Let Sleeping Serpents Lie

An old joke describes a New Yorker proudly presenting the awesome, roaring Niagara Falls to a visiting Texan. The Texan, starting with a chuckle, soon was into a full-bellied guffaw.

"What's so funny?" demanded the indignant New Yorker.

"Well looky here!" drawled the Southerner, "We got a plumber down in Texas that'd fix this leak in five minutes!"

So goes a number of "Texan" jokes that poke fun at the stereotypical Texan who thinks everything is bigger or better in the Lone Star State.

When it comes to the flora and fauna of Thailand, I'm beginning to feel like the Texan. The lush, prolific, and gigantic representations of the animal and plant kingdoms here continue to leave me awestruck. Some of our flowering trees look like 100-ft bouquets straight from the florist. Some of these wild orchids would be just too big to pin to your mom's Sunday morning outfit for Mother's Day. The dragon flies should be honored as a special division of the Royal Thai Airforce. And, you really haven't jumped high until you've felt a one-inch-long red ant scurrying across your bare foot. Among the flowers, green leafy plants, insects, and reptiles which all come Super-Sized, there's the bigger-than-normal-life aquatic creatures.

When I first visited the Mekhong River, bordering Thailand and Laos, I chuckled at what I assumed was a doctored picture of a "sea serpent" caught in the river by US Marines several decades ago during the Vietnam War. The picture hangs on many a souvenir shop wall at open air markets along the Mekhong.



However, in the last couple years I've been coming across more stories and news reports about truly mammoth creatures that inhabit these waters. Last week, Time-Asia magazine had a startling picture of a captured alligator which dwarfed a pickup truck over which it was draped, bound and snout-taped. The 30-ft (10-meter) 'gator looked like something out of a horror flick. Prior to its capture, it had eaten 27 hapless human beings over the years! Then there's the Mekhong catfish. Now there's nothing uglier than a wide-mouthed, beady-eyed, whiskered catfish, no matter where he hails from. But there's something REALLY ugly about one that is big enough to eat you. Hence, today's story from on-line Associated Press . . .

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Thursday June 30, 7:18 PM (AP)

Thai fishermen catch world's largest freshwater fish

Thai fishermen caught a 293-kilogram (646-pound) catfish believed to have been the world's largest freshwater fish ever recorded, a researcher said Thursday.

The 2.7 meter- (8.9 feet) Mekong giant catfish was netted May 1 by villagers in Chiang Khong, a remote district in northern Thailand, and weighed by Thai fisheries department officials, said Zeb Hogan, who leads an international project to locate and study the world's largest freshwater fish species.

He confirmed it was the heaviest recorded fish since Thailand started keeping records in 1981.

"This is the largest individual fish of the species that's listed as the biggest in the Guinness Book of World Records," he told The Associated Press by telephone.

The fishermen had hoped to sell the fish to environmental groups, which planned to release it to spawn upriver, but it died before it could be handed over, and was later chopped up and sold in pieces to villagers to be eaten.

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The surrounding exotic wildlife plays with my imagination, as well.

The grass on the little plot of land next to my duplex is reaching for the sky due to two factors: rainy season and my disinclination to break into a sweat trying to remove it. It took only a month to go from shoe-height to chest-deep. As I glanced out at the patch through my kitchen window last week, I caught an ominous sight. It was just on the edge of the grass jungle. Near the top of a tall tuft of grass I saw an unmistakable serpent's mouth slowly opening and closing--like he was sort of yawning. It was a big, ugly, dark mouth. I thought I could see flashes of red which must have been that evil darting forked tongue. Horrified, I tried to determine if it had a hood behind its head. I was remembering that Isan has the world's largest concentration of hooded King Cobras. Hypnotically, the yawning mouth pivoted back and forth, slowly opening and closing. It was almost like he was trying to taste the air, to see which direction live prey might be. I shuddered, despite watching behind my iron-barred, mosquito-screened window.

Then, before my disbelieving eyes, the dreaded mouth and head made a full 360-degree pivot (a la "The Exorcist"). Incongruously, it then disconnected from the neck, and gently fluttered away on the tropical breeze wafting through my weed-patch. It was only when the "serpent mouth" was in full flight did I realize I had been watching a rather large black and red butterfly sunning itself on my weeds. While stationary, the slow flexing of its wings had me convinced I was watching a loathesome snake-head on the lookout. Oh my, time to see a shrink.

With the recent reports from the Mekhong, now I've got something else to worry about. Over the last two years I've had occasion to go down to the water's edge at this mighty river, a couple of times dipping my fingers or toes into the warm muddy current. Now, my news and picture-poisoned imagination makes me think twice before doing so. That second thought advises, "Why not just let those behemoths live in peace, undisturbed?"

Or, like those Thai villagers, I will opt to meet my catfish in a skillet. Thank you.

Staying Out of Black Holes

Er, may I pass?

All in a day's motorcycle ride . . .

Although elephant sightings downtown are commonplace here, I'll never forget the first time--that weird feeling--of coming upon an elephant in darkness on the outskirts of town while riding my motorbike.

Southeast Asian towns are quite dimly lit, so there's not enough general light to illuminate BIG things like elephants, trucks without headlights, a bulldozer parked overnight, a stack of hay that fell off a cart, etc. (all common highway hazards here). Further, your little motorbike headlights typically illuminate only about 30 feet in front of you, so you do come upon things quite quickly in the darkness here.

So what do you see when you come upon an elelphant at night? It won't be a gigantic semi-illuminated body in the road. All you'll see will be a black hole. You begin to gradually notice that the dim lights of town ahead have a strange, big, mysterious black hole. It just doesn't compute. As you get closer, the hole gets bigger--and sometimes starts moving. It's enough to make you question your sanity. Only when you nearly are under its legs do you realize you've come upon an elephant taking up half the roadway.

Further, elephants have a pesky tendency to panic and rampage all over anyone or anything that startles them. A normal-sized adult elephant can pretty much stomp the livin' daylights out of a Toyota pickup, not to mention my little Honda motorbike. I've been lucky enough to make last-ditch maneuvers to avoid those close encounters of the large kind. Others haven't been as fortunate as I. Their epitaphs read something like "Overcome by a Black Hole", or "Left This Life as a Pancake." Not my vision of how I want to check out...

Fortunately, the highway division of Thailand has thought of everything. I recently came upon an official notice in the newspaper for drivers, and thanks to the translation help from a friend, I share it with you. So just in case you are suddenly confronted with an elephant on I-405, here's some motorist tips which will certainly come in handy:

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1. Try to avoid the freeway which borders the nearby national park between 7pm and daylight, especially where there are elephant warning signs.
   
2. Elephants can effectively block the road in a number of ways--standing in the middle, walking along the road or feeding on roadside vegetation. In all of these cases, cars should not try to pass them.
   
3. If you see an elephant blocking the road, stop your vehicle, then...
   
   
   • First check that there are no other elephants to the side of you or behind you. If there are, stay still. Usually the elephants will be moving together. Let the elephants next to you, or behind, walk past you and join their friends.
     
   • Do not turn off your engine or your lights at night. If you do, you cannot see where the elephants are and turning your engine back on again may scare the elephants causing them to panic and maybe attack the vehicle.
     
   • Keep your distance from the elephants, at least 20 meters (60 feet).
     
   • If there are vehicles in front of you, closer to the elephants, give them space to maneuver. If the elephants move towards them, they may need to reverse in a hurry. If the vehicles are too close an accident may occur!
     
   • If the elephants walk towards you, slowly reverse and keep your distance, until the elephants leave the road. When they do, you can drive on.
     
   • If the elephants walk away from you, perhaps going out of sight round a corner, follow them slowly. Again keep your distance until they leave the road and you can pass by.
     
     

• Last but not the least, all motorists should check with traffic police once in a while to see whether elephants have been seen recently.
  

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There you go. Don't say you weren't warned.

An Afternoon in Washington State

With moss-covered evergreen trees, sword ferns, and alpine lichens, I felt suddenly magically transported to Olympic National Park's rain forest in Washington State, USA. The cool 65-70 degree temperatures (yes, farenheit) added to the illusion. I had just summitted Thailand's highest peak, Doi Inthanon on April 14, 2005.

OK, "summitted" and "peak" are stretching it a little. A paved road to the top made it convenient for our little songtheaw (red pickup truck with bench seating in the back) to huff and puff it's way to the top of the 8,415-foot mountain. We stopped a couple times for the little overheated engine to cool off. Thai pick-ups are just out of their realm in these airy mountain regions. Then there's the "peak"--actually a heavily forested rounded mountain top, crowned by a white buddhist shrine. Not my normal Cascade Mountain peak-scaling experience.

A group of young monks cool off at one of the
mountain's many scenic falls.

However, beautiful waterfalls, Hmong hilltribe villages and formal gardens mid-mountain (courtesy of the Royal Thai Airforce) added to the unique trip, about two-days' bus ride from my home in Mahasarakham. This was the environs of Chiang Mai, near the Burmese border in north Thailand. The formal gardens were full of flowers and plants one would find in grandma's garden in Washington or Oregon: snap dragons, pansies, fox glove, lilacs, juniper bushes, and other very USA Pacific Northwest flora.

Since this was the highest point in Thailand, I merely went for one of those "been-there, done-that" experiences with somewhat low expectations. After all, I had actually climbed peaks nearly twice that height back in the USA. Surprised, I came away with a little nostalgic touch of my beloved Washington Cascade Mountains and grandma's garden in The Dalles, Oregon. While most of the Thai in my group shivered uncontrollably, I for a moment, felt like a Seattle robin, just briefly released from a tropical sauna cage into my native refreshing mountain habitat.

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[For more information about the mountain, please visit my contribution to Summitpost.org by clicking here.]

A Blanket to Reckon With

I came home to a muffled cry coming from S's room. S is a university student who rents an extra room in my apartment, and is normally no trouble at all. His cry sounded like a distressed voice trying to talk through a mattress. I opened the door, and indeed it was as it sounded. He was laying face-down on his bed, apparently unable to move his head. Coupled with his useless effort to talk, it looked very unnatural.

"What is it?" I asked, alarmed. All I could make out was a muffled phrase of distress. So I tried my question in Thai: "Arai Na?!" Same unintelligible response.

I stooped down close to his head, and decided to pull it up from the bed--apparently something he seemed unable to do by himself. To my surprise, the whole bedspread came up with his head. Did he try to swallow the bedspread? A strange suicide attempt? Did his face get smeared with super-glue, then he fell asleep on the bed?

His face turned from distress to impatient irritation. "Get this brlllllghghghkt off my brdhglsdfcs!"

"What?" I yelled in his ear.

"Get this brlllgghghhkt off my braydghffflces!!!".

I started pulling on the blanket, but in pain he stumbled after it, with his face firmly attached to the bedspread. OK be gentle. The guy is in obvious pain and distress.

I finally wedged a couple fingers between his face and the blanket, enough to look in more closely. Yes, the blanket was somehow attached at his mouth. A slight twist, and the light revealed the source of the blanket's imprisonment: S's new braces. Something the dentist never warned him about ("stay clear of chewing gum, corn on the cob, and those clinging blankets!").

I thought we'd never untwine some of the loose threads of the blanket from his braces. Many minutes of untwining, punctuated with muffled "Oy!'s" made slow progress of separating the prey from captor (and which was which?).

When we finally freed up his sore and tired mouth, the story spilled out. While laying on his tummy on the bed, he had momentarily put his face down to the blanket and yawned. That's all it took. Baited and hooked. That's about the time I came home.

Then the funny side of it hit. We both laughed until the tears came. We imagined what it'd be like taking him to the dentist with a full bedspread attached to his face. First there'd be the nighttime 9-kilometer motorcycle trip with the blanket wildly flying around his head in the wind. It'd look like a ghost or banshee flying down the highway, and the Thai are terrified of both. Then the long wait in the waiting room and the quizzical stares from the 50 other waiting patients. What's this? The grown-up Thai version of Linus with his blanky? Then tucking him into the dentist's chair, blanket and all. I'm sure it would have made dental history, for at least that office.

The offending blanket,
in its more benign days.

I told him that if he insisted on catching blankets with his braces, he'd have to eventually get some kind of hunting or fishing license--and that he'd have to gut it and clean it all by himself. No more help from me!

2004 is almost gone. But among many more important and profound events of the year, we'll always smile about "The Day of the Blanket Attack". In light of the things that others are going through, may all our new problems be so small and solvable in 2005. Yours, too.

Happy New Year

A Memorable Very Cool Christmas

CHRISTMAS DAY 2004
I expected a rather bland Christmas Day as I've been nursing a severe cold for just over a week. I looked at it as one more blessed day alternately in and out of bed to get my strength back. However, when I opened my eyes this morning, the 8-day-old raw ache in the throat was gone. "Nice way to start Christmas," crossed my mind.
However, my warm pillow thoughts were rudely interrupted by a loud yell outside the front door: "Whee-pooh! Whee-pooh!". For some reason, Thai-Isan visitors never knock on the door, they just stand outside it and yell their lungs out. And what in the world is "Whee-pooh?" I figured, "Oh no, another utility collection. Don't they know it's Christmas?" Here in Isan, you don't get a utility bill. For water, electricity, and telephone services, someone just rides up to your door on a motorcycle, yells until you open the door, and puts their hand out. No itemization, no receipt, just an empty hand and a smile. Cash only, please. The person is never the same individual. For all I know, some farmer could pull a scam and collect water charges from everyone else in the neighboring village. It hasn't happened yet, but my suspicious Western mentality waits for the day.

I'm sure I was a sight: unshaven, tousled hair, boxer shorts. The Thais are always shocked any time when a "farang" (white guy) opens the door, but a disheveled farang really gives them their money's worth. Two service-uniformed men in red stood outside my door, like a couple of Santa's helpers, smiled, and in unison beamed "Whee-pooh!"
I stammered in Thai, "I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"Whee-pooh! Whee-pooh!" they repeated, thinking that the repetition would somehow break through my dense demeanor. One of the guys pointed down my hall and made a shape with his hands like a tall box. No, I don't have a cash safe you can steal. Besides it's Christmas, the giving season. He jabbed his finger again toward the hall. "Whee-pooh!" The fridge could be dimly seen in the kitchen at the hall's end.
Oh, they want to see my refrigerator? That useless hunk of junk taking up space in my crowded kitchen? I bought it new the first month I came to Thailand, and it hadn't worked since the third month of use. I thought I'd stick with a tried-and-true American brand, but alas, in Thailand, the customer is not king--even if the king has an American appliance. Yeah, your warranty says "5 years", but it doesn't say how long they'll take to fix it after it breaks. They did make 6 trips over 15 months and no one could fix it. After two such visits, it ran for 10 minutes after the technicians left, and then stopped dead. I then had to make one of those "Guess what happened?" visits to the store. At times, the manager would just look at my feet, sadly shaking his head. No words. Just big, sad eyes. I know he thinks I sabotaged the thing after his boys left.
At one point, they replaced my blue door with a black one. Now I have a two-tone blue/black refrigerator. My fridge looks like an old car with a mis-matched front fender from the junk yard. Don't ask me what a new door has to do with getting the thing running, but it made someone feel good.
For over a year, I made countless trips to the appliance store, ineffectually venting my frustrations in baby-talk Thai, until both they and I got sick of seeing each other. "Why don't you just replace the WHOLE THING with a new one?" I begged. Response? Stares like I had just stepped off an alien spaceship. I gave up about 6 months ago. I'm sure they were delighted to be rid of my "Me fridge no worky!" routine.
Enter, Christmas Day...

Finally giving up on my comprehension of "Whee-pooh", the men in red brushed past me down the hall to my fridge. When I flipped on the kitchen light, I had my own little private Christmas epiphany. Of course. "Whee-pooh" was the Thai's desecration of "Whirlpool." Duh.
Over the next hour and a half, they took the motor in and out at least four times. Of course, the door also came on and off a few times (what is it with the DOOR???). A lot of hmm-ing and haww-ing (in Thai, they say "Oy!" loosely translated, "Which end is up?"). I watched with a slight smirk--what do these Santa's elves know that the previous six pairs of technicians didn't attempt? Suddenly, one of them stood up resolutely while the other packed their tools away. He proudly pointed at the contraption: "Whee-pooh dai!" ("Whirlpool works!")
Oh yeah? This jingle bell didn't fall off the sleigh just yesterday. I know better.

Well, here I am 12 hours into Christmas. It's been 4-1/2 hours since they left. The little box is humming away like a little angel with a festive carol stuffed in her halo. The freezer shelf is turning frosty just like a white Christmas I once remember. So far "The Box" has passed all other on-off records. Could this be a dream come true--on Christmas yet? In a couple months, the hot summer season starts creeping up on us, and a cold glass of water would taste so-o-o-o delightful coming out of that little ole' ice box...
Ah, a student just showed up with a couple of ice cream bars to celebrate the day with me. I know I won't eat mine quite yet. My frozen treat will go directly onto the freezer shelf, where I will retrieve it at my LEISURE later this afternoon when the temperatures hit the mid-80's. At that time, I will luxuriously thrust my sweaty hand into the man-made arctic air of my modern appliance and leave it there just long enough for a souvenir freezer-burn before extracting my frozen delight.
I can't resist a wide-eyed wonderment in the spirit of Dickens' Tiny Tim: "God bless us, every one!" followed by a slightly impish grin: "...and Merry Christmas to me!"

September 2009 note:
The little Whee-pooh continues to hum right along.
(The pristine days before mis-matched fender.)

 March 2017 note:

Sadness is parting with my little WheePooh.  Someone needed it more than I.  

Happiness is knowing it's still running, 13 years on. 

Things I Haven't Seen in Six Weeks

Every now and then it dawns on me out of the blue. I shake my head in disbelief. "Can it be?" I go through this mini-litany every time I realize that since I came to remote northeast Thailand 45 days ago, I haven't seen....

...a hamburger. Didn't know human life could exist without Mickey D and the Golden Arches. It probably would exist a lot longer without the fat-laden patties of ground dead cow tissue. OK, I'm trying to convince myself I don't miss those juicy Big Macs, shredded lettuce and special sauce. Disregard my knuckle-biting. Argh!

...a cross on a gold chain.

...a loaf of bread. There are a lot of bread-like pastries at the local 7-11 (filled with various flavors of bean curd), but I just get a blank stare when I ask about a "loaf". Rice does for Thai folks what bread and potatoes do for Americans (fill us up).

...a piece of meat bigger than a thumbnail. Meat here is a garnish, not a main dish. But when you're sick, meat is the suggested remedy (despite the fact that I was finally craving some kind of veggie or chicken soup with only a trace of meat flavor).

Mom's pot roast--a faint memory.

...a funeral home. The Thai substitute? The big Buddhist monastery next door to the school handles all funerary functions. There's a big cremation area with a tall smokestack I can see from my apartment. At night, when I smell something burning, I assume it's someone's garbage and I don't care to investigate further. My neighbor complains that it gives him nightmares of dead peoples' spirits from Hell coming to haunt him. He also claims that when he sleeps with his head to the west (position of the corpse on a funeral pyre) he also has the nightmares. Thus, no Thai people in this region sleep with their heads to the west.

...a shopping cart. I had that term as one of my class vocabulary words, but had to drop it, as the students had no idea what I was talking about. It's all hand-carry baskets here. Plus, no one buys any more groceries than they can carry in the small basket of their bicycle or motorbike, anyway. Why fill a shopping cart, if you can't transport the contents home?

...a check. It's a cash-only society here in Isan. Credit cards are rarely used, and when they are, a 3% surcharge is levied. If I use my credit card, I get this long apology about a 3% surcharge and then I have to dig out my passport so they can make a copy. A real hassle. Personal bookkeeping is real simple. I check my bank balance at the cash machine once a week, just like my lazy USA friends who didn't like to bother with a checkbook.

...a file folder. I have been to three stationery stores, the one department store, and three college/university supply stores. No one has ever seen or used a common file folder. I have organized for my entire life with file folders! With 14 classes (400 students), worksheets to review, and 400 tests a week to correct, my apartment is beginning to look like a paper recycling station. Paper everywhere in separate stacks. I've got to figure out how the Thai organize their paperwork, and learn it quick, before they have to use avalanche transponders to find me under the pile of white. (Because they surely won't find me in a file folder marked "J".)

..."normal" napkins. Thai napkins are the size of 1 square of toilet paper, and just as flimsy. They turn to white pulp around the moist corners of your mouth, and you walk away from a meal looking like you've been frothing at the mouth. It takes about 10 little squares just to wipe up from a normal meal. One of my friends in Oregon sent me a "care package" with good old American napkins (in red, white, and blue yet!). I'm the talk of the apartment complex. "Come see Mr. J's napkins! They look like bed sheets! Americans must be very messy when they eat!"

...doggy bags. You don't ask to take uneaten food home after a restaurant meal. Bad manners. So, I either don't order enough and walk away a little hungry, or order too much, and stuff myself, because I can't stand to see it go to waste. My Thai friends have no qualms about leaving half the food uneaten. Such a strange habit for such a poor area. It must have something to do with the lack of refrigeration in most of the farmers' and silk-weavers' homes; or, perhaps cooked food spoiling so quickly in this tropical heat. Meanwhile, I try to do my human-vacuum-cleaner-best to do justice to "all the starving children in ______ (used to be China) who don't have enough to eat". Nice side of the coin: due to the low-fat, low-cholesterol natural diet, here, I've lost about 10 pounds and kept it off. Try it. Stuff yourself with veggies and fruit, and watch the scales reward you!

...sponges that hold water. The Thai version is a flimsy plastic open-celled honey-combed four-inch square that will not hold more than a quarter-teaspoon of liquid. Again, my Oregon friend comes to the rescue in her care package. I use the sponge and then hide it. I don't want anyone to steal it, abuse it, or overuse it. It is my precious remnant of American kitchen life. Only I know where it is, under lock and key next to my passport, bank book, and birth certificate. Thai visitors: "Mr. J, where is that nice soft wiping thing you got from America?" I feign sleep or that I cannot understand their accent. So far so good. The secret is only with me and the 10,000 of you.

...American news, CNN or Reuters. International cable TV is about $30 a month (and $250 to install)--very high-priced for this economy. Most of the teachers and I use "local UBC cable" which is regional in Asia. I get two stations (Filipino and Japanese) which occasionally have news in English, one Vietnamese station from Hanoi, a station from India, an MTV international channel, and the rest (about 25 channels) in Thai. The Vietnamese station is government-controlled and has a great deal of political content--including long musical tributes to Communist leaders, present and past. The Indian station is 95% native comedy shows, and the humor appears somewhat juvenile to a Western observer. Embarrassment makes me keep channel-surfing. One Thai station is all American movies, but the actors' voices are dubbed in Thai. It is hilarious watching Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver talking in Thai.. I always laugh at the wrong times. The price is right: $20 to install and $3 a month. A good side-benefit: it's helping me keep up on my Japanese and Vietnamese. An excellent major benefit: forcing me to learn more Thai. When Julia Roberts, salivating, looks at a Thanksgiving turkey, points at her stomach and says "HEW MAK!" I know she probably just said "I'm hungry". I also find cartoons very educational--they're in simple Thai for small children....and me.

...a lawn. In the city, most houses go right up to the sidewalk. The backyard (if any) is utilitarian: a place for garbage, to hang clothes, maybe a storage shed or two, or a place for the family manufacturing business to operate. In the country, farmers don't mess with lawns (they often don't in the USA, either--take a drive through the backwaters of Eastern Washington or the deep South!). However, the school here is like living in the Garden of Eden (with the addition of lizards and ants, of course). With only 1 or 2 building maintenance men, the classrooms are a bit dilapidated and there's a lot of equipment which doesn't work (broken VCR's, etc.). However, the school employs 7 or 8 gardeners, showing where their priorities are. (I think about that as I look for glue at the local hardware store to replace the loose floor tiles in my classroom--on my own time, and on my personal budget--as all the teachers do!) Every day there is some major garden-related project going on at the campus. Fruit trees (mango, tamarind, lychee), tropical palms, flowering shrubs and trees abound. Tucked between classroom buildings are small red-brick walkways with luscious tropical flora on all sides. It seems like 75% of the plants are blooming all the time. Leaves and flowers are mammoth-sized. Most plants are accompanied by little placards stuck into the ground, with the plant names in Thai and Latin. There are cool marble picnic tables and benches (some under shady cupolas) strategically placed in and around the manicured gardens. It's like an $8 visit to the tropical arboretum under glass up in Vancouver, B.C. . Here, I get to walk through it all day for free. It provides a lot of shade (crucial in this country) and sense of peacefulness. A very nice benefit. Don't miss the lawn one bit.

...a church with a steeple. Yeah right. In the land of Buddha. A couple churches do exist in town, meeting in commercial buildings or nondescript structures. Congregations are poor, and their pastors do not go door to door every morning collecting Baht or breakfast as the Buddhist monks do. For some reason the monks stopped coming to my door at 6:00am. Maybe it was the pitiful "Oh please come in and join me for breakfast. It's just two bites of pineapple, but somehow I'll manage to share..." which sent them away guilt-ridden. Or the shock of seeing massive amounts of white-pale skin as I admonished, "Sorry about being half-naked with a towel around my waist, but I AM in the middle of a shower!" Or, I really think it must have been the incredulously-delivered, "WHAT? You're trying to get money out of a farang TEACHER in the poorest region of Thailand? Hello! (knocking on monk's bald head*). I'll be over to the monastery later this afternoon to collect MY donation!" Word got around. Don't bother the blasphemous farang. A couple of the monks are professors at the college. When we pass, they don't smile or stop to chat as the other professors do. They just pull their saffron robes about them, shake their heads, and do the Buddhist version of the "crossed index fingers warding off a vampire" and walk on. Message: "We don't do business with stingy farang." Oh well, gotta draw the line somewhere. I can get away with it as long as I am Mr. Director's pet.

...a bag full of rice without a live insect. You ALWAYS rinse your uncooked rice.

...a cup full of ice without a frozen insect. You get very skillful with your tongue as an instrument of selection/rejection.

...an open-air market without a fried insect. Delectable item for the discriminating palate, if you're a native of Isan.

...an exterminator. I can't find the word in my Thai dictionary. One of my e-mail correspondents suggested I call in an exterminator for the ants and lizards. I tried to describe the concept to one of my neighbors: "An exterminator is a man who comes to your house to get rid of little animals you don't want. Then you pay Baht to him." Response: a blank stare. Maybe they thought I was talking about the flea-bitten and diseased stray cats and dogs that commonly run around the school. They were probably thinking, "If you're having a problem with little animals, why don't you just eat them?"

SIDE BAR:

Last week I found a couple dozen ants going after some tiny crumb I left on the kitchen counter. As usual, I pounced upon them with glee--wiping, crushing, washing down the drain--in my own "The Terminator" impersonation. I think it was the first time one of my Thai friends caught me acting out this role. He gawked at me with a mixture of horror and concern. "Mr. J, why do you destroy these little creatures? They are only doing their natural thing!" It was Buddhist philosophy and Western culture going for a head-on collision.

"Well I'm doing MY natural thing!" went through my mind. I tried to explain how it is not good to have pests in one's house. I gave all the good American reasons.

"But Mr. J, they DO help to keep our kitchens clean when one forgets something on the counter or floor. They are only trying to help you. If you don't want the little visitors, then you must thoroughly clean the kitchen when you're through," he said, eyeing the pile of dirty dishes in my sink.

Oh. Rebuked and educated at the same time, in the gentle Thai way.

My kitchen is now crumb-less, and my visitors are less in numbers. Now they only come for the water in the sink, and I have generously given trespassing license to "the little creatures" for that. Now, one crumb on the floor, and I pounce on it with my former ant-exterminating fury (after assuring my Thai observer that there are no ants on the crumb).

And the Adventure Goes on...
JD

*Some poetic license is used to get my point across to the reader. No, I did not knock on any bald heads. Matter of fact, you don't touch ANY heads in Asia--bald or not. (An adult giving a blessing to younger children is excepted).