An American Thanksgiving

Hi! Hello! Everyone.

Originally, my name for this post was “Hey, This is Kind of Crazy” November has been, as you might guess, kind of a whirlwind. But let’s start from the beginning.

The Service Project in Uthai Thani

One of the first things we did at the beginning of the month was a trip with the Rotary Club to a neighboring province, Uthaithani. The event was set up to formally gift chairs to students at a local school. Being a rural area, the school quite small and open, with a big pavilion where we met the kids, who were mostly younger, probably around 7 to 12 years old.

I think for a lot of them, they had never actually spoken to a foreigner before, so it was cool to hear them talk a little bit about themselves. They were all super nice, maybe a bit shy at first, but we spent about half the time there just going around to different tables and chatting with them. Afterward, the school prepared a meal for us and the Rotarians as a thank you, and, in classic Thai fashion, we ended up singing karaoke. A few schoolkids went up to sing, and then all of us exchange students joined in.

Loy Krathong

In Thailand, November means Loy Krathong, one of the most signifigant festivals in the year. The main idea is centered all around water. The belief is that by praying to and protecting the rivers and rain of this season, we wash away and cleanse bad luck and apologize for the pollution. Literally, the word “loy” means “to float” and “krathong” is the name we call for the intracate floating baskets that people handmake on the holiday. The most common design is to use a cross-cut banana tree as the base, then fold the banana leaves, orchids, and marigolds into the design. You can make them out of anything though. some people make natual foam or carve krathongs out of wood.

On Loy Krathong, I celebrated with two of my hosts. And actually, I ended up with a bit of a head start on this subject. In Bangkok before the holiday, we learned how to make krathongs. So, when the day came around, we went over to a friend of my mom’s house, and I found this really intricate design on TikTok for folding the banana leaves. I think my hosts were lowkey kind of impressed with the design I made. But, I have to admit, my host mom and her friends krathong was on another level. They folded a orchid into each of the leaves and it was just absolutely stunning.

That evening, after night came, I went out with my hosts. We ate dinner on a bardge floating in the Chao Phrya river, then walked to the center of the market with our krathongs. Three incense sticks (representing the three jewels of buddhism) and one candle (which symbolizes knowledge and wisdom) are lit and placed on the krathong. Apparently there have actually been some… incidents with this in the past, so they have a LOT of firefighters down on the banks of the river to catch any stray krathongs. But anyways, you finish the ceremony by taking your krathong and placing it in the water at the banks of the river, then slowly watch as it floats away into the distance.

This has been one of my favorite things so far. I found myself thinking the whole time I was making the my Krathongs, that I want to bring this tradtion to America. It’s fun to share and something I want everyone back home to experince.

Police School

Nakhonsawan is home to one of the biggest regional police schools, pulling kids from Nakhonsawan all the way to Chaingrai, a ten hour drive to the north. As a part of an english learning program, we went to the school six separate days to teach the police students english, plus giving hand-on experiences to help them handle tourists that might be a little bit… difficult to deal with. The police guys were funny; they all are obligated to shave their heads and look a little bit like monks wearing police uniforms. And despite it being an English program, truth be told, I don’t think any of them spoke much English at all. Or really learned much from what we did. But it was chill, they always get so exited when we say our favorite Thai food or ask if we’d been to Pattaya.

Bringing Thanksgiving to Nakhon Sawan

ALRIGHT. Okay. So: in the US, Thanksgiving is by far one of my favorite holidays (if not my favorite. It’s close vs. Christmas). I knew from the beginning that I really wanted to do something special, to show this aspect of American culture to people here. And not to spoil the suprise, but I said, if i’m going to do Thanksgiving, I’m going to do a real Thanksgiving.

But let me tell you, the proceses was not as easy as I was expecting. One of my highkey culture shocks about thailand is the true lack of any places in Nakhonsawan that carry Western food. Like, places here actually just don’t have Western ingredients. After trying to make tacos in early october (and driving over an hour to get basic ingredints cumin and cheese) I knew this would be the case, and so I started planning the Thanksgiving meal back in October. Of course, the trickietst (and most important) ingredint is turkey. Five grocery stores later, this turned out to be a problem. Actually, I almost considered using a chicken, but even the chickens here Are Not Like America, their much skinnier and bonier, not at all like a real Thanksgiving turkey. In the end, three days before Thanksgiving, someone gave me the phone number to a turkey farmer in southern Thailand. I ended up ordering by texting with this woman over the phone, and the bird arrived at my host’s doorstep just 4 hours later through the post. We put it in the fridge to dethaw, right next to the five kilograms of butter I bought the weeks before at 7 Eleven.

Perhaps the most stressful moment was early November, around three weeks before we were set to start cooking. I came home from school one day not feeling so well. By that night, I was in bed with a fever of 102 while on ibuprophen. For almost five days, I didn’t get out of bed. My mom gave me a rapid test, and It turns out I came down with influenzea B. Actually, little did I know, but this was about to become a kind of a crazy experince. Turns out, I was not the only one sick. Three days later, my oldest host brother came down with influenza A even worse then I had. He was admitted to the hospital with a fever of almost 105. The next week, they closed Nakhonsawan School after so many teachers were out sick they couldn’t keep the building open. To put things into perspective, at one point, my class of 26 students only had six healthy people without some version of the flu cold. By the end of my second week of being sick (one week before Thanksgiving), I somehow started getting worse again, this time with an even higher fever then before and throwing up. My host mom took me to the emergency room that night and I was admitted to the hospital for three days.

So anyways, not exactly fun, but basically, in the end, if there’s one thing to take away from this whole experience, it’s… how freaking crazy the healthcare system in Thailand is! Man, I mean WOW like really really WOW the hospitals here are so insanely good. And like, Thai people are very proud of it too. And the price… well I don’t know exactly what I would’ve paid in the United States (google said something like ~$30,000) but here in Thailand, it was a total shock in the opposite direction. I was at a top-tier (Internationally certified, recognized) private hospital. For the emergency room fees, three days of inpatient care, and all my medications… the total bill was just over $500 USD.

That’s before insurance.

So yeah, after leaving the hospital on monday afternoon, I felt so much better I was actually elated. “Time to go grocery shopping!” I told my host mom. we stopped at 7 Elven on the way home to buy more butter.

On thanksgiving day, I set my alarm for 6:00. We drove to the house of my third host family, who werent even home, they were out buying drinks for the evening. The final stretch was seriously a group effort. It was 8:30 in the morning when we started cooking. I enlisted the help of a few other exchange students because really, one person cannot do all the cooking. Thankfully, Yiwa (from Taiwan) actually studies cooking in school, so she handled the harder parts, like spatchcocking and carving the turkey (thank youuuu). Marie and Maria worked together to cook the cranberries for the sauce, roast sweet potatoes for caserole, dry the bread for stuffing, and roast the pumkin for the pumpkin pie. Oh, and speaking of pie, thats what I set my sights on. Trust me, I feel like there’s a legacy to uphold here, so I did not hold back: two Sister Pie salted maples (with Reny’s Maple Syurup), two apple, two apple-cranberry. then finish it off with pecan and pumpkin. I invited all of my friends invited friends from school, my host families and a few other people here and there. By the time the mashed pototes and gravy finished cooking at 7pm, everyone was hungry and ready to eat. But, wow, I think we exceded even my own expectations. The food was really good.

Achiwa

After Thanksgiving was over, things got back to normal pretty quickly. I was back into my regular school schedules. Well, kind of regular. One important detail here is actually on the school side of things. I almost forgot about it (with the whole not being in school that much anyways part), but we’re actually going to Achiwa now. Achiwa, which is essentially the Thai word for vocational school, is located maybe half a mile from Nakhonsawan School. The teachers at Achiwa have never hosted any exchange students before, so the both schools came up with a plan to send us for three days a week to learn different vocational trades, while keeping Nakhonsawan on as our main school. It’s really fun. On Mondays, we have a class on product photography. We started out by learning the camera basics but already we’re learning about creating different scenes and compositions, and every week we have homework to photograph and edit some sort of new product, whether it’s perfume bottles or slices of pizza.

On Wednesdays, we study something different depending on the week. But to give you an idea, some fun ones have been things like Thai stir-frying or fake flower production. Then finally on Thursdays, one of the surprise things I find myself enjoying, is clothing design. Every week we come in, and we have a new task of something to sew. We started out with basics, like tote bags and now it’s gotten a even more exciting as we move to designs that are a bit more complex. I look forward to Thursdays. There’s something really nice about just coming in for seven hours and sitting at your sewing machine to make something.

School Ceremonies and “The King’s Day”

Back at school, we had a special assembly for Father’s Day to honor the Great King. The student council at Nakhon Sawan School put a lot of work into making the ceremony and choreograph perfectly. Everything from where they walked, stepped, and turned was carefully mapped out. The Director Of The School gave a speech and all the teachers wore these elegant white uniforms I’d never seen before. It was suprising to me, the level of detail put into the choreography. My friends at school told me to buy some yellow flowerers for my host dad, so after school I went to three flower shops looking for canna lilies, but they were already sold out.

My “Side Project”

Oh, also, one thing im really exited about is a project ive been building. As a whole, I’ve been pretty happy with where my language progress is at, but even though I spend a lot of time talking to my host family or friends, I find that it’s often somewhat difficult to learn new vocabulary just in the daily life. I mean, I learn a few words per day probably, but if you do the math on that, it doesn’t put you close to being fluent in a language by the end of the year. This is what I’ve heard from past exchange students too. Really the only people who become fluent in Thai are the ones who actually spend several hours each day actively studying.

So lucky for us, I happen to have around six hours of free time per day, aka classes we’re supposed to be listening to in school. I think I mentioned this last month, but students in Thailand… don’t really do a lot in the way of school, other than playing Instagram or TikTok maybe. Opportunity for me though! Over the past few months, I built a language learning app for Thai called “Talk Thai.” I kind of based on the idea that there’s currently not a lot of good ways for thai learners to learn idiomatic language, like the things people actually say in real life. I mean, Thai isn’t even on duolingo after all. I really focused a lot on making something that would actually be useful. And I think I’m very happy with how things turned out. All the other exchange students at Nakhon Sawan School are now using it almost every day, which is kindof exciting haha. I mean, for something I built because I was bored in class, now I think I’ve actually been making much significantly faster progress on learning the language.

The Passing of the Queen Mother

Near the end of October, Thailand entered a period of national mourning following the passing of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit, the Queen Mother. She was 93 years old, the wife of the King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great, and mother of the current King. Queen Sirikit was beloved deeply by the Thai people, and was known for her extremely generous service project to the nation. This was somewhat of a suprising moment for the country, and I think it really reminds me how deeply Thai people revere the royal family.

Following the Queen Mother’s Passing, the government announced that flags would fly at half-mast for 30 days, and the public is required to wear black or muted colors for 90 days as a sign of respect. Walking through Nakhon Sawan, you can actually tell things are different. Almost all businesses have honorary signs repecting the Queen Mother, and as we are still in the mourning period, you will not see people wearing much other then black or white in public. The first week after the queen’s passing, my host mom took me to the store and bought several new pairs of black shirts for me. That night, we sat arround on the floor at home and looked at a large book with ilustrations of the royal family and their symbols.

Even festivals like Loy Krathong, which fell during the mourning period, were adjusted to make the celebrations more respectful, and major events like concerts had to be adjusted as well to be less loud or not use fireworks, these kind of signs to respect the Queen.

Other things and More

Throughout the past month there’s been a lot of things that pop into my head as intresting, so I’ve been writing them into my notes app. They dont really fit into the broader narrative here but I think they’re interesiting. So here are a few of them:

• One of my absolute favorite things about Thailand is the convenience stores. Like, I cannot stress enough how much better they are here. Back in the US, a 7-Eleven is kind of just a gas station at best. Here, it’s genuinely they’re on literally every corner, sometimes two on the same block downtown. Oh, and they have everything. You can get any hot food that’s actually good (sometimes when I miss western food, they sell this garlic butter sandwitch with truffle and cheese inside that is insanely good, its like the only good cheese in thailand), onigiri, and WALLS of drinks and snacks, like really the Thai snacks are so elite its really crazy. Oh, and of course five kilograms of butter when you need it for Thanksgiving. The workers are also always really nice, like they greet you when you come in, and the whole thing just so smooth and nice clean. Oh, and they are all open 24 hours. One morning I came back home at like 3 am, and the seven in town was still open, so I went on a late night snack raid.

• Oh, speaking of drinks… the bubble tea here is both everywhere and reallyyy good. my favorites places to go are the cafe at school and Mixue, which is like a shop from china I think. their both so cheap (maybe 10-25 bhat) and so good. Also another one of my favorite teas is Oishi, which is actually one of the most popular Thai drinks overall. It’s lowkey an interesing story! When Oishi was first very famous, it’s inventor sold the company a larger Thai drink conglomaerate, only to take all the money from the sale to found Ichitan, a competing company selling all the same tea recipes using more preminium tea leaves and at a better price. Now, most stores have two brands of tea, Oishi and Ichitan, sitting next to each other on the shelf. Honestly, they just taste the exact same, but some people have strong feeling for one over the other!

• One thing that I read online before coming to thailand was that it’s a very conservative culture. Ie. no PDA, alawys respectful, and somewhat conservative politically too, especially in rural areas. Well, I can definitely say the internet and guidebooks were wrong. Actually, I’d say in most ways Thailand is much more progressive than the US. I swear, the number of people I see holding hands out in public (which I think could be in part because of cultural influence from K-dramas too), is crazy. But I mean, even at festivals and groups… I mean, I saw grandmas who were getting low and twerking right in front of the temple door. Not exactly modest! But really, people here are not messing around. Like there definitely still is a lot of respect in Thai culture and politeness, but definalty not modesty or any of THAT kind of thing.

• Another thing that really took me by surprise is how most people do not use salt on anything. Like I was doing some cooking, and several of my host families didn’t even have salt in the house. How do they add flavor to their dishes instead, you might wonder? Let’s just say they have a whole section at the grocery store… dedicated to MSG.

• Somethings interesting about food too: First, Thai food may be, like, the best in the world. Also, secondly, the thing that took me by surprise, is I have many times found myself longing for Western food. I would have never expected this before going on exchange. Like, many days I end up thinking to myself, something like, ‘hmmm I really don’t want to eat riceee… oh! wouldn’t it be great if I had some french fries… or pizza… or a hamburger… mmmm, actually, I really want some cheeseee.” So that was a somewhat unexpected craving for me. And the third point is about western food itself. If you looked at the restaurants in Thailand, you might think this isn’t a big problem. Every night market, every block on the road, they all have Western restaurants. We have burger restaurants. We have pasta restaurants. We have pizza places. So it’s really no problem.

• NO, actually it’s a serious problem. The Western food here is genuinely, universally, terrible. Well how can that be true, you might ask. Let me give you an example. Pizza, something that shouldn’t be too difficult to mess up. Let me give you the rundown of the average Thai pizza. Start with the crust. Usually about an inch thick. With a thick, pillowy-doughy texture and a soft, bready crust. Okay, fine. Let’s move to the sauce. Instead of regular tomato sauce, it’s common to use a mix of ketchup and/or nacho cheese instead. I mean, you lost me at the crust actually. But no, it gets worse. Want normal, basic flavors like cheese or pepperoni? Not available in Thailand. Instead, the ‘default’ everyone orders is Hawaiian. Yes, really. I’ll leave it at that.

• Nope, I’m gonna keep going. So, the hamburgers? Are you kidding me? First of all, even though there’s more than enough ketchup for pizza, hamburgers do not have ketchup. Of course, instead we use some sort of thai flavor sauce. Oh and you wanted beef? No, hamburgers in Thailand only come in pork or chicken. If you’re lucky, you get nacho cheese on top. The one saving grace for Thailand might be KFC. It’s somewhat famous here. If you want good fried chicken, the KFC in Thailand is actually good. Lowkey even compared to the American version, it’s actually better. So crispy.

• Oh, another weird food quirk. This one’s not necessarily a bad thing, but interestingly, the default ‘bland’ flavor for ice cream, cookies, whatever it may be, is not vanilla like it is in the West. Here, if you want the plain version of something, it’s all a flavor called Hokkaido Milk. It’s kind of good. It’s a very neutral sort of grassy milk taste. I like it.

• Oh, I’m sorry. As I keep writing this, I just keep thinking more things about the food. I will also say, some Thai foods can get a little bit strange. Certainly. I went up to visit to see Mae Yui’s rubber plantation in the north, and one morning, she came in from the depths of the forest with a huge wasps’ nest. We boiled it in several pots over the stove and then spent most of the morning sitting at the kitchen table picking out all of the wasp larvae from their cocoons. We ate it for the next week or so. Surprisingly, it’s not bad, I’ll say. But, not something I would go out of my way to eat either haha. I’d describe the texture something like a blueberry, I think. They have a soft skin that pops when you bite into it, but slightly more creamy on the inside then a blueberry. Back in nakhonsawan though, people really like eating raw food. So far since being in Thailand, I’ve eaten raw chicken, raw pork, raw shrimp, raw beef, and the normal ones too, like sushi. It’s actually pretty good! I thought the meat would be weird at first, but it’s just kind of the same like eating raw fish. Especially if you put a good sauce on it.

• Another really crazy thing to me is the amount of gold in Thailand. This is not an exaggeration when I say every street in Nakhonsawan, a rural province, mind you, has a gold shop on it. At Central, the mall, there are six or seven gold shops. They sell any types of gold you could want, necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings, etc. And not only that, but almost every temple is, believe it or not, covered in real gold. They actually don’t use gold paint here, which is seen as unpure. As you can imagine, it’s gorgeous but still crazy to me how prevalent it is.

• I actually still stand by the fact that the heat in thailand is not that bad, but there are also liek a lot of adaptations to survive it. First of all, AC is everywhereee, but even when you’re outside, people often use UV hoodies or even umbrellas for shade. My favorite heat trick is in cars though. Everyone who owns a car here has these crazy window tints that are SO dark. When you look at windows from the outside they just appear solid black. And from inside looking out it’s like looking through dark sunglasses. It’s kind of amazing though, because you can leave a car here in the sun, even for hours, and they dont heat up at all. It feels physics-defying almost. Cars in the Maine summer get much hotter!

• Oh, and speaking of cars, electric cars are incredibly popular here. It makes a lot of sense too. If you adjust gas prices based on ecinomic power, the last price I saw when we filled up here in Nakhonsawan was arround ~$17.56 per glallon. Yes. Seventeen dollars and fifty six cents. Per gallon. That is correct. Thailand has almost no local oil production and insane taxes on gas to subsidize diesel, so… yeah as you could bet electric is appealing to a lot of people. Interestingly though, my host said EV’s havent widely been available here for even two years. How can that be I thought? The reason, Thai people almost exclusively buy Japanese cars, and so until recently when Chinese electric cars came onto the market, there werent a lot of options. Its caught on quick though. The Chinese have taken an insane portion of the market in just two years. I don’t know the exact number, but whenever you call an uber, there’s like a 50/50 chance it’s either an chinese electric car or a toyota yarris.

• Also, another thing ive had to adjust to: people here always get in and out of the same side of the car. Like in the US, if three people want to sit in the backseat, two might go in one side, and the third person will go arround and open the door at their seat. In Thailand, if there are two or three people, both of them will get into the same door. You’d think, this is to avoid getting out into traffic, but actually, people will sometimes just get out of the traffic side anyways. So I guess I don’t get it haha. Oh, and note a fair warning: Thailand is not a walkable country. But it’s fine, Thai people don’t really like walking either. Case in point, one day I was in Bangkok with my two host brothers, and we were heading back to our condo. It’s about ten minutes by foot, so naturally we waited fifteen minutes in line to get a motorcycle taxi, then drove another five minutes, and spent like 40 baht per person to get back to the condo. Make it make sense!

• And oh, wow, speaking of Japan, Thai people really, really like Japanese things. We actually have many stores that just sell things from Japan exclusively. Or take Uniqlo, for example; it’s a clothing brand, kind of similar to H&M or Zara, but more expensive and with less pretty clothes. I don’t get it at all, but I kid you not, Thai people will buy so much Uniqlo just because the company comes from Japan. Some Thai brands even just write Japanese things all over their packaging to make it look more trendy. Like, take Oishi, the tea that I mentioned earlier. If you looked at the bottle, you might think it’s a Japanese company, but no, it’s really Thai. I’m not completely surprised by this, actually. I mean, many people in the US do the same thing. What is kind of surprising, though, is I would have expected the same thing about Korea too, and don’t get me wrong, there is a big Korean influence in Thailand, but it’s not the same as Japan. Like yes, people listen to K-pop and watch dramas, but you’re not going to see Korean in every store or taught in classrooms.

• One final cultural note: it’s considered quite rude to point your feet at people—basically the equivalent of the middle finger. As a result, whenever we sit on the floor, we have to sit criss-cross to avoid accidentally pointing our feet at someone. While Thai people are used to it, it’s a genuine struggle for the exchange students; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood up only to have my legs tweak out and freeze because they’ve stretched to far. We also just sit on the floor a lot more in general. Since everyone takes their shoes off before entering houses, shops, and our school buildings, the floors aren’t considered “dirty” like they are in the US. The floors also stay clean because, us students keep them that way. Our schools don’t really have janitors, so we spend time after school every day sweeping the rooms and taking out the trash ourselves.

• Okay ONE MORE THING FOR REAL THIS TIME I JUST THOUGHT OF IT.

• I love Thai school so muchhhh—Instead of getting a slip if you’re late to school, like in the US, the punishment for being late is running three laps around the school parking lot !! One day I forgot to set my alarm, so I was not expecting the early morning laps.

But anyways, there you go! A few more interesting details about how things work here in Thailand. It’s been a busy month. But I really believe that even with a few challenges, things just keep getting more exciting. Thanks you all!

Best,

Declan

P.S. One of my friends snuck up on me while I was writing this post, and asked if she could add something to include at the bottom. I feel a little embarrassed to include it, because it’s really very kind and nice (and exaggerates) but she made me swore to include it :)

“Hi im declans friend, and I wanted to say that hes an amazing person, hes our dedicated thai translator and hes been such a great friend to us, its hard for him being the only guy in school with us but were having so much fun thanks to him ! Were all so glad we met him ! and we love bullying him !” -Marie