Thailand

Welcome back boys and girls!

First of all, thanks once again to all those who made this possible for me to come back for another stint as a teacher/missionary in Thailand. Without you, I'd most likely be another business school graduate struggling to find a job in the States right now. Instead I'm lucky enough to be experiencing life and this world in a way that very few people ever dream of... much less get a chance to. I'm truly thankful for that... and you.

Also, thanks to everybody who made my trip home so special. I had a great time, and it was incredibly tough to leave some of you again. I miss you all already.

But ENOUGH OF THE SAPPINESS! :)

First order of business back in Thailand... a few days in Bangkok with an old friend and some new ones:

Sebastian and the rest of the 'Globals'. Good people... all of them. We took a weekend trip with their culture teacher to a Buffalo Village/Resort. Learned of rice, the buffalo, and various other little neat stuff. Turned out to be an awesome time... but the truly 'Epic' times are still to come. :)

As you can see it wasn't exactly rough living.

I'd never seen a sick dog wrapped in monk robes.

Southeastern Asian scaffolding.

Cool-looking swan.

Cool-looking hungry swan.

Quick thought: Have you ever seen a HAPPY looking ostrich? I mean what's their deal? They're like the king of the bird world... why always so angry-looking? Maybe because they can't fly. Hmm...

Next order of business was to ride a buffalo... here goes...

You might ask: "Why Western-gun-slinger-style mount a buffalo and ride it around?"

The REAL questions is: "Why NOT Western-gun-slinger-style mount a buffalo and ride it around?"

Now I'm not one to make fun of someone's handicap. If he wasn't having a good time as a part of the show, I would never say this... but:

You've never lived until you've seen an Asian midget doing a little dance while running across the tops of buffalo.

However... the buffalo do serve a purpose in Thailand. They're not just for tricks and laughs. Not every rural farmer can afford a tractor:

"It's pretty spicy... and I eat a lot of rice." That's my typical response to the typical question of "So... how's the food over there?"

Rice is, of course, the main crop grown in SE Asia. Until this weekend, I had no idea how exactly it goes from this [above] to:

this.

So thanks to the good people of Mubaan Khwaii (the resort), I've now got a better understanding that I can now share with you!

It starts with some deep plowing in the mud and poo [seen above], then some grading [seen here]

Then we plug the little sprouts down in the freshly tilled mud/poo mixture. Good fun!

...for about 5 mintues. Till they tell us to do it all the way back... 5 times each. Yea, right.

Then after some period of time, the rice paddy looks something like this.

Then cut, and dried in the sun. At this point the buffalo comes into play again. He essentially just walks around in circles and stomps the grains out of the plants.