From Bangkok, With Love

Staying with the Tangchavalits on my recent Bangkok trip was such an experience, I left thinking I just saw another way how God intended for things to be done.

For one, I thought Ick and Yo were blessed with such cool parents.

Their love for their mom was really something special. They could joke and play around with Auntie Jintana, tickling and pinching her in return if she teases them, but all the while the trust and respect between them was something very tangible.

She maintains a somewhat matronly demeanour, but yet retains a sense of fun and is definitely generally not too uptight with issues. She feels more like a friend to them. It is not hard to infer that her trust in God has got a lot to do with this.

But whatever it is, her sons obviously love her tremendously, and it is definitely something right she has been doing. It was a joy and such comfort to be seated in the car on the way to church that Sunday morning as they bantered on big and small issues.

Seeing Yo hush his mom gently in the car when she exclaimed in horror when Uncle Samphan executed a nifty manouvre while driving, was one delicate moment I was very privileged to have witnessed.

It was also hard to imagine Ick fighting with his dad a few years ago, as Ick recounted last year when we first got to know each other at the conference last year. Despite Uncle's stern demeanour, he actually has a very healthy loving relationship with his sons.

Yo actually shares his photographs with his dad and Ick actually talks to him about the girls he knows. In fact, Uncle Samphan knows so much about his sons' private lives, it's startling to even start imagining.

In fact, the things that Uncle Samphan got to know of me in the few days when I was in his home, is perhaps more than my own parents will ever know of me. He even asked me questions that I could not answer, like why I am so drawn to Thailand.

Quite simply, being in their home for a few days reminded me of what my home is not.

I know this sounds triet, but while it used to induce a bout of wallowing in self-pity, this time round, it was an encouragement to just work with what I have been given and make the best out of my situation.

But still, it was just great to see another good model of a Christian family. And then, there was their church.

I think I got reminded of the original intent of the church afresh after going to their church in Bangkok. Makassan Church, near the Victory Monument BTS, is only about 60-strong. Every week, somebody would buy lunch and they would have it together at their foyer.

Everybody know each other not just on the superficial level, and it was the kind of fellowship that the Bible probably expounded about in the book of Acts. It kind of strengthened my belief that churches were probably never meant to be that big.

When things get too big, things tend to get too corporate and inpersonal because Man start to impose himself with all things organisational and bureacratic, and then the chances of people getting distracted and diluting the authencity of our fellowship increases as a result of objectifying people as masses to be controlled.

I was really blessed by the short time I spent there in church and in their home.

Uncle Samphan went to the extent of ensuring a copy of Bangkok Post be despatched to their home when I was there. Breakfasts was always in extra large portions. And did I already mention what a good cook Auntie Jintana is?

Uncle Samphan even told me that I was more than welcomed if I wanted to stay at their home the next time I visit. He told me to keep him posted about my future Thailand plans. He might even send Ick and Yo to study English here, if I agree to supplement by being their tutor.

It was a great trip I guess. Uncle Samphan asked me whether I met the objectives of my trip. I guess I did, considering how little I had in mind, to begin with.

I went to Bangkok just wanting to hang out with my friends, and I guess the whole wallet saga inevitably created an opportunity for us to "do something together." I suspected that part of them went "not again" when I told them I was going back to Thailand for missions. Heh.

I really just wanted to live their lives for a while and slip into their lives for a bit, but I ended up causing so much inconvenience for them.

But in traversing the breadth of Bangkok, I also got a greater sense of the depth of the city. I saw how people really lived. I did not get a chance to enter the slum areas that developed along the railway tracks near Asia Hotel and the Patpong areas, but I think that will be for subsequent trips.

Some things I could have done better included not stumbling my brothers. Ick and Yo brought me to a pub called Saxaphone for some live music, where I ordered myself a Corona, which was way too flat for my liking. But my drinking elicited intense stares from the two of them, and they thought it quite incredulous that I should be drinking.

I brushed it off then - I mean, what else could you be drinking in that kind of a place right?

But on hindsight, I could have been more sensitive culturally. I have never been big on drinking anyway, but I could have considered that drinking in their culture is not something as acceptable as what I am used to right here, because it could have meant something more sinister in Thailand.

I should have been more aware, more so since I am a freakin' sociology major. Oh well, the only consolation is that there is definitely going to be a next time. =)

As I left Bangkok this time round, somehow I felt a burden for this country. Sure, it might have been the shopping and friends in this city that drew me here in the first place, but I think something else might be brewing in me.

Although I have a few possibilities tingling in my mind, I still do not know what that is and until I do, I will keep mum. But until then, I know this trip has surely got a lot to do with it.