then drilled four new holes for the wall mount, secured the bracket and fitted the arm that held the red satellite dish. I called down and told them to try their television. They all piled inside, my family and the Botans, but only the grown-ups came out. I could imagine my TV-starved children channel-surfing, the Oxford Junior Atlas forgotten on their laps. Tess gave me the thumbs up.
‘Looking good,’ she said.
Mr and Mrs Botan were talking quietly to each other when I came down the ladder and I guessed that they were wondering if they should try to pay me. The old man looked at me and I looked at him and he did not attempt to give me money. I was happy about that.
‘You know many things,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t always a driver,’ I said.
Despite the red satellite dish that now stood straight and tall on their roof, the Botans’ place felt like a classic Thai home to me, because every part of it felt like it was bathed in a light of soft honey-tinted brown.
Buddha images stared from alcoves and the top of black lacquer cabinets. There was a photo of the King on the wall. Six chairs stood in perfect alignment around a long, wooden dining table, as if waiting to have their photograph taken. Everything immaculate, exquisite and very clean.
Although it had exactly the same layout as our place, it felt like another way of living. It had none of the jumble and mess that you get with children growing up in your midst, the endless books, the forgotten items of clothing and the discarded toys – not that we had brought many of those. Snacks were important to Rory and Keeva. The last snack. The next snack. The snack that they wanted and the snack that they were allowed. There was no evidence that any kind of snacking ever took place in the Botans’ house.
But Mr and Mrs Botan were parents too.
Next to what looked like a small altar – more Buddhas, a few lit candles, and a solitary teacup – there was a silver-framed photograph of a large, prosperous-looking man in glasses standing next to his seated, tiny, very pretty wife with a solemn-looking little boy standing to attention between them.
‘Our son,’ Mr Botan said, the pride obvious. ‘A lawyer in Bangkok.’
‘What a lovely family,’ Tess said. ‘And do they visit you often?’
Mr Botan frowned with thought, and sort of slowly rolled his head, as though it was very hard to give a definitive answer. I could hear Keeva and Rory in the other room, laughing together as they changed channels.
‘Not so often,’ said Mrs Botan, bringing a tray of tea.
We all looked at the silver-framed photograph and, placed that close to the altar, I thought that the family in the picture looked as though they were being worshipped too.
We went back home after our tea but an hour later the Botans knocked on our door with two plastic bags, one for Keeva and one for Rory, both stuffed full of a jumble of banana leaves, candles and flowers ready to assemble. The Botans told us that tonight was the festival of Loy Krathong and although I had no idea what that might be, I saw that this was how they were thanking me.
When night fell and November’s moon rose full and white, the children carried their hand-made baskets to the beach and walked with the Botans down to the water’s edge. The baskets were lotus-shaped and decorated with banana leaves, flowers, coins and unlit birthday cake candles.
All along the bow-shaped beach of Hat Nai Yang, people were carrying baskets down to the sea where the candles were lit by parents before the baskets were gently set adrift. We arrived not long after sunset, but already there was fire on the water as a hundred pinpoints of flame floated out to sea, flickering in the moon-washed night.
Our first Loy Krathong. At the time I did not understand the importance of the festival to the Thai people. I had seen ready-made baskets being sold by the side of the road without understanding their significance. Without the Botans as our neighbours, we would have missed it completely.
Rory and Keeva were excited and happy about the whole concept. Putting down their Oxford Junior Atlas, spending all afternoon making baskets and then staying out late to send them out to sea – what was not to like?
Now, as we watched them prepare to push their baskets across the glassy black surface of the Andaman, the sea as unmoving as a skating rink, the Botans attempted to explain the significance of the night to us all.
‘Loy means float,’ said Mr Botan. ‘Krathong means …’ He reached for the words. ‘Leaf cup?’ he said, looking at his wife.
Mrs Botan said, ‘To honour the spirit of the water for providing life to the land.’ She thought about it. ‘To beg forgiveness for the sins of the humans who spoil the land.’
‘Cool,’ said Keeva.
Mr Botan took out a cigarette and hungrily eyed the unlit roll-up.
‘For a better day,’ he said simply, and as I watched the tiny lights shimmer in the darkness, I decided that is how I would define Loy Krathong to myself, and how I would understand it. A small prayer for a better day. But it was really much later before I really understood how important the ceremony was to Thai people. On that very first Loy Krathong all I saw was the beauty and magic of a night that seemed to be swarming with fireflies.
Mrs Botan shot her husband a look and the old fisherman slipped the cigarette into his pocket, deciding not to risk it. Keeva gave her basket a hefty shove and it spun away. Rory held his basket like a precious chalice, reluctant to release it. He turned his face imploringly to Mrs Botan, and the flames flickered on the pink and blue candles that he had pushed into the soft surface of the banana tree basket.
‘Can I just keep it?’ he said. ‘Maybe I should do that.’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You have to let it go.’
Together they bent down and slipped the basket into the water with a soft splash. We watched their baskets disappear into the night, until the pinpricks of flame were lost among all the others.
The longtail boats bobbed in the darkness and we felt the soft white sands of Hat Nai Yang under our bare feet. I tried to work out where the sea ended and the sky began. Voices murmured all along Hat Nai Yang but I had never been in a place more still than that beach on Loy Krathong.
Tess took my hand and squeezed it and as I saw her smile on the beach with her face lit by nothing but November’s full moon, I knew that she saw it too. It was beautiful.
Suddenly the peace was shattered.
Voices were being raised. Fingers were pointed. There was an excited babble of Thai and I realized that there was a boat out on the sea. Not a longtail, with a diesel engine that split the night. But a wooden boat that slipped across the water with almost no sound and revealed itself as just the faintest silhouette – a blur of black against more black. Then, as your eyes focused on all that darkness, you could see why the boat was out there. Whoever was on it was scooping up the Loy Krathong baskets as if they were some exotic form of fish.
A cry of anguish came from further down Hat Nai Yang. The voices of men and women who were suddenly angry. A child began to cry and protest in Thai and I saw a basket with its tiny prick of flame lifted from the water and stashed inside the boat.
Out in the shadows a small body slipped
