Rinse Cycle

Bangkok is now mostly drained. Only a few low-lying neighborhoods await pumping out. But for lots of homeowners on the edges of the city, now starts the hard part.

Ankle-high muck in the kitchen! Mold in the walls! Trash in the street! Mosquitoes everywhere!

Schools just opened up again yesterday after being closed for more than six weeks. That milestone will reveal how many people ended up fleeing the scene for good. If Hurricane Katrina is any guide, some Bangkokians will have decided that somewhere else suddenly looks lots better than home stench home.

The people I know who are returning to formerly flooded homes are trying to emphasize the positive—“I never liked that old refrigerator anyway,” or “the place has been needing a good scrubbing.” But their expressions give them away. The famous Thai smile looks a little forced these days.

And who can blame them?

Like the colleague pictured here, they lived out of a suitcase for as long as two months. They managed to avoid drowning and electrocution. They’re about to spend a boatload of their own money and time on supplies and scrubbing. Even when they decide they’re done, their place will still look lousy and smell worse.

At least the waiting is over, and we’ll all be able to talk about something else for a while. Let’s hope it’s a long while.

Sound and Light Show

In Thai villages, lunar eclipses come with audio. The sound track accompanying the disappearing-reappearing act consists of fireworks, the banging of pots and pans, and lots of excited giggling.

As Jip’s mom and I sat out in the yard and watched the big round yellow cookie slowly get nibbled away, we listened to the kids across the street laughing as their parents tried to explain that “science” was the reason why the moon looked different tonight.

The kids claimed they knew better. In school they’d been told about the many holidays in December—surely this party must have something to do with one of them. You couldn’t blame them for connecting the events in the sky to Constitution Day, or the king’s birthday. It was taking place in prime time, at the same hour when the royal family news airs on TV. Why else the fireworks?

A salty breeze blew in from the gulf. Eventually lights switched off in the houses and in the sky. Just the normal night village voices babbled on until morning.

All Flood All the Time

Bangkok hasn’t hosted an Occupy Movement protest, but it has been occupied. Preoccupied, even. These past couple of months it’s been all flood all the time. At the beginning the first question people asked each other was “Are you still dry at home?” Everybody’s assumption was that the water would eventually reach most parts of the city. Not whether but when.

That prediction didn’t hold water, so to speak, but neither did about a million other guesses about where would be wet and for how long. Around the outskirts of the capital today, many densely populated areas are still inaccessible by car.  Now people’s first question is, “Can you go home yet?”

Two days ago, coming back from an out-of-town trip, I watched water swallow up the wheels of our bus as we drove the main highway in front of the old Bangkok airport. That stretch of road, only a few miles from my apartment, has been submerged for more than six weeks.

The building where I live ended up dodging the flooding, so I lucked out compared to many of my colleagues whose homes remain waterlogged. I wore high rubber boots on my way to work for a few days, but I really only needed them for parts of a block or two where regular shoes would have gotten swamped.

Up until recently, nobody knew when they left in the morning how or if they would be able to get home. That’s been the most frustrating part. Good information has been very scarce. Friends of mine who live with aging parents or pets were forced to make awkward decisions about when to evacuate, knowing that the time and effort of finding temporary housing might not end up being necessary.

It wasn’t like Hurricane Katrina in that respect. Some neighborhoods were spared. Others were inundated suddenly when barriers broke or were torn down by jealous neighbors who had been wet for weeks. In the dry areas, all signals suggested that the next day might be deluge day: people sold inflatable boats and life preservers from roadside stands, stores built cement block walls out front. The uncertainty has made it hard to concentrate on anything else.

Even at the height of Bangkok’s woes, about three weeks ago, it wasn’t clear how much longer until the water made its way out of people’s first floors and into the ocean. I went down to the Red Cross to volunteer. The chatter going on as we packed family-sized relief parcels suggested that maybe the need for the supplies wasn’t that urgent. What I suspect was really going on was that the extraordinary had begun to seem ordinary.

I really really really hope that Thailand doesn’t let itself get too used to this. If the weirdness we’ve been going through recently becomes the new normal, then we’re all in deep trouble. Today at least it seems safe to say that Bangkok’s 2011 flood response phase has given way to the recovery phase, and lessons-learned conversations are beginning to happen. Yet standing water still dominates the news and conversations, and there’s no guarantee that this year’s calamity won’t be repeated annually going forward.

Drawing Lines in the Sandbags

For centuries, rainy season runoff has spread out as it flows south (downhill) through the essentially flat delta of Thailand’s Chao Phraya River. Bangkok, at around 10 feet above sea level, sits only a few miles from the sea, on both sides of the river.

This year there’s a Connecticut-sized puddle sitting just north of the city, inundating huge housing estates and industrial parks. That water is taking a while to move through and around the capital, as shown in these striking photographs.

Without retaining walls and drainage systems, all of Bangkok would be under roughly equal levels of water today. Instead, some areas are chest-deep while others are bone-dry. For those people whose first floor is full of stagnant, stinky water, government decisions about where to build the walls probably seem awfully random—especially when they can see untouched neighborhoods from their rooftops. (And let’s not forget how the residents of Ayutthaya and other upstream provinces must feel. They’ve been waterlogged, and most likely unemployed, for weeks.)

Already there are reports of sabotage along the sandbagged lines dividing the lucky neighborhoods from the not-so-lucky (the graphic shows chances that your house is flooded, by zip code). Those areas that have been allowed to soak are well aware that political choices, rather than geography, determined their fate. Further complicating those choices is the fact that the Prime Minister and the Bangkok mayor are political rivals. My sense is that the government could surely have done better, especially with its coordination of communication, but that no administration could have been prepared for this rare event.

Yet planning should start immediately for several predictable consequences. We already know the most common medical complaints: athlete’s foot, muscle strain, fever, skin disease, headache, and snake bites. Coming soon we can expect dengue fever, diarrhea, and lots of depression. Empty store shelves hint at short-term damage to the economy; longer term it’s likely that Thailand’s losses will be Vietnam’s and Indonesia’s gains.

For now my apartment sits barely on the good side of the dividing line, although the street out front is wet. If I walk 200 yards from my door, crossing over the street, a line of sandbags, and a wide canal, I find homes sitting in two feet of water. I’m doubly fortunate for having missed ten days of in-city stress while I was up north in Chiang Mai. The worn-out faces on my colleagues at work (or at least the faces of the 50% who have been able to make it in to the office) show how close many Bangkokians are to the breaking point.

New neighborhoods become submerged every day. Most reports suggest that the floods won’t go away completely until December. As a precaution, residents have parked tens of thousands of cars along the edges of elevated highways and on-ramps. Even though this situation makes traffic even worse than usual, these cars aren’t towed away—there’s no dry place to take them. When the 2011 Thai flood history gets written, it won’t be pretty. Already the tale is plenty nasty, and it’s far from over.

Far-Reaching Flood

Everyone in the country is affected, whether or not their home is wet. There’s a national paralysis. Now that the waters are hitting Bangkok head on, Thailand is feeling the consequences of having made the capital so central to all decisions, distribution, and discourse. People in the big city who normally spend their days running businesses or government departments or taxicabs are instead barricading their homes and heading out of town to places far from the flood plain.

Those places, in turn, find themselves with shortages of everything from car parts to chocolate chips. Not only are factories and distribution networks inundated, but an estimated million-plus Bangkokians are now looking elsewhere for their essential supplies.

I managed to become one of the Bangkok refugees because of a previously planned long weekend in Chiang Mai. Three days magically lengthened into ten. The boss OK’d my request to telework for a couple days, and then the government declared an emergency holiday from Thursday through Monday (perhaps bowing to the reality of widespread absenteeism). Locals are grumbling that the influx of cars from the capital is snarling Chiang Mai traffic. No doubt they’re right—I've been running into Bangkok friends while walking down the street here.

Tomorrow the office opens again. My landlady told me on the phone that our apartment building has remained dry. I’ll fly back to Bangkok tonight and see for myself how much will need to be cleaned up after the waters recede. Alas, that day could be weeks away, at least according to this short, entertaining youtube video about the causes and effects of the flooding.

The World Within

Will we be born again in a different form based on what we do in this life? Are we what we are because of our previous karma? Is it true that we women, who cannot become monks, have no chance of making higher merit and most devote ourselves to making offerings? What is higher merit anyway?

How could my grandmother, as a woman herself, discriminate against other women?

My grandmother taught me to pray in front of the Buddha image. Together we took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha and then sent merit to all beings. I barely understood the verse I was chanting. I just kept repeating it, and after awhile it became a routine. It did not occur to me that beyond prayer, offerings, and good deeds there might be another part of being a Buddhist.

I joined a Students’ Buddhist Club. There was an unmistakable energy among the members. They were serene relative to the student activists and seemed to talk more slowly and to smile more often. The activists thought that these people were politically naive and not interested in social justice and what was going on in the secular world. But after participating in their morning prayers and meditations, I discovered that the Student Buddhists were very socially conscious and aware of problems and injustice. They spoke with a compassionate tone when they described these problems and talked about the suffering of mankind instead of the suffering of the poor. Though I was still drawn to participate in the social movement, some mysterious energy kept me going back to the Students’ Buddhist Club. I thought I could make sense of the world by associating myself with those who prayed.

I developed a big-brother/little-sister relationship with the leader of the group. I had not learned how to juggle classes and social activism, and I maintained borderline grades. I probably looked exhausted when I sat down to participate in the morning prayers and meditation. The big brother gave me a smile and said, “How do you like school? Is it overwhelming?” I admitted that I was tired. “Learn about the world around you,” he said, “but don’t forget about the world within.”

Nobody had said anything like that to me before: don’t forget to look within. My prayer sessions with Grandmother had not given me any chance to look within and investigate my mind.

I thought meditation was for Buddhists who wanted to leave worldly worlds behind. I thought meditation was a trance state—a stillness and peace that might somehow extend to reading another being’s thoughts. I never believed it was for me, my grandmother, my mother or any other household Buddhists. But I was ready to sit down and meditate. For the first time I became aware of my breath. Short. Long. I began to look closely at my feelings, my thoughts, and my history.

[These nine pieces, edited slightly by Murph Henderson, are part of Jip's partly completed book about three Thai women of different generations. She would have turned fifty today.]

You Owe Yourself to Everything

My grandmother tells me that we owe our lives to unknown beings and nonbeings. I would not be here without the vulture who lost the feather that cleared her mouth and throat when she was a sick child. I would not be here without that medicine man or without the herbs. We would not be here without our ancestors. The stories grandmother tells remind us to be grateful.

One evening under the kerosene lamp where we often gathered after dinner, my grandmother started to tell her heaven and hell stories. Then she got up and disappeared for a few minutes. She came back holding something that looked like a bundled rag. She called us all to gather around her.

Slowly she untied the rag and revealed something that glittered in the light. "Gold!” we shouted. We became very excited. My grandmother smiled to herself. I wondered what she was up to.

"This is my sweat and labor that I have saved for all of you. The money I saved to buy this gold was from my seasonal labor. After the harvest from our own farm, I sold our extra produce. I worked on other people’s farms. I didn't make much money, but what I made I rarely spent. A little became something after a while. To be a woman of my time you had to have a gold bracelet and a gold necklace to wear during special occasions. They were your credentials. They showed others how hard a worker you were and how well you managed your savings. The story of my life and my values are embedded firmly in this gold. I have a piece for everyone. Necklaces are for the boys and the bracelet is for the girl. I hope that when you wear them, you will not forget about your grandmother.”

I was grateful to her. But I did not want to admit it. Admitting it meant that I was also admitting I owed myself to my ancestors. Grandmother reminded us that we would never be able to pay them back without becoming a monk.

My grandmother turned to my brother. “When you turn twenty,” she said, “you must become a monk and let your parents and grandparents see your yellow robe. It’s an act that brings such great merit. An incomparable merit, above all. There is nothing comparable that you can do to show your gratitude.”

I asked, “So what can I do to give back to them? Can I be a nun?” Grandmother said no.

She said that being a nun would not bring such merit to my parents. “But you can take care of them when they are old. That way you can show them your gratitude.”

I felt disappointed. Becoming a nun was not good enough. It was not as good as becoming a monk. And I didn’t like the idea of taking care of my parents when they got old. It sounded like a lot of work to be a woman. I wanted to be a man so I could become a monk and give back to my parents that way. That sounded easier.

“I know that you feel that you are not her favorite,” my mother told me later. “Isn’t it understandable? She who never had a son would automatically fall in love with your brother.” Then she said, “My mother is a very tough-minded woman. Both of you are.”

[Next-to-last in a series of writings by Jip from 2001.]

Water Over the Banks

Flooding has been in the news for weeks here. Nearly half of both Thailand and Cambodia have been inundated at various points since July.

Why are things worse than during rainy seasons in the past? Fingers are pointing lots of directions: deforestation, climate change, poorly planned dam releases, and unspecified “revenge.” 

Despite provinces just upstream being under as much as two meters of water, Bangkok has been spared so far by various engineering feats, from levees, to sandbags, to using Thai Navy vessels to push water out to sea. Every day we hear something new about which water will go where. Often reports contradict themselves. While headlines say “the danger is past,” government spokespeople announce, “We’re not sure if the dikes will hold.” And vice versa.

After a while, we find ourselves with the boy-who-cried-wolf problem. Or the waiting-for-the-debt-collection-agency-to-call problem. Rain falls in buckets for about an hour most afternoons, but somehow our neighborhood streets dry off quickly and we start to believe we’re untouchable.

We’re in denial, of course. We have colleagues who aren’t coming to work because their cars are submerged. We’ve seen the Internet images of people wading through chest-high water. We know the grocery store shelves are empty because of panic buying.

We and the government spokespeople aren’t the only ones prone to the natural human tendency to hope for the best. Anyone could feel paralyzed if they thought too long about refugees from the countryside, diseases breeding in stagnant water, or abandoned cars blocking overpasses. Overwhelmed enough, at any rate, to say, “whatever will be, will be.”

Maybe worst of all, our awareness of urbanization and corruption in Southeast Asia tells us that this disaster isn’t 100% natural, and that the suffering isn’t being shared equally. In other words, certain areas have been allowed to flood so that more crowded or privileged areas can be saved. Tough times here.

A Hard-Working Ox

My mother was born in 1937, a year of the ox. Her almanac predicts she will be a "hard working ox." Whenever my grandmother read her almanac she said, “This is a cow who will slave all her life!”

As the only child of Maha Budh and my grandmother, she is considered lucky on one hand. She will be the only heir. My mother sees it as a privilege as well as a challenge. This is how she tells her story:

"I was born to a father who was literate. He could heal the sick and comfort the worried. I learned the alphabet and numbers well in advance of when I started school. There was no surprise that I was the best student in my class.

"There was a high expectation and standard placed upon me. To raise me, my father used the monastic discipline he was accustomed to. Every night homework had to be completed, lessons reviewed, prayers recited. The three of us would sit in front of the family altar and recite 30 minutes of prayer before bed. I was not allowed to go anywhere without my mother.

"I began my hard working life as soon as I reached school age. My mother and I got up at four to cook desserts so I could bring them to sell at school and make extra money. Even though I earned money, my father would not allow me to spend any. It was very hard to buy new clothes, which I dearly loved. I secretly did it anyway from money I put away. On the new year I wore my new clothes. Father didn't protest. He was very strict but also kind.

"I wish I could have had more than four years of schooling. If you wanted more school, you had to go to a bigger town, Petchaburi. My teachers thought that I should become a teacher. There was a shortage of teachers, so students who did well and could afford more education were encouraged. The teachers came to talk to my parents to encourage them to send me for more schooling. They left disappointed. My parents insisted that, since they only had one child, it was important to have me at home to take care of the household chores. Also my father did not want me to be out of his sight for fear of danger. That was the end of my education.

"I used to dream of being a teacher. Wouldn't it be nice to wear a nice uniform, a little red lipstick, and to go to school everyday? I saw two of my neighbors who were chosen to be teachers. They were my elders. They weren't even required to go to more school. They didn't last very long as teachers because they were tempted by handsome young men and ran away with them. If I got such a chance, I would not let it pass before my eyes.

"My hair style had to be approved by my father. He disapproved of perms, which caused me heartbreak. I was the only one graduating from school without a perm. My hair was still straight. I looked childish and felt embarrassed and outcast. My girlfriends had all grown up to become young women with perms. I felt left out.

"How I got a perm was a historic moment in my life. One day my father’s monk friend came from Petchaburi to visit us. I called him 'venerable father.' I still remember the day very well. As we were visiting, the subject of my hair came up. His monk friend said to my father, 'Let her have her hair done so she can be part of her group.' I’ll never forget how thankful I was to the venerable father. He had definitely changed my life.

"My own life after school was up to my father's mercy. I got the hair thing done but there was still lipstick, clothes, and going out to the shadow puppet show at night. There was not any movie theatre then, but occasionally the shadow puppets would perform at someone's house on the occasion of a wedding or ordination. I was dying to go, but I was not allowed. My father said he could easily play the shadow puppets for me, and he did. He used his hands and sang, and I watched from the other side of the mosquito net.

"My father's discipline originated in his Buddhist monk training. He thought anything superficial like perms, lipstick, clothes, or entertainment only wasted your mind. To be out at night was not safe. Snakes were out then, and he had treated people with poisonous snake bites.

"I always belonged to the clean plate club because of my father. He would not let me drop or leave a single grain of rice on my plate. He said that the farmer had worked hard and we should not waste his labor. He told me the way they taught this lesson to temple boys was to have them pick up the spilled rice grains and carry them with rocks to dump in the river. He said this like it was a joke, but he was serious. I did not challenge him.

"After I finished school, my responsibilities in the house increased. I was a full-time cook, and Mother was there to coach me. We continued as dessert entrepreneurs. We started the day by making batter. We ground grain into flour and mixed it by hand. There was no machine. All the tools we used were made by my father. Our dessert business was very popular. Everybody loved to buy the mouse-dropping dessert. We made that on Mondays.

"We also dried and chopped and prepared various kinds of herbal remedies. Father always had green powder and black tablets for sore throats for sale. I helped in all the preparation. I was not interested in this knowledge. I did not think it was a woman's job.

"We worked hard as a family. We were quite well off compared to our neighbors. My parents were not the spending type, and so neither was I. Little by little what we earned mostly became savings. We were never wealthy because my father always said that being a monk for twenty years had taught him not to be greedy. People borrowed our money and could not always return it according to the agreement. They offered to give their land instead, but my father would not take it. He said we were not in a hurry and would not want to make trouble for anyone. He was a very honest man, and the villagers knew that.

"I grew up with moderation. If we did not have enough money to buy fish or fruits at the morning market, we would not take the food. We never owed anyone."

[Jip's mom is going strong, carrying on the important roles that her family has always played in the village. She was 63 when Jip interviewed her and wrote this piece.]

Firecrackers and the Lottery

Nobody else in the family prays like my grandmother. My older brother, Preecha, prays when he wants something or is worried. At those times he comes to the altar to recite his mantras, sometimes holding his Buddha amulets. Preecha has a keen interest in objects that protect him or lend him a magical power. He disappears for hours into my grandmother’s room in search of sacred objects.

Once he heard a rumor that he would be transferred to a remote veterinary station. He was depressed, thinking that his prosperous career would be jeopardized. His wife was nervous that they would be deprived of their comfortable life in the city and placed in some back country station. They consulted with my mother and came up with a solution: to pray together.

My mother, Preecha, and his wife prayed to the local deity, whose reputation has never failed those who believe in his power. My mother said that the deity is very kind and usually does not ask for much in return, but you must seriously and faithfully keep any promises you make to him. If my brother’s wish was granted, he would be obligated to offer fresh flowers and to light one hundred fire crackers.

A few weeks later, his prayer was answered. He wasn’t transferred to the remote station but to a bigger and more prosperous town. Preecha offered a beautiful bouquet to the deity, and the whole village listened to the one hundred fire crackers for almost an hour.

My mother secretly prays before bed. She bows three times on her pillow and recites a shortcut prayer, making quick wishes and then bowing three times: once to the Buddha, once to the Dharma, and once to the Sangha. She often wishes for a good dream. Having a good dream is important, especially on the night before the underground lottery. An old monk from a village temple helps her to interpret her dreams and to translate them into good lottery numbers. The process of getting the numbers right is very sophisticated.

I question my mother sometimes. Isn’t it a de-merit for this monk to buy a lottery ticket? Isn’t he supposed to be renouncing the world? Mother hisses at me and says, “Why are you asking such a question? The old monk is not gambling for profit. He plays just for fun.” There are a lot of people playing the underground lottery. The worst are the police. If there is going to be a raid, it should start at the police station. My mother always justifies her illegal gambling by saying it’s just a little fun.

[Written by Jip back in 2001.]

A Hot-Tempered Pig

My grandmother does not remember her birthday but knows that she was born on a night of the wax moon in the year of the pig. The almanac predicted she would be strong-minded with a quick temper. When she told me that she was on her seventh cycle, I calculated that she was born in 1911.

She was the only child in a family that farmed rice. Rice farming was a hard life. Rainfed rice farms without modern irrigation and technology often produced less than enough to feed the family. Yields were left to the mercy of nature and to the farmer's hard work. Still, nobody starved. The village had a system so that those who had a little extra gave to those who could not make ends meet. Children's bones did not stick out.

When she was about ten years old, my grandmother developed a high fever. There was no medical facility in the village, so her parents called on a medicine man. He prepared an herbal concoction but was unable to get it down her throat. The medicine man went out and found a vulture’s feather. Gently he cleared my grandmother’s mouth and throat with the feather and got her to swallow the medicine and fresh water. She recovered. Often when a child was seriously ill, she would be given away to different parents based on the belief that her spirit might not be compatible with her birth parents. Though my grandmother called the medicine man her adoptive father, she continued to live with her birth parents.

There were a few years of drought, and farming became even more difficult. My grandmother’s family moved south on another year of the pig. They traveled on an ox wagon and settled in Ban Krud near a thick jungle. Deer wandered through the trees, which were as big around as ten joined pairs of hands.

Ban Krud was not a new village. Many families occupied land there and planted coconut groves. My grandmother’s family built a small hut. Five months later, her mother died from dysentery after eating bad food at the temple on the ancestor day. A month later her father got malaria, known as “jungle fever.” Nobody came to help him. For people they knew—the “old people”—villagers would go out at night to fetch rare herbs and send the best herbalist to the sick. But my grandmother’s family were "new people." She watched helplessly as her father hallucinated, seizured and went into a coma overnight. He died the next morning. Within half a year in a new land, my grandmother became an orphan. She was 24.

Left on her own, my grandmother struggled. Married men came after her. The headman of the village visited and didn't want to leave until after dark. She had a hard time getting rid of such men but somehow managed to survive. She got up at dawn, never wasted what she could use and relied on her old hard-dying farming habits.

Maha Budh, the man who became my grandfather, was her distant relative. He was 45 and had been a monk for 25 years. He heard that her parents had died and came down south to check on her. When he saw my grandmother’s situation, he returned to his temple in Petchaburi and disrobed as a monk, then came back to ask for her hand. It was not romance but compassion for her that made him ask for the marriage. He did not want my grandmother to have to face her faith alone.

My grandmother’s life turned around after she became the wife of Maha Budh. She gained respect from the villagers for marrying a former "serious monk." The title "Maha" means “the great.” Maha Budh, or as most villager’s called him, “Teacher Budh,” immediately gained a high status in the village. Having been a monk for many years, he was a literate man. There was no school for girls, but he taught my grandmother to read. He was a man of many talents and fierce discipline and became a reputable healer, fortune teller, and artisan of fine furniture.

My grandmother, Maha Budh Mother, became his assistant. She had her own methods for treating illness. She lit a candle and incense and asked for the power of those who had taught her to heal the sick. After this short prayer, she prepared an herbal concoction. Then she advised the sick to avoid eating beef, egg, shrimp, and crab for the period of time and to stay away from cow dung. Her father had taught her not to charge money to monks and nuns, who renounced the world, but for villagers she charged one baht. She used the baht to buy an offering.

[Jip's grandmother was 90 years old when this piece was written. She lived to be 99.]

Curry-Eating Friends

My grandmother lives a clean life. She does not kill any animal—not intentionally—but she is not a vegetarian. She refuses to kill fish that my father brings home from his fishing trips. She also forbids anyone to harm the free-range chickens that she raises for eggs.

One time my father had his drinking buddies over to celebrate the weekend. They wanted to have chicken curry with their whiskey. The men chased the chicken around the house. When my grandmother found out that the party was about to cook her chicken, she said politely to my father’s guests, “If you are going to kill my chicken, just don’t do it in my backyard, okay?” My father’s friends knew what she meant. They took the chicken to a neighbor’s house and brought it back as chicken curry. Grandmother had chicken curry for dinner.

Grandmother is convinced that my father's multiple injuries and deformities are a result of harming animals. In his prime, my father hunted both for fun and for food. When he came home with baskets of fishes, frogs, and snails, my mother and grandmother left them out in a bowl without water. After awhile the fish stopped jumping. Once they became quiet, my mother and grandmother cleaned them. My mother said that they died from a lack of water. Nobody killed them.

One thing my grandmother insists upon is not eating beef. “How can I eat my old friend?” she asked me one day. “Cows are my friends. Without them I would not be here, and you would not be here, either. Cows worked hard on our farm. I talked to them nicely when I wanted them to work. I even saw them cry.”

[Jip wrote this about ten years ago.]

My Grandmother’s Friends

My grandmother is acquainted with angels and hell guards.

She says we are being watched and monitored carefully. The angels know when we are good, and the hell guards know when we are bad. They work diligently to watch how we think, speak and behave in the world. They are good accountants. They keep our records current.

After we leave this world we may get to meet them. Whether we meet an angel or a guard will depend on how good or bad we are. When we die they know how much merit or de-merit we have made and how that will determine our destiny in the next life. If we have made a lot of merit, we might be born again as an angel. If we have not made enough merit, we will be reborn as a human, or we might go to hell.

The angels are beautiful and immortal. They are free from any kind of suffering. They don’t depend on any worldly goods or sensual pleasures to make them happy. They are free from hunger, pain, and desire. They are "eem thip:" instantly satisfied beings. Just the thought of dessert makes them instantly content. They don’t actually have to eat it.

Hell is a chaotic place. It's noisy, smelly, hot, and crowded. People scream, cry, and curse there. Hell smells like human flesh, blood, sweat, and death. Some people in hell look frightened, sad, or worried. When they were human, these people made de-merits. They are in hell as a consequence of their actions. One man in hell climbs a Ton Ngew tree. His body is soaked with blood and his legs are trapped in the thorns while underneath the tree, a hell guard with a spear keeps pushing him to climb higher. This man committed adultery. A woman in hell cooks herself in boiling water in a big wok. While screaming she says, “I will never lie again.”

My mother’s friends live in this world, not in heaven or hell. She can call on them up for help at any time. Ta woon and the gecko are her good friends. Tawoon is a mean, old ghost-like man with a big belly, red protruding eyes, and yellow rotten teeth. He carries a big machete with him. His favorite food is children’s livers because they are sweet and tender.

Tawoon likes misbehaving children. He likes to show up when we give my mother trouble, either by fighting each other or refusing to do our chores. The words, “Tawoon is coming!” always cripple us. We stop our arguing. We run into the house and find the safest spot to hide. We wait for Tawoon to disappear, hopefully without our livers. Luckily no children in my village have lost their livers to Tawoon. We all survived childhood without being caught. Though I have never encountered him, I have a clear image in my mind. One day one of my playmates pointed at an old man and said, “He is Tawoon.” I said no. The man did not look at all like the Tawoon I have imprinted in my mind.

The gecko is another good friend of my mom. He also enjoys children’s livers. The gecko comes out if you cry too loud and too long. When I cried too much, my mother would say, “Quiet down. My gecko friend might hear and come out to look for your liver.” I would hold my tears and move closer to my mom, hoping that she could protect me from this liver-eating friend.

[Third in a series of Jip's writings from 2001.]

Grandmother’s Prayer

In front of the altar, my grandmother enters a different world. Here she is in touch with her ancestors and with my dead sister. At the altar, her past, present, and future interweave and become one.

Prayer quiets her mind and brings her tranquility. Devotion is her path. Few paths have been offered to her. As a Buddhist woman of her time, she has learned her place. Women do not have an opportunity to attain higher merit by being ordained. Offerings, prayers, and devotions are the only paths to merit open to my grandmother. She has hosted numerous Tod Kratin, rainy season devotions when Buddhists offer material goods to the monks. She says that Tod Kratin devotions bring powerful merit.

According to my grandmother, there are two kinds of offerings. One kind, like Tod Kratin, is to the monks, who live life to purify their minds. This kind of offering is called “making bunya.” The other kind is made to those with greatest need—the poor—and is known as “giving dhana.” The giver attains a higher merit when making bunya, since monks have highly purified minds.

On her seventh lunar cycle, when she turned eighty-four, Grandmother gave a food dhana to the whole village. There was enough food for 50 people. Grandmother believes that this food dhana will probably ensure her food security in her next life. Monks who receive food cultivate the good deed of giving. They yield good merit to the giver in this life and the next. But Grandmother thought that some of the people in the village might refuse to take the food for fear that they would have an inferior birth to her in their next life. I took the food. I told Grandmother that if I hang out with her in her next life, I am guaranteed not to be hungry.

[Second in a series of writings Jip did around 2001.]

The Altar Room

Nobody in my family prays like my grandmother. We call the altar corner Grandmother’s corner. The altar is located on the second floor of our Thai house and protected from distracting noises by two tall windows, always closed. My grandmother’s favorite Buddha statue, seated in a lotus position with its eyes closed, is on the top shelf of the altar. A local deity sits on the lower shelf next to a glass bowl containing a bundle of white cloth. Wrapped in the bundle are the remains of our deceased ancestors. Without them, we would not be here.

The dark mahogany floor and walls make the altar corner feel subdued, shadowy and peaceful. On the west wall, a picture of a smiling and walking newborn Buddha is high up near the ceiling. On the south wall, lower than the Buddha picture, hangs an antique picture of the first five kings of the Chakri dynasty. Grandmother orders us not to put anything on the east wall. Anything there will face west: the inauspicious direction. West is for the dead.

The pungent smell of incense sweeps through the altar room every evening. A candle flickers. Fresh flowers, usually Philanopsis orchid, stand near the altar. Grandmother sits tall and straight. Her face turns toward the altar. Her eyes close. Her face is serene. She whispers in the ancient Pali—the language of her father, of her husband, of those who have taught her about this life and the next. Over her eighty years she has made this language of prayer her own. She prays for all beings every night. She prays for herself. She prays for the worried, the alienated, and the deceased.

New Focus for holybasil

Now back in Bangkok, I’m thinking that this blog needs a new focus and new author for a while. Jip wrote some wonderful short pieces about her grandmother and her mom that deserve a wider audience. They were parts of a book she was writing that intended to tell the recent history of Thailand through the stories of three women. I’ll post a dozen or so of the stories over the next few weeks.

The book project gave her great pleasure at a time in Jip’s life, I think it was about 2001, when she decided to cut her research coordinator job to part-time in response to the fatigue that sometimes accompanies MS. She took a trip home from Seattle to see her family, taped several interviews, and transformed what she heard into accounts of grandma and mom’s worldviews. Jip’s own philosophy about things evolved along the way, which you can see in a few of the stories if you’re looking for it.

Later Jip shared the book pieces with my sister Murph, who is a fine writer and editor. By then Jip’s eyesight was giving her lots of trouble. Murph read aloud with Jip, then stitched together a few of the sketches in an order that made sense to both of them. The next several posts will be the result of that team effort from 2004.

The original interview tapes and Jip’s notebooks await my attention. With help from a few people who have expressed interest, and a little luck, maybe in the next couple years I can finish the book she began.

Sendoffs

On the day after Jip’s funeral, I had longstanding plane reservations for a conference in Atlanta, bookended by stops in Seattle and Michigan to see friends and family. As seemed true throughout the previous week, Jip seemed to be directing my movements and those of so many others. I kept to the original itinerary.

One or two phone calls from Jip’s village somehow sparked a large gathering at a Seattle park on the day after I arrived in town. People from several of her circles there created a lovely memorial event, sharing stories, food, and gorgeous weather. Somewhere along the line a website for donations in her honor was created, benefiting a fine MS Center in Denver whose work we’ve long admired. Our goal is to underwrite one issue of their excellent newsletter.

More remembering happened during the Michigan leg of the trip. The family cottage had hosted one of our three weddings. (Pictured at right is my family on a bluff we call “Jip’s Point” because she liked watching the lake from there). I enjoyed quiet visits with my parents, siblings, and three great college friends who claimed to be in the neighborhood by coincidence. At the place I’ve long considered my pole star, I also felt the strangest emotion of the month: a touch of homesickness for Thailand. I suppose I should listen to that clue as I plan what to do next.

Wherever the road takes us going forward, Jip and I couldn’t have asked for better sendoffs from countless special people this past month.

Arriving Home

We went home straight away to Jip’s village for the funeral. Chanting by Buddhist monks began the same night, at the house where she was born, grew up, and was married. On each of the next four nights, the monks returned for another hour’s chanting. A cremation ceremony took place at the nearby temple on the sixth day after she passed away. We scattered her ashes in the Gulf of Thailand.

During the five-hour trip south from Bangkok we narrated each turn so that Jip would know where she was along the way. In the rented van were Jip’s brother, caregivers, uncle, and me, surrounding a coffin that contained her body. Before we arrived home, the well-oiled village event machine had magically set up tents in the front yard. Blankets donated by neighbors were hanging down at the open sides of the tents.

Each evening dozens of people dropped by to make merit by joining the chanting. Each day we received visitors who came down from Bangkok—Jip’s college classmates, my office colleagues, people who decided to skip a Thai Studies conference that had brought them to Bangkok from all over the globe, and even my aunt, who happened to be in the same time zone (Tibet!) when she heard the news. A brigade of volunteer garlic peelers, cooks, and dishwashers kept everyone fed out of a temporary kitchen.

The combination of good friends, relaxed pace, and community ritual was just what Jip would have wished for. Everything fell into place so perfectly that I suspect she had a hand in it.

Some Mixed News About Jip

One night last month Jip went to sleep and didn’t wake up. The story isn’t quite that simple, but basically she made as gentle an exit from this life as anyone could hope for.

She spent her last day giggling and smiling. Her passing was sudden. I was beside her at the end, along with a close friend of both of ours who happened to be visiting Bangkok and one of Jip’s caregivers.

The most immediate cause of death was an intestinal blockage. Possibly, the nerves in charge of digestion had been damaged by multiple sclerosis, the disease Jip lived with courageously for twenty years. Those same damaged nerves meant that she didn’t feel any pain.

I miss her, of course. But I’m also happy that this way she is able to avoid further progression of MS, which had been blessedly stable ever since our return to Thailand six years ago. My own grieving began long before that, as I watched the disease take away so many of her abilities. Happily, MS never managed to rob her of the ability to, in her words, “water the seeds of joy.” She continues to inspire us with her wisdom.

Globalization at the Finish Line

Roadraces I’ve run in Bangkok generally attract a fair number of foreigners—never the majority, but higher numbers than their overall percentage of the population. In my memory they’ve rarely won the races, but one or two might have appeared in the top ten.

Until recently. Kenyans now seem to be entering everything from the 5Ks to the marathons here, and essentially creating two separate contests. This past weekend I joined a 10K along with about 700 other runners. At the halfway point in the out-and-back course, the first eight runners were all from Kenya. Nobody else was within 500 meters of them, and no Kenyans appeared to be behind that pack, unless they were behind me, which seems unlikely.

This trend is interesting in light of a recurring theme in the post-election commentary here. Lots of pundits have pointed out that rural Thais are now more likely than ever to have worked outside the country, increasing their sophistication and lessening the chances that they’ll vote in predictable ways. Historically they’ve gotten jobs in Taiwan, Singapore, and the Middle East, but lately the numbers going to Africa are growing.

It hadn’t occurred to me that maybe the same trend is happening in the other direction. What’s your latest globalization indicator?

What the Thai Election Results Might Mean

Some observers are saying that Thaksin is stronger than ever, or at least in a better position than he would have been at this moment had he not been ousted in a 2006 coup. Parties linked to him have now won several successive elections.

His little sister’s triumph at the polls, while not necessarily a victory for women’s rights (she freely admits she’ll be taking marching orders from her brother), could bode well for reconciliation (whatever that means—the vague term was tossed around in nearly every speech by every candidate during the past couple months). If Thais perceive that a feminine touch at the helm lessens the winner-take-all nature of politics, they may be willing to move forward without requiring retribution. However, Yingluck (Thaksin) and her (his) coalition will control three-fifths of the seats in Parliament, so retribution will be within easy reach. The main check on them will be the generals.

What might be some signs of reconciliation? Tabling discussions of amnesty for Thaksin, for starters. Any moves to bring him home too quickly would be inflammatory. Likewise for any rushed investigations into the violent ending of the 2010 hot season protests. If that violence stays at the front of the discourse, the temptation to repeat it may prove too great.

Investors, who like big wins by pro-business parties, feel this latest election has advanced the prospects of Thailand’s economy. How about Thailand’s democracy? On the face of things, you’d have to say that the one-person, one-vote concept has never been stronger here. The Thai courts, looking out for the interests of the old guard in ways that recall Bush v. Gore in 2000, managed to thwart the popular votes of the last few years by dissolving Thaksin’s party for election irregularities. Now the people’s voices have spoken extra loudly, drawing comparisons, fair or not, to Arab spring.

Yet if recent events lead to Thaksin’s return, and the military decides that Thailand isn’t big enough for the two of them, then probably the country will have taken a step backwards in the democracy department.

House Concert

Old college friends of Jip’s drop by now and then. Usually they come as a big group, bringing with them a playful mood that takes everyone back to life in the dorms.

Sometimes Jip is excited and welcoming, other times she surprises everyone by dismissing them after about 15 minutes. (When sent away, we’ve learned to retreat to the kitchen for a few minutes while she adjusts herself to the idea of a visit. After some time alone, she usually wonders aloud, “Where did everybody go?” and then we pick up where we left off.)

Yesterday a gang showed up with a guitar. They stayed most of the afternoon, singing the Thai equivalents of “We Shall Overcome” and other protest songs that Jip and her crowd used to know by heart. She didn’t join in the renditions, but neither did she get tired of hearing them, clapping vigorously after each tune came to an end.

As they tore themselves away, the guests were already planning the next performance/reunion here.

Music Lessons

Being married to me means Jip has put up with a lot over the years. Her latest trial is having to listen as I practice my latest musical instrument, the Thai hammered dulcimer.

The lousy results I’m producing so far stem mostly from my not being able to guess at all what note should come next in a given song. If I had thought about it for even a second, I suppose I would have known that the musical scale here isn’t the same as what I grew up with. To my ear the notes appear to be slightly out of tune, maybe because there are seven of them instead of eight per octave, each exactly the same interval apart. I’m told that only the octave notes can be matched exactly to the Western ones—the others all sound to us round eyes as if they’re in the gap.

As a result music here isn’t written the way I learned it back when I took piano. In fact it’s often not written at all. People learn songs by listening and memorizing and improvising rather than by reading them off of a static piece of paper.

More on this subject is sure to follow as I bluster my way through weekly lessons. Meanwhile, here’s a video of the first tune our teacher assigned us. The anonymous musician plays the way I’m supposed to (but don't yet) sound at this point in my musical journey. Happily, Jip isn't complaining too loudly. She even asks to be serenaded now and then.

Guilty as Charged

Just when I think this blog serves somebody besides myself, this irreverent post provides a hard look in the mirror:

http://stuffexpataidworkerslike.com/2011/04/11/44-blogging-for-the-folks-back-home/

Sustainable Brains

The main reason for last month’s trip to Ladakh was to visit Edie’s teenaged son, who was spending a special semester at a great school called SECMOL. The inspiring program brings together a handful of kids from the States and about 40 kids from Ladakh, housing them at a solar-powered, composting-toileted, springwater-supplied campus. The Americans who apply for this opportunity are chosen for their potential to grow through seeing a new culture, studying a new religion, and experimenting with new ways of lessening their footprint on the plant. For the Ladakhi kids, the critical requirements for entry are all of the above, plus having failed their 10th grade exams.

Unfortunately, lots of Ladakhi kids qualify for this last requirement. Exams in India are given in English and Urdu, languages rarely spoken in most Ladakhi villages. Especially in the public schools there, opportunities to practice anything except the local tongues are rare. So the SECMOL kids who come from nearby may even have done themselves a favor by not passing their exams, as they are now exposed to English and critical thinking and public speaking and a bunch of other nutrients.

Among SECMOL’s many cool rituals is Conversation Hour. Every afternoon, two or three Ladakhi students are matched with someone from “outside”—perhaps an American their age, or one of the international volunteers that seem to pass through regularly. The suggested topics and partners switch often, resulting in a refreshingly deep and wide cross-cultural exchange.

After Conversation, just as the sun’s last glow disappears behind the tall ridges on the other side of the Indus River, the dinner bell rings. Games of soccer and cricket are wrapped up. Anyone braving a bath has long since pumped themselves a bucket of water and hurried through the nippy ritual.

Now the center of gravity shifts to the dining hall, a large open rectangular space that unlike other rooms at the school is designed to be used after dark. There are no floor-to-ceiling windows here. We sit cross-legged on dozens of large rugs, attacking full, steaming plates of the evening meal. Everyone’s attention is focused on a stage at the front of the room.

One student, the designated master of ceremonies, stands to announce the evening’s lineup. In turn, other students then take to the stage, usually without notes. Their speeches last roughly five minutes, and cover topics as diverse as the economics of solar power and the moral value of friendship. The only noise is the sound of quiet chewing as the audience tunes in to the speaker’s message. The MC shushes the occasional murmur in response to a laugh line or a controversial point, and then, when the speech is finished, encourages questions from the floor.

No speaker escapes the comment round. What strikes the visitor is the patient fielding of the questions. These are teenagers up on stage, and yet there is no squirming, eye-rolling, can-we-get-this-over-with manner. Likewise, the questioners take their role seriously. They’re not afraid to challenge a speaker. Just as often, their feedback serves to rescue someone who has lost the thread, or to tease out bigger ideas from a thin presentation.

Generally the subjects are presented through a cross-cultural lens, meaning that students are constantly reflecting on what’s unique to Ladakh and how they feel about that. It’s no wonder that the local kids come away with a new pride in their heritage. Visiting students find themselves asking whether or not they have a culture. Everyone who passes through this successful school seems to develop at least one new brain.

Get Over It!

You have to love air travel in India. A veg meal is one of the standard options—no need to pre-order. Hitting turbulence gives people at the rear of the plane license to shout epithets at the captain. And attendants apparently are allowed to treat customers like rival siblings:

Passenger: Orange juice, please.
Attendant: I’ve only got coffee and tea.
Passenger (irritated, each word pronounced slowly and distinctly): Can you just get me a fruit juice? (In Thailand this request would be couched as a hint.)
Attendant (while moving along, bordering on sarcastic): The inconvenience is regretted. (No suggestion that anything can be done about this issue.)

My only other trip to India was many years ago. Memories of similar peculiarities began to flood back. This time I was on my way to meet my friend Edie, whose son is studying in the northern district of Ladakh. We planned a ten-day stay in that dry, mountainous part of the country, which is also sometimes known as “Little Tibet.”

Just before getting ready for landing, the cabin was fumigated, protecting India from unidentified Thai pests. The inconvenience was regretted.

Mind Games

Jip is mostly happy most of the time these days, but her moods do malfunction now and then, often at a moment’s notice. The caregivers and I are used to the big swings. We each have our special techniques for coaxing her out of a funk. Sometimes we team up and do a kind of triangulation therapy.

Take yesterday morning, for example. Upon overhearing words heat up between Jip and the woman who was on duty, I deliberately cranked up the volume on some music that I guessed Jip wouldn’t want to listen to right then. She promptly directed her frustrations at me instead, until the silliness of the whole situation hit her after a minute or two. Jip began giggling as I turned the music back down. The laughter cure.

Yesterday a new technique grew out of something I was reading to her from a website aimed at people with her disease. Jip’s attention had been wandering, which she usually shows by interrupting to ask how many blankets are covering her legs or to request that somebody close the windows (I don’t think she’s really cold, but ensuring that she isn’t has become a sort of reset button for her.) Then I described one of the site’s simple brain strengthening exercises—you say a word, then think of another one that begins with the last letter of the one before. Jip amazed me with how quickly she went from being fussy to being engaged.

Check out the words that came to her mind as she played the game happily for the next few minutes: Toddler, Reptile, Elephant, Totem, Marmalade, Egret, Telephone, Eggplant, Thailand, Dump, Papaya, Absorb, Bowling, Golf, Foolish, History, Yogurt, Tamarind

Occasionally she would revise her first choice for a follow-on word, rejecting it as “too easy—the words should more than one syllable.” Good clean fun.

Some Shortages Would Make Us Creative

A recent newspaper article, about demand for energy in a post-Japan-tsunami world that might be reluctant to develop nuclear power, prompted this letter to the editor:

What is the reason to satisfy the world's insatiable need for affordable and plentiful energy? And is there a need really? Yes, there's a huge appetite, true, but need...?

Our Western civilization reminds me of compulsive shopaholics, who often perceive as needs what really are their own addictions. If tomorrow we will find a new cheap source of energy, we'll just use it up to build bigger houses and cars and TVs, and making our existence messier and more complicated.

Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty myself and could agree that indulging in exuberant excess could sometimes be gratifying. But let's not forget that a plentiful society lacks motivation and breeds laziness, while real challenges, like energy shortages when and if we face them, would awaken our creativity.

Overcoming challenges—unless they are too extreme, of course—makes people happier then plentiful life. It looks like we really don't need plentiful energy; we just need to learn how to use wisely what we've got. So far our civilization used up precious natural resources and enormous amount of energy to build mountains of waste. Plentiful energy would continue us on the same path. Some shortages would make us creative, and perhaps even turn our lives into simpler and less cluttered ones.

I have to say the writer speaks my mind.

Supermoon

Five American cousins are in town, visiting from Beijing, where they’ve been living six months and where the temperature hasn’t been above sweater weather the entire time. Before they arrived, we had corresponded about their visit to Thailand, particularly about what to pack. I advised bringing only short sleeves, flip-flops, the minimum. March is traditionally one of the hottest, driest months of the year here, so no need for jackets or umbrellas.

You’ve already guessed that I’m now backpedaling wildly, trying to explain Southeast Asia’s weird cold and wet streak. The least lame of the many lame excuses I’ve come up with is the SUPERMOON! Maybe you also read about this last Saturday, when the full moon cozied up about as close as it ever gets to the Earth, leading naturally to all kinds of predictions of weirdness to come.

Sure enough, two days ago here a quick but drenching downpour flooded Bangkok in record time, making everyone I know at least two hours late to work. Last night an earthquake in upper Myanmar led the bosses at work to activate the call tree to make sure everyone was OK. We’re all wondering what today will bring.

No need to worry about the cousins. They pretty much ignored my packing suggestions. Not that we didn’t believe you, they said. Bodies that are used to wearing fleece just need a little confirmation before they make the big leap to the tank top, and vice versa.

Well-Timed Mozart Requiem

Bangkok offers a surprising amount of good classical music. Not so surprisingly, the auditoriums are rarely full. I’ve never had trouble getting a ticket to anything I’ve wanted to see. Once I even bought a seat ahead of time and was told a few days later that I would get a refund, maybe because they didn’t sell enough in advance to make the performance worth giving.

When I noticed this week that a group of college students was putting on Mozart’s Requiem at the Siam Society, I figured there was no need to arrive early. Wrong! Standing room only! Nobody was turned away, but plenty of people had to listen from the lobby.

To be sure, the singers from Mahidol University did a great job. The soloists were especially superb, projecting their lines to the rafters as if Latin were their first language.

Beyond the musicians themselves, another explanation for the packed house might have been the tsunami in Japan. The concert was of course scheduled before last week’s disaster. But the powerful music, along with lyrics like “Grant them eternal rest,” and “Let the perpetual light shine upon them,” was therapeutic for many in the audience.

Going to Burma/Myanmar

I’m thrilled to finally have the chance—tomorrow!—with my pop!—to visit that exotic and bizarre country just to the west of Thailand. Before we get too down and dirty with the details, which I’ll post on hipbelt, holybasil’s sister site, let’s take care of the name issue. Is it Burma, or is it Myanmar?

I’d been inclined toward the former—y’know, stick with what you grew up with and all—until I read recently in a travel book written by a woman who grew up there the following paragraph:

Myanmar has always been our country’s name in our language, but the British called it Burma and thus it was known to the international world… Because the military changed it, the name of Myanmar was unacceptable to many people, mostly those Western countries who insist on continuing to use Burma. My view is, the military government did not get the name out of a hat and that actually it was the British who did so when they used “Burma.” They probably confused it with the name of the majority race, the Burmese.

Her line of reasoning makes some sense to me. I realize that the choice is more political than linguistic—the U.N. has been using Myanmar, while Aung San Suu Kyi’s party prefers Burma. What do most people on the street use? We’ll see when we get there. Very excited!

Let’s Run That by the P.R. Dept First

I ate horse urine eggs for lunch last weekend at a restaurant. They weren’t really what I thought I had ordered. Jip cracked up when she heard about it.

The name comes from an old wives’ tale about how pickled eggs are prepared. They are indeed preserved in a special brine, which admittedly gives the finished delicacy a slight ammonia odor. But horses and urine have nothing to do with the process. You’d think some marketer would’ve come up with a jazzier label by now.

The story of how they ended up on my plate starts with my fondness for Thai salads. People here eat an endless variety of them, all symphonizing the five S’s of Thai cuisine: salty, savory, sour, spicy, and sweet. I never go wrong with these flavors. Whenever I think I’ve tried the last and most delicious combination, along comes a new salad that nobody has mentioned before.

Sometimes in restaurants I just order at random from that section of the menu. Last weekend, though, I had a craving for fried egg salad. At a place where the offerings were written in a stylish-and-hard-to-read Thai font, I scanned the list looking specially for the word “egg.” When I found it, I didn’t see the word for “fried.” Instead, “egg” was followed by what I thought said “pee.” Then there was another word that can mean lots of things—come, horse, chair, dog—depending on its tone marker. I can never remember which is which.

That mishmash of language didn’t make sense, so I asked the waiter about it. He answered too quickly for me to understand everything he said, but I asked for the dish anyway. I guessed that he was describing the egg’s color, or that maybe Thais use the same word for “pee” that they use for “yolk.” Besides, food here is pretty cheap. If it’s really terrible I can always bail and start over.

The salad contained the kind of egg that I’ve always heard called “thousand-year-old.” This gourmet treat—prized throughout Asia—on its own isn’t my favorite food. But it tasted OK when blended with the marvelous five Thai S’s. I ate the whole thing and went home to tell Jip what I’d had for lunch. Actually, I still wasn’t really sure what I’d had.

“Horse piss egg!” she laughed.

Guess it’s time to memorize those tone marks.