Open Writing

Respect for an Elder

Hello again.

On Tuesday a.m., feeling quite lazy, we didn't do a lot, ambled around etc. Yves and Eva visited a Chinese temple. Fantastic and outrageous in colour and design, it looked like a fairground, and Eva didn't have to put her temple shirt on. They were not bothered about it there.

Eva saw her first motorbike come to grief, driven by a rather large farang with a small Thai girl on the back. It started going round a corner, then went slower and slower until they both fell off and sat there blinking at each other.

Later, we saw a young Western guy on a motorbike bash into a Thai motorbike. Bits of bike flew off. Happily no one was hurt, and the passers-by seemed quite used to this happening.

We sat at a cafe and watched telly. Thais LOVE TV; nearly every cafe, restaurant, market stall etc has one. They also love watching Thai boxing and European football on the box, especially English teams. Even some of the dogs had English team names on their collars. It took us a while to realise that the dogs weren't actually called Arsenal, Liverpool, Man United etc.

As we went through the Night Bazaar later, every TV was tuned to the same channel. They were glued to a weird variety comedy type show, with a large bloke wearing lots of make-up getting the most laughs. Can you imagine the din! The lady who was making chocolate pancakes was riveted to it. She could prepare, cook them and take money while laughing hysterically.

There was a stall with toy animals, and three girls were stroking two little white bunnies sporting pink matinee coats. They looked so real that I asked Eva what she thought. 'Are they real?'

'Course not, they're toys.'

'Are you sure?'

'Oh really, how can you think that they're real?'

'Er - they appear to be chomping on a letuce.'

Eva got closer and closer, peering at them. Her face was a picture when she was nose- to-nose with them. 'Good God, they are real! Well, what a quaint idea, fluffy bunnies dressed up in little pink coats, made to measure with armholes. Why didn't we think of doing that at home?' We took a photo and ambled on.

Yves is moaning away. Apparently, when some of the girls looked at him, they did a wai, which is a prayer-like gesture, hands under chin and nodding at the same time. This is their gesture of respect; also they use it when saying thank you. 'I'm not that old,' he said, not at all impressed that they thought that he was an elder who commanded respect.

'Never mind, maybe they don't think of you as an elder. Maybe they think that you look like you are about to give birth to the French Buddha instead.' This mollifies him somewhat.

Time for bed. Tonight I decided to be Elvis Presley in one bar, a Thai version of the Beatles in another, and Westlife cum reggae elsewhere.

Bon nuit