Kornography

“Maybe I should drive,” I said, as images of the terrifying plunge down cliff-hugging dirt roads the night before intercut with Khru Yay leisurely tipping glasses of Karen moonshine down his throat the previous afternoon flashed through my head, not thinking there was any chance of him surrendering his keys.

To my utter disbelief, and faster than I imagined the words could permeate his once again rice-whiskey-soaked mind, a smile broke across his face and he tossed me his keys. I had wanted to drive his truck for some time, nicknamed “The Elephant”, it tore through both foot-deep clay-turned-quicksand and the rock-hard ruts left by that same clay baked in a sun-powered kiln until it reached a consistency resembling concrete. Mounting my stead (or more literally, getting behind the wheel) I headed off back home, concluding another great week spent in the jungle.

On previous trips, I continually oscillated between awe and apoplexy as my view shifted from the unbelievable vistas of jungle-fringed valleys that seemed to extend indefinitely, and the winding, blind-turn addled, sometimes washed-out road the clung to the edges of the precipice. In the dark, one could easily treat the darkness as the unknown and thus remain indifferent to it, but at the wheel, I could not help from imagining the sheer rock faces that I knew lurked mere feet from my tires.

I took it real slow and steady (STOP READING NOW MOM) as opposed to the average 50mph that Khru Yay usually takes these 180 degree turns, tires squealing, while we peer down into the abyss. This is usually around the time where Cat, when she is with me, closes her eyes, covers her ears, and retreats into her mind to be with her comfort animal.

(OK YOU CAN START AGAIN)
As soon as we got onto (largely) surfaced roads, with very few tracks of hardened clay, where mudslides had taken out the roads a week or so before, I noticed that the gas light had come on. I alerted Khru Yay, grinning to himself in the passenger seat, who assured me that the truck could go 200 kilometers (roughly 124.27 miles) on empty. For some reason I was not entirely convinced, and took it upon myself to re-alert Khru Yay about our gas status every time we passed through a village that could potentially have a gas station(See Contest). Each time I was met with the signature Khru Yay chuckle-boarding-on-giggle. After about an hour of intense concentration (don’t forget those cliffs) as we came into the large village that we frequently stopped at, I once again raised the gas situation, he nodded, and I pulled over in front of the station. The gate was pulled closed, but Khru Yay went inside to speak with the owner, and Tyler and I walked just up the street to buy snacks for the remaining 3-5 hours of the drive. When we came back, no progress had been made on the gas front, but all of our bags were out on the sidewalk, and Khru Yay and the owner of the store were standing around talking and gesturing towards a 7 foot tall, rolling, stand-up display fridge that had been pulled out to the front of the store.

Unphased, Tyler and I each grabbed a corner and helped heft the fridge up in the back of the truck. Lying down, the fridge was about 1 foot too long to close the gate, and becoming slightly more phased, we lifted it up again, now positioning it upright standing in the truck. It seems appropriate now to re-emphasize the height of the fridge here—7 FRICKIN FEET—in other words, standing up, it was about 4 feet above the roof of the cab of the truck. Khru Yay wordlessly set to tying this behemoth down with what could easily be referred to as string (or depending on your semantic leanings, twine, but certainly a long way and a fair stretch of the imagination from rope). With a quick wrap around the bottom (if it we a person, low- to mid- shin) and over the top, Khru Yay motioned to the car, as if everything was fine. Tyler gave me an 80% chance that this thing was not going to make it all the way to Chiang Mai, and we kept going, still without having bought gas.

Now for a moment imagine you are the fridge. Think about how good your balance is when the only thing to lean against is about mid-shin. And you whole body is rigid. And you are 7 foot tall. My bro used to say that Emmet Smith’s center of gravity is about a foot under the ground and that’s why he’s so hard to tackle—well if you were this fridge, your center of gravity is quite a distance above your head.

Oh yeah, and you are on roller skates.

Now imagine that you have to drive a pick-up truck over mountain roads with this goliath in the back. Needless to say, I was little anxious (hoping for the remaining 20%). Taking it real slow I could feel the gentle rocking from side to side as I crept along. Around a corner the road turned into concrete-like clay ruts, and I slowed waaaay down. Over the first bump I started feeling the rocking and true enough the rope held, having the effect of rocking the car in a sort of harmonic acceleration. In the rearview mirror I could see the blood drain from Tyler’s face, and I brought the car to a stop. Khru Yay jumped out to tightened the string, but didn’t secure the fridge any higher than the previous shin-high thread, and Tyler upped the chance of disaster to 100%(still no gas).

As a result of some divine intervention (I’m willing to make concessions about the existence of God(s) if He/She/Them continue to intercede when I am in times of distress) Khru Yay announced he was now fine, and he would take over driving. Whether or not he was completely sober (something that usually is very, very important to me), was neither here nor there, and I was just relieved to be off the hook, as driving had taken extreme concentration and I was completely exhausted. Khru Yay got behind the wheel and peeled off at at least 70 kph (43.5 mph) and, no longer responsible for what happened next, and resigned to the fact that worrying would have no effect, I dozed off to sleep almost instantly.

When I awoke, a proper road sprawled out in front of us. Looking over I saw the speedometer at 120 kph (74.56mph), and with a glance over my shoulder I saw the fridge still there, and Tyler smiling and shaking his head with disbelief. Before long, against all odds (not to mention Tyler’s 100% certainty), we, fridge and all, pulled up to Khru Yay’s house on the outskirts of Chiang Mai.

Khru yay is usually translated as “school principal”, but its two parts literally mean “big teacher.” In this case, the name couldn’t be more apt. Khru Yay (pictured above driving “The Elephant”, with bird as co-pilot), as everyone calls him—including his family, members of the community and teachers at other schools (who indeed have their own khru yay)—is larger than life. He knows everyone everywhere he goes, and he is always hustling. The fridge was just a single example in a long line of unbelievably detours that one comes to expect—as well as the requisite loading and unloading—after spending any time with him (other examples include, in different instances, a bed full of rocks, a bed full of logs, a dozen small children, dozens of pumpkins, and perhaps most memorably, 60—that’s six zero—banana trees). “The Elephant”, like Khru Yay, is a well-earned epithet as, under Khru Yay’s stewardship, the truck—and its passengers— is repeatedly employed as an all-purpose beast of burden.

After being a teacher in another community for at least a decade and mysteriously making a small fortune (without being impolite I have tried to discern this somewhat important fact about his life, and the only hint I have got, took the Graduate-esque form of “computers”), Khru Yay decided to build a school way out in the mountains, far from his wife and children, to allow for children who otherwise wouldn’t have access to education, to go to school. The school—its grounds, buildings, teachers, textbooks, school lunch, everything—has been almost exclusively funded by Khru Yay himself. The place is a fully functioning institute of learning for about 130 students, and thus a miracle. The kids are beautiful, respectful, and have a great time, all as a result of the selflessness of this one man. As a result, Khru Yay can frequently be seen strutting around the school in sweatpants and a tanktop/wife beater/singlet, grin in place, silently beholding his Kingdom, as dozens of children run around between classes playing soccer or any number of the other games that kids play.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 12:10 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.