Reality Nights
Before our long drive home, we stayed at the house of a friend of Ma's friend. It was military housing as her husband is in the army. The house itself could probably be considered lower-middle class for the rural areas as it was concrete with a corrugated tin roof and running water. They had a stereo and a computer, and as most Thais do, a TV.

The second story had a bedroom big enough for a twin bed frame with a very thin mattress (where I slept), a bookshelf with old magazines, and a cloth "armoire" as a closet. The master bedroom had a queen sized bed with a mosquito net, a desk, and a similar armoire for clothes. The "family room" had a tv, a wooden bench, an old computer, and a picture of the king. Downstairs was a bathroom with the "floor" toilet (it doesn't have a bowl as it is built into the ground) and a spicket at about hip-level with cold water to fill the tupperware bowl for a shower. The kitchen table was outside under the porch (created by the master bedroom which was directly overhead) where it was protected from the rain. The wooden shutters on the window covered the ill-fit screen and mold was everywhere as it is impossible to keep it from growing on concrete, inside or out of the house, in such a wet, rainy environment. And the mother and son who lived inside the house were, of course, amazingly generous and so rich in spirit; they were very happy to have the four of us visiting, even though we used every clean towel and blanket that they had.

In giving this description, as with any of my blogs, I hope only to share as many details as possible of the circumstances that I have come to know. I don't have a picture of the house to share with you, as I didn't feel it prudent to be keeping that as a memory. Instead, here is a picture of the group of us in front of a sculpture of a lotus flower before it flowers at the local dam that we visited together.

The lotus flower is known in many cultures, (especially in Buddhism) as modeling the human attempt of reaching up to the divine, with roots in the mud and murkiness of material life. The lotus bud, untouched by impurity, is often helpful with meditation as it symbolizes the purity of heart and mind and represents long life, health, honor and good luck. In this respect, out hosts mirrored the idea of the lotus blossom as their beauty and grace were projected out from the status of their material world.

After the dam, we visited the oldest teak tree in the world.


On Tuesday, we visited a temple outside of Chiang Mai.


Picture of the week- Eating dinner at the river's side.

On the way back to Udon Thani yesterday, we stopped at a quaint riverside restaurant complete with background Thai music . Each "table" was a small, open-air room built over the water. The mosquitoes and ants were nice enough to take a break from me as their dinner (the big red ants are gnarly here!) and we had a relaxing feast of fried chicken bits with seaweed, som tum (spciy papaya salad, which became standard fare once they found out that I really liked it), sticky rice, and fresh cabbage, green beans, and a leafy veggie that tastes like black licorice. I also tried a new fruit that looked like grapes from afar, but had a thin, rough shell around the fruit along with the best dessert ever- fresh coconut pieces in gelatin inside of the coconut.