by Guy Lilburne
“No, Buddha cannot stop mosquito biting you.”
“Well I’m going to ask him anyway and very nicely, if he’s not too busy if he could sort it out for me.”
Jee tells the others and everyone laughs at the crazy Farang but the next day I did pray to Buddha about the mosquito issue and for three days after that I didn’t get bitten and that’s the absolute truth, although I also bought some different mosquito repellent which might have also helped.
Chapter 20. Falling in love with everything/ speedboat/ rafts/ water falls/ Jee mobile phone calls.
Jee and I had become very close and I think I was falling in love with her. I asked myself the question, could I spend the rest of my life with this girl and the answer was a big ‘yes’. Each day the whole family went out and we travelled all over the place.
We went to temples in caves and ate food on rafts floating on a river; saw a water fall with no water. Each day I’d put 1000 Baht of diesel in Sak’s pick up and we would end up somewhere totally different to where I thought we were going. Maybe the plan was changed on route, or maybe I just misunderstood each morning when Jee explained where we were going to, but it really didn’t matter. I enjoyed all the things we did and all the places we went to. We drove through towns and villages country side and hills. The beauty of this country is overwhelming.
We spent one afternoon swimming in a big river and ate in a bamboo hut on stilts in the water. I saw something very Thai happen at the bamboo huts. In the hut next to us were two young Thai couples eating and drinking and having a great time, just as we were. On this vast expanse of water there were ferry boats going along and someone was hiring out jet ski’s. The two men next to us hired a jet ski for an hour and paid the man for it. They couldn’t ride it very well and both kept falling in the water, the man on the back gave up and went back to his girlfriend, but the first man persevered and eventually managed to stay on the thing and make it go but not very well and not very fast but the whole crowd of people watching had laughed a lot and enjoyed his antics, it was funny to see.
Now I really can’t tell you if an hour had passed or not because I hadn’t checked my watch. Maybe it was an hour and maybe it wasn’t but it seemed like a quick hour if it was. The man who had hired them the boat had come back to get it and blow his whistle and waved the man on the Ski back in.
He just shook his head and made a gesture towards his wrist watch. A second man who was hiring out the ski’s had to accompany him back in and there was an angry exchange. The man on the ski obviously thought that he was being done out of some hire time and the man who had hired him the ski wanted more money because he thought the man had gone over time. It got very heated but they kept smiling as they argued. I thought that they were going to come to blows, if it had been in England they would have already or at the very least they would have gone their own ways and parted hurling a lot of abuse and threats about what they would do to each other if their paths ever crossed again, but here it was different. Neither side would back down and the argument seemed to go on and on and now everyone nearby was looking on, this was going to be big trouble.
Then it happened, the ‘very Thai thing’ I was talking about. The man who hired out the ski tossed the other man a life jacket to put back on and he climbed on the back of the ski. The man who had hired out the ski then fired it into life and took off at great speed with the man holding onto him for dear life. They did a great big arc at amazing speeds and he even managed to make the thing jump up out of the water and spun it around in little circles spewing water up into the air. It was fantastic to watch and must have been amazing to experience, after about five minutes they returned and everyone was all smiles, but real smiles this time. Then the people in the hut handed the hire man a bottle of beer and some food.
He stayed and chatted while, he ate and drank and had a cigarette with them, somehow they had all become friends. I thought it was very typical Thai diplomacy, the world could learn a lot from Thailand.
One little thing did start to play on my mind. From the first day that I had met Jee, she always had several calls a day on her mobile phone. I didn’t know who it was but sometimes I could hear that it was a mans voice, and sometimes the calls went on for quite along time. On a couple of occasions I asked her who it was on the phone and she would just reply ‘my boss’. Over the last couple of days the amount of phone calls increased, and on occasions it was Jee who was making them. It was starting to bother me. I didn’t want to become paranoid and I kept thinking how can I doubt this girl, she was lovely, and anyway surely her family would have given off signals to me if she already had a Thai boyfriend. I kept dismissing the doubts from my mind but they kept creeping back in like a sinister shadow. If we could communicate better I would be able to discuss it properly with her and at least find out what all these phone calls were about. I thought that Jee’s English was getting a lot better and she seemed to be saying more in English to me, but a couple of times I started having a normal conversation with her and generally she was agreeing with me ‘yes darling’ and ‘can do, no problem’.
But then I’d get to a point and ask her opinion on it and she would just shrug and say ‘darling I don’t understand what you say’.
So all the nodding and agreeing was exactly the same that I do with Sak. She couldn’t understand what I said except for the easiest of things, so on more than one occasion I sort of fell into a false sense of security. All this made it more difficult, but I was falling in love with the girl and something inside was telling me that it would all be okay in the end.
She only had to hold my hand, or smile or kiss me and my doubts melted away, at least for the time being.
Chapter 21. Mosquitoes/ language/change of plans/ eating/ rivers and more temples jee nun/ inside of house/decorating Sak’s
I was really getting to like the area around Udon Thani. I was also getting used to the heat and humidity and Thai food and actually started to enjoy it. I still hadn’t built up the nerve to try and use the squatter type toilet, because basically I didn’t know how to. How far down do you have to squat, or do you try to drop it in from a bit of a height like a bomber pilot? But then I’d be worried about splash back and what if I missed the target. Was I supposed to take my shorts right off? How could you squat over enough to miss your own pants? I don’t think I’m old at only forty eight, but if I squat down that low then I might need somebody to give me a ‘hand up’ and I don’t really think it’s much of a spectator sport, watching somebody trying to have a crap. There wasn’t a bar or anything to hold onto. I might fall over, and I was also worried that it wouldn’t flush away. How did this scooping a ladle of water wash it away? I’ve been responsible for some pretty big monsters in my time, double flushers, so I didn’t want to be trying to wrestle one down a squatter toilet with nothing more then a big spoon of water. I couldn’t ask anyone about these things, it’s all too personal. Maybe Thai people do a different type of ‘poo’, because of all the spicy food, a little ‘plop’ type poo (I’m sorry if poo is a Thai name, no offence intended) would be okay in one of these things but in England we have slang expressions for going to the toilet like ‘dropping a log’ ‘cutting a link’ laying a cable’ and as the terms suggest they can be pretty big and mighty. I just don’t think that the squatter loo and I are ready for each other. I always think that God has done a good job with natures design except for the cows bum. This is very badly placed and so they have to walk around with shit all down their back legs. Not a good look. Well if I tried to use a squatter loo I think I’d be walking around with the same look. Forget it.
On one of our day trips out we went to a temple and Jee really surprised me when she told me that she had been a Nun here when she was twenty years old. She had been here for a year. Wow, Jee had been a Nun; it sort of explained her spiritual ness. She had a big heart and a very caring nature. Most nights now she would give me a massage in the hotel room and gently sing away in Thai as she did. There was something
very exotic about it but it was also very loving and caring and there were nights when I wished it could last forever. I knew in my heart that Jee loved me.
Jee had rang the lady who was selling the big house in Chiang Phin and we arranged to meet her there so we could look inside the house, Sak and Fon came with us. The house was lovely inside and Jee loved it As well. The lady selling it said that she would hold it for me for a small deposit but I couldn’t risk entering into any sort of house purchase until I sell up back in England but I really loved this house. When we got back in the pick up truck Sak told Jee that he would help me to paint the house if we buy it. I asked Jee to tell Sak that we will buy extra paint and also decorate his house when we decorate our own. Jee told him and Sak was beaming, I had made him a very happy man. When we got back to Sak’s house I had another look at it. With a lick of paint and some wood stain and varnish, maybe some windows and a new bathroom this would be a beautiful house and it wouldn’t cost that much. I felt guilty now that when I first saw Sak’s house, it had depressed me because I thought it was so bare and basic, but I liked it so much now. It was a happy house and it was always an open house to so many people. Over the last few days I had also seen how important this family are to the village. Like all the families who had houses on the main road they ran businesses from home. Besides Fon’s iced drinks stall, Sak repaired and serviced motorbikes and Pon made clothes. I saw some of the waist coats that she had made and her skill as a seamstress is beyond question. She made beautiful clothes.
Pon is a very likeable lady. She is thicker set than her younger sister, but by no means fat. She is a gentle quiet lady and she adores Sak and her children. Like all the Thai people I have ever met, she smiles a lot and she keeps telling Jee that she doesn’t look after me enough, which couldn’t be more wrong but is very sweet of her anyway. Yes I have started to love this house of Sak and Pon, and I have started to love the people who live here. If I end up marrying Jee I will be very proud to have such family as this.
Food was being packed with the usual cute little wicker baskets of sticky rice and bottles of iced water onto the back of the pickup truck, so I knew we were heading out for the day, and as always we didn’t just go to one place, we travelled around to lots of places and ended up at a big dam and reservoir.
Which reminds me, I saw a lot of road signs in north east Thailand as you are leaving villages which read ‘bon voyage’. What’s all that about why have they got signs in French in North Thailand? (I have since found out that it is because of the French colonisation of Laos. In Nong Khai on the banks of the Mekong River there are shops where you can actually buy French bread, amazing). Anyway, we had another lovely day and bought some of the road side barbeque chicken that I liked so much on the way. It was another hot, hot sunny day.
That night as we drove back towards Udon Thani Sak’s pickup started to make clunking sounds as he changed gears and he told Jee that tomorrow we would not be able to travel anywhere because he would have to fix it. Jee asked me to give him 1000 baht towards the cost of repair, so I did and Sak dropped us off at the hotel.
Jee made some phone calls and then told me that she had just been speaking to her friend who she met when we took the money tree to the temple. She said that her friend told her that the monk wanted to see me again and that this was an honour, we had been invited to his house in the temple grounds and that tomorrow her friend was going to come and collect us and take us to see the monk. I knew from the last time that it was a two and a half hour drive to this temple, so her friend was going to invest at least ten hours of driving time to come and collect us, take us to the temple and then bring us back again, only to then have to drive back herself. That seems like a lot out of someone’s day to me (10 hours driving time) but it had been arranged ‘no problem’.
Chapter 22. Fish/ pond release
We are going to be picked up by Jee’s friend, Nudee, outside the front of Tesco Lotus at 10:30 am. We get there early and have something to eat from the food hall inside the building and then Jee buys coffee and fruit juice drinks for the monk, well I say Jee but as always I pay for everything, it just seems to be the way it is over here.
It is baking hot outside and it’s nice to be inside enjoying the air conditioning but for the last ten minutes we wait for Nudee on a bench outside, and by the time she arrives I’m melting. Nudee has an old pickup truck and the air conditioning doesn’t work. It’s very uncomfortable inside the cab. The windows are wound fully down but the wind blowing in brings little relief because it’s hot, it’s like sitting in a fan assisted oven.
It’s a very long two and a half hours until we get to the temple. Jee and Nudee chat away excitedly all the way there, they have a lot of catching up to do. Nudee can’t speak a word of English and so Jee keeps updating me as to their conversation and various points of interest. Nudee wants a Farang and I’m asked if I can help find her one. I promise to do my best, but I’m just too hot and bothered to worry about it now. We are driving around a village that I didn’t recognise from last time we came here and I ask Jee why we are not going to the temple and I’m told that we are going to buy fish, which Jee very cutely pronounces as ‘frish’.
Once again I make the wrong assumption and we are not buying dinner but about two hundred little fish in two big plastic bags, which we are going to release in a pond in the temple grounds. This, Jee tells me, is a very good thing to do.
We get to the temple just after 1:00 pm and I’m happy to be out of the car. We go straight to the monks house but he’s not there, so we wait and while we wait the two women sweep off the veranda and tidy the little garden. I just sit in the shade.
When the monk comes out of the temple we all greet each other although the monk doesn’t wai back, apparently Royal Family and monks are the only people who don’t return a wai. The monk smiles a lot and chats easily with Jee and Nudee and Jee tells me that he is very happy to see me again. I’m delighted, I like this monk, he’s young and cool with movie star looks and he always carries his mobile phone and cigarettes with him. He gives me the ice cold Thai equivalent to ‘Red Bull’ and it’s very refreshing. I’ve never been in a monks house before and it’s exactly like I would expect, the room is dominated by Buddha statues in one corner of the room raised up on a little platform. There is no other furniture other than a fridge freezer and two big electric fans. After a while we walk around the temple to the other side of the grounds to a pond that has a little platform built over it. There is an old woman and a group of kids sitting on it and playing around the pond. The water is the colour of milk chocolate so these fish are never going to be seen again once they are in there. The kids keep throwing leaves in the pond and as soon as they hit the water they are gobbled up by hungry unseen fish. I fear that our little baby fish are just going to become fish food for the bigger fish already in the pond, maybe it’s a good job that I hadn’t become too attached and named them all.
I was worried for nothing, a couple of men appeared with some netting which they pegged around one side of the pond, sinking the netting into the water. The monk lit some incense sticks and said some prayers and planted the sticks in the ground as everyone else, including all the kids, adopted the ‘wai’ position. Then I was given the signal to release one of the bags of fish and Jee released the others safely into the netting.
We go back to the monks house where we spend a very lazy afternoon. The monk blesses me and writes down my date of birth in numbers which he then keeps adding up and dividing and adding until he comes up with a number which he then thinks about for some time before telling my fortune and giving me predictions for my future. He reckons I’ll sell my house in July and I’ll be very happy with Jee and we will marry and have two children and we will always have money and do good business. I will live happy and long in Thailand.
Wow, all good stuff then, good job my date of birth is what it is. He does the same ritual for Jee and Nudee and I can tell that they both take it a lot more seriously
than I do and their predicted fortunes are discussed in great depth. The monk who had gone to so much trouble last time when he platted a multi coloured wrist band for me, gave me a wooden beaded necklace this time with a gold and glass pendent with a gold coloured Buddha inside it. He blessed it first and I really did feel very honoured. It came into my mind that if I was to marry Jee then I would like this monk to perform the service. Nudee prepared some food and we all eat sitting out on the veranda. We waited around then for the rest of the afternoon until it started to cool around 6:00 pm before Nudee drove us all the way back to Udon
Thani. We go to a very nice open air restaurant and have some great food before Nudee makes the long journey back again, it will be after midnight by the time she gets back.
Chapter 23. Udon Thani city and eating out
Over the last few days and nights for that matter we had spent more time in the city of Udon Thani and the place had really grown on me. I loved the busy night markets and at night time, the streets were alive with restaurants of many types which I hadn’t noticed in the daylight but by night they light up and looked busy and inviting. One of the places that we went to, you got a big pot of water which boiled on a little cooker on your table and you have to buy whatever ingredients you want and make your own soup. Jee put in fish, prawns, beef and pork, an egg and some leaves. It was great fun, although I have to say I thought it tasted disgusting. Give me ‘Bachelors Cup of Soup’ any day.
