A Visit to Muang Gorn

Charlotte and I just spent a lovely day and a half in Muang Gorn, the village where Khun Annop (from the office) lives. Khun Annop invited us to join him and Thor for a short visit to his village, since Whitney, a 5th grade teacher from Colorado, was coming to do a home-stay with him and to teach local students for a few hours (just to "see what the culture's like"). Naturally, Charlotte and I were eager to do a bit more exploring, and happily accepted the invitation. After we picked Whitney up from the airport yesterday, we stopped by a local restaurant for some killer kow soi--the curry-ish egg noodle soup that I'm hopelessly addicted to. (I really need to learn how to make some before I leave Thailand, since I'm going to crave some when I get home!)

When we arrived at Khun Annop's house, his wife and some of the village elders greeted us and performed a welcoming ceremony for all of us. (Ooh, and they also gave us each these heavenly-smelling, Thai-style jasmine leis. They smelled sooo good!) A Bai Sri Soo Kwan ceremony is a traditional Isaan ceremony that's conducted on important occasions like welcoming visitors, celebrating marriages, and for deaths. Only the village elders can conduct a Bai Sri, and the special tradition is passed on from one generation to the next. During the ceremony, the women tie strings onto participants' left wrists and the men tie strings onto participants' right wrists. As they tied the strings onto our wrists, the elders prayed for our spirit/soul (Kwun) to bring goodness and protection to us. An older woman also dragged a piece of string across the palms of our hands to remove any bad things from our lives and welcome good things. Many Thais believe that each person has a protective Kwun that looks after them and their family throughout their lifetime. Your Kwun brings happiness, and it must be regained if it is lost (or else there will be serious problems!). For now, we're supposed to keep our string bracelets on for at least three days for good luck. Hopefully, mine will make it longer! It was quite incredible that they shared their ceremony with us, and I felt honored to be a part of it. It was such a cool experience, and all of the village elders were very sweet.

Me, Charlotte, Thor, the village elders, Whitney, and Khun Annop at the start of the ceremony.

The Bai Sri tree that served as the centerpiece was meant to represent  the universe.

Tying the knot.

We then refueled with fresh coconut water (right from freshly picked coconuts from Khun Annop's garden) before going for exploring the village. We pedaled around on these adorable, candy-apple-red vintage bicycles that used to belong to the Japanese postal service. They proved to be an ideal method of touring the area! After stopping over for a quick visit to the local temple (every village has its own temple), we paid a visit to the local handicraft center. The village is know for its carpenters, and I quickly learned why. They made these incredibly intricate wood carvings that had so many detailed layers of woodwork. In one little patch of the wood carving, there would be misty mountains, twisting trees, blossoming flowers, and leaping deer all carefully carved around one another. I can't imagine how you'd go about making something like that out of a huge hunk of wood! And think how patient they must be to gently tap away each little piece of wood! I wish I could bring some of them home (I bet Charlotte would put the wooden dragon in the entryway to our house if she could), but I know they'd get smashed to bits.

Look at all of those wood shavings!

Later that afternoon, we met some of the local children that we'd be teaching the next day. As we played soccer with them, I realized that they are much more advanced than our students (near the elephant camp). I'm not sure why this is, since they don't have any foreign English teachers at their school, but it certainly was much more fun playing with them when I could communicate properly! There were longan trees everywhere, too, so we had fun picking and munching on them throughout the afternoon.

Longans!

Khun Annop and his neighbors went all-out for dinner, though! They made us an incredible feast with lemongrass pork sausage, tasty pork bits, this yummy soup, some sort of hevenly veggie, and the world's best curry. Everything was so yummy, Charlotte and I had a hard time eating it all, although I did manage to get fourfthsies! For dessert, we munched on mangosteens, longans, and this fruit that looks like a small, tan fig but tastes like a grapefruit. A most curious fruit! When I was so stuffed I couldn't even wiggle (to pack the food down), I drafted a quick lesson plan before turning in for the night. Oooh, but I forgot to mention one of the the wonderful luxuries Charlotte and I had at Khun Annop's house--full sized towels! Ever since we've been in Thailand, we've only used these tiny, quick-dry camping towels that are slightly larger than a wash cloth (since we didn't have room to pack big ones and we don't want to buy big ones since they'll never dry in this humidity). I guess I hadn't realized it before, but there's nothing like burying your face in a nice, fluffy towel (especially if you've been deprived of one for a bit).

This morning, we woke up early to visit the village temple, where they allowed us to participate in their daily rituals. Everyone was given plates with incense, flowers, leaves, and puffed rice (of all things!) to donate and place in four larger bowls. Then we sat in the temple during their prayers and chanting, which were sometimes led by the monk. At one point in the ceremony, everyone was given a small bottle of water and a glass. When the monk blessed the water, we bowed three times (nearly touching our heads to the floor) and slowly poured the water into the glasses. We then took the water, and poured it over some of the plants outside the temple. It was a most relaxing ceremony, even if I didn't understand what they were saying! Following the ceremony, we all lined up and gave food donations to the monk (although we had to place them in his bag, since we weren't allowed to hand it directly to him). Most people donated rice, pork rinds, perhaps some fruit, and/or a few baht, although I saw one lady donate a chocolate bar, too! There was this super cute old lady there, who was very eager to tell us all about her tradtions and customs (but in Thai). She was so sweet, and showed us how to rub the gong to make it ring, rather than hitting it with a gong-hitter thingy. While we rubbed the gong, we were supposed to think of a message or wish for Buddha, so that he would hear it. It was pretty cool how loud the gong would ring just from us rubbing it with the palms of our hands.

Khun Annop making his donation.

Rub rub rub!

After a brekky of tea and toast (hooray!), we broke into our English-teaching groups. Since Whitney teaches 5th graders in the US, she took the youngest kids while Charlotte and Thor taught two high school students. Meanwhile, I worked with three adults from the village who wanted to work on their speaking skills. I was quite impressed by how much they already knew, and they were worked very hard for our 3.5-4 hours of lessons. They even tried teaching me the Thai translation for some of the words I introduced, but I didn't retain any of them! After a lunch of pork fried rice and pig's blood noodle soup (that tasted surprisingly normal, despite my previous misgivings), we strolled through the neighborhood, pointing out things in English and asking our students simple questions. I enjoyed talking to them and trying to pick up Thai words and phrases. As we strolled about, the villagers and Thor showed us all the incredible fruits and veggies that grow there. Honestly, I don't see how you'd ever need to buy produce if you lived in a village like that, since there's so much! On our walk, we encountered: green papaya, mangoes, guavas (that were hard as a rock and tasted pretty funky....I'm pretty sure they weren't ripe!), pomegranates, lemons, limes, pommellos, longans (of course! Pretty much every other tree was a longan tree), bananas, custard apples, dragon-fruit, Thai basil, two types of beans, and a number of other mystery herbs/fruit/veg. That's quite a mix, I'd say! And the nice thing was, we had a chance to sample many of the tropical fruits. One of the villagers even gave us a pommello to take home! (It's about the size of my head, so it should make for a nice brekky tomorrow for Charlotte and I.)

Dragon-fruit!

Mysterious thingamabob.

Enormous pommello!

Sour/bitter thingy.

Charlotte and Pai, one of her students.

Later this afternoon, we chatted with some of the villagers, one of whom was this hysterical Thai man, who is a retired teacher from the local school. He kept giggling at everything, which I found quite entertaining, since he had a very goofy laugh to begin with. When he found our Thai-English phrasebook, he flipped through it, looking for words and erupting in little fits of laughter every so often. He'd repeat many of the things we'd say (a good way to practice his English, I suppose!), but his glass of wine certainly didn't help with his giggling! Finally, after pouring over our phrasebook for quite some time, he triumphantly looked up, and with a gleeful laugh pointed to the phrase, "What a babe!" Everyone at the table busted out laughing, especially the Thai man. He thought it was the funniest thing! Haha!

Pai, Charlotte, funny Thai villager, and Thor.

After a day and a half of exploring, teaching, and eating, it was time to bid farewell to the Muang Gorn village and return to Chiang Mai.