These four white people were from Wisconsin and came to Thailand for 3 weeks for an exchange program with our school. And they were getting the coolest tour of Sukhothai. For the first day of their trip, they were being taken to Thung Salium, the neighboring town. I took the liberty of tagging along, self-appointing myself as the American ambassador that can help with explaining Thai cultural intricacies in the education system that may interest American teachers. Really, I just wanted to go to these temples in Thung Salium I had never been to! We went to three incredibly different temples- one is the oldest in...the district? The region? I’m not sure what the superlative is, but I AM sure that there is a piece of Buddha himself encased in a relic thingy in the museum. For real. When Siddhartha Buddha himself was incinerated, I guess his ashes had been preserved and spread to various temples (mostly still in India), and Thung Salium has a tiny share! I think we fought over it with Burma for a while, as seems to be a common theme with important Buddhist objects (ahem. Emerald Buddha), but now it is safely tucked away in an unprotected random museum in the middle of Thung Salium that nobody visits and I’ve never heard of. I feel like this is a big deal, and I really don’t know why I just found out about it. I also just found out that we have BAT CAVES!!! in Thung Salium. Like really popular ones that are supposed to be really cool. And I would have been able to tell you all about them, but as we were leaving the third temple, we got hit by the biggest storm I had ever seen in Sawankhalok. Well, I haven’t seen any storms in Sawankhalok- because it hasn’t rained since I moved here. We had all just donated some money to the temple to participate in a prayer of dropping 108 satang coins into little cups (don’t know what the action meant, and why 108, but it was really fun), and we were getting ready to head to the bat caves, when it started downpouring and lightening and thundering like crazy. I guess they thought this was a “mai bpen rai” situation and continued to drive through the storm when the car in front of us (the director’s workers who were carrying our picnic dinner) almost got crushed by a falling tree! The tree fell inches in front of them, and blocked the road to the bat caves. Almost in unison, all the Thai teachers exclaimed what great luck! It’s because we just gave a donation to the temple and prayed to Buddha. I thought that was fantastic- makes me love Buddhism. So we took our good luck and picnic dinner to the director’s (incredibly huge) house, and enjoyed Som Tam, Gaiyang and Khao Nieow, while watching the sky outside turn amazing colors as the sun was setting through the storm.
I didn’t have any expectations for my birthday. All I wanted to do on my birthday was go to a temple and give an offering to the monks. When my dad grew up in Thailand, that is what he did on his birthday every year. I didn’t really know how to actually do it, and Tara and Be, being the wonderful people they are, said they would come with me, but they didn’t know what to do either. We bought the basket of food, candles and flowers, but weren’t sure what to do from there….and no one else was being particularly helpful. So I asked Kru Pet to take us (I always feel like he helps us the most, so I always ask him last- I feel bad always asking him, but then he’s the only one who ever actually helps us). He picked us up in the morning, and took us to Wat Sawan Rusaaraam (something like that…) on the other side of the river. None of us, including Kru Pet, had ever been there, but it is closely affiliated with our school. Thank goodness Kru Pet was with us. He casually strolled into the temple, found the head monk eating breakfast, prayed to him, and told him we were teachers from Sawananan and came here to see him. The monk was so so happy. He spent over an hour talking to us, telling us the history of the temple and about the monk who founded it, who also founded our school, and told us that he was so lucky to have three foreigners come to him that day. He assumed that we were Christian, and was so happy to be able to expand our prayers to Buddha. He told us, you we pray in a Buddhist temple, your right hand prays to Buddha, and your left hand prays to the God of your choosing. When you pray in Buddhism, you can pray to any God. This is a very rough translation from the monk, to Kru Pet who said it in easy Thai for Be, than from Be to us, and then from my memory. So don’t take what I just said for fact. In any case, the monk was really happy we were there, and gave all four of us an amulet of the monk that founded the temple and our school. I thought Kru Pet was going to explode with joy- especially because this monk doesn’t usually give out amulets this special. Kru Pet estimated these amulets cost about 500 bhat each, and it is infinitely better to receive them from a monk than to buy it yourself. Chok tdi mak. AND THEN Kru Pet told the monk it was my birthday, so he gave me another extra cute little amulet! SO exciting! So I gave him my offering, and then we poured water into a cup while he gave us a blessing. We took the water outside, and watered a banyan tree. COOLEST EXPERIENCE EVER and was so much more than I was expecting. He also told us if we ever need to go anywhere, we can come to the temple and borrow their van. Then he had one of the monks accompany us to the museum across the street that has all the history of Sawankhalok and Sri Satchanalai, including many ceramics from an 1974 excavation, and many of the belongings of the monk that founded our school. Who else can say they had a monk as a body guard to a museum? Soo cool.
We finished our wonderful morning with lunch at my favorite noodle restaurant on the Yom River. Oh my gosh, such a great day. Then in the afternoon, I went to the market to find a cake to give to the johk lady, at her request (I told her the day before that it was my birthday, and she asked if I would eat cake. I told her no that I don’t like cake, so she told me to bring her my cake and she will eat it. So I bought her and her workers little cakes). I found a lady boy selling cakes, and he/she said hello to me in English, looked at me curiously and said to me in Thai, you're half Thai, aren't you? NO ONE ever guesses that I am half Thai. Ever. I actually got mistaken for Italian at the bar last week in Bangkok watching the Wales v. Italy rugby match. Sorry, but I would never root for Italy. Wales won by the way. Anyway I was so excited that the lady boy recognized me as half Thai. And so I have a new English student- he/she wants me to come visit him/her regularly so he/she can practice English.
That evening, Kru Pet offered to bring us to his home in Sukhothai and have his parents make us dinner. So he picked us up that evening and we headed to Sukhothai. It was too bad we missed sunset, because his 800 rai (about 400 acres) of rice fields would be so beautiful in the sunset. It was already dark when we got to his parents’ farm, but that didn’t stop us from going out to see his brothers harvest the rice. After driving down a windy road in the pitch dark for about 15 minutes, I think never leaving his parents’ property, we finally approached signs of civilization. There was a monster tractor pacing back and forth, ingesting the grains of rice while tossing aside the reeds. And when I say monster tractor, I mean it really looked like a monster! Or an alien. Maybe a monster alien. It’s two distinct headlight eyes were surrounded by a rainbow assortment of lights all over (every vehicle in Thailand has an array of colorful lights…even tractors), and it had multiple limbs coming out to do various functions, and it glided over the rice field with such ease that it was really hard to believe there was someone hiding in there driving it. So eerie- so awesome. So picture that, and then look up in the sky and see endless constellations. Amazinnnggg. Then the monster tractor came to where we were standing to unload the grains of rice into the truck. One rai of rice paddie supplies roughly 80 kilos of rice. Wow.
So after that little slice of heaven, we drove back towards his eldest brothers house, and they cooked us dinner. His house, though still under construction, is built in the old Thai traditional style- made out of wood and on stilts. You climb up to the balcony, then enter into one very large room, which kind of makes up the entire house. The room didn’t have any furniture…and it doesn’t seem like they intend on getting furniture, so dinner was served as is I think is typical in Thailand: on the floor with us sitting around it in a circle. They made us a wonderful local feast: pak bueng (morning glory) from their backyard, laab gop (Thai style salad with frog) I think also from their backyard, an omelet, and pork and cabbage soup. So yummy! We spent most of dinner talking about farming, and they were so excited to hear about my home in America- about my dad’s tractors, my mom’s organic garden, what we use as fertilizers, etc. Who would have thought it would be these moments- talking about fertilizers and tractors over my birthday dinner, that I would miss home the most.
The rest of my time since school has ended has been much less exciting. For Fulbright, I have to intern for the month of March. I was very lucky to find an internship with an American Fulbright research grantee that came here to study solar cell lifecycles in Thailand. So this month we are working on writing a paper together on the energy policies of Thailand, and where solar fits into the energy mix. It’s been really easy so far, I can work on the internship from anywhere really, which has allowed me to spend a lot of time in Sawankhalok. The guy I have been working for, Noah, is really brainy, and I think he’s never had someone work for him that gets as excited as I do. Everything he asks me to do is like, the coolest thing in the world. And I feel like I’ve already learned so much about Thailand’s energy policies, though I have barely done anything. The one (huge) annoying thing about this internship is that I have to take frequent trips to Bangkok.
Now, you know you’ve been to Bangkok too many times when: 1. Sunrise traffic jams are beautiful. 2. I routinely give myself three hours to run a small errand, because that is probably how long it will take. 3. It’s no surprise to see your bus driver fall asleep while waiting in traffic. By the way, between him and the young kid driving the bus with his head phones in that neglected all forms of traffic laws, I totally prefer the old man that falls asleep at the wheel.
Can you tell I’m starting to feel a little fed up with BKK? During my last trip to Bangkok, I probably spent at least half of my time in a vehicle trying to go somewhere. Actually, my last day there, I unintentionally went to every edge of Bangkok on several errands. By the time I boarded the night bus back to Sawankhalok, I was so bored that I decided to tally how many forms of public transportation I had taken that day. And now I will bore you with the details. I made 12 transfers that day, taking 5 different types of public transportation, NONE of them being a taxi (public bus, free van, motorcycle taxi, sky train, and tour bus to Sawankhalok). And the entire day, I only spent 217 bhat on transit. Not bad, eh? This included starting from the most eastern part of Bangkok, to the Northern tip where the regional bus station is, and then accidentally getting on a van to Bangkhuntian while trying to meet up with Noah in Bangmot on the western side of Bangkok. I didn’t know this Bangkhutian campus existed until I got there. The van driver entered the campus via a road that was basically built on top of lakes, which should have been my first sign that I wasn’t in Bangkok anymore. I got to the campus, called Noah and spent 30 minutes on the phone with him trying to find him looking for me. When I finally figured out that Bangkhutian does not mean the same thing as Bangmot, I panicked. Almost in tears, I exclaimed, “Noah…where am I?!” He casually responded, “Okay, so if you look at a map of Bangkok, Bangkhutian is below that…you’re basically at the Gulf of Thailand.” Oh great. At least the hour-long bus ride was free, and I was able to take another free van back to Bangkok to meet Noah. What a mess of a day.
Sawankhalok is such a treat coming back from Bangkok. We just started our Mamuang Mapraang Festival, which from what I have heard are all over Sukhothai. The festival celebrates the mamuang (mango) and maprang season- and the police station gets packed with vendors from all over Thailand, selling everything you can imagine (yes, pet rabbits, squirrels and parrots included) except mango and maprang. It’s kind of the ongoing joke- every one goes to the mamuang maprang festival…but there is no mamuang or maprang! But my fridge is already overflowing with maprang, after Kaffa’s father gave me a kilo from their house, and I went maprang picking at another one of my student’s houses in Sawankhalok. His father has 20 maprang trees, and it is like walking into paradise. He doesn’t use any chemicals, so you can just pick a maprang off a tree and eat it right there. Ah, why can’t it be hotter in America so we can have maprang trees?!
After going to meditation one day with Kaffa and her boyfriend’s mom, we went to the festival together with nongFang. I guess everyone else was scared of heights, so I got to take nongFang on the Ferris Wheel =)
But after the Ferris Wheel, she wanted to go on the slide and carousel. Her dad said no, and she was in tears for the rest of the night. Poor nongFang.The next night, Tara and Be and I went to check out the rest of the festival- and we had a feast! Pork satay, oyster omelet, Chiang Mai sausage with sticky rice, that dish with the crispy pork ball that is mashed into a Thai style salad, some weird fish soup, and other unnamable goodies. Soo much good food that we never get in Sawankhalok, with an equally exciting array of snacks to take home.
This week, all of the bad students at Sawananan school had to go to disciplinary camp. I had never heard about this, except once when P’Sonya casually mentioned it. She didn’t tell us that all the bad students at Sawananan get sent to a three day boot camp in Phitsanulok where they have to roll around in the dirt and eat food with their dirty hands while getting screamed at by a drill sergeant. Kru Bon told us about it one night when we were all hanging out. Kru Bon took all of us (Tara, Be, me, Kru Pet and Kru Soot) to the Sawankhalok dam to take pictures. I had been there once before with Kaiau, but he wanted to go take sunset pictures (Kru Bon is an art teacher at Sawananan). So we piled in the back of Kru Pet’s truck, and headed to the dam, stopping for beers along the way. It felt so high school, hanging out at the dam, drinking beers from a pick up truck. But instead I was with Thai high school teachers. Weird.
Kru Bon told us all about this camp he has to take the kids to the next day, and asked if we wanted to come check it out. I had to work on internship stuff, but Tara and Be decided to go. They came back with horror stories about the kids passing out, having to run into the forest at command, and being beat with sticks.The next day, Be had to get his visa renewed in Phitsanulok. He can’t drive because his arm is still sore from the accident, so he asked if I could drive him. Kru Pet lent him his truck, and I jumped on the opportunity of driving a stick shift Toyota pick up truck in Thailand. We took the back roads to Phitsanulok, passing miles of rice paddies, some still immersed in water, others just being harvested. It was so funny driving Tara and Be around. They both look Thai, so we got a lot of great stares when someone would see two Thai people being driven by a farang girl.
After Be got his visa stuff done, we had to drop off some bags that got left behind at the disciplinary camp yesterday, so we headed to the military base. We were a little worried coming in, practicing my speech in Thai that I was a teacher from Sawananan and I needed to drop off bags for the students. We pulled in to the first security gate, and the soldier didn’t even blink at the farang driver, he just nonchalantly opened the gate, saluting us as we drove through. We burst out laughing- really?! That is how tight the security is?? We got to the second gate, same thing. Are they even curious about a farang is coming into their military base? They’re probably too scared to speak English. We got to the camp to see the students lounging around, buying snacks, grinning widely. Tara was like, “What?! This is so different than yesterday. This is no fun” They drilled the kids a little bit while we were there, but the big afternoon event was ziplining into the river!!! I think the second day of the camp was less discipline, more adventure camp.
So Tara and Be and I climbed to the top of the three story tower where kids were ziplining from. It looked soooo fun, I was so jealous. The best were the lady boys- the drill sergeant was pushing the students off the edge, and when it came to the lady boys, they would squeal all the way down. I wasn’t gonna jump, but the drill sergeant saw me trying to leave, pulled me back and took a zipline hook and life jacket from a student in line. He insisted the farang jump with him, and so we cut in front of all the students in line and got set up to jump. For how much the lady boys squealed, it wasn’t really that scary. Half way down the line, the drill sergeant let go and leaned back, holding on with just his legs. I tried the same, but then fell off once we hit the water. Haha, He made fun of me for that. 
The water was warm from the sun shining on it all day, but still felt refreshing after this heat wave. Tara and Be jumped together after me, so the three of us were soaked for our sunset drive back to Sawankhalok through the rice paddies.
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