My Last Day at HAT

Yesterday was my last day at HAT and I spent it wrapping up the brochure, taking pictures and showing Pong where I live on the map. For my last day, we were all going out to dinner and at 4:00 p.m. we packed into the van and headed to Pla Yoonyen, an outdoor patio seafood restaurant with an enormous statue of a fish in the front.

The one thing that I have succeeded immersing myself in during my stay in Thailand is the art of the Thai meal. I am a pro. Thai's don't eat with chopsticks (unless it is soup and then they use them to eat the noodles out of the soup) but with a spoon and a fork, using the spoon as we would a fork and the fork as we would a knife. Meals are family style and everyone starts out with a big plate of rice. Instead of passing around all of the dishes and loading up their plates as we would do, they take a small spoonful at a time and eat it with rice until they are through and then move on to the next dish. Napkins, in Thailand, either do not exist, or are hoarded by the an elite minority, because every table in Thailand is adorned with a toilet paper holder and a role of toilet paper - which comes in very handy during those times when you need to blow your nose or mop your brow, because for the most part Thai food is HOT.

I was at the end of the table across from Usana, who managed to assure that my plate was never empty and next to Sua who kept up a running commentary, letting me know what everyone was talking about, which for the most part, was the Thai Beer girl in the skimpy dress in the bar behind me. Next to Usana was Moo, then Khun Sippon, the director, Vikram and Noi. Champ was next to Sua with Moo and Fawn next to him.

Our first course was a baked fish of some sort, served hole (head and all) with a pepper sauce. Two fish were placed in the center of the table and everyone just dug in with their forks. Next came the Chinese dim sum and som tum (spicy papaya salad - delicious!) and more fish - steamed this time. As with the other Thai meals out I've attended, once the dishes start coming, they just keep coming. After the fish came the som tum with crab (From Sua, "you might not want to eat that; some of them have bad diseases"); tom yum kung, oyster omelet, stir fried morning glory... Our ever attentive waitress kept my glass full, my plate full of rice and Unsana made sure I had a taste of everything at least three times. Everything was delicious, but there is only so much a person can eat! I began to leave a little of everything on my plate just to assure that it wouldn't be refilled.

When everyone started slowing down, they began electing people to speak and asked Fawn to speak for the first floor and Champ to speak for the second floor. Fawn came over to me and told me that she was so happy that I had come, thanked me for everything I had done, said she was going to miss me and wished me the best of luck in my travels. She then handed me a gift. Champ went next and echoed her sentiments in his own shy way, handing me yet another gift. Soon everyone was getting up and wanting to talk and by the time they were through, I was almost in tears and loaded down with gifts. When they asked if I wanted to speak, I said that I did. I thanked them for their kindness and told them how lucky I felt to have had the privildege of getting to know them all. I told them how when I started, I was scared and unsure about how I was going to work in an office full of strangers who spoke another language, but how after just a few days, they had made me feel welcome and howthey now all felt like good friends. I cried, they clapped and we all took a group photo.

After dinner, we all said our goodbyes, but they weren't tearful goodbyes, only cheerful "see you tomorrows" because I since I hate goodbyes and was not ready to leave my new friends, I had made plans to play Badminton with them the next day.