Amazing Fruit Race?

Saturday turned out to be quite an eventful day with Thai culture abounding. We had decided on Friday that our language class would meet at the hub in order to attend a going away celebration for Anton’s host brother. Anton’s host brother who was going to be entering the Sangha (Buddhist monastic order) for a period of one month and the celebration was set to last at least five days.

When we arrived at the hub site Ajan Danai had misunderstood the starting time of the celebration which was thought to be starting at 8:00 am but in reality didn’t start until 11:00 am. In order to fill the time we were assigned to partake in an “Amazing Fruit Race.” The Amazing Fruit Race consisted of splitting up into two teams and racing to the market to find the names of six fruits, their price per kilo and per unit, and to figure out the classifier which accompanies all description of fruit. He also explicitly said that the winner would be based on how quickly they got done, but also by the completeness and degree of detail of the information. The teams ended up being Tony and me versus Quilen and Mike. We were given 45 minutes and set to the task. Tony and I divided up the fruits and headed to different parts of the market to get our information. We came up with some pretty imaginative ways to figure out the unit price, give that some fruit are not sold by the unit (bananas, grapes, etc), and the fruit classifier given that English does not have classifiers. Tony and I got all the information and rushed back to the hotel sensing victory. After about 20 minutes of waiting, Quilen and Mike showed up with sacks full of various items from the market, but not what was specified under the official rules of the Amazing Fruit Race.
Well it appears that Quilen and Mike have the attention spans of two year olds and listening skills that are quite possibly worse. They had taken their merry time buying flip-flops and Dance Hits 2006, a CD vital to Quilen so he could teach the local kids how to bust a move. They tried to claim that they were done at a certain time and should be credited with the time they finished, not the time they showed up at the hotel. Tony and I had a detailed report including all the required info plus the colors and tastes of the fruit. Quilen and Mike, needless to say, did not figure out the classifier, they did come up with the word for fruit?, and had no descriptions. They tried to claim that the judging was flawed, but the more astute team clearly won!

Afterwards we headed to Anton’s host family’s house for the celebration. Of course as soon as we showed up we were given the celebrity treatment. We were immediately sat down and given enough food and beer to feed an army while everyone else basically stared in wonderment at the farang that had suddenly appeared at their party. We ate and drank and then we ushered to the side of the house for the head shaving ceremony. Of course a head shaving ceremony would not be complete without a whole rock band playing out of the back of a small Toyota pickup truck. Keep in mind that this was rock music, not traditional Thai music that you may expect to be present at this type of ceremony. The local monk was present to make the first cut and almost before the family could get a snip we were ushered in to take a wack at it. It is so great that we are allowed to participate in all these events. I guess a parallel would be pouring water on a baby’s head at a baptism in the States. Quilen, the most un-bashful person I have met, was hesitant to step in and clip a piece of hair. Well after he was at it there was no holding back. He grabbed the biggest piece of hair he could find and went at it with a pair of dull scissors. After a few minutes of yanking and hacking a courtesy Thai lady showed him that cutting just a small piece with sharp scissors was far easier. Quilen never fails to just crack me up.

Several men had by this time gotten fairly drunk and it was hilarious to see how the women handled them. The women and men were separated by tables but when a drunken man’s good intentions turned into what the women saw as an annoyance they were rather bluntly yanked away by the arm. Thai society seems like an interesting syncretism portrayed as patriarchal society outwardly but clearly matriarchal within. The women seem to be relegated to traditional feminine roles, but there is no hesitancy for them to assert their authority! Soon after the drunk man was escorted to another area of the party we were greeted by several women telling us that one of our own had just showed up to the party. Well it turned out to be an American military man in his late 50’s. He had come to Thailand in August for his vacation R&R from Iraq where he was a bookkeeper and had met a lady at one of the popular tourist hang outs. Well they had been in touch since then and he had come back and married her three days earlier. He spoke three words of Thai and she spoke no English. Yet another interesting look into Thai culture.
After Anton’s host brother had been thoroughly shaven, even his eyebrows, he was loaded up into the back of a pickup and paraded through the neighborhood to the local wat. The lead truck was that which carried the rock band and the falang, along with the rest of the celebration participants, danced in-between the rock band and the truck carrying the soon-to-be monk. When we arrived at the wat we were given special access to the ritual of initiation and were asked to return the next day to participate again. Unfortunately I couldn’t, but I had thankfully caught not just a glimpse of Thai life but rather an extended private session. Once again, an experience that would probably never happened if we wouldn’t have been part of the Peace Corps and been honored house guests of the local families. What a way to get to know the culture!