You experience everything in Thailand (41)

A short holiday in Patong, nice hotel, terrace, beach, sun, drink. What else do you want? This is Thailand, thought Christian Hammer. Until, at the invitation of the hotel staff, he traveled to another part of Thailand, namely the Isaan. He entered a completely different world. Christiaan wrote the following account of what he experienced there:

Vacation in Buriram

In the first week of April 1994 I was on a short holiday of 7 days on Patong Beach in Phuket. It was very quiet. On the last 2 evenings I sat on a hotel terrace. The staff had almost nothing to do and sat down with me. They said that the season was almost over and that they would then go back to their village to help plant rice. You should come there too, said one of the waiters. On the last evening I decided to go and asked the waiter how I could get there in June. He gave me his address and asked to write to him when I arrived in Bangkok. He would pick me up and take care of me.

And indeed he was waiting for me at Don Muang at 7 o'clock in the morning with a friend who also worked on Phuket. I was tired and wanted something to eat and drink and so was she. During dinner he told me that it was going to be a long drive to a remote corner of Buriram, namely in the Na Pho district. I wanted to take a taxi. He negotiated for me with some taxi drivers. One of the drivers wanted to do it for an amount equivalent to 90 guilders.

And they had arranged that I could stay in a good house of the village chief. The village chief had lost his wife and lived with a nice lady and her 2 children in a simple house. His home was occupied by his daughter and two grandsons, when they were not working elsewhere.

I was warmly welcomed in the village. Water was fetched so that I could shower in a shed. Later, water would be brought into the house.

The following days I explored the area on foot. On foot? Everyone wanted to take me somewhere with a moped. In the afternoon I sat on a stump and watched for an hour a man trying to get home his water buffalo lying in the wet field. When I got up, at least 4 snakes came out from under that stump. I didn't know how fast I had to get away.

Within a short time I got to know a lot of the few villagers. There were hardly any young people, because they worked elsewhere. The villagers engaged in rice cultivation and others in silk caterpillars, spiders and silk dye making.

I regularly received fruit from a neighbor across the street and an aunt allowed me to come and drink coffee every afternoon. She was the only one who had coffee. There was only 1 shop in the village, which sold little but varied from paracetamol to white whisky.

On the 3rd day I had to get up early at half past five to experience the rocket festival. The missiles were launched into the air after a monk prayed for enough rain for rice cultivation. Afterwards the people were sprayed with water by the monk, who showered me with a lot of water with the words "extra for farang".

In the afternoon I played games with the children of a few families, who loved it. The village chief watched as he woven baskets. Then I saw that he gave people a special massage after fractures in arms, legs and thus accelerated the healing of fractures. His fame was apparently great, because many people came for treatment.

The next day we saw a pick-up coming with a woman in the trunk who was seriously ill. Relatives had taken her to a hospital in Buriram and were told by the doctors that the woman had very advanced cancer. In the evening we went to visit with many others. It would be a farewell visit.

The next night I was awakened by a loud noise from people and animals. I looked outside and saw a sky that was going wild. I looked at my watch and saw that it was half past five. Later, the daughter of the village hall told during breakfast that that was exactly the time when the woman had died. She asked if I wanted to come to the death house, where everyone was busy preparing everything for the cremation.

When they got there, the men were building a coffin and I went to help. I was offered that cheap white whiskey and had a few glasses while the women were preparing food for the family and watched in amazement as I drank that stuff. A little later they offered me a large glass of water, which made me cough profusely. Everyone laughed and they said that the farang could handle whiskey better than water. At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, prayers were said and then the coffin was burned on a large funeral pyre.

In the last week I ran out of money and wanted to exchange guilders in a larger village. But in the bank they did not know the exchange rates of dollars and guilders. I went outside and saw a sign saying "Mastercard". I went back in and showed my credit card. And again the lady from the couch shook her head. We do not yet have a device to make a copy of the card. So gone again. The owner of the village shop offered to go with me to the provincial capital the next day. He only wanted money for petrol (10 guilders).

And the next morning he was at the door, but not alone. There were several women and children in the cargo bed with food and drink. Nice and cozy. After exchanging money at a large bank, we went on a tour. We visited an old Khmer temple and on the way we stopped, put a mat on the ground and ate rice with fried chicken and fruit and drank water. It was very pleasant for us with 17 people. We were back at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

It was a very nice vacation and I decided to come back. I was accompanied by 2 people to Bangkok in a regular bus. I stayed in Bangkok for another 2 days to eat something nice again, because the menu in that poor village usually consisted of soup of snakes or eels from the rice fields and fried frogs or chopped frogs.