Strawberry Fest With No Strawberries

When I travel, I always love to become friends with locals. The travel stories are so much better that way and the experience is much more meaningful.

Luckily, I have a friend here, Matt, who is friends with basically every person in Thailand.

Every time you hop on the back of a motorcycle with him, some Thai person yells something at him like "Where are you going?" as we pass by.

Matt decided that he should become friends with some local Thai police…because he’s always getting into trouble and needs someone to bail him out of it. 😆

Kidding about the trouble part, I think.

Here's a pic of the Thai police uniform and a policewoman just for fun:
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His police friends told us about a strawberry festival that was happening, which was awesome because literally NO tourists or farang (foreigners) here in Thailand knew about it.

That means we got to have a truly authentic experience with locals. Matt and I were the only two foreigners there!

My favorite thing about the Samoeng strawberry festival was that there were almost no strawberries.

🚫 🍓

I know there was a language barrier... but I was SURE they had said we were going to a strawberry fest.

This was the one lonely strawberry we saw, so I knew I must have heard correctly:

Actually, there were more cowboy things and Native American Indian stuff than strawberries!

Thai police make hella good Native American/ Strawberry Fest Indians:

And there were also a lot of American flags?!? I was so confused...I promise this was in Thailand! 😆

Here's a cool strawberry life hack I learned ** (thanks, strawberry festival knowledge):

You can use empty plastic to keep your boots standing straight in your closet! I
actually use pool noodles at home...but I love the plastic bottle idea.

Bonus points: There was a swing there!

One thing every strawberry festival always needs to have to be a big hit is a swing.

What You Need To Throw An Awesome Thai Strawberry Festival:

1. Feather Headdress ✔
2. Cowboy Hat ✔
3. Tractor ✔
4. Boots ✔
5. Boots with plastic bottles inside ✔
6. Swing ✔

According to my calculations, this festival was a perfect success!!

It turns out, this place was only a pit stop to the REAL festival. PHEW. We were super confused! This is what happens when you are the only two foreigners and have no idea what is going on.

We drove to another place even further away that had actual strawberry things!

The strawberry parade floats were my favorite. The detail is amazing on these things! They're made out of flowers and fruit!!

The funniest part was that someone ate the strawberries off of the parade float:

Food wise, they mainly had strawberry wine and strawberries:

I wanted to be friends with this guy who was selling some strawberry whiskey because his smile was so contagious!

He wasn't even posing for me... I was just taking multiple pictures of him like a straight up creeper.

Proof that I'm creepy and took several pics of him:

I took a taste of the wine...and surprisingly it was some of the best wine I've tasted! Even though I typically don't like very sweet ones...this was berry good. 😆