Visit to a Thai Village

August, 2006.  Chiang Mai, THAILAND.   Over the years I've made friends with several young, professional Thai women. I met Aom five years ago. At that time she was studying to be a lab technician at Chiang Mai University. Fast forward, today she works at a public hospital, has married a gentle man, and has a darling baby daughter who calls me “Grandma.”

Recently Aom invited me on an overnight visit to her natal rice-farming village, a three-plus hour drive northeast of Chiang Mai. I responded with an enthusiastic yes. Meanwhile, I calmed my nerves. I decided that this competent young woman would surely take good care of me.

Aom, her husband, and baby daughter picked me up in their truck in the early morning of a Buddhist holiday. We broke up the long drive through the mountains with a breakfast stop (fried rice noodles and vegetables) and a temple visit.

We arrived at our destination in mid afternoon. Before heading to the village we stopped at the family's rice paddies where Mom, Dad and cousins sloshed around planting rice. There would be no holiday for these dedicated rice farmers. Aom and I carefully walked along the narrow dikes to where her mother toiled. The planters took a short break to give me a smile, and then returned to their backbreaking task of tucking individual rice sprouts into the mud. Aom’s mom gave Aom the key to the house, and we returned to the truck.

We next stopped at the local open-air wet market to pick up something Aom could cook for dinner. Most of the stalls were closed. There was little choice and no vegetables. Aom selected some cheap cuts of meat and hot dogs. My dinner--I'm a vegetarian--would be ordered later from a food stall.

Finally we arrived at the recently renovated two-story house. We carried our luggage upstairs to the intimate family rooms. Aom showed me my room, one of only two bedrooms, yet seldom used. Thais often sleep together and in this case Mom, Dad and a nephew slept in the same bedroom. Aom and her husband and baby would sleep in the family room. Just off the family room was a large bathroom. I was impressed, and relieved. Rarely does one find an indoor, upstairs bathroom in a Thai village home.

Aom wondered if I might like to take a shower. Sure, I thought, better to shower before everyone comes back from the paddies. Later I discovered that the village water is turned off at 8 p.m. I chose to shower in the large, tiled upstairs bathroom, which had a small, instant electric water heater with a shower head attached. Also in the bathroom there was a squat toilet and a small sink, and a barrel of fresh water. Everyone else showered downstairs. I soon discovered why. If water is turned on anywhere else in the house, or maybe even in the village, there is no water pressure upstairs. No problem, I finally rinsed off using water from the barrel of fresh water… a Thai-style shower.

During the late afternoon village children, mothers with infants, and a few ancient women dropped by to visit. It turns out everyone in the village of some forty houses is related to one another. In Aom's house the family social life took place in an open, public living space under the house, where light breezes kept everyone cool. Aom chatted with the visitors, cleaned a bit, went to buy dinner for me, fried their meat in a wok, and did other errands. Aom, her husband, and I ate Western-style at a cement table under the house. Later Aom’s nephew joined us. The family returned from the fields, showered, and put on clean, comfy clothes which also served as their pajamas.

After dinner Aom and I walked around the village and delivered a gift to her cousin who recently had a baby. We dashed back home as it had started to rain. Then it poured so we moved indoors, upstairs. For a while it was just the immediate family. Aom’s mom said she wished she could talk with me and I too would have loved to chat with her. Unfortunately Aom's English wasn’t fluent enough for her to comfortably work as a translator. I focused on communicating from the heart. I smiled and stayed present in the moment. Later on several women from the village dropped by to say hello. I continued to sit and smile while the women chatted, the children played, and the men watched television.

At one point I knew the women were talking about me and I picked up that Aom told them that I was a vegetarian. Aom turned to me and said the women were commenting on my beautiful skin. Aom's mother, who is ten years younger than I am, looks ten years older, perhaps because of her life of hard physical labor in the sun-drenched fields. Most of the village women start having babies as soon as they are done with high school, if they even wait that long. Then they're stuck in the village and work in the rice fields or take low paying jobs in far away cities. They leave their children in the village, sending money home to the relatives who raise their children. But Aom chose to study after high school, using government scholarships and loans. She's made the big time, she's the village star.

We went to bed late by village standards, 9:30 p.m. I slept well on a hard cotton mattress on the floor, kept cool by a small fan and open windows.

The family woke up well before dawn to prepare for another day in the fields. Not wanting to disturb the morning routine I stayed in my room until almost 7 a.m. Someone went to buy breakfast, which turned out to be sticky rice, fried fish, a spicy thick concoction I didn't recognize, bamboo, and fresh fruit. No one used plates or silverware, rather, they all sat on a woven mat on the floor and ate with their hands. For my breakfast, Aom and I zipped over to the food stall on the family’s motorcycle and ordered Pad Thai noodles. By the time we returned to the house the family was finishing up, or at least it seemed so: when I sat down they all got up and left for the fields. I noticed there were plenty of leftovers. But as soon as I'd finished Aom packed up the leftovers and, on our way back to Chiang Mai, we dropped the leftovers off with Mom and Dad in the fields.

Vicki Terhorst