When we first envisioned this year-long roadschooling, I didn’t include Thailand in the itinerary. There was too much there for me: too many memories, too many friends, too much at stake to bring my family. How could we do it justice? It’s THAILAND! Lorna persisted and said that she really wanted to see it. Ok, we decided to go for a month.
At 21 years of age, about to graduate from college, I remember taking my large envelope from the US Peace Corps up to my bedroom to open it in private. A Spanish minor, I had applied to both top-up my conversational Spanish and to, idealistically, make the world a better place. I was sure that I would go to Latin America. But when I opened up the envelope, I was shocked to read that my invitation was to Thailand! …partly, because I honestly didn’t know exactly where Thailand was. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor of the local bookstore to wrap my head around this curve ball and thought the photos of Thailand showed the most foreign and exotic place on earth. Thailand felt like destiny and I accepted.
The floating market near Bangkok.
To make a long story short, I spent almost half of a decade living, working or specializing in Asia. After three years with the Peace Corps, I worked as a guide in Thailand and Laos and later became the Southeast Asia Program Director for Where There Be Dragons. Then 9/11 happened; student travel dried up; I met Will and started a family. I hadn’t been back to Southeast Asia in sixteen years.
Spent the first few days in Bangkok with Pojaman and Patra, my old Peace Corps language teachers.
Arriving back in Bangkok on January 31, 2018 reminded me of the first time I set foot in Asia. It’s a sensory place: the buzz of the tuk-tuks, the heat, the golden temples, the heat, the flashing lights, and the heat. The humidity is like a coat you can’t take off. In one block, you can smell cilantro, garbage, chili peppers, plumeria, and pollution. I watched my kids come to terms with the air, the smells and the chaos that is Bangkok. I had arranged a van pick-up for all our stuff and surprisingly I chatted with the driver in Thai. Boulder, Colorado gives very little opportunity to practice Thai. The few Thai restaurants employ college students with little to no knowledge of Thailand beyond pad thai. I have one Thai friend in Boulder, but after a few conversational silliness, we have always defaulted to English.
Tuk-tuks: one of their favorite parts of Thailand.
So the Thai just flowed out my mouth with the van driver. Instead of trying to translate as I do with Spanish, I just got out of my own way and words just came; words I didn’t even know I knew. And I could still read the basics too. Who am I, that this side of myself was hidden even from me? But my kids and husband weren’t shocked. To them it was just totally normal that I could blabber away in Thai.
After just five nights in Bangkok, we flew down to Krabi where I lived and taught for two years. Some former students came to pick us up at the airport and brought us to another student’s restaurant. Then we spent two nights up near my site in Khao Phanom. They threw together an impromptu gathering and others phoned in. When you’re a teacher in Thailand, you forever have your “lug sit” which roughly translates to “children” but reflects the idea that you are always connected to your students in a familial way. We were received by all my lug sit as family returning. From there we spent a day in Laem Sak with a good Thai friend who has worked for various NGO’s. He drove us all back to the Muslim Sea Gypsy village where I came to visit and help write grants. The folks in the village hosted us for lunch and a chat. Their dialect was admittedly tough but most of them can speak Central Thai also. And there was plenty of time with my coworkers too. There was laughter and lots of eating and even some tears. But mostly, years washed away and there was affection; simply love and affection that spans hemispheres, language and decades.
Some of my old students and an impromptu dinner in Khao Phanom, Thailand.
I haven’t written much at all because this whole month has been so profound for me. I can’t quite make this time into a listicle or a punchy blog post. It’s my life looking back at me with my family as a witness. I kinda “broke up” with Thailand when I moved back to the States to grow up, but first loves will always welcome you back and they’re especially happy to meet the fam. Thailand still sees me as the twenty-something idealist who said yes to the unknown adventure and learned how to both dream and dance in Thai. My Thai friends don’t know me as a mom.
In Nakorn Sri Thammarat with Ruay and her family.
Some days in Boulder, I feel down at myself for not putting myself – my “career self” – out there. I can’t quite make the leap to do more than just be a mom. Most days I seem to spend doing for others what they should better learn to do for themselves. Perhaps, it’s more stagnation than fear. But those days in Krabi, I heard over and over how my time there, and my actions, helped lives along: from doors that were opened by their English, to grants that were written. Boom. Done. My life has touched others – isn’t that what it’s all about?
More photos of Ruay and her family visiting the temple in Nakorn Sri Thammarat.
This year has been more than simply “roadschooling”; it has connected some dots that were left floating in our Boulder lives. Lucy returned to her orphanage. Will returned to Nepal. We all stayed with Pasang (our adopted Nepali 24 year-old) and her family in Kathmandu. And now my return to SEAsia and the self-reflection it begs.
