Flashback Friday: Vanilla County, part 1

I keep getting sidetracked from our fantastic family vacation to Kerala ... which took place FOREVER ago. Actually a year and a half ago, but still. When last we visited God's Own Country, we were exploring the tea estates of Munnar. After our hike through the tea, we piled back into the car and Kareem drove us over and around many a mountain until we arrived at a homestay called Vanilla County. It was remote, it was surrounded by rubber plantations and gorgeous flora and fauna, it was run by a lovely and welcoming family, it had amazing home-cooked food ... it was fabulous. If you are ever anywhere near Kerala, you need to relax at Vanilla County for a few days. Just look at how relaxed this child is ...

If you know John at all, then you know that his idea of relaxing has little to do with hammocks and lots to do with exploration. He quickly roused the rest of us from our hammocks and led us off on a nature hike down this mountain road.

These photos don't really do it justice. I loved the way palm trees were poking up from among the other vegetation.

Weird flowers we saw everywhere ...

There were lots of jackfruit trees ...

The owner of Vanilla County, Baby Matthew (yes, that's his real name), has a friend who owns a working elephant that's used on the rubber plantations. On our first morning there, we got to help give the elephant a bath. First we hiked a little ways up the middle of a wide stream that had cashew trees hanging over the banks. This is a cashew fruit in the water ...

Cashews on the tree ...

After walking a little way, we came upon this scene ...

The elephant's name is Indira, and her mahouts were giving her a bath. We grabbed scrub brushes and lent a hand ...

I don't know how well you can see it in these photos, but Indira is an albino. All of her fur is translucent.

After her bath, Indira was ready for a snack. Her mahouts made sure we were well out of the way before she stood up and walked back down the stream.

Here's Samuel feeding Indira bananas ...

The other kids each had a turn, too. Indira seemed very docile, but we weren't allowed to come close enough to feed her until she was chained, and the mahout was constantly on the watch. We were allowed to help bathe her only while she was lying on her side and had to move far down the stream before the mahouts helped her stand up again. Elephants are beautiful but huge. You don't want to be in the way of a swinging trunk or pounding foot. I'm certainly not an expert, but Indira seemed happy and healthy. She definitely looked better than some of the temple elephants we saw in India.

She let John put bananas right into her mouth and kept nudging him for more ...

After Indira had her snack, her owners invited us inside for our own snack of jackfruit. It was the first time I'd tasted it. Not my favorite thing, I have to say. It's a bit on the stinky cheese side of taste when it's raw, but we had a great jackfruit ice cream another time.

Coming up: We explore a natural rock pool where kids enjoy swimming and Mom destroys her knee ...

Loy Krathong

Last night was the first full moon in the twelfth month of the traditional Thai calendar, and that means Thais everywhere celebrated Loy Krathong. A krathong is the flowery sculpture Evie's holding in this picture.

Evie made hers at school in the traditional way, using a disc cut from a banana tree as the base. The base is decorated with folded palm or banana leaves and flowers, and then incense sticks and candles are added to the top.

On Loy Krathong, everyone floats (Thai word is loy) the krathongs with lit candles and incense. The idea is that the krathong carries bad luck or negativity away from you, while the incense and flame carry your prayers and wishes into the air.

We participated in our neighborhood's Loy Krathong festivities and launched our krathong on the lake near the kids' school. Evie liked her school krathong too much to float it away, so we bought one of these krathongs made of bread. I took this picture to show off the gorgeous Thai costumes and jewelry people were wearing.

Since we don't own any traditional Thai clothes yet, Evie and Samuel went in Indian costume. Close enough, right? Here are Evie and her two besties, Emma and Emily ... and Samuel. Johnny is being very middle school-ish these days and refused to change out of his school uniform for the evening.

Family photo by the pool. I have no idea why Samuel is grimacing in all of these photos ...

Krathongs floating on the lake ...

One Thai family came with krathongs made of ice cream cones. Genius! I want to do that next year.

Evie and Johnny getting ready to set ours afloat. Samuel has developed a crazy fear of candles, so he stood well back.

(Please note the two guards helping kids launch their krathongs. That is to avoid disasters like this one, survived last night by good friends of ours who chose to forego the party and launch krathongs on their own. Warning: Watch this only in a place where you are free to laugh loud and long. Turn on the subtitles for the full effect.)

During Loy Krathong, you see these giant lotus krathongs everywhere. I drove by one of the klongs (canals) today while taking Samuel and some friends to the science museum, and these krathongs were floating every few feet. Our neighborhood had this one smack in the middle of the swimming pool.

We watched traditional music and dance performances while we ate dinner. Thai dance heavily emphasizes hand movements, and the dancers are able to bend their fingers far backward. We noticed this in Cambodia, as well, in today's dancers and also in the stone carvings of dancers around ancient Angkor. I'll have to research what makes hand and finger movement so important.

Evie, Emma, and Samuel were inspired by the music ...

The Thai music is heavy on percussion and flute. There were all kinds of hand drums and a couple of huge wooden xylophones. The flute was a small wooden one, sort of like pan pipes from South America.

More from the peanut gallery ...

Krathongs filling the lake as the evening wore on ...

Evie and Johnny showing off the loot they won at the game booths ...

There were fireworks, too, but we were having meltdowns by around 8 p.m. and chose to get home and to bed. So that was our first Loy Krathong. We think we might get all native and head to a riverside next year. We'll see. This was a lovely night, though.

Cooking with Poo

No, no! Not THAT kind of poo. This is about cooking with Khun Poo, an amazingly energetic Thai woman who has lifted herself, her family, and several friends out of poverty by founding and running a cooking school.

One of the most popular Things To Do while visiting Thailand is taking a cooking class, because Thai food is to die for. All kinds of places cater to this tourist obsession, but the one we kept hearing about was Cooking with Poo. She founded her school with the help of a charitable group called Helping Hands, which has many supporters in our expat neighborhood, and she's been able to support her family and help others in the Klong Toey slum, where she lives. She's been remarkably successful. She recently traveled to the UK to appear with Jamie Oliver, and she and her assistant, Khun Noi, couldn't stop talking about it! She's an incredibly energetic, happy person.

One of the ladies in my neighborhood was dying to cook with Poo, so she scheduled a Saturday morning class and rounded some of us up to join her. It was so fun!

The class started with a tour of the gigantic market in the Klong Toey area of Bangkok, where Khun Poo and Khun Noi bought supplies for our menu.

We're not in Kansas, you know. Not even in (vegetarian) India.

I can handle the plucked chickens with eyes still staring ...

... snakes and eels are a little weirder ...

... but the skinned frogs were a bit much.

How about some bugs? So good for you! Khun Poo pointed out which taste good and which taste as nasty as they look ... I do not plan to test her theories.

Klong is the Thai word for canal, so the Klong Toey area is the part of town along the Toey canal. This is looking across the canal to another part of the market.

Some stalls specialize in providing vast quantities of one item, and others sell everything you need for your meal in small piles.

These red bulbs are banana flowers.

I haven't been able to figure out what all the greens are around here. They have lemon grass, several kinds of kale and cabbage, morning glory, long beans, several kinds of basil, cilantro/coriander, celery greens, and on and on and on.

You can't cook Thai food without chilies!

The green bulbs are Thai eggplant ...

This stall was full of dried seafood, and the smell about knocked me out ...

Fruit! The red, fuzzy ones are rambutan. Delicious!

I've never seen so many kinds of eggs for sale as we see here in Thailand. All colors and sizes and from all kinds of birds.

More fruit, including limes, bananas, longan ...

Rambutan, mangosteen, and longan ...

These women were making wrappers for spring rolls. They grabbed a handful of dough, swirled it into a very thin, round pancake, flipped it, and stacked it with other freshly made wrappers. It took about 15 seconds to complete each one.

Snacks and sweets stall ...

This is a set-up for steaming sticky rice ... mmmm ... sticky rice ...

Chinese Thais use pig heads and parts for good luck offerings ...

Thai food is heavy on seafood. We saw thousands of crabs, shrimp, squid, and fish ...

A couple of years ago, the community raised the money to cover the market's largest meat section ...

... where we saw lots of families working together.

We were at the market from around 8:30 in the morning, and it was crowded and busy. The streets were packed, and every once in a while you'd hear one of these porters yelling for people to make way.

Veggie stand. The wrapped things are cauliflower.

After we finished at the market, we were off to cook what we'd bought. Khun Poo's nice kitchen burned down a couple of months ago, and while they were rebuilding, she held her classes at her sister's house in the slum. Here's a view of part of our walk. John and his mom, Sarah, did a Cooking with Poo class a couple of weeks ago and were able to cook in the new kitchen, but I enjoyed getting a look at a part of Bangkok I normally wouldn't see.

Two of my neighbors, Thuy and Mindy, making lemon grass salad.

Here's mine. Delicious!

Thuy about to dig in to her pad thai, which was the second dish we made.

Our last dish was massaman curry. We made the curry paste from scratch, toasting the whole spices and then pulverizing them with a mortar and pestle. We also toasted fresh ingredients like lemon grass, galangal, and garlic, and then pounded those together with the dry spices. If I did this every day I'd be ripped. Take a look at Khun Poo's lower arm muscles. Impressive, eh? You should see her biceps!

Here I am taking my punishment, er ... turn. I'm pleased to inform you that I finally went and had my hair dyed, so I don't look quite so scary now.

The finished product. This was by far the best massaman curry I've ever eaten ...

Here's the group from my neighborhood with Khun Poo and Khun Noi (not a flattering shot of her, sadly). Thuy, Mindy, Kerry, Debby, and me.

I highly recommend Cooking with Poo! It was great fun, Khun Poo and Khun Noi are great people, and it was a great opportunity to see Bangkok in an up-close-and-personal kind of way.