Tomato Sorting Day

Yesterday was a tomato sorting day. Our landlord is the middle man between farmers in the mountains and sellers in Bangkok. So a couple of farmers came down from the mountains and brought their tomato harvest with them. The garage door beside our kitchen was rolled up and the courtyard and this little room were filled with tomatoes. That's our landlord in the pink shirt. He's a very kind person.

The tomato farmers were a couple. They looked very, very young and they brought this little delight.

So I had fun photographing him and trying to make him smile. He was very serious with me, but he smiled for YaYa. Of course. She's such a winner with babies and animals.

I asked my landlord what hill tribe the couple was from, and they discussed it amongst themselves for a while. They were trying to think of what the English word for Hmong was, but I picked it out of what they were saying in Thai, and came to the rescue. "Hmong?" I asked. And my landlord said, "Oh! Same in English!"

Our landlord says that he speaks a few words of a lot of hilltribe languages. I'm kind of excited for more tomato days, because I want to meet more people from the mountains around here. There are many Shan people in Pai, and Lahu, and Lisu as well. These were the first Hmong people I've met since we moved here.

Our neighbor from across the street came and played, and everyone oohed and aahed at the baby boy.

 And I oohed and aahed at the baby wrap that his mother made for him. Oooohhh. Aaaaahh.