When it comes to obtaining the materials needed for experiments, things are a slightly different here in Thailand than they are back home,. Since we will be working with Thai medicinal plants, we had to go buy them from the local street market. We made two stops at the old city of Chiang Mai. The first stop was at the street market. The street market was filled with busy vendors and many diverse people. As soon as you start walking the street the air is filled with many distinct aromas like durian, papaya, mango, pineapple, fresh fish, and many more. As we were looking for the Kaffir lime I saw a vendor that was selling water snakes. I couldn’t help but wonder how he was able to catch them. Some of the interesting things I found there was black garlic, rose apples, and pomelo that is native to Southeast Asia. Our second stop was at a store that had many types of dry medicinal plants. I never really realized how many herbs we can utilize for holistic medicine. I hope that in the future we strive to have a balance between holistic and industrial medicine.
~Jasmin