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Part 1

A few years back I had been staying in the village for a couple of months after our 2000 village wedding and our subsequent honeymoon in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We went to see the Angkor Wat ruins for our honeymoon and had had an excellent and very enjoyable time there and met very many nice people.

The small newer hotel in Siem Reap a friend had recommended was fabulous and the family that ran it were extremely friendly and helpful people and made the best American/French breakfast I'd had in ages. (Awesome aromatic thick dark coffee and truly exquisite omelets and scrambled eggs.) The French bread they served with breakfast every morning was the best I have ever had in my life, even when I was in France. The family that ran the hotel were also expert wood-workers and this hotel was filled with beautiful hand-carved pieces of furniture in every room and throughout the hotel. Our bed was an absolute work of art and the finest piece of furniture I believe I have ever slept on.

If you've never been to Angkor Wat you really need to see these ruins if your interests lie in this area. They are spectacular. We also met a wonderful Cambodian gentleman named Chak Vandy (Vandy pronounced Whan Dee) who we had hired as a private guide for our visiting the ruins. (I hate tour groups and would always rather have a private tour.) He was an older man, not much older than me now I think of it, who had once been a school teacher during the Khmer Rouge days of terror and murder and who had hid in the jungles for years with the help of relatives and friends as the idiot Khmer Rouge were murdering teachers and intellectuals throughout the countryside. After the reign of these genocidal maniacs had ended Mr. Vandy worked for a few years with the UN in Cambodia as an interpreter, and his one true passion was the Angkor Wat ruins. He knew all the history and facts and stories about the place and the bas reliefs adorning the vast structures. He was a font of knowledge and anecdotes on the history of the place and the people who built it. His English was very good, although his accent at times was thick and it took me a couple hours to get my mind around his accent to finally understand him totally, which was no problem as we were staying for four days to tour the ruins and surrounding area and had hired Mr. Vandy for the duration along with a good driver and mini-van. Mr. Vandy is the epitome of what was once Cambodia's best and brightest. A finer, more intelligent and truly gentle man I have never met.

Of course he fell in love with my wife and they got along famously. (More Surin witchery I suspect.) A lot of the locals all thought my wife was Cambodian and were always speaking to her in Khmer dialect. She is Thai of Lao descent and speaks no Khmer, but I have to agree she looks exactly like the beautiful dancing ladies carved in the bas reliefs on the walls of the Angkor Wat.

One thing that I love about my wife is her own interest in the Khmer ruins in our area and of the Angkor era. She loves seeing and exploring these historical sites and ancient cultures' constructs as much as I do. 

On our return to our home in Thailand I planned on staying a couple of months in our now finished village home before returning to the states for two months duration for some scheduled spinal surgeries for my injured back. I love being in the village, well, mostly anyway. This time up I was given the duty of driving my daughter to the new school my 'now' wife and I had decided to send her to in Surin. It seems look sow (daughter) wanted Papa to take her and pick her up every day, if he could, no problem if he can't/won't you know, but she would love it so much if he did, mai pen lie (no problem), up to you Papa. Hmmmm ... I know when I'm being guilted out. Thai ladies are good at this, better than an old Jewish mother actually, and that's sure saying a lot. So, I agreed. I figured, ahhh, what the hell. I did get to see some early morning Isaan (Isaan is the rural area in Northeastern Thailand and covers much of the Isaan Plateau.) sunrises, some early morning local color, and stuff I usually never see, as I am not an early morning kind of guy usually. I chalked it up to an adventure. Look sow was happy when I agreed, my lady was happy, so ostensibly I would therefore be happy too. Should work right? Jesus. Five a.m. comes awful early in the day doesn't it?

My daughter is very scared of the mini-van driver who usually takes the kids to school in the morning and back in the afternoons, for a fee of course. She says he drives very bad. Like I've said before, "Somchai wants to die!" And he doesn't really seem to care much who he takes with him to the grave along the way. So I started doing the drive every morning, and later in the day my wife and I would go back to Surin to pick her up from school. These trips to Surin turned into a, please excuse the phrase, but it's apt, 'clusterfuck'. It seems the word was out on the bamboo grapevine, "Cent is going to Surin every morning to bring his look sow (daughter) to school. Hooray! A free taxi to Surin!" Shit.

Plus it seems my lady always needed something in one shop or another, since, "We are here in Surin anyway, darling." Double shit.

So these trips could turn into all day affairs. Tiresome to say the least, and the cause of the poor beleaguered falang (foreigner), me, losing his cool a couple of times.

"Goddamnit woman! Why the hell didn't you think of getting that yesterday while we were here? For chrissake, make up a shopping list will you and we can get everything in one freakin' day!"

So every day, damned near it seemed, there would be a couple or so of village 'hitch-hikers' along for the free lift into town, a stop or two here or there for something not available back in the village, and I'd get to have my falang style 'American' breakfast at the Thong Tarin Hotel as a consolation prize for cheap baht before heading back to the village, or where ever else had been planned for the day.

By the way, just so you know, the trip from the village to Surin takes about 50 minutes ... one way. So these trips back and forth to school end up taking at least four hours out of the day. Just goes to show what a sap ... errrr ... nice guy I am.

Well, one morning there we were, no hitch-hikers for once, running a bit late for leaving, as Papa and Mama (me and my wife) had had a late night up with friends discussing the upcoming Thai elections. Beer Chang fuelled lengthy late night discussions these turned out to be, and not conducive to early morning shitbox pick-up truck runs to Surin; as the pink tinted sunrise lit sky washes over the water buffalo filled paddies and the unearthly early morning light of the nuclear furnace we call old Sol seems to try to burn its way into the few remaining brain cells in the hung over farang's itty bitty brain. I knew I should have thrown those drunken bums out at least three hours earlier last night.

It's off to Surin we go, without much talk and chit chat from my wife either. It seems she's feeling the effects of the late night too. Good. Misery loves company. She has what she so cutely calls an 'overhang'. I know the feeling darling, intimately. Join the crowd.

We tool along the soi (street) towards Surin, dodging buffalo flops, and soi dogs intent on making me slow down to avoid hitting them, I don't. Slow down that is. I'm in a foul mood to road obstructions and the need to shift gears that grind like hell in three of the four gears. Look out doggies! Death prowls the sois of the hinterlands! In the form of a hung over falang in a red shitbox Toyota. Lie in the road at your own peril. I'm no longer responsible for my driving actions. Just call me Somchai. Chickens scurry to safety in a flurry of feathers, and even the cattle and water buffalo seem to sense not to screw around with me this morning.

I dodge the potholes that the Einsteins of Surin's department of public works seem to think is mandatory on all the streets in and out of the city. When the hell are they going to finish the construction? It's been going on for over a friggin' year now, and I can't for the life of me see any damned progress being made, unless progress is being rated by the growing size of the potholes. In that case, they are doing a bang-up job of it. We make it to school amid a cloud of red dust and mysterious hand waved communications from some decidedly retarded police that direct the traffic in a way not seen in most western countries and cities. Some sort of Isaan Amslan, only for the blind instead of the deaf.

We see our daughter off to class and head for the Thong Tarin Hotel for a much needed cup of their wonderful Joe, (coffee for you non-Yanks) and a leisurely breakfast. Wifey-poo seems to still be feeling the effects of her Chang intake of the night before. She stops cold at the entrance to the restaurant, turns pale white at the smell of the food, and hurries off to the hong nam (bathroom) to ... errr ... freshen up. Myself, being a veteran of the Beer Chang Wars, stroll in with Sis, who has accompanied us today, and grab a cup of coffee and a large glass of cold milk, and order some scrambled eggs from the young dude behind the grill.

Afterwards I grab some wheat bread and throw it in the toaster, while piling some ham and assorted pastries on a plate and going back to the table to inhale my coffee and milk whilst having a nibble waiting for my eggs to be done to perfection by the lad. He knows how I like them by now, especially since I used to hover over him and tell him when they were done to my satisfaction. He took a while to learn how to make them not soggy and watery, but now is an expert on scrambled eggs. I figure he'll soon be gone to Bangkok to work a better paying job, and another cook will need to be trained all over again by me. I enjoy the perfectly done eggs while I can.

My lady returns from the hong nam, still a bit pale and shaky, but she gamely peruses the Thai buffet offered and chooses a few things to her liking. I make a mental note to myself to have her sit near the window in the truck on the return trip, just in case. She puts up a brave front and tests the waters so to speak with a nibble here and a chew there. All the while watching me eat with gusto my rancid, in her eyes at least, falang fare, with a look of obvious hatred in her eyes at my unimpeded appetite. She's probably wondering to herself in awe at how many beers her love needs to drink to throw him off his feed. Quite a few darling, really. Although the thought of rice soup and spicy noodles for breakfast right about now could do it I'd think.

Ahhh, thank God for the Thong Tarin. Where the hell else could I find a decent civilized breakfast in this city?

(to be continued)

Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)

© Written in the year 2000. All rights reserved by the author.