trouble

My siesta was interrupted by a neighbour making a noisy phone call to her father in his mountain village. The gist was that a farang had asked her to marry him and she wanted her father to tell her how much she should ask for. 100,000 baht was the answer. Meanwhile, Pha-Aw’s daughter has vanished. Pha-Aw learned that she was seeing a young man with the same surname (though it was acquired from his step father), which is a Lisu taboo. When he called her and angrily told her he’d bring her back home and tie her up, she took off. Until recently, a young man’s family would suggest a possible wife to him. If he liked her, negotiations between the two families would ensue. Not surprisingly, people here find the Western notion of ‘falling in love’ odd. Love, Avo told me, is something that grows after you’ve been with someone for a period of time, not something that strikes you like lightning.

Pha-Aw’s daughter

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