Kru Nate, Man or Myth?

Let me just begin this with a short note: Nate, if you ever read this at any point, you have made quite an impact on each and every Hangchat resident. Here is the proof.

Kru means teacher in Thai. I am “Kru Emily.” Erin is “Kru Erin.”

Nate was our predecessor. He participated in the Teach in Thailand Program last year and lived and worked at the Hangchat Wittaya for a full year. He left shortly before we arrived.

Apparently Nate is a Thai God. The people here are absolutely obsessed with him . . .I mean OBSESSED. Everywhere we go, especially restaurants, we can barely get our broken Thai greeting out before we hear the words “Kru Nate” echo from the mouths of both owners and patrons alike. I thought I understood at first. Nate was one of the few (VERY few) farangs in Hangchat for that year. We are now farangs in Hangchat. We are also teaching at Hangchat Wittaya, like he did for 2 semesters. They are comparing us to him. . .totally normal and to be expected.

It’s so much more than that. He’s sort of started a new religion around here, the Kru Nate religion. He has mesmerized the people with his whiskey drinking, soccer playing, Thai speaking, and motorbike riding ways. There are many legends circulating Hangchat about him. “One time, he paid for a group of his students to eat dinner at a restaurant.” “He would ride the motorbike all the way to Chiang Mai.” “He would start drinking whiskey at 3 pm.” He seems to have befriended everybody. The motorbike we ride is not “Sutham’s motorbike” or even “The Farangs’ motorbike,” it is “Kru Nate Motorbike.” Honest to God, the day we took motorbike lessons from Lun, she just kept repeating the words “Kru Nate motorbike” over and over and over again. She seemed to think it was very funny that we, veritable imposters, were riding the motorbike of Kru Nate.

Furthermore, the owner of every restaurant we go to informs us that Kru Nate ate there every single day, and he or she serves up Kru Nate’s favorite food in Hangchat. Is it possible that this God of a man was eating 7-8 meals per day? Keep in mind, he also ate at the “cantine” or cafeteria every day for lunch. (Of course he loved the cantine food the most). This larger than life character loved hot and spicy food, (the hotter the better, in fact) and tried every single menu item at every single eatery during his time in Hangchat (so adventurous). He would even use his superhuman strength and knowledge of the Thai language, (practically fluent by the time he departed,) to work at restaurants and help out as needed.

Last week we visited the restaurant of Lund Dang (Uncle Dang) who kept ordering us to send certain messages to Nate through the internet. We must tell him that Lund Dang misses him very much. Does he remember the noodle dish that he used to eat all the time? Lund Dang, at one point during our dinner, appeared at our table with a notepad that contained writing from this mythological man! Imagine, an actual tangible artifact! We read the few lines where Kru Nate had written his phone number and address, along with a couple of his favorite dishes at the restaurant. Then we had to look at a cell phone picture of him and say how handsome we thought he was. Everyone asks if we ever met him. When we tell them that we did meet him briefly in Bangkok, they look at us with a knowing gleam in their eye . . .as if saying, “Well, then, you get it.”

What impossibly large shoes to fill! Will we ever possibly be able to carve out our own niche in Hangchat after such a crater has been formed by this man? All we can do is try, and try we will. I will never be able to eat meals loaded up with chili peppers. I will never be able to converse in Thai. I will never enjoy eating pork liver, and I will never be able to eat 13 meals a day. But maybe, just maybe I will be able to work my way into these Thai hearts in some other fashion – my karaoke skills? My amazing dance moves? We will see, we will see.