โฮเวอร์คราฟท์ของผมเต็มไปด้วยปลาไหล
A day trip to Samut Songhram (Thai: สมุทรสงคราม) began with a shrieking alarm clock at 7am. Then another at 7.30am. It was, it appeared, time to get up. Not my favourite activity, and certainly not my favourite time at which to perform it. Continue reading ‘Samut Songkhram’
Wow, a new article. Yeah, that’s right, look impressed. If you’re interested in linguistics, and particularly Thai, that is.
A couple of things have been revolving around my brain recently, amidst the flood of booze and sunbeams. And PHP code, yuck.
Firstly, learning Thai is hard. But it’s not that hard. Every Thai person I meet asks me how many years I have lived here. I will have been here for seven months tomorrow, and most Thais can’t believe I’ve picked up this much vocabulary in such a short time. Either that or they’re all being suspiciously polite. If so, I wonder what they want…
Anyway, there are apparently well over a million words in the English lexicon. In Thai, I’m told that there are maybe forty thousand. I’m still a beginner, of course, but it has already struck me that such everyday things as nuance, subtlety – even my beloved puns, are alien to the Thai way of thinking, or at least of speaking.
The Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, so we are told[1] The Thais, in contrast, seem to have one word for each thing – perhaps two at most.
Consider this example – how do you introduce yourself to people? “Hi, I’m John, what’s your name?”, “Hi. I’m John. (looks at person expectantly)”, “How do you do, my name’s John, what’s yours?”, etc etc etc. All variations on a theme, of course, but at least noticably different.
Every single Thai person I have met has asked me “khun cheu arai?” (lit. “you name what?”) or the more informal “cheu arai” (lit. “name what?”). No variations, no exceptions. The only surprises have been when they’ve been able to actually pronounce my name on hearing it[2]
Perhaps not the greatest example, especially for non Thai speakers, but the pattern seems to continue in almost all areas of the language. The Thais do have a few of their own rather cute phrases to fill in the gaps in their vocabulary – “same meat” is used to describe a couple who are what I guess we would call “soul mates”, which is a little more romantic. Likewise, one can deny being homosexual by asserting that “I do not like trees from the same forest”, which is rather more poetic.
But I was talking to a friend recently, who asked if I knew the word for “remember”. I didn’t, but knew “mai leum”, which means “not forget”. The word “mai” can effectively double your vocabulary – no need for antonyms when you can just learn half of the words, and put “not” in front of them to convey the other half.
And then I recalled a passage from George Orwell’s 1984:
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words, Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.
Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘ungood’ will do just as well — better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ’splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course, we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words –in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was Big Brother’s idea originally, of course,” he added as an afterthought.
Chillingly, how do we express ourselves in Thai?
“dee” = “good”
“dee mak” = “very good”
“dee mak mak” = “very very good”
“mai dee” = “not good”
“mai dee mak” = “very not good”
“mai dee mak mak” = “very very not good”
We’re not so far away, are we? There may be words for ‘excellent’ and ’splendid’, but I am not aware of them.
At the other end of the scale are the personal pronouns. “Him, his, her, it, its” is “khao, khao, khao, khao, khao”, which is easy enough. Wiping out the gender (and neuter) differences, if a little odd, is at least more sensible than French/Spanish/etc where every single noun has a gender which must be memorised.
But addressing people is another matter entirely. The Thai social hierarchy is enormously complex, but all Thais seem to generally know their place in it, at least compared to other Thais. They get a little confused by we “farang” (lit. “Western barbarian”, apparently) folk, but they generally know where they rank amongst each other.
To address someone as an equal, you would use the word “khun” for “you”. To address them as a superior it would be “pee” instead, and to address them as an inferior (and you’d better be sure that they agree with you), it’s “norng”.
You’d generally use “pee” for anyone more senior in position or age than yourself, “khun” for almost everyone else, and “norng” for a younger sibling. In fact, “norng chi” means “younger brother”, and “pee chi” means older brother”. Same with “norng sao” and “pee sao” for sister.
You can’t simply mention in conversation that you have a brother – you have to use “older brother” or “younger brother”. The heirarchy is that ingrained.
There are more options of course – on the vulgar side, naturally. “Mung” is from the Issan/Lao tongue, and is a rather more offensive version of “norng”, and “i” (or “e” for addressing females) is simply obscene, and likely to get you beaten up.
This being Thailand, of course, this wonderfully intricate method of addressing each other is summarily ignored all too frequently by the Thais themselves, who prefer to avoid the whole issue by referring to themselves by name instead. Thai style!
An English conversation:
Barry: “Hello Mike, would you like to go to the pub?”
Mike: “Hello Barry. I certainly would.”
A strictly correct Thai conversation:
Barry: (mentally discerns whether Mike is inferior, superior or equal)
Barry: “Hello Mike, would (inferior/superior/equal) you like to go to the pub?”
Mike: (mentally decides whether he agrees with my choice, then answers with either:)
Mike: “Hello Barry. I certainly would.”
or optionally beats me to death if incorrect.
A more informal Thai conversation (they honestly do this):
Barry: “Hello Mike, would Mike like to go to the pub?”
Mike: “Hello Barry. Mike certainly would”.
There you go – the whole social hierarchy issue dodged perfectly. More time for drinking. Mine’s a Guinness.
Spent last weekend in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Diary here:
Photos here:
And so we wake up to our last full day in Phnom Penh. Well, my last half-day – last night’s boozy night out means that I wake up early in the afternoon. Sonny and Nick have already left to return the hired motorbike and get some lunch, so I wander on my own to find the British pub/restaurant I saw last night that advertised an all-day breakfast.
Half an hour later I’m polishing off the remains of sausage, bacon, ham (wrong), saute potatoes (wrong again), fried eggs, toast, beans and mushrooms. And tea. And orange juice. No black pudding, but you can’t have everything. English cuisine may not be the most elegant, but by crikey we know how to treat a hangover.
I spot Sonny at La Croissette on the way back to the hotel and join him for a coffee and a flick through yesterday’s Bangkok Post. We head back to the hotel, Nick shows up, and we go for a wander around the city.
There’s a lot of squalor and a lot of dirt – garbage sits stagnant in the street. Some of the side-streets are little more than dirt tracks, but are nowhere near as bad as yesterday’s trail to the Killing Fields.
There is a lot more greenery visible than in Bangkok – one good thing – but the overwhelming impression is one of extreme poverty and discomfort. We are, again, eyed with distrust and unease by some. We are so, so lucky to have been born white Westerners, into middle-class families.
We drink pappaya fruit shakes at a street stall, then go for a traditional Khmer massage (which is almost identical to a traditional Thai massage, unsurprisingly) – $10 each for two hours, which is a little more expensive than Thailand, surprisingly. However, I’ve no doubt that this is a tourist version, and that the local versions, if they even exist, would cost pennies.
Later it’s back to Cafe Rendezvous via a few clothes stalls. I see some shirts I know I could buy in Bangkok for $5 at the most; here the pushy stallholder demands $10. Pizza for dinner, then a few beers and bed.
In the morning we check out at around 7am, and get a tuk-tuk from the hotel to Phnom Penh airport. We check in, then discover that there’s a $25 “departure tax”. We don’t have enough dollars yet. There is a door between the departure tax booth and the ATMs, which we are not allowed to open. So we have to leave the airport, walk around the building, and get some more dollars.
We breakfast on a burger and fries round the corner, return to pay the bill and head to departures. The duty-free store sells cigarettes at 50% more than the cost in Bangkok, so I leave well alone.
Finally we board the plane, and within what seems like moments we’re back at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok. Immigration is straightforward – a pleasant surprise given the recent chaotic changes in visa rules.
When I used to arrive at Don Muang International, it was a simple matter to avoid the queue (and surcharge) for using the official taxi rank by hopping upstairs to Departures, and hailing a taxi that had just dropped off. Here at the new airport, the authorities have become wise to the trick, and the security guards tell us that we have to use the rank.
Nick is having none of it, and hails a cab. It’s a little rude, of course, but our social status as farangs in Thailand means that the guard will not actually stop us getting in the cab. The hierarchy is a double-edged sword. We save ourselves a long way, and 50 baht, and the drive home is swift, comfortable and easy.
My apartment is still here and intact, which is nice, and I flop onto the bed to sleep.
Dawn breaks, and I slumber on. Eventually I rouse myself, and head down to the hotel veranda for another exquisite bacon cheeseburger and fries. Phnom Penh is apparently not a fully paid-up member of the South East Asian Diet Plan.
Nick and Sonny have gone to hire a motorbike. I drink a soda and chat to a motorcycle driver. He offers to take us to the shooting range, where we can fire handguns, AK-47s, M-16s, rocket launchers, etc etc. Then the Killing Fields, and S-21 if we’re interested. The round trip is maybe 40km, and the price will be $4.
Nick and Sonny return on the hired motorbike, and we agree to take the trip. I sit on the back of our driver’s bike, and Nick follows with Sonny on the back of his. A quick petrol stop, and then we’re off on the long drive to the shooting range.
Outside urban Phnom Penh, on a long busy country road, people stare at the three white men. Some look suspiciously at us, others smile and wave, or shout “Hallo”! There are very few cars, a few trucks, but the traffic is overwhelmingly motorbikes. We see two, three, four, even five people on one motorbike. One of them is actually carrying two passengers and a bicycle.
And then the rain starts – a torrential downpour. We pull over to the side of the road and wait under the tin roof of a shack where a local family live and work. They’re collecting the rainwater in the polystyrene boxes discarded by the factories nearby. They’ll sell the rainwater by the tank for a couple of dollars. A small girl is out washing her bicycle in the rain. Nothing is wasted.
Eventually the rain passes and we set off again. We wind round back roads, past an apparently abandoned assault course, and finally reach the shooting range. We’re greeted by a gaggle of Cambodians, one with a huge grin. “Your driver tells me you want to shoot a rocket launcher”, he smiles – you can sense he can almost smell the dollars. We tell him that at $200 a shot, that’s a little outside our price range, and his face visibly sags.
Sonny and Nick eventually decide on a couple of handguns to fire at the open-air range – I, as the token Brit, am playing the conscientious objector today, and just watch. We’re given ear protectors, but Nick fires off the first shot before I think to put mine on. I’m almost deafened – guns are loud. They’re only firing at paper poster targets, but the feeling that this is all too real is inescapable. This is my first experience with live firearms, and I’m taken aback at how simple it is for such a small piece of metal to wreak such havoc.
The handguns are soon depleted of ammunition, and we move into an enclosed brick corridor to fire the AK-47. One magazine of 30 bullets costs $30, and Nick and Sonny fire off 15 each. Even with the ear protectors the noise is deafening.
We pay up, take a few photos, and then it’s back onto the motorbikes as we head for the Killing Fields (Choeung Ek, actually). The ride is easy enough on the tarmac roads, but as we get closer to our destination the road surface swiftly deteriorates into mud.
Eventually we arrive at Choeung Ek, our clothes covered in mud spray, and we pay $3 each for the privilege of standing in what appears to be a paddy field. Child beggars follow us around the muddy track, continuously begging us for dollars as our shoes become caked in crap.
We complete the circuit and walk back to the waiting motorbikes. We had planned to visit S-21 as well, but this waste of time has put us off tourist attractions for today, and we just want to get back to the hotel, change our now filthy clothes and have a thorough wash.
For dinner we head up to the Rendezvous Cafe by the riverside again – another stupendously good (and cheap) meal, and then we wander down to Sharky’s.
Sharky’s is a rock bar not far from our hotel, and its slogan is “Survive 3 mortar rounds and get a free t-shirt”. Disappointingly, a “mortar round” is a cocktail.
9-ball and 15-ball pool tables, draft beer, a wide variety of cocktails, local and western food, decent music and a swarm of, shall we say, “ladies of negotiable affection” make for a lively atmosphere, and Sonny and I make a commendable dent in their stock of Anchor (not Angkor) Beer.
Next stop is the Heart of Darkness – I was wary, having read online about a murder there last year, but we decided to brave it. We are thoroughly searched for weapons on the way in – further reading since the trip suggests that this is mostly for show. Westerners (who are going to be unarmed anyway) are thoroughly frisked, whilst the Khmer gangsters get waved through without any checks…
Thankfully, our visit is incident-free – we glug a beer each and leave before the dirty looks we are getting from the locals turn into anything more serious.
We were going to head to Martini’s after that, but a particularly insistent taxi tout suggests we try Zapata Bar. To be fair, it was a pleasant enough venue, with cheap beer and very attentive company. A Khmer girl stands behind my barstool, massaging my neck and shoulders while I make short work of a Beer Lao.
Finally we do make our way to Martini’s, and it’s quite a sight. A chap with no arms or legs greets us at the door, and after another weapon-frisking we’re out on the patio sipping the evening’s final Heineken and fending off the by-now-obligatory pushy whores.
