XV. Thai Lessons

“Khun Philip, kin cow!”

Ah, the call to breakfast. I came running. Yai, tiny, wiry ancient matriarch of the Jungle Adventure Tour family, greeted me at the door with a sweet smile, her gums stained bright, bloody, betel-nut red. She said something to Maow and they both chuckled.

“What did she say?”

“She say you now understand as much Thai as the dog.”

It was true. After seven weeks of living in Thailand, the only Thai I knew was food related.

Yai sniffed at me and pointed to the washing area, an open tank of water with a hand-bucket, surrounded by a chest-high wall for modesty. As I left to bathe, she said something else to Maow and chuckled. I didn’t ask, she might have said that I smelled like him too.

I didn’t think I smelled that bad. I just hadn’t washed the night before. In the eyes of the family, though, if I didn’t wash at least twice a day, I was just another filthy foreigner. Maow once told me that they could always smell farang coming. She thought it was because we used toilet paper instead of water. I thought it absurd at the time, but once I made the switch, I could see what she meant. Toilet paper just didn’t seem as thorough anymore.

I sloshed the cold water from the tank over my body and dried myself off with a sarong. Once properly attired (my clothes had to be fresh and clean as well, even though I’d be wading through jungle muck within the hour), Yai fed me the usual breakfast ─ whatever spicy meat concoction was leftover from the night before, mixed with rice porridge. Occasionally, I craved a western breakfast and would have been happy to make myself some eggs, but Yai wouldn’t let me in her kitchen. She never let anyone, not even Maow, her eldest daughter, into her kitchen without supervision.

One night, the entire family went out to some local Buddhist ceremony. I was invited and ordinarily would have loved to go, but it was a rare opportunity to stay home alone and relish the solitude. I made a little something to eat, some fried rice and, although I had never used a wok before, I had seen it done enough times to figure it out.

After cooking a reasonable approximation of Yai’s fried rice, albeit a tad heavy on the fish sauce, I cleaned up. I made sure to do a thorough job. Although Yai never explicitly said I couldn’t use her kitchen, I knew I was transgressing. I was careful to leave the kitchen looking as though I never set foot in it.

The next morning, I got no breakfast call. Wondering what happened, I tiptoed into the kitchen, where Yai, looking angry and holding a meat cleaver, was discussing something with Maow. Yai saw me and zeroed in. Her head came up to about my chest, but she scared me, talking fast, harsh-sounding Thai, and waving her meat cleaver every which way. Even if I could understand her, my attention was focused solely on the cleaver. I felt her resolve was weakening, she lowered the cleaver and the slightest hint of a smile came creeping in. She must have felt it too; she quickly finished her tirade with a derisive, snorted “Hmph!” and left the kitchen.

“What’d she say?” I asked Maow.

“She say, ‘Your fish have no tail.’”

“Huh?”

“It’s old saying. ‘Fish must have head, must have tail.’ She always tell us when we’re kids.”

“What does it mean?”

“It mean I think maybe you don’t cook anymore, okay?”