Under A Full Moon And The Golem Tree Part 6

As I drove into the parking area behind the newer Wat I glanced about, looking for a shaded area to park the truck, so as not to fry my nuts once re-entering and sitting on the plastic seat, after the searing sun has heated it to a temperature only a bit lower than the surface of said sun. I pulled in under a large old tree which seemed to provide the best shade in the lot. I noticed as I parked the truck an older Thai man and lady, likely his wife it looked to me, sitting in the shade at a picnic type table under a smaller tree nearby. Spotting the farang, me, they started chattering away, sorta like Meer Cats spreading the alarm that danger was in the area, and I noticed a young boy come running over to them. I guess for protection, in case the farang turned out to be some sort of threat to their precious progeny.

No need to fear good and gentle people! It is but I, Cent, that harmless wacky farang from Happy Village down the road a ways. Calm yourselves, and enjoy my alarmingly funny and crazy antics as I try to break my legs while shooting lengthy video footage of yonder pile of ancient rubble. No need to get yourselves into a tizzy. Sit back and enjoy the show.

Sis and wife climbed out of the truck along with me, showing the Thai family that I was a tame farang, and under the control of my expert Thai "falang handlers". This calmed their fears somewhat, and Sis and wife exchanged sawadee's with them. I chucked in a "Hello, how are ya?" and a "Sawadee krup." for good measure. This caused the little boy's eyes to widen.

What the heck? A Great White Ape that can actually speak Thai? Wow! Wait 'till I tell my pals this one! Yeah kid, Thailand truly is amazing ain't it? All sorts of wonderful and exotic animals can be seen huh? You have a flaming hoop of real fire I can jump through for ya maybe? I'm trained to perform all sorts of neat and amusing tricks. Nice little family. Cute kid.

I stood there and looked about me as the wife and Sis chattered away to the mother and father of the kid. Probably telling them both that they were taking me out and about to see the sights, sites, and culture of Isaan, when the whole freakin' thing was my idea to begin with. I've noticed Thais are want to take credit for things happening, and ideas not their own originally really, and love to show off their pet farang.

I am a strapping hansum example of walking ATM to be sure, and a fine specimen, of which they seem truly proud to own most times when I'm on my best behaviour. They do seem a bit quick to disown me though when I act up and get a bit too uppity for a falang. Usually when I am somehow incurring the wrath of Buddha in my ignorance this is done. As though they distance themselves in casea bolt of lightning is about to crash down from the heavens and strike me for my foolish behaviour. Hey, their own fault really, not mine. They are supposed to be my trainers ain't they? I'm not stupid, and pick things up pretty quickly, but if they don't teach it to me how the fuck am I supposed to know? I want to learn all I can, they are the lazy ones who sometimes can't be bothered.

But, I am fairly well trained, and only crap on the carpets rarely when left alone too long. It's all that damned rice they feed me, you see? I'd have better control if they'd only feed me a little rice and peppers, and more of my natural kibble and bits that my system is better adapted to digest. I need more meat and potatoes. After all, I am an exotic creature and need a special diet if they want me at my optimal health and disposition. I must say though that they hardly ever beat me, and keep me very well groomed. I've not had a reason to try to escape…….yet.

They do keep a close eye and short leash on me in Pattaya though. Even they know this falang beast is always in heat and will likely mate at the drop of a skirt…..errrr…..hat I mean.

All of a sudden something small and hairy jumped down from the tree above the family's heads and landed on the little kid's shoulders. The wife and Sis started screaming so loudly they scared the Jumping Blue Jesus out of me!!! I nearly shit myself! "Jesus Christ wimmin! What the hell are you screaming about? It's only a baby monkey for God's sake! Look. Baby ling, that's all. Looks like the kid's pet." I grumped, as I checked to see if blood was running out my punctured eardrums by fingering my ear holes.

I guess they thought the little bugger was attacking the boy or something. "And what the hell are you hiding behind me for?" I said, as I noticed they were both standing behind me and peeking around me at the boy and his pet monkey. There was no blood dripping from my ear canals, so I had a good chance of at least regaining partial hearing within a week or so. You would have thought the kid had been attacked by a King Cobra by the way they were acting and quivering in fear.

I left them, shaking in their foolish boots, and walked over to where the kid stood with the baby monkey on his shoulder. Wife and Sis started chattering to me to "be careful" and other such nonsense. The kid smiled at me and I reached my hand out to his pet monkey, not touching it, just letting it smell my hand and see that I was no threat to him. The little guy reached out with his little human-like hands and touched my outstretched hand. Cool. His hands were cool to the touch.

I noticed his tiny fingernails, and was fascinated how much they looked like a human baby's. He then climbed down the kid's shoulder and jumped onto my arm and ran up onto my own shoulder and sat there. This elicited some more warning chatter from my ladies. Excitable wenches. I ignored them, pleased with myself and that this lttle ling showed no fear of me, and seemed quite content to sit on my shoulder.

The little ling started touching my hair and my ears. It tickled. I stood there and grinned a satisfied foolish grin and told my wife to come take the video camera from me and film the monkey sitting on my shoulder. This would be sure to be a hit when the kids watching the video tape later tonight saw this! The wife was reluctant to approach me until I gave her a stern look and said, "Oh fer chrissakes just come over here and take the damn camera you little baby!" She timidly approached me and grabbed the video camera out of my hand as I held it toward her, and then quickly scurried away and handed the camera to Sis to film me. Sis is the camera expert in the family, when I'm not there anyway.

As Sis prepared the camera to film this communion with nature of mine the little bastard tried to grab my 100 baht fake Oakley sunglasses from my head, where I had placed them when exiting the truck. I grabbed them back quickly from him, or her, I had no idea really which, knowing there'd be hell to pay with my eyes without them for driving, as the way home would be facing west most of the time, and the sun would be directly in my eyes as I was driving. "No, no, little ling. You can't have that. Give 'em back to Cent like a good ling. They won't fit you anyway." I chuckled at the thought of a little monkey wearing shades. An amusing thought. I put the sunglasses in my pants pocket to keep them out of the monkey's reach.

I looked up at Sis and said, "C'mon. Take some video will ya." The monkey then made a grab for my reading glasses, which were hung by one arm folded from my shirt front top button hole, in case I needed to read something small while out and about. I quickly foiled this attempted thievery by placing my hand over the glasses as he tugged them up. I guess this was just a distracting gambit, because as soon as my hand covered the glasses the little prick grabbed my pack of Winston's right out of my shirt pocket, leaped from my shoulder to the kid's shoulders, and then jumped straight up into the branches of the tree above and clambered up into the foliage!

"Hey! Come back here with those you thievin' little son of a bitch!!" I yelped. The furry little mafia bitch was as quick as greased lightning! All the Thais laughed at this. Shit. That was the only pack of my smokes I had with me. If I didn't get them back I'd have to smoke Sis' Spring Rain shit Thai cigarettes all the way back home. Dammit! No way! That monkey had made a monkey outa me.

I walked over to the tree and stood beneath its branches as I peered up to find the fuzzy little fucker. There he was, sitting up on a branch, pulling out ciggies from the pack. Dexterious bastard. A few mutilated Winston's fell from up above onto the ground. "Hey! Don't break 'em all you little shit!" I yelled up at him. He pulled a couple more from the pack, and began EATING them. "Yeah, go ahead stupid, eat them! You're gonna get sick as a dog you dope!" I gleefully told the munchkin furbag above as he chewed away on my smokes. The Thais were all laughing at my agitated conversation with the ling. "Hahaha. Doesn't the falang know the monkey doesn't understand what he's saying?" Yeah, sure. Fuck you he doesn't understand. He knows what he's doing just as well as my Angel this morning brushing her hair knew what she was doing.

As I was peering up into the tree I noticed the branch he was sitting on and chowing down on my butts was attached to another larger branch, one which lead down to the trunk of the tree, and one which I could easily reach. Using my Higher Ape greater intellect I devised a plan to reclaim my stolen cigarettes from this lowly monkey baby. I reached slowly toward the connecting branch within my reach, so as not to frighten the crafty little shit higher up the tree, and, once my hands were firmly around the branch, I braced my feet and gave the tree a mighty shaking. The ling gave a cry of alarm and scampered higher into the tree, but he was so frightened he lost his grip on my smokes and they slowly bounced from limb to limb as they fell toward the earth below. Ha! My plan had worked! Haha! I actually caught the smokes as they fell down to me. I opened the pack and looked inside. The shit had eaten half of the damn things. I hoped he'd be up all night puking his balls off. I stuck my ciggies in my pants pocket, just in case the ling tried a sneak attack, and turned to acknowledge the applause from Sis and wife at m success at retrieving my smokes. Yes, I'm a clever fellow aren't I?! Thank you, thank you. Just throw money please. Applause is so cheap you know.

We bid the family and monkey goodbye, and went to check out the ruins. I managed to get some good video of the place, only incurring a minor scrape on my shin. Mission accomplished.

Sis and wife entered the newer Wat and did their Buddhist duties while I sat outside and had a smoke. Afterward we went to another noodle shop where they had some spicy sour kind of soup, which I found not to my taste. I ordered a beer Chang and drank that while they ate, and ordered some fried cashews with salt. I planned on stopping at Makro and buying some delicacies to cook up on the new charcoal grills. We'd also stop to grab some sticky rice and Papaya Bok Bok, and some Pad Thai and other treats to round out the meal.

We paid up and jumped into the truck and headed back home toward the village. All in all an interesting afternoon it was.

Stopping at Makro later I found that we could buy a kilo of extra large/jumbo live shrimp for 100 baht a kilo I think it was. 100 baht a kilo? Isn't a kilo 2.2 POUNDS? Like USD $2.50 for 2.2 pounds of fresh live shrimp!!! Wow! Here in the states these are practically worth their weight in gold! I bought 2 kilos. Feast time tonight!

I also bought a few pounds of small chicken wings and legs, and a Thai spicy dipping sauce I have had before with SukiYaki that Sis had told me I could buy by the bottle in Makro. I planned on using this as a baste/BBQ sauce/marinade for the chicken. An experiment I had planned. I also grabbed some thick sliced pork strips to experiment with too on the barbeque, and some great tasty, and cheap, pork short-ribs. You can get about three pounds of pork ribs for about 80 cents. Score!

I had a box of beer Changs in the fridge, a half a fifth of a nice 150 proof 20 year old single malt whiskey at the house I'd gotten as a present from a friend, stashed in a locked closet so the old biddies couldn't swipe it, and strict rules of death by slow torture if anybody ever drank it on me when I wasn't there. Jing jing! (It's true, times two.) And plenty of extra beer Chang that could be easily purchased from Sis 2's shop, along with some Lao Kao for those with much less discriminating tastes.

Yep, things were looking up for a nice party and BBQ at the old homestead tonight! Party time!

(to be continued)

"Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life's a short Summer, man a flower;
He dies,—–alas! How soon he dies!"

Samuel Johnson, Winter

Stickman says:

More Magic From Cent.