The house my roommates and I will call home for the next three months is a quaint neighborhood called Benjasub Village (pronounced Benja-saab). There is one entry road into the village, which is marked along the main road, Ekkachai Road, by a 7-11 and a Tesco Express (corner store). We can get all of our day to day and even food essentials at either stop, but rarely do given almost everything can be found within the ‘hood.’ In front of the 7-11 are usually some food and snack carts. Continue down the entry road into our village and on either side can be found a few nice Thai restaurant ran by friendly neighbors. Most meals at local Thai restaurants cost about $1.25 US.
This is also where our friend, Num, has his stationery shop. Num helped me install a shower in our 2nd bathroom (two showers in our house is a wonderful thing!) and he refused my payment for service saying “I am a friend.” He has proven to be a good friend time and again, and we try to have him over for our home cooked meals whenever we can. So nice! Back to the food—one of the restaurants has very good soup foods, the other restaurant has great noodle and rice options. Every morning, the same entry road has some additional food carts for the breakfast rush: one serves a soup that looks to be porridge (verification will be added once I sample some), another cart serves buttered toast, and few carts serve lunch-in-a-bag. For those who don’t know, lunch-in-a-bag is literally just that. Think of a sack lunch at school in America, but now think of that bag full of soup. The Thai’s fill small plastic baggie’s with broth, twist it around tight, then rubber band it, fill other bags with noodles and veggies, then put all of them in another, larger baggie for the road. Don’t spill.
The village opens up to a community center where the body of a dead and abandoned pool lies empty and in disrepair. There are loose tiles and broken bricks along the bottom. The heat is so great in Thailand that I have considered cleaning out the pool but I realize that the community probably can’t afford to keep it filled or chlorinated, or they just don’t see the use of a pool. The hallmark of this area seems to be the club house where the local youths gather in the evenings to compete on the six snooker/billiards tables. But from 6-7pm most nights, a fitness class has center stage. Outside, on the end of the pool opposite the club house, is a fairly large, flat chunk of cement that hosts fitness aerobics. The class burns calories to some fantastic fast-paced Thai pop music, and is led by an energetic woman who stands over the class on a wooden scaffold-like structure at the head of the class. The women turn and clap and twist and sweat, all of them smiling!
More food carts can also be found in this area (the food cart vendors can be identified by big beach umbrellas to block out the sun). There is a butcher cart where a woman chops up different meats on her chop block. Another cart has fresh seafood. And of course, one or two carts have delicious mangoes and other fruits! The Thai word for fruit is polamai. I try to eat a lot of polamai.
Also in this area are some run-your-own loads wash machines at a cheap price of 20 baht per load (about 70 cents), as well as some electronics stores, a fix-it shop, and a few other shops. One cart is a CD and DVD cart that plays music throughout the evening to entertain. Continue walking past the neighborhood central (community center and food cart alley), and you come to Soi 1 (soi means little street). This is where I do my laundry; I take clothes on Wednesday, pick them up on Sunday and drop off another load, which I then pick up and repeat again the following Wednesday. The clothes are washed and dry, pressed and folded, and the bagged or left on hangers. One month of laundry costs about $18, including tip! My house is on Soi 3, so laundry is just around the corner. Not far from the laundry lady is my choice of tailor, where I've had to take a few items. And near the tailor is my barber; I pay $2 for my monthly haircut in Thailand. All of these businesses are "home office" style, meaning the bottom level of a two story home is where the business is, and then the family lives above on the second floor.
We live in District 1, of which there are 3 districts in the Benjasub neighborhood. At the meeting point between District 1 and District 2 is a good-sized shrine area for worship and offerings.
Some of our neighbors have been shy around us, but most are very open and friendly. I played a bit of badminton with some kids the other day, I talked Thai Boxing with two men before that, and we always say “sawadee” to others as we walk past. They smile and respond, some more shy than others. We do look pretty out of place here! Many of our students live in this neighborhood, but I don’t know any by name yet. One, an older boy who is at least old enough to drive, stopped me today and said “teacher!” and indicated that I should get on his motorbike for a ride home. I was already in the neighborhood, just passing the restaurants and only a four minute walk to Soi 3, but I graciously accepted and he safely delivered me to my home, astutely following my pointed hand directions.
it’s rainy season in Thailand. We’ve been lucky so far to have most of the rain fall when we are already inside. There’s been quite a few nights where deafening rips of thunder awaken the house mates from sleep late at night, and one night the lightning temporarily killed all power, save for my handy, ever-ready flashlight. The sound of rain on our metal rooftop is very distinct. The dogs are the worst; they bark from about 9 to 10:30pm every night, so my sleep schedule revolves around their noise levels. I usually go to bed at about 11pm. Some nights the dogs will start barking and howling again in the middle of the night. There is almost always, without fail, a chorus of dog noise at about 5:30am, so that’s when I start moving and getting out of bed. Like I said, my sleep schedule revolves around those dogs. And they don’t so much bark in this neighborhood—I can respect a hearty dog bark. The dogs here “yip” and they “whine” and they do not sound tough or scary at all, just very annoying. I could do without these dogs!
Of course, if I manage to sleep through the dogs, I'll still be woken up by the 6am mobile alarm clock. That's right, there is a man who rides his bike up and down every street in our village, honking his horn again, and again, and again. Everyday, Monday - Saturday. My best guess is that he is paid by the factories nearby who employ a lot of our villagers. The factories want their workers to show up on time, so maybe they provide their own alarm clock system? I don't think this one biker guy does it just because he likes waking up and pissing off his neighbors!
One of my good Thai friends here has asked me and my roommates, on separate occasions, what the difference between a house and a home is. They do not have a similar expression in the Thai language, so the concept was at first confusing to him. I explained that home is really where the heart is, and a house can be anywhere you stay for a period of time. For me, I have a nice house in a nice neighborhood, a place that I am starting to become very comfortable with, but there still is no place like home!!!
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