The Royal Projects

Chitralada Palace is divided into roughly three parts: the school, the royal villa, and the royal projects. The royal projects is actually the thing that makes Chitralada so special, in my opinion; it is the only "working palace" in the world. His Majesty the King (the only monarch in the world to hold patents for some machinery that he designed) has long had a special interest in agriculture, and instituted the royal projects as a research and training institution to improve the development of his kingdom. Today, Chitrlada shops can be found at some of the upscale malls and at both airports in Bangkok. Products sold inlude, among other things, silk, soaps, lotions, and honey.

experimental green energy 

Chitralada is especially famous for its dairy. Each day the students get a milk break, and even we teachers have gotten the habit of going on an occasional midmorning "milk run" to the campus store. One notable product are the milk tablets, which are shipped out to poor areas to help children who don't have proper access to dairy. As a result, this young generation of Thais is much healthier and stronger than before, and the previously high rate of lactose-intolerance among adults has decreased drastically as the children are getting exposed to proper levels of lactose at a young age.

Today was the first "dead day" of the term. Midterms start on Friday and continue on Monday and Tuesday. There were no students at school today, so we had a nice laid-back day of grading and taking care of administrative business. The weather has been perfect recently, and we have finally opened the windows in our office and shut off the air. This morning an administrator finally brought Kate, the new teacher, her official ID badge. To celebrate, she, Ryan, and I went out to the projects store for Chitralada ice cream after lunch. (You can't walk around the palace grounds without an ID badge, so she has had to stay at the school.)

I knew they were there, but I had never walked through the royal projects before. They were really interesting to see! I forget how big Chitralada actually is, since I spend all my time at the school campus. Today we went on an adventure exploring the projects, and got to see where the honey is produced. We also got to walk past the dairy. Most of the cows were dairy cows and were kept away in a special area, but we did get to get close to some water buffalo who had been wallowing in their mud puddles. They were really friendly!

friendly buffalo