Kings Royal Projects

8/1/2015

Today not much occurred sadly.  Though we left the apartment at 7.30 am and again didn’t have food until lunch time (though this time I was prepared) and have only just arrived back to the apartment at 6pm I can honestly say not much happened. We spent about 2 hours getting to our destination today due to traffic and then nearly 2 hours getting home, again due to traffic :( 

Today we went to see the Kings Royal Project. I found it really interesting to see how much the king has done for Thailand and how much he produces on his own land. They have candle making from beeswax, honey making, spirilina making, paper making, they make so many different things with milk from chocolate to milk purchased at a discounted price (due to the king wanting Thai people to drink more milk) to milk produced only for the purchase of the government to then distribute between school students. They are also making chocolate chips for children who don’t drink milk as the king thinks intake of milk is very important. The king has also got rice fields on his land which he helped to plow using Thailand first ever tractor.

All these ‘projects’ that occur on the kings land was started by him and tended to be around the 1960’s. I really like how the king funded the research with his own money and has done it for the goodness of his country. Take the rice fields for example, he got one grain of rice, tried multiple ways of planting it, planted them himself, plowed them himself and now the Kings Royal Project has over 40 different kinds of rice. Another thing I learnt that was really interesting was how conservative the king is. He doesn’t like to waste things so with rice he then researched ways to optimise every part of it and the husk/stalks of rice is ground up and used as fuel instead of coal and wood. He also researched how to make his own fuel using sugar canes (that may be why fuel is ridiculously cheap over here it’s just over $1 NZD per litre).

It was really disappointing though when the girls weren’t allowed to see the kings royal elephants as we weren’t wearing collars. All the guys saw it and said there was nothing to see but I think it would have been really good to see because the other day at Samphran Elephant Ground and Zoo we learnt that all white elephants found in Thailand are deemed to be property of the King, I have never seen a white elephant, I wonder how rare they are?!?!

They even grow their own mushrooms!

After the morning at the Kings Royal Project we went shopping at downtown Bangkok. There are some HUGE malls right beside each other but my favourite places is where Frances (our group leader) takes me as she’s been to that area of Bangkok quite a few times and shows me all the good places. Today I wasn’t in the mood for shopping at all, I mean after all we have shops in New Zealand plus I’ve never liked shopping I leave that up to my mum and my brother. Instead of shopping I went for a two and a half hour pamper session. I had a full body Thai massage and a manicure. It was so relaxing and amazing, I can never get enough.

Oh well  we are heading out to dinner shortly and then to this AMAZING gelato shop. They sell beer ice cream and vodka and redbull ice cream. These ice creams are really good and taste just like really chilled alcohol, the ice cream also comes with dry ice, which is always fun to play around with while pretty much having a beer. It’ll be a good way to end the day.

Tomorrow believe it or not we are going to ANOTHER palace, that’s three days in a row.

Anna xx