’t make those, therefore couldn’t teach me how…
Feeling relaxed but quite warm, it seemed like a good idea to go for a little swim…the saying ‘it’s alright once you’re in’ (said with a Scottish accent, think Billy Connolly) came to mind as I dipped my toe into the..hmm, let’s say ‘very refreshing’ water…but the Billy in my mind was right, it was alright once I was in and I soon was laying back feeling particularly satisfied…my sense of hearing was tested here, as a few of the kids from the shelter are staying in town during the holidays and they joined us in the pool. Like all kids, the more excited they get, the louder they get…and they were very excited!!!
Yesterday when we had been swimming, I was watching them play, my mind switched into ‘solution mode’ as it tends to do when I see something that doesn’t seem right…thankfully I have learned that my thoughts of right and wrong aren’t always correct and that further investigation is required to find the root cause of what I see as an issue…
The situation: 8 kids swimming in a private pool, wearing t-shirts, some with long sleeves and long shorts, jeans or tracksuit pants. My thoughts were that they could not afford to buy them all bathing suits….my solution…clothes are very cheap here and we could buy them some bathing suits a gift. Thankfully, my recently acquired extra layer of consideration made me think that maybe they don’t want to wear bathing suits for other reasons than the cost….so afterwards I talked to Jarm about it (research) and found out that the majority of Thai people prefer to were clothes while swimming, for modesty. Those who don’t want to be so covered can wear a bathing suit or underwear if they want to….but they are the minority.
Today though, most of the kids were in their shorts or undies…perhaps they felt more comfortable with us today…
My feeling of relaxed, cool comfort was to be short lived, as the next opportunity to explore real Thai culture was about to begin…whether I liked it or not…
We were cooking our own dinner…that part is not the cause of concern….we were going shopping for ingredients at the local evening market….that part was also not a concern….we were cycling there, along narrow roads at about 4:30pm, in amongst the traffic….huge concern!
Firstly, I am not a confident cyclist…that is the second, third and final concern…it isn’t that I don’t like the idea of cycling, but when you put me on a bicycle my heart starts to race, my palms get sweaty and every muscle in my body starts to tense up…what a waste of a good massage!
I did my best to keep calm…took slow steady breaths, thought positive thoughts and said to Rutha, our guide, that I would prefer to ride at a very steady pace so as to keep as straight as possible on the road…my biggest fear was that I would wobble out in front of a car that was doing it’s best to avoid me…
Needless to say, I survived…and actually found the journey back to the house along a back road quite enjoyable.
We had been given a large selection of recipes to peruse the day before and picked three of them to cook today.
We chose a Papaya Salad; a Pork with Pepper main and a Fried Banana dessert.
Thai’s like their food spicy…’ped mak mak’. whilst I don’t mind food a bit spicy, I don’t enjoy eating very spicy food…now, the definition of mild, spicy, very spicy and very, very spicy is obviously not clear…depending on how you are raised…we learned today that whilst 5 small chillies is mildly spicy to Rutha, it is very, very spicy to me. Needles to say I didn’t have a second helping of Papaya Salad…
When it came to making the Pork with Pepper, I was already cautious but wanted to be sure that David enjoed the dish too, so we went fairly heavy on the pepper…but it was very nice and I didn’t mind having a little extra with some rice of course.
Fried bananas…sounds easy enough, which I am sure it should be, however first you have to have bananas that are neither too green nor too ripe. This proved challenging today, the ones at the market were too much either way, we stopped at two shops on the way home and they couldn’t help either. In the end, we sent one of the students out to try a couple of other shops…they returned with bananas, though they were still a bit green too and it made the dish not as enjoyable as I suspect it would have been otherwise. We did have some left over batter that we fried off too, it was tasty and had the texture of a crumpet.
Part of our reason for choosing Joy’s House to stay at was the ability to help some of the students with practicing their English. In Thailand, they children learn English as part of the Government School system, however the feedback is that the Thai teachers that take the classes are not confident to speak English, therefore the lessons are very much theory based. The students had pretty good vocabulary knowledge, but lack the confidence, practice and opportunity to get the speaking and comprehension side of the language improved. Tonight, we sat after dinner for quite some time talking with Rutha about her journey to Joy’s House, from her childhood in Myanmar. We didn’t correct every word she said, just listened and let her tell her story in English, helping to suggest alternate words here and there to correct the context. It was a lovely way to finish the day.
