Madness? This! Is! Thailand!

In a conversation with my friends P. and M. on Facebook, I have empirically determined the Most Thai Thing Ever.

Me:  Today I witnessed a chicken attacking the scorched remains of a floating lantern. That may be the most Thai thing that has ever happened to me.
P:  If it didn't occur on the back of a motorbike, with a dog in the basket, then there's room for improvement.
Me:  This is true. A chicken attacking a lantern, on a motorbike with four people and a dog, driving the wrong way with no lights down the highway with the driver on the phone AND drinking a bottle of Chang, the second guy eating noodles out of a styrofoam container, and the passenger at the back setting off fireworks. As they drive between a wat and a 7-11. There, fixed it.  And they're going to a mookata.
M:  No blindfolds, no gangnam style?

Me:  Oh, shit, yeah! They're all blindfolded, including the dog, and Gangnam Style is playing.
P:  And there's a baby. Preferably being breastfed.

Me:  And not a helmet in sight.
P:  There'd be one, but it'd be hanging off the handle. Maybe one on the dog.
Me:  One of the passengers should be snorting lines of MSG off the guy in front of him.  Cut with chilli.
P:  And all of their names are some variation of Porn.

Translation notes:  This last bit refers to the fact that "porn" is Thai for "beautiful".  There is actually a Porn electrolysis clinic (which, no lie, I thought was named that because they were promising to make you as attractive as a porn star), and a friend of mine has met people named Porn, Supaporn, and in one memorable instance, Pornsuk.

Obviously, you don't actually snort MSG, but we had a conversation some months back about whether cocaine would be more addictive with MSG in it.  And they do love their MSG here.  One of my colleagues says that a meal without MSG is like a marriage without love.

Finally, Chang is a cheap Thai beer.  The mixture of nausea and regret that attacks the next morning after you've drunk too much of it is known as a Changover.

The More You Know!

Falling On My Head Like A New (And Unpleasant) Emotion

It’s ironic that my walk tonight lasted longer than normal, because I got caught up in the celebrations for the end of rainy season – and that’s why I was still half an hour from home when the most violent thunderstorm I’ve seen all year hit.  In Soviet Russia, weather celebrates the end of you!

I’ve taken to walking down, some nights, to a rather lively student food market that’s about halfway between my house and the Ping river; it’s a nice long walk (anywhere from an hour to two hours depending on the route), and it gives me a chance to explore the area a little more.  I drive most places that aren’t in my immediate neighbourhood, so it can be fun to take the slow route:  poke in small shops, get to meet stallholders, try and fail to befriend the local cats.  (Moray can testify that I have very limited success making friends with Thai cats.  By the end of his trip, he was jokingly telling me off for stalking the poor things. :))  I was on my way down there tonight when I heard music near the bus station, and when I followed it, I discovered the drunkest, least organised, happiest damn parade I have ever seen in my life.

There was a truck creeping along in front with a huge money tree on it; then a procession of about forty or fifty people carrying money trees and dancing (I gotta say, elderly Thai ladies can cut a rug; must be all the tai chi); and then another truck with giant speakers and a huge, rotating disco ball.  (Money trees, by the way, if you haven’t seen them, are trees made out of sticks with 20- and 100-baht notes woven into the branches.  They’re a form of Buddhist offering.)  This was the only parade I’ve ever seen where the participants got more excited every time it was held up.  Whenever the truck in front had to stop to let a bus past, the crowd would start dancing more wildly, swigging Leo, and setting off firecrackers right under their feet.  It was kind of awesome, and I was curious about where they were going, so I kept pace with them.  I didn’t actually go over and join them, for fear of intruding or putting a damper on the proceedings (“farang present, this is weird and uncomfortable, better tone it down”)… and, because, you know, what they were doing is a good way to lose some toes. :)  But I joined the stragglers trailing after them, and we picked up more and more people as we went, with the music getting more raucous all the time, until we reached a temple I’d never noticed before, tucked behind the new bus terminal.  The music and the disco ball stopped there, letting the worshipers process in with their offerings… while a few drunken older Thais stuck around to get funky in the middle of the road, under the swirling red and green lights.

I eventually peeled off and went to get dinner at the market (and also to hit my new favourite place – a laid-back bakery/manga library/internet café with fantastic chocolate pudding cake, which I would never have expected to find in such an un-touristy area).  And I’d barely turned back when the wind started up all of a sudden.  I didn’t think much of it, but all the Thai people did – they were instantly scrambling to batten down their stalls and close up the fronts of their shops.

I didn’t get far before the rain started:  big, fat drops that quickly turned into a complete downpour.  I ended up under a plastic shop awning with a middle-aged couple; a young dad and his son on their motorbike; and a young man, probably a student, who crouched near the edge of the awning and watched the rain with a surprisingly peaceful expression on his face.

And this was rain like you wouldn’t believe.  Within minutes, the streets were flooded.  It was coming down so hard that it kicked up a layer of mist a couple of feet thick, so that trying to see the road ahead of you was like peering through fog.  There was a particularly bright flash of lightning, and every light on the street went out; a few emergency lights struggled back on, but a minute later, another flash took those out, as well.  We were left with only the lightning and the headlights of a few cars that had pulled over by the side of the road; even in Thailand, where drivers are completely insane, no one was daring to move.  (Watching raindrops in headlights is the weirdest thing, by the way.  They look like they’re made with stop-go claymation.)

After maybe twenty minutes, it started to slacken a bit.  The couple were the first to leave, her clinging to his back on the motorbike so that they could wrap themselves in the same poncho.  A little while later, I decided that this was as good as it was going to get, and struck out for home.

The walk back was an adventure, let me tell you.  The fun part was balancing precariously on the curb – the only part of the sidewalk still above water – and then having the sheaves of water thrown up by passing cars soak me up to the shoulder.  (Well, that and walking by a lot of dry people smugly eating hot soup at a hotpot restaurant.  Bastards. :))  But I was doing okay… until I reached the petrol station, where the forecourt had become a lake.  The water was shin-deep; I ended up having to wade across, thinking uncomfortably about all those public-service animations from the time of the Bangkok floods, showing downed power lines and hidden sinkholes and families of crocodiles.  (Well, okay, I wasn’t really focusing on that last one.)

The rain picked up again just as I turned into my street, about five minutes from home; I finally staggered home, so drenched that the neighbour’s dog didn’t recognise my smell and practically went for me.  (Fortunately, we are talking about a miniature freaking poodle here, so I wasn’t exactly in danger. :))  I came home to a power outage, but thankfully it only lasted about an hour.  Which means that I had to shower in cold water in the dark, but I didn’t care – it just felt so good to be clean and dry.  And now I can actually heat up my dinner (which survived the walk – the Thai habit of putting everything in multiple plastic bags pays off!) and relax with some cartoons.

By the way, I did run into at least one refugee from the parade on the walk home.  She was wearing a soaked and tattered pink tulle skirt, and was trying to keep dry by holding an overturned silver offering bowl over her head.  Poor kid.  The celebrations for Loy Krathong may start a few days early, but rainy season isn’t giving up that easily.

Mystery Dumplings

A short meditation on culture and economics in Thailand:

The woman who runs my local noodle shop occasionally makes dumplings.  I still haven’t figured out why.

Don’t get me wrong – I obviously know why she MAKES dumplings.  They go in soup.  What I mean is that she doesn’t have them consistently; she tends to make one small batch a night, or maybe two.  And she doesn’t reserve them for people who specifically order dumpling soup.  Rather, she asks everyone whether they’d like some dumplings to go with their noodles.  If you say yes, you get a generous handful of them – and it’s not like she skimps on the meat or the noodles to make up for it.  Nope, it’s the same dish, at the same price.  Just with a delicious added freebie on top.

And I don’t understand why she bothers.  The dumplings are labour-intensive to make, and don’t earn her any extra cash.  If they were always on offer, I suppose they could be a way to lure in customers, and make her place stand out from the half-dozen identical noodle shops within shouting distance – but she usually doesn’t have them, and when she does, they tend to be hidden away.  They might be a treat to reward (and encourage) the loyalty of regular customers – but I remember her offering me some back when I first moved here, in the days before I had enough Thai to order food, or even to say, “I would like this,” and point.

The closest I can come is that, well, maybe she just likes to make us dumplings?

That’s not as silly as it sounds.  Let me lay down this beat and see if you pick it up.  The Rough Guide to Thailand states that three concepts are essential to understanding the Thai mindset:  jai yen, or “cool heart”, which I’ve talked about before; mai pen rai, which means, “It’s no problem,” but is less a no-worries philosophy and more closely related to jai yen – it’s about laughing things off and rolling with the punches; and sanuk, or fun, which everything should be arranged to be, as far as possible.  At this point in my time here, I think I’d add a fourth:  jai dee, or good heart.  Thai people are very focused on doing the right thing, and being generous with their time and help – according to some of my friends here, it’s very tied in with Buddhist ideas of karma.  Having trouble getting your motorcycle out of a parking space?  Someone will come over and start helping to move the bikes around you.  Ask for help from someone who doesn’t understand, or can’t answer, your question?  They’ll call over a friend, or even approach strangers on your behalf.  Leave your helmet, your groceries, whatever in the basket of your motorcycle?  It’s extremely rare that anyone would dream of taking it (and even when it does occur, a lot of helmet theft is spur-of-the-moment “borrowing” to avoid helmet fines, not premeditated theft for profit).

So it’s not entirely bizarre that someone would make extra treats for her customers just because, without any business motivation.  To take a similar example:  at another cookshop near me, rice or dry noodle dishes usually come with a bowl of soup on the side, but it’s understood that if the shop runs out of soup, it runs out of soup.  It would be terrible form to complain that you didn’t get your soup, whereas in a Western restaurant, it would only be natural to point out that one of the sides never arrived.  That’s because in a Western restaurant, it would be treated as part of the package to which you were entitled, whereas at a Thai cookshop, it’s seen as a courtesy, almost like a gift from your hosts.

It’s kind of charming, actually.  I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for an unexpected free treat, even a rare one; the fact that you never know when it’s coming gives something as simple as going to the noodle stall a tiny added thrill.

… which, come to think of it, probably keeps me going back more often.

Huh.  Maybe noodle-shop lady is more calculating than I thought.