Faces look ugly, when you're alone

I get my first taste of the unadulterated Thai experience, and I sure do have a lot to learn before I can play alone in the deep end of the pool.

On Tuesday we catch a longtail boat to Krabi town, where we board an air-con bus to Surat Thani ... or rather, an outlying village called Na San, Lian's home town. Na San is to Surat Thani what Molalla is to Portland. No dual Thai/English signs here, and no need for them. You could drop a farang bomb on this place and kill just one person: me.

We are a LONG ways from tourist territory: these locals gape openly at the big, drippy alien that lumbers off the bus behind the returning local girl. As it happens, Na San is having some festival or other -- these people are continuously celebrating something, and always with food -- so we wind our way through the vendor stalls as I manage to crack my head on a metal sign that is hung too low (for me).

Uncle Somebody with rambutan

No one in Lian's family speaks a syllable of English, which frees me from social obligations: I get to just sit here on a hard wooden bench sweating and grinning at the mother, siblings and nieces who ignore me, while quietly flashing on a Robert Earl Keen lyric:


"Little sister brought her new boyfriend / He was a Mexican.
We didn't know what to think of him / Till he sang 'Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad.'"

Brother Whozits chops durian

On Wednesday we pile into Lian's brother's pickup for a 30-minute ride into the countryside to tend his fruit orchard of durian, rambutan, and other exotic-to-me tropical delights. Finally I get to taste the notorious, much-maligned durian: many Asian hotels, including the one I'm staying in, have signs prominently posted: "No animals, no durian." The fruit is malodorous, like rotting sweat socks, but its taste is like creamy custard -- truly a cognitive dissonance between nose and palate.

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Time to start heading home.

Lian puts me on the local train that stops in every village between Na San and the next sizable city four hours up the line, Chumpon -- third-class rail, my favorite way to see the countryside. Passage is free for Thai people, 40 baht for white folks. Racial injustice? Not really, considering all the crap they have to put up with from us ...

My reading comprehension is improving: I make out the Thai script for town names at each station and then check my answer against the nearby English translation.

Third-class "local" rail

Tonight I am in the coastal town of Hua Hin on business -- I have a 9 p.m. conference call and need the proven superb wi-fi connection of a guest house I visited two years ago.  Then tomorrow, on to Bangkok.