It was very cold up in the mountains, colder than we’ve ever been in Thailand. We all huddled around a campfire while we grilled fish and chicken, steamed rice and vegetables, and listened to Chai play the guitar and sing praise music. Amber and I were treated like guests of honor the entire time, which means we got the warmest blankets at night! The house that we slept in was made entirely out of bamboo and wood, and the bathroom was an outhouse.  But after living in Thailand for four months, we were totally comfortable and appreciative of the accommodations.

The village itself was very remote and rural.  Everyone that lived there was Thai-Karen and seemed to be related in some way.  On December 31, the entire town took a day off from their farming and gathered at the local school (which only teaches through the equivalent of 5th grade) to play soccer and volleyball, share good food, listen to music, and have a great time.  That night, the entire town gathered together to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  Everyone huddled around about 20 campfires and watched singers, dancers, speeches by local officials, raffles, and fireworks.  Happy New Year 2011 from deep in the mountains of northwestern Thailand!

The next day, we packed up the truck and drove another few hours through the mountains to a different Thai-Karen village where Tamla’s sister and her husband owned a small restaurant.  We explored the area, ate some home-cooked Karen food, and joined the entire family for their church service.  We visited some friends of theirs at night and ate rice cooked inside a hollow bamboo log, mixed with coconut milk.  We had read about this specialty in Zoya Phan’s books about Karen life, but we had never tasted it before.  It was the best rice we have ever eaten!

On the way home from the Thai-Karen villages, we stopped at a huge botanical garden with flowers of every color, shape, and size.  On Monday, January 3, we visited one of Tamla’s brothers, as well as her parents, in a suburb of Chiang Mai.  We feel like we know both of their extended families now!  After that, Chai and Tamla dropped us off at the bus station.  Since it was the first travelling day of the year, the buses were sold out, and we ended up spending one additional night in Chiang Mai before heading home to Mae Sot to begin whatever adventures the year 2011 would bring.

There are a series of ten waterfalls along a 3 km stretch of river, with rapids, calm pools for swimming, etc. Some areas have huge, flat boulders where people take picnic lunches, read books, etc. At the base of the falls, we bought some pad thai, grilled chicken, and sticky rice to eat on the boulders.

We took a day trip north to Chiang Rai, the Golden Triangle (famous for heavy drug trafficking in the 1970′s and ’80′s), and Mae Sai (a town along the border with Burma and the northernmost point in Thailand).  We visited the famous White Temple, took a boat ride on the Mekong River, and even briefly set foot in Laos.

Amber and her mom did a Thai cooking class, where they learned how to make pad thai, khao soi, spring rolls, coconut ice cream, and more.

We went to the khantoke dinner and dancing show.

We went Christmas shopping at the Night Bazaar, Sunday market, the Central World mall, the silver district, and more.

We lit a lantern just like the Loi Krathong / Yi Peng festival and sent our Christmas wishes up into the sky.

We went to the Mae Sa elephant camp, where we saw elephants perform tricks and sports and Susan took an hour-long elephant ride through the jungle.

The ten days went by very quickly because we had so much fun. Having a family member from home join us for Christmas made the holiday special and memorable. Susan even brought us a Christmas tree for our hotel room! Check out the pictures below to find out how she did it!

For my students, we sat around the classroom table eating fried fish and chicken, playing the guitar, and singing Christmas songs in Burmese and English. My students gave me a traditional Karen shoulder bag, which Amber has begged me to buy for myself for months now. I will wear it proudly!

** Note: As always, for the safety and security of the students we teach, there are no photos of our students below.

Throughout December, Amber and Sofia began visiting this migrant school/orphanage regularly. I call it both a school and an orphanage because the children’s parents are not necessarily deceased. Some of their parents were forced to abandon them there since they could no longer afford to feed them or care for them, because their jobs in factories and sweat shops pay them only $1 or $2 per day. The children may have been born in Burma, or they may have been born in Thailand, but it doesn’t really matter. They are not citizens of either country, so they have no home other than the orphanage.

Amber and Sofia delivered clothing, coloring books and crayons, soap, shampoo, medicines, and anything else the children might need. But more importantly, they gave the children affection, attention, and love.

Amber then taught the young women at her ethnic minority school how to sing a few Christmas songs in English. On December 14, Amber took her students to visit the migrant school/orphanage to sing the carols to the children there. In addition, we brought them toys like a soccer ball, a bowling ball and pins, etc. I went along on the visit to take photos, and it was a very emotional day. Some of Amber’s students got upset when they saw the children, because it reminded them of their own poverty-stricken villages inside Burma. But the children were happy and played for hours. Our visit was probably the closest experience the children will get to Christmas this year, because somehow it seems Santa Claus skips over this part of the world.

**Note: As always, for the safety and security of our ethnic minority students that we teach, there are no photos of Amber’s students below.

Interesting fact:  H.M. The King was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lived there for less than a year, while his father attended Harvard.

This evening, the entire town of Mae Sot converged on the local school’s campus for a carnival, fireworks, food, music, dancing, etc. It must be an unofficial rule that everyone is welcome to celebrate H.M. The King’s birthday safely, because many thousands of Burmese migrant workers and their families turned out for the event, and they usually disappear after sundown on any other day. Our friend Sofia even saw a few of her students, and they would normally avoid public places at night for fear of getting questioned or detained by police.

Anyway, to get into the spirit of the celebration and truly remember this day in my mind, I did something that has been on my “Thailand to-do list” for a long time – I ate an insect. Not just any insect, but a two-inch long deep-fried cricket!

At first, it took a while to get over the mental hurdles of eating an insect before I could even begin.  And once I actually ate the thing, it took a long time to chew. What did it taste like, you ask? Good question. It could best be described as tasting like a burnt, greasy, salty, BBQ-flavored potato chip. Amber and Sofia thought it was gross to watch, and yet they were unable to turn their eyes away. In fact, Amber took pictures while Sofia filmed it!

And so, for the first time ever on www.steveandamber.net, we have live video footage in addition to the pictures below. Please be warned, the video is real, raw, graphic, and unedited. It may not be suitable for people with weak stomachs. Bon appetit.

Since the tour van that took us to the park continued on to Tak, we hadn’t really planned on how we would get home to Mae Sot. Fortunately, it was a crowded day in the park, and a Thai family from Bangkok saw us in the late afternoon walking towards the park exit (and out towards the highway). They stopped and offered us a ride, and they just happened to be going to Mae Sot to shop at the border market! The whole way home, they joked with us and said, “You farangs sure must like to walk. You were going to walk all the way back to Mae Sot!” We laughed along with them, but secretly we didn’t think it was very funny, because #1) they were right, we had no plan for getting home and #2) we were nearly 20 miles away from Mae Sot.

The next day, the morning of HM the King’s birthday, we attended a wedding at a beautiful resort in Mae Sot. Students from both of our organizations were there, as well as family and friends from Bangkok and inside Burma. The wedding was a major event for the ethnic group that we both teach, since both the bride and groom’s parents were activists and leaders for their people in Burma.

Our Thanksgiving meal included:

• rotisserie chicken (a turkey would have to be special-ordered from Bangkok)
• potatoes mashed by hand with a wooden spoon
• asparagus
• corn on the cob
• green beans with onions and ham
• grapes, tangerines, and cheese
• Thai shrimp spring rolls made by the Thai owner of our guest house

This was our first holiday living abroad, and we definitely missed home.  We missed being surrounded by our friends and family.   We are certainly thankful here for many things – safe travels, good health, our students, and of course, the opportunity to share this experience together as a married couple.  However, nothing compares to sitting at the dinner table with family and friends, carving the turkey, passing the mashed potatoes, and just laughing and living in the warmth of the holiday moment.

Although we’re 8,000 miles away, our hearts are with you today. As you enjoy your slice of pumpkin pie, think of us and smile.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For Loi Krathong, people place floating flower arrangements known as “krathongs” into the Ping River with candles, sparklers, coins, incense, etc. Hundreds of thousands of these krathongs float down the Ping River, possibly all the way to Bangkok. We opted for the more eco-friendly “biodegradable” krathong which is made out of bread and is usually eaten by fish within a day or two. As you watch your raft float away, you’re supposed to let go of all of your grudges and anger and feel emotionally refreshed.

For the Yi Peng portion of the holiday, people light a fire underneath paper lanterns known as “khom loi” and release them up into the night sky. This is a beautiful sight, as thousands of lanterns glow like stars over the city. Throughout the holiday weekend, everything is lit up with white lights – buildings, trees, bridges, etc. Also, there are concerts, beauty pageants, parades, etc. Among all of the festivities, thousands of people light fireworks and throw them off of bridges or down the street! Imagine the 4th of July in America, but more condensed and more reckless.

Interestingly enough, a few days later in Cambodia, a holiday celebration was held and nearly 400 people died on a bridge when fireworks caused a stampede. From the craziness that we saw in Chiang Mai, I can easily imagine how such a tragedy happened. Fortunately, we were safe and had a great time, and we headed back to Mae Sot after a long week of traveling.

As a complete coincidence, Laos was celebrating the 450th anniversary of Vientiane being the country’s capital, so there were official parades and celebrations. Vientiane was swarming with Western tourists and backpackers, and it was funny to see how little the tourists and the Laotian locals interacted. Keep in mind, “The People’s Democratic Republic of Laos” is a Communist country and is very conservative culturally. The Laotian people are told what to think, how to dress, and in the case of the women it seemed, even how to style their hair. Meanwhile, some of the tourists and hardcore backpackers rarely bother to even wash their hair! So while tourists blocked city streets to take photos or nursed their hangovers by drinking coffee at French outdoor cafes, Laotian men and women walked between the government buildings and banks with their heads down, eyes forward, and blank expressions on their faces. Lao police and military guards stood nearby, assault rifles and machine guns slung over their shoulders, just watching and waiting for someone to do something remotely illegal or un-Communist-like.

In Vientiane, we saw the touristy sights, such as the Presidential Palace, the Patuxay (similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, this monument ironically commemorates the struggle for independence from France) , and Pha That Luang (a Buddhist temple covered in gold and the national symbol of Lao culture).  In keeping with Lao culture and Communist laws, Amber was required to rent a long traditional skirt in order to visit Pha That Luang, since her shorts exposed too much leg!

After two days, we were back on a bus, crossing the Mekong River into the relative luxury and laid back attitude of Thailand! Overall, Laos was nice to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there longer than about 48 hours hehe.