A few days in the forests of Thailand…
I’m in Thailand to spend about 4-6 days at the Sakaerat Environmental Research Station in Nakhon Ratchasima Province. It is a few hours bus ride northeast of Bangkok (about 300km).
Last time I was there, I didn’t get to stay very long or see very much. I’m glad to be able to spend several days in at the research station, which is in the dry dipterocarp and dry evergreen forest! Although I’m admittedly a newbie at outdoorsy things, I think I’m really going to enjoy this time here. It is nice and cool at night, and not too hot during the day.
The air here is really fresh. I’m really enjoying that part a lot. There is a nice breeze right now, and I’m happy to have escaped the humidity in Singapore. It’s also nice to not be in the city for a while. I got to go to a local Sunday market just down the road from here:
Today a few of us went to a roadside cafe nearby for lunch:
Tonight, I’m going up to the ponds with my friend’s field crew. She is doing research on amphibians and they are collecting frogs for a behavioral studies and such. The frogs are quite small, only about 2 cm. And they are super cute!! Apparently, it was raining a lot every day before I got here so the ponds are filling up and the crew is busy doing all the research activities.
If you are a fan of strange flavors of potato chips (or crisps if you are British), I saw these in the 7 Eleven:
They are salmon and cream flavored Lays potato chips. Lays has a pretty big holding in Asia in general, and they never fail to have interesting flavors everywhere I’ve been (except Singapore for some reason, the flavors there are all pretty normal). I’ve seen some funky ones in China as well.
In a few days, I’ll be back in Bangkok. If anyone knows of places I should definitely check out (especially for food), please let me know! I won’t have much time to explore, but will try to at least see some things and eat some new dishes.
