Songkran 2550

Things I learned over the holiday week:

1. Songkran is a Buddhist New Year’s festival, and is based on the lunar calendar from the time of the Buddha. At some point in time Thailand switched to a solar calendar like the west, but they still use the date from the lunar calendar, which means it’s currently 2550 in Thailand, but they actually have the year change over on the solar calendar when we do. Yeah.
2. Songkran is supposed to be a break from the steamy summer wrath of Mother Nature. This year she wasn’t feeling the wrath vibe and decided to give us a break on the temperature. It was very hot the week before Songkran, and then immediately afterwards, but while the entire country was having one huge water fight there was no sun to be seen and temperatures would have been quite pleasant if I had not been soaking for hours on end riding at 2 mph down city streets in the back of a pickup truck as hundreds of complete strangers constantly drenched us with water.
3. I thought Thai children were extremely polite and reserved. Songkran is the exception that makes up for the rest of the year. Any human being that would purposely dump buckets of ice water on visibly shivering people in the back of a truck after dark better be on their best behavior for the other 361 days.
4. Touching members of the opposite sex is frowned upon in public in Thailand, except during Songkran, when many, many men (and a few women) walk right up to anyone and everyone and rub handfuls of baby powder into their cheeks. They get you from the front, from behind, from every direction. I think more people touched my face over the last week than during the last 26 years of my life combined. Really. I asked several Thai people about this custom, it’s origins, what it represented, and the only answer I got was that it was a chance for men to touch women’s’ faces. Somehow I suspect there used to be more to the story.
5. Some of the baby powder was laced with menthol. Menthol stings when it’s rubbed into your cheeks. Let’s not talk about when it gets in your eyes.
6. Although partying is more intense in some sections of the city, you can be Songkraned anywhere, at any time from any direction, even if you just changed out of your wet clothes into dry ones.
7. (Almost) everything closes during Songkran, so if you’re used to eating in restaurants for every meal, good luck finding food. Of course the meat vendors are still open, we can’t go without meat on a stick/and or string for even a day now can we? Luckily Pizza Co. doesn’t observe this tradition.
8. It’s illegal to sell alcohol during Songkran, although no one actually stops selling it. Some people protest this hypocrisy with marches during the festivities, demanding that no one drink in the streets during the holiday (but they don’t care if you stand with a beer on the sidewalk, as long as you don’t step into the street).
9. Songkran is amazing and unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world, and the Thai people really know how to throw one amazing, four-day-long, country-wide party. If you think a kiss at midnight starts the year right, you need a good Songkraning.

I (heart) Durian

There are many culinary adventures to be had here in Thailand, and the durian fruit certainly qualifies. Since moving here I have been asked three times by different Thai people if I had yet tried the durian, and I have not been asked that question about any other Thai food.

When another fellow in Joe’s program who is staying with us brought some home the other night (she had never tried it either), how could we say no?

First a little background on durian.

It’s large, about 12 inches long and 6 inches in diameter with a scary thorn-covered outer shell. On the inside are yellow pods each containing a pit attached to the center core. The yellow pods are usually removed and one eats the yellow flesh around the pit. So far not so intimidating, right?

The unusual part of the durian is the way it tastes and smells. I simply can’t describe it except to say that it tastes like farmer’s cheese. Lucky for you I found great quotes on the web (I’ve given up on the live links since they so often fail).

Here is how Alfred Russel Wallace (a British naturalist writing in 1856) describes the flavor:

“A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy.”

And here’s a great quote on the taste by travel and food writer Richard Sterling:

“... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.”

After opening the package and releasing the stench, we told ourselves we would not be put off. I wish I had a camera to catch the look of apprehension on our faces as we bit in and then our various expressions of confusion as we registered the taste. Joe and the other PiA bravely took several bites, but in the end surrendered admitting they hated it (a quote from our friend: “I can’t believe it, I never met a fruit I didn’t like!”). I was baffled for a different reason. I loved it, and I didn’t understand why the others looked like they were about to toss their cookies. In the end it turned out to be great luck for me, because I got to eat the rest of the fruit, and a raw deal for the others since they had to smell it over the next two days while I finished off the supply.

Cooling Off, Thai Style

I woke up this morning thinking about how unusually cool the weather felt. I didn’t begin to sweat the second I left my air-con bedroom, and come to think of it, riding home last night on the motorbike was almost chilly. Then I checked the actual temperature on weather.com. The high is in the mid-nineties. How hot must it normally be for 90 to feel cool you might ask? Oh, between 105 and 110.

We are right in the middle of summer here in Khon Kaen, and it is hot. Even on a cool day it’s hot. I used to think that people who covered up to protect themselves from the heat were crazy- of course it must be hotter under all that clothing. Nope, it’s not. Direct sun-on –skin contact is to be avoided at all costs. Normally riding your motorbike is a cooling activity. A few days ago I remember thinking that riding in the heat felt like continuously opening the oven door while cookies are baking: just wave after wave of heat.

Of course the Thai people know how to make the best out of the situation, thus a week from today begins the Thai New Year, aka Songkran. New Year is not a single-night celebration here as it is in the US. Songkran is a 4 day water festival where basically the only objective is to make sure that every person in the county is soaked from head to toe in water. You walk down the street and literally (or so I’ told) people will just throw buckets of water at you. I’ve already had two Thai friends offer to show me around the festivities, personally I think they just want to see me all wet. Songkran conveniently falls right smack in the middle of summer. What better way to cool off from the 100+ heat than to take a few days off of work and douse every moving being with refreshing water? I’ll let you know how it goes.