OTOP Fair

Sunday, 7 November 2004

This morning, Linda (the American professor who works at a local university and is married to a Thai and has been living here for 20 years) called at 6:45 am to ask if Christy and I wanted to go on a field trip with her husband's students (he's a high school teacher). She told us it would be great to buy Christmas gifts. OTOP stands for One Tambon One Product, and is a company that organizes all of the quality merchants from all over Thailand. Every hand made product, from silks to pineapple paper to food to bags and kitchenware from various provinces can be found here. We got on an air-conditioned bus (It's key that you get to ride on a bus with AC. No AC can make the trip a bit unbearable and uncomfortable.) with 100 7th - 9th graders and headed to Muang Thong Thani, the Impact Convention Center in Bangkok where many concerts and presentations (like the upcoming Dr. Steven Covey's presentation on leadership in mid-November) are held.

Basically, it was a huge trade show with buildings of different vendors. We spent hours looking at different crafts, and I bought Thai placemat/chopstick sets, Thai print boxes, a purse, recycled Heineken beer can purses (as requested by relatives in Hawai'i, after they saw my Singha beer can purse), cotton scarves, and cosmetic bags. Everything was reasonably price, and you could still do some bargaining for things.

It was exhausting, and by 2:30 pm, we were shopped out! Although it was good for us, unfortunately, I don't think it was too interesting for the 100 students that went. Crazy thing is this is a field trip sponsored by the government. They paid for 100 students from high schools to go, perhaps to be more informed about business or Thai economy and merchants? And, there were busloads of students from other schools there. But, the students didn't have money to buy things, and they really didn't make it an educational field trip for them. A waste of government money really to pay 3000 baht for the buses and all. But, there are a lot of things that the Thai government and education system are still trying to figure out.