SALT AND COCONUTS
SALT AND COCONUTS
By Charles N. Stevens
This is the third in a series of articles about the fascinating country of Thailand.
I am awakened by the sound of boats pulling barges, the noise like small airplanes taking off. We roll out of bed in the dark just before five o’clock. As light begins to appear in the east, wavering bluish lines reflect in the river.
After breakfast, we relax in our room. Outside, loaded water taxis struggle through the water with their burdens of humanity. I watch two orange-robed monks row across the river in a small shallow boat.
Our bus leaves about 7:30, joining the flood of cars, motorbikes, tuk-tuks and busses that clog the roads. School children in uniform tote their backpacks on the way to school. People line up at bus stops and the stands of street vendors. We pass klongs lined with rickety houses existing among the towers of new housing projects.
Farther out of town, we roll by outdoor spaces along the road where vendors sell nursery stock, ceramic animals and round squat pots. Some people live in shacks nearly masked by the trees behind their businesses. In contrast, we come upon private housing developments and huge billboards that advertise them. The houses are expensive and pretentious, all of them two-story houses with ostentatious columns, balconies and balustrades. We pass one housing development after another, a sign of the growing wealth of Thailand, the newly rich.
Buddhist shrines and temples rise everywhere, even in vacant lots. Outdoor shops along the road sell personal shrines or spirit houses, most of them small and reddish but delicate like the real temples.
Farther out yet, we begin to see coconut palms and miles of mangrove swamps cleaned out for the support of new industries, mainly small factories. New buildings seem to be going up everywhere, a sign of Thailand’s optimism and emergence as a manufacturing nation. We pass a huge seafood and fruit market housed in a brand-new building. We roll through the town of Samut Sakorn with its gayly painted little busses, passengers crowded into their small bench seats.
Moving on, we pass over the Tachin River bordered with mangrove swamps. Here and there, palms poke out of the swamp, their sweet fruit, we are told, often used by the Thais for dessert. Traveling through a strange mixture of open country, we see that it is interspersed with new factories and Buddhist temples. Just beyond one new factory lies a huge Buddhist temple with a white stupa and a sitting Buddha. Not even a monk is visible, a contrast to the crowded temples of Bangkok.
As we drive on, we pass through miles of flatlands where ancient-looking windmills with matting for sails turn crude pumps to move seawater into square ponds. After the water evaporates salt will be left behind. Egrets and stilts linger around some of the ponds looking for small fish and shrimp. Women sell plastic sacks of salt at stands all along the highway, the sacks arranged artistically into white pyramids.
Turning off on a small side road we come upon more ponds for extracting salt while others serve as shrimp raising enclosures. In some of the dried ponds. salt had been raked into large cone-shaped piles. We rumble through the town of Samut Songpram, a bustling town with its share of small, skinny yellow stray dogs. Piles of coconuts and coconut husks are everywhere beside the road. We pass a school where the students are lined up in the yard for special instructions. Just outside of town more coconut groves shade the ground. Piles of coconuts are in front of many houses, the smoke of burning coconut husks drifting across the road.
We stop at a grove where workers make coconut sugar, the clear coconut milk steaming in large wok-like pans over a fire. The steam is moist and sweet-smelling as I pass through wisps of it. Like the production of maple sugar, the coconut milk will eventually boil down to its sugar. We try some of the finished product which is very sweet and tastes mildly of coconut. The sugar is for sale as well as many other coconut sugar products. After using a hole-in-the-floor toilet, a real bother and ordeal for the women, I watch the glow of burning wood and coconut husks in the brick ovens that supply the heat to the pans of steaming coconut milk. A half dozen unfettered dogs lie around the place, sleeping or scratching fleas.
We pass many more coconut plantations with mounds of coconuts and husks around many of the houses or under sheds. Trucks of coconuts roll down the street. We begin to see fewer coconuts and more bananas as we drive toward the boat dock for our next adventure.
MONTEREY PARK AUTHOR PUBLISHES 4th BOOK – Seeking More of the Sky: Growing Up in the 1930’s:
Charles “Norm” Stevens, a 43 year resident of Monterey Park has recently published his 4th book: Seeking More of the Sky: Growing Up in the 1930’s. This is the story of a young boy growing up in Inglewood, California in the l930’s. This was a time during the depression when unemployment was affecting many and the banks were closed, while the clouds of war were gathering in Europe. But he was lucky enough to be raised in a loving family, the power of that love reflected throughout his stories.
Stevens is the author of three previous books about his experiences during WWII:
An Innocent at Polebrook: A Memoir of an 8th Air Force Bombardier (Story of his 34 bombing missions from his base at Polebrook, England over Germany and France)
The Innocent Cadet: Becoming A World War II Bombardier (A prequel to the first, telling of his training in the U.S. before going overseas into combat.)
Back from Combat: A WWII Bombardier Faces His Military Future from Combat: (This book details the time from when he returned from combat in England until the end of the war.)
He is known to the readers of The Citizen’s Voice as the author of Travel Log Articles including “Cruising the Rhine and Mosel”,” Best of the West”, “In Search of Snow” , “From Paris to Normandy on the Seine”, and “Exploring New York”. He is retired, having taught for 32 years, primarily in the Montebello Unified School District.
Those interested in purchasing an autographed copy of any of his books, may contact the author at 323-721-8230 or Normstevens24@gmail.com.
