Green Home, New Home

This past Saturday, November 4th, 2023, my one and only goal for the day was to go back to the Green Home café. I had gone to Green Home on my second day in Wapi Pathum after arriving to my teaching placement on October 27th. However, doing laundry and finding a meal in another country is enough to zap all the energy out of you! It wasn’t until three PM that I left home for the cafe on my little green bicycle adorned with a black basket. I took mostly the backroads to get there, trying my darndest to avoid the main road where anything goes. Under the heat of the mid-day Thai sun, I passed one huge Christian church, a couple of rice fields, yards full of chickens, as well as some bickering strays.

Café Green Home emerged at the end of the road as if it were a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow: a safe brown oasis in the midst of an evergreen tropical garden. The pathway leading up to café is lined with potted plants, with swings hanging from trees to the left and idyllic hammocks calling out to the right. The issue being it’s too fucking hot to exist outside. It’s at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit, if not 100, plus the wool blanket of humidity. Before I even left my shaded driveway, the pressure cooker had me dripping in sweat. So by the time I was walking up the forested path of the café, I was the Pacific Ocean I crossed to get here. My Thai friends always laugh at me and remind me that “It is winter” here.

When I entered the shop, I welcomed the cool air on my puddled skin. As a reward for surviving the laundry mat fiasco, I decided a mood boost was necessary: I ordered a mango smoothie. I picked a table that looked to be hand crafted, a tree trunk glossed over with polish, and I spread myself out. My bag, which once weighed down the front wheel of my bicycle, sat empty on the seat next to me and before me lay my book, air pods, phone, paint, paint brushes, colored pencils, pens, post cards, and of course my journal. I began drawing with yearning music blasting. A few minutes later the café owner is standing in front of me with a brilliantly yellow cup of sunshine. “Cup Koon Ka” I thanked her with my biggest smile of the day. “Can I sit?” she asked.

Soon we were chatting about how the heck this farang (Thai for Westerner) pulled up to her cafe last week and why she returned. “Nueng Bpee!” she called to her mother and her daughter to come meet the farang that would be teaching English in Wapi Pathum for one year. As new customers came and went, so did P’Oy at my table, and pretty soon her 6-year-old daughter came over. I asked, “Do you like to draw?” she nodded sheepishly. “Is it okay if she joins you?” P’Oy asked from behind the counter. I wanted nothing more! Admittedly I missed working with the kids at the American Farm School and I was excited to share some youthful energy. Pretty soon the six-year-old was having a field day with my paints. Nothing made me happier than watching her splash colors all over her page and wiping up the spilled watercolor paint off the table. “One more! One more!” She begged for more papers yet always gave me her masterpieces to keep. My heart swole. She asked me over and over what color she should use in Thai. Since I speak like a two-year-old in Thai, a six-year-old is a pretty good language teacher! Grandma brought over some cheese balls and chicken nuggets for us to snack on and insisted that “teacher” stay for dinner as well. P’Oy was cleaning up the kitchen and paused to ask “Want to learn to make a drink?” After letting me pick whatever I wanted off the menu, she showed me step by step how to make an Almond Green Tea: two runs of hot water through the green tea leaves, green dye, a little sweetener, a shot of almond milk, some ice. “A-raawy maak” if I do say so myself, my first drink was a success!

When P’Oy told me that she would be baking some cakes, my eyes widened, “I LOVE to bake!” After inviting me to join her, I asked if she had ever made muffins and her eyes widened back. Pretty soon I was in the kitchen showing her––with the help of Google since my baking phase was way back in early high school and I don’t have any muffin recipes memorized––how to make chocolate chip muffins. As we cooked mosquitos attacked, and stray dogs wondered in and out, breaking into the café through sliding windows.

As I prepared the muffins, she made a coconut cream pie that was out. of. this. world. Given, I only tried the coconut cream filing––which she had cooked while fixing the pie crust that I had found impossible to spread across the pan––but that filing rocked my world. That night, I learned how to make coconut milk, how to make crumble, how to make ga phrao muu kai dow (basil pork with fried egg and rice), and how to pronounce myriad Thai words most of which I would soon forget, some of which stuck and some of which await in my voice memos app for later review.

When I finally said yes, to the question P’Oy had asked me a dozen times “Hiu mai?” (Are you hungry?) She let me take the lead on sautéing the basil pork and every time I asked “is this right?” Or “How much…?” She replied with “Up to you”. The meal came out decent enough for it being my first time trying. But when I showed her the finished project, she looked horrified. “Is that enough?!” I laughed and assured her “Mai bpen rai.”

While it took me a whole 30 minutes to prepare my ga phrao muu, she took a short five minutes to finish her version of the dish. We sat in the closed café eating and talking about how we got there, what we had studied, what we dreamed of. She explained how her father had drawn the design for this café, that she had helped to build it and that all the furniture her father had designed and constructed himself. She also told me she worried about her daughter’s English levels because in the English program she managed to pay for, they often just watched YouTube videos. I happily offered to come talk and play with her daughter. She declared throughout the night but also once again then and there that I had not only friends but also “family” in Wapi and that I could call her anytime of day. Since it was well past dark and it was quite obvious that I was tired, she loaded my bike into the back of her pick-up truck and drove me home. We hugged and said our goodbyes. I slept well that night knowing I would have Green Home during my year in Wapi Pathum.

Leaving most of the muffins for her to sell, I took one muffin home to try the next morning. To be honest, the muffin was only so-so, a little dry. I texted her that next time we should add some bananas and coconut, using some Thai flavors, and of course practice makes perfect!