Company!

I never thought I would get to share my experience with a friend but at last the day has come!  Andrea who I met in Koh Phi Phi traveled up from Bangkok and stopped in on her way to Chiang Mai.  She is planning on staying here for two days to experience real Thailand.  That so far has included a full moon monk ceremony (have no idea what its really called), and a trip to the village.  She also got to thoroughly understand the concept of a "thai time."

We started the morning at five thirty.  I pre-warned Andrea that the next few hours would involve a lot of chanting and might get rather boring.  She took everything in stride and appreciated the experience.  It also helped that we socialized quietly during the ceremony.  I explained how things worked in the Buddhist culture while she explained to me about Hinduism, since she spent two months in India before coming to Thailand.  

We had a typical day out at the village; Laying in hammocks, playing with the Dow's son, and eating food.  Taiten, Andrea, and I went for a walk and ran into some un expectantly huge leaves.  I seriously have never seen leaves that big in my whole life!!    

Its amazing how much Taiten has grown up during the five months I have been here.  He used to be this shy, timid person who only communicated with well known associates.  However this has greatly changed!  When he first met Andrea he had no problem talking to her and was even eager to join in activities with Bow and us. 

Bow, Andrea, and I drove the motorcycles to go get lunch, which was noodles.  We took Sak and Sa's bikes which where both standard.  Bow had to start the bike for me the first time but I had no problem getting it started by myself the second time around.  You have two extra foot pedals, one which is the brake, and the other to change gears.  I was surprised I caught on so quickly, and was riding like a pro in no time. 

Since this is my last month I have been getting photos with everyone in the village. I'm going to print a copy for each family as a gift and memory.  I absolutely love the village and the people and I hope they feel the same way about me too.  I consider them as my extended family and look forward to coming back some time in the future to see their growth.

The village was good until Andrea got an allergic reaction to noseeums.  She started to get progressively redder and had uncontrollable itching.  I asked Mon if we could leave soon so Andrea could take her medication back at the house, but the concept of soon was almost two hours later.  "Thai time" is a pain in the ass sometimes.  I have adapted to it but there is the odd occasion when it bothers me.  I could tell that Andrea was extremely uncomfortable, so I went to find Mon to see if I could hurry things up.

When the family wants to go somewhere I literally have five seconds to get out the door.  No one tells me whats going on and they never give me a heads up to when we are going to leave.  However when someone else wants to go somewhere its a struggle just to get out the door.  This is a common occurrence when we want to go camping.

When we finally got back to the house Andrea took her medication and had a cold shower which brought her back to health.  We decided we would try to do some baking with what ingredients we had.  However we had to wing-it and substitute a lot of the ingredients.  We made a brownie cake and a apple pie cake which turned out alright.  Even though they turned out very different than they would back home they tasted really good to us.  I think this is since we both haven't had dessert in months.  Even Mon and the kids really like them.