Sunday (Part 2)

Into the car and down the mountain to stop for lunch at 2 p.m. at a roadside stand we had noticed going up with a grill and hand turned rotisserie full of chickens. Martha was thinking we would have chicken, rice-of course, and a green papaya salad type dish she especially wanted her mother to try. But Tee ordered those things plus a spicy pork soup and a plate called a pork salad...all beautifully presented and yummy. Loved the soup flavors...chilies made it hot, but mint and a Thai kind of coriander really was great. So enjoyed it. Everyone else had sticky rice while I had long grain. I can see that sticky rice makes finger eating easier. : ) Tee related the meal with so many courses to our Thanksgiving...a gathering of family and friends. A nice sentiment. I don’t remember when exactly Martha started referring to me as her “other Mother,” but I appreciate the “not-by-blood” yet very familial relationship we’ve had through the years.

The cooking chicken by the side of the road was a great advertisement.

Our soup server.

The pork salad.

The whole roasted chicken cut with a cleaver into handable portions. Very yummy, btw.

The green papaya salad. It has lots of those tiny, tiny dried shrimp in it, so not for me. : )

Martha and Tee.

Back in the car and a little farther down the mountain to the Elephant PooPoo Paper Park http://www.poopoopaperpark.com/en/ . Now don’t laugh, it’s definitely part of the story of the elephants here in Thailand. I’m sure I’ll learn more at the actual Elephant Refuge on Thursday, but briefly here’s there story. Elephants were used in the timbering of the mountain forests. Thailand outlawed that timbering a number of years ago. That left a workforce of domesticated elephants unemployed and no elephant welfare. Finding ways to help have funds to continue to take care of them and their descendents results in an elephant “industry” which is continuing to evolve. The PooPoo Park is one of those “industries.” We had a great tour in English-ourselves and a family of three from San Francisco. Learned a lot and then had the paper making experience. Very cool! Not yucky at all...at the beginning they had horse and cow poo to compare...elephant poo is amazingly fibrousfibrous. A great afternoon ending with fun in the gift shop, of course!

Follow the Poo!

Of course the poo balls are moist when first deposited. So letting them dry out is first on the agenda. Once they are dry, they are light like a ball of yarn.

Since drying doesn’t kill any existing bacteria, the balls are then boiled for hours and then go through several rinsing barrells.

The resulting fibers are put through a machine that cuts the fibers, just like your blender does when you make paper at home. They use food coloring for the colors, which keeps the whole process organic.

Since my hands were in the water engaged with paper making I don’t have a photo of the process...but the balls of colored chopped fibers…

Are spread on these large screens while underwater, then raised out of the water and laid out in the sun to dry.

See the garden in the background and all the banana trees...elephants eat a lot!! All the water used in the paper processing here is organic, and used to water the trees and garden through the dry season.

Once dried the sheets of paper are pulled off the drying screens. See the stack of dried paper sheets. The paper made by hand has a rough surface. What they make by machines has a smooth writing surface. Nothing goes to waste. Any failures are simply recycled back into the process.

They have a really neat gift shop plus a whole DIY spot where you can have access to all the cute cutouts they have and make your own cards, notebooks, and a host of other projects. A great place to visit!

The man on the left was our driver, a friend of Tee’s who rents himself and his car out for day trips. He is currently on dialysis and appreciates the business.

We three ladies were dropped off at the local open air market in/for our neighborhood, which is behind where had dinner Saturday evening. All kinds of fruit, vegetables, meats, prepared traditional Thai dishes, bags of various kinds of rice, soups ladled into plastic bags for carrying home, sweets and a few baked goods. Pretty amazing....this is a daily market. Meals are not put together here from once a week trips to the grocery store, but from getting your ingredients from the market daily or every other day. The market felt clean and the vendors friendly. Though the wares offered were decidedly different, the folks at the Lancaster Farmers’ Market would feel right at home here!

A cooked meat stall...chicken and pork.

Veggies and fruits of all kinds.

Prepared foods to take home for supper!

A few bakery and dessert stalls.

A stop at 7-11...I totally enjoyed a 16 oz cup full of ice with Sprite from the fountain for B20. By the time we got to the water station, I had drained out the Sprite and still had enough water after filling our two water bottles to refill my cup, so enjoyed a nice ice water drink for the the rest of the walk home. We’d had such a big lunch, we had fruit-pineapple, papaya, and guava along with some a little bag of “American Corn” bugles, and some chocolate and called it supper.

Martha walking beneath our balcony on her way home for the night.

It’s after 9 p.m. and  Indira is already asleep. I’m next.