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.