Night and Day Markets!

We spent several days hanging around the house, talking, eating, and doing other stuff (I myself took the time to watch a few movies and write in this blog, of course). But at night one time, O suggested we all go to the night market of Chok Chai. It’s not like the huge night markets that exist in certain bigger cities…we saw a bigger night market later and I prefer this night market. It was smaller, simpler, and I enjoyed looking at the things they sold much more. It was much more bohemian and easygoing and beautiful than bigger night markets, which seem more commercial. This was just wonderful.

There was all kinds of goods, fruit, meat, fish, vegetables, and some places sold meals too, like barbecued chicken or pork, pad thai, sweet fried bread and other desserts, grilled corn on the cob, and much more. They even sold barbecued insects! Those were mostly outside of the tent.

If you look closely, there's squid there on the platform being sold.

Drool...I wish I could've tried it all. But there's was so much good food I was eating already that I couldn't possibly have room to try everything Chok Chai has to offer.

This is Pad Thai being sold. O would get this from the night market sometimes and bring it home and we'd eat it there. It was really delicious, ONE of my favorite dishes here. Only one. One of many. They mixed it with shrimp and peanuts and bean sprouts and yummy stuff. So good.

My insect-tasting days ended in Peru, I fear. But the chance has come my way many times while being in China and Thailand.

I don't know what the brown vegetable things are, but the red ones are fruit. Don't they look like a cross between an apple and a bell pepper? Well...that's exactly what they TASTE like too!

Inside the big tents, there were clothes (traditional and modern), perfumes, underwear, automobile/bike parts, tools, dry snack foods, carved sculptures for decorations, pictures/paintings, and much more. And O seemed to know everyone there. We’d be walking down the aisles and O would be called by someone working the stands. This happened many times. But it makes sense, because she has lived here for many years, she grew up here.

Outside the tents, we passed several stands selling different types of clothing. I felt much more comfortable potentially buying clothes here because the people here were of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t just a super small size that as a foreigner I could never dream of fitting into…and in America I’m regarded as average or smaller. We were in one clothes section and O asked me if I’d like some tights. I LOVE tights. They’re one of my go-to clothes items. And unfortunately, one of my tights is getting ripped right now. So yes, I said I would, and I got ready to buy the ones I had chosen, but O said, “No, it’s my treat!” And she got them for me! She really is a really really sweet lady. Really.

While we were getting the tights O had run into another group of ladies she knew. They were having a conversation and this one young lady, maybe a couple years younger than us got all shy around Kyle and asked if she could take a picture with him. And she did. Then she comes over to me and says I’m so beautiful and asks to take a picture with me. Now that was a surprise…I hadn’t really been getting a lot of that in Xiangyang. In a small city like Xiangyang, people have seen less of the world but generally carry a Westernized standard of beauty (or shall I say European?). So often they’ll goggle at the foreigners of European descent and briefly acknowledge me. Sometimes I’ve had better experiences, sometimes I’ve had worse. But in general, let’s just say I’ve had to really work to maintain my self-esteem and confidence in Xiangyang, because they’ve really tested me. So being here in Thailand and having people look at me with such admiration was a complete change of attitude.

I think perhaps I needed that because I felt really good after that…I think I hadn’t realized how much my self-confidence was hanging on by a thread, because I had masked it all with cynicism and jadedness. I don’t like that I’ve been so beat down and I’m working on not letting anything phase me because in all reality, what’s most important is what I think of myself and nothing else. But for now though, this change of attitude was helping me rebuild myself and once more become comfortable in my own skin. And boy did it do numbers…I’ve felt more self-confident than I’ve felt in a very long time I think. It’s a good feeling…I hope I can remain this self-confident as I return to Xiangyang in a few weeks. I think I’ll be ready for it all again.

I just loved every minute of being at the night market. I couldn’t stop grinning wherever I went. I grinned the entire ride as we drove through the town. I grinned as we ate delicious food. I grinned as we walked through the night market. I grinned at everyone who glanced at me. It was just somehow so easy to be happy right now. Call it the honeymoon phase of being in a foreign country. It’s when you’re just fascinated by anything and everything you see when you first arrive in a new country. And though I know Thailand has its ups and downs that I’m aware of…there are many similarities between it and China…I was having a wonderful experience here. I was around good people, eating good food, and seeing beautiful things all around me.

It’s like I was star-struck, but rather I was more Thailand-struck, gawking in awesomeness at what was in front of me…it’s a completely different experience than I’ve ever had in any country I’d been to. And yet I realized something: THIS WAS THE FIRST COUNTRY I HAD EVER BEEN TO IN WHICH I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND A SINGLE WORD THAT WAS SPOKEN. I had studied Spanish for two years before I went to Peru, and so I was able to get around the city of Iquitos without major problems. And I was able to hold a basic conversation with a friend who spoke no English, only Spanish. And in China, it was pretty much the same thing. Not to mention the Jamaica, where they speak English. No, this was the first place I was completely helpless. And I didn’t like that feeling. I don’t like feeling helpless. So I tried to learn a few basic words. I made sure that the majority of words that O taught me, I tried to remember. So I’ve got a few, a SMALL few, phrases I’ve collected now to get around. Things like, “Hello” and “Thank you” and names of things.

Anyway, night market was great, and as we were leaving, O invited me to go to the day market the next day. The day market wasn’t really a “day” market, it was really early in the morning, before the sun got high. So I got up early and we left the big house at 6 to go to the market, even though it opens an hour or two earlier than that.

We went over there and it was quite the same as before, except in the morning and without as much of a bustling crowd as you’d see in the night market. Once more, it was wonderful. There was fresh food in abundance, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh cuts of meat, fresh fish that were still flopping around, and more. We made our way through the aisles, and as O went to buy some cuts of pork, she introduced me to the lady working at the stand. I couldn’t say a single word, so I tried my best to smile and look pleasant (honestly, it was really quite easy because I was having so much fun), and I think the smiling did the trick.

What I’ve learned from being here is that Thai people are very smiling group of people. Even my Thai friends in China were the same way, constantly smiling. I don’t necessarily say happy, because while a smile generally signifies happiness, as Kyle’s uncle said: a smile can have so many different meanings. Thai people smile a lot, even if they’re not happy, there’s a not-happy smile. It’s kind of like myself, because I do the exact same thing. I smile a whole ton, I sometimes find it hard not to smile…the only time when I don’t smile for the most part is when I’m in my own little world, daydreaming or concentrating on reading or writing something…like this blog for example. But other than that, if I’m angry, I smile HARD. If I’m said, I give a sad smile. If I’m happy I smile widely, I can’t help it. I can’t NOT smile if I’m so ecstatically happy.

Anyway, I smiled to the lady and nodded in respectful acknowledgement…I acquired this habit from Youya. She taught me a lot. And it was enough. The lady seemed really happy to meet me. It was cool. Then she took a line of sausage links and gave them to O, and O translated what she said for me. She said, “These are for you for free, if you like them you can come back and get more!” I nodded and smiled again and that was that.