Well I’m back after 36 straight hours of traveling, after spending an amazing 10 days in Thailand. I’ve got about 1600 – 1800 photos to go through, including an inordinate number of photos of Thais on various 2 or more wheeled contraptions, photos of various cool places and random Thai things that caught my mind, photos of village life in the province of Kalasin and photos of many of the amazing and new things that I ate. On top of that I took about 66 pages of notes on my trip. Being able to write to myself went a long way in helping me deal with homesickness, as I was traveling alone and far from the context of my daily life. Originally I thought I’d primarily be spending my time in and around Bangkok, but I ended up spending about half my trip in Bangkok, the Eastern Seaboard towns of Bang Sean, Si Racha (as in home to the OG Sriracha sauce) and Pattya and the other half in Kalasin in Eastern Thailand, close to the border with Laos. So what I thought would be a museum/sightseeing heavy urban trip transformed itself into a road trip – my favourite way to travel.
The purpose of my trip was to begin the process of making arrangements for an upcoming international exhibition of Thai artists at the Cultural Center, by meeting with artist Jessada Kongsommart who will be organising the exhibition and wrangling all of the Thai artists on that end, meeting with some of the artists who will be taking part in the exhibition, and seeing the work of others from Jessada’s group of Thai artists. Should all things go as planned, the Center will soon be home to an exhibition featuring some Thai artists, bringing their work to the United States, almost all for the first time. Being exposed to the Thai art scene was an experience in itself – just seeing the different dynamics and learning about the development of Thai contemporary art has been an amazing process that I feel had broadened and changed the way I think about exhibitions and the process of curating and organising shows.
Thanks to my especially generous hosts, Jessada and his wife Kanjana, I was able to experience Thai daily life in a way that a casual tourist might not. They invited me into their homes and fed me at their table as if I was family, and were incredibly patient and eager communicators I was welcomed into the homes and met so many other amazing people, especially all the people of Jessada’s home village in Kalasin province, to whom I feel I owe a special thanks, in addition to being amazingly friendly to a total stranger, who spoke little to no Thai, let alone the Laotian influenced dialect spoken in Kalasin, they were incredibly patient as I took many pictures of them and their homes. I’m so tired right now that I can’t even really think or process everything.
After being almost completely flipped, my day/night cycle is now totally flipped and altered. Add to that my “early to bed, early to rise” mentality combined with the Thai “late to bed late to rise” way of life, and I’ve got almost no idea what time it is or was. So that’s that. I’ll be posting a ton of photos and stories about my trip, especially about food (I think about 50% of my notes are about food – I entered real Tony Bourdain territory on this trip), until I get through it all. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.
When I first visit Bangkok I found that I can see Temples everywhere, especially during the tour of the Chao Phraya River. I’ve saw the real lifes of people living on both sides of the river, It’s a heart warming experience for me. One things to remember: when visiting temples, show respect to the Buddha, and the monks. Take off your shoes before entering into the hall and don’t wear shorts or tank tops in temples.