(This story is written by Sean Parlaman (
seanpar@ksc.net.th) and published here with his kind permission.)
In summer 1994, in my first trip to Thailand, I was a student at
Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, living in the Thai dorms and eating
in the student cafeteria. One morning, while standing in line to get a cup
of hot coffee, I noticed that the milk the women in the food stall were
using didnt look very good. It wasnt UHT Milk, which means it needed to
be refridgerated, which it probably hadnt been. As some of the students in
front of me got their coffee and passed by me in line, I could see bits of
stale milk floating on the surface of their coffee. I decided to have it
black instead.
So when I ordered my coffee, I added mai sai nom, na khap. If you say it
correctly, that means dont put in any milk, please. However, having no
sense at the time (or now) of the tones in Thai language, what I actually
said was stop shaking your breasts, please. The three women in the booth
literally fell to the floor in hysterics. Now I was pretty used to Thais
who found my attempts to speak their language a source of neverending
amusement, but no one had ever collapsed before. So I stood there like a
big, dumb white guy, confused smile pasted to my sunburned face, and waited
patiently while the women stood up and caught their breath. At which point,
I (of course) repeated my request again, taking down not only the women in
that booth (again) but the servers in two adjoining booths and a few Chula
students who were listening in to see what bizarre thing their caucasian
classmate had said now. Finally, one of my Thai roommates came to my
rescue, and sorted it out.
But I made an impression. Two years later (summer 1996), I was on the
Bang-Sue train station platform in Bangkok waiting for the commuter train
to take me to work at Internet KSC out in Don Muang, when an excited woman
(who looked vaguely familiar) ran up to me shouting hallo, chon, hallo
chon (Hello Sean). Khun chon jam chan mai, ka? (Does Mr. Sean remember
me?) I told her I remembered her face but not her name. Jam, mai
(Remember?) she said, giving her bosom a burlesque (and very un- Thai)
shake. I just blushed. One of the coffee ladies. How nice to be remembered
for the important things you do in life.
Again in the summer of 94, after three months of studies at Chula, I spent
my last two weeks in country at Patong Beach on Phuket Island. A British
friend I had met (who had lived there for years but who couldnt speak Thai
to save his life) asked me to help him find out if the local grocery store
carried food for his cat. So thinking myself quite the language stud after
12 weeks of Thai classes at Chula, I marched into the store, where an older
Thai-Chinese woman sat behind a counter, one end of which was occupied by
one of the few true Siamese cats I have ever seen in Thailand. (I thought
all Thai cats would be Saimese, or at least many of them, before coming to
Thailand.)
What a fortunate coincedence, I thought. The cat was beautiful, probably
pure-bred, and obviously quite pampered, unlike all of the strays I was
used to seeing. I figured this woman would certainly have cat food to sell.
So I asked in gramatically-incorrect Thai mee miaow ahan, mai khap which
literally translated is (Do you) have any cat food? The problem was, in
Thai the adjective comes after the noun (like in Spanish), not before (like
in English). So I wasnt asking if she has food for a cat I was asking if
she had a cat for food. Mai mee, mai mee (Dont have) she said, quite
shocked.
I, as usual, didnt get it, and neither did my friend. When the woman
reacted with a horrified expression, I immediately took it upon myself to
make my request more clear. So I repeatedly pointed at her cat dozing on
the counter, and followed with a pantomimed motion of feeding myself from
my curved hand representing a bowl. Miaow (cat) ahan (food) I repeated,
over and over while the situation seemed only to get worse and worse.
The lady jumped to her feet, grabbed the cat, and angrily yelled mai dai,
mai dai (You cant). She backed away from the two of us as far as she
could, clutched the startled kitty to her chest and began to cry. Figuring
that we had done our bit to advance international understanding for the
day, my friend and I left, totally mystified. I thought you could speak
Thai, my friend scolded me in his very proper Brit accent. I was, I
said, maybe she only speaks Chinese. Yeah, sure, that was it.
My other big blunder was in spring of 1995. I was in Udon Thani on an
independent graduate study abroad project from my college in Oregon,
teaching English to sixth graders at a school for at-risk kids during the
day, tutoring high school and tech college students in the afternoon and at
night preparing a northeast Ministry of Education Task Force to travel to a
one-month workshop at Florida State University.
The evening my night class job ended, some of the high school boys in my
village that I tutored insisted I go out with them to a club that evening.
They all had dates, which means (to a Thai teenager) that you and about 50
of your closest friends go to some public place somewhere in the general
vicinity of the 50 or so girls each had invited out. You spend the night in
gender-segregated groups, drop by a Swensens Ice Cream Parlor or Kentuck
Fried Chicken for a bite afterwards, then gather in the parking lot to
take, like, a gazillion pictures before everyone goes home.
Anyway, we went to a typical E-san (northeastern Thai) club/bar, sitting on
pillows at low, round tables. The boys all drank beer, a few whiskey (since
everyone was over 15), and the girls drank coke. (I play the role of the
good Buddhist and just had Sprite.) A DJ with a cordless mike would prowl
the room, engage in funny banter with a customer or two, take a request and
plays the song. Everyone stands up where theyre at, dancing by themselves
and occasionally waving to their girlfriends who are at a table about 30
meters away. (Not much like the Oddessy or Sugar Shack or any of the other
temples of sin teen clubs I haunted as a youth in L.A. the 1970s.)
Eventually, the DJ makes it over to our corner, and must have thought he
has struck gold to have a farang in his club for the first time. He ran
through the usual questions with me. How long have you been in Thailand? Do
you like E-san? Do you think E-san people are nice? Do you have a Thai
girlfriend? Is she khon issan? (a northeasterner); Do you think Thai
women are beautiful? (Which I did finally learn to answer correctly, saying
suay maak (very beautiful) with the suay vowel sound said short, not
dragged out for emphasis (as in English) which I repeatedly did on my first
few trips, inadvertantly expressing the opinion that Thai women were very
unlucky (with the long vowel
sound.))
So the DJ gets a little mileage out of the fact that Im a vegetarian,
speak a little E-san/Lao, practice Muay Thai and live in Nongbua (a poor
village north of the city). Pleasant enough chat, not really too funny. But
when he asked me if I wanted to request a song, the guy hit paydirt.
I had spent the previous hour sitting at the table drinking my Sprite,
trying to find a comfortable position for my sore back, and practicing in
my head what I could say if the DJ asked me for a request. I liked the teen
singing duo Raptor, (aka Joni & Louis) especially one song off of their
Waab Boys album titled Blawp Peun (support your friend). In the song,
one boy is laying down outside looking up at the night sky and mourning the
fact that the girl he loves doesnt love him. His friend consoles him,
pointing to the stars in the sky and telling him that just as there are
thousands of stars in the sky, there are thousands of girls to love in the
world, and thousands of people who will be his friend.
Sugary, bubble gum pop, thats for sure, but Im a sucker for sentimental
songs. So when this guy asks, all I have to say is Blawp Peun. Not too
difficult. I could sing the damn song acapella in perfect Thai I had heard
it so many time. I had even practiced making the request in my head for an
hour before the DJ came over. But when he asked. I didnt say Blawp Puen.
I accidentally left the L out of the first word and said Bawp Peun,
which in the most crude Thai slang, translates as (to put it nicely)
perform oral sex on your friend.
There was about a second of stunned silence in the room, then it sounded as
if a bomb went off, with 200 people, mostly teenagers, laughing their heads
off. The DJ never even chuckled. He looked at me with a slight,
appreciative smile, calmly patting me on the back and (Im sure)
contemplating the money he could make by taking me on tour and asking me
simple, mundane questions so that I could answer with the most
inappropriate responses possible. After about what seemed like an hour, the
room settled down a bit, and with that same calm smile of satisfaction on
his face, delivered his punchline in Thai, talk about making your friend
see stars. Thats really supporting a friend!
When I sat down again, it took five minutes before the guys at my table
could calm down enough so that they could figure out how to explain to me
what I said wrong. Their limited English, my limited Thai, and the Thai
modesty about discussing sex made it a long and difficult process. When I
finally realized what I had actually said, I switched from Sprite to Singha
beer for the rest of the evening.
(As when I posted this before, I hope others follow up with similar
experiences of their own, or discuss whether or not this *alleged* Thai
Language is just an Asian plot to make farangs use words like dong,
f*ck, sh*t, krap, clit, in public and think they are speaking a
foreign language.)