Ban Talae Nok - June 28 22:30
What a crazy day! I tried to get money from the ATM and my card was not set to use in Thailand. After much hassle for both Dave and I, I was eventually able to withdraw funds for my week. Also, Dave had tried to register me for my classes but the two most important classes gave him errors. He did register me in my third and fourth choice classes. So, I held up the group on our departure for an hour this morning to try to get this straightened out as well. After emailing the professors for help, we had to leave. Then Dave called me while I was in the truck on the way to Ban Talae Nok and now I think I may have dropped my phone in the truck.
Once we arrived in the village (Ban Talae Nok means far away village by the sea) we drove to the beach to see the area that the village used to be located pre 2004 tsunami. Tui, from Andaman Discoveries, came with us for the week to be our translator and explained what we were seeing. How can I describe the feeling? After reading the book “Wave of Destruction” I knew exactly what had happened and what these people experienced. When the wave hit, many people were at the school rehearsing a Christmas play. The school is gone and so are 47 people, including 16 children. There now stands only a small memorial that was built on the spot later. 
The driver turned and the road followed the shoreline. All I saw was a sparse tree left standing here and there. All the buildings were completely demolished and nothing of them remains. The great majority of the trees are now only broken stumps. It was really eerie to see all this and as I watched the waves come crashing to shore, I got a huge lump in the pit of my stomach. Tears came to my eyes and I had to fight them back. I just wanted to hug and cry with everyone in the village – as if it had just happened. For me it did.After the tour we were taken to our host family. They have a nice house with a gorgeous yard and front porch. Plants decorate the front and obscure the view of the house from the road.
The porch has a raised platform made of bamboo and nipa palm that is absolutely wonderful. We dropped off our things and went to learn to make soap at the Youth and Community Center right next-door. We were introduced to Pink, who is part of the youth group and the women’s soap making group and is a multi-talented lady. I did not realize that soap mainly consists of oils. Different oils are used for different purposes (such as soy, sesame, olive, avocado, carnation...) and then sodium hydroxide mixed with water is added, which has a chemical reaction with the oil and makes it become soap. I chose cloves for the scent of the soap I made.
Andrew wears a really strong citronella for his mosquito repellent, so I think they thought that meant he liked the scent. Therefore, they had him make citronella-scented soap. It was fun and interesting and fairly easy with the hardest part being the measuring of the oils, which needs to be precise. We were given the soaps that we cut out – not our own as it takes a month to set up and solidify – and an additional bar to try. I am going to bring home the recipe and try making it at home.We had lunch on the platform porch. Rai, our home stay host, made fried local fish, rice, tofu and bean sprouts, chicken and vegetables, a fish sauce that was quite salty, and chili paste. The fish was a good mild white fish, the fried tofu was good and the chicken was a little spicy. I have to get used to chicken being cooked in small pieces without being de-boned first. Everywhere in Thailand that I have had chicken they do not take out the bones first. After this tasty and relaxing lunch, we were off on our next task.
This time, we were taught how to batik. We were given a blank white piece of cloth attached to a wooden frame by wax, a pencil and an eraser. The first step is to draw your pattern. I made it clear that I cannot draw at all, so Dah (the local lady batik expert) gave us some books with drawings in them. This was great and I found several beautiful patterns until I found out I had to just look at the pattern and then freehand it myself. I chose the simplest one I could find. It was a little goofy but not too bad. However, I then had to trace over my lines with a wax dispensing pen-like tool thing that is totally awkward. I was doing pretty well until the en
d and I made a blob. But she looked at the back and said I did not make my lines thick and heavy enough (and therefore the dye would bleed), so I had to go over them again from the other side. This was next to impossible! If I didn’t follow the pencil lines exactly, no big deal, but if you miss on the wax lines, you get double lines. Towards the end of this I accidentally jerked my hand holding the wax and blobbed it on my batik. It was a mess, but there is nothing you can do. Once the wax is on, it stays on. The next step was to use paintbrushes to apply the dye. I liked this part; it was easy. The completed batik needs to dry for eight hours, then she will apply a silicate to keep the color in and boil out the wax. We will get to bring our batiks home.
Next, we were taught how to make roof “tiles” from mature nipa palm leaves. A “rod” of nipa is covered by the leaves and stitched together with a “thread” made from bamboo. The needle and thread is really quite clever. A strip is taken from a bamboo stalk and made thin enough to keep it flexible, but the tip is left double the thickness and sharpened to a point to make the needle. It works very well. Two palm leaves are used at a time overlapping each other and the previous leaves on the rod. And then two stitches are sewn to hold them in place. The leaves are green while the roof tiles are being made. In about a week they turn brown. I believe Tui said the tiles last for about two years before they replace them. The ladies actually go out and collect the leaves and parts on their own. One assembled piece earns them 5 TB (Thai Baht). It is a lot of work for a very little bit of pay. One woman can make 100 tiles in a day earning 500 TB a day, but this does not include the time for collecting the pieces. They even tried t
o show Andrew how to make cigarette wrappers from the young nipa palm stalks. Very thin strips are ripped off, then twisted around the finger. The ends are pulled together and tied making something that resembles the Chinese finger trap. Hard to explain. I have to show a picture. These are dried, then cut into small pieces and sold to the markets. The markets package them and sell them in quantities. This is another way to earn a little money and the guys have it down to a science, making it look quick and easy. Andrew found out it is not as easy as it looks. Six of the houses in the village make the roof tiles, but almost every one makes the cigarette wrappers.
After this task, we returned to our home house to rest. My back needed it! It was killing me! Everything the Thai do is back breaking work! I took two aspirin and laid on the platform with Tui for about half an hour or so before I started feeling a little restless. I was dying to go out and take pictures. I think Tui knew this because she invited me to take a walk to the beach, while Andrew took a nap. It is such a beautiful area! Thailand is just gorgeous. It is so green. It rained while we rested and then cleared up for our walk. Not even 5 minutes after we returned it opened up in a downpour. Our timing could not have been better.
We had dinner inside. Then I “showered” by scooping water over myself from a large basin of water to freshen up before bed. This is a little tricky when you are not used to it and takes practice. One more activity was planned for the evening. Rai dressed Andrew and I both in traditional Muslim attire. We learned that prayers are held five times a day, though not always at the mosque. We learned a greeting or way to say blessings upon you that uses words and hand motions. There is no alcohol in the village and no pork/pigs or dogs. However, there are a lot of caged birds, cats, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, cows, and buffalo.
I am exhausted and ready for bed. My “room” is shared with Tui and Andrew has his own room. Our rooms are the front part of the house sectioned off by hanging curtains. There are mattresses on the floor and mosquito nets hanging around them. We are supplied with sheets, a pillow, a blanket, and a fan and I am actually quite cool. In fact, this is the coolest I have been since my arrival (except of course my brief moments in Seven Eleven).Ban Talae Nok - June 29 13:00
One of the villagers made a Thai dessert that would be for sale to the rest of the villagers. Rai picked some up and we found out that it was two types of doughnuts – one tasted like a glazed doughnut and one tasted like Indian fry bread, not sweet. They were really good. Our host also made sweet sticky rice with coconut milk topped with a bit of custard, which was also very good.
This morning we helped the Youth group with their garden. It is an overgrown weedy mess. This is bec
ause during the dry season, they cannot maintain the garden. We started by using a hoe to sort of scrape off all the weeds. This was hard to do and I don’t know how much help we really were. The heat just saps us of our energy. We were not just dripping sweat, it was pouring off us in a regular flood. Disgusting! Andrew poured water over his head to cool down. I stopped to drink water, but still ended up really dizzy. I took a 15 minute break to cool down and drink more water and then went back to it. We did end up getting it pretty cleared and ready for the next step, but the brunt of the work fell on the three other people helping us. I was really good at hauling the weeds to the compost bin, though. Haha. The thing in the middle of the picture is what I used to carry the weeds outWe left to go back to our home house for lunch, but Tui showed us a house where cashews were being peeled. I n
ow understand why cashews are so expensive. This is not an automated process. The nuts are harvested by hand from the trees in Ban Talae Nok February through April. They are sold to a factory, where they are roasted in the shell, the shells are removed, and the nut is sent back to the people here in 5 kg bags to have the skin peeled off by hand. A woman can peel one of these bags a day and makes 38 TB for it - talk about little pay for a lot of work. Then the nuts (and waste - to control the weight to make sure none are eaten) are sent back to the factory to be roasted again. The factory then packages them to sell in the marketplace.Lunch was awesome. Rai is a really good cook. She made fish with a tomato and onion sauce that had a nice spice to it, tofu with a green leafy vegetable, shrimp paste, and fish sauce;
served with rice, of course. Rai is getting worried, because I am not eating much. I was worried about this being taken as me not liking the food, so I made sure Tui explained that my appetite has been very small due to being unaccustomed to the heat. After lunch it was back to work at the garden. It was all cleared, so now we had to break up the soil in rows with the dreaded hoe again to prepare it for the seeds. Once we planted the seeds we were all done with our part in the garden. That was a rough task because today was exceptionally hot and I kept getting faint, dizzy, no matter how much water I drank. Speaking of the hot temperature, this year has been an unusually hot year for the Phang Nga province. They had never seen 38 degrees Celsius before, but before we came they had a steady week of it. People here believe in the climate change!
After the garden and about an hour’s rest, we went to the youth center to learn to make recycled paper. We sorted through a heap of old paper (which had some nasties in it including two huge cockroaches) for paper that would work. Basically any paper that is like writing or copy paper, nothing like magazine paper in texture. After sorting it out, we tore it up into smallish pieces and put it in a small trashcan. Then Pink added water and we were done for the day. It has to soak over night.
Andrew, Tui, and I decided to walk to the beach to unwind. It is much cooler there and it is so strange to me to feel the temperature difference since the town is only a very short walk, maybe ten minutes. It is very eerie to be at the beach. I feel I need to always keep an eye on the water. The cows seems unperturbed, though. I can understand why the people were afraid to rebuild the lost parts of the village back on the beach. Instead, they rebuilt with a distance cushion out of fear of another tsunami. The tsunami of 2004 was the first one to ever hit Thailand and hopefully the last! The sky here has multiple layers of clouds. Some are very very high and make the sky just seem white. Then there is one or two layers below that and sometimes there is also a mist that creeps along the hillside. It is really quite beautiful and very picturesque. A good photographer can probably capture it well, but unfortunately that is not me - you can kind of see the layers in the previous beach picture I posted above. I can see when the r
ain clouds are coming. They are darker in color, heavier and thicker looking. Then when the sudden cool wind hits, you know it is coming very soon – and when it does, it could be a torrential downpour. This picture shows the storm coming in just before the rain I like the rain. Here, I am learning to love the rain. It cools it off so much. And I prefer to be wet from rain than wet from sweat, since I am going to be wet no matter what. I don’t remember feeling sweat running down my body in Cost Rica like it does here. I think it is for two reasons: Ban Talae Nok is hotter than where we were in Costa Rica and I am working harder here than I did there. I definitely did not choose a lazy way to spend my summer. But I really like everything we are doing. I want to bring home the soap recipe and make it myself and also keep trying batiking.I can’t find my phone. Last I remember having it was in the pick up on the way here when Dave called me. The driver looked in the truck today but it is not there, so it has to be here somewhere. Unfortunately, there is no signal here, so calling it does not help. I was having such a rough morning, who knows what I did with it.
Ban Talae Nok – June 30 08:00
The morning wake up call is definitely the roosters, but they sound off early and it doesn’t last long. I am able to go back to sleep afterwards. There are probably a dozen birds in this house that all make their noises in the morning. I like that sound and can listen to them or sleep through them, depending on how I feel. After 8:00 am the gibbons start to sound off. This is when I choose to wake up for the day. I like to listen to them. They are not wild around here, other parts of Thailand yes, but not here. There is a wildlife sanctuary here for them. These gibbons are unable to live in the wild or were once brought here as pets but as they got older, they got too aggressive. Due to diseases (and some of them mental issues) they cannot be released in the wild. They have hopes that someday they can be released, but this is not very realistic. They sound off two or three times a day after they are full, Tui says. So I guess they make happy noises after eating. Rai’s son works there (he is the one with all the birds) and we hope he can bring us there before we leave. I know the standards are low compared to what I am used to and they are kept in small cages, but I want to go anyway.
20:30
Today started with breakfast (Thai doughnuts and sweet sticky rice) and then we went to the youth center to work on our recycled paper. We took out some of the s
oaked paper and made sure it was in very small pieces and put it in a blender. We added water and blended it to a pulp. We did this until we had a good bucket full. While I worked on this part, Andrew and Tui went out and collected panda nut leaves to use for green coloring and purple flowers, berries and bougainvillea leaves to use for purple coloring. Basically these were blended with water and added to the paper pulp. We used a wire mesh screen in a wooden frame and another wood frame to capture some pulp. After straining the water out, it is turned over onto a muslin cloth and pressed out of the frame. This takes some practice, but we were getting it down. Each was placed on top of the previous with a cloth between. After the last one, a cloth was placed on top and a stool was placed on top to press the water out.Papermaking took the whole morning and we w
ent to lunch after. I am still having my appetite problem, so I abstained from lunch entirely and just rested. Later, we went back to the center and were given plastic bags to cut apart. These are the type of bags that soap and detergent refills come in. The bags were cut apart and cleaned and matched with a piece of cloth to line the inside of a water-proof purse that was going to be made from it. The small bags make coin or cosmetic type purses; the larger ones can make tote bags. I get to bring home the sample that I helped make. I did not do any of the sewing on it, though, and the little holes that are in it are from my sloppy pinning of plastic to cloth.By late afternoon the paper was ready to hang to dry. We peeled the layers apart and draped the paper on the cloth over a rack. We cleaned up the mess in the center and then joined the local kids in a garbage pick up through the town and to the beach. We stayed at the beach until a major rain spoiled the good time and chilled the kids. By the time we got back from the beach, it was time to clean up for dinner anyway. Abstaining from lunch worked and I was able to eat a decent sized dinner. I think Rai was finally a little satisfied with how much I ate. I did eat some Sharkies electrolytes today, too, but I am not sure if that helped or not. I think tomorrow I will skip breakfast and eat Sharkies in middle of the day. We did not make it to the sanctuary, but it is in the plan for tomorrow now. Especially since a sick sea turtle has come in to be cared for. I can’t wait! Oh, and my phone mysteriously appeared on my bed tonight. Someone must've found it somewhere. Yay!
Ban Talae Nok – July 1 22:00
Today was a bit of a wash out, literally. It rained almost all day. If we had waited for the sun to come out, we would have gotten nothing done. Personally,
I was very glad for the rain, because it makes for much cooler days. Pink took us into the outer edge of the mangrove that is mostly nipa palm. There is an area that they take the seeds to and use for a nursery. Once the seeds have become seedlings, they take them to another area deeper into the mangrove and replant them. We transplanted about 100 nipa palm trees today. It was a messy business, wallowing in the mud to remove the seedlings. It didn’t matter that we got muddy (though we didn’t realize at the time) because we walked through the canal in muddy water up to our waists. It was slow going for me. My ankle is still weak and my sandals kept getting stuck in the mud. This picture is the very end of the canal, which I took later. I did not bring my camera for this task since it would have gotten ruined in the rain. (These pictures were taken the next day.) Oh, and Judith came from Kuraburi to join us for Thursday and Friday's activities. That is her in the mangrove in front of Andrew.
The canal was dug after the tsunami to improve the water flow through to try to change the soil compound. It was bad and nothing would grow in it. Now, years later, nipa palms are growing nicely and they are seeing new species appear. The ocean washes in seeds from far away and they are taking root along the canal. They are very pleased to see this. It means the soil is improving and there is an increase in biodiversity. The people of Ban Talae Nok truly live off the land and the canal is a veritable supermarket of groceries. Mud lobsters, fish, crabs, herbs, fruits, and much more can be found there. Most everything we ate was locally grown fruits, vegetables, and meats. At home it is a major feat to buy within 100 miles, but here they easily buy from within 2 miles.After a morning of very hard, very dirty work, we came to our homestay house and “showered” and changed. Lunch was ready and waiting for us.
We had the afternoon off to rest and were supposed to dine with the youth group this evening. However, the kids had to go to the mosque and then it was pouring down rain, so our turn out was very low. It was still a nice evening of giggling and being made fun of for our lack of grasp of the Thai language and pronunciation. They found the game of Telephone accomplished this quite well. I like this picture of Tui laughing at the unintelligible mumble jumble that came out of passing on a phrase. The kids played other games with us like one where everyone puts their hands in and one person sings a songs as they 
touch the fingers. A certain word results in the removal of a finger. I cannot explain how you you win in this game or the one pictured here where fists are stacked.It is our last night here. Our last task for tomorrow is to plant seeds of another mangrove species at the beach. We already collected these from the nursery earlier today. They were carried there by the tide, but they typically grow by the beach.
So I just wanted to share a behavioral thing. At home I do not sit or even stand anywhere that I see ants or other bugs. If there is only an ant or two, I will flick them away before sitting. Here, I look at the mat or floor and pick the spot with the least amount of ants and bugs and sit or lay down there. I know, I know. You don’t believe me, but insects are everywhere and you just do what you gotta do. I still don’t particularly like them crawling on me and will flick them off when I feel them, but I have not freaked out once. Fortunately, I have not seen a spider on me, though Tui assures me that the spiders in Thailand do not bite. It doesn’t matter. I still don’t want one on me. Did I mention I have a spider roommate in Kuraburi that I let live and let be? As long as it doesn’t come near me, it can stay and eat all the bugs in my room it wants. It must be slim pickings now though, because the spray I put by my door works really well to keep them out.
Oh, I did well with lunch and dinner today. I skipped breakfast and that really helped. I also ate another package of Sharkies. I am feeling better today, less lethargic, but I think it is because the rain cooled it down so much. We did not make it over to the sanctuary again. I do not think we will have time tomorrow since we leave around 3:00 pm and are doing the planting in the morning.
I think this is enough for this post. I will do Friday's post later, when I start on the weekend in Khao Sok.
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