by Guy Lilburne
As everyone piled outside after the bowls, people chatted and most made a bee line for Jee and her family and I was introduced to more people then I could possibly mention. I smiled a lot and kept returning gracious wai’s, actually I was quite good at it for a Farang and lots of people commented on how nicely I did it…. For a Farang.
To everyone I kept repeating
“Sawaddee khrap.” (Hello.)
Also
“Sabai dee mai khrap?” (How are you?)
People seemed delighted I could say a few words.
We drove back into the city so that I could buy a wallet and some sandals from Tesco Lotus. When I was in there I saw a great set of sharp knives and a meat cleaver with a proper metal knife sharpener, so I bought it for Pon. Then we went to Pon’s house for breakfast.
Pon’s house was bright and the sunlight cascading from the window washed the blue floor tiles in brilliant light. How come I didn’t notice that yesterday? The house looked clean, warm and welcoming. The house hadn’t changed at all, but I had. Somehow I was seeing it with different eyes this morning. We had a great party here last night and this house is filled with love, warmth, fun and lovely people. How could I have ever seen it any differently?
Jee lit half a dozen incense sticks and took them to the side of the house said a prayer and planted them in the ground. I liked watching Jee, she always looks so elegant and graceful in whatever she does.
I went to the shops over the road to buy some flip flops because I wasn’t sure about the sandals I’d just bought. The shops over the road from Pons house were great. There were shops all along the road of various sorts selling everything you could think of, but these shops opposite Pons were set back off the road and there was parking space for the bikes and pick up trucks that stopped there.
The shops were set out on three sides of the unmade square. On the right hand side was a butchers shop. This consisted of a heavy wooden table with a canvas hung out above it. Each day the butcher arrived with a carcass of meat, usually beef, and hung it up off the ground at the side of the table. He kept a bucket of water with his knives and meat cleaver in it and spent most of the day in a hammock that was suspended between a couple of poles behind the table. He was there all day from early morning until about 9:00 pm at night, or until the meat was all cut and sold. The shop on the left was a bit of a garage selling oil and spares and never seemed to get that much custom. The big shop in front sold everything a house hold could ever need, including flip flops, hence my visit.
Fon came over with me and the lady in the shop greeted her warmly. I think everyone in the village must like Fon and it’s easy to see why, she’s adorable. Fon is a very pretty girl and absolutely never stops smiling. She is a delight to be around and she runs around all day long doing errands for people without complaint. Not just her family but even friends and neighbours will call around and ask Fon to go and fetch them something or to go and deliver something. She just gets up from watching TV or whatever else she is doing and with a big grin and a delicate wai she gets the money and skips off to buy whatever it is they want. She takes it to them upon return and gives another wai before carrying on as before, this happens a lot. She is just a really nice happy person and I like her a lot.
Some kids have set up a big plastic barrel of water at the road side in front of the shops and all armed with water pistols they squirt me and Fon both going in and coming out of the shop. Songkran has started!
Songkran marks the start of the Thai new year. The year in Thailand is now 2551, because it starts from when Buddha was born, which is five hundred and forty three years before Christ.
The festival goes on for three days and traditionally the people visit the temples and wash the Buddha statues with water. They would also wash the feet of elderly relatives and water would be splashed onto people as a blessing for good look in the new year.
Because of the Thai’s natural inbuilt sense of fun, the festival became a big water fight that over the years got bigger and bigger. Today it probably is the biggest water fight in the world and the whole of Thailand joins in, young and old. Sometimes they also smear your face with white powder, but I’m sorry, I don’t know why they do that.
Sak has loaded a huge ceramic pot as big as a beer barrel onto the back of the pick up truck and is filling it with water, so I go to the shop next door and buy a few big super sized water guns and some plastic buckets. Fon gets very excited and I’m sort of excited too. I don’t know what we are going to do exactly but it’s Songkran and Sak is getting water so buckets and water pistols might be fun.
We had breakfast. In the Western world we have certain types of food for certain meals during the day. For instance you might have cereal for breakfast, a sandwich or salad at midday and maybe some cooked meat or fish for your evening meal. You wouldn’t dream of having say curry and chips for breakfast. Well in Thailand it’s very different; you eat the same food for every meal at whatever time.
Also Thai people seem to eat eight times a day but they all stay so slim because they only eat a little at a time and it always seems to get shared with a lot of people who are either there already or just came and joined in when the food is out. So this morning for breakfast I had some roasted chicken, curried beef, chilli vegetables and sticky rice.
I have to say, I think I prefer it light and fluffy but maybe I’ll get used to it, and anyway I like the little wicker baskets that everyone uses to carry it in. That all sounds a lot but I only had a small mouthful of each thing really, and that was just to be polite. I haven’t quite got the taste for this Thai food yet and last night I had done the same thing and just picked at a couple of things. It’s just so different and I have to get used to the texture and smells, oh and of course the chillies. I don’t think I’d ever be able to eat frogs, bugs or insects though, I don’t even like fish because of the bones, I haven’t done since I was a child. After breakfast Jee tells me ‘we go river’.
Since yesterday I have sort of got used to getting by with just this sort of very limited information because we can’t communicate well enough to discuss the finer detail. So I don’t know when we are going, which river we are going to or how we are going to get there, but I’m happy enough to drift along with it, we might do a bit of fishing or maybe just sit on a grassy bank and watch the water flow by.
It really didn’t matter to me, I was with Jee and my new friends and anyway it was all an adventure.
It was only 9:00 am and already the sun was burning hot. The buckets and water guns were put in the back of the pick up and we all got in the cab. We turned up a little road near to the temple where we had been this morning. I didn’t realise this place was so big, I had thought that the place just consisted of the houses along the main road where Pon and Sak lived, but there were hundreds of houses here, some brick built but most of wooden construction on the stilts. There were more shops and so many people around. I had thought it was a village but this place must be a town. A lot of people of all ages but especially the younger and the kids were on the streets throwing water over each other and anyone else who passed by. As soon as they saw the Farang in the car we were targeted with great hilarity. The English word everyone knew was ‘hello’. People were pointing me out and shouting ‘Farang Farang’, then they would wave and shout hello before throwing water over the car. Everyone was laughing and waving and I waved back. I think this is going to be a fun day.
We stopped at a house a little further along the track and a woman was waiting for us, she waved to me and climbed into the back of the pick up truck. A little further along we picked up another lady who also climbed into the back, but then we were off, off to the river.
Actually we weren’t. We drove into Udon Thani City centre to another temple. In the short ten minute drive that it had taken us, the two poor ladies sitting in the back of the truck had got soaked by all the water throwing people we had passed. It wasn’t just the gangs of people with barrels of water at the road side.
/> There were hundreds of pick up trucks carrying huge vats of water just like us and the trucks were loaded with people sometimes eight or ten, all with water pistols and buckets and the water went over anyone they passed included other pick up trucks. This water fight is really taking off. Some of the places at the side of the road had set up huge 5ft speakers that blasted out music and everyone was dancing in the streets and dancing out into the roads to stop anyone riding a motorbike or open sided buses and tuk-tuks. Nobody was safe, even monks and Police Officers got a soaking.
When a pick up full of water pistol carrying passengers went by, they would stop, and a full scale water fight would happen with the people on the road side. Everyone was laughing, singing, dancing and getting very wet. It looked like great fun, I had never seen anything like this in my life. If this happened in England it would be stopped simply because it is so much fun. I have never seen so many people join in an activity just to have fun. Cars and people were covered with white powder which became paste with the water. I was loving this. The two poor ladies in the back of our pick up truck were hopelessly outgunned.
This Temple was more of an open air monument with a couple of buildings which housed Buddha statues and another bigger Buddha sat outside on the nicely coloured paving. In front of that were boxes of sand with candles and incense burning. We went to the kiosk and made a monetary contribution and collected big lotus buds, incense sticks, candles and little square gold leaf papers. Like a lot of the temples in Thailand, it was very ornate and pretty to look at with red pitched roofs, white walls and intricate gold’s and greens painted onto the eaves. Any steps are always guarded by bright green scaled serpents or snakes with wild eyes and fork tongues.
Jee showed me what to do with all the stuff. We prayed to the three Buddha statues in turn, one we put the lotus buds, another had the gold leaf stuck on him and the third got the candles and incense.
There were silver coloured bowls around and containers of water. We used the bowls to throw water over the statues. I don’t know why we did all these things and I don’t know why we did it in the order we did, or if indeed it makes any difference, but I just liked doing it and because I was copying the way Jee prayed I even looked as if I knew what I was doing.
As we were leaving, a man and a little girl of about four years came up to me both carrying the silver bowls full of water. The man said something very politely in Thai and then before I could say anything he poured the lot over my head. My surprise only lasted a moment then I thanked him.
“Khawp khun khrap,” I said with a wai.
He wai’d me back and gestured with his hand to the little girl who was gazing up at the giant Farang. I got down on my knees and bent forward as low as I could go and she too emptied her bowl over my head. Then she started dancing around. It’s amazing what makes some kids happy. I got back to my feet and everyone was all smiles.
As we walked back to the car Jee held my hand and then she leaned into me and stretched her neck up towards me, I thought that she was going to kiss me, but she didn’t, for some reason she just sniffed me, maybe to see if the water was scented, but I couldn’t smell anything. I was soaking wet and I wanted to join in the fun, so I climbed into the back of the pick up truck with my two new friends and then everyone except Sak also climbed up. We loaded up the super size water shooters and we were ready for anyone.
It’s now only just gone 9:30 am and we’re off to the river. Actually it turns out we’re not. We drive around the city which in parts has come to a complete water fighting standstill. At some point we go past a big grassed park and there are thousands of people drinking and dancing and having a water fight. We are constantly involved in the action and a Farang makes a great target. It’s all done with humour and in good spirit and anyway I’m wetting as many people as are soaking me, but it’s just funny how happy they are to wet me.
At one set of traffic lights we are caught in a pincer movement, with pick up trucks at each side of us and one behind us, we were attacked from all sides and they didn’t bother with each other, only us. We were outgunned by three to one and to screams of laughter we took a good hiding at that particular skirmish.
We drove out of the city, but you’ve guessed it not to the river. We drove around lots of small villages and towns for the next four or five hours, stopping at improvised water filling stations twice to fill up the water pot for 20 Baht. In many villages we saw long lines of people walking in drinking, singing and dancing processions.
At the head of each line someone was carrying a little bamboo tree with notes of money attached, stuck on with sticks. At the back of each procession was a vehicle blasting out music. I guessed that each procession was heading to their local temple.
At 2:30 pm we pulled up onto a field were a lot of pick ups carrying water barrels were parked. It was only when the truck stopped that you could feel how hot the sun was, with the water and the wind it had felt nice and cool. I followed the others through the field and as we walked down the bank. There it was, the river, and what a spectacular river. It was the mighty Mekong River. We were at a place called the Jominee Beach. It is huge and just further down to the right of us is the massive ‘Friendship Bridge’ that spans the river from Thailand to Laos on the other side of this international border.
This was a busy place packed with people. For as far as the eye could see there was an area covered with black sacking held up with poles under which people sat on matting eating or just relaxing. There were old tyre inner tubes inflated and ready for hire. There were food stalls and iced drinks stalls. Lots of people were swimming in the river and toddlers splashed about in the waters edge. The water flowed lazily by, and even though the water was muddy brown, it still looked a beautiful and impressive sight to me.
In the time it took us to walk from the truck to the river bank, our clothes had dried and it was a relief to get under the black sacking out of the suns blaze.
We sat down on the rush matting and Jee ordered food from the young girl who had shown us to our mat. As they all sat around me chatting away Jee rested her hand on my leg. She didn’t even look as if she had noticed what she had done, but it felt great. I was happy to be her boyfriend and I felt as if we were getting closer.
We had a great time by the Mekong River, I liked this place. I was actually starving now because I had only had four small mouthfuls of food in the last two days. I really was going to have to try and get a taste for the local Thai food.
A short time later three young girls brought dishes and dishes of food and it smelt fantastic. There was chicken, pork and fish and some kind of crispy stringy beef, salad and vegetables, oh and of course lots of sticky rice, bottles of beer and Cola. Wow what a great picnic. I got some sticky rice and something that looked like bean sprouts, onion and strands of chillies, I put it in my mouth a second before Jee tried to stop me.
“Darling no good for you. Very hot pok pok.” (Papaya chilli salad.)
I looked at her through the tears in my eyes, it wasn’t that I had become overwhelmed with emotion, it was the chillies. They were indeed very hot, my mouth was on fire and I felt my lips going numb. Everyone fell about laughing, well except for me and Jee who was now holding my hand and looking very concerned. Actually after the initial burn there was a very nice after taste and now that my mouth was so hot and numbed I found that I could eat more of it and I liked this ‘pok pok’ stuff. I also tucked into the white fleshy fish, great big chunks of it and I never eat fish but it was ‘arroi’ (delicious) as everyone kept telling me. I was eating genuine Thai food and I was enjoying it, this was a big step forward for me, at least now I wouldn’t starve.
I was enjoying the closeness of Jee as well. We weren’t kissing and cuddling or anything like that but there was lots of delicate little touching at every opportunity she got, it sort of showed me that she really cared, well that’s how it made me feel anyway.
We stayed at the river for a few hours and at one point I was walking along
the river bank with Sak as we smoked a cigarette and he chatted away merrily in Thai. I hadn’t got a clue what he was saying, but as he pointed to things or it just felt appropriate I just kept nodding and saying ‘chai’ (yes).
We finally all climbed back onboard Sak’s pick up and headed home. The water fight was resumed all the way back. This was the most fantastic day, I can’t remember the last time that I had had so much fun. We dropped the two ladies off from where we had collected them and went back to Pon’s house. We sat at the table at the front of the house and watched the daytime turn into a dusky evening.
People up and down the road were still soaking passing motorists from huge water barrels set up at the side of the road. Even when the sun goes down it’s still very hot. We didn’t do a lot that evening.
We had a few drinks and ate some more food. Jee sat next to me the whole time and we were either holding hands or she had her arm around me or on my leg. A few people from around the town came round to sit awhile and they exchanged stories about the day. It seems that me eating hot pok pok was one of the highlights.
