Nothing like a roadtrip with the coolest grandmas from Thailand’s Chaiyaphum! Especially if the car follows Siam Tulips and natural stony structures at Pa Hin Ngam National Park, and Thai traditional dances at Candle Festival in Chaiyaphum.

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On a bland afternoon, right after nibbling through a big bowl of Noodles with my bamboo chopsticks, before post-lunch lethargy kicked in, stronger than the strongest donkey-kicks, who would have known four Thai grandmas would whoosh in, eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses, and kidnap me in a big-ass air-conditioned black car (without dark glasses)…. To where?

‘Where are we going?’ The question kept resurfacing in my mind, bursting like crackers in the odd cells of my belly, but I was testing myself. How long can I just sit in the car and simply not ask that question? ‘Let grandmas decide my destiny.’ Yes, it’s as spiritual as it gets. Hold it tight, Grandma Stuk will show us the way.

But I couldn’t hold it longer. Twice the question almost slipped my tongue, but I reminded myself, ‘No, you are grounded!’ I tame my thoughts on Chaiyaphum’s surprisingly clean roads, a red telephone booth more European than Thai, women tossing spice inventory on frisky Noodles… But for how long? I finally gave in. ‘Where are we going, by the way?’ Grandma Tim has a naturally smiling lip-structure; her lips are sculpted in a way that, by virtue of anatomy, smiles all the time. ‘It’s a surprise!’

I Am Staying in Chaiyaphum’s Ban Khwao

Just a bit of backstory though. Grandma Tim’s family has been hosting me in Ban Khwao, a district in the Chaiyaphum province of Thailand, which has the only Google reference to Mudmee Silk in weaving Thai traditional fabrics, but to me, this pocket-village is a cocoon of bottomless Thai hospitality. Let’s say, I walk for 10 minutes from the house to their family-funded school, and Tim’s brother-in-law calls me out on any chances of sneaking out, and drops me in his car right at the front gate of the school. I move my head and hands in Thai expressions, to express my love for walking, and I need to walk! But who wanted to listen!

‘I will fix the bicycle for you. You can commute easily.’ Grandma Tim tells me. ‘Khap Khun Khan (Thank you!), but I love to walk, you know. Can you ask Mr. Udom to not put me in the car every morning? It’s just 10 minutes!’ ‘Oh, he will either way. It’s a Thai thing. They see you walking, and they put you in the car.’ ‘But I really love walking!’ I don’t think my opinions are quite valid or if it’s even worth mentioning, important. The next morning I am again in Mr. Udom’s car! What the hell! He speaks no English though. Total silence.

But two people in silence have a purpose; a dual comfort of knowing that each is absorbed in self-aligned horizons. A nod, a smirk, little attempts to phrase a word, an isolated meaning between two acquitted lives where the physicality of language is out of focus. But then he hands over the ice-cream with shreds of potatoes, replaces the spoon I had dropped quite by the subtle strength of snapped finger-gaps, and produces a smile raining from his elongated mouth.

They Took Me to the Candle Festival in Chaiyaphum

Long before the four-grandma saga bluffed into a hang-around, Grandma Tim and Mr. Udom drove me to the customary urban intersection of Chaiyaphum, for Thailand’s Candle Festival. Lunching together in the school staff room, Tim had shown me b-rolls of the festive dances on a Thai YouTube Channel, of the grandest celebratory dancing crayons. The bigger procession is at Ubon Ratchathani, where Candle Festival shuffles customs and choreography, but the femininity of the movements, the caress of the swaying holds, and the folded-palm gestures of Thailand hold the sensitivity of the spacious Thai traditions everywhere they so tenderly prayed on.

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But two people in silence have a purpose; a dual comfort of knowing that each is absorbed in self-aligned horizons. A nod, a smirk, little attempts to phrase a word, an isolated meaning between two acquitted lives where the physicality of language is out of focus.

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The festival at Chaiyaphum is smaller. Mr. Udom took down three chairs from the back of his pick-up truck, and quite evidently, we waited for 2-3 hours by the lanes for the procession. In between, twice, we changed position. The king’s yellow flags bellowed his upcoming birthday to its monarch and subjects. Thailand is still a Royal-governed country, you know.

Intrigued, Grandma Tim somehow had smelled a sketchy hint about the galvanising procession following the point of arrival at a dim pace. She fixed her Thai Police Volunteer t-shirt in a ducked tuck, although not to volunteer for the police, but to lead us to what seemed to be a catch in traditional Thai attires, oriental umbrellas, and a golden Buddha riding a long truck!

Asalha Bucha Day and Khao Phansa – two commanding Buddhist marking-days have given roots to the Candle Festival. Asalha Bucha Day (‘Asalha’ meaning ‘Eighth Lunar Month’ and ‘Bucha’ meaning ‘worship’), to Theravada Buddhists, is an undertone of Buddha’s first sermon of ‘Four Noble Truths’ to his four disciples in Sarnath India. Those ‘Four Noble Truths’ have dragged bricks of Buddhist philosophy with dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, and magga. While dukkha weighs up the inevitability of suffering in human existence, samudaya brings in ‘attachment’ as the mediator of all sufferings. Nirodha evokes the thread of how letting go of attachment is the only way to be free from suffering. In ‘The Noble Eight-fold Path’, Buddha establishes magga, the ultimate elimination of attachment and suffering diluted in a chain.

Right after Asalha Bucha Day is Khao Phansa, the commemoration of the three-month-long Buddhist Rain Retreat; a period of temple-isolation for the monks. Quintessentially, long before electricity popped in, the Buddhists used to donate candles (also food and rain-clothes) for the monks to continue their studies under lit-candles. As electricity rubbed off the necessity for candles, the tradition punctuated into a magnified procession ‘The Candle Float Parade’.

Falling in July, the Eighth Month of the Lunar Calendar, many parts of Thailand flaunt giant candle wax statues that can take up to a month to prepare. Though the interior is mounted in cement or plaster, the scaffolding is perplexed with wax, and the wax-carvings’ creativity exceeds any artistry. These carvings on a ‘float’ display their connotations on a large truck that moves with the moving parade.

The rest of the grandmas hadn’t entered the scene yet. It was Grandma Tim who single-handedly handled the hospitality quotient. She kept her electric car at tipping toes, ‘rose and shone’, for pretty much anything, festivals or daily lunch-outs.

‘Have you ever had Indian food, Tim?’

‘Oh, I had only Roti.’

‘Oh, really? Where did you find Roti in Thailand?’

‘You know just outside 7-11, a Pakistani man sells roti every evening.’

‘That’s cool.’

‘I will take you to see him.’

‘Oh no, it’s alright. I have had enough rotis in my life.’

She did fix the bicycle whose career imbalance was now resolved, but I never used it. And I also found a way to sneak out from the outhouse fooling Mr. Udom. Vigilance is the answer to vigilance. Wisdom!

Time for Some Roadtrippin’ with the Grannies

Violating my grand plan of interim naps on the soft-and-squishy mattress, little did I know the four grandmas had already magicked up a ‘day-trip’ or rather an excuse to drive around Chaiyaphum in flying hair and flashy earrings!

‘My friends are here.’ Tim hears the first screeching of the tire and gobbles up a whole bunch of Glass Noodles in Thai habit. ‘Let’s go!’ I don’t know how she finished the last bit, but she was already apprehensive around, while I slowly sipped on my glass of water. ‘Let’s go!’ Tim is almost out in the yard. ‘What! Am I coming too?’

‘Yeah, of course! They want to take you out.’

The ‘they’ rolled down the car-window. Grandma Stuk’s right hand left the steering wheel, coursing through the cool jazzy cap she had put back on. Bracelets, finger rings, and a pair of round silver earrings that hung in touch-and-go proximity around her neckline.

‘Have you seen the rock shaped as… a man’s thing?’ It wouldn’t have been five seconds of me stepping down from the natural stony structures of Pa Hin Ngam National Park, had Grandma Stuk moved thunder-fast and gestured in rather a ‘picture-perfect way’ what clearly could only have been… a penis.

‘What?!’ It took me a few indecipherable blinks to absorb the turn of the conversation. Am I really discussing ‘boys’ with a 67-year-old Grandma from Thailand?

I couldn’t have been more blunt. ‘You mean a dick?’

‘Ah, well!’ Grandma’s indulging smile shifted from cheekbones to lips, with a bit of ‘what-else-would-we-discuss-if-not-a-dick’ air. ‘You know, there’s a structure in the shape of a dick there.’

‘Oh really? Are you sure? I didn’t see it.’

‘Have you taken pictures of all the structures?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Show me the pictures.’

‘Beautiful stone’ and ‘forest’; ‘Hin Ngam’ and ‘Pa’. Large rocks of unusual shapes with some resemblance of maybe a ‘castle’, ‘hen’, ‘FIFA World Cup’, ‘Peekaboo Rock’ were caused by the deposition of sediment over millions of years formatting now into layers of stone. It consists of more than 160 million years of sedimentation of the Phra Wihan Formation, which is on top of 190 million years of Phu Kradueng Formation, while sloping to the East of Chaiyaphum at around 10 degrees in quartzitic sandstone and siltstone.

‘Where is the thing?’ Grandma kept swiping left and right in my photo gallery. ‘Are you sure it’s really there, or is it just your own interpretation?’

‘Oh no, it’s real. I have seen it before.’

I pointed at the ‘Hen Rock’ which had two long columns, kind of flimsy. Maybe that’s what she meant! ‘No, that’s just a hen!’ No luck!

I am dubious, but also kind of certain that it was just her ‘way of looking at things’.

If you want to volunteer in Thailand’s Chaiyaphum (Ban Khwao), why don’t you connect with Teacher Tim through Workaway?

Also read – The Sounds And Taste of Thailand’s Ban Khwao

Grandma Moments at Pa Hin Ngam National Park in Chaiyaphum

The quietest was Grandma Toi. We have two Grandma Tois here; both on opposite ends. One had found the word-source of an infinite energy exploder, and the other was as quiet as a morning, with pockets of strength and sunshine. She is 80, and is often caught dancing her night off in village weddings or taking sheepish but steady steps on rocky trails. When I looked at her, I fancied myself to be like her when I would be older, so active in body and at heart. I hope to fling my hands up in the air, before I lie on the edge-cliff, posing like a teen in love and in possession!

‘Here is the West of ‘Phang Hoei’ mountain. This long steep cliff looks like a ridge and gradually slopes to the East at 200-846 metres above mean sea level. This stone is 180-230 million years old, and is from the Khorat Group in the Jurassic period. You can imagine that dinosaurs once stepped on this stone.’ The Chaiyaphum Tourism Board read.

I offered her my hands; my fingers. In those terse moments of her white hair rebelling against the tide of time, I felt the desire to be like her again; someday when life would or would not summon another phase, a differing courtesy of challenges. Maybe it feels different standing on the edge of life. But she didn’t move away from the cliff-edge.

We untangled the finger-bouts on the last rock. The other grandmas were already posing under the brown ‘Chaiyaphum Thailand Board’ in Thai scribbling. Well, they were posing under, in, on, over almost everything. I was snatched in; a photographer with a big lens had already chosen his angle, snapped a handful, and taken them back to the Photo Booth for printing. In an hour, me and four grandmas are framed and up for sale. And now our framed easiness sets back inside the hidden compartment of my backpack in the hope that too much travelling would not break the memories.

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Maybe it feels different standing on the edge of life. But she didn’t move away from the cliff-edge.

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I walked on the walkthrough board amidst pink Siam Tulips. The grandmas had given up already. ‘We are tired. You take the trail to Bua Sawan Field. We will see you at the bus stop in 20 minutes.’ Fair enough! The Siam Tulips are more of a jungle flower with an underground bulb, in the family of various ginger species. Only in the splashes of the rainy season, do the pink multi-tiered tulips blossom all over this park in Chaiyaphum. My first tulips.

Sometimes we forget a name, an identity, a face; all the same. Then it comes back, the outline of the face; the dust that went under the rugs, the phonics of a foreign name that didn’t register. But I haven’t forgotten a single soul that had touched me in one way or another (if there are many ways) in the last four years of living the world.

Sometimes I can’t remember the name, or I take longer pauses to place their externalities on my memory palate. But I remember them. All of them. The way I will always remember these four Chaiyaphum grandmas; how they blocked me in the car with ‘We are four retired teachers’ and I didn’t have to pay the ‘foreigners’ ticket price’, how they packed my Sticky Rice with Pink Century Eggs I couldn’t believe existed, and how they laughed at 80!

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Of course Chaiyaphum doesn’t hail buckets of tourists, but the tulip beds at Pa Hin Ngam National Park in the rainy season come alive with more visitors. If you are on the way, Tat Ton Waterfall and Sai Thong National Park are also worth strolling by!

Have you been to Thailand’s Chaiyaphum?

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