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decreaseI've gotten to do some serious driving in the LOS during my many times visiting here, and now, as I live here most of the year, I drive all over the place, all over the country. This can be a serious matter if you've ever seen the way some, well most actually, Thais drive. (LOS is an acronym meaning Land of Smiles, a nickname for the country of Thailand. An apt one at that.) One afternoon I was bringing my wife to visit my daughter in the hospital. My daughter had pneumonia. She was doing fine, responding well to the treatment and meds, and would be out of the hospital in a couple more days. As Thais do we spent most of our days and evenings at the hospital. On the way to the hospital that day I saw a pickup truck run a red light right in front of me, broad-siding a woman on her motorcycle, and knocking her and her motorcycle clear across the street. Watching her legs slide along the pavement with her motorcycle on top of her, and realizing she was wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, and luckily a helmet, I winced and shuddered at the thought of the pain she would be in very shortly. I've been there and done that on a motorcycle, at 60 mph at that. They were both doing maybe 25 or 30. She got clocked good though, but she got up, looking somewhat dazed and confused, and picked up her motorcycle and pushed it to the side of the road. Of course, the truck driver fled the scene as many Thais seem very likely to do in these traffic situations. On with the story.
I had rented the old red junk box pick-up truck from my lass' girlfriend once again and she was to meet us in the Thong Tarin Hotel in Surin the day we arrived. We got in at 4:30 a.m., her friend showed up much later, as usual. I'm going to strangle her some day I swear. Either that or buy her a Timex watch, bring it from the states and give it to her as a present. One or the other, I still haven't decided which. The woman is always late. Not that I expected her to show up at four thirty a.m. but she had agreed to meet us early in the morning as we had plans and needed the truck she promised to rent us. Thai time isn't even close to any other country's time. Well, maybe the Bahamas. Those guys are slower than the second coming of Christ too. It must be the tropical heat.
After finally getting the truck and driving up to the village, an hour's drive, I found out from my wife that I needed to go to the village down the road to pick up some stuff for the family and Mama. This required about another hour's drive, round trip, further into the boonies and rice paddies.
'Yeah, no problem, darling. Let's go now and get it over with so I can relax and have a beer later, okay?'
'Have beer now darling?' she comes back with.
'Yeah, why not I guess?' I responded to her question.
She cracked open a cold beer Chang for me and we jumped in the truck with her sister and headed on down the road to her Momma's sister's ville.
I love driving the back roads up-country in Isaan, as long as it's not raining anyway. We pop in a Lao country music cassette and glide on past the rice paddies. Guys on their strange looking rice paddy tractors are plowing up the fields getting them ready for planting next season's rice crop. It's very rustic and pleasant out in the ricefields. The sun burns my right arm black as it hangs out the window while I sip my beer and slowly wander the rural roads. Water buffalos stand bellowing along the roadside as we pass, and women in large straw hats, with their heads and faces wrapped in black bandanas, hide from the broiling hot sun as they work the last of the late season paddies in knee deep water, doing back breaking labor most falang (foreign) people would die from having to do all day, every day, for a week or two, now-a-days, let alone for a couple of months. I know my back couldn't handle this work. Other water buffalos plow through the waters in the ditches along the road side with only their heads showing, munching on what ever grasses come within their reach, their huge crescent shape horns bobbing from side to side as they wade slowly through the wallows. In the distance the sunlight reflects off a neighboring village Wat's broken pieces of various colored mirror decorations imbedded in the concrete walls, causing it to sparkle like a fairy tale castle from a story written by an Asian Aesop. Small stands of towering bamboo occasionally break the monotony of rice paddy dikes and fields, and a lone tree stands forlorn, providing small shade to a couple of workers sharing some sticky rice and tea during a break in their labors.
The air smells sweet, and you can taste Thailand in the back of your throat if you inhale greedily the glorious mixture of scents of this strange and beautiful land. I'm home, and yet far away from home. Happy, yet sad. Happy to be here, yet sad I'll once again have to leave home to go home. Funny isn't it how much you can love a people not your own; still missing your own, yet never wanting to leave.
I sometimes feel I've but dreamed of Thailand and I'll someday awaken and have to kill myself from the grief of knowing it was all only a dream. A grief especially painful would be to lose the one sitting beside me now forever. Her fat, funny, wise cracking sister is laughing and joking with her as my wandering mind soaks in the flashing glimpses of this dreamscape and my soul is released to soar above the land like an eagle on wing.
A movement on the road breaks my reverie. A snake, a big one, a cobra, about three feet long or so, is side-winding across the road some meters ahead. I bring my ladies' attention to it, and, with perfect timing and deft control of the steering wheel, run over the snake, but, having put it perfectly centered between the wheels of my truck, I pass over him without touching a scale on him. Looking in the rear view mirror I see him rear his head from the tarmac and turn menacingly to watch my receding truck. Lucky for the snake he wasn't a bit larger or he'd have been a goner.
My lady and her sister have twisted their heads around and, spying the still unharmed snake watching us drive away, they shriek with glee and start yakking in Thai together and tell me I will have 'big good luck' today. Or 'chok dee mahk' as they put it.
'To see snake cross road is big good luck!' they exclaim, beaming.
It was just more Thai superstition, but I felt glad I hadn't run the snake over. I turn to my lass and say, 'Yes, today I have big good luck. Today I am with you, darling.' Her sister makes a gagging noise, reaches around behind her and smacks my shoulder and calls me 'Pak wan' (sweet mouth/flatterer) while laughing and giggling. My lady rests her head on my shoulder and sniff kisses my neck and whispers softly in my ear, 'Kup koon Ka darling (thank you).'
'Jing jing, darling, jing jing (it's true, darling).' I mumble into her hair while I sniff kiss her back.
Yes, today I am a lucky man. One of the luckiest by far.
Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)
© Cent. All rights reserved by the author.
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December 17, 2008, 22:35
A very pleasant piece of atmosphere writing, an "idyll" they used to call it in a more romantic age. If I could make some suggestions:
Lose the first paragraph. The motorcycle accident does not fit the style or the narrative of this essay.
Shorten some of these sentences. Here's an example: "Water buffalos stand bellowing along the roadside as we pass, and women in large straw hats, with their heads and faces wrapped in black bandanas, hide from the broiling hot sun as they work the last of the late season paddies in knee deep water, doing back breaking labor most falang (foreign) people would die from having to do all day, every day, for a week or two, now-a-days, let alone for a couple of months." How about something like: "Water buffaloes bellow at us as we pass, and women in large straw hats, their faces hidden from the sun by black cloth, toil in knee deep water, working the last of the late season paddies." I would leave out the remark about Westerners not being up to such labor, since it's not true. If a farang spent her life in the fields, she would be up to the labor. If an Isaan villager spent her life behind a desk in an air conditioned office, a week in the paddies would mean death. It's about conditioning, not about race.
Finally, this piece is short enough that you could add lots more to it, and I would suggest fleshing out the two female characters. The climax of the story is the narrator's realization that his greatest joy comes from the company of this woman, so let's meet her. Right now she doesn't even have a name. A few snatches of her banter with her sister would give you the opportunity to flesh them both out. Maybe some physical description, and an endearing habit or tic. She places her hand on the driver's thigh to remind him to slow down at intersections, she puts a straw in his beer even though she knows he doesn't drink it that way, and he drinks it that way because her sister is in the truck and he doesn't want his wife to lose face. Something soft and sweet and touching to make this character more three-dimensional, and to reinforce the denouement.
And I've not spent much time in the rice fields (Phuket grows nothing but pineapples, rubber, and room service waiters) but it struck me odd that some fields would be dry enough to plow and others still knee-deep in water. Maybe that's the case, but it still seems to provoke a moment of cognitive dissonance, at least for this reader.
Otherwise, a very nice reverie. Thanks for sharing it.