Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Kanchanaburi

It seems only fitting that, for a GSE experience laden with food, our vocational day in Kanchanaburi should begin with a trip to one of Thailand's largest bakeries - the Cifra Bakery, which produces not only small packaged goodies, similar to Little Debbies in the USA, but also fancier layer cakes and pies.

After a meeting with the owner of the business, his son showed us a short promotional film about the Sifra Companies which, in various locations produce not only bakery products, but also a variety of frozen food items. Naturally, you cannot leave a meeting in a bakery without sampling the product. The freshly baked apple pie, still hot from the oven was a real treat.

We viewed the production floor from second floor windows which overlooked the production floor. Gleaming metal, spotlessly clean mixers, ovens and conveyors were manned and monitored for quality control by workers dressed in, what looked like, Hazmat uniforms which, in fact were worn to preserve the sterile enviornment on the production floor. This need for 100% clean environment for the food production was the reason that we could only view the production floor through windows.

From the bakery our hosts drove us to Wat Tamsua, an incredibly beautiful complex of wats (temples), perched high over Kanchanaburi on a hill. Although the team members chose to walk up the long steps up to the top. I chose to ride the incline railroad, which brought me to the same spot as the steps, but with both my lungs still fully functional. At the top of the complex we had an unobstructed view of the city, rice fields and mountains.

As beautiful as was the view, the temples themselves were even more impressive. Gilded spires, adorned with mosaic glass glistening in the bright sun, surrounded us. These wats, built in separate but adjoining sets by Thai and Chinese Buddhists, were inspiring statements of faith, no matter what one's own religious beliefs might be. Although Wat Tamsua was not part of our "vocational" experience, our hosts correctly believed that this was a part of our exposure to Thai culture that we should not miss.

After lunch. we set out on our separate paths exploring our individual vocations - Amanda to a hospital, Brooke to view a municipal center, Kip to a "green" home designed and lived in by one of the local Rotarians. I joined Jennifer as we visited a school for 450 children from poor homes who "paid" for their education by performing tasks, many of them agricultural in nature, at the school. On the school grounds were vegetable gardens, fish ponds, pigs, chickens, ducks and even ostriches.

The children not only get a good education, not only in basic subjectsncluding computers, but also to learn skills in which they may eventually chose to work. (As an aside, for many of us who chose to send our children to school on a bus or by car, these children walk or ride bicycles to school every day, from as many as ten miles each way!} After our tour of the school, we were treated to a concert by the students and ice cream.

Finally, Jennifer and I were taken to the photography portrait studios of one of our hosts. Displayed on the first floor were fine examples of his worksmanship. We were also shown his collection of old cameras and the most up-to-date computerized photo processing equipment.
Up stairs we were taken to the actual studios where his subjects were posed and photographed, which he then proceeded to do with the two of us.

After a dinner that included fried frog legs and fried frog skin (which tasted somewhat like fried pork rind) I was taken to another Rotary club meeting where I rejoined my team. The meeting, scheduled to run from 7:00 to 8:00 PM, didn't actually start until 8:30. We were not called upon to make a formal presentation but,rather, to just tell a little about ourselves.

On the way back to our respective hosts homes, Brooke purchased fried grasshoppers for us all to try. They were quite tasty - salty and crunchy. And with that, the end to another full day.