Our remote rice-farming village in northern Thailand
Life in our village began for me in 2005. We stayed in Mum’s house, but had a room to ourselves, which I assumed was the house Temple… a bit like the front room used to be many years ago for laying out the dead. How wrong I was. We stayed in that lovely room for about a year while waiting for our own house to be built over the lane.
It was only ten years after that that I learned the truth about that room. It was my wife’s brother’s, and he had been sleeping on the kitchen floor for twelve months!
Kindness to Strangers
I have often thought about that act of kindness, because I don’t know anyone in my homeland who would have done it for me, or, for that matter, whom I would sacrifice my room for for so long. In those days, we were invited to all the parties going. It seemed that everyone wanted to make me feel at home, and welcome Neem back home too. I got to know a lot of people very quickly. Being in so many family homes meant that I met all the children of the village.
Most of those under ten were very frightened of me, and younger children still would run screaming into their mother’s arms at the very sight of me! Thankfully, that rarely happens now. I have often wondered whether parents used to scare their kids into doing things by threatening them with big white giants or ghosts, and then I turned up. Just like Western parents would invoke the Boogeyman.
I have asked, but no-one will admit to it. Don’t forget that these old remote villages were usually surrounded by forest as recently as the 1960’s, so parents had to say something to keep their kids from wandering off.
These days, most small children love to wave and shout ‘Hello’ (or more usually ‘Goodbye’), and I love it, although trying to explain that you have to say ‘Hello’ before you can say ‘Goodbye’ is an on-going challenge.
In those old days before the 70’s, the forest was home to 30 foot snakes, 12 foot tigers, eight foot crocodiles, and six foot slavers.
If you would like to read more of my experiences in Thailand, read some free first chapters in First Chapters
or buy the the first volume of Behind The Smile