Pyromaniacal revelry: Americana at it’s best in Asia

This blog has been almost written a few times in the last weeks on a number of topics none of which captivated my attention enough to write a whole blog about. First, there was the visa fiasco, but, after last blog's cynicism, I just couldn't put you through it. The new PiAs, who are wonderful, deserve a whole blog, but they’ll be recurring characters so you’ll know James, Saba and Lizzie soon enough. I am happier than ever in my teaching career, and my students never cease to keep me motivated or entertain me so more on that topic at another time, too.

The runner-up blog featured the tale of a slow-motion head-on collision involving my motorbike and an old man aboard a bicycle. At first, the topic was too sore to touch, but I'm not losing any sleep over it now. I don't want to insult the man because, believe it or not, Thai culture and deference to my elders has rubbed off a bit and the crash wasn’t entirely his fault. Yes, that is code for it was my fault, at least partly. But, I will say, if the man had used his hands to brace his fall instead of save his cigarette, he would have saved me some scared tears and his week’s salary in forgone baht. He would have also spared himself an egg of a bruise which I saw when he took his pants off to show me. To answer your question, either none or skin-colored briefs, but I tried not to see. So, instead of cataloguing the current color of my post-collision bruises, you will get the story of my second July 4th in the Land of Smiles. It’s been a while since I’ve had a Fourth on American soil, and I don't want to insult anyone with whom I’ve spent the fine holiday by saying this one was THE best, but the Americans did pretty well for ourselves celebrating a holiday that you’d assume falls short anywhere outside the Land o’ the Free.

We inaugurated Saba and Lizzie's new house which has just enough bamboo “furniture” for a Thai girl, six Americans, a French-Ethiopian and a Spaniard to wish America happy birthday in style. The spread featured corn on the cob, fries swimming in a soy-oil-grease-meets-Heinz-ketchup combo, chicken which Thailand does better than America, and beers in a can which America does better than Thailand.

After the feast, we mounted our motorbikes and proceeded to shock and awe the people of Khon Kaen with our pyrotechnics. After taking off two to a bike on five bikes, our motogang shot a couple waterlogged and therefore lackluster bottle rockets in the KKU coliseum but bolted at the distant whistle of the KKU security police. Had they really seen us, it would have been fairly easy to peg us since there aren’t too many foreigners in these parts and seven of us are teachers at the fine establishment that served as our launch pad.

As our band of hooligans on wheels rushed off to site 2 with adrenaline in our veins, I asked my motorbike partner in crime, Lizzie, if she still had that Roman candle. She said yes and, anticipating what I was getting at, reached under herself for a lighter… bummer, it’s broken. Luckily, the Glenn+Saba team slowed down just enough to complete a side-by-side-lighter-hand-off and, grinning with the delight of a naughty kid, Lizzie detonated a progression of fireballs as we cruised across campus.

We arrived at site 2, haunted lake, after some serious offroading and branch-dodging. We busted out the big guns which really attracted the campus popo who were hot on our tails after the failure at the coliseum and our indiscrete get away. It was a very Thai-Farang run-in with the law. The altercation can be translated as:

What are you doing?
Fireworks.
Why?
It’s the birthday of America.
Stop. It’s very loud.
Ok. Sorry. Thank you. Goodbye.

Exhausting ideal campus locales, we set up the Grand Finale at the lake in Gung Sa Daan, my former neighborhood. At this point, it was 10:30, just early enough to have a good-sized audience of coffee shop chatters and Sunday night bar-goers. Parading down the well-lit street, we acknowledge “this is a terrible idea” and simultaneously “this is the best idea we’ve had in a while.” After facing the bikes in the direction of our escape, we lined up four big guys. One, two, three, light them, and three, two, one, BLAST OFF! 25 canisters of explosives which sent 25 balls of fire in 25 colors in 25 directions echoing with 25 deafening ka-booms like only your local fire department can produce in the States. It was exhilarating, maybe because they didn’t go quite as high as expected and we ended up dodging a little shrapnel. The tweenage boys in close proximity leapt for joy screaming “very GREAT, very GREAT!" We sped off and reconvened back at the bamboo palace where we rehashed the night’s excitement moment by moment and accounted for all 90 fingers in our crew of bandits.