Temple Time

I spent the afternoon at Pui's house, and managed to get in a nap on the floor. (Fortunately, there were pillows.)

While I napped, Pui and her friends helped Pui's mother make a dessert dish for the temple visit later on in the evening: Rice, coconut, and banana wrapped up in palm leaves. (One doesn't eat the palm leaves... they are merely the "container" for the yumminess inside.)

I was sort of looking forward to going to the temple, but also was filled with a sense of forboding, because I know what can happen...

We walked from Pui's house to the temple. Pui had to run off to the nearby shop to buy a few things, and I walked onward to the temple with Pui's sister-in-law and mother. When we got to the temple, it was just as bad as I expected.

You see, every Thai man is taught from a young age that if you manage to get a farang drunk, you will achieve very good karma. If you manage to get a farang drunk while you yourself are drunk while at a temple festival, you will receive enlightenment so quickly that beams of light will shoot out of your pores.

Now, when I'm out in the Thai countryside, and the single lone Thai drunk sitting on the motorsai taxi lean-to outside of the local grocer sees me (the first farang he has seen in years), yells "oh-ho!" and goes totally spastic in an attempt to get alcohol into me, I can usually handle it with four or five "my ao" (no thanks).

However, as I arrived at the temple, it was like the holy winemaker himself had come to heal all wounds. Four... count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 4... drunk guys, each with their own bottle, leapt up, and shouted "oh-ho!!", with their eyes beaming the reflected light of the holy aura I must have been emitting. Then, finding their tongues, they realized what a mistake it had been to sleep through English class for the 2½ years that they had bothered to attend school, as English would have seriously helped them gain their golden ticket to Nirvana. "Hello! OK! Thank you! Yes! Whiskey! OK?" It was a veritable barbershop quartet of "Dick and Jane" English.

Of course, I made the mistake of saying "my ao", and the 4 realized their grand guest could speak their lingo, and their grins became wide, their faces glowed with whiskey-fueled electricity, and the air was filled with an alcohol breeze as the four gushed out in the Isaan dialect gestures of friendship that would have been impossible to understand even if it wasn't slurred beyond all recognition.

(Pui's mother and sister-in-law, of course, were completely oblivious to the hell I found myself in, having wandered off to do their things with their palm-leaf dessert platter.)

It took about 2 minutes of "my ao" for the men to go back to their table without me in tow. But they came back 3 minutes later to try again.

Repeat. Wait 3 minutes. Repeat.

Pui finally came from the store after the men had returned to the table a third time, and seemed quite shocked that I wanted to leave. She managed to talk me into staying, mostly because I got the impression from the drunkards that I had been, for the most part, abandoned to my own interests, and a fourth attempt to get me to drink would not be forthcoming.

Pui and I sat down at a table, and Pui brought me a bowl of noodles, chiding me for being so uptight.

I was one bite into my bowl of noodles (Pui sitting nearby with her own dish) when I hear, "Oh-ho!" Across the bench table from me sits down a fifth newly-arrived drunk with a bottle who had not yet had his chance to get to know the farang. He offered his hand, and I politely took it, and he began to babble on. I tried to take my hand back, but he was holding onto it for dear life. I finally had to pull so hard that I almost took the Thai drunk over the table along with my hand.

Pui suddenly realized that I wasn't kidding about my earlier experiences with the 4 drunks. Drunk #5 was now reaching across the table and tapping me on the shoulder while I was trying to eat. I was ignoring him. Pui was getting angry, and told the guy to leave me alone. I was getting tapped. Pui angrier, ruder comment. Tapped. Pui angrier, louder comment. Tapped.

Finally, Pui let loose on the guy with a tirade of verbal abuse that, if it weren't for the semi-loud music playing, would have caused the entire temple grounds to fall silent. I quietly picked up my plate of noodles, turned around 180 degrees in my chair away from the table to look at the stage where Pot and his friends were dancing, and tried to pretend that nothing had happened. Pui, with a huff, turned around and joined me. Drunk guy did a kind of slide down the table to where his friends were sitting.

"Oh-ho!!!" Number six.