Esarn is one spelling for the rural northeast region of Thailand and the people that come from there. Their style of food is slightly different than most Thai food and many restaurants in our neighborhood serve this kind of food. Other spellings of this region are Isan, Isarn, Essarn, and Esan. I ordered spicy shrimp with lime sauce. It was a little spicy and very good.
After this, Judy and I began our mapping exercise. Bill told us this exercise is meant to familiarize ourselves with the neighborhood to understand the layout of it and so we know where everything is. He said that making a map is the first step in creating an ethnography, and in rural regions, can be connected to a genealogy. I spent about an hour and a half mapping the small street (called a soi) in front of our building. This was useful because I had not yet explored this area. This is a gate from just down the soi.
The far end of the soi empties out onto a busy street. There, I found a street vendor selling these creme filled pastry shells with citrus zest on top. Six of them were 20 baht, or about 60 cents. They were quite good.
I then went to a restaurant around the corner called seasoning to meet Bill and pick up my meal allowance. He informed me that I did not need to map the soi that I had just mapped. The only street we needed to map was the main road (called a Thanon). I was still glad that I had explored the neighborhood, but had more work to do. We discussed the language barrier, brothels, and differences between Thailand and America.
I then set out to map all of Thanon Rang Nam. It is a short street, but there is a lot on it. I walked slowly down one side of the street, wrote down the names of businesses and took photos of some of them. After about two hours, I had written the down everything on the street. I still have to draw out the map. These are some photos from the street.
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| These carts are all over the city and people sell and transport many different things on them |
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| Thailand has the second most 7-11's in the world. The US has the first, but we should be surpassed by Thailand by 2015 |
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| One seafood restaurant has outdoor tanks with fish and shellfish in them |
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| There are many security guards all over the city |
After my cartography, I went back to the apartment and met up with Christina, another student. Her room is on my floor, but faces southwest towards most of the tall buildings. I took some more panoramic shots from her balcony.
I then swam in the pool for a bit and got ready for dinner. There are now ten of us here and we are just waiting on one more. The ten of us went to Mallika Restaurant right around the corner. I ordered pork with curry and chillies. This was by far the spiciest dish I have had. It took me a while to finish it, but it was very good.
We then walked around a bit and the group decided to try to find a bar. We have all been mapping and did not know of one in the immediate vicinity. Therefore, we decided to find a tuktuk driver who might know where a good bar is. They are not hard to find so we found two of them who took us to a restaurant who pays the driver to bring them customers. This was my first tuktuk ride and it was exhilarating.
It was just a restaurant but we ordered some Chang beer and sat and talked for a while. A waiter came by with a lobster and let Shane hold it up for a picture.
We took the tuktuks back home, sat in my room and talked for a while, and went to bed.
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