We're baaaaaaaack! Over Fruit, Volume 7

After a long hiatus, here's my and Emily's latest "Over Fruit" episode - brewed fresh for you this afternoon.

Enjoy!

Everybody Loy Kratong!

Loy Kratong-ing: the light festival in Chiang Mai (Source)

This weekend was Loy Kratong ลอยกระทง, the annual Thai lantern festival held on the full moon in November. In cities and towns across Thailand, huge paper lanterns are set off into the night air, along with firecrackers and sparklers. People also assemble and decorate small floating rafts (about 5-6 inches in diameter) from banana tree trunks, leaves, flowers... and sometimes colored ice cream cones and sliced white bread (this is Thailand, after all). Incense sticks and candles are placed in the center of the raft floats, then sent down the river, hundreds at a time. (Loi means "to float" in Thai, and kratong is the name of the rafts).

Sending kratongs down the river: a time to forgive and forget.

I've been doing some research on exactly what the meaning of the lanterns and rafts is, and there are a few different explanations. Basically, sending off lanterns into the sky or down the river is supposed to be like sending off one's bad luck or bad past experiences. Letting go of the rafts and the lanterns is symbolic of letting go of one's grudges, anger, and jealousies with the hope of starting afresh and turning over a new leaf in life. Some people apparently even cut their fingernails or hair and add them to the raft, to symbolize getting rid of the bad parts of one's self. Others say releasing Loy Kratong lanterns is supposed to bring good luck, and that the practice originated as a way to honor and thank the ancient River Goddess.

In class this week, I noticed the 6/1 students were reading an assigned book in English that compared Loy Kratong to the American "festival" of Thanksgiving. Although the two holidays obviously have no connection in origin, there are indeed some interesting similarities. Both Loy Kratong and Thanksgiving are held in November, but not on a set date (instead, the full moon or the last Thursday of the month). Both involve giving thanks: Thais give a shoutout to the River Goddess or to Buddha with their candle floats, or simply feel gratitude for shedding a bad past, while Americans give thanks for whatever it is they are grateful for in their lives. Both holidays are held at the end of the calendar year, and in their respective ways allow people to reflect on the past 12 months and prepare for a fresh start.

Wear your helmet on Loy Kratong.

Friday kicked off Loy Kratong, and our whole school marched to the river in the morning to send off lanterns. Every kid brought, bought, or made their own kratong float. Creepy ol' Director Sukda began the riverside ceremony by lighting an enormous paper lantern. He let go a little early, and the flaming lantern proceeded to drift horizontally instead of vertically, floating right into a pile of 4th graders and almost lighting little Tart on fire. After the janitor had plowed through the crowd to reset the lantern and saved the day, all the students and teachers lined up at the river and let their kratong go on the water.

Saturday night, after some Christmas shopping at the Hmong night market, Emily and I decided we'd celebrate Loy Kratong our own way with a mini Nan "pub crawl." We went to not one but TWO restaurant bars and had a beer at each. At midnight, we decided to really go crazy and head over to the Fifth Night Club - mostly because we were hankering for the overpriced and delicious popcorn they sell at the front door. 

It's hard to explain exactly how, but the night took a few big turns, and ended with Emily and I at a stranger's apartment eating a 5 a.m. feast with the entire Thai staff of the Fifth, including: Tee, a baby-faced male singer at the club, who has impeccable fashion sense and a huge crush on Emily; Puu, the 34-year-old club manager, who in retrospect I'm fairly sure is a lesbian - and possibly thinks I am too; Pi Pong, the bassist who only knows how to say "I love you" in English, and liked to use it every time he refilled the ice in my glass; Nong, another band mate who had a long mullet-ish haircut and was wearing linen pants, but somehow still pulled off the large "THUG LIFE" tattoo on his forearm; and Som, also a singer, who was celebrating her 22nd birthday that night and was the one to invite us over to her apartment "to eat food" as the club was closing. Naturally, we said yes.

Now, in America, late-night munchies usually lead to a Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru window. In Thailand, they involve 1) a trip to the talat (outdoor food market, open and in full swing even in the wee hours of morning), 2) buying a full spread of fresh fish, clams, noodles, veggies and spices, 3) bringing it home to prepare on banana leaves and cook outside in a portable hotpot, and 4) eating with friends while sitting cross-legged on grass mats until you're positively eem lao (full). By the end of the meal, Emily and I were indeed eem lao, and finally, after exchanging phone numbers with literally everyone in the group, we biked ourselves home at sunrise. 

Last night (Sunday) was the full moon and official Loy Kratong night. Everybody in Nan - babies, teenagers, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, tourists - gathered at the river to send lanterns up into the sky and float kratong down the river. Fireworks and sparklers were going off in every direction (again: safety more of a light suggestion than a rule of thumb here... We saw more than a few paper lanterns accidently go up in flames, and another few get caught midair by electrical power lines. You just kinda cross your fingers and hope for the best). 

All night long, the sky and the whole Nan River were filled with glowing candle light. Hey, if I can't have a real Thanksgiving this week - Loy Kratong made a mighty fine substitute holiday.

October Vacation, Part 4: Along Halong

Halong Bay, Vietnam

Halong Bay, Vietnam. GO.

Everyone reading should immediately locate Halong Bay on a map, then buy a direct plane, bus, and boat ticket there. 

The entire time we spent in Halong Bay, I was thinking to myself, I didn't know places like this actually existed in the world. Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and nominated as one of the world's "Seven Natural Wonders" - for very good reason. For as far as the eye can see, the bay is an endless plane of jade green water interrupted by thousands of huge craggy limestone cliffs and islands, that rise up like crooked various-sized skyscrapers balancing on the water's surface. Anna, Nicole and I signed up for a 3-day, 2-night tour of Halong Bay in the Hanoi airport (unfortunately, tourism is set up such that it's hard to visit without joining the dreaded Package Tour), and by Friday we were eager to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city for it. We set out early Friday morning, and were cruising on our sailing junk cruise ship in the Bay before lunch.  

Cruisin

The first day of our Halong Bay tour involved sailing on the ship all afternoon, visiting the "Suprise Caves" located inside one of the Bay's huge karst formations, kayaking, enjoying an afternoon beer on the top deck of our ship, and swimming off the boat at sunset. We ate a dinner feast of spring rolls, vegetables, rice, and pork, and spent the rest of evening chatting it up with our fellow package tourists. As a whole, they weren't the most lively bunch (post-dinner karaoke had to be forced down most of their throats, even when we started everyone with a rousing rendition of If You Wanna Be My Lover)... But everyone was very friendly and eager to swap travel stories. There was a Belgian woman who spoke 6 languages and had taken a 5-month leave from her marketing job in Germany to travel by herself through Southeast Asia; an Irish Gaelic couple who were traveling Asia and Australia for an indefinite amount of time (but were pining for the Guinness back home); two young girls from Spain, who mostly kept to themselves; and an older, very heavyset Russian couple, who smiled a lot and loved to swim in their speedos, and who required a Vietnamese "page boy" to tag along on the tour for translation help (they didn't speak one word of English - the Official Language of Tourism in any country, it seems).

Post-impromptu sandal hike. At least the view was worth it. 

On Day 2, we were dropped off at Cat Ba Island, the biggest of island in Halong Bay. Feeling a lot like sheep or herded cattle, we were passed off to a new tour guide in the morning (the gregarious "Won"), shuttled onto taxi boats, then tour buses, and finally dropped in front of Cat Ba National Park. We had actually signed up for the bicycle tour option, but had instead ended up with the hiking group - who were about to climb up through the island jungle to the tallest viewpoint on Cat Ba. We told Won we weren't really equipped for a hike, pointing to our sandals and beach gear. He apologetically promised he would rent bikes for us later in the afternoon, but that since we were now at the Park anyways, we could take an "easy hike" to pass the time. So hike we did: one hour, all the way to the very top, through the jungle, in shower-shoe flip flops. Sabai, sabai.

 

Eat your seafood IN THE SEA.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on bicycles and at Cat Ba beach, which had only a handful of other tourists on it and incredible panoramic views of the bay. The beach was breathtakingly beautiful, and Nicole and I stayed floating out in the green bay water until we were too pruney to stand it any longer. Around the land point from the beach, a small island bay is home to an entire "floating fishing village," which is exactly what it sounds like. Local fishermen live with their families in one room homes that float out in the water, about 100 meters from the shoreline. Alongside the homes are floating seafood restaurants, to which people can hire dinghy boats and eat what's gotta be the freshest seafood meal in the world: while you wait, you can watch your fisherman chef pulling nets up from the water beside you.

Cat Ba Beach: gorgeous.

The last day of the tour, we were shepherded back on a boat and taken to Halong City - the dirty, crowded, overdeveloped gateway port to Halong Bay. The tour company served us lunch there, and we sat at a table with a large group of Vietnamese tourists. In a typical display of Asian food-hospitality, they all reached over the table to serve us from plates of rice and chicken, and showed us how best to eat it, before even touching their own food. One guy even left the restaurant after we'd cleared our plates to buy chili-spiced guava from a street vendor, and fed half the bag to me. (I will never tire of being fed delicious food from total strangers in Asia).

From Halong City we headed back to Hanoi, and caught an 18-hour overnight sleeper bus to our next stop in Vietnam. ...More on that transportation adventure, and the marvels of Hoi An, in Part 5. 

October Vacation, Part 3: Do You Know The Way to Hoan Kiem Lake?

Hanoi, Vietnam

Celebrating a millennium of Hanoi.

10 p.m., our very first night in Vietnam. Our taxi driver has stopped the car about six kilometers from our hostel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. "No! No!" is all he can explain to us in English, as he tosses our backpacks out of the van and impatiently waits for us to get out too. Another recently-ejected passenger begins to argue violently with the driver on the sidewalk, while yet another gestures towards the throng of people marching through the nearby streets and shakes his head at us: "Cars won't go there tonight."

Great.

Exhausted from a long day of travel, mapless, and with only "Hello" psuedo-memorized in Vietnamese, we began to feel helpless. The area we were standing in was near the highway, with no hotels or tourist offices in sight. We'd landed in Hanoi right in the middle of its weeklong 1000th Anniversary celebration, for which hoards of Vietnamese had flocked to the capital city. The crowds and huge military parades made the streets so people-thick that we couldn't even walk down most of them.

A few minutes later, two elderly Vietnamese women dressed in pajama pants approached us from the crowd and asked us something in Vietnamese. We shook our heads I don't understand, but hoping they'd be able to give us some directions, mentioned the name Hoan Kiem, the large lake inside the Old Quarter of Hanoi. The shorter one shook her head back at us, then yelled excitedly "Hoan Kiem! Hoan Kiem!", grabbed my and Nicole's hands, and took off with us. 

Half an hour later, we were still handholding with the Vietnamese grandmothers - crossing streets and weaving in and out of the crowd without ever letting go of their hands. We realized at that point that we had walked great big circle around the parades, and were not actually getting any closer to one particular destination. Several times, the women would stop to talk to one of the many police officers on the street corners, who were usually slouched over on a plastic chair smoking a cigarette. The police officers' responses to their questions were always the same: they eyeballed us, laughed, shook their heads, and pointed in some other direction. Clearly, the Old Quarter was not gonna happen for us this night. 

Just when we were ready to bail on the old ladies, they led us down a series of dark quiet side alleys away from the crowd. One of the women stopped at a gate, pulled out her keys, and a moment later we were standing in her living room with her daughter, Ha, who had evidently been woken up just for the occasion. We explained our situation to Ha and her extremely outgoing 3-year-old daughter (who "looks like a boy because she is lazy about eating"), and she told us we would have to wait until morning to get to the Old Quarter, but that she would help us out tonight. She took us into the kitchen and had her sister make us noodles. While we slurped them and watched a Vietnamese soap opera with the rest of the family, Ha and her mother went out on their motorbikes looking for hotels in the neighborhood that would accept foreigners (many are not licensed to host non-Vietnamese guests).

By the time we'd finished dinner, Ha was ready to take us. I said goodbye to my new 3-year-old bestie and the grandmothers, and we walked a few blocks to the hotel. Ha purchased us water bottles and bananas, and arranged with the hotel owner a one night stay and a taxi ride in the morning to the Old Quarter. She even left us her number in case of emergency. It was the most incredibly kind "Welcome to Vietnam" gesture we could have asked for.

In the Old Quarter, we stayed at a dormitory-style hostel run by a friendly Vietnamese guy named Mike. It was probably the cleanest place we stayed on the whole trip, and cost all of $5/night (which included free breakfast and free pre-dinner beer). Mike talked with us in the lobby every morning and evening, and gave us recommendations things to do in the city. Our room had a total of six beds, three of which Anna, Nicole and I occupied, and three of which were empty our first night there. The second night, we came home from dinner to find that a young Vietnamese mother had taken a fourth bed, along with her one-year-old baby. I was worried for my sleep that night, but it turned out that the baby made far less noise than the mother, who answered her cell phone every hour at a wholly unnecessary voice volume.

Hoan Kiem Lake by night.

Hanoi was full of incredible sight-seeing. We visited ancient pagodas, preserved traditional Vietnamese homes, museums, monuments temples, water puppet theater; we spent most afternoons sitting by the lake and resting our feet (Hanoi is a fairly huge city, but taxis were usually out of our budget, and the bus system was terribly confusing). At night, the 1000th Anniversary celebrations began. Around 5pm, the inner city was closed entirely to car traffic, and tourists and locals alike would poor into the streets, waving red banners, wearing head bandanas and stickers, carrying sparklers, balloons, anything. It was fascinating to watch, and impossible to avoid. The area Hoan Kiem Lake hosted a huge parade each night, with elaborately-costumed dancers surrounding pink floats and tossing out goods to the crowds.

Everybody and their Vietnamese mother in town.

One night after dinner, we went for ice cream by the lake and then sat on a stoop to people watch. It wasn't long before a couple asked to take their picture with us (a pretty standard foreigner request in Asia). Two minutes later, another family. Then a pack of teenagers. Then a mother wanted us to pose with her baby. Then a group of young guys just wanted our picture on their cell phone camera. Then another group of kids. And so on and so forth for about forty minutes, while we just sat on the sidewalk. My cheeks began to hurt from smiling. We contemplated making a sign: 1 Photo 10,000 dong.

PHOOO

Hanoi granted us our first authentic taste of pho, a Vietnamese noodle dish that I could probably live solely on if I had to. To save money, we decided we'd do as locals do and only eat at street stands our whole stay in Hanoi. This worked fabulously, except for one night when we had trouble finding a "table" at the stand we wanted to eat at - "table" meaning a set of Kindergarten furniture: for some reason Vietnamese like to sit on chairs and at tables that require bringing your face to your knees to eat. After getting no recognition whatsoever from the servers at the stand for a good 10 minutes, we gave up and walked across the street to another noodle stand. About 5 seconds before we were going to be served at that stand, Nicole made a crucial observation: the pile of pig tongues, hearts, and noses resting on the chef's table. ...Our search for dinner continued.

Next on the Vietnam tour: a cruise around Halong Bay.

HBD, AJ CP

So I thought my 21st birthday was pretty epic, but turns out a birthday celebration from 11-year-old Thai children can rival Ivy Inn karaoke.

I came into school yesterday to find my office and desk covered in balloons, courtesy of my wonderful roommate-coworkers, who also plotted with my 6/1 class last week to have a surprise party. Before class, one of the Thai co-teachers, Aj. Wandee, brought me a chocolate cake that read "Happy Birthday Caitlin, September 2th." (It was close).

I try not to let it go to my head.

At 9am, I had my first class with 6/1. Halfway through the lesson, Khim1 told me she wanted to practice her English Competition speech for the whole class, but that she wanted to do it next door in the stage room. I agreed and we all went next door and let Khim begin speaking. Mid-speech, someone hit the stereo and "Happy Birthday" (chicken dance style) started blasting from the speakers. The entire class filed into the room and onto stage, broke out in a coordinated song and dance number, then turned around and had "H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y" spelled out in huge letters on their backs. They presented me with a huge card reading "HBD AJ CP," signed by the whole class.

Gifts galore

Then, as if I wasn't already dying of laughter and gratitude, another group of students came into the room in Snow White costumes and put on a skit about why the Witch was not invited to my birthday party. Next, Khoonsuek and Ka-noon came on stage with their violins and played me "Happy Birthday." Finally, every student pulled out a gift from their pocket or backpack and handed me them one by one - each present more hilarious than the last. I was showered with Santa Claus teddy bears, cell phone key chains, a pot of fake flowers, a snow globe, a Spiderman wallet, a Lion King II book, and an assortment of other adorably random things. We ditched the rest of my lesson plan for the day and ate a delicious cake instead (that read, "From Your Lovely Students").

At night, I went out for dinner with some other farang teachers and a few Thai friends, who treated me to my first pizza in 5 months. Other gifts included an American flag from my Swiss and Belgian friends, and a knit wool scarf from Cho and Orm (because heaven knows, I'll need it when it drops down to 70 degrees here). Really, I got everything I could have ever wanted.

It was a very very happy birthday.