Travel

Thai Pancakes and Gibbon Apes: Day 2 of Our Homestay!

Me Ra Koh

Brian and I have been reading some of the submissions as they come in, and we are both moved by your honesty and passion. I’m also proud of those who are nominating themselves. As women, we can struggle with self worth and the idea of deserving a gift. Whether you’ve suffered trauma or not, if your a mom, you deserve a break and a gift. 🙂 Amen?! For anyone who missed yesterday’s post, make sure you enter someone you love (including yourself) in the Running on Empty Contest before Wednesday!

Want to hear about the rest of our Homestay in Ban Tale Nok?

We woke up a few times the second morning. The first time was at 5:30am when the rooster crowed and crowed AND crowed. When he was done the neighbors rooster crowed and crowed and crowed. And when all the roosters had their final say for the morning, we woke up again at 7am with the Gibbons singing their beautiful songs. Every living thing was alive in the early hours of the morning. Day two started with a vibrant energy!

Mr. Hem’s wife invited us over for breakfast and taught us how to make our own Roti Thai pancakes.

Blaze loves Roti pancakes and didn’t waste any time getting started. You’d love them too: fried dough with condensed milk, sugar, chocolate and sliced bananas on top.

For all my Photo Recipe lovers, I shot the above image with the Sony DSLR-A900 at an aperture of 2.8. My ISO was high b/c the kitchen didn’t have a lot of light. My ISO was at 1250. My shutter speed was 125 or 1/125th of a second. Metered on Blaze’s face.

After breakfast, we were given a tour of the village’s Animal Rescue Shelter. This set up is awesome. When monkeys or apes are injured, the village has set up the means to help rehabilitate them so they can enter back into the wild.

As you know from past posts, it’s rare to see a Gibbon ape at our house. We hear them, but rarely see them. Well guess what! The village had a handful of beautiful Gibbons!

We have a couple white Gibbons living in our backyard! We’ve spotted them two or three times, but it’s always from a distance. It was AWESOME to see the white ones up close. They are just beautiful!

Not only do Gibbon apes have amazing songs, but they also do the most incredible acrobatics with their long, strong arms. I could watch them for hours and not ever get bored. But watch out for those long arms, they swiped the sun glasses right off a man’s head! Lickety split! His glasses were gone! They can reach through the cage a lot farther than you’d ever guess! You can see how they are spying on Brian and Blaze, waiting for the perfect moment to grab that video camera. 🙂

After the Gibbons, we went on to more activities! The day had only begun. One activity was meeting the beautiful soap making women and being taught their trade. The other activity was learning to palm weave. Both of these experiences were amazing and could be their own blog post! I’ll start with the palm weaving and see how far I get.

This amazing woman taught how to palm weave.

She will get an order for 400-500 sets of palm weaving that becomes a bungalow roof. Have you ever been to Mexico or Hawaii and had a bungalow bar on the beach? Next time see if the roof is made up of palm weaving.

She earns 5 Thai Baht for every length she does. See the piece on the top of the pile? How the colors are brown and green? For that whole thing, she is paid 5 Baht. It’s mind boggling. In US dollars that conversion is 14 cents.

For almost two hours, she sat with us and the kids and taught us how to do her trade. This woman didn’t speak a word of English, but she had such a heart of gold in wanting Pascaline and Blaze to learn for themselves.

Blaze loved her. The two of them spent almost an hour together working on one piece. He kept asking her questions, and she would just smile at him and nod–sometimes saying “Wow!” or give him a thumbs up with a BIG smile. Oh, Blaze soaked every bit in. They were total buds.

With the help of our friend, we all finished our own pieces.

In the evening, some of the staff from Andaman Discoveries came by to teach the youth how to make compost for organic gardening. AD is doing an AMAZING job with the villages, on so many levels!

Pascaline and I joined the village w
omen and learned how to shell cashews. The village women do this every night. I asked them what they like to talk about together. They said men and how to make more money. Women are women! 🙂

For example, I was making fun of Brian behind the camera. And even though these two women don’t speak a word of English, they totally got was I was saying. When someone is crazy in the head, Thai people call them “Ding Dongs.” Brian said we use the same word in English. Husbands are husbands (and often Ding Dongs), no matter how small your village is.

Aside from the occasional (HUGE) beetles wedged between the curtains, we had an AMAZING time! Some Thai people fry these beetles and eat them with chocolate sauce. This is a tough one for us to grasp. 🙂

We want to thank AD and all the villagers of Ban Talae Nok for welcoming us into their homes. The experience was life changing to say the least!

And a HUGE thank you and BIG HUG to the sweetest, most savvy Thai woman you’ll ever meet!

Her name is Tu, and she was our translator the whole time. She owns her own restaurant in Thailand. And when we were done with our homestay, she took us back to her restaurant and gave us Thai cooking lessons!

It was AWESOME! We love you Tu and miss you terribly!!

Brian tried to do some Photo Coaching Tu by teaching her how to lean forward to elongate your neck for pictures. She almost did it as good as me. 🙂

Maybe if you had blue eyes Tu, it would be easier. 😉 (little inside joke we have with Tu)

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  1. Linda says:

    Looks like Pascaline’s hair got lighter. Your adventures are incredible and I check this site often to get envious of your travels. 🙂 Love the photos!

  2. Jessica N says:

    Give us some Thai cooking lessons please! Ever since I went to JMac’s house for a Cambodian & Thai feast, I’ve been on a Thai/Asian food kick! You may want a burger and fries by now, but all that Thai food sounds so YUMMY. Glad you guys are having fun and experiencing all this!

  3. Brooke Snow says:

    Absolutely LOVE the picture of Blaze looking up at that sweet Thai lady! Precious!

  4. so is this the end?? 🙁 I hope not!

  5. Jen says:

    I especially love the 2nd photo taken in the kitchen – love the light!
    Can’t wait to hear more!

  6. Whitney says:

    We have so enjoyed reading about your adventures! Life is too short to not live big and go for your dreams. My husband and I have been talking recently about how to manage our photography business so we could weave in some extensive family travel time… homeschooling being another scary thing to possibly attempt. It has been so encouraging to watch someone actually do what we’re dreaming. Thanks for the visual reminder that it’s all possible if you have the guts to go for it!

  7. Chelsea says:

    Oh man… I am just loving this LOVING this…. we are saving up like crazy to make it to Chiang Mai this Christmas…. my husband’s parents live there (missionaries) and they get to see the grandkids like once a year if that. If we go this Christmas, it is the last chance we can fly with only 3 tickets for 4 of us. 🙂 Your trip to Thailand has been so inspiring to me on so many levels. It has always been a dream of mine to take off for a couple of months, half a year or a year and do just what you are doing with our kids (they are just 1 and 3 right now, so I think we will wait for a few years). I definitely would love to do a homestay adventure like this. Your kids are getting the education of a lifetime. What a priceless treasure!!

  8. Shannon says:

    Thanks for sharing your adventures! It inspires me to one day take my own adventures with my son!

  9. jeramy says:

    great story!

  10. Paris Parfait says:

    Except for the beetles, it looks like the most wonderful holiday! What a thrill to share all these unique experiences with your children! They’ll remember this time all their lives. The photos are wonderful! And thanks for the tip about the A900. Am having such fun learning more about this camera.

  11. lindy says:

    My fav is blaze adoring the thai lady! I miss it there! You guys look like your having a bast! keep enjoying it! have you had somptum yet? have it dum thai… its the best!

  12. Julie Watts says:

    I agree…blaze adoring his buddy is heart melting.

    I especially enjoy seeing real women and what their day is like on the other side of the world…

  13. Sue Christianson says:

    ah….chocolate dipped crunchy beetles hmmmm….Don’t know about that either. That bugger is huge!
    The pictures are amazing! Thanks again for sharing your experiences with us. You are truly experiencing every aspect of the Thai life. How cool for your kids. Looking forward to more pictures!
    Love you guys!

  14. Amanda Key says:

    Thank you for sharing your adventures. I love the pictures!

  15. Amanda Mays says:

    Awesome awesome awesome! I LOVE that you guys decided to do this. What an amazing experience!Weaving the bungalow roof is priceless!

  16. Such an amazing adventure!

  17. cecily says:

    Oh my goodness I would love some Roti pancakes! One of my Thai favorite’s! What an awesome adventure for your family.

  18. norris hall says:

    If you like learning to cook thai food, take a look at this website

    http://www.thaifoodtonight.com/thaifoodtonight/recipes.htm

  19. Mittie Duong says:

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  20. There are numerous many towns to get a really good adventure across the globe. I do not be aware of why, nevertheless i’m sure i’m keen on normally typically the asian continent to get my own vacation, because i’m sure the folks you can find so friendly and also powerful

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