Sanpatong, Thailand is about 25 km Southwest of the city of Chiang Mai. Its a small town where you can eat dinner for under $1 USD, stop by one of the many markets for fresh fruits and veggies, and then stay home after 7 PM because everything except 7-Eleven is closed by then.
I have a little apartment on the same street as the school where I work (I’ll talk about my experience teaching in Thailand in another post). Underneath/attached to my apartment is a little shop that sells bubble tea. Across the street is “Love In Coffee”, where almost every morning before school I stop to get a double iced hazelnut americano and chat with the owner while we both attempt to understand each other without really knowing English or Thai (respectively). Next to that is the Noodle Soup restaurant where I like to eat sen yai noodles with buffalo for lunch. Two doors down from my apartment is the restaurant where I almost always eat dinner. It is an open-air garage with patio furniture, like most Thai restaurants outside of tourist destinations, and Pa Nong makes the best Thai food I have had in Thailand while her husband, Sing, brings us samples of random foods and teaches us the names of the foods, which we inevitably forget by the next time we try to order. In the mile between my school and apartment, there are also lots of street food vendors, an amazing Tom Yum soup restaurant, an amazing Pad Thai restaurant (I know I used the word amazing twice, it’s appropriate), a 7-Eleven, and a market that I frequent after school for fresh fruit, fried chicken, spring rolls, roti, etc. Down a side street past the market is a lake that I like to bicycle and jog around. I like to go specifically at sunset because there are more mosquitos possibly carrying tropical diseases (malaria, dengue, etc.) and I just really like to take risks.
The view of my street from my apartment complex. 
The bubble tea shop attached to my apartment building, featuring the friendly smile of my landlord! 
My apartment building! 
The lake near my house. 
A photo of me biking around town. 
The lake is very pretty. 
The lake is very pretty at sunset. 
More of the lake being pretty at sunset. 
You don’t have to go far to find a cool temple. This is one of many in my town. 
Just some casual water buffalo taking a nap by the lake, no big deal. 
The sunsets in my town are beautiful. This is on my street. 
The inside of Pa Nong’s, my favorite restaurant. 
Love in Coffee 
The fruit stand where I buy pineapple every day. 
One of the daily markets in town. 
The daily market on my street.
It would be completely possible to spend my entire six months in Thailand without ever venturing farther than the mile between my apartment and school. I have absolutely everything I need, which, if I’m being honest, mostly just means I have lots of tasty, fattening food options. However, being the exciting and adventurous explorer that I am (only slight sarcasm in that statement), I have gotten to know the rest of Sanpatong as well. On Fridays I might follow the highway South (on my MOTORBIKE, did I mention i have one of those?) for a few miles to get coconut ice cream and Pad Thai at the Friday market. Or I could drive North to get to downtown Sanpatong. I don’t spend much time there other than to stop at the bank or post office, and occasionally to grab noodle soup at the nightly market. I do, however, pass through downtown Sanpatong every Tuesday and Thursday night on my way to Muay Thai boxing class! If you ask me what my favorite part of living in Thailand is, Muay Thai class has to be it. Twice a week I spend a few hours with Kru Pak, Nom Cake, and a bunch of energetic Thai kids punching, kicking, and elbowing (elbowing is allowed in Muay Thai, just one of the things that makes it so awesome). I am learning a lot of Thai words related to boxing that will never be useful in any other context, so that is exciting as well. Nobody at the Muay Thai gym speaks much (or really any) English, but somehow we manage to communicate and laugh a lot. There is an elderly Thai woman who comes in just to yell at me to put “more power!” into my kicks, we all laugh together about how close my head comes to hitting the pole above the punching bag when I jump (I am much taller than Thai people), and sometimes Kru Pak gives me free fried chicken at the end of class, and it is absolutely the best fried chicken I have ever tasted. Last week Kru Pak took us to the city to see one of the boys we train with fight at the stadium, and we got to hang out in the back with the fighters. Basically, I am a VIP Muay Thai trainee.
My motorbike and I posing for a photo together. 
A photo I thought was artsy enough to post. 
The awesome sign for my Muay Thai gym. 
I know. I look like a real Muay Thai fighter. Be afraid. 
We have to run a mile before every class but this view makes it better. 
The gym is being renovated but I am very sad because I will be gone before it is finished. 
Hello Kru Pak! 
The most pure joy I have ever captured with my camera. 
It is possible that I am by far the oldest person in the class. 
Kru Pak gave me these shorts to borrow for this picture. 
I train with the fighter on the left. He won this fight at Tha Pae Stadium in Chiang Mai!
If you ever happen to google Sanpatong, you won’t find much information online. It’s not a place that tourists visit, as evidenced by the fact that I and my fellow foreign teachers are the only western people we ever see around town and everyone always stares at us. However, the one thing you might come across online is the Sanpatong Buffalo Market (although in town everyone just calls it the weekend market). Every Saturday morning starting at 5am and going until about noon is a huge weekend market spanning two sides of the road. You can find anything you could ever want, from water buffalo and frogs and fighting chickens, to every kind of Thai food, to shoes, gardening tools, electronics, glasses, crafts, medicine, cosmetics, guns, clothes… anything. On weekends when I don’t travel, I like to spend my Saturday mornings walking around the market sampling pork dumplings and watching old Thai men drink Hong Thong whiskey and bet on cock fights. Then I walk over towards my apartment and get a relaxing two-hour Thai massage for $8USD.
If you ever need a chicken I know where to go… 
I was taking photos far away until an old drunk Thai man yelled at me to pet the chicken. 
Cock fighting at the market. 
You can find everything. 
Look how cute the little girl with the balloon is! 
Songthaews shuttle in loads of people for the weekend market. 
Pork dumplings are my fAvOrItE. 
Mangosteens look like fake, cartoon fruits. 
Look at all the cOoL sTuFf. 
Buy your veggies at the buffalo market. 
Yummy…? 
Hot and spicy. 
A water buffalo! 
He posed for my picture. 
I don’t wake up early enough to see the buffalo area when it is still full. 
If you want to buy a water buffalo I know a guy.
Living in Thailand has been a unique experience. In no particular order, here is a list of the most noticeable day-to-day differences that remind me that I’m not in Ohio anymore:
- Stray dogs are everywhere. Normally they don’t bother you, but occasionally they’re feeling feisty and you will turn around to see a pack of four dogs barking and chasing you. This is as terrifying as it sounds. I have learned to confidently yell at them and it has successfully stopped them from biting me so far.
- Nobody has a full kitchen or cooks much at home. Street food is king. It is cheaper and more convenient than buying ingredients to cook for yourself. Also it is delicious.
- Squat toilets are a thing. There is no toilet paper anywhere. You learn to carry around toilet paper and hand sanitizer or you get used to the “bum gun”.
- The bugs are bigger and there are giant millipedes and snakes and fun things like that.
- Thai people wake up early and close up shop early. They are up at 5am and most restaurants close by 5pm. I am not a huge fan of this or of the rooster that wakes me up at 5am with everyone else.
- The roads are about 50% cars and 50% motorbikes dangerously weaving through those cars. Thai people also have the insane ability to fit their entire family of 5 (including a baby) on one motorbike.
- The people are really small. The average height of a Thai woman is 5’2” and the average height of a Thai man is 5’5”. Also if you are a size medium in the USA, you are a double extra large in Thailand. Needless to say, I don’t do a lot of clothes shopping.
- Although it is a required subject in Thai schools, English is not very widespoken outside of major tourist areas.
- All of the beauty products, lotions, cleansers, etc. have bleaching and whitening agents in them. I do not like this.
- 7-Elevens are EVERYWHERE and they have EVERYTHING.
- Markets are the best. I go to a market every day and buy all of the things.
- Thai people value harmony and the culture is more passive that what we are used to in the USA. Direct confrontation is seen as embarrassing for everyone and is frowned upon.
- There is rice in everything. Even ice cream has rice in it. What’s for breakfast? Sticky rice. Whats for lunch? Chicken and rice. What’s for dessert? Mango sticky rice.
- You have to constantly take your shoes on and off in Thailand. Entering a home or business with shoes on is very rude, and you absolutely cannot enter a temple with shoes on.
- Nobody drinks the tap water, not even Thai people. Water delivery services deliver cases of purified water to homes and businesses every week.
- The monarchy is very important to Thai people. There are portraits of the King and the royal family everywhere and it is illegal to speak negatively of the monarchy. One of the princesses of Thailand actually visited my school for Teacher’s Day and it was a very big deal.
- Thai massages are amazing and cheap enough that one time I got two in one day and felt like a super rich person.
How long does it take to go from where you are to Chiang Mai?
Is the town so small that there are not rooms or hotel?
How large is your school?
I’m a retired teacher of grades 3-6 in USA?Iowa.
The town has guesthouses but you are better off with a hotel in Chiang Mai about 50 minutes away!