Our first day off!

This past Saturday and Sunday, we did not have work to do with BWU and were on “holiday.” You can tell that some of BWU’s English teachers have been British because they also refer to grocery carts as “trolleys.” I had a good laugh about that one and it turned out that one of Zar Zar’s teachers was from England. Morgan and Rachael have been consulting guide books while I have been taking care of GlobeMed business and there wasn’t many touristy activities listed in the Mae Sot area besides a spa, which we’ll definitely be hitting up later. We decided the best course of action would be to consult Noe Noe for advice. She discussed (in Burmese) with a couple other staff members before advising us to go to the local supermarket, Tesco Lotus. I happened to pick other interns with very similar tastes and interests to me because we were all revolted at the idea of spending the entire day in this supermarket giant (think Walmart). I tentatively asked if there were any local waterfalls we could visit and Noe Noe’s eyes immediately lit up and I could tell that she now knew what we meant by “fun activities.” After some discussion we decided on Saturday to visit the Border Market in the morning and the Mae Sot night market in the evening. For Sunday, we would be hiring a taxi driver for the day to take all six of us (Zar Zar, Suzy, Mae, Morgan, Rachael, and myself) to see waterfalls!

Sign out front the Border Market

Inside the border market. These stone trees are beautiful but it would be such a hassle to bring back…

Another view from inside the border market.

See what I mean about them selling everything?!

The Burmese border market was a bit away (~15 min. motorbike ride). In Mae Sot, we are approximately 6 kilometers away from the Thai/Burma Friendship Bridge (although there really isn’t anything friendly about how the Thai police officers treat the Burmese migrant workers, but more on that later) and the border market was very close to it. Practically on the Moei River. This market was huge and it reminded me of similar outdoor markets that I have seen in Barcelona. The market was covered by a roof and each stall had its own room as well (to prevent goods from getting wet in a rainstorm which is a very real possibility). There were about five rows of stalls and maybe twenty or so rows deep. It was massive. If there had been more people, I would have been quite claustrophobic but luckily there were only a few other individuals besides us walking around. This market had every kind of touristy gift you could ever imagine. There were purses, wallets, cheap jewelry (glass rings being 30 baht ~ 1 USD), tea, assorted candy, assorted dried fish, and so much more. I didn’t end up buying anything for myself but I did purchase some items to take back to Whitman. I came over with $100 (~2800 baht) from our fundraising to use to buy traditional Burmese items that we could then sell to Whitman students as a fundraiser. I purchased this traditional Burmese powder (thanaka) and the stone and piece of wood used to make the powder as well as these owls which are supposed to bring good luck to your house if you display them on a shelf in your living room. The owls were quite beautiful and we bought 8 thinking the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority would especially like them because their symbol is an owl.

Burmese make-up (thanaka) as well as the stone and wood used to mix the water and powder together. We’re hoping to have a Burmese cultural event at Whitman next semester where students have the option to wear thanaka.

A traditional Burmese owl believed to bring good luck to one’s home. This little guy is about 3 inches tall. We also bought some with the colors inverted (mostly black with gold). Zar Zar says Burmese people really like gold, but then again, who doesn’t?

I really enjoyed looking around the market and had to keep myself from impulse buying a lot of items. This was the first real touristy market we had been to but we will also have the opportunity to buy items in the Mae La Oo Refugee Camp so I really only wanted to look on Saturday. Morgan ended up buying some tea and Rachael got this interesting candy. It isn’t very sweet (so not really my thing) but she likes it. It has Chinese characters on it but I don’t recognize any of them. It’s probably just a name anyway. After spending an hour or two in the market, we headed to Tesco Lotus, which is this huge supermarket. As I mentioned prior, i’s like Walmart but it also has small stores within it on the bottom floor. Noe Noe was telling me this afternoon how international companies, like Tesco Lotus, are destroying local Burmese shops inside Burma because shop keepers can’t keep up with their low prices. It reminded me a lot of what I’ve heard about Walmart in rural US towns and it really made me frustrated how these large corporations don’t think about the needs of the people they are serving. Yes, buying goods cheap is great but is it worth the cost of putting local shops out of business? I personally don’t think so.

My super spicy lunch. My eyes still water at the thought of it.

These were on display at the food center in Tesco Lotus. It did not make we want to order food from their station. Granted, I didn’t order, Zar Zar did in Burmese with one of the cooks.

The have escalators for carts! It was pretty awesome.

We all got 10 baht ice cream from KFC! And let’s be real, who from the Dornan family ever turned down an ice cream cone, ever?

This is where we ordered lunch in Tesco Lotus.

Have I mentioned that everybody motorbikes here? Our neighbors have cars and it’s rather strange.

We grabbed lunch inside Tesco Lotus but everything was written in Thai. That goes for the whole city actually. All the street names are in Thai which makes it impossible to describe where I am living. There is a giant poster of a woman on one street corner but besides that, I have no idea. I’m also not sure why the woman is there or what she is selling (because it’s in Thai). This is completely understandable considering I am living in Thailand, but does make it difficult at times when neither we (GROW interns) nor BWU staff members read/speak an inkling of Thai. It is kind of fun though because I definitely feel like I am living in a foreign country. The food area that we purchased lunch from had displays of everything so I picked an item that looked similar to sizzling rice soup which is my favorite Chinese dish (ask anyone in my family). This however, was nothing like that soup. It was so spicy I was crying throughout the meal. It is no secret here that I can’t handle spicy food, and while Rachael didn’t think it was that spicy, I could only eat half before my taste buds couldn’t take anymore. I hadn’t had much for breakfast either so when I happened upon a Chinese mooncake in Tesco Lotus, I couldn’t help but buy it. It was also 5 baht (~15-20 cents).  After lunch, we wandered around the supermarket buying ingredients for our picnic lunch for Sunday. One thing that is definitely not different between the US and Thailand is how boring grocery stores are. I was miserable in the store. It didn’t help either that Suzy and Zar Zar didn’t know some of the food we wanted to buy (rice vinegar for sushi and peanut butter) so we wandered around in circles for what felt like hours. I was also really hungry and had to hold my mooncake without devouring it, so I wasn’t a happy camper. Eventually we got everything and were able to leave. I’ve never been happier to leave a grocery store in my life. We piled onto the motor bikes and were off to find this outlet store that was supposed to sell cheap cell phones. We already had one cell phone (Rachael brought an unlocked one over and we were able to purchase a SIM card for it in Bangkok) but one is really useless if you don’t have another one to call. If we ever decided to split up, we would really need two, so we were on the hunt looking for another one. This outlet was huge and we couldn’t find what we were looking for. Oh, a side note on language. While it is true that all signs are in Thai, everywhere we have gone there has been an individual who speaks Burmese that we (and by we I mean our Burmese staff friends) can communicate with. We may be in Thailand but I would venture to say there are more Burmese people living in this city than Thai people.

This was taken right in front of the phone store. We are not quite positive but are pretty sure this is what you would consider downtown Mae Sot. We are definitely living in a city, but the rural countryside is only a twenty minute cab ride away.

One sales representative suggested we go to this other store to buy a SIM card, so that was our next stop. We drove through the main market of Mae Sot, stopping in the middle of the street to buy avocadoes. While we were stopped, this little girl came up to me and tapped me on my thigh (while I was sitting on the motorbike). She pointed to her stomach and then to her mouth and looked at me with really sad eyes. It was so hard to see her. At the training I attended in Boston, the Director of Partnerships for GlobeMed said that internationally, parents train their children to go up to white foreigners and beg for food and money knowing they’ll feel guilty and shell out a few bills. Alyssa highly suggested we not do this because it perpetuates this stereotype and is not a sustainable solution to solving the world’s poverty problems. While I have to agree, this girl was just ripping out my heart. I didn’t give her money, which may haunt me, I’m not sure yet, but I made my decision and I’ll stand by it. I suppose I could have bought her a piece of fruit since we were right there. I may do that next time even though Alyssa advised us not too.

After buying the avocados, we went to the cell phone store. I wanted nothing more to do than sit on the motorbike and not have to enter another store, but when I saw that Rachael was having trouble, I knew I needed to go inside and see what was happening (being the team leader and all). It turned out that the shopkeeper didn’t have a SIM card that would work with her other phones and we would have to buy a new one. The cheapest was 700 baht (approx. $25 USD) and I decided to buy it. It really did seem pointless to only have one cell phone, especially once Dandi arrives and it may be possible to split into twos to walk around. And it was purple so how could I say no?

Finally, at 4:30 pm, we arrived back at BWU (we had left at 10 am that morning). We were all so exhausted. Morgan, Rachael and I plopped down at the table in front of the fan and Zar Zar, Mae, and Suzy lay on the floor, in front of another fan. We all sat in silence for awhile, munching on fruit before Zar Zar asked if we still wanted to go to the night market that evening. I really was content staying at BWU and after looking at Rachael and Morgan’s faces, I knew they were too. Suzy and Mae also looked pretty exhausted and I thought it would be best for all of us if we took the evening off. Everyone was quite relieved and we had a quiet evening back at the office reading Harry Potter, trying to connect to the internet that was not being cooperative, and eating delicious Burmese food. Suzy and Mae are really the best cooks. I love everything they have prepared. Eating a bowl of rice as the main part of every meal is starting to get to me though. I’m going to have to find pasta and marinara sauce soon, ha! Well, it turns out I had much more to say about Saturday than I had remembered. It’s a little after 11 pm here and I’m going to hit the hay. We get up around 7 am every morning and Rachael is usually asleep by 9 pm. Morgan is usually my night buddy with me but tonight she headed up at 8 pm—BWU is wearing us out! Haha no, I think a lot of it has to do with the heat, it’s completely draining.

Anyway, love you all lots and hope you are enjoying your June, I know I am. 🙂

With thoughts of chocolate (it all melts too fast here!),

Rachel

PS- Would someone please tell Big Grammie that I got an ice cream cone at KFC for 10 baht the other day (~33 cents)? Oh, and a watermelon for 35 baht, a little over 1 USD. Grandma would love it here!