It’s 10:41 p.m. and I’m tired.

We were up at six to work so we could be out the door by noon and still have paid the bills. We’ve driven the “Golden Triangle” loop, north from Chiang Rai today, and I could write at least three stories for you:

• One about the staggering beauty of the mountains reflected in the rice paddies
• Another about sipping tea out of the tiniest egg-cup style cups painted a Ming blue
• A third about how I ended up sitting in the lap of an enormous golden Buddha.

Oh!

• And then there was the one about hunting for Hill Tribe’s silver in a sweaty market in Mai Sae on the Burmese border
• And the other one about the amazing feeling of standing where the rivers come together into the Mekong where we stood in Thailand looking at Burma on our left and Laos on our right. That was pretty fabulous.

Instead, I’ll just tell you about lunch:

Hannah says to tell you that this post should be entitled something more like, “What to do if you really hate your kids.” She may well write one on her blog called, “Five reasons I know my parents hate me.” You get the idea.

It started off pretty well, really, before we got to the child abuse part.

Visiting the Hill Tribes Museum in Chiang Rai before we ventured into the mountains ourselves, seemed an educational and edifying thing to do. We’d learn about people groups, get an etiquette lesson, and perhaps see some artifacts. The admission price is 50 baht, about $1.60 USD per person, a bargain made even better by the desk officer letting the two little boys in for free. The icing on top: tickets for free tea and coffee at the restaurant downstairs when we were finished. That alone would have cost more than $6.40 USD at home! Spirits were high.

If you find yourself in the far north of Thailand ignore the guidebooks and come to Chiang Rai province. The writers seemed to find it a slow and tiresome place (we have pages torn from two books in our possession, both ones you’d have heard of) but we are loving it. There is no McDonalds downtown, that’s worth five extra points in our book right there. Besides Wats (a plenty) there aren’t loads of cultural sites, but there is a lot of quiet hearted “real Thailand” going on in this province, and that’s always more interesting than the contrived versions.

We sat in the night bazaar munching crisped pork skin and chilied peanuts while Hannah sucked down her “snake head soup” last night and watched beautiful ladies dance to music played on stringed instruments that the girl was just itching to get her hands on. “You know Mom,” remarked Elisha, “This is not at ALL like Asia at Epcot.” This analysis is a good sign. It would have been much cheaper to go to Epcot. But I digress.

The Hill Tribes Museum is worth your time. It will take only an hour and the slide show alone is worth a buck sixty. It’s not entirely politically correct. There are a few jarring bits in which the Thai sentiment seems to echo that of the politicians of Arizona and Texas regarding refugee status. But the pictures are lovely and it provides a nice explanation of the people groups of the region, albeit not in their own words.

And, there is opium. I love poppies.

If you’ve been following for long you already know that our kids are no strangers to the drug trade:

• We’ve been to Amsterdam.
•  Ez could identify the difference in smell between burning pot and hash by the time he was five and a half (not saying this is a good thing, mind you, just commentary.)
• They’ve attended more European music festivals than we could have managed if we’d actually planned to be at them.
• They’ve spent two winters in Central America driving through big x-ray scanners near border crossings and seeing pictures of bales of cocaine that our diving instructors have helped recover.
• And also, they are friends with hippies.

Drugs happen. 

Ez was particularly keen to add opium to his repertoire of illicit information. “Wait, so, this is flower goo dried up from what GRAMMY grows beside the house?” He asked, with added interest. Clearly his estimation of Grammy was changing. “Well, not those poppies exactly, but like that, yes.” “Oh.” Clearly disappointed.

I learned that I really like opium.

It’s in so many of the drugs that we use that help with my migraines (codeine being one). I also learned that it’s bad to be the Afghani guy who’s planted pretty terraces of poppies in with his wheat. But if you’re the Euro guy living in Africa using slave labor (essentially) then Glaxo-Smith-Cline will award you a real silver cup trophy for “biggest opium crop of the year” and you can smile like the snake in the grass that you are on the front of the newspaper. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

“Hey Mom! There’s a restaurant right under us!” Elisha announced, hint, hint, with his head stuck out the second story museum window. “Yes, I think we have tickets for free tea there,” I brushed him off. “Well, can we go get it?!” He asked. A boy’s thoughts are never far from his stomach.

It was one of those classic parenting moments from the instant we opened the pristine glass door and entered the air conditioned room with Santa Claus and some Super Hero in life sized standing at our left to welcome us. The boys were talking excitedly about whether they’d order noodles or rice, shrimp or pork today. Hannah gave me a queer look and said, “What the…” voice trailing off… “Mom?!!” I followed her eyes to the festive sculptures and then to the name over the door of the restaurant. Tony and I exchanged a look that said, “Well, why not, today is as good as any for “the talk.””

Cabbages and Condoms is somewhat of a chain in Thailand, in that there are a handful of them scattered around the country. They were started to educate the peasant class on the finer points of family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention with heavy emphasis on prophylactics, as the name suggests. Their menu boasts that they’ve successfully helped reduce the average Thai family size from seven children to two. I’m not sure that’s a win in my book, but choice in the matter certainly is. Their stated goal is to make “condoms as accessible as cabbages” to the rural people. They do seem to be making a dent in it.

If you have teenagers and you want to mortify them absolutely to death and scar them for life, I whole-heartedly recommend lunch at a condom restaurant following your cultural excursions. Talk about a “culturally broadening experience!” It’s even better if you can manage a couple of younger siblings who are blissfully clueless and wear their neatly folded napkins on their heads like clowns so Daddy will take their pictures.

Then spend the time between water coming to the table and the food arriving (that the teenagers can mercifully bury their heads in like cows at a trough) by discussing the human trafficking situation, the explosion of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how condoms have made significant progress in corralling the little critters that are killing people.

The other point I must add is that (surprisingly) we were the only Farang in this restaurant. It was entirely populated by Thai business men who seemed to enjoy sipping their drinks and having the serving girls in (very short) blue dresses refill them. “I wonder if this is like a Thai “Hooters?”” Tony stage whispered. Gabe sank lower in his seat. “Oh if ONLY their dresses were latex this would be PERFECT.” I giggled back. “They must be thinking we’ve arrived about ten years too late, with all these kids!” We snickered.

I have to say that we were impressed by this restaurant. With so much potential for the inappropriate, it was really quite PG. They seem serious about their mission, the food was good. The free tea was excellent and there was even live music. It was actually the worst live music we’ve ever heard. A Thai man with a synthesizer keyboard banging out cheesy American love songs, one, after another, after another, when clearly he had no idea what they said. Perfect.

Hannah gave me her signature, “Death by humiliation” look and groaned:

“Mom! The only thing that could POSSIBLY make this worse was if you and Dad got up and danced.”

“Danced?! OH! We could do that!” I said in my “overly cheerful” voice, Tony moved to stand up.

“NO!” both teens gasped, “PLEASE!! We already KNOW you’ll do it, you’ve done it before, it’s SO embarrassing!” And here I thought we were kind of cool. Guess not.

Oh, and for the record, Hannah was wrong:

That was not the only way it could have gotten worse:

Standing in the entryway, waiting for Dad to exit the bathroom the little boys started examining the statues: Santa and the Super Hero, remember? Well, it turns out that the Super Hero was Captain Condom. Both he and Santa were completely decorated in colored condoms glued over their styrofoam forms. Santa even sported a “birth control pill pack” belt buckle. Snazzy.

“What ARE those on these guys?” one of the little boys wondered aloud, “I think they’re hair ties, like Hannah’s… nope… they’re BALLOONS!” Hannah, not surprisingly, was no where to be seen.

“Nope, they’re not.” I left them hanging. I’ve never been one to offer information not asked for to little kids. “Well what ARE they Mama?”

Gabe had now disappeared as well.

So… I told them.

They were quiet for a few minutes, thinking about the new information. Then, Elisha giggled, “Mom, there are some really inappropriate pictures in here,” he observed, pointing at the man wearing a condom like a raincoat instead of an umbrella over Santa’s head. I laughed, he laughed, the ice was broken. Dad chose just that moment to walk out of the restroom. “You dodged a bullet,” I winked, “I told them!” He laughed.

With full bellies we hopped in the car to drive to meet another epic day. The teens were visibly lightened by their escape from their worst nightmare (they aren’t very imaginative yet.) I looked at Tony with a smile, “Health class! Check that off the list!”