Our ride finally shows up. It is a giant logging truck, replete with a haul of freshly cut timber for sale on the market. We hop in the back with the logs, and begin our journey to the family farm.
My girl's home is 30 miles away from the main town. The roads, if you can call them that, are simply a trail of mud and crater sized holes. Our truck shares the road with water buffalo, packs of wild dogs, and the occasional human toddler wandering around with no supervision. The journey takes over an hour. Along the way, the landscape is one from a save the children commercial....."Won't you send some money, so this child can have a pair of shoes, and clean water to drink?"
We pass the ubiquitous houses, or rather shacks on stilts that dot the Thai countryside. All of them seem to have a 1980's era huge satellite dish on top of them. When you don't have indoor plumbing, or running water, it must be nice to at least be able to get Baywatch on the tube.
Families sit outside their shacks and absolutely every person is walking out to the road to see the strange white guy riding on the back of a logging truck. Children cry out "Ma! Farang!" or "Mom, come look at the white guy! Why the Hell is there a white guy around here, and why do you think he's sitting on top of a bunch of dead trees?"
Our truck finally arrives at my girl's home. Her house is a step up from the others. It has walls made from poorly arranged cinder blocks instead of rotting wood beams. We unpack and I am shown my room. It consits of a 2 inch thick pad on the floor under a mosquito net.
It is late and everyone is tired. In the countryside, most people go to bed around 8pm. The flicker of TV sets glow in the absolute darkness, being visible in the neighboring houses through the spaces between the decayed wood planks that make up their walls. I hear the sounds of the Jing Joak, which are the the lizzards that inhabit every house in this part of the country. They make a sound similar to someone getting kissed rapid and loudly. They are the surest sign that night time has arrived, and you had better get under your mosquito net soon or suffer the consequences.
I go to sleep with my girl. She asks me if I want to go to swim in the pool tomorrow.
"Pool?" I say.
"Yes, we have pool. Can swim tomorrow if you want. Very hot, swim in pool make you feel good."
I go to sleep, or try to with the din of howling dogs in the distance. Wishing I was in Laos where they at least have opium dens.
I wake up and my room is filled with the acrid smell of smoke from burning wood. The kitchen is outside my window and consists of a charcoal pit on the ground where they cook the food. It is old school all the way. The way mankind lived for thousands of years before we turned into a bunch of pampered princesses with steel appliances, and granite counter tops. My girl prepares me a delicious Thai feast for breakfast. I look at her, and then look around. I can't believe a girl this happy and lovely grew up in such austere conditions.
Finally time comes for us to go swimming. I am given the keys to my girlfriend's sisters Hello Kitty scooter. It is a nauseating pink scooter covered in Hello Kitty designs. Only in Asia, would this be a valid marketing gimmick for a scooter company. I hop on and rev it up. I can feel my estrogen levels rise as we navigate the mud roads on the short trek to the pool. We arrive at the family farm. It's over 500 acres of rice, and Issan potato's which look like dirty twigs but taste the same as the ones in the West.
"There's the pool." She says.
"Where?"
"Over There."
"That Thing?"
"Yes, come, we go swim."
I walk up to the large hole in the ground, filled with stagnant, shit colored water. My girl strips off her T-shirt, and gets down to a bikini.
"Come, go swim with me." She says.
"In there? No fucking way man."
"Why? Aren't you hot? Water make you cool. Go swim."
"What the fuck? I'm not swimming in that. That water's fucking filthy. Some kind of worm is going to swim up my dick and eat it's way into my brain."
My girl only understood the "I 'm not swimming" part of that and looked at me confused.
"No, water fun. I swim in pool since I was little girl. You be okay na."
I know I am wasting my breath and she won't get what I'm saying but I try anyway....
"You will be okay because your people lived here for thousands of years and you have a natural immunity to the shit in these waters. Remember when you told me you got bit by a cobra when you were little but didn't die? didn't even get sick for that matter. That's because you and your people have been in this part of the country since the time of Angkor Wat. If my white ass goes in there, I'll die from some messed up parasite that's going to get inside of me."
My girlfriend tilted her head, as if the marbles in her brain would function better if they all rolled to one side.
"You no want to swim with me? Okay. You sit and read your book. I go swim."
At that, she walked down into the water. Up to her waist in her leech bath. She splashes around like a four year old, laughing to herself and seemingly, having the time of her life. I sit on the dirt, brushing away red ants, and everything else that has emerged from the ground to make a feast of the tender white flesh that makes up my legs. I, for the first time in my life, am in harmony with nature. Simply with the realization that mother nature doesn't give a rats ass about me or any of us. I am, at this moment, simply a fresh piece of meat for the insects to consume. They don't want to wait for my corpse to be in the ground. Perhaps because they are denied this pleasure since Buddhists cremate their loved ones.
"Drink up fuckers." I tell them.
After ten minutes of getting eaten alive, I strip down to my boxers and jump in the pool.
NOTE: A over the counter drug called Albendazole is available in most Thai Pharmacies. It is an Anti-Parasitic. I highly recommend you take a dose after any prolonged stay in the Thai countryside. Or if you enjoy eating at street food stalls for that matter.
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