Who, or what, or where is Khon Khao? I may never know.
I had spent the morning at Wat Thewet, a small temple outside the ancient Thai capital of Sukothai where monk Phra Sumroeng Thamanatha had cast his dreams in concrete. Over two decades, this eccentric and creative monk had build life sized statues illustrating stages in Buddha Shakyamuni's life and, based on dreams he had had, interspersed with images of misbehaving mortals and the hell that awaited them when their bad karma would come back to haunt them. It's really quite a magical place, and I left it with a feeling of quizzical wonder.
The trip back to town was on a type of local bus called a songthaew - a small lorry with seats down either side. I borded one going to Sukothai to find a wrinkled local man beaming at me from up the front. He started chatting to me so I moved closer to see what he was was so animated about. Khon Khao, as it turned out.
We chatted for the whole of the half hour journey into Sukothai about Khon Khao. Or rather he chatted. Continuously; excitedly; incessantly; and entirely in Thai. At first I tried to convince him that I couldn't understand through the usual hand gestures. He nodded, smiled, and continued chatting. Then I gave into fate and decided to ride this one out.
Anything which the tone of his voice indicated was an emphatic statement I agreed with. He liked that, mostly. Sometimes I got it wrong and had to 'let him win me over'. He would argues (or so I figured from the tone) and I woud frown seriously, nod a lot and finally agree that I should have disagreed in the first place. I wasn;t thrown off the bus so I figure I hadn't insulted any sensibilities too much. Questions about Khon Khae I tried to deflect by gesturing that he give his opinion first. This usually led to an emphatic statement and, bingo, I was back in the saddle!
What plagues me, though, was the existential nature of Khon Khao. Was it his favourite place? His favourite food? A good book he had read? At one point it ocurred to me that it might be a meaningless interjection, syntactic sugar. I realised that an alien visitor to Dublin might assume that 'right', 'like' or 'you know' were interesting foods or places and wonder at what they were like. Knowing that he did not understand anything I was saying and was not listening anyway, I alternately promised to visit, read, or eat Khon Khao at the next available opportunity. My keen interest kept him happy, my pretence engagement in this imaginary conversation kept me just on the right side of sane.
He got off before the last stop. Just as well, or he might have followed me home. Maybe he got off at Khon Khao. I guess I'll never know, and curiosity aside it's kinda more fun that way.