Thailand-Day 2-Khon Kaen

Enjoyed a nice, warm morning sleeping in-making up for the 4:00 a.m. bedtime. Met up with John after his morning of teaching for a delicious lunch at a small shop down the street. I then spent a pleasant afternoon walking around the main lake in Khon Kaen, which is across the street from John’s apartment. It was a great way to relax, enjoy the warm weather (China gets cold with its sparse indoor heating even if it’s not that cold) and most of all, do some great Thai people watching. Some people may not, but I absolutely love people watching, especially in a foreign country. There tend to be so many little unknown quirks and mannerisms that are (of course) foreign. Add these with a language I can’t understand, and it makes for quite a mental challenge to figure out what people are doing, and I seldom can even guess as to why. So, with the jet lag and overnight bus still restraining my energy, I had a great time walking around the lake.

I met up with John in the late afternoon, as he was wrapping up a meeting. John teaches English to elementary school students as part of his job, but another big part of it is working within the Khon Kaen Education Initiative (his employer) to help foster and spread a contemplative education movement within the city of Khon Kaen. As breaking any social norm is hard, including educational practices, this group is using the English teachers (who are already foreign) to help introduce contemplative education to the city. John is actually kind of an educational consultant-despite (like me) having no pedagogical training or teaching experience.

After the meeting, we went to dinner with three of his colleagues-two elementary school teachers and one guy from the education ministry that’s part of the program. It was an awesome time for me. They were very kind, helpful, relaxed people. The education minister was very curious in asking me questions about my life in China, and in America. Even though he certainly had asked John and other Americans in the program the same questions, he was eager to talk to me too. I had a few questions to ask them that didn’t quite get covered in the Lonely Planet country overview, and between their English and John’s Thai, I got some great answers. We had a great conversation about the ever-present relationships of Thai women and Western men (often older), which I was pretty curious about. I learned about the role that property/business ownership plays into it (foreigners often marry to gain access to properties or business sectors restricted to Thai citizens) but overall the opinion of these three Thai people was that they don’t see the Thai women as sell-outs nor the Western men as predators, but that the marriages are usually mutually beneficial. The dinner was a tasty Thai version of hot-pot, with lots of fresh greens as garnishes, which was a touch I liked. It was a great first evening of enlightening conversation, good food, and a delightfully warm evening at the open-air restaurant.