My First Birthday

Thursday morning, Sua asked me if I had anything to do that evening, and if not, if I would like to come to dinner at his mother and father-in-law’s home for his son’s fifth birthday dinner. I couldn’t turn down such an offer and we agreed that I would meet him there at 8:30 that evening. I had been to their home before, but wanted to be sure I knew where it was, so I drew a very basic map and had him write the name of the street and of the square at the end of Issarapab where I made the left turn (and then another left) to get to their street.

At 7:45, I made my way out of the house, quite intimidated with my mission and really wishing I could just curl up with a good book in the safety of my own home. I hadn’t thought to pick anything up eelier and wanted to bring flowers for Sua’s wife and mother-in-law, as well as a present for his son. Being as late as it was and not having a decent night market near the house, I didn’t think that I would find anything and even if I did, I had no clue how I was going to get to Sua’s mother and father-in-law’s home - I didn’t have the address to tell a taxi driver, nor did I know what bus, if any, ran that route. Had I been anyone other than me, I would have planned ahead, bought everything in the afternoon and asked someone at the house which bus to take, but being me, I found myself in this pickle, no one’s fault but my own.

Having no other choice, but to do what I could, I caught the bus down the street to the market, hoping that someone would have flowers and a toy of some sort. If I mentioned in an earlier post that this market smells revolting, my addendum here is that it is indescribably more revolting when the sidewalks are caked with blood and the meat from the morning is still sitting out in the heat. I had to roll up my pants to keep from looking like I’d just walked through a homicide investigation and made my way down to where the carts were still in business. Two small shops looked promising and I stopped in to be sure there were toys there before continuing on to catch whatever flower venders hadn’t left for the evening. A few minutes later, I came up a cart with bunches flowers in a bucket on top, but it was all dark and there was no one around. Thinking that these may be my only option, I got the attention of woman sitting at her cart nearer to the street and motioned to the flowers saying “suur” (buy) in my caveman Thai. She nodded and as she came over, I picked an enormous bunch of flowers out of the bucket and asked how much they were. She said one-hundred and fifty bhat, which I thought was a lot, but had never bought flowers before so I didn’t know if that was a good price. I got her down to 100 bhat and walked away with the biggest bunch of flowers I’ve ever had, wondering if the woman who really ran the flower stand was going to come back and wonder what happened to one of her enormous bunches of flowers, while the other woman chuckled at her luck to score 100 bhat from the dumb foreigner for a 30 bhat bushel of flowers.

After purchasing the flowers, I made my way back to the shops with the toys and picked out a coloring book and crayons for 30 bhat, which, through a mixture of pantomime and pointing, I had wrapped in this neat gold paper with butterflies on it, for another 15 bhat.

Now armed with my gifts, I turned to the problem of actually getting to where I was going. I decided against a taxi because my destination was so close, and a bus, because it might turn before I knew it and I’d be on the other side of town. I settled on a tuk tuk where I could watch where we were going and direct the driver to my destination. I flagged down the next one and tried to explain to the driver, with my makeshift map, where I wanted to go. He didn’t have a clue what I was saying or where any of the places on my map were, but seemed accommodating enough to let me direct him, so, without negotiating a price, a got in and just asked him to go straight. I knew that Sua’s mother and father-in-law’s home was only on the next road after two left turns at the end of Issarapab, but given my sad history of navigation, I doubted that I would ever make it there and I looked down sadly at my gigantic bouquet and fancily wrapped present wondering who I would give them to when I dejectedly made my way back to the house. As I looked down, I noticed that they flowers were wrapped in a clear plastic with butterflies on it, just as the wrapping paper I had picked at random. Noting the odd coincidence, but telling myself it was a sign, I stared straight ahead and willed the familiar intersection at the end of Issarapab to come into view. Soon after, we came to the intersection, where I asked the driver to turn left. We drove until the next intersection, made another left and I began to grin like a fool, knowing that I had successfully completed everything I set out to do.

I walked across the board over the canal with my bushel of flowers and was greeted by Sua’s smiling face. He took the flowers to his wife and I handed, Pume, his son, his present and received a reluctant wai and a kob khun, krap, before he ran off, ripped it open and began coloring. Success! We then had delicious dinner of papaya salad, chicken tom yum, chicken, fish and barbequed beef. After dinner we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in English (although Sua is the only member of the family who actually speaks English) and Pume blew out his candles.

Although, it seems like quite an every day event to make such big deal of, I left quite proud of myself for making it all work and felt very lucky to have been invited to share the occasion.