My social life in Khun Han

My social life in Khun Hanh

My first impulse is to say I do not have one. That is because the month before moving here I lived in three party lands. More realistically, I have to admit that it would be impossible not to socialize at any place where at least another being exists.

More accurate would be to say that my social interactions have been drastically simplified. Apart from me, there are only four other Western people in this town: the other two “falang” teachers, Paul and Charles, and two older guys whom I have not talked to. Charles is over seventy and lives in his own world. He is the kind of person that is thinking in whatever he wants to say right after he asked you a question (well, we all do that, but he does it more than the common person). Paul has been very helpful in orienting me, although I wished he did not talk so much. He has shared with me all his –mostly negative- insights of Thai culture. I try not to pay that much attention to what he says because I would become depressed if I did.

The Thai English teachers do not speak much English so our conversations are pretty much reduced to commenting how we slept, what we ate, or how hot the day is. With the rest of the locals the conversations are much simpler because my Thai is extremely basic (“good morning”; “how much is that?”; “I like it”; “beautiful”; and “thank you”)

Despite any language limitations, there are a few people in town that are my “friends”. On the same street of my hotel, close to the main road, there is a fruit and lottery ticket stand where a group of women are always laying down on a wooden platform, resting in the shade. Whenever I pass by, they wave and say “hello” to me, so proud of their English skills. A couple of them have red smiles from chewing on the “cleansing” berries. On the way to school I pass by Ms. Ew’s fruit stand, where I get most of my fruit. Ew is very sweet and asked me to be her friend. Again, there is not much we can chat about. At lunch I eat at Ms. Ole’s restaurant because she cooks without MSG for me. With her we have a more fluid exchange. I got that she lived in Bangkok for a while and decided to come back to Khun Han to have a more peaceful life. In the evenings I visit the salad lady at the market. I come back at the hotel and that is when my heavy social interactions start: Facebook and Skype.

The director of the school where I work tries hard to have the international teachers entertained. The last week he invited us to have dinner with him and a man with a high position at a university in Bangkok who came to visit as a guest speaker in a teachers’ meeting. We went to a high-end restaurant just outside of town, owned by a rich oil driller from Denmark. The place is really beautiful: wooden pergolas decorated with orchids rest on the shore of a central pond, holding tables for individual groups. The bathrooms have non-squatty toilets and both a hose and toilet paper, and sinks with water, soap and towels. The next morning to the dinner, I also got invited to a breakfast with the director and this gentleman. Finally, the director invited me to a field trip with the students of the 6^th grade the last Sunday.

We departed school at 3 AM in six massive karaoke busses. I was hoping to get some sleep but the students started the karaoke party as soon as we left. They made me think about how much energy one loses in a few years. It took about six hours to get to the Wat That Phanom, one of the most popular temples in Eastern Thailand. We walked around the chedi, incense and flower lotus on prayer hands, and then saw a devotion parade. We jumped again on the bus and, a couple of hours later we arrived in Mukdahan, a boundary city with Laos with lots of shopping opportunities. After another ride we were at another temple which name I could not catch but which was pretty impressive. On the long way back, there was another karaoke party and I got to sing the only song in English they had, which I had never heard before. It was a long and tiring trip but it bought me closer to the students’ culture. I learned a lot about Thai music bands that made me popular among my students the next week.

Pretty temple somewhere in Eastern Thailand

 



Today it was Science day at school and somehow it involved a fashion show. The dresses were created by the students with recycled materials such as plastic bags, soy milk cartons, rattan decorations, paper flowers, etc. I must say that I was impressed by the complexity and beauty of these outfits. Also very impressive were the makeup and hair-dos of the models, which included a few lady-boys. They brought in little kids from kindergarten to pose in pictures with them. The students were frantically cheering for and taking pictures of their modeling classmates.

I am certainly seeing aspects of the Thai culture I did not get to appreciate while rock-climbing in Krabi or hanging out with European friends in Chiang Mai.