Tour de Nan

This past weekend, I got a visit from my good friend Hannah, who is teaching through PiA in Vientiane, Laos this year. She swung through Nan at the tail-end of her month-long teaching vacation, and like any good Thai hosts, we showed her the utmost hospitality. We provided fine amenities (a child-sized bicycle with faulty handle bars on which to get around); sampled traditional Thai cuisine (D-Milk and regrettable sticky rice logs); and showed her the historic sights of Nan (The Fifth nightclub). It was a classic Nan weekend of being gawked at by the locals, casual drinking, and relaxation... but with the added bonus of catching up with a friend from afar.

My Southeast Asian Other Half in the N-a-n

Hannah arrived on Friday afternoon - about an hour before I finished teaching and could make my way through a sea of high-fives to head home. Since I don't have an exact home address, and since we only had a vague idea of when the bus would get in, and since our Thai and Lao SIM card cell phones can't connect, we were going with a just-see-what-happens approach to meeting up. Everything worked out, though: Hannah ran out of a noodle shop - where she'd been sitting enjoying a Coke and studying Lao flashcards - and flagged me down as I turned down my street.

Friday night, Emily, Nicole and I took Hannah to our favorite riverside joint, which we call Ricky's - partly because we can't read the Thai restaurant name, and partly because we've befriended and nicknamed the waiter there "Ricky." Ricky doesn't speak any English, and never understands my attempts at Thai, but between charades gestures and a lot of smiling, we've formed a special bond with him. We even gave him our Christmas card last month, with our names scrawled on the back; he practically ran to the kitchen to show the rest of the staff, and now calls all of us "Anna?" (the only name he can pronounce).

In with the in-crowd

Ricky did us right with our usual order of cashew chicken and tom yum soup, and afterwards the four of us hit up a few "bars" (huts-that-serve-beer-and-whisky) and headed to The Fifth. Hannah was introduced to our motley crew of singer/DJ friends who work at the club: Gookgai, Poo, Tee, Pi Pong, Koko, Golf. They were excited to meet a new farang, and Gookgai even jumped off stage to sing at our table during one of his sets. Ajaans by day; groupies by night.

The rest of the weekend was spent pretty lazily. Saturday was Thailand's National Children's Day, Wan Dek - a holiday that sounds like it would solicit the celebratory equivalent of Grandparent's Day in America, but being a Thai holiday, is celebrated with great vigor here. Kids with balloon animals and paper hats and other free loot roamed the streets, play parks were set up at almost every public space in town, and a lot of businesses closed all weekend for the holiday. Of those that were open, I showed Hannah my favorite spots in Nan ... and was quickly reminded why Nan's appeal lies in its charm and personality, not its tourist attractions.

Cows, river... Welcome to Nan!

Monday morning, Hannah came with me to school before heading to the bus station. I asked my 6th grade class to "interview" her, one question per student, as a warm-up activity. Questions ranged from "When is your birthday?" to "Who are your best friends?," and a lot more kids wanted to know about the weather in Laos than anything about America.

Over the course the weekend, Hannah and I talked a lot about our respective experiences living in Asia so far. Even though we're in the same program, and living pretty close to each other on the Southeast Asia map, it sounds like we're having pretty different experiences in terms of work and daily life. But the appreciation for meat on sticks, stray three-quarter cats, and abundant mistranslations appears to be just as strong across the border. It's a small continent after all.

Zen and the Art of Copy Machine Maintenance

9 out of 10 days, my morning starts with 1 jammed copy machine, 62 copies of a worksheet to make, and 5 minutes left before class. How's that for a math problem? If I won the lottery, I would donate brand new copiers to Bandon Sriserm School, and chuck ours out the third floor window (I have a hate-hate relationship with it). 

Last week, lack of copied worksheets led to skit writing, rehearsing, and performing in my 6/1 class. I was pretty impressed by the final products, especially by Khim 1's group, who created a play about a girl named Olivia and her cousin Brian trying to find a girl named Gloria's orchard. I didn't fully understand the story after reading their script - especially where they came up with the word "orchard" - but they went with it, and it turned out hilarious. My favorite characters were Flook as "Ray the Fisherman," who makes Brian sell his watch for a ride across the river, and Fon as "old woman," who can't hear anything anyone says. Fon even broke out the baby powder for her hair to get in costume:

Fisherman Flook and Old Woman Fon 

(In other 6/1 news, I found out today that three of my 6/1 students, Khim 1, Fam and Cake placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd - respectively - for 6th grade in all of Nan Province. One of Emily's 3rd graders did similarly well, and one of Nicole's 5th graders placed 25th in the entire country. We are proud ajaans).

Last Friday night after school, we visited a sprawling street fair outside Wat Phumin in the center of town. It was packed full of street vendors selling everything from coconut ice cream and fried quail eggs to pet bunny rabbits (complete with matching bunny sweaters). We also watched a skit that was being put on for the whole crowd... we weren't sure what the story-line was, but it involved characters in wigs parading signs that said "NO SMOKING ALCOHOL!" and a main character who was impersonating a farang (white person). It also included some pretty hilarious song and dance numbers.

We were told about the street fair earlier in the week by Cho, our friend who runs a coffee shop and art supply store next to school. Cho got my number a while back to call us for events like the fair. The other day - fed up with the English office's disgusting instant coffee sludge I have to down every morning - we decided to visit Cho before class and throw down some baht for real coffee. At 8:00 am, however, the shop was closed up... Cho's wife was at the counter in their supply store next door, and said he'd be back in ten minutes. We walked back to school, and as soon as I sat down at my desk, my cell phone rang. "Hello? Did you come for coffee? What do you want? I'll bring it to you at school." I gave him our orders and assured him he didn't have to hand-deliver our drinks, and that we could be back at his shop in 2 minutes. Now that's some friendly neighborhood service. 

I learned today in Kindergarten that Pee has officially changed his name to "Yellow." I can't tell if he's aware of the irony, or if he simply found a new favorite color... When we did worksheets in class this morning, he ran up to me with a yellow colored pencil and danced around while saying "My name is YELLOW, my name is YELLOW!" Pee also caused to me to burst out laughing in the middle of leading the Alphabet Song, when I looked over and saw him trying to lick his Ikkue's ear. (Ikkue was oblivious). Never a dull day with this kid...

Tonight we went to the Asian version of Souplantation for dinner: choose your own meat (or squid balls), choose your own noodle. The live one-man band at the restaurant sang "Country Roads," which is a very popular song here but never ceases to feel out of place in Thailand. We watched as the kid at the next table over created his own version of an ice cream sandwich at the dessert bar: two scoops of green ice cream plopped inside two slices of white bread. Mmm?

Emily, Nicole and I went a different route for dessert, stopping by D-milk for an evening snack. The woman there knows our orders by heart (Oreos inside the milk!), and stops to say hello whenever we see her around town. In America, I might feel embarrassed about this fact, but in Thailand I only rate food on a scale of WTF? to Delicious.

 If I come home morbidly obese,
D-milk will be the culprit... but I will have no regrets.

Right now, for the first time in 3 months, the shutters to my bedroom windows are wide open and the A/C has been off for 48 consecutive hours. Writing this will probably jinx it, but we may finally be seeing cooler days in Nan. In any case, I'm excited to wake up to natural sunlight tomorrow, ready to face a big cup o' instant coffee and a broken copy machine. I can't complain.