BRE 23: School’s Closed

Mom at Site

As I waited at the main bus station in Phitsanulok for my mom to arrive, I could not sit still. I paced around the terminal munching compulsively on banana chips until my jaw hurt. When she suddenly appeared, it was like a mirage, her familiar face oddly juxtaposed against the ugly background of a little-known Thai city among rice fields. We hurried to catch the van back to site, as it was the last day of school and we needed to get there before all the teachers left. Everyone shrieked with excitement when they saw her and repeatedly exclaimed how beautiful my mother is, how she looks like my sister, and how our faces are the same. I think mom was overwhelmed, having barely slept, flown half way across the world, and within 12 hours of arriving, finding herself at a village school with 10 Thai women chattering loudly at her. Still, she was an excellent sport about everything, from ants infiltrating her suitcase, to biking in the heat, to squat toilets without toilet paper.
Where we would eat dinner was an issue for weeks before her arrival. Thais are obsessed with food and family. Additionally, this is a culture which puts great value on hospitality. Thus my mother’s visit meant that there were borderline battles over who would have the privilege of feeding us. In an effort to please everybody, we basically spent the entire weekend eating. Her first night at site, Mr Jon took a group of people to eat mugata (similar to Korean barbeque) for a birthday dinner. Mom was slightly weirded out by the bowl of raw assorted meats bowl placed in front of her, but graciously tried everything (except the cow internal organs). The next night, we ate with Jon, Film, Orasa, and a few others again, but this time at Jon’s house. I suggested a few dishes that were traditional and non-spicy for mom to try, like sweet and sour green curry, and stir fried vegetables. Both evenings were wonderful, with me translating back and forth between Thai and English and making all the people present laugh at my exuberance, as well as unceasing chatter. Granted I am an extremely fast talker and prone to being…verbose, under any circumstances, but Jon and Film (and the others) had never really seen me speaking English with an English speaker, and I think it showed them a different side of me, a side not restrained by a language barrier. I also kept accidentally saying things to my mom in Thai, which cracked them up.
Saturday morning, we biked to the daily market to buy food for making merit at the wat. We sauntered through the numerous stalls, buying anything that struck our fancy (anything we thought Buddha would enjoy). One of the local wats was having a fundraising events, with traditional Thai dance, which we peeked in at briefly, but made merit at a quieter, forested wat, where the head monk was kind enough to give us a grand tour, opening all the buildings in the wat complex and letting us ramble through. We spent the rest of the time on bikes, riding through rice fields and exploring various villages, as well as making som tum- traditional spicy papaya salad- with my neighbors.
We arrived in Chiang Mai on Sunday October 11 around dinner time. After checking in at the hotel, went straight to the legendary Sunday night walking market. Block after block is sectioned off in the middle of the city and packed with people, wandering among thousands of products from hand-made hill tribe purses to Thai silk scarves to $1 bracelets. I had a long list of things I wanted to buy, and all my pent-up shopping energy explored onto the night. I bought everything in sight, including linen pants, a school shirt, a purse, silver bangles, sunglasses, and woven bracelets, all together totaling under $30. We ate dinner by hopping food stalls, buying pad thai at one, dumplings at another, deep fried bananas at a third. When we had finally exhausted ourselves, I put her in a tuk tuk back to the hotel and met up with a few other volunteers at our favorite rasta bar to celebrate my birthday at midnight.
The next morning, I had a late start, having returned at 4 am. I luxuriated in the soft clean bed, dawdled in the hot shower, and ate 4-5 different types of breakfast pastry before I was ready to head out. We spent the day doing a “wat crawl” of Chiang Mai, hitting the most important temples and thereby walking from one end of the city to the other. That night, we took a long and nauseating song taio ride up to Wat Doi Suthep, where you can watch the sunset over the city from the top of a mountain, while the chants of monks and scent of incense mingle in the air behind you. Tuesday morning, we got Thai massages with hot herbal compresses and then ate traditional northern Thai curry noodles, and left for Vietnam that afternoon.

Vietnam and Cambodia
Our first stop in Vietnam was Hanoi. We arrived at night and stared out the dark windows of the cab at the foreign landscape. It felt odd to be a foreigner in an Asian country where I did not know the language. Thailand I understood, but Vietnam I did not. Our hotel was in the old quarter, and our cab meandered through narrow and decrepit streets with people and motorcycles brushing the sides of the car until pulling up to an alley and pointing to a sign for our hotel. The hotel was lovely, but like everything in Vietnam, tall and narrow in pagoda style. We dropped off our bags and went off in search of spring rolls before bed. The next day was rainy, but as it was our only day in Hanoi, we persevered and walked across town to the Temple of Literature, a Confucian influenced pagoda complex known for its beautiful gardens and education themed iconography. Vietnam is a primarily Buddhist country, but they practice a different strain of Buddhism (Mahayana) than Thailand (Therveda). Additionally, Vietnam is strongly influenced by Chinese culture, and Taoism and Confucianism are present everywhere. Vietnamese spirituality is really a blend of these three faiths, I was surprised at how evocative of China all the architecture was.
After the temple, was hit up Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which was unfortunately closed to re-embalm Ho’s body, and then to the Museum of Ethnography, which has exhibits on the dozens of ethnic tribes Vietnam’s northern mountains host. We ended our day with a walking tour of the motorcycle, wandering through markets, almost being killed by motorcycles multiple times, and buying pastries at a French bakery. Since Vietnam was formerly a French colony, loafs of French-style bread are sold on the streets by old women in conical hats, and there are actually bakeries. That night, we saw a traditional Vietnamese folk puppet show and had wine at a French restaurant.
Hanoi is a 3 and a half hour drive from Halong Bay, a UNESCO heritage site. The bay is a large body of water with natural limestone cliffs standing eerie and tall throughout. In order to fully experience the bay, it is necessary to do an overnight on a “junk” or small wooden boat. Our boat was quite small, with only 5 cabins and 9 people aboard-me and mom, an American family of 3, a pair of Australian sisters, and a British couple from Liverpool. We had a leisurely lunch aboard as the boat set off into the depths of the bay. In the afternoon, we explored some caves, kayaked, and swam, and then had a few hours for relaxation and drinks before a decadent 7 course Vietnamese dinner. The next morning, our group visited a floating village in the bay.
From Hanoi we went down the coast to Hue, a seat of the Nguyen empire and home to the opulent tombs of the emperors, as well as an old citadel. The tombs were outside of Hue proper, and we hired a van to drive us from place to place. These were sprawling complexes, with ornate decoration and mystical gardens. I could feel the ghosts of concubines and eunuchs float past me in their silk robes, living in the tombs long after their emperor was deceased, devoting their life to the memory of the glorious dead.
We continued on in our journey to Hoi An, a quaint fishing town vaguely reminiscent of Venice. We took a map from the hotel and gave ourselves a self-guided tour of Hoi An, peeking down faded yellow alleyways and into Chinese assembly halls. Hoi An was a center for trade with China, and thus there is a palpable Chinese influence. The assembly halls were covered in bright lacquer molding, mythical sculpture, and shrines. Giant incense cones hung from the ceiling in one hall, while another had a fountain made out of leaping mosaic fish. In addition to its charm, Hoi An is known for its custom shoe-making. I had a pair of leather gladiator sandals made to fit my feet for $12. Even more exciting (to me anyway) was Hoi An’s renown as a culinary center. Mom and I wandered the streets until we found a cute restaurant with a balcony overlooking the main walking street. We ordered all of the local specialties on the menu, exclaiming how we could never eat all of it, but then, of course, left only crumbs. There were “white rose” dumplings with shrimp; light and crispy pancakes where you add in your own bean sprouts, pork, and delectable dipping sauce; and fish fried in banana leaves. Vietnamese food is considerably lighter and healthier than Thai food, a fact which both of us appreciated.
After Hoi An, we moved further South to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh city. Upon arrival, we realized it was a relatively generic-looking, metropolitan city, and decided to spend the next day on a trip to the Mekong Delta instead. The trip was a jam-packed day, including multiple boat rides, visits to a rice paper making shop and a coconut candy co-op, as well as a fruit sampling, musical show, horse-cart ride, and a canoe cruise. Having accomplished all of the above in a week’s time, we felt ready to leave Vietnam for Cambodia.
Our travels in Cambodia centered around Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom, but we had a bit of time in Phnom Penh to visit the Royal Palace and National Museum, as well as a spa. Phnom Penh is a small city and I’ll be honest when I say the highlight were the praline peanut pancakes available for breakfast at our hotel. Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom however, were awe-inspiring. We hired a guide and spent the day visiting the “highlights”, as there are hundreds and hundreds of temples in this old capital of the Khmer empire. To attempt and describe the experience, I fear, would reap trite and inadequate results. The structures are incredible for both their monumentality and their exquisite detail, photographs cannot do them justice, and they made me feel almost sad, because I felt there was a something powerful, universal, and elemental in their beauty that I could not fully comprehend. My favorite temple was Ta Phrom, made famous by Tomb Raider: Laura Croft and known for its carnivorous trees that appear to be devouring the temple whole. I love the idea of nature taking revenge.
Finally after all these travels and adventures, after seeing so much in so short a time, we flew back into Thailand. I felt like I had come back home, to a place where I spoke the language and knew how to navigate. We spent two days in Bangkok before Mom woke up at 4 am to fly back to America, and I said goodbye to her, as well as genuine comfort, and headed alone back to site.