I always enjoy the market.  Sunday morning has the biggest market in the village.  It has rained a lot the last couple of days so the market was a mud pit.  There was a whole section I just looked at and decided I couldn’t go in.  I didn’t think I could make it out without casualties.  Whatever was in there, I just didn’t need.  I did get a Hello Kitty pancake which made me very happy – the little things…..  I swept the house, defrosted the refrigerator (unplug it and open the door until all the ice melts), read a chapter and did some blogging.  It almost feels like a normal day, the kind of weekend I envisioned I would be having here, not the constant lesson planning I’ve been having.

In the afternoon, Tip picked me up for a Sam Ngao road trip.  She wanted to go to the Sam Ngao temple to drop off a donation for the monks.  I had never been to this temple, but had driven past it quite a few times when someone took me to Ban Tak or Tak.  It’s also the temple that comes up when you google Sam Ngao.  After that we went to another temple.  This one was on the Ping River and was in the jungle.  You had to drive through farms on a dirt road for quite a while to get there.  The buildings were much more simple without all the gaudy glittery colored ornament.  I thought it was very beautiful.  Lining the river was a long line of large Buddha statues.  Tip said there were over 100 of them.  I counted over 50 as we walked along, but they kept going off into the distance.  Tip explained that there were jungle temples and city temples.  The jungle temples were simpler with less buildings.  I think I like the jungle temples better.

Oh, and there were buffalo walking down the street.  This is far better than cows walking down the street.  Just so you know.

As we were driving out we passed Chatchai, which I had passed many times before and always wondered what it was.  It has a lot of signs and a big entrance with sheep statues.  Tip said it was a resort.  On the way back we drove through.  It’s a huge, quite, almost deserted resort with a sheep farm in the middle.  I wonder how this stays in business in a very rural village in the middle of nowhere.  It was very beautiful.  If you are looking for a very nice and quiet place to get away, this is the place.

Now I’m at home avoiding doing research on what is next to do.  Where am I going to go in October?  What am I going to do after that?  It’s a giant world out there and figuring this out seems like a daunting task.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore