Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Notes From Our Honeymoon Journal, Seven Years Ago At This Time

"The vendor came over, pointed to it, and said, 'Future!  The future!'  I really wish I knew what he was really trying to get across to me.  If I buy the flask, am I destined to take up golf later in life, swinging my way through life?  Or was he asserting his firm and, perhaps, correct belief, that at some point in humankind's not-so-distant future, all people will be carrying around silver flasks, swigging unknown beverages?  Whether this earnest man is a prophet or merely not good at transitioning Thai thoughts into English words, we will most likely never know."  [Matt wrote this after a visit to the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai, where there was a flask for sale, festooned with a golfer swinging his club.]

"We were standing, trying to decide how to cross the thanon, when we heard someone exclaim, 'Hey, Patty!'  How bizarre it was to hear someone in the middle of provincial Chiang Mai, in Thailand, shout out my wife's name!!"  [Matt wrote this after we met new friends, from the train north, for dinner.]

"Then Gnop brought out the whiskey and the cloth balls on string.  He wet the balls and lit them in the campfire.  He swung around first one, then two of those balls of fire.  He then tried a new trick, for him, blowing whiskey onto a torch so the flame was huge."  [I wrote this about our overnight stay in a Karen village in northern Thailand]