George's Unusual and Marvelous Adventure - Part 2

As he promised, Tom came to Latda Mantion at 9 am this morning, said hello to Mary, and then took me (George) to Baan Non Tum.  Tom hopped on his tractor with young daughter Namfon and moved the tractor to its shelter.

And then tended to his animals.

In Isaan, one sees a lot of roosters under cages like the one below, but I hadn't seen a rooster "walked"  with the cage.  Tom moved several into the shade this way.

I think word had spread about the farang and suddenly there was a larger group of children than there had been the week before.

I had given Tom a copy of the blog post about my visit the previous Saturday, as well as some prints of pictures I'd taken.  Tom began reading the Thai captions.

When he got to the part of the blog post saying he drives boats across the Mekong River, he said "mai, mai" ("no, no").  Tom made clear he's a farmer, not a boat driver.  That had been the first conversation Tom and I had the previous Saturday as we stood in the pavilion overlooking the Mekong River and he had been talking to me about the boats on the river.  We were pretty new at this business of communicating across the language barrier with neither of us knowing much of the other's language.  I must have assumed he was talking about his livelihood even though he never said that.  So the record's corrected now.  And this post will demonstrate what a farmer he is!

He took me to a building nearby to show me how rice is milled.

In the milling process, the hull is removed as well as the bran layers to leave white rice.

I also saw some chicken eggs lying where I think they had been laid.

 

Sintan, a neighbor, arrived and posed with his grandchildren: Marisa (Nooknick), Nattida (Nun),  Natakron (Tern), Pakapran (Tooktick):

Tom and the kids and I did a little vocabulary practice.

Tom has taken on the mission of trying to teach me Thai and uses every opportunity he gets to teach me new vocabulary and to drill the pronunciation.  I am an eager student but with (unfortunately) a limited retention capability for new vocabulary.  I insisted that he also pronounce the English words.  Today I got a good start on the Thai words for straight, left, right, like, and know.  Tom didn't seem as good a student at drilling for himself (but he doesn't have the pressing need to learn English that I feel about Thai) so I think I may remember more of our lesson today than he.

We were joined by Oanchittha, another neighbor who is Runee's aunt and a 5th grade teacher in a local school.  She dramatically improved the communication between the farang and the locals.

 

Suddenly there was commotion in the yard near us: a bunch of cows had gotten out of the nearby temple grounds and were headed for Tom's rice field to graze.  Tom jumped up and began chasing them (to save the forage for his cows).

Tom pointed to a monk helping corral the cows.

Runee and Tom served lunch

which included fried crickets (which I passed up).

 

Then Tom said let's "go around" and we got on the motorbike to visit his friends and family. The first stop was to see his friends Paupan, Pausuai, and Marion.

 

Next it was the home of Paulat.

 

Paulat is a blacksmith.

At the same house, I also met Fon (with baby) and Frangeng and their children and a monk, Prakruprian Meiter.

Then we headed further into the country and Tom stopped to show me his rice fields and pond.  Those are two charcoal ovens in the first picture below; Paulat had been using charcoal to heat up the metal rod.

Tom showed me a lot of land that he owns.  I asked if he hired people to help and he said no, he farms it by himself!

As we neared Khemmarat, Tom stopped to show me Wongcheh and the Hwaiwongkoi River.

Thank you, Tom, for showing me so much of Isaan and its wonderful people, like Lanchai and Piau, Tom's nephew.