Ubon Thailand

Ubon, Thailand—where you’ll learn about missionaries, an old brothel named Disneyland, the search for my old house, and a horny leopard

I arrived in this provincial town at 7:30am on the night train from Bangkok. That may sound exotic, but in actuality, the engineer must have been either inexperienced or an overly cautious fellow; throughout the night, whenever approaching a stop, the train jerked its way to a stop, as if the poor fellow couldn’t make up his mind whether to stop or not. Or the guy had previously worked for Amtrak. At any rate, I didn’t get much sleep up in the top bunk and was happy to get off the train. I wandered into the small station and out the other side just in time to see a tall woman in her late twenties approaching from amongst some tuk-tuks and taxis. This would be Carla, the director of the SDA English Language School here in Ubon. The folks in Bangkok had put us in contact, and Carla had graciously invited me to come visit the school and my old home.

After our intros, we were getting ready to head into town in the back of a tuk-tuk when Carla spied a middle-aged Thai man walking towards us. “Tomas,” she cried in joy and with a laugh. “What are you doing here?” She spoke some words in Thai to him and turned to me. “C’mon, he’ll give us a lift into town. I met him when I first arrived three months ago.” The guy had a very nice Jeep Cherokee, and we piled in along with three backpacking women in their forties. Apparently he ran a makeshift taxi service. After dropping us at the “apartment” complex where Carla had reserved a room for me (and where she lives), I checked into a nice room with private bathroom and good wifi in the room and air-con, thankfully. I was sweating like a pig and it was only 8am.

I wound up walking with Carla a couple blocks to where the church and the school are located. It’s a nice little whitewashed church, though only twenty or so people were in attendance, mostly Thai’s but some Filipinos as well, and Angel, an American woman who is a teacher at the school. At the front of the church, a Filipino woman led out in the singing, and then translated the sermon into English with the pastor beside her. After church, I just wandered around this part of town remembering the old days and taking everything in. The town is not big—perhaps a hundred thousand, but just a collection of streets with one lane in each direction, and as in much of Asia, shops fronted the street, wide open and inviting customers to walk in. There wasn’t much in the way of English signs; and no tourists in sight. Ubon is a Thai town that offers nothing to foreigners other than friendliness and a chance to rest. Cars didn’t pack the roads as elsewhere; I could cross a street without worrying about a maniacal taxi driver aiming for my legs. Tall palms stood behind three and four story buildings that looked, truth to be told, a bit run down and tired—but that pretty much describes Asia, and is part of the charm of the place. Finally, here was a place without Starbucks or McDonalds—(or much Cola Zero, as I found out to my chagrin).

My swallowing difficulties persisted though I discovered that I could more easily swallow solid foods. Anything juicy had been giving me trouble, as if the swallowing reflex didn’t recognize “juice” as needing to go down, but in Ubon, I ate my first apple without half gagging on the juice that preceded the ‘meat’ of the fruit. I decided one morning to go find a coffee shop and read a newspaper. I’d been praying for an International Herald Tribune, VERY difficult to find in China and impossible in Laos, so imagine my joy when passing a small seemingly second-rate magazine shop and spotting ONE copy of the Tribune. I happily paid my 60 baht for the paper. So when I woke up that morning, I took my paper and headed down to the street, where I caught the “number 3 tuk-tuk”. Carla had shown me on the map the route it takes. “It’ll go up the one main street we have until it reaches Tescos,” which was a British supermarket. “And it’s bright pink,” she added with a laugh.

On the hot street under a hot sun, I waited only a few minutes for the number 3 Tuk-tuk, which was indeed bright pink. One climbs aboard from the back and sits on a bench on either side and beneath a canopy. Whenever you want to disembark, you push a buzzer and the driver pulls over, at which point you go around to the front and pay him 10 baht. Quite simple and wonderful. I wasn’t sure where there would be a coffee shop, but I figured there had to be one near the Swenson’s Ice cream parlor I’d seen the evening before while wandering about. “Western” goods and services were often in close proximity. The Tuk-tuk carried me and a half dozen other passengers along the somewhat busy main street, and only after a few minutes, I spotted the Swensons. I pushed the buzzer, the driver pulled over, and I paid him his 10 baht and stood under the hot sun glancing around as he took off. Scanning, my eyes rested on the one place a diabetic should avoid: a Mister Donut shop. There was nothing else around except for the ubiquitous Thai shops: a tire shop, a ‘refreshment’ shop (selling only sugared drinks, chips, various Thai snacks), a clothing shop, etc. I walked into the wonderfully air-conditioned Mister Donut and for the next hour or so, munched on two donuts, drank Latte, and read the paper. It was heaven.

In the evening, Carla and Angel invited me to go with them to the night market. Hopping on a Tuk-tuk, we rode a short distance to the market where there are dozens of stalls, booths, stands—all selling fresh grilled, baked, boiled or otherwise heated up foodstuffs. Fried bananas? Rice topped with either green veggies or some unidentifiable glop of something? Fresh-squeezed mango or pineapple juice? Carla opted for some grilled chicken whose aroma wafted through the air and past the plastic tables where we sat. I played it safe and chewed up my rice with chicken bits about thirty times before carefully swallowing. Afterwards, we each had a roti, which is a powerfully sweet taste treat that every diabetic and overweight person should fanatically avoid! So I had only one. At a roti stand, I watched the ‘chef’ spread a thin layer of dough over a hot circular griddle, on top of oil and grease and butter, naturally, just to make it totally bad for the health but assuring a delight for the taste buds. As it begins to cook, he lops on some butter, then squirts from a tube a steady stream of sweetened condensed milk, and sprinkles on sugar. Then he rolls it up, wraps it in paper, and you take it in anticipation of the rapture to come.

We munched on our rotis and took another tuk-tuk back to the apartments. Here, I completed the last step of my evening out: injecting a hefty 8 units of insulin into my tummy, which I’d noted hadn’t been decreasing in size although a few ribs were poking through skin. I unhappily concluded that I’d be the fattest emaciated man walking around town.

I had two joys primarily during my first days in Ubon: riding a bike around town, staying mainly on the many untrafficked roads, and visiting some of Carla’s classes. I twice did a stint as ‘guest teacher’ for her 4:30 class, which consisted of 4 children: pon, po, puey, and tang tai. And before you start snickering about odd names for kids, consider two of Sarah Palin’s offspring: Track and Trig. Pon was a pleasant but ‘naughty’ boy around 10; he and Po, about the same age, frequently chatted in Thai, heads together while Carla and I offered our lessons. Tang Tai was a cute little girl of about 10 or 11, and her English was probably best of the lot, though of course we’re talking about beginning level, the use of simple past. During one of the visits, she stammered out, “I…flew..on…plane….to…Bangkok.” Puey, a quiet, obviously introverted little girl of about 8 or 9, when asked a question, would look stunned and shy for moments before whispering a carefully worded answer. The first afternoon I met with them, Carla sitting to the side happily watching and interjecting comments, I told them where I was from, about my family, and about my trip. The two girls listened carefully but Pon and Po had to be dissuaded a couple of times from their ‘laughing chats’. I let each of them write down a couple of questions on paper (always the writing teacher), and then asked them to say their questions aloud. Actually, the questions were fairly thoughtful, Tang Tai asking, “What..does…you..father…work?”

The third morning, I met Carla downstairs at 9:15 because she was going to lead me over to a fancy little Kodak shop where she would meet the owner for some English tutoring, and where I could transfer my flashdrive pictures to a DVD. The owner was a woman in her early fifties, I imagine, and she was typically Thai: soft-spoken and gentle, and acted as if genuinely honored to have you in her shop. Carla had told me on the way over that the woman’s family was quite wealthy. “They own the shop, not to mention a five-star hotel and a restaurant.” No wonder the woman could enjoy a private tutor. At any rate, it was quickly decided that I would attend the first part of the lesson. Her daughter, in her early twenties, also studied with Carla. We all got comfortably seated around a big desk in a fairly empty (but air-conditioned) second floor room, and I repeated my lecture of where I was from, about Dubai, and about my trip, all of which they soaked in with smiles and little exclamations. The woman had traveled to Dubai and the daughter to Germany, so they were quite taken with me, as I later found out. We got invited, Carla told me, to a dinner on Friday evening. While we were chatting away, one of the worker girls brought in four big glasses of iced juice for our sipping pleasure. Very nice morning. When I tried to pay downstairs for the DVD with my pics on it, the girl behind the counter replied, “Free.”

I biked down side streets to a coffee shop named Peppers. I’ve no idea why it’s named Peppers since their menu is rather normal, nothing exotic. The owner/manager is a pleasant Aussie named Andrew, who was there that day with his Thai wife and 2 little daughters, one of whom was celebrating her birthday. We chatted about the usual stuff: home countries, heat, Dubai, life in Thailand, but he did convince me to come back the next morning for blueberry pancakes. For now I satisfied myself with Latte and the Herald Tribune. After a bike ride through the delightful roads of Ubon, past shacks, sparkling rich villas, lakes and temples, nothing can be better.
In the late afternoon, back at the school, I had a talk with Carla about the school. Unfortunately for the mission school, enrollment was way down, in fact practically nothing. This was because there was too little need for English in Ubon and too many English language schools. The fact that the SDA English Language School was a rather old two-story structure (though with a nice shady front lawn), was not air-conditioned (we sweated like hogs while sitting in either the office or the classrooms), and there was a general air of ‘old and poor’ about the place. This is no fault of Carla or Angel, who work under difficult conditions. I blame the mission ‘leaders’ in Bangkok, who do not have the foresight to see what is sorely needed in order to meet with success. It’s not enough to simply say “We are doing the Lord’s work.” To my way of thinking, the Lord would prefer if church leaders opened their purses a little more and tried using their brains. Ah, organized religion.

I started feeling lightheaded (when I get overly hot about politics or have had too much insulin). I joined Carla with Pon, Po, Puei and Tang Tui once again, though. Standing somewhat feebly in front of the four energetic students, I told them a story about snorkeling with a friend in Dubai and seeing a shark, and about my friend screaming when she saw the shark. The kids thought it moderately funny and learned the word “scary” and practiced their past tense verbs for awhile, but then I needed to get some carbs down my gullet in order to avoid fainting in the streets of Ubon, so off I went for dinner.

I chose an Italian place on the corner of the street closest to the apartments. I suppose it was the only Italian place in town, but it looked authentic and Carla had raved about the place. As the only customer I the rather cozy and well-decorated restaurant, two waitresses hovered over me as I looked at the menu. Realizing that I needed to raid an ATM, I asked a waitress if they accepted credit cards. The question was met with a blank stare, so I said, “How pay? Pay by credit card?” The girl turned with a shy look of horror to another girl and said, “Pay…pay?” Her companion was equally clueless so I withdrew my Mastercard from my wallet and showed it to her. She shook her head, “No, no, so sorry.”

“Where’s an ATM?” I asked. “A bank?” This word they knew, and the girl led me out the front door and pointed down the road. “Go to end road…to streetlights, then left” but she pointed right. We got it figured out and she said, “You take my bicycle please.” I thanked her, touched. Can you imagine a waitress in the US offering her bike to a total stranger who had only left an International Herald Tribune and a bag of red apples as collateral in the restaurant?

The girl pointed down at her bike, and I groaned inwardly. The thing was this tiny, girly-pink bike. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, however, so I climbed aboard what seemed little more than a toy, and pedaled off down the busier-than-normal street on my pink girlie bike. I got a few stares along the way, the white foreigner on a girl’s bike! I had to laugh though. How many Nebraskans were riding on a pink bicycle past tuk-tuks and pedestrians and chickens on a busy Thai road? Not many, if you ask me. Anyway, after probably making a lot of Thai folks chuckle as they walked along the road or watched from those open-front shops, I withdrew a cool ten-thousand from the ATM (don’t get excited, that’s only a couple hundred bucks). I returned to the restaurant and feasted on a big salad and spaghetti. Back at my hotel room, I had a warm shower to rinse off the day’s accumulated sweat and got caught up for the most part with my journal. I was getting used to this room, even though the ants in the bathroom kept appearing from nowhere.

I walked over to the school around 9am to meet Carla and Angel. “We’re going to a Veteran’s Day memorial in the park,” Carla said. “Wanna come along?” I said ‘sure’ but wanted to rent a bike for a couple days; Carla walked with me over to a little shop where a man did printing and engraving—but also rented out bikes. His wife, Yoko, half German and half Japanese, was a cheerful woman in her early forties who pumped up the front tire of a bike and waved happily as we three pedaled off down the street.

The next morning, the three of us attended a Veteran’s Day memorial service held in the city park; the military was represented by several hundred cadets, all of whom were simply kids trying to stay in the shade. Beside several bouquets of flowers and at a podium stood an Englishman speaking about how the city was honoring Mother Ubon, a truly elderly woman who during WWII had risked her life to give fruit to the allied POWS brought to Ubon by the occupying Japanese. The couple hundred in attendance applauded her as she collected her flowers. She told everyone (in Thai) that she wasn’t a hero, that it had been the soldiers. There were two or three picture-taking periods where the media snapped group shots, though it was never clear to me who was to be in the shots. There was a funny little Thai guy, obviously military, who was running around ushering anyone and everyone to come forward to be part of the group shot; why on earth he wanted me in my shorts and tank top, and sweat pouring from my face, to be in a photo with well-dressed (but definitely suffering) townspeople and dignitaries was beyond me. I guess I only went because my Uncle Clause had been a POW of the Japanese, and of course my own father had been stationed in England during the big war. Today was in honor of them and their service.

Then Angel, Carla and I pedaled our bikes (it’s so much fun!) to Peppers, the place owned by the Aussie, and feasted on blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup. They were delicious. Carla had ordered eggs but cooked well, so when they came out with yolk oozing from them, she wasn’t a happy camper. “They never can get it right,” she said. Well, after that, back at the SDA English Language School, I spoke with the secretary, a cute little Thai woman in her forties who speaks decent English. I’d been trying to arrange a meeting with an elderly pastor—in my search for stories of inspiration. I think she got tired of us asking, because she got hold of him and said, “He says, okay, but come now.” So just as I was dreaming about a nice nap, I instead drove with Jaroonee and her friend to the home of this elderly, retired pastor. The guy is eighty-three years old, but still pretty spry. But he said (speaking Thai to Jaroonee, who in turned translated into English) that he wasn’t sure of dates and would like to have his friend present “because she would remember more.” So we hopped back in the car and drove a few blocks to pick up an elderly woman. On the way back, one of my prayers was answered: I found the house where I’d lived nearly 30 years earlier and “Disneyland”, a place I’d visited in those days. More on that later.

In short, in the un-air-conditioned hall of the school, a once grand old two-story building, I listened to the history of the church and school in Ubon. The pastor or his friend, a genteel woman in her seventies, would alternately speak about those times and the hard life, and while Jaroonee translated, sometimes with chuckles, I’d type it out on my laptop. One of the stories the woman related, and as she sat in the plastic orange chair in this hallway, she told of how the pastor in his younger years had befriended a man named Mon, and after getting to know her, telephoned Mon, living in another town and said, “I have a girl here for you to marry.” Pastor Mun, at the time in his mere twenties, did come to Ubon, did meet her, and did fall in love. Eventually, they married and had a full life serving God in various places in Thailand and Laos. But that’s the subject of another book.

For now, after the interview ended, Carla and I biked through town to go to the night market. We stopped at Joe’s shop, where a friendly little Thai guy named Joe sells a vast assortment of semi-expensive and quality items: knick knacks to silk ties to art. He introduced us to a Chinese girl named Jessie, who is here guest teaching for six months at a small university. As we sat at a table in Joe’s shop drinking water and juice, she told us about herself, and of course we reciprocated. The cool thing about traveling is the human connection. The night market was right across the street, so we left our bikes parked in front of Joe’s and crossed over to the buzzing colorful market with its special enticing scents and deep-fried foods. I saw the same Roti maker rolling dough in which he’d sprinkle sweet condensed milk and sprinkle sugar, the same musician beggar playing his little ukulele as he slowly strolled along only half seeing out of one eye. Townsfolks and a handful of whiteys sat at cheap plastic tables munching on fried rice with assorted ‘goodies’ and drinking fresh-squeezed juices. Bugs flew here and there, this being Asia, but I thought it sad that this kind of social setting, a market, was missing from Midwestern society.

The next day, my fifth day in Ubon, I was going to bicycle up a few blocks to see the house where I’d lived in 1982—and a place called Disneyland, just down the street from that house. Carla and Angel asked if they could bike along; they, too, were anxious to see the places I’d talked about. The sun was strong and great puffy white clouds hung in the sky; we pedaled through light traffic past all the two and three story buildings (some old, wooden structures from way back) and others more modern. Passing a temple where I was sure the house had been near (and where Jaroonee had showed me just a couple days earlier), I was frustrated not to see the house. “Let’s try Disneyland,” Carla suggested. “Maybe then we can backtrack and find the house.” That sounded logical so I agreed. And within a few minutes, we coasted into Disneyland. Which requires an explanation here.

I had come to Ubon in 1982 for several weeks to teach English to Lao refugees in a Red Cross camp; the organization for whom I worked was Volunteers International. There were four of us volunteers: Clint, a rather serious youth who was technically ‘in charge’; myself, and then Jamie, a pretty young woman from California, and Duncan, an English lad of nineteen with blond hair and an amiable personality. We three gentlemen lived in one house that had been built by the church leaders two or three decades earlier; the house was a whitewashed affair that resembled an old American home from the period—front porch and all. Jamie lived alone next door. The guys’ house had an expansive green lawn on which the neighborhood boys frequently played soccer, and the house also had a collection of bats, ants, geckoes and roaches. The entire neighborhood had a rural feel about it though we could pedal into town within minutes. But this street was limited to our two houses and some wooden shacks. The road in front of our house was of dirt.

Down the street from us was “Disneyland.” In the 1970’s, while hordes of Yankee soldiers were based here during the Vietnam War, Disneyland was a brothel, an amusement park of sorts with undoubtedly wild rides. The place was nothing more than some wooden two-story shacks that looked like they might collapse would there be any tectonic jolt whatsoever. Then, years after the uniformed Americans departed, Disneyland remained a partial brothel but also a place where poor folks lived. I’d met a Thai teacher and his wife there, and every few days biked down the road to visit them. There was a little weedy front yard filled with junk and dust, a low fence, and a couple round metal tables over which hung a makeshift covering. A couple of chickens might have been clucking around as well as some stray mutts. There had been one young lady there, a twenty-two year old girl named Jau, that seemed to take a liking to me. For the longest time I didn’t know her profession—until one night when, at a rather seedy club, she showed up. For work, that is.
It’s like this: Jamie, Duncan, Clint and I had been teaching in the camp that afternoon. After ‘work’, we wanted to bike into town and catch a bite to eat. On one dust-covered street, inside a two-story building, there was a ground-floor eatery of sorts. But the manager insisted we go ‘upstairs’, and so we did (well, why not?). Jamie said, “Oh oh,” as soon as she saw how dimly lit the room was—and the men sitting about tables. But she was from California so made the decision to go in. Well, I’ve written a whole story about that night which I won’t repeat here; suffice it to say that the four of us, in our semi-missionary capacity, were struck dumb when a young beautiful Thai girl started doing a strip-tease. We were more shocked afterwards when some naughty boy switched on a projector. It wasn’t a home movie that you would show to an after-church potluck crowd.

Flash forward to 2009, and me wanting to locate my old house and Disneyland. It had seemed impossible once I got the lay of the land: the city had grown significantly even though it still was a very small city (or big town); I remembered nothing about the street layout of the town, and after asking a few locals where Disneyland was (and getting some funny looks—as if to say, “well, in California, isn’t it dumb kid?”), It became apparent that I wouldn’t find it. Not even Jaroonee had heard of it. But the day Jaroonee and I had gone to pick up the elderly retired pastor for an interview; she’d driven me by the house that the church had owned. A “Wednesday Market” was going on at the time on a patch of land so I didn’t get a great glimpse, but she assured me that this was the house in which I’d lived because Adventists had owned it then.

Which brings me back to my bike ride there in the morning with Carla and Angel. We pulled into Disneyland (the big sign that had read DISNEYLAND was no longer hanging between two trees) and celebrated our find with a couple of hurrahs. I happily pointed out the very same table that I’d sat at with the Thai couple and Jau twenty-eight years earlier. The memory was sharp in my mind because I’d bitten into a Thai pepper thinking it was a carrot. The resulting tears and agony had evoked a few chuckles from my Thai friends, but at least Jau, bless her, had had some compassion.

As I was relaying this to Carla and Angel, a woman (needless to say, a short, Thai woman) came into the ‘yard’ and asked, “Can I help you?” in English, a surprise. I guessed her to be in her fifties. Carla told her in Thai that we’d been looking for the place because some old friends of mine had lived here. Breaking into a smile at that information, as well as the fact that Carla spoke Thai, the woman answered some questions for me, but basically there was no Jau living here now and no teachers. Well, it had been ages ago. And Disneyland looked poorer than ever. From up on a balcony, a very old woman looked down at us. A couple other souls in poor garb shuffled across the dust-covered lawn and disappeared into one of the three shacks, two of which were closely set together. “Why don’t I get a picture of you and the lady?” Carla suggested. She was such a cheerful soul, and a real people person! She likes to laugh, and is one of those wonderful human beings that makes you feel a little happier, and her laugh gets you into a good mood so that you want to laugh too. All of us were smiling and shooting pictures when the very old woman joined us, and a new round of picture-taking began. The old woman’s face was heavily wrinkled and had seen a lot of hard times. But she possessed strong features and her lively eyes danced as she said to Carla, “You are beautiful.” To which Carla laughed hysterically and said, “You’re so sweet!”

The woman impulsively hugged Carla, which was such a sweet thing to see, and not content with that hug, she went on over to Angel and hugged her, a big full hug. More pictures, this time the whole gang, and of course with each of our cameras. “You’re good lookin’ honey,” said the old woman, first to me (with a hug, of course), then to Angel. Carla said, “Yep, she was definitely here during the American presence.” Doubtless that’s where she’d learned some of her phrases. At some point, she’d mentioned “G.I Joes”, another giveaway. Carla handed each of them a brochure for the English school though I doubted either could afford the classes. Carla would hand a brochure to Barrack Obama should he make an appearance in Ubon. But, heaven knows the school needs students.


We hopped on our bikes, waved and said our good-byes to the ladies, and rode on up the street. After crossing another road, I heard Carla say, “Is that the house?” I looked ahead and said, “That’s it!” But the place had changed dramatically; a once green lawn was now weeds and dust. A mini-market of tables, stalls and awnings had sprouted just to the east of the house, which apparently was deserted. There were some guys in chairs and a hammock under one of the coverings, doubtless shading themselves from the sun, and I asked Carla if she’d ask them if we could go up to the front porch at least. We parked our bikes and Carla went over to talk to them while I stepped up to the porch. I began to wonder if this was the house; something wasn’t quite right, but then, it’s likely my memory wasn’t quite right. Carla came over with a Thai guy in his early to mid thirties, and at the same time, a pickup truck had pulled up behind our bikes, out of which emerged a youth with shoulder-length hair. Angel at once thought he was adorable—reminding her of her adopted brother).

As it turns out, the youth had bought the house and was in the process of renovating it. In typical Thai fashion, both of the men insisted we all three go in. After removing our shoes (not that we could have gotten the floors dirtier than they already were), we walked in. I knew that this couldn’t be the house—and also remembered that Jaroonee had said one of the houses had been sold and demolished.
The bottom line was that the house in which I’d lived—with ants, bats, geckoes and roaches—no longer existed. As I looked across the lawn, I could see where the house had stood. This house we were in was the house in which Jamie had lived. Still, it was a cool and wonderful feeling to know that so many years ago, I’d been in this house and that I’d discovered my old stomping grounds. We had quite a nice visit with the guys, and Carla said, “Why don’t we get some pictures of them?” Needless to say, we are all now the owners of a fine collection of pictures—including the men because after our talk with them, we rode our bikes back into town and made printouts of the digital pics. We rode back to the house and presented them as a gift to the man who had been laying in his hammock just an hour earlier. He was pleased as punch and invited all of us for…well, some kind of fruit punch. We sat at one table next to a much smaller dwelling (one couldn’t call it a house), sipping drinks and being introduced to three young ladies who were masseurs. “Come, see,” the man said beckoning me inside the little place. The gals didn’t get an invite. I walked in to a little side room about the size of a bedroom. On the floor were three single mattresses. At the foot end of each mattress were little pink towels.
In the afternoon, we met up with Satpo and Sita at the coffee shop they own, a nice little place that makes great smoothies and has treats. Satpo also owns the adjoining hotel and insisted on taking us through two of the guestrooms, a king-bedded room and a double-bedded room. Here, Satpo learned from us to say “King-bedded room”, repeating the words slowly, and then thanking us.

Then I pedaled around, saw a temple, just enjoying riding. The one thing that made me a bit nervous was the dogs. In the temple compounds, there always seemed to be two or three dogs that would bark threateningly, trotting closer to the bike, but not too close, being uncertain about the white boy. And not only near the temples, but also ordinary neighborhoods. Underfed-looking dogs, probably not fed by owners who believe in a dog’s inherent ability to ‘catch food’, either slept at shop entrances or lurked about the streets. For the most part, I have to say, they rarely barked at me and only a couple gave chase. Usually, my shouting at them (usually in fear) dissuaded them from furthering their pursuit.

In the afternoon, I attended the kid’s class again. Tempo is a new boy, a little Thai Harry Potter. It didn’t take him too long to figure out how to be naughty, whispering and giggling to Pon while Carla was speaking to them. The kids were all rambunctious, though, and when Carla asked them if they were ready to tell Scott a story (she had told them the day before to memorize for me), they squirmed, shook their heads or looked dumbly straight ahead; so I had a quick idea: “Kids,” I said, getting up, “Let’s write sentences on the board.” Which is something they enjoyed as long as three could get up at once. They had to choose one animal that they knew and use it with one of the verbs I’d written on the top of the board. Overall, it went well. The kids expended some energy writing on the whiteboard (Carla whispered some ideas to Pon at the far end of the board) and they had good practice writing full sentences.

I rode my rental bike at sundown to the river, a gorgeous sight as a red sky off to the west made the water turn amber. This forty-something guy, who I’d seen standing over one of the many ‘cooking stands’ along the river, where one could purchase various fried or grilled foods. He must have seen a falong walk by, because all of a sudden he came up with a ‘hello’ and said some words that might have been “I see you are riding your bike down by the river” as easily as he could have been saying, “It’s my dream to kill a foreigner.” He was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and all of a sudden, the air reeked of Johnny Walker, which I doubted was emanating off the river. “Where you from?” he asked in carefully constructed English (must have been a challenge after the Johnny Walker). After mentioning “Nebraska,” he offered up this dumb look of non-comprehension. I promised to return for some of his good cookin’ the next day and biked off, keeping my eyes on a couple of mean-looking dogs as I pedaled.

The last event of the day was a fine dinner at the Rossito’s Italian Restaurant. Days earlier, when Satpo and her daughter Sita had learned that I’d be leaving in a few days, Satpo had insisted that she host a dinner for me. Carla told me one afternoon, “The ladies are quite taken with you; they loved talking about Dubai with you and think you are so neat.” She laughed. “They really like you.” I thought it was cool but wondered why I hadn’t had this effect on women when I was twenty-one. Anyway, we all met up at the restaurant, filling up two tables shoved together. Satpo had brought along her husband, who spoke almost no English and aside from Sita, her other daughter, who was married to a lawyer whose name was Pi Nut (pronounced ‘peanut’). He didn’t speak English either, so the only conversation at the table was between Carla, Sita and me at one end, and Angel at the far end chatting with Satpo. The others got some words in (with either Satpo, Sita or Carla translating) before the meals arrived, at which point there was more chewing than communicating. At the end of the meal, we had a round of “thank you”s, pictures, and handshakes. It’s never easy to have these cross-cultural dinners, but they’re usually enjoyable and make everyone feel good. It’s nice whenever people of different backgrounds (and worlds!) get along and laugh together. Stupid world leaders, most of whom in my opinion will one day be doing the backstroke in the lake of fire promised in the book of Revelations. Don’t bother with the life vests, boys.

On Friday, Carla, Angel and I caught a bus (air conditioned by the open windows) to Tiger Kingdom, an hour outside of Ubon in the middle of nowhere. It’s a zoo of sorts with only a few animals, but the thirty tigers are wonderful to see. Unlike the tigers at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, these beasts are energetic and have small yards in which to exercise. Tiger Kingdom also has a few lions, several leopards, cute monkeys (though cruelly chained or kept in cages), alligators, and bright colorful tropical birds. Highlights this day included a tiger that rose on his hind feet and pushed against the metal grillwork of his cage in order to impress me, a leopard couple, the ‘husband’ of which was clearly very infatuated (drooling, actually, in anticipation of mating; the female was less than enthusiastic, simply cowering), and a monkey that jumped at us, hitting the cage we stood beside. Well, check out the pictures.

We hitched a ride back to Ubon with a pleasant young couple in a Toyota Pickup with AC running and American pop music playing. They dropped us at Big C Department store, where we devoured some KFC before we caught our pink Tuk-tuk ‘home’. In the afternoon, Carla and I biked around, visiting some of her favorite temples. At one, we met a Thai English teacher, and I suggested that someone in Ubon start up an English club—since so many people wanted to practice their English.
In the evening, we biked along the river as the sun was going down, and then headed to a Vietnamese restaurant where Angel awaited us. The place was fairly upscale and a woman in her forties sung mournful Vietnamese love songs as a man played the piano. Not in the mood for love songs, we instead got to chuckling over movies, TV shows, and other equally important topics. This generally led to our guffawing rather loudly, I think. But the time was relaxing and fun. Sometimes, you just have to have a good time and laugh. As I biked home later, I heard “Hi Scott” from someone; turning my head, I saw the kid who worked at a fruit stand; I’d spoken with him two days ago—and he’d remembered my name. I was impressed and bought another apple.