Birds' eggs and parasols

I am a little slow on the uptake, sometimes.

For example: at the admission booth for San Kamphaeng Hot Springs, an hour east of Chiang Mai by songthaew, Lian picks up, of all things, a bamboo basket containing a dozen speckled robin-size eggs, and looks at me: "We get?" For 20 baht (about 66 cents) I figure, what the heck.  But ... why?

An odd memento?  Another Buddhist worship ceremony?  (Last week at the temple we bought live fish and caged birdies to be released back to nature at the riverside.)  But as we approach the twin geysers of the main hot springs, I finally get it.

A sign provides directions for boiling the eggs in the adjacent pool.  Ah!  That would explain the packet of soy sauce tucked in with the eggs. How it works is, you hang your basket on hooks that are driven into sides of the pool.  A few minutes later you retrieve your immersed basket and start peeling teeny-tiny eggs to eat with the soy sauce.  Yum!

So we hang out at the hot springs for a couple of hours dangling our feet in the not-boiling watercourse near the geysers before grabbing lunch and heading back to town. But Lian arranges with the driver to take us on a scenic route through Bo Sang "to see amber store," she says.  I wince.  Amber?!?  What, with mosquitoes trapped in it, like in "Jurassic Park"?  I'm not buying any damned amber ...

But I am mistaken: she is saying "umbrella," not "amber," and it turns out to be a happy surprise.  Bo Sang is known as Umbrella Village for the many manufacturers of parasols, fans and other colorful trinkets -- all handmade using traditional, pre-electrical tools.  OK, I'll admit that this is pretty cool to see, and I might even come back for the Bo Sang Umbrella Festival in January.  Lantern processions, traditional Thai music ensembles, and not touristy at all, according to my tourist guidebook.