What It Means to Release a Turtle in Thailand

We had just finished a marathon of facilitating two camps for the past five days. I was exhausted from spending each night preparing materials for the next day and making sure that the lesson plans I had written could be easily understood by the Thai facilitators who were not used to using games as teaching tools (turns out, they weren’t understood very well.) Ning, my co-teacher who does get it, turned to me and asked “Do you want to maybe go to Bua Yai and relax and get dinner?” Bua Yai is the next district over from mine, where she lives with her parents and is larger than where I live. I agreed; I really did not want to cook.

After signing the required paperwork and taking the obscene amount of photos with teachers (some who did help out and others who just sat on the side and asked if I could finish early) and students who were so excited to have just learned how to sound out words, we climbed into her grey Honda City and set off in the opposite direction of my village and house. She cranked up some English pop songs, I sang along, and some Thai pop songs, I bobbed along.

We stopped by Ning’s house, where I chatted with her mother, grandmother and neighbor for a short while. I introduced myself to her blind grandfather for the third time, who is always excited to meet me and Ning tells me that he wants to talk with me. After making our appearance for about 15 minutes, we set out in search of relaxation and dinner.

“I like to feed the fish when I feel not good. It makes me feel good,” Ning tells me as we make our way to the middle of town where there is a large man-made pond stocked with lots of fish. There are vendors nearby selling different sized bags full of fish food; Ning purchases two medium-sized bags and we sit down on steps that three months ago we stood on and fed the fish. Now they are half covered with water, a result of the beginning of the rainy season.

Ning places her hand in the shallow water to feed the small fish that can swim there and I throw my food out as far as I can and watch the frenzy. Every so often, after I throw my food out and the frenzy has subsided, the water churns violently. I ask Ning why and she tells me that maybe there is another fish that has teeth that eats the other fish. She cannot remember the name of it in Thai. I notice a catfish and attempt to get most of my handful to it instead of the greedy other fish. Ning points out a rain storm that is rolling in towards us so we finish off the rest of the food in our bags by flinging it all out as far as it will go.

We get in the car and drive a few blocks to a restaurant. Just as we arrive, the clouds open up and it begins to pour. We eat our dinner and joke with each other. Ning asks about rain and dogs and I explain to her the idiom “raining cats and dogs.” She says they have the same thing in Thai: fon dtok meeo meeo maa maa. We finish and decide to not wait and head home, making guesses as to whether it is raining in my village. I run to get in the car and let Ning use the one umbrella. I hear, just as I shut the door, “Christine! The turtle!” I turn and look and see Ning outside the driver side door, an umbrella in one hand and a turtle in the other, so I open the door for her.

She hands me the turtle, closes her umbrella and the car door. “We believe that if you release the turtle in the good place, that good things will come to you and you will have a long life, like turtles,” she says. So I hold this turtle as it pees on me three times, pulls it’s head and legs in to warm itself up from the blasting air conditioning that I appreciate and we drive about an hour to my village. Ning explains further that I am supposed to write my name on the turtle’s shell before I release it and that I can make a wish. The turtle struggles to be free, wiggling its legs and trying to push my fingers off of its shell.

We arrive in my village and it is raining, though just barely, and we stop by the reservoir that provides the water for the village. We walk through the mud and Ning tells me to write my name on the turtle’s shell. I don’t have anything to write with and she says that’s OK. We get close to the water and she says that spot is good. So I go to set it down, I make a wish and Ning says “May you have the long life like the turtle.” I watch as at first it doesn’t move and then makes a break for the water before scurrying back to the car and making my way home.