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Published: July 26th 2004
Thai dancers - open day at local school
Next to me is Tom's niece, and in front are Tom's daughter and her ADHD nephew.Dear all,
Last weekend I went to Ban Phai, a place so insignificant it doesn’t even get into Lonely Planet’s Thailand guide. Wretchedly hungover (sorry mum and dad) from a bizarre party the night before, I met Tom the Thai woman who thinks I look four months pregnant, and David, her hyperactive and demanding ADHD 6 year old nephew, at 9am in Bangkok for a six hour bus trip to Ban Phai, a village in Isan. I was not particularly looking forward to the bus trip, having taken many coaches long distances in my short life, but! Luxury awaited me. Coaches, VIP Thai-style (the class we took is actually called VIP), are so comfortable, with fully reclining chairs, lots of leg room, a blanket, food (a bizarre-tasting Chinese apricot tea drink, chips, rice and something that looked like meat which I didn’t eat), air-con of course, and TV. The TV bit wasn’t so good as they were showing some film I didn’t recognize but it looked German and like it was made by the same people who produce Inspector Rex, and some tripe with Tom Cruise which had lots of blood and guts and was not at all appropriate for a 6 year old, - both overdubbed in Thai, and at an almost ear-piercing volume. Thai people however can sleep through anything (and they do sleep anywhere, at any time… I often see street vendors taking naps on a chair next to their stall, or tuk-tuk drivers and their friends napping in the tuk-tuk… on crowded, polluted Bangkok streets - amazing!), and so they all put their seats back and slept, except for 6 year old David who likes blood and gore, and myself. I listened to my walkman, watched the lush green countryside pass by, and dozed a little after the movies had finished!
We were going to Ban Phai to see Tom’s children, who live with her ex-husband’s parents. Thai people aren’t that affectionate in public, but it was still a little odd to see the reunion - clearly Tom and her children were pleased to see each other, but there were no hugs or kisses. I think her children were actually a little over-awed to see her. The children are obviously happy there but it seems sad that they have to be separated from their mother, and see her so infrequently that they are shy when they do see her. It also makes me angry because Thailand is not a poor country and I don’t understand how the poor people of Thailand can be so neglected. So many of the beggars on the street are severely disabled people… why are they not looked after by the government if their families cannot take care of them? I see people without limbs, with festering wounds, blind, with elephantitis… perhaps I’m being naïve: after all trafficking in people for begging is a growing crime, so perhaps many of these disabled people have been trafficked to Bangkok to beg rather than reduced to begging by an uncaring society, but it’s usually children who are trafficked, not adults. I guess I should ask Thai people about their social welfare system before I start mouthing off about their crap government which neglects disabled people, single mothers, the poor, but it appears to me that there is little in the way of a social safety net and that is just obscene when I see luxury all around me, so many Thai people in designer clothes and expensive cars and then the rich foreigners.
Anyway… back to Ban Phai. So we got there, and there was a cow in the front yard of the next door neighbour, no one spoke English of course except for Tom (very limited) and David (fluent - his father is American but he was playing with the children all the time), but that was fine, because we could smile of course and Tom’s father-in-law actually spoke French. Of course! He’d been to school in Laos 30 or so years ago and so spoke French… but with his Asian accent, it was a little difficult to understand him. Anyway, why did I need to talk when I was stuffing my face with food? Yes! My struggle to find delicious food ended in Ban Phai… it reminded me of being in Greece with George’s family or Italy with Maria’s family when I hardly lifted a finger and was just fed delicious food all the time. I don’t know what half the stuff was, but it was vegetarian, and it was swimming in sauce, and it was plentiful. Every meal was a feast! They would put out about seven or eight bowls of various dishes and we’d all help ourselves. I was given steamed rice rather than sticky rice because, according to Tom, sticky rice was too “strong” for me… I don’t think she meant too strong, because it’s just rice, no chili, I think she meant that I wouldn’t want to eat it because you’re meant to eat it with your hands… and a Princess like myself wouldn’t be able to do that! Not only was every meal a feast, but there were many meals… We arrived at about 5pm on Saturday and ate twice that night, and on Sunday, we ate 5 times by 6:00pm! And one of the sisters (there were 6 people living in the house - the grandparents, one of their daughters, Tom’s two children and another granddaughter, plus another daughter was there the whole weekend to help with the constant cooking) told me that if I lived there for a month, I would become thin… Ha! I replied, “But I’m not fat!” And Tom said something about the Thai diet not having any cholesterol… because clearly, my vegetarian diet is full of cholesterol and that’s why I’m so fat!
The house itself was ‘modern’ Thai. Thai houses are traditionally wooden and built on stilts; this one had a few brick rooms on the ground but the top was wooden and supported by stilts when it wasn’t above the brick rooms. The rooms upstairs were the bed rooms, half of them above the open area downstairs where we sat and ate (and ate and ate) - the children, especially David, found it very amusing to call at us through the wooden planks of the bedrooms and stick their hands through the gaps. There were Thai toilets… ew. Thai toilets are squats - there’s a tiled area with a raised sort of toilet bowl, which, as a woman, you squat over… it’s not a long drop, there’s clearly sewerage going on there, but there’s no cistern. There’s just a huge trough, full of water, with a bowl floating in it; once you’ve finished, you pour water over the toilet. There’s no toilet paper either. No toilet paper. Now I’ve heard all about places like India and Morocco where they eat with only one hand, because the other hand performs less clean duties… but my inner princess is just not ready to find out about this first hand. Oops, excuse the pun. The toilet room is also where you shower and brush your teeth.. but there’s no basin, there’s just the trough. So at night when I was brushing my teeth, I didn’t know what to do - where did I spit? Surely not into the trough. And what water was I meant to use to rinse? Surely not the water from the trough? I think that’s what the Thais did but I couldn’t… there was definitely water mould in that trough. I brought my bottle of water with me and then hoped that David, brushing his teeth next to me, could enlighten me as to where to spit. But no, Prince David, growing up in a Western style house, couldn’t help me out. In the end, we spat into the bowl (the one you use to scoop water out of the trough and clean the toilet with) and I poured that down the loo, but I think we were meant to just spit into the toilet. It certainly was a cultural experience.
This being a tiny town, I was probably the only foreigner there. I got stared at of course at the market, and people were asking Tom about me, but she wouldn’t translate!! It was a bit annoying, to hear myself being talked about, (they were saying ‘falang’ constantly) and to not know what they were saying. At one stall I forced her to translate and she told me that were asking if I spoke French… she just laughed and didn’t tell them that I did… this was Sunday evening, so after having spent a whole weekend just nodding, smiling and eating, the idea of communication was a little appealing! I ended up talking to the sweetest girl in English and French… who would have thought that my French would serve me so well in rural Thailand?!
On Sunday morning, Tom and I got up at dawn, having been woken up by the roosters, to give food (alms?) to the Buddhist monks. I’m not sure if they go around every morning asking for food, or just once a week, but anyway, we gave them oranges and milk drinks (they have bizarre milk drinks - including corn milk which is incredibly sweet, tastes just like corn except even sweeter, and absolutely disgusting), and were blessed. Maybe now I’ll come back as a man in my next life!!
The bizarre party that I went to the night before going to Ban Phai was hosted by young people who work at the UN. It was weird in a number of ways - weird to be hanging out with beautiful, well-off, multi-lingual, white professionals (the only Thai people there were those who were serving us), people who I wouldn’t usually hang out with back home, and weird because of the theme… the theme was “In the Meantime,” which meant nothing to me whatsoever. The party was put on by the “UNconventional girls” so I thought that perhaps there was some bizarre link between ‘in the meantime’ and ‘unconventional girls’ but no, it turns out there was no link there… the UNconventional bit was just an example of the sparkling wit people from the UN is capable of… the “In the meantime” refers to being inbetween fellas or waiting for a husband… !!! Can you believe that someone would actually have a party whose theme is waiting for a hubbie?! Sue from Geraldton (small town in Western Australia) said to me at the party, “Well, it’s what we’re all really looking for, isn’t it? A great husband and a good job?” She seemed surprised when I replied “Errr… no.” Anyway, these two gorgeous Norwegians accompanied me to the party and we still had a great time despite the weirdness.
Saturday just gone, continuing the theme of weirdness, I went to a Bikram yoga class. My knees have been a little sore of late so I figured I should yoge, and my boss, Anne, raves about bikram. Bikram yoga is done in a room heated to 37 degrees celcius (98.6 fahrenheit) and the class goes for 90 minutes. Oh my giddy aunt… Apparently, because it’s so hot, your muscles are meant to be more relaxed, more flexible… which is all well and good during the class… but when you’ve pushed yourself further than you should because your muscles are so flexible (I think they seem more flexible because the pain one feels due to stretching is less than the pain one is suffering due to the heat!) you kinda pull up a little sore the next day. Still, I slept like a baby Saturday night.
xxx
Nina.
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steve
non-member comment
Thanx
Thanx for sharing your experience i was looking up ban phai and enjoyed reading . steve x