Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) Read online

  We were swimming again now, caught in a whipping eddy, Katai spluttering and squawking. I tried to help her, but I’m no life-saver and things only got worse. She flailed, rapped me in the face with her elbow. She was taking in water again.

  “Oh no, oh no,” she cried.

  Then suddenly the current changed again, and we were bobbing off towards the bank. I saw the farmer’s raft in a little inlet. When we were close enough I let go of Katai. The current threw her against the stern of the raft. She grabbed hold of it. I was swept on for a bit, out of sight of her, but soon managed to grab the loop of a root in the bank.

  I would find [the Mekong] called by many names: River of Stone, Dragon Running River, Turbulent River, Mother River Khong, Big Water, the Nine Dragons. Along it empires, kingdoms, and colonial realms have risen and fallen; successor states have been plunged into war and bloodshed. Death and hardship are its legacy.

  —Thomas O’Neill, “The Mekong” National Geographic

  I hung there gasping and grateful. I realized we had nearly

  drowned. I heard Katai call my name, whether for help or out of concern for me I didn’t know. I called back, “You O.K.?”

  “No.”

  She was sitting in the mud, coughing and choking.The old man was kneeling beside her, holding her head down between her knees. She had taken in a lot of water. As she coughed it out, she was crying.

  “Oh God, I thought we both gonna die,” she said when she saw me.

  “We were O.K., Katai, no pompen,” I said unconvincingly.

  “Oh God,” she said again. She would never have sworn by the Buddha, but she had heard farang saying “Oh God” and “Oh Jesus” all the time.

  The old man was talking to her quietly. I couldn’t understand what he was saying to her, and she wasn’t about to translate for me. Later she told me: “The old man say to me I am very lucky girl. He say the river is hungry. That was the word: hungry. He say that every year, before the rains come, someone drowns in the Mekong. Last year it was a boy from Chiang Mai: he was a very strong swimmer but the river take him. The people here say that if the river does not take someone, the rains will not come, the crops will die.”

  “Like a sacrifice,” I said.

  “Yes. It is the naga of the Mekong. He must take someone. In return he will bring rain.”

  We cycled back down the sandy track to Chiang Saen. The sun was bleached out with a heavy haze. It hung over the river, over our heads. It made it seem like we were pedaling uphill. Katai was quiet and pale. The water had left a greyness on her skin. She cycled very slowly, always keeping behind me.

  We stopped to rest. Mosquitoes mustered round my sweating shoulders. Katai stared out at the river and she began to cry again. She said, “I wish Harry was here. You take no care of me. You nearly let the river take me. Harry take good care of me.”

  Back at the guest house, she ran up the steps and went into her room without a word. The door slammed shut behind her.

  “You’re farang,” Katai said sulkily. “You couldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  A couple of hours had passed since our return to Tang Guest House. I had knocked on her door, said I was sorry, refrained from pointing out that it was her crazy idea to cross the river in the first place. She admitted me to her neat little room. She had hung a puang malai garland above her bed, and a red sarong over the window, which mingled the greenish river light with a rich pink, gave the room the air of a shady summer bower.

  “O.K., I tell you. But you won’t laugh?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s what we call khwan hai, Charlie. It is the losing of my spirit. It happen today in the river. The spirit inside us we call khwan. It is not our life spirit: this we call winjan. When the winjan goes we die. The khwan is something we might lose many times in our life. When you are sick, or when you have the big shock: when this happens we say khwan khwaen, which means that your khwan is hanging above you.” Her fingers made dangling movements above her head. “You might lose your khwan at some great change in your life, like you get married, or have a baby, or when someone dies who you love very much. The khwan is what flies away from us. We call it the butterfly soul, it flies from us so easy.”

  When a baby is fast asleep or scared, if it gives a sharp cry or abnormally continues crying or weeping, the mother will pacify it by patting its breast gently with her hand and say such sweet words as, “Oh dear khwan, please stay with the body.” This is the manifestation of an old belief that the khwan is leaving the body, and that, by such persuasion, the khwan will come back and the baby will come to itself again and stop crying.

  —Phya Anuman Rajadhon, Some Traditions of the Thai

  “Where does it go when it flies away?”

  “That depends. You remember the old man we met?”

  “The man we met…in Laos?”

  She smiled in a way that seemed to say yes, of course it was a crazy idea to cross the river to Laos. “Well, he tell me the river has taken my khwan away. It did not take all of me, I was lucky, but it has taken my khwan, and now I am sad and empty.”

  It wasn’t just the river accident either. Her khwan had been in a volatile state for a while—ever since grandfather’s death, in fact. “You remember at Chiang Rai? The fortune stick which told me I had no fortune. And today, when we walk in the sand in Laos, did you see?”

  “See what?”

  “When we walked we left no footprints.”

  “Yes, I did, but—”

  “So all these things are telling me I have lost something, that I’m in a bad way, I’m empty. Tai bau dee: mind not good, na?”

  “But you’ve seemed so happy,” I protested. “This is your holiday, Katai.”

  “Not holiday,” she said firmly. “It is bigger than holiday. This is the first time I travel out of Bangkok alone. And there’s Harry. We got plans, Charlie. This is big change in my life.”

  “Plans?”

  She didn’t answer. She sat down on the bed. “He won’t come tonight,” she said in a matter-of-fact way. “So we must think about my khwan.”

  “Right.” I cast around for something to say, some tone to say it in. “Well. We’ve got to think of a way—”

  She laughed, laid her hand on my shoulder. Her laugh had an edge to it. “The poor farang,” she said, shaking her head in mock sympathy. “He don’t like anything on the inside of people. He always like to stay on the outside, where he can feel big and strong. So. What does the farang fear?”

  “Salt, sugar, and chili?” (dutifully).

  “No. The farang fears what is inside him.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  She put her finger to my lips, stopping my anger, cooling my hot heart. “It’s O.K., Charlie. I’m sorry. This is not your fault. It is my bad mind talking like this. It is because my khwan has gone.” She rubbed her eyes. Her face still had that greyish pallor: the shock of the river still on it. “Anyway,” she said, “I know what we must do.”

  “What must we do?”

  “We must find someone here in Chiang Saen who will perform the ceremony for us. We call it the bai see soo khwan. The ceremony to call back my khwan.”

  We went to Porn’s noodle shop. Porn would know what to do. She sat attentively as Katai explained how we had swum across to Laos, how we had nearly drowned, how the old farmer had said that the river was “hungry” and had tried to “eat” her, how she felt so strange and thought the naga of the river had taken away her spirit.

  Porn nodded and murmured sympathy. Yes, of course, the classic symptoms of khwan hai were there. Yes, she knew of a mau khwan, a specialist in khwan ceremonies. Porn’s daughter, a pleasant, tubby girl of about fifteen, was despatched in search of this man. She went off into the darkness on her bicycle.

  The ceremony would be expensive, Porn warned. The mau khwan would have to be paid; the offerings needed would have to be bought and prepared. It seemed that Porn was taking on a managerial rol
e here: she would organize the whole thing. The cost all-in would be 700 baht.

  “That’s a lot of money, Katai,” I said. She was careful with money, used to making it stretch.

  She said it was worth it. It would be worth it at twice the price. “It’s like paying for an operation when you’re sick. Whatever it costs it has to be done.”

  “I’d like to watch the ceremony,” I said. “It would be very interesting to me. Perhaps I could help out with the money. You know: farang leech… ” I mimicked her Bangkok drawl. She always pronounced “rich” with a sneer, so it came out like “leech.”

  “No, Charlie, thank you. I know you mean it well, but the soo khwan ceremony, well, you don’t buy the ticket to watch like it was a pussy show in Patpong.”

  I started to protest, but she stopped me. “Of course you can watch. You were in the Mekong with me.” A fleeting warm note in her voice, a sense of something shared, even if it was just a fear—the fear when we felt the primal power of the river, the naga force, pulling us away to kill us. She was quickly sardonic again, looking at me through half-closed eyes. “You think you are the strong farang swimmer, but I know you were frightened for a bit there. Perhaps the mau khwan will say a few words for your spirit, Charlie. Maybe your spirit is not so good too. But I will pay. This is Katai’s ceremony.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said, and we both laughed.

  Porn’s daughter came back in, wheeling her bike through the eating area to the kitchen out back. The mau khwan was out of town, she said. He had gone to assist at an important ceremony down at Ban Son That: a blessing on a new school house. He wouldn’t be back until next week.

  Porn wasn’t put out. She knew another man, perhaps not quite so expert, but a very competent prahm. This word Katai translated as “spirit-man.” The prahm is an all-purpose local ritualist, versed in various ceremonies: the word actually derives from “brahman.”

  The spirit-man lived not far away. Our meal now finished, it was decided that we should visit him without further ado. The four of us walked off down Main Street, leaving the sleepy-eyed servant girl in charge of the noodle shop. We cut down a couple of shady soi, dense foliage overhead, and came round the far side of the town park, to a cluster of wooden houses. In one of these, seated on a verandah, was a small, frail old woman, doing embroidery by the light of an oil lamp. Formalities were exchanged. This was the spirit-man’s mother. She sat there serenely as we trooped on up to the jaan. I bumped my head on the roof of the verandah. Porn’s daughter giggled.

  Her son was not there at present. We waited a bit. The old woman sewed: an undulant motif, it might have been a naga, aquamarine thread on peach-pink silk. There was talk and there was silence, the Muang women smiling as they spoke, the Bangkok girl sharp and making them laugh, the farang on the edge of the circle, nodding like a mascot.

  The man didn’t come. Was he out doing a ceremony? I asked. No, he was out having sanuk, his mother said.

  “We all like a good time,” I said. Everyone smiled at my bad Thai, nodded at my profound insight.

  Katai said, “Sure. The good times you have had, it’s the one thing they can’t take away from you. That’s what Harry says.”

  A message was left for the spirit-man. The old lady said she was sure he would be able to perform tomorrow morning, unless…

  “Unless what?” said Katai.

  “Unless he’s had too much sanuk tonight.”

  We walked back to the guess how [guest house], the streets dark and quiet, the moon over the river crooked with haze. I don’t know how she knew, but she was right that Harry wasn’t coming tonight. Having got over her disappointment the night before, she seemed to have fallen back on the general Thai view that it’s no big deal if someone’s a few days late. I saw her eye flicker over the verandah as we climbed the steps, looking for some sign that Harry was here, but everything was dark and still, just a dog barking down the street and our rooms waiting as we had left them, with the untenanted room like a borderline between them.

  “It’s been quite a day,” I said.

  “Oh yes, and tonight we will sleep very well.”

  She kissed me on the cheek, so quick it might have been the touch of a moth. She was right too. I lay down on my bed and when I woke up next morning I was still dressed.

  It was Katai knocking that woke me. The sound of her knocking joined in with the clucking of the hens in the yard, like the segue into the reprise of “Sergeant Pepper.” She put her head round the door, face fresh again, saying in sing-song farang-speak—as she did countless times up on the fourteenth floor—“Good morning, sir.”

  She had already been down to Porn’s. Everything was set up for the soo khwan ceremony: it would take place, in the room above the noodle shop, at ten o’clock. “I’m going to get my khwan back today,” she said, like it was her birthday or something.

  She watched me, arms folded, as I sat up. “Just like Harry,” she said. “Look real bad in the morning.”

  I showered with the bucket and scoop. There was coffee and “scramble-egg” waiting for me. Katai was taking Chinese tea, nothing else. Was she nervous? “Nid noi.”

  We walked up to Main Street. It was a glorious morning, the sun low and clear, sucking up mist off the river, the sky blue between the old chedi and the dark mangoes, blue between the thin grey trunks of the teak grove at Wat Pa Sak.

  At the noodle shop four women were preparing the offerings and decorations for the soo khwan. They sat cross-legged on a low wooden dais in the back of the restaurant. Cartons, tools, bicycle parts, pots and pans had been pushed to the back, and the area where they were working had been swept clean. The scene was fragrant with flowers, bright like the morning. They worked with a quiet cheery expertise: the pleasure of preparing for it seemed a part of the ritual’s tonic effect. There was music on the radio, a lilting piece with some string instrument. Katai said it was music from Issan, her father’s homeland. She looked as if this was significant.

  The women arranged the flowers in bunches, wrapped around with a freshly cut banana leaf. They carefully polished each leaf with a damp cloth, giving it a bright sheen. The mass of flowers—chrysanthemums, frangipani, sugar-cane flowers, a red flower called sathaan, and many others—reminded me of the Flower Festival the day I arrived in Chiang Mai, less than two weeks ago, but so far away in the slow elastic time of these Mekong days. There were white lotus blooms too, for the Buddha, though it was explained to me that the soo khwan was not a ceremony involving the Buddha. The ceremony was to be addressed to a tutelary spirit, in this case the local naga, the river-spirit into whose domain her khwan had strayed. We were in the realms of the old village spirit cults now.

  The flowers were to grace the pha khwan, a kind of tiered conical structure set on a silver-gilt dish. This is the central item of the ceremony. Its framework was decorated with a serrated ridge of folded leaves. These, Porn said, were called nom maew, the teats of the cat. The little coils of leaf around the candles were called hang nag, the tail of the naga.

  The pha khwan is a holder for the offerings that are made to entice the errant khwan back. As well as flowers, the objects arranged on it were two boiled chickens; a half-bottle of Mekong whisky; sweetmeats of sticky rice, sugar-cane and candied marrow; quids of miang, betel leaves and areca nuts; pink birthday-cake candles; and a range of small token gifts, cunningly fashioned out of leaf-cuttings: a bracelet, a wrist watch, a cup suitable for an elfin-sized dram of Mekong.

  There is something very charming about this characterization of the khwan as a flighty, childish creature, won back by these baubles and bonbons laid out for it.

  The spirit-man arrived on time. He was a thin, neat man, perhaps about fifty, balding and bespectacled. He was half-Burmese, and had the distinctive Burmese skin, smooth and pale-brown like varnished wood. His short-sleeved white shirt was crisply ironed, frayed at the collar. He carried a couple of exercise books. In his breast pocket was a sheaf of folded papers, a spectacles cas
e, a couple of biros. He might have been a village headmaster, or a moderately prosperous trader, or a minor fonctionnaire like Katai’s father.

  Not—one would have thought, wrong as usual—a caller of spirits, our special envoy to the naga of the Mekong.

  We went upstairs. There was a thin kind of parlour with cushions on the floor, and a couple of aged armchairs. We were directly above the cook shop. High on the walls were cobwebbed old monochrome photos in gilt frames. The prints had emulsified, faded to a pale tweedy brown. The King and Queen were there, circa 1960, hung with withered garlands. Down near the street-side window was a big dusty TV set that one knew didn’t work. It served as a little family altar: on it were Buddhist statuettes and medallions, jars of spent joss, and also a small collection of dolls: cutesy dolls in synthetic lace, jovial pudgy baby dolls, a Snoopy with a smile badge. Pride of place was given to an ornate pen-holder: two plastic biros shaped like old text-pens, and between them a nickel-plate model of a vintage car which served artfully as a universal calendar. On the base of this object, bearing strange news of another old spirit-cult, was the legend, “Season’s Greetings From Don and Tammy, Tulsa County Autos, Your Caring Car-Mart.”