Thai Whiskey, Limbo, and Shaboozle: An Ajaan Affair

Yesterday was an all-around fantastic day - totally Mangkorn.** We started our morning at Hot Bread, our new favorite breakfast joint that just opened this week after a month-long holiday. It's this tiny cafe near the bus station, with a "buy and rent" bookshelf of used English books in the back, and a menu chock full of western-style breakfasts like egg scrambles and sweet Thai banana pancakes. It's run by a very sweet Thai woman, Usa, who sent us away with an extra bag of peanut butter cashew cookies (we've visited her quite a bit this week). Next, we got insanely good and insanely cheap Thai massages at a spa down the road... This will probably become a regular thing.

In the evening, we went to visit our friends for a get together in Tha Wang Pha, a town just north of us in Nan Province. We biked to the bus station to park our bikes, grabbed a song taa-ou (sort of a taxi-bus... basically, a pick up truck with that carries about 10 passengers - or as many as will fit - on two benches in the covered truckbed), and arrived in Tha Wang Pha about 40 minutes later. Tha Wang Pha is tiny. I mean, our friends who live there come to where WE live to go grocery shopping and see the "city." From what we saw, it is made up of dirt roads, rice paddies, a whole lot of chickens, and a few schools. Markus, Dave and Jesse picked us up on motorbike from where the song taa-ou dropped us. They teach high schoolers at a "boarding school" in Tha Wang Pha, and live in an apartment on the school grounds. A lot of their students come from the hill tribes that surround northern Nan, and live on the school grounds as well. At the apartment we met a few other American teachers visiting from Pua and Chiang Rai, a young Algerian guy named Malik, as well as Yong and Joy, two Chinese teachers at Markus's school. We broke out the Thai whiskey and Leo beer, and the international ajaan festivities commenced.

Anna, discovering Markus had a kitchen (ah!) and finding herself back in her element, whipped up a delcious feast of rice and spicy stir-fry. Yong made us chicken with bagel-like dumpling bread, which he had somehow managed to cook in his kitchennette-apartment upstairs. The girls from Chiang Rai made fresh guacamole with avocados from the market. Malik brought sweet sticky rice with bean curd stuffed inside hallow bamboo sticks for dessert. I... ate. And helped with dishes.

The night rolled on in the hot humid air (the guys unfortunately have no AC - yeeesh), with games of Beirut and Flip Cup (because really, college doesn't end just because you're graduated and in Southeast Asia), an impromptu limbo competition, sparkler fireworks, a dance party and Shaboozle. Shaboozle is essentially a poor-man's version of Bagg-o or cornhole, invented by Markus, Dave and Jesse. To play, a wooden chair is propped up upside down by a broomstick. An empty beer can is placed on top one of the legs. Another of these contraptions is set up about 20 feet away. Each team throws a frisbee at the other team's upside-down-chair-broomstick-beer-can. If you hit the chair, it's 1 point. If you hit the beer can, it's 2 points. And if you knock the whole thing over, it's a "shaboozle" for 3 points. Each team tries to make it to 21 points first. I don't know how fun this sounds, but trust me: it was really fun.

This morning, with a solid whiskey hangover intact, I woke up early and sat out on the porch... surrounded by chickens and roosters pecking at the night's leftovers on the ground, and waving hello to the few high school students who walked past and giggled. It was completely silent, and totally peaceful. A while later, once everyone else had woken up, an older Thai man arrived at the apartment. His name is Tong, and he is another teacher at Markus's school. He apologized for not being able to come to the party last night, and sat with us for a while talking (his English is very good). I immediately liked the guy. Jesse had him show us all the English slang he knows, some of which didn't even sense, but was hilarious: "What's crackin?" and "You should take the small boat to China." Tong told us how he's lived in Nan most of his life, but when he was 12 he left home to go to Bangkok and train as a Muay Tai (Thai boxing) fighter. His family was very poor growing up, and he was one of 8 children. Now he himself has two children, both of whom are doctors, and he says he is now in "a lot of debt" from paying for their schooling. He went on a lot about how "strange" and unfair the world can be, talking about the disparities between upper-class wealth in Bangkok and the hilltribes, like the Hmong, in northern Thailand. "We are all living on the same earth, but some people can be so rich, some so poor... some so stupid, some so wise," he said and laughed. Tong then went upstairs and brought down a huge watermelon and a bag full of dragonfruit. He sliced it all up and had us eat it. It was a delicious breakfast.

Tong offered to drive us to Nan, since he was going there anyways to watch one of his students fight (he is still a Muay Tai trainer). We graciously said yes, not wanting to wait for a song taa-ou to come by. We got into his car and he asked if we wanted Thai or American music. We shrugged and said that he should pick. He popped in a CD and the speakers started bumping hardcore techno music. We stopped once when Tong wanted to buy us some sticky rice at a roadstand, and then we hit the highway: 4 American girls and a 50-something year old Thai man piled into a pickup truck, blaring techno music through the scenic hills of northern Nan, and driving about 20 miles under the speed limit the whole way into the city. I couldn't stop laughing to myself the whole way home.

**Mangkorn: a new expression, taken from our favorite Thai nickname... can used as a verb or noun to describe or associated with anything totally awesome, good, or delicious... as in: "Man, that Thai massage was totally MANGKORN," or, "I just MANGKORNED that entire bowl of noodles." Spread the word.