May 23, 2004

Chok Dee For You And Me

One July, a few years back, I got to do some more serious driving in Thailand. Up in Surin. In Isaan. We rented the old red shit-box pick-up truck from my lass' girlfriend again as we had been doing on earlier trips up there. She met us in The Thong Tarin Hotel in Surin the day we arrived. We got in at 4:30a.m. off the VIP bus from Morchit bus depot in Bangkok, her friend showed up much later, as usual. She was supposed to pick us up from the Surin bus depot. She never showed, as she had promised my wife she would, nor answered her mobile. I'm gonna strangle her some day I swear. Either that or buy her a Timex watch and bring it from the States to give it to her as a present. One or the other, I still haven't decided which. The woman is always late! Thai time isn't even close to any other country's time. Well, maybe the Bahamas. Those guys are slower than the second coming of Christ too, at times, and usually late as well. Must be the tropical influences.

After getting the truck from the wife's friend later in the day, and driving up to the village, about an hour's drive outside of Surin, I found out I needed to go to the village down the road to pick up some stuff for the family and wife's Mama. About an hours drive, round trip, further into the boonies and rice paddies of Isaan. This asked of me after just driving an hour up there already. "Yeah, no problem darling. Let's go and get it over with, so I can relax and have a beer later, okay? I responded to her request. "Have beer now, darling?!" she comes back at me. "Hell yeah, why not?" I say to her. She cracked me a cold Beer Chang, which I find cool and tasty, and we jump in the truck with her sister and head on down the road to her Momma's sister's village to pick up some supplies needed.

I love driving the back roads up country in Issan. As long as it's not raining anyway. We pop in a Lao country-music cassette (think American country and western music, played on strange instruments, and sung in Lao) and glide on past the rice paddies in the rented red pick-up. With a gun rack in the back window of the truck I'd fit right in anywhere in Alabama or Georgia in the sticks. Village guys on their strange looking rice paddy tractors in the distance are plowing up the red muddy fields for planting next season's rice crop. Very picturesque. The sun is burning my right arm black as it hangs out the window while I sip my beer. Water buffalos stand bellowing and tossing their huge heads along the roadside as we pass, and women in large straw hats, with their heads and faces also wrapped in black bandanas or ski-masks, hide from the broiling hot sun as they work the paddies in knee deep water, doing back breaking labor most falang (foreigners) would die from having to do for a week or two in that blazing sunshine and heat. Other water buffalo plow through the waters in the ditches along the road side, with only their heads and mighty horns showing, munching on what ever grasses come within their reach, their huge cresent-shaped horns bobbing from side to side as they wade slowly through the paddy roadside canals. In the distance the sunlight reflects off a village Wat's broken pieces of various colored mirror decorations, which are set into the wet concrete walls when they are first built. It sparkles like a fairy tale castle from a story written by an Asian Aesop. Whose fables I want to one day read. Small stands of bamboo and huge old trees occasionally break the monotony of rice paddy dikes and fields, and a lone Mango tree stands forlorn, providing small shade to a couple of workers sharing some sticky rice and tea during a break in their labors.

The air smells sweet, and you can taste Thailand in the back of your throat if you inhale greedily the glorious scents of this strange and beautiful land. I'm home, and yet far away from home. Happy, yet sad. Happy to be here, yet sad I'll once again have to leave my new temporary "home" to go home. Funny isn't it, how much you can love a people not your own? Still missing your own, yet never wanting to leave. I sometimes feel I've but dreamed Thailand, and I'll someday awaken and have to kill myself from the grief of knowing it was all but a dream. Especially to lose the one sitting beside me now forever. Her fat, funny, wise cracking sister is laughing and joking with her as my wandering mind soaks in the glimpses of this dream I'm in. Their laughter and chatter releases my soul to soar above the land like an eagle on wing. A movement on the road breaks my reverie. A snake, a big one, about three feet long or so, is side-winding and slithering across the road some metres ahead. I bring my ladies attention to it, and with perfect timing, and deft control of the steering wheel, run over the snake, but, having put it perfectly centered between the wheels of my truck I pass over him without touching a scale on him. I had tried to miss him, without having to lock the brakes up and cause an accident. Looking in the rear view mirror I see him rear his head from the tarmac and turn his head to watch my receding truck. Lucky for him he wasn't a bit larger or he'd of been a goner. My lady and her sister have twisted their heads around to look rear-ward, and, spying the still unharmed snake watching us drive away, they shriek with glee and start yakking in Thai/Lao together, and tell me I will have "big good luck" today. (Chok dee mahk mahk) "Why's that?" I ask them, puzzled. "To see snake cross road is big good luck!" they say, beaming brightly their white smiles. More Thai superstition, but I felt glad I hadn't run the snake over, and harmed or killed it. I turn to my lady and say, "Yes, today I have big good luck. Today I am with you darling." Her sister reaches around behind her and smacks my shoulder, and calls me, "Pak Wan" (sweet mouth, flatterer) while laughing and giggling. My lady rests her head on my shoulder and sniff kisses my neck, whispering softly in my ear, "Kup koon Ka darling." (Thank you , darling) "Jing jing, darling, jing jing." (It's true) I mumble into her hair while I sniff her back. Yes, today I am a lucky man! One of the luckiest by far.