Farewell, for now, Juniper Tree!

As I fly out of Thailand early on Monday, it's time to start getting packed up. Hopefully the interval between this months visit and our return to work here will be brief, but as yet no definite plans can be made.
As today is my last "day off", I went to the Day Market in Chiang Mai to pick up some souvenirs for home.

Unlike the Night Market, there is a much wider range of goods and not all aimed at the tourists either. I wandered around for an hour or two and found a few interesting things. One vegetable stall piled about six feet high had a very life like effigy of an old woman lying asleep among the fruit and veg. It wasn't until I was nearly passed by that I realised it wasn't an effigy-it was Grandma, snoring away the lunch time on top of the fresh goods!

Another stall, which was no more than a small folding table had small plastic bags of live fish, some tiny finches in a tiny bamboo basket and a washing-up bowl with twenty or more tiny turtles in it. Whether these were for sale as pets or as food-stuff, I'm not sure.

You could watch them cook your lunch here!

If you wanted to buy sea-food, the picture below is of a stall that was cooking fresh shrimps, tilapea, sun-fish, and many more I couldn't recognise, but the smell was fantastic! Other stalls with vast buckets of curries, sausages, kebabs and every conceivable  type of meat product in vast heaps sprawling across their counters.

Just outside the market was a Buddist temple. In fact there were far more monks, in their distinctive saffron robes, wandering in the market than I have seen so far. The temple was beautifully kept, it stands out like a jewel amongst the ramshakle stalls of the market. Markets often look like this though don't they? Even the Tooting Market in London looks and smells just the same in places! (At least it did last time I went there!)

I wanted to spend some time out in the sun around the Juniper Tree's gardens today. Before the original "Holiday Resort" was built, the land which we are now on was an orchard. Many of the mature trees in the gardens have survived from those days. The tamarind that I mentioned was in close proximity to lychees, jack fruit, bannas, mangoes and papayas. Other less well known fruits are growing around the gardens and in time I'll be able to find out more about some of them.


In the mean time try doing a google image search for mangosteen, rhong-rien, durian or dragonfruit; all these add a lot of colour and flavour to the choice we have here. Below are some of the fruit trees growing in the Juniper Tree gardens:

Mangoe

Bannans

Lychees

Jack Fruit