You experience everything in Thailand (222)

In the series of stories that we post about something special, funny, curious, touching, strange or ordinary that readers in Thailand have experienced, today: "Foster Parents Plan and the cute Bum-Bim" 

BUM BIM

In the nineties I kept a Thai girlfriend. Her name was Bum-Bim, she was 7 years old, lived with her grandmother, and did fun things at my expense. Like going to school and diligently coloring pictures for the distant Dutch sugar daddy. At least, that's what I was assured by the organization that looked after her well-being, Foster Parents Plan.

My other (and adult) Thai girlfriend at the time thought that I could transfer that monthly money to her much better. After all, she was just as Thai, just as poor, and just as looking for a generous lender. She was right, but didn't get it.

TO VISIT

Later, however, I met my current life partner and wife Oy. And things changed.
She also heard about my Foster child, and thought I couldn't afford not to visit Bum-Bim while I myself spent weeks wasting money in Thai pits of destruction.

After I feebly cited the great distance and then the language barrier as a good reason not to go, she spontaneously offered her services as an interpreter.
It immediately elicited the laugh of the day, because her spoken English would make coal blush.
But she insisted, and eventually I called Plan anyway. We turned out to be welcome, with Plan arranging the interpreter. This eventually resulted in two bus tickets for a ride from Pattaya to distant Khon Kaen.

Quite a long drive indeed. During stops at stations I became aware that for food and drink-pedaling Thais, a farang traveling by bus is a gift from heaven. For someone like the undersigned, only used to watery cups of coffee on draughty Dutch stations, a complete revelation.
If we had gone into all the outstretched trays and bulging ice buckets, we would never have reached beautiful Khon Kaen. Because of succumbing to heart and liver fattening before that time.

BUSY

At three o'clock in the morning we arrived in Khon Kaen, sleepy, and after a short cycle rickshaw ride ( during which the crunch of the bicycle chain, which had not been lubricated since the early Iron Age, kept us wide awake ) we entered the hotel a little later.
There, the desk staff managed to sell us a room for a good 2000 baht per night, under the guise of being busy. The fact that we could have played a game of football in the dining room the next morning without hitting even one other hotel guest having breakfast was a detail, but still.

The next day we were picked up by a van by a female interpreter and two male escorts. The latter for the safety of Bum-Bim. Logical, because after all every pale face from that vague foreign country could say that he came to visit a sponsor child.

On the way to Bum-Bim's hometown, a few more jars of Ovaltine, boxes of washing powder, and two kilograms of sticky candy were quickly stocked at the market. As a gift to the family. Grandma took the stuff from me a little later with a black-toothed smile, standing next to a shy Bum-Bim. A sweet child, with whom I hardly exchanged more than two words.
Fortunately, friend Oy got on very well with her, which was quite a relief for me.

NOSE OF THE FARANG

This was followed by a walk to the nearby school, and an introduction to BB's teacher. And his female colleagues.
Curious about the visiting farang, these ladies immediately dropped all other activities, leaving entire classrooms full of Thai futures to their fate.
Looking past them I could see and hear that the Thai kids seized the absence of order and authority with both hands to kick some ass.

Later, after translation by my own walking dictionary, I understood that the phrase 'farang, chamuk jai' applied to my front. Which once again proves that the schoolchildren at that time deserved a big pass for the subject of observation. Also on the part 'climbing school desks and making funny faces' some would one day graduate cum laude, I was sure.

Slowly dripping off my chair through the steaming heat in the classroom, I was updated on BB's school achievements, and hobbies. The latter was definitely not 'helping grandma with the housework', as the interpreter wanted me to believe. The first child that jumps for joy when mother calls to help with the dishes has yet to be born.

THE HEAD

After half an hour of chatting, the headmaster appeared on the screen. A tall, oversized ex-military. Includes camouflage suit. This one was, (my unspeakable thanks for that), clearly not informed of the arrival of a strange chap from Holland.
For a moment I feared very harshly that I would be removed from the school grounds by this bear of a guy. Fear prompted by the Chief's most foul look. Which one usually reserves for rude colporteurs, or pushy tailgaters.

Anyway, luckily it thawed out later, and after my heart rate had dropped below three hundred again, we spent another hour strolling around the schoolyard. We reported back to the hotel desk later that afternoon with some cheerful pictures of Bum-Bim and classmates.
Where, despite the peak crowds, the room key was handed over to us in no time. Where else can you find such staff.

OTHER PLANS

That was the first, and also the only time I met Bum-Bim.
I was no longer so charmed by Plan. First of all there was the slight heart attack that I could have been spared by informing the headmaster.

Then the two paid 'security guards'. Who, apart from driving the van, I have not been able to catch doing any useful activities.
That is, if you don't count past naps in the shade, smoking lace-shag, endless chatting and scrounging drinks.

Add to that the piling up of messages about bows sticking to everything at Plan, the director whose daily salary was more or less the Balkenende norm, and the fact that the entire village floated on money from that same Plan.
So Bum-Bim could go to school in her uniform after all. So I stopped playing sugar daddy.

However, for the money that I saved every month, I had already found a great other destination.
Because this time I was going to sponsor friend Oy.
To come to the Netherlands.

A tight plan, if I do say so myself.

Submitted by Lieven Kattestaart