For about 6 months of 2011, I was working part-time at the Navy Fleet Gift Shop. About once a month, one person from the store and a volunteer go on a buy trip to make purchases for the shop...and no, this is not like pick out sweatshirts and coffee mugs...this is real shopping! :) I was asked to go to Thailand with Diana for a double buy trip...which meant that we would be picking out items for the store that would arrive in both November 2011 and January 2012. The whole process is VERY cool and a lot of work! If you haven't seen the website for the store, check it out on facebook. (You just have to 'Like' the page Navy Fleet Gift Shop.) Anywho, we picked out TONS of stuff, like furniture, clothing, dishes, artwork, mirrors, lanterns and kids stuff! We worked about 11 hours a day...and it was hot!! We visited both Chiang Mai and Bangkok. In Bangkok, we shopped at the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which is of one the biggest markets in the world! It was pretty crazy because we had to carry everything with us all day, and then back to our hotel on a packed subway ride home...I'm pretty sure people thought we were a little nuts :)
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| Khao Soi |
The food in Chiang Mai: Amazing!! And one of the best things about Thailand. :) Our consolidators often took us to lunch at "Mama's", where we ate Khao Soi for 3 days in a row! It's soooo good!
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| Rice fields |
We had a half day off on one of the days that we were in Chiang Mai, so we decided to take advantage of our time and go a cooking class! We were able to each make 3 dishes, a soup, a curry and a noodle dish. I made Tom Kha soup, green curry and pad thai. Sooo so delicious!
First we went to the market to learn about the ingredients...
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| Limes |
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| Eggplants and peppers for curry paste |
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| Diana and I |
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| Diana making red curry paste |
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| The eggplant for green curry |
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| Diana and her new friend :) |
Cooking class was awesome!!
Most of our shopping in Chiang Mai was done with different vendors (indoor and outdoor), and also in the night markets. We also got a lot of our products from a special Sunday night market...but this year it was more like a floating market. Diana and I were drenched!!
The Sunday night market
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| One of my favorite vendors...Lotus leaf artwork! |
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I was REALLY excited to send this box to Laura...it was special Lotus artwork for her baby girl :)
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| A vendor |
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| Bottoms of a coffee table |
Here are some more pics from around Chiang Mai...
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| Attack Bug!! |
So this bug landed on me...I mean, attacked me...when we were walking on the street. When I realized it was on my back, our consolidator calmly tried to get the bug off of me, and while speaking to another woman in Thai, she soon hurriedly got the bug off of me because it bites!!! Yikes :) Glad I didn't know that beforehand. Shortly after I took this picture, I think it got ran over by a car. Sorry attack bug.
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| The "mall" |
After the buy trip, our products get to our store via ship, and then by semi. We spend hours unpacking and pricing all of the fun stuff!! Here are a few pics of our Thailand shipment after about 30 hours of unpacking...
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