2010 Thailand - Taking Boonmee "home"

January 2010
This time, no diseases hit -- must have been good karma for volunteering to take Boonmee back to her native village in the Isaan district. We're still very jetlagged, though, but we've managed to throw up a few photos from that part of the trip.



Ironically, they were playing a nature video about Arizona in the Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, as we awaited the last hour flight of a 30 hour journey!

The house

Preparing for the House Blessing Ceremony

Boonmee's cousin is the head monk:


Writing a

At the house blessing, Boonmee's cousin, the head monk at a local Wat, asked us what we planned to see while in Isaan. I was a little stumped, so mentioned the one claim to fame I knew of the area: a fossil museum of local specimens. We found out later he insisted that he be our docent for the day, and so the nieces and K piled in the back of the pickup, while Meo's husband drove the monk, Boonmee and Rozie in the cab. The monk told us in halting English about how, 45 years previously, he had walked for two days to get to the Wat where the bones were much later discovered.





Note how the women can't stand too close to the monk for this picture. The nieces didn't ever say a word to him at all!


Jeo, Meo, Boonmee, (unnamed relative), and Theu:

Boonmee has already been adopted by some small relative whose mother was away working in Bangkok. K and R were educating Mei in the fine American arts of cat's cradle, solitaire, and alphanumerism.



Mei goes to the same school Boonmee went to as a child.