Going coup coup ... plus the tea museum!

You might have heard that there's been a military coup here in the Land of Smiles. Not much smiling going on about that, actually. Our neighborhood is far from any action (and to be honest there hasn't been nearly as much action as people were worried there would be ... yet), so we're safe and life is pretty normal. Aside from the vague worries about violence and the actual loss of civil liberties, the main downer is that we can't get out and explore much. You might say things are a little too quiet. I suppose that's better than things being a little too crazy.

On a positive note, it does give me time to update the blog on last year's adventures in India, so ...

... on to Munnar! Munnar is a not very beautiful little town located in a ridiculously beautiful setting. Before checking in to our homestay (right in the middle of a gorgeous tea plantation) we stopped at the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations tea museum.

The museum was packed with Indian tourists all excited to learn about their favorite drink and not very willing to stand in line or do anything else in any kind of order. As this is how things generally go in India, we gamely entered the fray and learned all about India's obsession.

First they make you sit through a documentary about the formation of the company, which is actually pretty interesting. The plantations were founded by a couple of British soldiers who saw that the area was perfect for growing tea. They and their descendants ran things until the Tata group (known in India for its monopolies in about everything) took over in the 1960s. Tata bowed out of plantations to focus on other things in the early 2000s, and the plantations became a co-op with all employees as shareholders.

A guide led us into the museum factory to tell us all about tea. I learned all kinds of things. I had no idea, for example, that black, green and white teas all come from the same plant. Tea leaves are harvested by hand because of the steep and curving slopes on which the plants grow and because the leaves are very fragile. Once harvested, the leaves are taken to the factory for processing.

We were packed into the tea leaf holding area (for lack of a better term), and the tour guide climbed up onto a little platform so the teeming masses could hear as he went through the growing and harvesting process. (Here's a good overview and here). This is where I learned that black, white and green teas are all from the same plant, but fermented for different lengths of time.

Next we filed onto the factory floor to watch the tea being processed. First the leaves are wilted, then fermented, then rolled, dried and cured.

This man's showing us a green tea and a black tea during processing.

The kids liked this vibrating machine that was separating cured tea into different consistencies.

One of the museum workers took us out back to see the ancient furnace that powers the museum factory. He said it's the factory's original power source.

And here's what they're using for fuel ...

Outside the museum you can see some of the plantation's old barracks and slope after slope of growing tea.

Not being tea-drinkers, we skipped all the free samples after our tour and drove through some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen to get to our homestay. Every curve in the road presented a new, gorgeous view. It was like driving through a fairy tale.

More to come.

Moms' tea

More throwback! This is my darling Evie last Mother's Day. Her kindergarten class had a cute Mothers' Tea, where the kids presented us with these pictures.

 

Spice garden

Samuel's occupied with a new set of matchbox fire trucks, so I'll continue our Throwback Thursday Kerala adventure. We left Cochin and the coast and headed into the mountains for a stay on a tea plantation at Munnar (and here and here), one of the many Indian hill stations created by British colonials who couldn't take the lowland heat.

Once we hit the mountains, we started passing "spice gardens" left and right. We finally got curious enough to stop at one. It was pretty cool. We went on a little guided tour and learned about different plants and spices that are native to Kerala. We actually learned more later on our trip when one of our hosts led us around her own spice garden, but this was a fun introduction.

Here's the all-important lotus flower, which has spiritual meaning in both Hinduism and Buddhism. We see it a lot here in Thailand, too. Here's an interesting explanation of the flower's significance.

Kerala is covered with jackfruit trees. They're so funny looking! And I was always slightly nervous that one of these giant fruits was going to fall on somebody's head.

Kerala's black pepper trade goes back millennia and is still strong. Check the pepper in your pantry. There's a good chance it was grown along the Malabar Coast. Here it is still on the vine, before being harvested and dried for sale.

Chocolate lovers should know this one ... That's right! The cacao plant! It's not native to India, but it grows well in the south and is now one of the plantation crops there, along with rubber, coffee and tea. It's kind of a strange-looking plant, with the pods growing right out of the bark and all over the tree.

This one's a nutmeg tree. The spice comes from the dried seed that's inside those yellow pods.

The last stop on our garden tour was to the gift shop, where our guide explained the ayurvedic properties (and here) of the fresh spices they had for sale.

Interesting stuff!

Household help

We've been here in Bangkok for about three weeks now, and John and I are contemplating what we're going to do about the household help situation. It's wonderful to live in a place where domestic help is affordable, because -- let's be honest -- I don't want to scrub toilets if I don't have to, but also because it's one way we can contribute something to the local economy. It's also extremely helpful to have a native in the house when you're trying to navigate the insanity that is the Third World. It's true that we do a lot of travel and touring, but we're actually living here, and that's serious business.

When you hire household help, though, you take on major responsibility.

Here's a picture of Samuel with Joseph, who did housecleaning and babysitting for us in Chennai. In the left of the picture you can see Gopal, who cooked and generally ran the kitchen. Samuel loved them both and misses them (as we all do). As their employers, John and I became involved in Gopal and Joseph's lives in a way that doesn't really happen in the States. We were their sole source of income. In a country with limited health care and even more limited insurance options, we were also a health insurance company of sorts. We helped Gopal get through cataract surgery, and when Joseph's wife, Queen Mary, had a stillborn baby, we offered monetary support and visited her in the hospital.

So deciding whether to hire and whom to hire is a big deal. I felt a bit overwhelmed in India, because we had an actual staff -- cook, housecleaner, gardener, driver. Too many people hanging around the house, no matter how much I like them. Bangkok is much easier to navigate than was Chennai, too, so we've decided not to hire a driver here. Our housing compound has its own gardeners, so we don't have to worry about that, either. So now the decision is whether we're going to hire full time or part time inside the house. Since I've been having a great time experimenting with local cooking, I think we're going to try part time first and see how it goes. I hope we find someone as nice as Joseph.

Kalaripayyatu

Here's a Throwback Thursday post for you, continuing our adventures last year in Kerala. Woohoo!

After dinner with Kareem's family, we went to the local kalari to see a demonstration of the traditional South Indian martial art kalaripayyatu (and here and here). This was one of Johnny's three must-sees for Kerala. Indians claim that kalaripayyatu is the most ancient of the martial arts and the basis for the more famous forms out of China, Japan and Korea. This could be true. Buddhism spread to the rest of Asia from India, and it's not unlikely that other bits of culture went along with it.

Since there's not much call for bands of Malayali warriors to be roaming about these days, the art is now practiced as a combination of physical and spiritual fitness and dance.

The kalari is a simple rectangular building with a dirt floor and lots of religious icons and weapons hanging on the walls. (A word about the poor lighting in these photos. I didn't use a flash for fear of blinding the combatants, so the photos aren't spectacular.)

In one corner there's a little shrine, at which all of the combatants pray before beginning their demonstrations.

We were the only people at this demonstration, so the kalari's guru encouraged the kids to run around a bit ... as if they needed encouragement. Samuel immediately started asking for a sword. Lucky for me, the guru wasn't quite that encouraging.

Here are some of the combatants praying before the demonstration begins ...

First we were shown how a single combatant prepares himself. A lot of the movement is based on animal strengths, so there are postures for the serpent, lion, elephant, tiger, etc. The movement was so quick that it was hard for me to catch it on camera, not to mention the little problem that I was sitting in amazement with my jaw dropping to the floor and kept forgetting about taking pictures.

After the individual movements, we saw combat with various weaponry: axes, poles, clubs, daggers, swords and shields, spears, and this crazy long and bendy sword that was almost like a whip. They also fought without weapons and occasionally with one armed and one unarmed combatant.

If you squint a little, you can see in these pictures that the fighting is very acrobatic, full of flips and spins and incredibly high jumps ...

We were sitting in plastic chairs about six feet away from all of this! Evie slid off her chair and inched further and further back as things got more intense. She ended up behind my chair, peeking over my shoulder to see the action ...

I was a little worried we were going to see actual bloodshed, but these guys know what they're doing and everyone emerged from combat unscathed.

The very last demonstration was fire spinning ...

After all of the demonstrations, the guru asked if the kids would like to try some moves. Evie by this time was practically under my chair, so she declined, but Samuel sat right up and said: "Can I do the fire?" I'm happy to report that the guru would allow no weapons, but one of the combatants led Johnny and Samuel through some basic moves. I love Samuel's face in this photo!

An awesome end to a rather full day in Cochin!

Vimanmek Mansion and Dusit throne rooms

Tickets to the Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha are also good for admission to the Vimanmek Mansion and Dusit throne rooms, and it's a good thing you have seven days to use them, because all of that in one day would be a whole lot of walking in the Bangkok heat. So the Saturday of our second full weekend in Thailand was devoted to Dusit Palace Park. (and here)

The Dusit area is dotted with royal residences and throne halls, some in current use and others historical. We spent a good four hours here and didn't come close to seeing everything cool there is to see, so we'll be going back for sure. We missed the royal tuk-tuk! For shame! And the elephant stables! Augh!

We did see three amazing buildings, though: the Vimanmek Mansion, the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall and the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall. No photos allowed inside any of the buildings, which is too bad, because they were all pretty spectacular. The grounds are beautiful, too. Here we are all set to explore ...

Note to anyone coming to visit us: It's not too smart to wear a bright yellow shirt around, because you'll accidentally be supporting one side in the current political hullabaloo. (Bright red is out, too.)  I got enough comments on my shirt that day (all friendly) to permanently remove it from my exploration wardrobe.

Our first stop was the Vimanmek Mansion, which is supposedly the largest golden teak building in the world. It was built by Rama V (who was Prince Chulalongkorn, one of Anna's students in the King and I, if you know that play) in 1900 and has been restored and filled with period furniture and photographs taken by the king. The rooms are beautiful and full of interesting things like an old gramophone, hunting trophies and a random room full of old typewriters. You can see some interior photos if you click on the link above. The outside was surrounded by beautiful gardens and a whole lot of Chinese tourists.

All the guidebooks and tourist sites say you can only go through the mansion as part of a guided tour, but we wandered right in and nobody stopped us. There are people stationed in every room, presumably to keep rowdies like us from touching things (they snapped to attention as soon as they saw the kids coming), and they were happy to answer some questions. We were lucky enough to have our friend Mike with us, who speaks pretty good Thai. A couple of ladies were gleefully outlining some of the king's stranger family history for us. They showed us a picture of the woman who was both Rama IV's wet nurse and Rama V's mother, so wrap your head around that one if you dare.

After wandering through the mansion, which is beautiful inside and out, we took a quick break to check out the durian products on sale at a nearby snack bar. If you aren't familiar with durian, you're kind of lucky. It smells so bad that it's actually banned from public transportation in Bangkok. Lots of people love it, though. Here's a good primer. I guess it's sort of like stinky cheese. If you can muscle past the gag reflex you're in for a treat. I haven't tried it yet, though it's related to jackfruit, and I kind of like jackfruit. We'll see how brave I get.

Check out the ice cream flavors -- including two that are durian-based. Mike tried the durian ice cream, but Johnny and Evie preferred the safety of chocolate and Sam chose his favorite flavor ever -- mango. I would have gone for passion fruit. Mmmmmmmm.

We found this shrine to a Chinese goddess while walking over to the throne halls. The shrine was a gift from a Chinese delegation, and it apparently gets quite a few faithful visitors.

 

 

Not sure who the goddess is exactly ... anyone able to enlighten me?

A view of the Vimanmek Mansion from the Chinese shrine ...

The pillars are all adorned with dragons ...

... and this one also features a cutey patootie ...

Johnny and Evie were real troopers on this trip, because they were both feeling kind of sick. They soldiered on without complaining (well ... that's not entirely true, but we can pretend it is).

Next stop was the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall (and here), which Rama V used to receive foreign dignitaries. Now it's a museum of traditional Thai handicrafts. The current queen is a huge patron of the traditional arts, and her organization, SUPPORT, maintains the museum. We saw some amazing jewelry, baskets, woven silk, niello and kram metalware, and wood carving. At this point, Johnny was really fading, but the sight of all that gold and silver perked him up some. The throne hall is made of teak, but the style reminded me a lot of the Mughal architecture in northern India.

Here's a view of the newer throne hall's dome from the Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall. The buildings are separated by more gardens.

Our last stop was the incredibly impressive Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall (and here), also commissioned by Rama V. (He was quite the builder.) Rama V (following in the footsteps of his father, Rama IV) worked to modernize and to an extent Westernize Thailand as a way of resisting colonization. The incredible thing is that they managed to remain sovereign at a time when most of their neighbors were falling to colonial rule. Impressive.

Anyway, the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall was built by Italian architects in the Italian Renaissance style. The inside is even more beautiful than the outside. You can see a couple of interior photos here (and here), along with photos of some of the amazing pieces of traditional art housed here. The throne hall is another museum of traditional arts, but these pieces are on a huge scale and must be worth several million dollars each. I loved the use of beetle wings in a lot of the art, but my favorite pieces were two huge needlepoint depictions of scenes from the Ramakien. I also loved a giant teak carving that told the story behind the nine sacred gems, or navaratna (and here).

Evie in a gazebo outside the hall ...

 

Since this throne room is still used for royal activities, it requires "appropriate dress," meaning I had to cover my pants with a sarong. I might start doing all of my tourism wearing a long skirt, because you never know when they're going to get picky. I missed a part of the temple complex the week before because I was wearing pants, too.

When you enter the throne hall, you get a little handset that tells you the history behind all the art you're going to see. Pretty cool, but Evie felt the need to listen to every second of every. single. piece. of. art. By the time she and I made our way through the galleries, the boys were sacked out on a bench by the exit, a clear sign that it was time to get home. Another great day in Bangkok!