Welcoming Party

Ok so after a long journey on the bus and waiting at the bus stop I got to my new home. I greeted all the family with the traditional Thai greeting Sawatdee Kap, a small nod while doing a wai (putting your hands together like praying with your hands covering your mouth. There was a lot of smiling and talking amongst themselves but I couldn't understand much as they were speaking Isaan not Thai and I only know a little in Thai only. The differences are between the 2 dialects are big and Isaan dialect is closer to Laotian language just across the border than Thai itself but still some words are the same in both so I was able to understand little bits.

I was shown my new house which I have to say is much larger than it ever looked in the pictures. I played with Mixer (Moni's 2 year old brother) and Dab the family's dog. Slowly during the course of the next 2 hours more people from the village turned up to see the new Falang (their word for white foreigner) as well as other family members and some elderly people from the village. The family and elderly people came along so we could perform a blessing on the house so the ancestor spirits could look after us while we stay there. The elders coming would somehow bless me and Moni to to allow us live to their age. I have some pictures of this to follow as they werent taken on my phone but they show some of us in our house receiving the blessing and the cotton string tied around our wrists is the personal blessing of each individual to give us good luck which are then to be worn for 3 days and can only then be taken off.

Everyone then had a feast in our new house during which they all were keen for me to keep trying new things and eating the food the Isaan way. Isaan way of eating is traditionally done by using your fingers to scoop some sticky rice out of one of the bamboo containers and then rolling the rice into a ball. This can then be dipped into the food and you simply grab a little bit of what ever your dipping the rice into with the ball and the pop it all into your mouth. There was quite a lot of food and most of which I'm not even sure what I ate but most of it was quite nice. This traditional Isaan way of eating is done mostly by the elderly these days and with more youngsters now using a spoon to scoop the additional dish this sounds more hygienic to me but when in Rome. Everyone thought I was really friendly, polite and they kept telling me they had never met a white foreigner like me before.

Also just an update I am currently in Huahin a coastal town in Thailand as I am writing this and trying to catch up with all the blog posts of things I've done. It's Moni's birthday today and we had her party last night and we are off to Koh Samui with 2 more of our friends in a day or so.