A few days ago, I was taking my usual look at foodgawker.com, a site that seems to collect a photo thumbnail for daily posts on a very wide range of food blogs.  It’s fun to check in each day and see what people are writing about.  This is another form of “therapy” for me, seeing as I do not have a proper kitchen of my own to work in anymore.  I seem to live vicariously through the joys of others as they seek to create quality recipes and share them with the rest of the world.  I really have learned a lot about different cooking techniques and ingredient combinations through it all as well.  This is good.

Anyways, there just so happened to be a photo of these incredibly fun looking pinwheel-type cookies and a link to a site called SprinkleBakes where I could find out the story behind them.  Naturally, I clicked and read away.  Soon after reading through the ingredients required to make such cookies, I decided I needed to bake them for myself.  I could actually find everything I needed here right in my part of town, the recipe required a bit of skill and concentration in order to properly execute the spiral design, and well, they just looked cool.  Since our weekly fellowship group was cancelled due to most of the group travelling, I had extra time and the project was slated for this evening.

This is what I made.

It’s a buttery, shortbread-like cookie with a strawberry swirl (the pink part).  Aren’t they just lovely?  This is why I had to make them.  If only you could have seen how antsy I was to get them out of the oven and cooled so I could take these photos. Something about a fun pink spiral encrusted in multi-colored sprinkles just screams “share me!”  And that is precisely what I am going to do with them.  Share.  Strangely enough, I don’t enjoy eating sweets as much I enjoy preparing them and giving them away.  I guess that’s good for the ol’ waistline, huh?

Another wonderful thing about this particular recipe is that you can pretty much use whatever colors and flavors you want!  Chocolate swirl + crushed Oreo edges, orange swirl + crushed candies, green swirl + pistachios… Hey, Colts fans, you could even make them with a blue swirl and roll the outside in blue & white sugars!  How’s that for customization.

Just look at these little beauties.

I think it would be hard to be in a bad mood with these things staring you down.

Thailand is known for having some of the most beautiful panoramas, brilliant sunsets, and excellent underwater sporting in the world.  We were blessed with some wonderful gifts from home to add to the money we’d already been saving ourselves for this short holiday, and as soon as we knew we had enough, we knew precisely where we wanted to go – Krabi.  Virtually every picture you see of Southern Thailand’s beaches, soaring cliffs, and spectacular sunsets come from Krabi and it’s surrounding islands (Koh Phi Phi, Koh Lanta, Koh Kai, etc.)… but, this time we were lucky enough to witness these scenes ourselves.

Sometimes, you don’t really know how badly you need a break until you’re finally there, and boy did we need a break.  Our bodies and minds had all but shut down by the end of our visa run in Malaysia (immediately prior to our week of holiday).  How wonderful it was when we finally arrived at Ao Nang and started thinking of the week we had ahead of us!  Now, some of you may already know a bit of what we did, how we enjoyed what was around us, as well as a few of the “adventures” we had along the way, but for those of you who don’t, I’m going to lay it out in bullet form for you.  Ready?  Ok.

• First afternoon, we arrived at our hotel in Ao Nang to find out we’d been given a complimentary room upgrade, and were very pleased with it.  Staying 10-15 minutes walking distance from the beach and using online pricing services allowed us to stay comfortably for quite cheap already, so this was a wonderful bonus!  Later, we enjoyed some great grilled chicken on the beach about a 20 minute walk down the road from our hotel.
• First full day was spent doing absolutely nothing at all on West Railay Beach.  Not far from Ao Nang, West Railay is a beautiful stretch of sand that is surrounded on 3 sides by sheer cliffs and jungle, making it accessible only by longtail boat.  Pure bliss.
• Day 2 we decided to hop on an all day tour of islands, famous bays, and hit a few snorkeling spots.  The fish were incredible, and the water was unbelievably clear.  We stopped at a couple of famous movie locations as well – the first was Phang Nga, known unofficially as “James Bond Bay,” as the 1974 Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun was shot there, and the other was Maya Bay where Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The Beach was made.
• The sand at Maya Bay was like baby powder, so white, so soft, so clean… and so deceptive.  Why?  It was here, in perhaps the most beautiful place I will ever visit in my life, that I kicked a tree root hidden in the sand, split my toe open, and lost an entire nail.  Ha!
• Days 3 & 4 were spent with me hugging the throne in our beautiful hotel bathroom.  Lucky me, I got a violent case of food poisoning (most likely from lunch on the tour the previous day), and was forced to stay inside while Brook was a good sport and took care of me.  We made a visit to a local doctor as soon as I was able to leave the room, and he filled me up with enough meds to get me better, back out to the beach and finally eating again.  Oh, and he cleaned about a pound of sand out of my busted toe, too.  But, the upside to all of this?  At least the bathroom I had to live in was 100 times nicer than the one we have in Lopburi, and it had a bathtub to relax my sick self in.  Good deal.
• Day 5 was back to Railay, lots of water and meds in hand, for another day of blissful nothingness.  I think we played about 3 hours of frisbee out in the water, not kidding.  It felt good to be back out in the sunshine relaxing, laughing, and having some fun with the Mr.
• Day 6 we took it easy in the morning and headed out for a sunset snorkel tour around 2pm.  This trip was far more relaxed and had much fewer people than the tour earlier in the week.  We jumped out in 3 different locations, very protected from the other tourist areas, so each was filled with colorful coral and vegetation and some of the most brilliantly hued sea creatures I have ever seen.  I even found Nemo!  One stop also had a cave where Brook, the experienced Scuba diver, guided me along and took me far under the water to see the giant schools of fish and sea urchins below.  I don’t think the snorkeling would have been quite as amazing as it was, had he not encouraged me to go under the water and go outside of what I though I could do.
• After several snorkel stops, sunset on a tiny uninhabited island, and delicious Thai green curry for supper with new friends, it was time for the bioluminecsence swim.  We were taken to another sandy-bottomed, protected area under some cliff overhangs after it had become completely dark.  Upon jumping in the water, we were instantly surrounded by tiny flickering blue orbs of light.  It was incredible!  (If you’ve seen the movie Avatar, think of how the jungle lit up at night.)  With every movement I made, thousands of these tiny blue sparkles (actually a species of plankton) appeared in the dark ocean water surrounding me.  It was almost as if I was wearing them.  Even more incredible was when I put on my mask, and looked down into the blackness below and saw my legs glowing.  (And yes, for a brief moment I pretended I was Ariel when she was turning from a mermaid into a human… and that is still my favorite Disney cartoon!)
• Our last morning, we slept in, packed up, and took our last chance to sit and chat with the Thai staff at our hotel.  They were more than accommodating to us and took great care to check in on me when I was ill.  It’s amazing to see what knowing how to speak Thai and actually interact with people can do when you travel.

So, there you have it.  Our week of rest was wonderful, even despite my little speedbumps.  We both were able to get a great deal of rest, as well as spend some time just enjoying one another again.  Between all the stresses of language learning, support budgeting, daily cultural adjustments, the busy holidays/ministry season that just passed, and all else, it’s easy to lose each other in all that mess.  This was kind of the honeymoon we wished we’d been able to have a few years ago, and I am ever so thankful for it.

Now, back to daily life.  Back to language study.  Back to learning how to live our lives here in Thailand.  And soon, it’s time to travel again!

Here’s some shots from my Flickr of our trip in Southern Thailand.  For captions, please view the set at my actual Flickr page.

Today was evidence of that.

We had just received our meals at a local street vendor’s shop (similar to the photo above, but with more tables).  Having frequented this particular location over the past 5 months, the owners usually know what we would like to order before we even say it.  We are familiar with one another, and each time we appear, we try to speak with them in Thai just a little bit more.  Today was a day just like any other – walk in, smile, greet one another, and confirm their suspicion as to what we would like to eat.  Next, we chose one of two regular tables, sat down and ordered our beverages.  Wait another 5 minutes or so, and our plates with a piping hot Thai meal are served to us with the traditional bowl of broth and cilantro.  Yum.  But wait, they forgot the sauce… that’s ok, because there’s usually a bottle on the table right behind us.  Scoot the stool back a couple of inches, turn around, reach and grab the bottle.  Proceed to deliver it to Brook, and all is well.

That’s how it usually happens.  But, today?  Oh, today!

This is what I was sitting on, as I do in almost every single street shop or market stall we dine at (though mine was actually royal blue, and lacked those spiffy horizontal reinforcement bars).  Usually, they do their job in keeping one seated at the table, rather than under it, but today my stool failed me.  As I scooted ever so gently backwards, everything went wrong.  You know how people sometimes say that disasters seem to happen in slow motion?  Well, this disaster actually did, and there was nothing at all I could do about it!  As I scooted, the back 2 legs of this rickety old seat buckled inward beneath me, causing me to go straight down to the floor – thankfully, since they bent, I didn’t go totally backwards though!  I felt them bending, could tell I was going down, and was utterly helpless as I watched Brook’s face go into a sudden half shock – half laugh sort of look.

The bustling shop went silent.

So, what does this taller-than-the-average-Thai, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned foreigner dressed in a flowing black skirt and beads do in such a situation (not to mention in a very face-saving culture)?  Stand up quickly, silently, and gracefully (of course to compensate for the lack of earlier charm).  Then proceed to quickly brush off my skirt, turn around to face the people, put up my hands and say “whoopsie” to release them all to laugh freely.  And they did.  One of the ladies that worked there came and took my old stool to the back of the shop, supplying me with a new one so I could return to my meal safely.

And what do I find Brook doing as I finally collect myself once more and take my seat?  Typing on his iPhone.  Yep, he was tweeting about his wife, the one who is a master at being inconspicuous.  Oh wait.

I couldn’t help but continue laughing as I ate my lunch as I thought about how every person in there would likely go home tonight and tell everyone about the “farang” who fell out of her chair reaching for the chili sauce on another table.

Thanksgiving Message from Michael Brook Sarver on Vimeo.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are waiting until we can get together with some fellow Americans here in Thailand to have our Thanksgiving meal. When we do, I’ll fill you in on just how we made that happen here in Thailand.

Until then, I want to hear from you!  How did you celebrate this year?

Anyways, a client of my mother’s has been to Thailand, and offered a couple of books to her for more insight into the culture in which my husband and I now live.  To my delight and surprise, one of the books was Thai Ways, by Denis Segaller.  Upon hearing that my mother was now reading through this book, I decided it was time for me to pick it back up as well.  Denis Segaller is an Englishman, born in 1915, who travelled all throughout Europe as a child with his parents, and attended school in Switzerland.  Having grown up to be a documentary film maker, he continued his travels throughout the world doing his work.  In 1965, he visited Asia for the first time, and it just so happened to be in Thailand.  He loved the country, married a Thai woman, became a news writer, and remained in Thailand.  As a news writer, he developed his own weekly column “Thai Ways” in the Bangkok World (no longer in print) newspaper from 1975-1985.  When the column reached its end, each of his articles on the Thai culture and Thai form of Buddhism were complied into this book, forming a unique commentary on why things are they way they are in this foreign culture – all through the eyes of a foreigner who had to dig deep to figure out the why’s and what’s for himself.

Another good book, if you are one who likes pictures to go along with what you are learning, is called Very Thai.  While Segaller’s book, Thai Ways, conveys more of the meanings and nuances that go along with Thai traditional culture, this book captures Thai pop culture and modern phenomena.  Only published in December of 2004, Very Thai is a more modern take on the Thai culture, written by an Englishman who came to the city of Bangkok as an editor.  Little did he know, he would remain in Bangkok for more than a decade, organizing the Bangkok Metro magazine, film festivals, and publishing several other books on Thai and Southeast Asian culture.  In the book Very Thai, he focuses on the little things you see everyday, those things that foreigners will notice right away as being either very strange or very different from their own culture.  Why are all table napkins pink?  What’s with all the flowers hanging from the taxi’s rear-view mirror?  Is that person really drinking a soda from a small plastic grocery bag with a straw?  Very Thai is a fun read, has TONS of pictures (which is something I always look for in a book!), and will fill you in on a lot of interesting differences between the Thai culture and your own, things that you would see everyday if you were to visit or live in this country.

You can click on the underlined words within this post to follow links to the books and Baan Thai restaurant, as well as Brook’s website.  If you want to know more about where it is that we are living, check them out.  Enjoy!

Here’s the men’s sign.

And, here’s the women’s.

But… there’s a catch – since we’re in language school learning how to speak, read, and write Thai, of course we had to sing the song in Thai as well!  We’ve provided subtitles both in Thai script and English phonetics, as well as singing the song in both languages.  Enjoy!

Brook and Sara sing Thai from Michael Brook Sarver on Vimeo.

Today marks the birthday of two very important boys in my life, and seeing as I can only be with one of them today, I thought I’d write a special blog post about them.  We’ll start with the youngest, my nephew Carson, because he’s the one I won’t be able to see today.

I remember when Carson was born 6 whole years ago on October 28!  I made sure I was home in Illinois that weekend, since I was studying at Huntington University in north-central Indiana at that time.  He was born a little early since he was such a big boy, and since his birth was scheduled, I knew I couldn’t miss it!  That made me happy.  Even neater was the fact that I knew he and his Uncle Brook would always share a birthday from then on out.

Anyways, I remember the time getting closer and closer to when I had to leave the hospital and head back to school, but we still couldn’t see him yet.  Waiting, waiting, waiting… looking at the incredible little baby boy through the nursery window, wondering when or if I’d even be able to touch him before I had to go.  You can imagine how worried I was that I wouldn’t get to meet this little boy that I had just only seen for the first time… But, then, my brother, the new proud father, announced I would be the first one to hold him (other than his new parents of course!) after he had been brought to their room.  Before the grandparents, before the friends, before the other family!  I seriously broke down crying when Tim put him in my arms.  Who knew you could instantly love someone so very much?

It’s been wonderful to see Carson grow up into such a fine young man.  He is very smart, loves to draw, is kind, conversational, has a good imagination, is handsome, and just an all-around great kid.  He was the ring bearer in Brook & I’s wedding just over 3 years ago, and I’ll never forget that squeaky hamburger he carried down the aisle with him.  (I hope that makes you laugh, Carson!)  He loves to fish and go canoeing with his dad, my brother Tim.  He is always interested in new things, and I can see him doing great things as he grows even more.

I wish Uncle Brook & I could be there to give you big birthday hugs and eat cake & ice cream with you!  I wish you all the best things in this next year, and I pray that God would keep you safe, teach you more, and let you keep becoming the wonderful boy that you are!  I love you, Carson!

The other birthday boy, is of course, my husband Brook.  Brook and I first met October 4th, 2002 at Huntington University.  Yes, I’m a female, and I am allowed to remember things like that.  I had made a commitment between myself and God not to date anyone during high school, rather to focus on academics and service from those 4 years through the first semester of college.  Then, there he was, visiting a mutual friend on campus (he attended elsewhere at that point), and we hit it off right away.  I couldn’t believe this guy I’d met… We didn’t see each other again for exactly 2 weeks, and I couldn’t get him off my mind in the meantime, so all I could do was pray.  Had God honored my previous commitment, and brought me someone at just the right time?  It appeared so, and the story only goes on from there.

We’ve been through life together for the last 7 years, married for just over 3, and I am thankful for every one of them.  Brook’s passion for music and anything that has to do with it was the first thing that brought us together.  I still enjoy singing with him, or simply listening to him play his guitar (especially when he doesn’t even know I’m listening).  He has this drive, this determination, to learn new things and do them well.  He has this ability to go out and meet new people, unafraid.  He has become a good teacher, preacher, and friend to others.  He makes an impact wherever he goes.  He tries very hard at whatever he does, and if he doesn’t succeed at first, he tries even harder the second time.  He is my best friend, and my companion on this journey in life (cheesy, I know, but true), and I wouldn’t want to face Thailand without him.

I love you, Brook.  And I pray that this next year you would flourish here in Thailand, that God would continue to bless our marriage to one another, that we would only continue to grow together and love one another as much as one can.  I thank God for you, for your determination, your love of life, your passion for this work in Thailand, and most of all that you are mine.  :)

How blessed I am for these 2 boys being a part of my life!  Happy Birthday!!!!

*For outtakes of our birthday photos among 13th century temple ruins, visit my Facebook page (will be uploaded as soon as the internet allows!)*

One example of this can be found in the promotion of a particular brand of dried seaweed sheets. They are known as “Big Sheet” and you see their products in every supermarket, every 7-Eleven, and on practically every street corner. We were even recently in Bangkok during one of their major promotion days, and they had a few different mascots running around handing out free sheets of seaweed to anyone who wanted them. They had posing stations for photo opportunites, information booths on all the different types, flavors, and sizes of seaweed snacks you could buy, and even a live concert going on with flashing advertisements for the product. My absolute favorite thing though, was this billboard just around the corner from the Big Sheet fair going on. It was almost scary, as this was covering the top half of a large building, and completely 3-D. Just take a look at it!

Another example of “cute culture” can be found on my phone.  What?  Yes, you can find it on my phone.  Not on the screen, not a picture on the background, but literally hanging off the side of my Motorola Razor flip phone.  Much to Brook’s demise, I have added a phone charm to my calling device, and I’m really pretty happy about it.  You see, here in Thailand (and much of Southeast Asia), cartoon characters and the products they appear on are not just limited to children.  You might see a 6 year old child and a 32 year old mother both wearing the exact same Winnie the Pooh backpack, and no one thinks twice about it.  Any major store or mall will carry more than one line of car accessories, including seat belt sleeves (to cover the part that goes over your shoulder), gear shift covers, tissue box covers, floor mats, things to hang from your rear-view mirror, etc. all designed by cartoon companies.  Winnie the Pooh and a brand called “The Dog” appear to be among the most popular.  Men and women alike will buy these things, all different ages, and no one says a thing.  (At home, it would probably be a different story… :)  ) I love it!

The club that I have chosen to become a member of though, is that of the phone charms.  There are literally 1,000’s of different charms you can attach to the side of your phone, ranging from dangling jewels to cartoon characters, small action figures to fake cinnamon rolls, even small dolls that are twice the size of your phone!  Seeing as I was a rather large fan of Hello Kitty when I was a kid, I was instantly pulled toward a market shop that sells only Hello Kitty merchandise.  Oh, the joy I had when I saw this little charm hanging from a rack above the stuffed Hello Kitty dolls!  I am very proud to say that my phone is just that much cuter now and nobody will ever say anything about it (well, nobody here in Thailand anyways).  :)