Sanuk Weekend!

This weekend, we took a trip with some of the Thai Grad Students that we're working with!

June 26th, 2010 - Saturday

1. Siam Museum - Basically, a cultural and historical museum of Thai stuff!

This is the group of Thai REU students that I will be hanging out with, this summer! :)

This guy (basically) the Thai version of John Muir, was made out of wax!

2. Khao Bin Cave, which was HOT and HUMID! But, awesome, nonetheless!

3. Our Home-Stay Place, which was in traditional Thai architecture!

4. We took a river motorized-boat to Amphawa Floating Market (lots o' yummy munchies!), then to see the fire-flies on the river (not too many, they were mainly in the trees, and lit them up like tiny Christmas lights!)

June 27, 2010 - Sunday

1. Wat Bang-Kung (Buddha in a tree!)

2. These Random Muay Thai Warrior Statues that we saw right next to the Temple...

3. Sanam Chandra Palace

4. Phra Phatom Chedi (Tallest Buddha Monument in the World, but, unfortunately, we were unable to see the Buddha inside of it since it's under remodeling!)

Rod mea~!

I had forgotten about the LT^3BMD section of my blog for a couple posts, and as I was writing this, it ended up being REALLY long, so… I’m dedicating this entire post to….

LT^3BMD – IV

Commuting to and from work, though time-consuming, is pretty fun! I have to take the bus and metro, and while my commute-buddy (Mike) and I usually use the very pleasantly air-conditioned metro for flipping through our GRE Vocabulary Practice Cards (GAH!), the bus I think, is definitely a nice experience, as well.

Rod mea = bus!

One reason that I love buses is because I always love observing and meeting new people on the bus, and I could talk about that for forever, but.. let me just comment on the overall bus system in Thailand, which I'm still amazed by! :)

So far, we’ve encountered two types of buses: one being new, shiny plastic-y, with TV-monitors and air-conditioning. And the other being old, wooden-floored, windows open, a fan above only the driver, and a bit worn down.

The new bus’s fare is typically calculated by distance, so… in our case, it’s 14 Baht.

However, the old bus’s fare is at a constant… 7 Baht! How nice is that?

Being a cheap-o and fan of establishments that have gone through a bit o' wear and tear (as long as it doesn’t involve smelly-toilets!), I’m sure anyone can say which bus I like better…

The feeling of the air through my hair and the rustic character (spray-paint writing and cartoons on the wall!) of the bus… love it.

But that’s not the only thing I've enjoyed…

What’s really cool is that the way they actually give you your ticket on the Thai bus systems, here, is really interesting!

Basically, when you enter the bus (from either the front or side, it doesn’t matter), a bus-attendee walks up to you, and asks you where you are going (on the new buses). They then take your money and….

Put it in this SUPER AWESOME change collector, thing! Basically, it’s a cylindrical container that is partitioned into different values of change, as well as paper rolls of various ticket values. They hold the bills (folded quite nicely in an organized fashion) in the same hand that holds the cylindrical container.

With the paper roll of tickets, they then rip off a ticket for you, but then… tear the sides of it in a way the denotes where you’re actually going? I think that there’s numbers that denote the number of the bus-stop that you got on at… so the tears are made right where you got on?

Actually… THIS just IN! I just asked my assigned Thai-research-mentor, Top, about the bus systems, and here’s what she enlightened me on…

1. Although there are more stations than numbers on the sides of the tickets, the numbers basically say where around your station that you got on, was
2. Where the rip on the ticket is made based upon which direction you’re going in. Generally, in the corners of the ticket, there is also (in Thai) the name of the places that are at the start and end of the bus-line.
   The numbers on the ticket are divided in two (like, 1-7 and 8-14 or 1-6 and 7-12), and the rip is made on whatever number side that corresponds with the direction that you are going in. The direction of the rip matters, as well, as all the rips are made diagonally, and somewhat point in the direction that you are going in, too!

Let’s give an American example…

Say that life is grand, and there’s a bus from Los Angeles (Station 1) to Berkeley (Station 14). If I get on the bus at around Simi Valley (with one of my roomies!), then my ticket would probably be ripped at around number 3 on the paper ticket. If it’s Thanksgiving, I need to go home, so I get on the bus at Berkeley, my ticket would probably be ripped at 14.

3. There are so many types of buses! I was explaining to Top that this morning, I was worried when Mike and I didn’t pay for our bus, since no one came to us for our ticket-money, and we couldn’t locate a box for putting in money… but it turns out that we were fortunate enough to get a ride on one of the government-owned free buses!

Government-owned Buses:

Old ones:

Cream or red coloured – 7 Baht

Cream or red coloured with a blue sign on the front window – Free!

New Ones:

Orange coloured – Start at 12 Baht, and is increased, depending on your distance

Private buses:

Old ones:

Orange coloured – 6.5 Baht

Blue coloured– 8 Baht

New ones:

Any colour on the outside! – Starts at 11 Baht, and is increased depending on your distance!

Wan~!

So, things in Thailand have been very good so far!

Today is my third day in lab, and although I’m not doing much synthesis, it’s still already been a fun experience, and I enjoy working here.

My project itself is actually not really what I was expecting to be researching (more iron-core things), but it’s still interesting! Basically, I’ll be studying membranes, inserting ionophores, chromoionophores, and another ion exchanger, to then immerse the membrane within a solution. This is with the hopes that the membrane, with its ion exchanging, will go into equilibrium with whatever ionized solution it is in, then be able to visually display the concentration of whatever ion is inside the solution.

In our case, for example, we’re going to have some boronic acid derivative within the membrane that is already protonated, then immerse it within a sodium or potassium ion solution, with hopefully the sodium/potassium ions exchanging with the protons within the membrane. The chromoionophore is needed within the membrane, since, without it, the membrane would be colourless. With our membrane, for example, the chromoionophore will change from pink-violet-blue depending on its protonated state (fingers crossed!).

Besides lab work, though, life here is continuously exciting. Although the commute for me to work (from outer to central Bangkok) takes about 1 hour there, then 1.5 hours back, it’s been nice to be able to actually go into Bangkok everyday and just observe the people and city life, here.

Everyday I will come to this university, Chulalongkorn University (Chula, for short!), which looks a little something like this~

What’s cool is that all the undergraduate students have uniforms, which are actually really cute! For girls, it’s a white collared shirt with blue/black skirt and a brown belt, while for boys it’s a white collared shirt with blue/black pants and brown belt. I always love seeing uniforms, especially when people wearing the uniform still take liberties to show their unique characteristics via their shoes, hairstyles, jewelry, makeup… Perhaps it just makes me a little happy to see people somewhat bending the rules, ahah :)

What’s also nice is that my lab is located on the 12^th floor of the Chemistry building, and actually has a pretty nice view of the skyscrapers in Bangkok!

This photo was taken on the balcony of the building, and it seems like my labmates (who, are all Thai, and thus, also love to eat!) love to have little snack parties out here!

Yesterday was no exception, and I was able to try a lot of fruit that we bought off of street carts (even though our Program Director told us not to eat any street fruits/water… oh well!). I was exposed to a lot of new things, and it was a lot of fun!

For example… I mean, we had a lot of your normal fruits, such as pineapple, papaya, watermelon. But, have you ever had pineapple or papaya with shrimp-infused-sugar or chili-infused-sugar??? It was actually quite tastey!

We also had Star-Gooseberries (Ma Yom) that were mixed with both shrimp and chili-infused sugars!

These leaf-wrapped squishy coconut desserts, complete with even more sugar inside, were quite nice, as well!

As you can see, I am enjoying being in Bangkok, since it definitely is combining my top hobbies of eating (maybe a little too much!!), learning about new cultures, as well as Chemistry!

I know I’ve been mainly displaying sweets in Thailand (which, they definitely have a LOT of!), but do not worry! I will soon put up some other “arroy” (Thai, for delicious!) pictures of more savory foods, soon!

----

Thai Vocab!:

Pet – Spicy

Wan – Sweet

Bree-au – Sour

Kop Koon Kah~

Today, we took a trip to the Grand Palace, Reclining Buddha, and other landmarks in Bangkok~!

What WHAT? Wat DEE!

June 18, 2010 – Bangkok!

After arriving in at Suvanabhumi Airport, I was welcomed by a CRI (Chulabhorn Research Institute) driver, as well as two Thai students (one working on her Masters, the other her PhD) that I’ll be working with in lab! I’ll have to probably correct myself in the coming posts, but they were speaking a little quickly and not that clearly, so I believe that they introduced themselves as “Tap” and “Guoy?” We drove from the airport to CRI, and then grabbed our rooms in the residence halls here (more like hotel rooms!) to get some shut-eye.

In the morning, I met up with the Thai-based program director, Dr. Poonsakdi, to just ask some general questions about the program, Bangkok, and then grab some lunch with him and a few other professors in the department at a food court in the nearby mall.

And let me tell you… the food courts here are NO joke. They have EVERYTHING here, with the aroma’s stirring in the air and me hoping that I have enough time to try most of the things that they offered!

Anyhow~ I ended up getting Pad Thai w/shrimp, wrapped in egg. I know, I know, you’re probably telling me that I should have gotten some REALLY exotic Thai dish that isn’t offered in the states, but… Dr. Poonsakdi recommended getting the Pad Thai, and I can attest that it definitely tastes BETTER here! Not severely orange in color, not too sweet (unless you add some sugar to it, since they actually do have a jar of sugar next to the other spice condiments for customers to use!!), and actually a tiny bit spicy… good! Add a glass of Thai iced tea, and, ooo.. I was set.

Ooh wait. We weren’t done, yet. That’s right…. Topped it off with dessert!

We all got shaved ice, which, when literally translated, they apparently just call ‘Sweet Cold!’ This consisted of getting 3 or so toppings, putting a scoop of shaved ice on top, then covering it with either the typical colored sweet syrups, condensed milk, or coconut-syrup.

Now, the toppings, though… I was SURPRISED by their selection! While there are some typical Asian sweet toppings, let me just list off some of the choices, shall I?

Red bean, pineapple, cubed yam pieces, Julienned kabocha pumpkin, grass jelly, coconut jelly, corn, sweetened cooked barley, this weird green-dyed flower blossom thing, this clear bean-looking palm-related-shrub fruit, gingko nuts, sliced lotus root, lotus seeds…

I was feeling a bit adventurous, and tried the sliced lotus root, weird green-dyed flower blossom, clear bean-looking palm fruit, and pineapple with the normal syrup.

The blossom ended up being a little bit like the white, not-quite-mochi balls that you find in some Japanese cold, red-bean + syrup desserts (the name is evading me right now, ママ！). The palm fruit was a bit chewy but slightly sweet and yummy – I’ll have to try it again, to taste it without the syrup! And the lotus root was actually fine, since it had a nice crunch to it and had the flavor of the syrup with it, anyway! So, all in all, it was a very good meal… all for 100 baht, which is basically $3!

Now, it’s time for…

LT^3BMD – II

On the way from the airport to CRI, I saw a very bright blue taxi next to us, and asked the 2 students with me if all Thai taxis are blue are not. To which, I got a reply from Tap,

“No! There are many colors! Pink! Red! Orange! Blue! Green! Yellow!...”

LT^3BMD – III

When grabbing lunch, today, and seeing how impressed I was with the food court and surrounding food stalls, Dr. Poonsakdi remarked,

“Yes, in Thailand, eating is a pass-time. We eat all the time just for fun.”

MUSIC TO MY EARS!

Ni Hao~ Part Eight!

June 17, 2010 – Tsai jien, Shanghai~

So, after spending a great two weeks in Shanghai under my sister’s care, it was finally time for me to head off to my main destination for this summer…. BANGKOK!

Having a late lunch at a Southern Chinese noodle-joint (lots of peanuts in the soup, mm!) as my last meal in Shanghai, I headed off with my sister to a bus stop to take a shuttle to Pudong Airport. But, this guy with a parked, nice car was offering (or, more like… INSISTING, to put it politely!) to take me to the airport for 30 RMB (the shuttle was 24 RMB, but was running a bit late, and would take stops along the way), and ended up just basically grabbing my luggage with a Mandarin “let’s go!!”

This m-a-y sound sketchy, but, there was another person in the car going to the airport, and it seems like people just drive other people around in their cars for $, all the time in China! How fitting that that’d be my last means of transportation in China~

I always find it funny, though, when I’m with people who don’t know English at all, and likewise, I can’t speak their language either! It’s always interesting to see what types of words do come out of their mouths, in order to converse with me… This was definitely the case in this car-situation, with the driver of the car driving over the bridge in Shanghai (that goes over the Expo), and suddenly pointing and yelling out “HEL-LO! EXPO!” Aww~ cute!

Anyhow! I got to Pudong airport well on time (aka, enough time for me to not freak out about being late, ahha!), checked a couple bags, passed through security, yada yada… went to the gate, and was happy to see that the gate-waiting area had a couple TV screens playing a FIFA match between Argentina and Korea!

And yet, again, I was thoroughly pleased to see everyone in the gate area was quite into the game! Indeed, it seemed as though the gate next to us was actually full of Korean tourists going back home, and so it was fun to hear their gasps whenever Argentina came really close to scoring, shreaks whenever Argentina did score, and very high volumed cheers when Korea scored their… one point. Although I must admit that one of the goals that Argentina received was a bit unfair (the one where the ball basically bounced off of a Korean player’s leg and went into the Korean goal!), but… it was a fun game, nonetheless, especially since I watched the final score of 4:1 occur RIGHT before I walked through the gate to walk to the airplane (so, I felt highly satisfied that I knew what the outcome was, hehe).

The flight from Pudong (Shanghai) to Suvanabhumi (Bangkok) was relatively uneventful, especially since it was only 4 hours long and was in the dead of night (9pm-1am). Although I had requested to receive a vegetarian meal on my flight because I heard from both my sister and father that the other (meat) options on China Eastern Airlines is such bad quality, we ended up receiving basically a BOX of SNACKS! Which, was kind of fun, actually, since I don’t usually eat too much junk food, and it was kind of interesting to see what kind of snacks they’d give us! Anyhow, the box consisted of a dried radish thing (I didn’t try this…), dried apple chips, some peanuty-Chinese thing, KitKat’s, a pound cake slice, a bread roll with some dried hredded (flossed?) fish-stuff in the middle, and… onion cookies (shortbready-like cookies which were surprisingly pretty good, even though they indeed had a slight onion-y taste!)

Now, I’ve heard a lot about how smiley and kind-natured Thai people are, and I’m sure that this is going to become really commonplace (haha, BANAL, TRITE, as my sister would probably imagine me saying right after her saying this!), but I’m going to start my list of Little-Thai-Things-That-Brighten-My-Day! This is ridiculous, but I shall shorten this as “LTripleTBMD!” Or… should I call it “LT^3BMD?” Here goes…


LT^3BMD – I
So, while I was trying to enjoy my treasure box of snackie goodies from China Eastern Airlines during my flight, I gorged down my onion cookies and proceeded to open my plastic-packaged bread roll. What happened, though, is a mystery, because as I was opening the package, the next thing I know… my bread roll is GONE, and I hear a ‘plop!’ as I turn my head towards the aisle next to me and see that, indeed, my bread roll had escaped my clutches to roll itself on the floor and probably collect some gross airplaney ground material that I don’t even want to start thinking about.

Most of my friends know and can characterize me as being able to display my emotions quite well by both my weird vocal sounds and strange shapes that I create on my face.

This was definitely no exception, as I probably produced some sort of very disappointed/shocked look on my face, which I thought was being snickered at by some of the older men who were probably just returning from a business trip and thinking, “sucks for her! Too bad!”

I quickly gathered myself though, and proceeded to just pick up my now-sullied-bread-roll, and shamefully placed it back into its plastic wrap, grabbing the package of pound cake, instead…

But! A few minutes later, I was pleasantly surprised as the guy sitting across the aisle from me tapped me on the shoulder, to present a bread roll in his other hand to me!

It is no secret that food is one (MAJOR) way to my heart, and at that moment, I felt so delighted that this business man was offering up his BREAD ROLL to me! As I tasted the weird combo of fish stuff with puffy white-bready-goodness in my mouth, I felt so thankful~

It sounds lame. But, you had to be there. It made my day. Don’t judge, at least… not too much, ahha!

Ni Hao~ Part Seven!

June 13, 2010 Part Two:

So! After returning to my sister’s apartment at around 4:30 AM (yes, the sky was already starting to light up!), my sister and I basically knocked out… only to…

Have to wake up around 10 AM to get ready for a 12-hour train ride!! YAH!

WHY?! So, here’s the story:

This week in China (Wednesday, to be precise), is the Dragon-Boat Festival. As such, many businesses take time off, and some people try to take the whole week off. My sister and her boyfriend, for example, took the beginning of the week (Monday-Wednesday) off from work – and so, we used this time to ESCAPE the city-life and go on a mountainous adventure from Sunday-Tuesday night!

So, my sister, her boyfriend, and I took a 12-hour bed-train from Shanghai to Jixi (Anhui province). The overall trip was not too bad, actually, since it was nice to relax on the train, looking out the window, lying on the bed eithr reading or sleeping…

We arrived in Jixi around 1 AM on Monday, then just went to a local hotel and grabbed a couple room for us to sleep (even

more, I KNOW! Ahha!), then wake up in the morning at 8am, getting some morning grub across the street from the hotel.

I was particularly excited about this, since, 1. I love food, 2. This place was just, a VERY informal place run by a family and this nutty-scientist-looking-father, 3. We got to see the food being prepared in front of us, and 4. It was nice and yummay~!

We ended up getting wonton soup, grabbing some bao’s to-go, and watched the father making these fried-dough-stick things that represent this evil rich guy and his wife who schemed against the emperor and were symbolically punished by being fried in oil, muaha!

(Props to my friend Herman who told me this VERY informative food-legend, ahha! Serves as a handy icebreaker, no? hehe!)

Anyway. Back to the hike… Let’s see!

So, the hike that we took is known as the ‘Huihang Way’ path, and goes along/over a mountain ridge, going from Anhui to Zhejiang province.

Huihang Way was this really steep and rock+dirt pathed trail, and was apparently used for hundreds of years for the exchange of green tea from Anhui and grains from Zhejiang.

Although I had some trouble breathing (needing to take a lot of breaks!) and it was a bit drizzly when we were hiking, the mountain views were really gorgeous, with a very mysterious mist over the ridges.

After hiking for 3 hours uphill, we finally arrived at this little village (more like just a cluster of houses, haha!), where we were greeted with green tea and stayed with the Yang family at their very quaint Bed+Breakfast.

This area seems to be a very popular hiking place for both locals and foreigners, so we ended up eating dinner with this family (2 chemists living in Shanghai for 3 years, their VERY cute-and-talkative 11 year old son, and their laboratory-beagle Ginny!), having a nice conversation about Shanghai-life/other nature-getaways over various dishes cooked with bamboo, ferns, pork, as well as soup that had a WHOLE-chicken in it [no joke, it was sitting in there, and I had to cover the head with a spoon because I was so creeped out!].

After having a nice, restful sleep (complete with frogs croaking, crickets chirping, and water streaming~!), we awoke in the morning and had some noodles in a really nice chicken-broth with sunny-side egg on top, as well as a bamboo+veggie filled pancake thing (think, Chinese pupusa!)! Tres yummaaay~! My belly was happy.

After saying goodbye to the Yang family (who looked SO happy and young, by the way! Must be the fresh, mountain-grown food and all the hiking!), we hiked a little further up the mountain to actually reach the mountain peak/ridge, then descended the other side of the mountain towards Zhejiang province.

This, I think, turned out to be a nicer hike than the previous day, since 1. It was mainly downhill, 2. There was a lot more greenery and the sound of birds around us, 3. Honestly, hiking is nice, but the prospect of having a shower and proper-toilets again was really getting me excited!

Anyhow~ It took a long time for us to get back to Shanghai (van, bus, bus!), but we made it back to civilization!

Although the hike was a bit painful for my lungs/heart to handle, it was definitely nice to see the other parts of China – aka, the areas that aren’t so heavily populated with people, the number of cars/motor-vehicles is greatly diminished, greenery exists, water is clean, freshly brewed green tea is a social norm, the air is pure, and life is simple.

(Lots of photo cred on this post to my sister, Erika!)