Kevin Coen
Professor Langston
ENGLISH 1301
9/29/2015
The Land of Smiles
I stepped off a Thai Airways “Golden Jet” into the tropical air. I instantly react to the temperature, smells and sights of Thailand all at once. Sweat broke out on my brow, my nostrils crinkled, and my head spun around as if on a swivel to take it all in. I remember smelling a mixture of jet fuel, damp air, and grilled chicken. Several airport workers gathered around food vendors congregated outside of the open-air fence, smiling, talking, and enjoying a snack on their break. Big puffy clouds moved swiftly overhead, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in Houston. There were big jets everywhere. I looked up and there stood my mother and 5-year old little sister, waving at me. We gathered up our bags and piled into a taxi bound for Sukumvit Soi, an area in Bangkok, where our family waited for us to arrive.
My mother being a Thai immigrant, we often visit her side of the family in Thailand, some of them located directly in the heart of Bangkok. I can remember Bangkok being alive, vibrant, and full of traffic. The sacred temples are found all over the city and one could spend a whole trip just taking in the structures and feel the serene calm of the temple grounds; many times I rode the packed city busses to these places as a boy. Movie theaters, shops, and the markets were always accessible by klong boat or bus, a favorite destination being Sanam Luang, where the weekend market was. One of my favorite things to do was to go there and browse, looking at the exotic animals and enjoying some fresh fruit, while trying foods you wouldn’t normally find in the states.
“Sawadee-Kap”, I greet a street merchant while holding my hands together in a pray pose just under my chin, which politely means “hello” in Thai.
“Sawadee-Ka”, she replies with a friendly smile on her face, looking at me behind a pushcart full of deep-fried bugs.
I’m standing by a fence at the crowded street market, where this vendor is offering different fried creatures: water bugs, worms, grasshoppers and birds from a pushcart. As I scan through the selection of bugs, I point behind the glass and ask her what some bugs are. “Rod fai duan” she says, which translates into “express train”. The express train is a worm that eats bamboo, which doesn’t sound bad, it sounds clean and it only eats bamboo. Like something out of a horror movie, this fat long bug with visible sections looked much too small to be a bad bug. After short deliberation and deciding to put my prejudices aside, I decide I want to try it. She is so generous with her scoop that I had to tell her I’m new to bugs and to go easy on me. She sprays my bugs with a thin brown sauce and hands the bag to me. When I ask her what the sauce is, she smiles and simply replies, ‘secret sauce’. Bugs may not seem like the ideal meal to us, Americans, but eating insects is a common practice in Asian countries, Thailand being one of them. And while we find it gross to cook bugs and eat them, I’ve learned it’s a difference in cultures.
At this time, I was well into my teens, where my mother figured I was responsible enough to travel around alone. She encouraged me to go out and mix with the local Thai people, whether it be the noodle vendor who pedaled his cart of delicious hot “Koey Teo” soup or to travel to the “Baan Nawk” (an internet café). But the greatest memory I had as a teenager was serving as a monk for a short period of time. In my mother’s words, this was to make merit for my family, an extremely important act as a male in Thai culture. To respect my mother’s decisions, I stayed in a monk retreat for nine days.
Upon arriving at the temple, I was greeted by a man named “Mike”, who was the abbot of the monks. He spoke broken English, just enough to understand him, and was very kind to me. Almost immediately he escorted me to an area where I was wrapped with a white apron, where I found my head to be shaved, and robbed of my belongings. Completely stripped of my previous self, all they left me was a saffron robe and sandals. This introductory trial was shocking and I was starting to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew.
Once nightfall came around, I was sent into a living quarter with other monks, where I slept on a pillow-less wooden board. In these living quarters, there was lack of air condition, where I was left with only a basic plugin fan to keep me cool. Sleeping in these conditions was tough, the heat and the humidity was just too much for me, it is no surprise that I felt dizzy for a while. Once I was able to fall asleep, I was abruptly woken up at 4:30 am with an icy bucket shower and the scrape of a razor over my chin and head. I then meditated with the other monks for a couple hours before breakfast of rice and chicken. Once breakfast was done, it was back to the meditation hall where we meditated until 10:00 am when the second and final meal of the day was served. We were then permitted to take a nap through the heat of midday before meditating again until around 7:30 pm.
This difficult process went on for 9 days, which at the beginning seemed virtually impossible to complete, but towards the end my mind began to slow down and settle. When I was finished I began to experience a feeling of serenity and mental clarity that I had not thought possible.
In conclusion, after my unique life experiences in Thailand, it broadened my perception of a different race and location. My moment of eating bugs showed the differences in American culture compared Thai culture, that some foods are more or less ideal. And as I was among monks, there were no economic or class divisions, only equality among us. This ultimately constructed insight through a different race of people and differences in location.