Servas in Bangkok

As we've posted before, we are part of Servas to meet and stay with people from around the world. Our Servas hosts here in Thailand lived in Bang Phli, a suburb about 30 km east, but 1.5 hours by taxi in the gridlocked traffic. Still, it was worth the journey to learn more about the people and make new friends.







We had a warm welcome by Bubpha and her husband Surapon, nickname "Toy." Every Thai person has a nickname, which may or may not have anything to do with their real name. Bubpha's is Ead. They have a daughter Pichamon (Mon) and son Sukontee (Nui). Our first stop was the local temple where she showed us her Buddha. They use the possesive here, and it was introduced as "My Buddha." Same for the King and Queen, which she referred to as "My King" and "My Queen." It made the relationship quite personal, and the Thai people love their royal figures. Every business seems to have a picture of them and Bubpha's family did as well, alongside other their own family pictures.



We enjoyed a walk around the mini-temple in front and saw many people feeding bread to the turtles and carp in the temple pond. Some of these fish were so huge from the handouts!







Twice a week, the temple parking lot hosts a market, selling goods and cooking up lots of food treats. Lots of stray dogs and cats roamed here looking for dropped morsels. Many people leave their unwanted pets at the temple so I found quite a few nice cats to play with. The dogs weren't in such good shape -- it was a bit sad.







Next to the temple was Bubpha's school where she teaches 11-12th grade English. Her husband also teaches English to other classes at this 2000 student school.



That night we had a nice dinner, (Bubpha doesn't like to cook so Toy proudly takes up this task and is quite a good cook), and then watched some Thai TV. The next day we went to her classroom and talked to the students to practice English with them. The Thai girls were sad to hear that I was his girlfriend already. "You broke my heart!" shouted one of them with a laugh. The students were quite sweet and took us on a big tour of the school garden, library, and small museum. They are very respectful of their teachers and always greet them with a little bow and hands pressed together like a prayer.



When we returned to Bangkok with Mom. Pops, and Augie, we met the family again and went out for a nice dinner. We saw another temple this time, with an enormous reclining Buddha. In this temple, you can walk inside the Buddha structure and make offerings at his heart. An offering is placing incense in front of the heart and sticking gold leaves to his heart, a "life-size" mold of how big his heart would be if he was 100 feet long. In the feet of the Buddha, there are paintings of hell. It was quite gruesome but interesting in the similarities with Christianity. There were also paintings of Buddha dividing the seas.





For our last dinner with them, we walked to a nearby mall, having to cross a river with no bridge. The solution was simple in this neighborhood. A man had a station where he collected your toll and then you walked across one long canoe boat and stepped into another to reach the other side. It was somewhat stable and an easy way to get across. The dinner was nice and we had fun meeting again and introducing our family.



Afterwards we toured the grocery store and they picked out a durian fruit for us. On the outside it is brown and spiky. The inside is white and a bit soft, but not too juicy. Bubpha warned that some hotels don't allow you to have durians in your room and we found out why. It destroyed our mini-fridge with a strong smell and didn't really taste good or bad. So we have renamed it spiky stink fruit. But as Bubpha says, "All Thai fruits are delicious!" Another great quote from daughter Mon, "American people are tall, but Thai people are beautiful."



We hope for more fun Servas visits!