DAY NINE: SUWAN FARM

We started the day off traveling to Nakorn Rachasrima provice which is home to the National Corn and Sorghum Research Center (Suwan Farm). It's a research farm for the university we are traveling with.

Agent Jay joined us for this trip along with two new friends - Jip and Mingju.

We arrivied to a delicious lunch (which of course included corn), and on our way to our dorms, we saw our first wild monkeys! I'm still working on the species. After the excitement we enjoyed a lecture by a professor at the university who tuaght us about different corn species and the research done on the farm. After that we had a coffee break which also included sweet corn juice -- that's right. They make sweet corn juice. And people LOVE it here. Love it. I was gifted a bottle and felt obliged to drink it all. I will say it tastes better than you'd think, but I still prefer to eat my corn.

He took us on a tour of the farm which featured employees shucking the corn at a rapid rate. They illustrated what happens when corn does not pollinate completely (evident by lack of kernels). It was humbling watching these people work so hard to shuck the corn. We also saw women flash boiling the corn and packaging it in order to be sold. I think the husks are used for biofuel. I'll have to double check on that one.

We went into town afterwards, and I enjoyed my first real Thai massage. It's a full body massage that lasts an hour where they do some crazy things. It was intense to say the least -- painful and confusing. But I really did feel better afterwards. I'm really looking forward to getting another especially now that I know what to expect.

We visited the outdoor market for a little bit, and then we decided to head back to the dorms. Sue dropped us off and told us not to come out of our rooms for 30 minutes because she had a surprise.

After 30 minutes, we made our way over to dinner and were very shocked to find that Ahn, Gahn, Naan, and Tar had all driven 2 hours from Bangkok to have a BBQ party with us that night! It was very touching. We had a big time joking around, and the girls taught us how to do a traditional Thai dance (Tar is a professional dancer).

We retired late that night.