Trip to Thailand, January 2013
We were on the road at 8:30 in the morning. The ferries back took some time—the first, smaller, boat was the bottleneck—but everything went okay. In contrast to the beautifully sunny day yesterday, we had some more rain on the morning drive, though not as heavy as on the drive down.
Around 1:30 we pulled back into Surat Thani and had lunch on the outskirts of town again with Bulan and her mother and an eight-year-old cousin. Bulan’s mom insisted on treating us all once more. The place was all the way up a mountain, with an amazing view down of a river and rice farms, and fabulous food: tod mun-style fishcakes formed to look like eggs, egg-shaped white fish cakes, a plate of plain flaked crab meat out of the shell with a dipping sauce on the side for all of these, river prawns—long legs like spiny crabs coming out of jumbo-shrimp-sized bodies, with meat in all of them), another whole fish, two plates of deep-fried pork belly (crispy pork), and a vegetable and a tom yum. Samantha loved the crabmeat and just kept scooping it up, and both my kids loved the white fish cakes. Marcus liked the crispy pork, which had a sweet-spicy ketchupy dipping sauce for it, but he really went crazy on the river prawns. He ate nearly all of them, which was getting embarrassing—I kept saying, “okay, let’s see if anyone else wants one now,” and trying to move the plate away, but Bulan’s mother kept pushing it back, and her kids ate almost nothing except the crispy pork in ketchup anyway. Marcus made a valiant effort at getting the shrimp meat out of the legs, but I had to end up cracking them for him, using a spoon and a fork and all my lobster knowledge as a twenty-year New Englander. Marcus’s do-it-yourself attempts got a lot of attention, as Bulan’s mom, our waitress, and a woman at the table behind us all commented that it was obvious he wasn’t a Thai child, as a Thai kid would just sit there and expect his mother to do it for him. I said something to Bulan’s mom about how we see this as typical of a 4-5 year old in the US—the “I can do it!” attempt, at least (possibly leading to frustration if they actually can’t), with pretty much everything, and it became obvious that we’d hit upon a significant cultural difference here, as this entire scenario was quite literally foreign to them. At any rate, it was a delicious lunch.
Lunch overlooking rice paddies in Surat Thani.
Since the restaurant was quite close to the Burmese border, we saw a number of people in the restaurant that George and Bulan’s mother nudged me and told me were Burmese, with the white/yellow cosmetics on their face (men and women alike) that were typical in this part of Myanmar. Everyone else in the restaurant was of course Thai except us.
As we left, Bulan’s mom gave us gifts in the parking lot—hand-woven fabric for me and a fun molded plastic bank for Marcus and one for Samantha, in nice bags. Bulan was still shy, but Marcus was sad she wasn’t going to come for another ride in our car.
That afternoon we made assorted stops at gas stations, convenience stores, and fruit stands as we drove north. Everything by the side of the road was clumpy: that is, there’d be orange vendors, a lot of them, all with the same fruit and the same juice, and then a few score kilometers further there’d be pineapple vendors, a lot of them, then another few score kilometers, coconut vendors, then sea salt vendors, then salted eggs, etc.
Trucks along the road (left one full of coconuts).
We were still driving when it got dark, with a hotel in mind that Pat had looked up while we were on the road and called ahead to, and then we saw it: my holy grail of this road trip—a temple fair. Now, we love fairs in general—church, county, state—and I had read before we left that temple fairs were great fun, with great food, and a wonderful way to experience the “real” Thailand, but were virtually never advertised other than word of mouth and a sign and string of lights in front of the temple. Forget about a web presence—these events don’t even have a print presence as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, other organizations also use neon lights by the side of the road to advertise other things, and thus far on our trip (I’d gotten George excited about finding one and enlisted his help) we’d already seen these lights and stopped at, and been disappointed by, a police station suggesting people drive safely, a local technical school having their annual picnic, and a civic organization giving out free bottles of water.
This temple fair, though—the lights were on an entirely different scale than anything I’d seen, and even Pat became really excited, saying it looked like it would be a really large fair just based on the lights we saw. We followed the lights for a good 3-4 kilometers down a side road off the main highway and then paid a whopping 40 baht to park in a vacant lot and walk into the fair. Wow—what an amazing taste of rural Thailand! Marcus was almost asleep on my lap in the car as we pulled up, but he woke up quickly to all the lights and sights and sounds.
There were wood furniture merchants selling intricately carved daybeds and pork swings and table and chair outdoor sets with a gazebo-like roof over them—beautiful stuff, and only 3300 baht for one of these. Seriously, not even $200 for all this wood? I wished I had some way of getting it home and up onto our roofdeck. And the food! Cotton candy in all colors, popcorn too—green, orange—my little marshmallow tacos, both packaged up and made to order. I held out for fresh from the last vendor we saw who had them, topped with sprinkles. Crispy rice cakes with caramel, and the bug booth that George ordered ants from, and stand after stand of delights. I bought Marcus a punch ball for 10 baht and in the kiddie area he went into the bouncy houses—20 baht for 20 minutes, but no one was counting. Thrilled, but hot, he emerged on his own after about 15 minutes. He was too scared to try the trampolines though, which was just as well.
Approaching a temple fair in Thap Sakae from a kilometer away; parking our car and walking up to it.
First impressions--sight and sound.
The bug vendor.
Kids' area.
Inside the temple.
My favorite sweet treats.
Near the kiddie rides an old woman nodded at Sam in the sling and tried to talk to me about it, but she had zero English and I obviously had zero Thai. A young woman sitting nearby holding a one-month-old baby acted as our translator, and soon I was talking to her as well. We discussed where I was from, why I was here, and who I was with (this was not at all obvious, as Marcus was somewhere in the bowels of the bouncy house at the moment and I’d sent George and Pat off—there was no need for them to stand in the kiddie area too, after all, so I think they were at the midway so George could win Pat a big stuffed prize, so it was really just me and Sam, her in a sleeveless onesie with her white arms hanging out, standing there smiling vaguely all around us). The young woman started nursing her babe, just pulling up her shirt and doing it calmly but unobtrusively, and the old woman jiggled her own breast, pointed to Sam, and looked at me inquisitively.
“Uh, did she just ask if I breastfeed her?” I asked my translator, who confirmed that, so in turn I gleefully responded affirmatively, with a lot of pretty hysterical pantomime on my part. I knew Robert would roll his eyes at this, and say something like, “You went all the way around the world and you’re still talking about breastfeeding and babywearing?” in an exasperated way, but she brought it up first, I swear! As for babywearing, I saw so many people just carrying babes cradled in their arms (if tiny and asleep) or draped over a shoulder (if a bit bigger and asleep), and many people checked Samantha’s knees and bottom in the sling, discussing it with their companions in Thai.
Marcus, Sam, George, and I definitely stuck out, as we were the only farang we saw at this entire event—the schoolkids in uniform who were volunteering at the fair (collecting shoes, selling flowers and gold papers for offerings) giggled at us and got close and then darted away; families pushed their little girls close to Marcus and snapped a phone pic (“They’re saying, ‘Oh, he’s cute, do you want to marry him?’” George translated. I think George only understands Thai if it’s spoken to a child.); men and women and bigger kids petted Marcus’s head; and older women came up to me and rubbed Samantha’s arms and face and tugged at the fabric and rings of my sling interestedly.
Pat couldn’t go into the temple proper because she was wearing a tank top (and she was already using her pareo as a longer skirt over her shorts), so she waited near the shoe area while George and the kids and I went into the temple and then wended our way out of there—Marcus with his loot, a bit glassy-eyed, George with the giant animal he’d won for Pat, all of us parading past the lights and the din. Just on the path to the temple proper was the only place this entire trip that I saw beggars, and they seemed to be sort of officially sanctioned by the temple, perhaps to encourage people to give more money.
I cannot convey the noise level at the fair: it seemed like every second man there had a microphone connected to a speaker, or just a plain old megaphone, and was yelling something, whether at a booth doing a closed-box toy auction, or outside the temple entreating people to give money, or at the main fundraising tent where they continuously announced the running totals raised by each of the different areas of the fair, all of which appeared to be in competition with each other. Marcus had covered his ears for the first ten minutes or so we were there, but eventually he became used to it and didn’t notice it anymore.
I left there on such a huge high—sugar and sight-seeing both, not to mention sensory overload—and felt that my great desire of the trip had been satisfied, albeit entirely by luck.
The hotel for the night was not such a big high. It was close and cheap, one of those places with separate cabins like Robert and I had stayed at in Wall, South Dakota, bare bones in the extreme inside—bare light bulbs, no phone, two twin beds. We had little time for worrying, though, as Marcus dragged himself inside from the car and fell immediately asleep draped sideways across one bed. I had to pick him up and reposition him when it was time to get in with Sam. All of us cuddled in one bed—not so bad at all.
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Created: 1/15/13. Last Modified: 1/15/13.