More rice paddies, lady boys, and buddhist temples
Trip Start
Dec 28, 2008
1
4
18
Trip End
Jan 12, 2009
Chai Nat, Thailand
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
I go outside, and what do I see, but one car had backed up into another.
Mind you - This is in the middle of nowhere. There are NO other cars ... this is a private property with nothing but rice paddies and a few houses on it.
All I could think was "Good god.. are the rumors of asian drivers really this badly true!?!?!"
Turns out it was auntie pong pan's super sweet 15 yo son ,Jeffrey. One of the cousins' boyfriend let him drive the car, but somehow he backed it up into his mom's car. Poor kid; spent the day with red eyes. I felt super bad for him. He really messed up the driver's car, and hitting your mom's car also, not so good.
We then set out for the day and visited the land on which the (altar?) of the sisters' mother (Mike's grandmother) was. Apparently the ranch was occupied by not so good spirits, so her spirit was not at rest on the land. They moved her to a local buddhist run land, so her spirit can be at peace.
We all paid our respects and then went on to the next avenue of fun.
We then went to some kind of.. time share place that is ritzy for thai people? I am still unsure about this point of the trip. At one point I realized that the cute thai chick employee with the bad skin was actually a guy. That is a serious adam's apple s/he was sportin' there.
We finally left to go on to a really beautiful temple.
The thing with buddhist temples, or at least the very few I've been to, they have some loud speaker where someone continues to speak (words of the buddha!?) continuously.
I crawled and clambored all over. At one point I was stopped by what appeared to be Chinese people (although a SLEW of chinese moved into thailand over the years, so they could be chinese-thai). They asked me what country I was from, and how long I have been in Thailand. I think they were just proud they could speak English (which they should be.. not easy to learn the respective language of another culture that doesn't even have sounds your own language does).
Speaking of language, Thai language is fascinating, yet complex. You can have the same word five times over but a very slight inflection on the vowel will change it's meaning.
More driving more driving more driving through many many rice paddies, and back to the ranch we went. :)
