Chaa Thai Podcast, Season 2 Ep. 1 Passing the Kettle
1–2 minutes

Chaa Thai is a podcast spilling the tea on Peace Corps volunteer life in Thailand! Each episode, hosts Alyssa Strong and Lilly Hromadka interview a current Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and do a deep dive on their experience at their host site. The tea is that there are as many examples of what service is like for a volunteer in Thailand as there are volunteers — join us as we get a taste!

This episode begins a new era of Chaa Thai! Out with the old hosts, Dano and Morgan, and in with the new, as we pass the kettle to Group 135 hostesses, Lilly and Alyssa.

In their final episode before retirement, Dano and Morgan tell us the story of the Chaa Thai podcast from birth to present day. Morgan and Dano reflect on their service, spill the tea on their post service plans, and impart all of their wisdom on the new hosts. Thank you Dano and Morgan for creating Chaa Thai, we’ll pour you a cup at the 2045 host reunion tea party!

Find more episodes of the Chaa Thai podcast here.

One response to “Chaa Thai Podcast, Season 2 Ep. 1 Passing the Kettle”

  1. Denny Wells Avatar
    Denny Wells

    Planning a trip back to visit our friends in Thailand 22 years after our group 112 COS, nostalgia prompted me to search the current status of PC Thailand and Sticky Rice. Then my OCD prompted me to binge Chaa Thai from the beginning. I made it to this episode today. Dano’s suggestion to listen back to this in 20 years felt very prescient.

    The stories from season one (I’m sure this will be true with season 2 when I get through that too) were so compelling. There were some new things that we did not experience in 112 – homestays at site, 2 separate but parallel programs in the group, video conferencing, screens in the classroom, Sticky Rice in a blog/social media/podcast format.

    But the stories were also super familiar. Language struggles and triumphs. Thai counterparts running the gamut from amazing partners to mysteriously vanished. Living in a place with non-Thai languages common in the community (my wife and I served together, and our 4 first-year-of-service schools were variously one-each in Thai, Khmer, Lao, and Suai-speaking communities). Stomach bugs and the ubiquity of discussing BM’s as a topic of PCV conversation. Thai night in training. Travelling to other sites for camps. The decrepit bikes you rely on for 2 years. Fighting off crazy dogs while riding those same decrepit bikes. The differences in sites, from those with a 7-11 and good transportation, to those at the end of a line with nothing around.

    20+ years later, it all still sounded very very familiar, and regularly brought a smile to my face. Thank you all for keeping the tradition going.

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