I was happy for the opportunity to meet other English speakers, both native and non-native. We met up in town and piled into two trucks, stopping on the way to pick up produce at the bustling Kapoer night market.
The Kapoer night market and the smallest bananna ever (We found it on a wild tree)!
My second trip to Boo Nam’s rainforest home was every bit as enjoyable as the first. Upon arriving we immediately began unpacking the groceries to prepare them for various fates. The women in Thailand do EVERYTHING. I guess traditionally the men did the fishing/hunting/animal raising work while the kitchen and home remained the woman’s domain. Modern Thai women have maintained their traditional responsibilities, often rearing the children, doing the shopping, cooking the meals, and managing the rest of the household tasks, all the while holding down permanent full time jobs. As Bodie put it, openly admitting his guilt over this disproportionate divvying of duties: (Sarcastically, beer in hand) “Yeah, I helped. I helped a lot. I WATCHED my girlfriend buy those groceries and then drank ALL the beer while she did the cooking. I’m exhausted!”
Preparing dinner
Being a farang woman in Thailand, cooking dinner is always a somewhat awkward and humbling experience. Never is the division of the sexes clearer. This is the part of the evening when the men crack open beers and make jokes or play the guitar around the fire. Meanwhile, the women retreat to the kitchen to begin the arduous task of preparing multiple complicated Thai dishes. I was one of only three women and the only non-Thai of the group. I tried to help, and asked for instructions I knew I would only partially understand at best. I like to think I was helpful and learned a few things about Thai cooking (I’m now an expert at cleaning a fish by ripping out the gills and guts with one motion), though in all honesty I probably just got in the way more than anything else. At the slightest sense that I was becoming more of a hindrance than help, I would awkwardly join the circle of beer drinking men. And so this was how I spent the first part of the evening – flitting between the jovial conversations at the fire, and then guiltily thinking ‘I should help in the kitchen,’ where I would awkwardly try to take part. One highlight for me was holding the flashlight while Boo Nam cut fresh lemongrass from her garden, and dug up some ginger root from a nearby stream bank. The dinner was of course delicious, a feast of fish, chicken, and beef dishes with a variety of rice, noodles, and mouthwatering curry, coconut, basil and lime sauces. Afterwards, feeling I could have contributed more to the food preparation, I helped the men wash the dishes. I couldn’t help feeling a little lost, floating on the outskirts of this gender-based division of labor and the multilingual conversations taking place around me. Even so, it is impossible to feel out of place for long with this fun-loving, kind-hearted group.
Gearing up
After dinner we gathered spotlights and head lamps and prepared to take a nighttime forest walk. This is one of my favorite activities, as it affords an excellent opportunity to see all kinds of animals that spend the daylight hours sleeping or hiding. Our group of ten or so took off down the rainforest path, lights scanning the canopy overhead. We weren’t exactly a stealthy group, some members having consumed a considerable amount of beer by this point. Good thing our primary target – the slow loris – is so aptly named. Having spent an entire summer in Madagascar doing exactly this (minus the beer) as part of a study to estimate the impacts of forest fragmentation on lemur population density, I was thrilled when my headlamp illuminated a shining pair of golden eyes in a nearby tree. Framed in the light of my headlamp and frozen in terror was one of the cutest animals I have ever seen. Huge round eyes blinked back at us, and the tiny nose twitched, mouth bowed into a permanent smile. Our group crashed through the underbrush to get a better look. Finally the poor animal, doomed by its evolutionary fate (how is being slow a physical adaptation again?..) began what was for it a breakneck getaway (two feet per minute) with its tiny grasping hands and feet. We spotted six more slow lorises before turning back to camp.
Look closely.... it's a slow loris!
We found several large cauldrons of raw cashew nuts waiting at the fire. In the ensuing hour, I learned firsthand why cashews are so expensive. First of all, cashews grow individually at the base of a sweet bell-shaped fruit. The nut is housed within a rock-hard green casing that can only be removed after smoldering in a red-hot fire. As the nuts are continuously stirred over constant heat, they begin to smoke and hiss. Then suddenly as the oil seeps out of the shells, the entire cauldron lights ablaze. Illuminated by an eerie glow in the darkness of the rainforest, Boo Nam looked like a sorceress conjuring up spirits before us. She dumped the nuts onto the ground, where we allowed them to cool for a few minutes. Then came the most physically demanding part of the process: banging on each individual nut with a rock to free it from the shell. This required a skillful balance of force and caution, as bashing the nut too hard would crush it into cashew dust. I worked at an excruciating pace of 2-3 minutes per nut, and decided looking down at my cramped hands and sooty blackened fingernails that maybe cashews weren’t so expensive after all.
And this is how you get a cashew....
After a while (and a disappointingly small pile of cashews) I returned to my little pup tent, where I fell asleep to the songs of the gibbons overhead. In the morning we embarked on a jungle trek to a series of beautiful waterfalls. It was the perfect conclusion to a fantastic weekend retreat.
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