Well, I hit the bed at 8pm last night, got up at 5am, and I finally felt 100% for the first time in five days. My last post gives the details of my bout with viral gastroenteritis.

I have some pictures to show of what Thai ceremony looks like. It’s not unlike ours in any sense that’s essential—that which is being celebrated. It’s just all the trappings that are quite different, which signals our stark cultural differences.

But one thing you can count on about Thais—and celebrate in itself—is that they know their culture and traditions, practice them often, and there is no compromise. They are traditional, conservative, and modest.

…I first met Chili and her younger sister, Wasabi, in May of 2020 when I travelled to a rural village in Si Sa Ket province in northeastern Thailand just north of the Cambodian border, in order to see about building a house. It’s just shy of two years now and in all that time, those two girls have never said a single cross word to me. Not one. Try that in the west, where they spoil EMPOWER!!! toddlers and children, and create the most putrid and puerile form of teenage girl imaginable.

Fast forward to about a year later, which is a year back, and their mother approached me, saying she didn’t think they were getting quality education from the local village school. She had done some math tests and was disappointed.

She found an alternative. An interesting one. It’s an elementary-school adjunct—right next door—to a special school that has had at least one foreign teacher since at least the 1960s. Here’s a short, interesting take from a Peace Corps volunteer who taught English there from 1967-1969. And it’s only 18 KM from the front doorstep and the major place we go several times per week for anything and everything above the afternoon market in Ban Lalom a few clicks away…and it has bussing that picks up and drops off 100 meters down the road.

It has a Tesco Lotus, sort of like an American Walmart with the grocery sections. It even has a KFC…and just Google why Thai KFC is so much better than American KFC. Because the chicken, duh.

So, while the village school is no cost, these schools are. We paid to get them into the elementary, and the initiation payment was about $1,500 for the two of them for the first year (way less ongoing). Then, bang, lockdowns again and it’s learning by phone. This went on for a few months, then a re-open for like two weeks, then bang again. Oh my Buddha. But they’ve been back for a while now, and surely, in time for a proper graduation ceremony. It will be next year for Wasabi, but this was Chili’s day. She just turned 13 (with all that comes with if you catch my drift) and will be starting in the secondary school with a farang for an English teacher (typically Brit, American, or Australian) within a month or so.

Here’s the photo set Chili’s mom sent me. See if you can tell mom, from aunt, from grandmother.

Not sure how people take this stuff. How mundane, or whatever. My perspective is that at 61, I can say “I get it!” Also, it’s become more prescient to me. Their natural father died about a month ago after a battle with liver cancer. He was 45. They had a good relationship with him and he and I got along well. He expressed his appreciation to me numerous times and treated me very respectfully. They lived only an hour apart, so visits both ways were frequent and video chats almost nightly. While typical shit ended up in the breakup with their mom, he eventually got his act together, advanced in his job (cell tower tech), and had provided some life insurance for them. Not the typical breakup story in Thailand.