November 2, 2025
My Sixth Cycle
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My Sixth Cycle
Fifty one years ago today I was placed with a Thai family in their home inside the old section of Chiang Mai. It was my 21st birthday that day also. I was shy and terrible at quickly learning or speaking a foreign language and Thai is an especially hard language to learn since there are seven tones. My family spoke no English and somehow thought I could just pick up Thai within minutes like some kind of language savant or polyglot. They didn't realize, yet, that they had gotten that other rare person, not a polyglot, but a polymess. I mean, I had had only about three days of Thai language training at Chiang Mai University! What were they thinking!
My new family showed me to my room which was a room right off the living room! It was the worst place to put a shy person who couldn't speak. I was mortified and it was the most awkward day of my life instead of what normally would be an exciting celebratory 21st birthday. My family knew it was my birthday (which actually made it worse for me) but, I must say, they were very sweet people. They didn't know what to do either! They wanted to show me a good time and to them a good welcome to the family was to take me to a very special restaurant - FaHam Khao Soi. I think it may have been the only khao soi restaurant in Chiang Mai at the time.
Everyone put on their best clothes and we drove across the river and to the left upstream. I could tell by their excitement it was a special and favorite outing for them only done on weekends. I was honored that they wanted to show me their special place and food but I kind of wished I could vanish and instantly show up back home in Minnesota with my own family. I just felt really alone. I was on edge not only because I couldn't communicate but back in those days there were a whole lot of rules of Thai social etiquette. I didn't yet know what to do and what definitely not to do. But the khao soi was good, if I actually remember.
When we got back home I noticed that the door to my room had recently crushed a gecko near the hinge and a line of ants crossed the entire wall to get to it. They were feasting like it was a weekend and they had put on their good clothes and gone to eat khao soi. It was an ugly looking juicy carcass. I had no doubt I had unknowingly crushed the poor little guy earlier. My Thai father was in the living room (where he always was) and I pointed to the dead gecko and said two of the only Thai words I knew, "Mai dee." He came over to see what I was talking about and started laughing. He called the others to come, not to see the gecko but to hear what "Boot" had said. They all laughed because I had simply pointed at the tragedy and said, "Not good." They were doubled over in laughter! Was it an ice breaker? Who knows but yes, it was. I was speaking Thai and they understood and in the lovely Thai way, they were not laughing at me at all, their laughter was a sign they were accepting me.
Today we are in Chiang Mai and it's again my birthday. I didn't necessarily want to go to FaHam Khao Soi to relive my long ago discomfort but it would have been an interesting revisit for sure. All I really wanted to do was to go way out to the edge of town to visit our good friend Steve Werner at his unusual guest house called Enchanted Garden. He's one of my favorite people. Steve has lived in Chiang Mai for 39 years without ever returning to Minnesota once. A rare breed Steve is, once a concert pianist in the States, but in Chiang Mai an antiques dealer/collector, chef at his own Thai restaurant, master gardener, member of a polyphonic choir and now the part owner of a beautiful bungalow garden retreat. We hadn't seen him in a few years so we needed to catch up.
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At one point he excitedly asked, "Do you want to hear a scary story?" Of course we did and he launched into a story about something biting him on a finger while he was sleeping in the middle of the night. [My sister should probably quit reading right here!] He told how the pain progressed into his whole hand. He didn't think it was a mosquito or any other kind of bug except maybe a scorpion because he had seen scorpions in his house. He said the pain got so bad that it felt like all the skin had been burned off of his hand and the pain was starting to travel up his arm. He turned on the light and his hand was swelling up. It was then he thought about going to the hospital but he didn't want to bother anyone. Eventually towards morning the pain subsided and he and his partner looked carefully at his hand and there were two fang marks! He had been bitten by a venomous snake in his bed!! AAHHH!! Besides a fast moving snake crossing the road and getting tangled up in my bike, a snake in my bed is my worst nightmare. It's right at the beginning of our trip and he tells us that story?!
I suppose it was an appropriate story for me since I was born in the year of the snake, as this year is, and today I start my sixth cycle - a momentous day. Steve telling a snake story on this particular day is a kind of synchronism I guess. But I should watch out for snakes this trip. I guess I always do since I really don't like them.
Even so, it was a good visit with Steve and I had a wonderful birthday. It started with our first-of-the-trip papaya/muesli/soy milk overflowing breakfast bowl we made in our room. Andrea had made the muesli at home. It wasn't just because it was our first papaya or that it had anything to do with my birthday but that papaya, grown in a guy's backyard, was possibly the best I've ever eaten.
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After we saw Steve we were going to go up the mountain to visit Wat Doi Suthep, which would have been the thing to do on one's birthday since it's the most sacred temple in the country. But, it was enveloped in rain clouds and we didn't think it would be very enjoyable. Instead we wandered all over Chiang Mai visiting temples and enjoying flowers everywhere.
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Around dinner time we discovered a khao soi restaurant and had some unusual, more crude but good khao soi. Khao soi is all the rage now with tourists. I believe the best khao soi comes from restaurants dedicated to making only khao soi. Those restaurants always are scraping the bottom of their big pot around 1PM and then they close. The once, one and only, famous khao soi restaurant in Chiang Mai, FaHam Khao Soi, is still serving and even looks exactly as it did fifty one years ago. It's now called Khao Soi Lamduan FaHam. It will never be dislodged from my memory.
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And I had a nightmare last night about a scorpion in my bed. 🫣 I'll save a venomous snake story for when we see you.
sawadee ka/ krap
bnr
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