January 3, 2010

Happy New Year one and all! I wish for everyone who’s eyes scan this page all the very best of health and peace and contentment for the new year of 2010. I thought of each of you in a special way as I watched the New Year arrive over a 15 hour time span – thinking of each time zone that was just then welcoming the new year.

Four hours of my New Years Eve day was spent at the Buddhist Temple in Nakon Sawan – about 2 hours north of Bangkok. Puy and her friend, Pop (who I’ve been calling Bob for the last few days until I finally asked how the name was spelled) – I didn’t really think they were saying Bob but it was the closest I could get without asking AGAIN. So, anyway, we were at the temple between 10 and 2. in the middle of the day. I will try to explain this experience.

It was a special event at the temple because the year was ending. There were many different things to do. For example, one was to lie down in a ‘coffin’ kind of box, hands folded up in prayer holding a flower and some kind of cloth, and the monks sat above and chanted. Another was to buy offerings for the Buddha and light incense and candles and pray. There were many more and all of this took time. Then, at 12:00 the formal ceremony started. We each filled out forms with our names, day of the week of our birth (I guessed at mine!) and the date of birth. These were placed in a bowl along with some string and a prayer flag and some seeds & rice. The praying and chanting started and then we wrapped the string around our heads which had been attached to the prayer flag, which had been attached to criss-crossed strings above our heads that connected the whole building.

There were 4 monks by now, sitting on the platform in front of us. There was much chanting and then a break for 10 minutes. Quite a challenge to sit on the floor for all this time! Then we started the second session and this one was way more aggressive. The monks level of noise in chanting had risen to a very strong and forceful chant and then they started doing all this crazy kind of chanting to expel all the evil from us as the year was ending. The chanting was very powerful and 2 guys on the floor ‘freaked out’. Apparently this happens because they have tattos and have ‘much bad and evil’ in them and they want to fight when this kind of chanting evokes such emotion. One of the guys was right behind me and had to be held down by about 6 men. It was a little scary, but very very interesting to be part of this. Puy told me that she was surprised by the ceremony and that it was a very unusual one and I was very lucky to see such a thing because it does not happen very often. \\

Puy and Pop took me for lunch afterwards to a little hole in the wall restaurant where we had a really different kind of noodle soup. Not the regular run of the mill noodle soup that is served for lunch everywhere in Thailand! This one had jelly fish and squid and octopus in it! It was quite spicy but oh so yummy and the cook was concerned lest I didn’t enjoy it. I assured him it was great.

Then – Puy and I went to her friends who is a hairdresser and got our hair done! Just randomly! This is the main thing about ‘hanging out’ with Puy. I NEVER know what is coming next and its always a big curve ball! So – Pop lay down on the couch at the hairdresser’s and slept while Puy and I got our hair fixed up. Then we went shopping for groceries and to KFC for dinner (yuck – but it is very popular in the bigger centres here). We were tired by then – wandered through the night market and then home to bed. There were fireworks going off like crazy outside my bedroom window but I was so tired I ignored it and slept.

The next morning we were up at 5:00 to leave to drive out to Puy’s parents place. We went straight to another temple, which is right near her parent’s place out in the country. We met up with her family at the temple for another ‘session’ to welcome the New Year. We arrived at 9:30 and had another less eventful ceremony in a very open air and beautiful temple. All the people brought food for the monks and after the ceremony they ate, and then we all ate.

The farm is lovely! It is so peaceful here and I have met some wonderful people. Puy’s Aunt and Uncle, who are my age more or less have been here for the weekend as well. Even though it is difficult to have a conversation we have had a lot of fun. Puy’s Mom and Dad are great and so welcoming. They have a little store attached to their house, so all the villagers stop by for cigarettes or whatever and visit. They just happen to have beer for sale, so I got into the beer with Pop and Mic – (Puy’s unlce is Mic) Sooo much fun with them and we laughed our heads off trying to understand each other. Then Puy’s Mom drank rice wine and the villagers were stopping by for a ‘shot’ and to point and stare and talk about me. I always let them know I know when they are talking about me and they just laugh.

We have had some wonderful meals together. New Years Day we had a BBQ – Thai style. I think I mentioned what that was like at a restaurant I went to with the students in Chaiyaphum. This was the same cooking experience but just at their home, all sitting on the ground on straw mats. Yesterday we had some more challenging stuff for me! Pork intestines cooking in lemon grass then mixed with some delicious Bap (I think). Ground pork, garlic, onions, chilis, fish sauce, rice flour. I made the rice flour! We fried the rice for quite a while – uncooked – just brown in the wok. Then I ground in with a mortor and pestle until it was flour. Then mixed it with the pork. They had to wreck all that good stuff my adding the intestines! Then to make it just a little worse, they poured fresh blood over it and cooked it again. I couldn’t do that one. We had some great meals though and just visiting was fun.

A strange thing has happened here. Puy’s great grandmother of 92 years has been failing and so 2 months ago she was in the hospital Puy’s Dad and Mom went to the Monk and the Monk prayed for her healing. She has not gotten any better and no worse since them, but she has been just lying down and refusing to eat. So – yesterday morning Puy’s Mom and Dad went back to the temple to pray to Buddha to release her because she is not enjoying her life anymore. They waited to do this until after New Year’s day because apparently that would not have been a good day to die.
Sooooo – anyway – last night around 9:00 great grandmother passes away!!!! I couldn’t believe that was actually happening.

There was much commotion after that. People coming and going all night. I haven’t seen Puy’s Mom since then, but the great grandmother was her Dad’s Mom. They are grateful for her passing and even more grateful that it happened AFTER New Year’s Day. They are busy preparing for the funeral now. I should explain that the great grandmother does not live at this house I am at. She is about a kilometre away.

I was a little confused because yesterday Puy’s aunt took me in the car to meet some other relatives and at that house there was a very old woman of 92 as well. I thought, when they told me that great grandmother had passed, that it was the woman I had just sat with and watch chew the beetle juice and tobacco. I was a bit weirded out about that – and somewhat relieved, for whatever reason, that it was NOT her.

So it is morning and I was up before sunrise to ride a bicycle along the dirt road and take pics of the rice paddies and bird and sunrise and moon set. So beautiful! Now – I sit and wait to be taken out of here and to a bus so I can get on my way. Puy has disappeared somewhere to get a photo of Great Grandmother developed and said she would be back to take me to the bus. That was ages ago – so, once again, and possibly for the last time! I sit here in the dark in the middle of the bright, hot hot sun! Patience is a virtue – I remind myself!!!

My plans for Laos have changed again. I have been advised to pass on the boat down the Mekong River idea. Its either long and slow and very uncomfortable, or fast, noisy, smelly and dangerous (because of the fast part!) So – because I am so close to Bangkok and the family is dealing with funeral preparations now, and not going back to the city of Nakon Sawan yet as I was expecting to be dropped off at – I will just get on a local bus headed for Bangkok and figure out my next move from there..

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