TourBlog 10: Shining THAI Culture & Tradition

TourBlog10: Shining THAI Culture & Tradition

                                                                                     

  

Thai Traditional dress

                I would like to introduce Thai traditional dress from each parts of country.

1. North: It depends on which tribe you are from, for example Tai Lu people wear headdress, shoulder boards is not too long and do not wear belt on it, and normally they wear sinh which come from Laos.

2. North-East: Most of men wear dark blue shirt called Moohrhom with same goes for pants, and tight around their waist with fabric called Pa-kao-ma. For women, they wear Sinh for whole dress, wear Sabiy, and wear accessories.

3. Middle: Around Rattanakosin period, men love to wear Jong-kra-ben and wear white shirt called Rajapratan. For women, they wear Sabai.

4. South: It depends on which tribe you are from; mostly we see them wear long shirt, and Sinh in Southern Style.

Thai Religion

                Thailand has a lot of religion, but the main religion is Buddhism.

Thai Language

                Thai language has its own characters and the way to pronounce it, it may hard to write Thai, but  makes it beautiful.

+++++++++++++++++

                Thai culture has been one of a kind that every country remembers. We teach by our parents to be polite and generous, we teach to respect people who older than us, be generous with friends, and “Wai” is the way we greeting, pay respect and thank others.

Prove this with your own eyes

TourBlog 9: Feel like Cooking! "Larb Muu / Minced pork Salad"

TourBlog 9: Feel like Cooking! 

"Larb Muu / Minced pork Salad"

Background

                Larb (ลาบ) is a local food of North-East and North of Thailand. We put meat into minced meat and mix it with other ingredients. You can use any kind of meat to cook Larb.

Ingredients

Minced pork                              350 g.

Mint leaves                               2 table spoon

Lime juice                                 3  table spoon

Fish sauce                                 2  table spoon

Roast ground rice                       2  table spoon

Minced spring onion                    3  table spoon

Pepper                                      1 table spoon

Sugar                                       0.5 tea spoon

Shallot                                     0.5 cup

Stock or water                           1 cup

How to cook?

1. Boiled water, then we poured pork inside the pot, and cook it. You need to separate pork, do not let them attach together. When it cooked well, move the pork into the bowl.

2. Pour shallot, fish sauce, pepper, sugar, and roast ground rice, then mix well.

3. Pour minced spring onion and mint leave the last, then mix.

4. Put Larb into the dish, and decorate it with mint leave. Eat it with fresh vegetables or sticky rice.

Please enjoy the video ... :P

 

Feel like Eating!!!

Tour.Blog 8: Fragment of Thai history “Ayutthaya”

Tour.Blog 8: Fragment of Thai history 

“Ayutthaya”

                Ayutthaya, this is one of Thailand province with the long history as an old capital city of Thailand. What we have today is the fragment of history, which remains in the land of Ayutthaya.

                The fragment of Ayutthaya history is nowadays the landmark for tourists to travel. There are a lot of old temples and castles, even they were almost damaged by wars and times, and they still the evidence of Thai livings and Thai history. I would like to present “Ayutthaya Historical Park”, a place where the central of the old capital city. There are Wat Ratchaburana, Wat Mahathat, Wat Phra Sri Sanphet, Wat Phra Ram, Wat Lokayasutha, Wat Kasatrathiraj, Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bopit, Wat  Yai Chai Mongkon, Phra Chedi Suriyothai, Wat Phanan Choeng, Wat Chaiwatthanaram, Ayutthaya historical Study Centre, Japanese Settlement, Wat Phu Khao Thong, and Elephant Camp. We are so proud to say that UNESCO gave this place as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Even in the past foreign people called Ayutthaya as Venis  of east, since Ayutthaya is around by river and klong.

                I love history, and of course Thai history is one of them. I impressed by the queen and the king in the past, Sri Suriyothai and Naresuan The Great. Sri Suriyothai was a Chief Queen of Siam (Ayuthaya Kingdom), she was wise and brave, she helped her husband (Maha Chakkraphat) to rule Ayutthaya Kingdom, but what made her famous is her bravery. She went to a war and protected her husband from killing, but she died instant. The other one of my favorite is Naresuan The Great, which is actually Sri Suriyothai’ nephew. He lived in Burma since he was a little as a hostage, then he came back to free Ayutthaya from Burma.

                For those who interest in history like me, you cannot be miss Ayutthaya of Thailand. The history which floating by the times into fragment of memories, what still remain is the thing that we should respect and learn them.

Tour.Blog 7:Feels the local with Rural Tourism

Blog 7: Feels the local 

with Rural Tourism

                    When you think about tourism, you may think of some place to be fun or some place to be extreme. The prize of the enjoyment is what we call impact of tourism, especially the negative impact. The increasing of tourist’s number causes the increasing of problem, such as environment, social and culture. But you can choose to travel without destroy environment, social and culture, which is “Rural Tourism”.

                Rural Tourism is a type of conservation tourism, which sees the local people, is the owner of environment, social, or culture. It means tourism will not destroy the local things. People still do their usual work and have usual life along with warm welcome to tourist. They welcome tourists as their guests or even family guests, not just a tourist. Tourists may stay in home stay and spend life as local people.

                When I was 10^th grade, I got a chance to go to USA as an AFS exchange student for one year. I lived in Portland, Oregon state with my host dad “Richard”, my host mom “Barbara”, and my host siblings “Freckles”, “Erin”, “Cara” and “Tazio” which are one dog and three cats. I learned to live with them in American style who loves their pets as their children. I went to hiking, watching stage plays, eating in local restaurants (since, my host family ban fast food), doing family activities with them. While I lived with them, I helped them some house works and spent time with them as a member of their family. Also, I went to Franklin High School and studied there with my American friends. I studied usual classes, and I jointed school activities such as musical play and dance team.

       To be conclude, the core of being an exchange student is you go to abroad to learn  new culture and learn how to live with it, and you bring your own culture to present other people. We exchange culture by culture. I got to know American culture and even their local attitude toward things. Rural tourism is also the way to learn new culture, new life by your own experience. This is a fun way to spend your life in the different world, and this will make you growth.

               

Tour.Blog 6: Tour Guide & Tourists in “My Life in Ruins”

Tour.Blog 5: Tour Guide & Tourists 

in “My Life in Ruins”

 

                        My life in Ruins is a movie about Georgia, a tour guide of Greece. She loves history and culture and prefers to tell this to tourists, but it occurred to be a boring tour. Also, mix personalities of tourists made her trouble. Then, she found out what and how happy tour can be with her tourists. 

                Basically, the most important characteristics of tour guide are good personality, speak clearly and know foreign language, active yourself to learn new knowledge about everything in that country, know how to explain to attract tourist and entertaining them, can control yourself, solve tourists problem wisely and good manner. Georgia is a good tour guide for explain the true and concise history of Greece, even tourists in film were not interest in history much, but for me, I love to know about history of each country that I visit, history always attract me even though it turns out to be boring for others. What Georgia lack of in the beginning was her entertainment skill. Sometimes, she needed to change way of explanation, added something funny as Irv, one of her tour guide advice.

                Other than Tour guide, this film “My life in Ruins” showed the various types of tourists too. There are tipsy Australians, American couple, difficult marriage couple and their unhappy daughter, duo women who try to find the right guy, old people, funny guy who love to tell jokes or a mature tour guide who always exciting. As you could see that, as you being the tour guide you need to meet with many kinds of people, and you need to know what they want. Being in the big group with various people from various countries, there will definitely be the problem, such as the misunderstanding of culture, tour guide is the most important person who will be the bridge to connect tourists to foreign country.

                Conclusion, a good tour guide should have a proud of he or she career, a patient, a faithful and good personality, plus special skills. What I got from this movie “My Life in Ruins” is you do not need to always serious about giving knowledge, but try to find how to enjoy yourself as a tour guide, and be happy with your tourists. Furthermore, you who are a tourist should also respect the country that you visit, even you are there to relax or study, try to be prepared by yourself to face with every situation.

Photo credit:http://www.impawards.com/2009/my_life_in_ruins_xlg.html