Thai Life
Everything I see and touch and taste and feel out here is so different to back home.
The air smells different. The colour of the earth is redder. The landscape is unusual. The Thai way of life - of what is rude and polite - is alien.
Perhaps I should explain a little of what I can see and do - especially as I am having trouble uploading the photos I have taken.
Around Namsom the land is mountainous - there are flat plains of rice fields surrounded by palms. Maybe a hut in the middle of green shoots of rice. Hills rise suddenly and unexpectedly, covered in dark green trees which climb the rocky, steep sides. In the distance there are mountain ranges.
The roads are bumpy, full of potholes. A bus journey is like a badly filmed amateur movie or a particularly old fairground ride. Your teeth continue chattering long after you have stepped off.
Everywhere I walk people stare. Sometimes it seems rude, often it is with curiousity. Mostly, I have learned that a smile and greeting sawadee ka produces waves, beaming toothless grins and returned good wishes.
A smile can do so much here even when nothing else is understood.
I wake at around 8am or 8.30am and shower. There are two bathrooms at Ban Falang, one has a squat toilet, the other a western toilet. Both have shower heads which run with cold water in the morning and warm water during the day when the pipes have been baking in the sun.
I eat bananas and yoghurt or maybe toast for breakfast and cycle on a bike with flat tyres through the town to school in time for 10am. It is not far but a hilly ride and I arrive sweaty and flushed.
When I get there every child I pass says hello or asks my name or where I come from (in English). They don't wait for reply and if they do, they rarely understand the answer. Sometime as I arrive at school there are boys working in the grounds, with spades and pick axes. Constructing something or nothing.
As I walk up the first floor, the children in my class greet me with 'hello charlie!' 'how are you?!' each wanting to shake my hand and get a smile. I am given a glass of cold cold water. Sometimes Pi Neung the teacher is there and we chat and she hands me a snack for break - a chocolate bar, muffins, cakes, sweets.
The lesson starts around 10.10am. We break at 11am for five minutes and finish at 12. The teacher, or one of the children collects some lunch from the canteen and I take the food gingerly wondering if today is the day I will come face to face with a chicken foot, eyeball, testicle or just more liver...
I cycle home a different way, past the Chinese temple and up the hill through town past the open air shops selling I love the King t-shirts, piles of rambutin and lagong fruits, stlls selling shakes and crepes, pancakes and coffees and go home to investigate lunch and consign the rest to resident dog, Dolly (for so Fem and I named her).
The afternoon is a laze of reading, washing, sunbathing, eating, tidying, cleaning, learning thai, going to the market and so on.
Yesterday (Monday) Mon came for lunch and we sat for hours nibbling and chatting about dangerous animals in Thailand. Turns out there is little malaria but Leptospirosis and Dengue Fever are pretty common as are scorpions, cobras, king cobras... but not poisonous spiders. Which was luckily as there was MASSIVE hairy spider in the Western toilet yesterday morning.
By the time I came back from school it had disappeared but Mon bravely swept the room and found it crouching in a hole and killed it.
She is handy to have in these situations. A nurse, snake slayer and identifier and spider killer. She tells me that if I am bitten by a snake I should kill it and take it to the hospital with me. AH ha yep ok. If I have been bitten by a four foot snake I am hardly likely to run after it looking to lose another chunk of flesh...
Around Ban Falang are small hut-like homes and bigger, gated stone and wooden houses. Most have dogs which give chase at night. A little off putting but they tend to tire after you get away from their territory.
Shops here are bizarre. They look like homes and then whoosh, some shutters are pulled back and in the dark recess is a photocopying shop or the kind of general store you get everywhere - selling cokes, sodas, yoghurts, biscuits, washing powder, whisky (naturally), beer, all sorts of odds and ends from the dusty interior. Mostly you take your shoes off at the door and pad in barefoot. Thai's don't like feet and shoes are considered highly dirty things.
Anyway, maybe that gives a better idea of things here other than the heat and humidity. The place is so different, but people are very kind and helpful. Which is good for those moments when you miss summer evenings and barbecues with friends and family, sitting in a pub being silly and the ease of talking to people who know you and understand your culture. But above all, the thing I miss the most, sorry mum, is wine...
The air smells different. The colour of the earth is redder. The landscape is unusual. The Thai way of life - of what is rude and polite - is alien.
Perhaps I should explain a little of what I can see and do - especially as I am having trouble uploading the photos I have taken.
Around Namsom the land is mountainous - there are flat plains of rice fields surrounded by palms. Maybe a hut in the middle of green shoots of rice. Hills rise suddenly and unexpectedly, covered in dark green trees which climb the rocky, steep sides. In the distance there are mountain ranges.
The roads are bumpy, full of potholes. A bus journey is like a badly filmed amateur movie or a particularly old fairground ride. Your teeth continue chattering long after you have stepped off.
Everywhere I walk people stare. Sometimes it seems rude, often it is with curiousity. Mostly, I have learned that a smile and greeting sawadee ka produces waves, beaming toothless grins and returned good wishes.
A smile can do so much here even when nothing else is understood.
I wake at around 8am or 8.30am and shower. There are two bathrooms at Ban Falang, one has a squat toilet, the other a western toilet. Both have shower heads which run with cold water in the morning and warm water during the day when the pipes have been baking in the sun.
I eat bananas and yoghurt or maybe toast for breakfast and cycle on a bike with flat tyres through the town to school in time for 10am. It is not far but a hilly ride and I arrive sweaty and flushed.
When I get there every child I pass says hello or asks my name or where I come from (in English). They don't wait for reply and if they do, they rarely understand the answer. Sometime as I arrive at school there are boys working in the grounds, with spades and pick axes. Constructing something or nothing.
As I walk up the first floor, the children in my class greet me with 'hello charlie!' 'how are you?!' each wanting to shake my hand and get a smile. I am given a glass of cold cold water. Sometimes Pi Neung the teacher is there and we chat and she hands me a snack for break - a chocolate bar, muffins, cakes, sweets.
The lesson starts around 10.10am. We break at 11am for five minutes and finish at 12. The teacher, or one of the children collects some lunch from the canteen and I take the food gingerly wondering if today is the day I will come face to face with a chicken foot, eyeball, testicle or just more liver...
I cycle home a different way, past the Chinese temple and up the hill through town past the open air shops selling I love the King t-shirts, piles of rambutin and lagong fruits, stlls selling shakes and crepes, pancakes and coffees and go home to investigate lunch and consign the rest to resident dog, Dolly (for so Fem and I named her).
The afternoon is a laze of reading, washing, sunbathing, eating, tidying, cleaning, learning thai, going to the market and so on.
Yesterday (Monday) Mon came for lunch and we sat for hours nibbling and chatting about dangerous animals in Thailand. Turns out there is little malaria but Leptospirosis and Dengue Fever are pretty common as are scorpions, cobras, king cobras... but not poisonous spiders. Which was luckily as there was MASSIVE hairy spider in the Western toilet yesterday morning.
By the time I came back from school it had disappeared but Mon bravely swept the room and found it crouching in a hole and killed it.
She is handy to have in these situations. A nurse, snake slayer and identifier and spider killer. She tells me that if I am bitten by a snake I should kill it and take it to the hospital with me. AH ha yep ok. If I have been bitten by a four foot snake I am hardly likely to run after it looking to lose another chunk of flesh...
Around Ban Falang are small hut-like homes and bigger, gated stone and wooden houses. Most have dogs which give chase at night. A little off putting but they tend to tire after you get away from their territory.
Shops here are bizarre. They look like homes and then whoosh, some shutters are pulled back and in the dark recess is a photocopying shop or the kind of general store you get everywhere - selling cokes, sodas, yoghurts, biscuits, washing powder, whisky (naturally), beer, all sorts of odds and ends from the dusty interior. Mostly you take your shoes off at the door and pad in barefoot. Thai's don't like feet and shoes are considered highly dirty things.
Anyway, maybe that gives a better idea of things here other than the heat and humidity. The place is so different, but people are very kind and helpful. Which is good for those moments when you miss summer evenings and barbecues with friends and family, sitting in a pub being silly and the ease of talking to people who know you and understand your culture. But above all, the thing I miss the most, sorry mum, is wine...
posted by charlie at 5:32 pm
1 Comments:
Charlie - this blog is amazing. You are such a talented writer!
Keep up the good work honey.
Miss you.
Annabel
xxxxx
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