Marriage, pt.2

Thai people can get very excited about babies.

At 5:30 am, Sakda is in our room playing peek-a-boo with Isaiah, who has recently begun stirring for his early-morning nurse. He wants to take Isaiah to go bathe and play with the family. Ahem...Sakda? Thank you...

After shooing Sakda away a few more times so that Isaiah can get a proper sleep in before the festivities begin, we slowly and drowsily rise. We can hear Markie gasping and shivering from the next room where he is taking a bucket shower, pouring cold bowlfuls of water over his head. Sakda has prepared a sweet little breakfast instant coffee packets, bread, jam, sweet rice bites and fried doughnuts, all laid out in array on the kitchen counter. We sit blankly on chairs in the kitchen, drinking instant coffee out of tiny, ceramic cups and munching toast and jam until we come to our senses. Meanwhile, the party 'staff' are bustling busily in and out of the house and a commotion is audibly growing in the house next door where the party is to happen.

Eventually, we make our way toward the scene where we find a full-on restaurant materializing. Women are stirring rice in gigantic steel pots over blazing coals. Single gas burners are flared in an adjacent garage with woks sizzling up curries and stir-fries. Meanwhile, in the tent-covered dining area, tens of tables are fully set with dishes, silverware, beverages and buckets of ice. Sakda informs me that a woman is being paid $9 to wash dishes all day. Later he tells me that they are expecting in upwards of 1000 people.

The atmosphere is vibrating with activity. Friends and family are constantly running about, gathering this food or that decoration. It seems that the majority of the working are women, their men standing idly by smoking coconut-leaf cigarettes and drinking beer with ice. Children scurry along as a circle of elderly women shell astringent betel nuts to chew like gum, staining their teeth and gums bright red.

Around noon, the masses descend upon the site. Pickups kick up dust as the rumble down the rocky road, parking in an adjacent field. Families of all sizes emerge, sitting down beneath the tent where they are served a few large dishes of curried meat, stir fry and fish soup by the party 'staff'. The effect can be dizzying. Through all of this, the groom's job is to meander about the party, chatting up guests and making known his leather hip-pack which he is using to collect his bounty. The deal is, if you come and gorge yourself at this thing, you are obligated to give a little to the groom and his family. An average family might give 200-300 baht ($7-10) and at something around 1000 guests, (divided into families) the groom ends up making off with a cool wad. In return, he distributes little pink trinkets (pink is the official color, ugh) to his guests and thanks them cordially. The groom, I notice, is strangely made into a background detail in the hullabaloo of the event. Wandering quietly throughout the party, here-and-there sitting down on the edge of a group, his presence is humble and without the kind of focus you might expect from a western 'bachelor party'. However, a western bachelor party this is not. This is a fundraiser, sponsored by family and friends with the hopes of collecting a generous nest egg for the newly weds. I was told that down the road, the bride-to-be was doing the same thing.

For the rest of the day, heaps of food continue marching out to a continuous crowd of guests. At one point a torrential storm rolls in, threatening the stability of the food tents. As water begins to stream down through the gaps, washing out the very ground underneath the tables and chairs, no one appears phased and the whiskey and sodas keep a' comin'.

By sunset the karaoke has begun at a deafening volume. The tunes are very Thai, very cheap-keyboard sounding, and very popular.

All night it will continue like this. The karaoke will get louder and progressively less tonal. A man will fall out of his chair and be carried off on the shoulders of his friends, leaving his shoes behind. Another man with whiskey eyes, stumbling and toothless, will proceed to hit on our friend Markie before he is dragged off by a crew of friendly but protective gentlemen. Half an hour later he is dominating the karaoke stage. I put the baby under my arm and amble off to bed, but Gaibi and Markie stay behind to wash dishes in the moonlight. They stood in deep mud, later moving to squatty little benches on a raised platform, scrubbing up the last of the greasy curry pots and fry pans in a gigantic plastic bucket, filled with soap and ice-cold water. The best part of being involved was that it never managed to feel like work. Everyone was family and friends, and merely to be a part of the experience was fun enough.

Soon, Gaibi was crawling in to bed next to us, smelling like dish soap. Tomorrow the wedding would start at 9 o'clock, we were told. In Thailand, 9 is a lucky number. There are no unlucky numbers.

Marriage, pt.1

From our porch you can hear the monsoon rains rollling in for miles. If you stretch your neck out you can see the mammoth clouds come creeping around small mountains and over endless fields. You can hear rusty bells of distant buffalo clinking in the distance. When it finally arrives, the rain often comes down in hammers, culling up all sorts of smells. Grease rises up out of the concrete, mixes with random spatters of dung and the smoke of burning rice stalks.

Much of rural/suburban southern Thailand rises at dawn with the crow of the rooster. Leather-skinned farmers pull on their huge rubber boots and take their cow herds out to field. Ochre-clad monks roam with large, bulbous alms bowls, collecting offerings from local families and businesses. Tens of pushcarts and motorized vendors hit the streets with fresh-cut fruit, steamed buns and pork dumplings. Roadside coffee vendors are legion, peddling their syrupy-sweet cups to the first wave of morning laborers: the rubber tree plantation workers, the fish factory ladies, the crude motorcycle taxis and morning market employees. Shortly thereafter the schoolchildren emerge, flooding the streets with uniformed children packed tight into pickups, loaded 5 deep on little motor scooters, with the priveleged few catching a ride in conventional cars. Among these the girls all have regulation chin-length haircuts while the boys are shaven like soldiers.

By 9 am, all of this has subsided and our small town is in full swing for the day.

However, from our isolated little campus island 10-odd kilometers from most anything, I would never have known of these phenomena had it not been for (trumpets, please) semester break! In between each semester of school we have about 1 1/2 weeks that are unofficially free, provided you finish all your grading and paperwork and are well ready for the next semester by then. For our little week we decided to take up an invitation to visit a wedding, given by our friend Sakda (previously featured in the hospital visit). His 18-year old nephew was to marry his 20-year old bride with a to-the-hilt, traditional Thai celebration ensuing and we were asked to bear witness. Prior to the event we had adequate warning that Thai weddings are not like American weddings. The have many more people. Like 800+ more. In Thailand, major events like weddings, monk intiation ceremonies and funerals become full-on fundraising events, drawing every friend, neighbor, colleague or acquaintance that has perchanced to sniff in the direction of the family into its ongoing merrymaking. In my mind I pictured something physically similar to an American wedding, only bigger. Perhaps staged in a hotel event room, filled with people all eating, drinking and carousing in the style of western nuptials. How lovely, I thought, to witness a sweet and traditional little ceremony, followed by a gay old time surrounding by crowds of friendlies and family. Surely at least a few of them will speak English, I told myself, and we will find a way to fit right in...

Thailand is teaching me to abandon this archaic notion of 'expectations'.

Much to our relief, when we get in the car that is taking us on the 2-hour drive to the site of the festivities, there is another westerner sitting there. Mark, a Canadian fellow who was never able to leave Thailand after he and his partner engaged on a world tour after one day deciding that their 9 to 5 life was ultimately unfulfilling, had been invited along by Sakda as well and was equally uninformed about what was to come.

While Sakda had mentioned that this wedding would take place in Krabi, a town significantly larger and more fun than our own, he did not mention that, well, it wasn't exactly in Krabi but a little village about an hour from Krabi where the closest ATM was a 20-minute drive and the dirt roads were covered in scrawny chickens and stray dogs. We pulled up to the house at dusk to find several large event-tents set up, under which tables have been arranged. Flourescent lights illuminate the edging darkness as we emerge from the car, our white skin almost glowing. Naturally, we feel something like a sideshow act as the family and friends numbering at least 50 gawk and stare at us in shameless, typical Thai fashion. Not that they mean anything ill by it, but the concept of discrete observance is entirely alien to them. Being that the family owns a rubber and palm plantation and spends most days in the deep country, the presence of farang (foreigners) stands somewhere in the neighborhood of seeing a unicorn on Miami beach. Add to this our cherubic child and the deal is done, we will not be without an audience for the next 60+ hours.

On the center table it is clear that something has been recently slaughtered. The extremities strung up to the tent-posts with plastic ties in the background confirm that it was something of a buffalo/cow-type creature. A man is laboriously carving shreds of meat from the dangling legs while a score of people gathered around its harvested crimson piles proceed to chop it to ribbons. An army is coming tomorrow and they must be ready to feed it.

At an adjacent table a circle of older men are drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes with great dedication. From the texture of their skin and the delivery of their speech, they appear to be farmers and manual laborers. Mark and I gather up two chairs and plunk ourselves awkwardly off to the side of it all while Isaiah is quickly swept into the hundred hands of Thailand once again and Gaibi goes tumbling after. Without great delay, whiskey erodes the culture barrier and Markie and I find ourselves seated amongst the older gentlemen, drinking strong sodas and trying to bridge the communication gap with our small bag of functional Thai. Anyone who has ever been in such a situation can attest to the fact that, in adequate quantities, booze can be a miraculous aid to otherwise troublesome communication situations. It allows you to be more bold with the few words that you have, and moments of understanding become celebrated triumphs. Likewise, the desire to merely connect becomes more prominent and leaving the details of actual information exchange behind, you make any and every attempt to do so.

Even with the aid of the spirits however, my attempts to communicate with others at this event ranged from laborious at best to downright depressing. A possible explanation for this might be that we were deep in the countryside and even those who spoke to me in the 'central' dialect of Thai must have done so with a thick southern accent. Add to this copious amount of whiskey, beer and ear-shattering karaoke tunes blasting out of 5 foot speakers from an adjacent stage and you can pretty much count on looking like a besotted, mumbling farang in even your most earnest attempts at communication.

We made it through that night by wiggling our way toward the meat-pile to help with mincing and were eventually offered a priveleged seat at dinner: a table in the kitchen. While everyone else, including the groom just to the left of our table, sat on the ground (the preferred choice of rural Thais everywhere) we regally enjoyed our chairs and dined on organ meat curries. I was told that the organ meats were are special treat shared only with the inner circle of family and friends the night before the party.

After all of this we were shown to our room in an adjacent house: a large, tiled space with a sort of thick comforter spread out across the floor that was to be our bed. By village standards the house was rather nice, though the average westerner might be inclined to note that it was pretty much a cement box with several rooms. On the wall in the kitchen a large, muddy hornets nest clung to the wall above the gas-burner stove - a sign of good luck, I was told. In the bedroom a spider roughly the diameter of a CD was hanging out on the wall. After a while none of it is shocking or discomforting any longer. The reality of a people so hospitable that they give you, (a stranger) the biggest room in their house in the midst of a wedding while they sleep on a wooden board in the TV room, slowly sinks in and you find yourself sleeping rather fitfully, nestled amongst the lizards and the creepers.

And rest well we needed to, for the next morning would commence a string of festivities that would not relent for the next 40 hours.

Making Friends

Being in the ethnic minority can be a refreshing and humbling experience for a pair of Caucasian Americans. It is very possible to go a full day (perhaps weeks) in the town of Trang, Thailand without seeing a single white-skinned being. Likewise, you will nary hear an English word other than the adorable shrieks of 'hello!' from toddlers and school children as you go zooming by on a motorbike. Moving to a small town in another country, we have elected to be foreigners in a very distinct way.

However, having a baby very much de-claws us in our capacity as ambassadors of the first world. With an infant strapped to our chest, people are quickly made aware that we are not here to swill beer and make ugly American mischief. The Thais have a particular place in their hearts for foreign youngsters, and even the steeliest of gazes melts when our bright eyed little boy reveals his cherubic face. We are quickly identified then as honest travelers and our reception is warm and inviting. With Isaiah's one foot in the door, we further pry it open with the few Thai phrases we can manage. Before long, we are engulfed in a crowd of beautiful dark skin and eager eyes, straining to catch a glimpse or touch the foot of our little ice-breaker. If Gaibi and I separate in the market, I can easily find them again by looking for the mass of people clumped into one area, all making high pitched noises and shuffling about, trying to get a touch of that squishy pale infant. Equally, Isaiah provides an in-road for conversation with even the most timid. The common, almost standard questions that always come up are,


"Boy or girl?" (this is ALWAYS first. The majority of people guess that he is a girl.)


"How much does he weigh?"


This quickly segues into a little game of peek-a-boo, which segues into a little hand-gesture that essentially means, 'give him to me'. Usually we oblige, albeit under tight scrutiny, while Isaiah gets a tour of the market, restaurant, bank, museum or whatever the establisment of the time may be. By the time we get him back he has charmed the whole of the establishment, making rather certain that we will be welcomed back any time. He often returns with a chewing souvenir of some sort- a straw or plastic spoon or other such prize. In most restaurants the waitresses are happy to provide an impromptu babysitting service, free of charge while we dine. This is a tremendous and unexpected boon for two weary parents such as ourselves.


A little cafe in the center of town we have a special friend named 'Sakda' who speaks English quite well and always give Isaiah the royal treatment. One day, we found ourselves in a very unexpected cirumstance.

"My sister is in the hospital," Sakda tells us, "She has to get (gestures a large, spherical formation roughly the size of a cantaloupe) taken out of (cuts across his abdomen with his fingers). 7 o'clock tonight, (it is now 4)."

Meanwhile, Gaibi and I are firing off guesses in an attempt to better understand the situation,

"Tumor?"

"Gall stone?"

"Is she getting an organ removed?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Sakda replies, "today I go see her in the hospital."

"That's nice of you," we reply unpatronizingly.

"You come with me?" he casually asks.

"..."

"I go today, five o'clock, you come with me!"

Surely he notices that we are reeling from a sort of cultural left-hook. Our jaws gyrate slightly, seraching for a response or at the very least a stalling strategy while we gather our senses.

"Sure, its ok!" he reassures us.

Our eyes remain focused, determined.

"Well, I don't know...what are we doing today, honey?" I pass the buck to Gaibi.

"I'm not suuure..." she drops it.

Somehow, from the back of our minds a notion creeps in, suggesting that perhaps we should consider going with this guy to the hospital to meet his sister two hours before her as-yet unspecified major surgical extraction procedure. After all, we came to Thailand to witness authentic Thai culture and what could be less tourism-fabricated than a trip to the hospital?

Wait a minute, what the hell are we-


The next thing we know we are on the motorbike, due for the hospital with Sakda zooming along beside us. While stopped at a red light, he informs us that his family has arranged a VIP room for his sister in the hospital. "700 per night," he tells us with a certain twinkle in his eye. (About $28 per day for those of you keeping score.)


We arrive at the hospital and park our motorbike amongst the others clustered along the curb outside the entrance. Inside it is tidy but not extravagant. Due to limited groundspace, the building goes more upward than outward. Ascending the stairway, I notice that the pharmacy on the ground floor has been built to resemble a small hut, perhaps reminiscent of the simple buildings you see in the countryside. Each floor looks out onto the ground floor/lobby/pharmacy area. On the 4th floor where Sakda's sister is located, an ornate Buddha image sits adorned with offerings of flowers, incense and a small plate of fresh food and water.


Expecting to enter the room and find ourselves awkwardly situated around the bed with our friend, enduring long silences, fairly frozen by our own ignorance of how to act appropriately in such a situation, we are pleasantly surprised by a very different scene: the room is packed with family. Four ladies from three generations are seated on a grass mat at the bedside. Throughout the room men of all ages are seated and standing, some eating fruit, others on their phones, the rest talking casually. In walk three foreigners, (us,) and Sakda. To put it lightly, they notice.
However, they are quick to welcome us with no shortage of generosity and soon our apprehensions have fully dissolved. An elderly woman promptly hops off the couch and insists that we take her place. Arguing, we find, will not assuage her. A large bag of fruit is quickly brought before us and we are more expected than invited to partake heartily. We soon find out that Sakda is the youngest of eight. His sister (aka, the patient) is the eldest and says very little but continuously twinkles at us through her bright, dark eyes. (yes, i mean bright, dark eyes) Far from ruffled by a few strangers prancing in a few hours before her surgery, she apologizes for her appearance and thanks us generously for coming. Shortly Isaiah is in the hands of the family and we are answering all of the rudimentary questions. Shortly thereafter, another elderly woman enters the room (putting the headcount up to around 14 in a regular-sized hospital room). "This is my other mom," Sakda informs us. I vaguely remember hearing in some cases, additional wives are taken into the family to fulfill such family duties as childbearing and householding when for some reason one is not sufficient. "Its ok," Sakda reassures us, "both my moms love eachother. Everybody loves eachother."

Slowly, people begin to trickle out of the room to the balcony (VIP rooms have balconies) where they are seated on another grass mat, having dinner.
The few remaining in the room disappear rapidly when they sense that Gaibi is about to nurse Isaiah. Despite Gaibi's best efforts to stay decent, hiding the whole operation under a red shawl, everyone left either shifts to the opposite side of the bed or exits to the balcony. Meanwhile nurses begin to appear, taking pre-surgical measurements and administering various medicines and swabs. Surgery is in 45 minutes and we suggest to Sakda that maybe we had better go. After a very warm send-off from the entire family, his sister again thanks us abundantly for our visit and all but demands that we promise to return (with the baby) in the coming week during her recovery period. We leave still completely unaware of exactly what is about to take place and really it is quite beside the point. Unexpectedly, we walk out of the hospital feeling quite glad that we agreed to come.

Later we are eating at a restaurant with Sakda and we remark to him how warm and loving it felt in the hospital room, surrounded by family sitting comfortably in the presence of their ailing sister. "Yes, whenever someone in my family becomes sick or has problem, my whole family will come to be with them," he replies with that unshakable smile of his. "That's my kind of health-care coverage," I think to myself.

We have scarcely seen Sakda since then, but the one time he did he told us that his sister was so happy to have met us and hopes that soon we will be able to visit her at her house in a neighboring province. Its nice to have friends.

Begin

From the moment you touch down in Bangkok, a distinct smell inhabits your nose. The recipe for this smell is specific and unchanging, at least in the last 20 years. All wrapped up in this saturated aroma is the pollution of a city whose highrises stretch as far as the eye can see, jammed with cars, buses, motorbikes, diesel trucks and three-wheel taxis (tuk-tuks, for those familiar) puffing a cloying haze into the air at all hours, unhindered by the burden of emission standards. Add to this the greasy smell of a million little food carts perched on every corner peddling everything from fresh fruit to chicken feet, the stench of thousands of stray animals running loose on the streets and finally pinches of sweet incense burning from the early morning hours in every temple and spirit house for miles. All of this remains suspended in the balmy air as you make your entrance, zipping through the maze of concrete and flashy lights to your destination.


We made our way quickly through Thai customs, a very unimposing process of shortly showing our passports, answering a few standard questions and looking right into the digital camera for a glamorous shot after 20+ hours of travel with an infant. We were hastily approached by some very friendly ladies in bright gold outfits who worked for a leading taxi service in the Bangkok airport. Perhaps part of the secret of their success lies in the fact that they refer to their taxis as 'limousines'. I held Isaiah and began what would unfold into a legacy of ogling and child-adoration in this country while Gaibi rifled through paperwork at the desk of the taxi company. Shortly we were climbing into a stout SUV with air-conditioning and a very kind driver who greeted us with a well enunciated 'sawasDEE krap!' and 'welcome to Thailand'. Immediately upon arrival in a new country, one is faced with certain cultural adjustment quandaries. Do you tip the taxis around here? What is a good rate for Bangkok taxis these days anyway? Could it have been that we shouldn't have gone for the first one to approach us in the airport? Shrewdly, the taxi service knows that such capacities of reason and judgement are considerably hindered after international flights. This, they know, is the time to strike.


Arriving at our destination, another moment of potentially serious trouble: the driver does not seem able to locate the address of our hotel. More panicky thoughts begin to flutter through your mind, oh God...all I have is this address scrawled in Thai on a little piece of paper that I have scrupulously kept by my side since our departure...if he can't find the place then what are we supposed to do? How do we go about choosing another place? Surely if we ask him he'll take us to a safe place to sleep...but this is just the kind of scam they warn you about in Lonely Planets and internet tour blogs: "Beware of taxi scams in the city in which the driver will seem not to be able to find your hotel, offering instead to take you to a pre-arranged, overpriced guesthouse where you will spend the night with rats that have been trained to steal your passport..."


Soon thereafter our taxi driver realizes that the address is actually an alley, kicks the taxi into reverse and drives us to the door of the hotel. He quickly unloads our 100+ pounds of luggage and waits by the car. Still unresolved about the tip issue, i rather clumsily ask if i should, to which he responds, "Very kindly, sir," and i ask to see the tab. With a modicum of confusion, we finally go to the cab and he produces a receipt which says something like 750 baht (or around $25 for a 30 min ride.) This is extremely steep by Thai standards, with the average cab fare for a 30 minute ride rounding out to less than half this price. This is what we get for biting the 'limo' bait. I hmm and hah a bit and produce a 1000 note, telling him to keep the change as I am thoroughly exhausted and can't imagine trying to think it over. His face explodes into a generous smile as he accepts the bill, bows politely and speeds off in his Rav4. Walking into the hotel Gaibi asks, "How much did you tip him?"

"About 250," I reply. "So 1000 altogether."

"You paid him again?" She asks.

"What?"

"I already paid at the desk in the airport."

"Well we just made a new friend, I guess."

Too tired to lament, the very friendly hotel staff again proceed to haul our belongings to the elevator without the benefit of a cart, and we go to our room.

Jet lag leaves you in a strange universe. At four AM we find ourselves in a 7-11 down the street from the hotel. It is raining outside and we stand in the distinctly flourescent light of the convenience mart, perusing the selection of snacks. Shrimp crisps, dried fish strips, sponge cake rolls, crab-flavored corn trumpets, chocolate wafers...

We collect an armful of foil-bagged munchies and make for the register. On the way out we grab a few tiny juice boxes and by 5:30 am we are passed out on the bed, garnished with wrappers. It was the only sustenance available at that hour, and only the hard-lagged brain can only take so much Thai soap-opera in the earliest hours of the day.

At 8:30 am we awaken again, feeling like we haven't had our V8.