-Eating meat, period (who has the heart to tell a host mom that "vegetarian" means chicken, too, after she has already cooked it?)
-Eating a live bamboo worm (and then more bamboo worms later mashed into a pasty dip)
-Fried bananas!
-Mixing mud with our bare feet for building adobe house
Laughing hysterically as Pee Noi (our host mom) tried to explain something to us with body language…and then realizing that she was describing the village woman who had just died and the arrangements for her funeral
-Trek in Northern Vietnam with Mirror Art Group and our machete wielding tour guides (“Are you Reaaddyy?!”)
-On last day of Thai trek, panorama of descending on the two foot wide path along the side of a cliff with a vast, crisp and clear sky of blue and white, and then later tramping through the jungle with bamboo walking sticks as our tour guides tried to remember the way
-The fresh, delicious vegetables that we ate with Thai and hilltribe families: pumpkin, broccoli rabe, kale, bamboo, spinach, garlic, tomato, hot pepper…
-Celebrations/ rituals in Ahka village during very first night of our trek and being dressed up in Ahka traditional garb…and then realizing that the rituals would continue all night long
-Watching our hilltribe leaders do anything with a machete, from finding bamboo worms to fashioning a pot out of bamboo to cook rice for lunch
-Biking around the ruins in the city of Ayuthaya
-Bowling with American dance music and flashing lights and then Karaoke in the “erotic” room atop a Thai mall in Bangkok
During trek, going to waterfall and eating pad thai out of banana leaf packaging (now that is biodegradable, Hofstra Food Services; don’t give me “we still need to use styrofoam!”)
-The Bangkok food market smells. The Bangkok food market, period.
-Eating durian fruit (it smells like armpit)
-Peer (aliases: Tornado of Destruction, Disap-Peer) jumping out of boat in Ko Lao, missing the landing by a longshot, and after he had climbed out to drip dry realizing that his camera had been in his pocket
-The drunk Moken village chief. Pee Now (the woman who really was what held the village together and did all of the duties a chief should have done) slapping him back into order
-Lifting the first Moken kid with such good intentions…and realizing what we had started. Then for the rest of the week having a constant line of tireless Moken kids lined up, ready to be airplaned around again and again
-Going to Burma (Myanmar). When we arrived, them turning the big screen television to a channel with 60’s disco music videos playing as soon as we arrived. A man with six fingers who called himself “Lucky” trying to exchange 1000’s of Burmese money with us for about 30 Baht (which is like exchanging a few cents for a dollar)
-Naked kids everywhere in Moken village
-Final group meal in Ko Payam, buffet style. Watching Peer eat mounds (plural) of food during final meal
-Cooking class in Chiang Mai
-Our cross-dressing train attendant on our very first Thai train. Who sang to us.
-Fishing and swimming off of boat with Moken men
-Margot acquiring the name, “Barbie”
-Street smoothies
-Going to a pharmacy to get medicines and supplies for Moken village, and being given it all for free when the pharmacist realized for what it was
-Snorkling in Ko Payam
-Enjoying afternoons at “You Sabai” (organic café with delicious coconut, banana, and passion fruit smoothies) and in the resevoir
-Playing and/or watching tecraw (game played by Thais; a volleyball with the feet, of sorts)
-In hilltribe villages, bamboo home on stilts, watching adults push food scraps through the bamboo floor (instead of using a trash) down to the pigs and chickens beneath the house
-Watching the pigs and chickens.
-Figuring out strategy to squat toilets
-Painting walls with mud at Pun Pun
-Breaking open coconuts to eat whenever we pleased
-In Mae Joo, shampooing our hair with eight year olds in the resevoir
-in Mae Joo, continuously watching Nong Ti (approx. 3 years old) get into all sorts of dangers that would be unthinkable in the states but that do not even register there (playing alone on tractor, playing with hammer, being put on a motorcycle standing up and wet, playing with giant bugs)
-Boxing with a professional Muay Thai trainer in Mae Joo
-Attending a formal cremation ceremony in Mae Joo. Also attending the visitation and constantly being fed, with a particular memory of a dessert of cold condensed milk soup filled with potato, kidney beans, jelly worms, toffee, tomato and only the gods knows what else and laughing uncontrollably (in a completely inappropriate environment) as we tried to swallow it down
-Constantly being fed.
-Elephant ride with Nong (Dianna from MI.) Our non-English speaking elephant driver/ guide taking us off of the course to his house so that he could get something…and temporarily sending us into panic driven hysterics that we may never leave again.
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