Second Day

Ok so I'll start where I left off. The second day in Nonthaburi, the town where my host Vaughan lives, I woke up around ten...sleeping in was much needed. So I hung out a bit and then my friend Yu came by and took me out to lunch at this restaurant around the corner from the condo building. The restaurant was very small, maybe seven tables. It was very informal. The only guy in there was probably the business owner but also the host and the waiter. He was very nice and talked to me a bit in English, so I asked him to order for me. What I got was white rice, a small salad and a piece of chicken in a sweet sauce kind of like teriyaki. It was soooo GOOD! It was probably the thing I would have ordered for myself! Yu got some kind of fried chicken which looked good too. Over lunch we talked about out different countries and she taught me a little Thai. The portions were smaller than a typical American meal but still too much for me to eat. When we finished Yu told me she had to go to a job interview. She's about to be twenty and just graduated from university in Cambodia. She left and I went back up to my room.

I hung out in my room until dinner when Yu came back to take me to the market. We got on her motorbike and drove about 3 minutes to the market. The ride there was fascinating. Seeing so many things, hearing people, smelling food. It was awesome. We drove past what looked like townhouses (obviously much older and worn down than the ones in the US), a random little building that was a barber shop and a guard station plus the always present little stands selling all different kinds of food. The market was set on what was pretty much a traffic circle. The traffic went around a large center and on the perimeter there were more stand and behind that, restaurants the whole way around. Thai pop music was playing, punctuated by an occasional "yo yo yo", which we both laughed at as we parked in front of the restaurant. The restaurant really was more like an open garage and the cooks were the first thing you saw. They were set up right in front maybe a couple of feet from where people would drive by. We walked past the cook stands to where there was seating. Again maybe 7 tables and this time one of the cooks came to wait on us. Yu ordered chicken and white rice in a lemongrass soup..AMAZING. We talked about music over dinner and she told me that the song "Low" by Flo Rida was really popular now in Thailand.

After dinner we walked around the market a little bit. I bought some fresh pineapple at one stand - 10 baht (= 0.28 cents). At another stand I met Yu's aunt and uncle. At another we bout fruit juice. I had never had beet root juice before so I tried it....wasn't bad actually! We drove back to the condo after that and Yu told me she was gonna bring two more girls over because they wanted to practice a dance for the youth camp we were going to the next day. The girls that came over were maybe 15, and their names were Maprang and Mail. They were really nice and practiced a little English with me and I tried my hand at some Thai. For the rest of the evening they practiced dancing and I read from my Thai phrase book as they corrected my pronounciation. (On the left is Maprang, center is Yu, and right is Mail.)

It was a really good second day. Everyone I met was really nice. All the food was great and I learned a bit of Thai. The next day we would be leaving for the youth camp so I got to bed soon after they left around 10pm.