'The most beautiful flowers grow at the edge of the ravine!'

If you are not a follower of The Prophet or at least a prophet, then you know that life is just an illusion. By structuring it and embedding it in cultural frameworks, we believe we can bring some reality to it, but what that reality entails turns out not to be very clear on closer inspection.

In the end, we all hitch a ride on a rollercoaster through time for a while as the illusion unfolds between beginning and end. The two certainties we have to make do with.

In my immediate environment I know few followers of any prophet. That gives the freedom to choose one's own path or at least to have the illusion that I do. Because my road sometimes deviates from the usual paths, it might be nice if I can take you along that road for a bit.

A common opinion is that men are simple creatures who only want one thing and I can confirm that this is the case with me. It's just hard to define that one thing. In my case, the search for it usually leads to Thailand. Don't ask me why, but it has been proven empirically. For the past two years, he's met a graceful young lady who, at regular intervals, manages to convince me that I've found the "one" thing. Hallelujah, and they lived happily ever after you might say. Yes, but it's not that simple.

One of the many obstacles on the road to ultimate happiness is potential in-laws. Fortunately, I now have some experience with that. Once again I decided it was time to meet them, because such a meeting always leads to a deeper insight into the background of your loved one. So I booked plane tickets to Udon in NE Thailand, the Isan, and rented a car at the airport and went with the current woman of my dreams to her native village Sawaang Daen Din, the source of all my happiness. From that moment the adventure begins.

You arrive at a fairly modern airport and get a contemporary Japanese car, eko-drive, what more could you want. You actually only feel that you are driving away from civilization when you end up on the first provincial road, where the driving behavior is not quite what you were used to and the vehicles are also becoming more and more primitive. Then at some point you arrive in the dull village that you thought was the final destination, but then you're not there yet. From there a journey begins on increasingly smaller and less and less asphalted roads, ending in a bumpy path between rice fields, for which the eko-drive was not designed, but which it nevertheless defies.

In the end you are faced with a primitive ruin, the kind where farmers store their agricultural tools with us. This is only the final destination. Your loved one appears to have grown up here, in a hut where there are no beds and no toilet. There is electricity and therefore a TV. Even a refrigerator is missing, but there is running water and what else is there are the in-laws-to-be.

The introduction is a fascinating ritual. As a Western man you are by definition an interesting conquest by the daughter, but outstretched hands or warm embraces are not in the arsenal here. The greeting and the conversation first focus on their daughter. Then the attention is slowly shifted to the “alien” she has with her. Of course it has to be somewhere and it has to have water. Hesitantly, some words are addressed to him and when it appears that he says something back, the ice is somewhat broken. After fifteen minutes, something that looks like a conversation unfolds. It is then a bit about village life and about the journey by plane and a suitable accommodation, because it turns out that he does not know much of the Thai language used in the Isan.

Fortunately, that accommodation is never a problem. In the first place because, thanks to the loose Thai sexual morality, you can always go to a “short-time” motel as a last resort. These are hotels consisting of simple rooms with a carport. You can drive in with your car and hide it discreetly behind a curtain, to spend a few hours with your sweetheart on a bed under fluorescent lighting. There is a need for that everywhere in Isan. Miraculously enough, however, in this case there was a beautiful resort within one kilometer of the parental home, consisting of beautiful teak wood, luxuriously furnished houses, located in a beautifully landscaped garden with ponds and flower beds. Besides us there were only two other guests and such a house costs just over a tenner per night. Don't ask how it's possible, just enjoy it. This slogan actually applies to everything in Thailand.

Once that has been arranged, we can work on further details of the introduction. The bottle of whiskey brought along for the father plays an important role in this. After a few glasses of this spirit realm, little is left of the initial hesitation and soon all sorts of other people appear out of nowhere, consisting of distant cousins ​​and uncles who do not avoid the bottle and also that "farang", whose fame has already preceded him, would like to see him in the flesh. Soon an exuberant atmosphere prevails. Unfortunately, experience shows that after a few more bottles of lao-khao, a horrible distillate of rice that smells strongly of petroleum, are touched, that atmosphere almost always turns into total drunkenness. It's a bit of a shock to see the father, who had been so praised beforehand by his daughter that I thought I was going to meet one of the most respectable Thais in the country, to see him roll drunk on a mat to sleep it off. The man's appearance was a cross between an Apache Indian and a faded guitarist from a hard rock band. The only plus was that my prejudice has been confirmed again, namely that Thai men are good for nothing and should be avoided wherever possible.

Rarely do I recognize the image that people like to paint about poor hardworking rice farmers from the Isan. Poor, sure, but hardworking? I know that rice does not harvest itself, but often this is done by the same woman's hand that also runs the entire household and cooks the rice. Rightly so, the mother is central to Thai culture, next to the king and the Buddha.

This mother was also a completely different story. A modest friendly woman, who functioned as mia noi, or concubine of father and gave him this lovely daughter. In addition, he has a mia luang, or main wife, who is somewhat older and with whom he has fathered four other children. Before there are too enthusiastic images, just a comment that it is unusual in Thailand for a man to openly have two wives. Although marital fidelity is rare here, it is mostly secret. The fact that these two women turned out to live together under one roof in one household with one man is a big exception and it was made clear to me from the first moment that such a thing is not for me.

During my four-day stay, some trips were made with the family and finally my duty was over. As a Westerner you are always a Don Quixote-like appearance in NE-Thailand when you are introduced by a local lady, but I managed well. It is always important, without showing this, to keep control. Three ingredients are crucial here. Timely assessment of how situations can develop, possession of a car key and sufficient Baht in your pocket.

The wonder remains that this strange world can sprout such an endearing appearance as my charming Bibi. The most beautiful flowers apparently grow not only on the edge of the ravine, but also in the rice fields of Sawaang Daen Din, which aptly means 'the light of dawn spreading over the land'.