This main building held the memorial placards for all the soldiers, while two exhibits on either side detailed the Chinese troops' movement in Thailand and the social welfare projects than sprung up around the community after the Chinese were well established. Many of the signs were in Chinese and the local people also spoke the language, which isn't surprising because China isn't that far from Thailand. Although they do not share a border, a southern province of China lies just north of Burma and Laos and the Golden Triangle area.
Next we visited the tomb of the Chinese general, General Duan, who was celebrated by the local people as a hero for their community. His tomb overlooks the village he helped establish, and is guarded by a descendant of a KMT soldier. We spent a lot of time at this tomb area because, true to the rainy season, it began to absolutely pour. Reminded me a lot of Washington so I didn't really mind!
Once the rain let up a bit, we headed off to the next activity, which I had been looking forward to for the whole trip. For those who know me, you know that I have somewhat of a fixation with tea and that I always keep water in the tea kettle and a box of teabags on hand. Well, when Thailand cracked down on the drug economy and stopped the people from growing opium poppies, they had to replace the cash crops with something to try and reestablish the livelihoods of so many villagers. Tea was the most prominent option, especially with the Chinese influence on the region, and so we got to visit a tea plantation and do some tasting. I order a lot of green tea in Thailand, and I guess they use some kind of matcha-type green tea powder because all the tea I have been served is a bright spring green! However, the green tea at the plantation was a more familiar shade of golden yellow and tasted wonderful. They served a lot of oolong, too, and a blend of tea that was also brewed with part of the rice plant.
We got to wander into the tea fields for a little while, where the grass was so damp that we abandoned our shoes after a little while and just walked around barefoot. The misty mountains overlooking the rolling hills of tea plants was such a beautiful memory. Pictures don't do it justice! There was a sign that made us chuckle that said, "Prohibit pluck the tops feel numb." At first, I thought that the tea plant would make your fingers tingle if you touched it, but actually the word for tea in Thai, "chaa," also means, "feels numb." It was a mis-translation, the sign was supposed to say something like, "Plucking the tops of the tea is prohibited."
After the plantation, we checked into the guesthouse at the village of Baan See See (actually pronounced "baan sue sue" but it is a hard sound for English-speakers to make - try to say "sue sue" with a big toothy grin and you'll get it!). Two people to a room and two rooms to a little house-like building, several of which overlooked a main courtyard area. After dropping off our bags we all wandered onto our porches and had a laugh greeting each other from across the way!
The whole village was built right into the mountainside, so we hiked around town for a bit before finding a Chinese guesthouse/restaurant for dinner. We noticed that they served Western-style breakfast foods for crazy-reasonable prices (you can usually expect to pay three to four times as much for Western food than you do for Asian/local food) and so agreed to go back for breakfast in the morning. We also appreciated the steaming hot cups of Chinese tea that were served with the meals, especially with how misty and a little chilly the area was! Nice and refreshing from the heat of the city. We hung out for a while at the guesthouse bar, playing games and chatting, before turning in for the night. A fun discovery on the guesthouse T.V. was the movie channel, which played American movies dubbed into Chinese with Thai subtitles. We got a kick out of an action flick with Jake Gyllenhaal, whose dubbed voice was about three octaves lower than any other human voice I've ever heard.
No comments:
Post a Comment