Falang

Sometimes on the very rare occasion, Thailand frustrates me. It isn't even that Thailand frustrates me, but being a falang in Thailand does. No matter how well you speak Thai, how good your accent is or how similar to Thai people you are, you will always be a falang; you will always be treated differently.

For the most part, Thai people are delighted to hear that you can speak Thai. As soon as you say "Hello" in Thai they start giggling and get excited that your accent is no longer Canadian, but verging on Thai. In Bangkok, all of this is different. Bangkok is where all the flights come in, where the streets are infested with falangs who cannot speak a word of Thai, whose accents are still Canadian and who verge away from certain food so they don't get traveller's diarrhea. I don't mind, they are tourists, they are travelling - they don't have to know the language, they don't have to have a Thai accent and they don't have to eat everything. But for me, I have to learn Thai, I have to lose my Canadian accent and I am subject to try EVERYTHING on a menu [and trust me, I have tried some things anyone sensible would steer clear of]. But because of the falangs who are tourists, the Thai people in Bangkok do not expect you to speak Thai. No matter how many times you tell them "I can speak Thai, I understand" IN Thai, they will always reply to you in English. This frustrates me more than anything. In Nakhon Phanom I am the falang who speaks great Thai, who has lost her Canadian accent and can have conversations with the shopkeepers. In Bangkok I am just another falang who needs the shopkeeper to say the price in English.

On top of the language frustrations there are the eating habits. I was never one to eat breakfast and though I have broken that habit now that I am in Thailand, I still am not one to be craving a big meal in the morning. I will have toast, or some fruit, or leftover vegetables from dinner the night before. This weekend I have been in Bangkok and the relatives of my host family pester me constantly to eat more food. I tell them I am not hungry, that I am full and they still bother me to try something, to eat more. On Friday they took me to the mall for KFC - I am never one to turn down deepfried chicken so I ordered something small. They didn't eat with me. Right after I finished eating they took me to a fancy hotel for Dim Sum. I didn't understand why they had taken me for take out when 15 minutes later they would be taking me to a big fancy lunch at a hotel restaurant. They thought I wanted falang food. At lunch we ate with chopsticks and I have always been confident with my chopstick skills - they improved immensely since I arrived in Thailand. These chopsticks were weighted down with lead on the end, not the throw away wooden type you use at food stalls in Nakhon Phanom. It wasn't a problem until I tried to dip my roll into soya sauce, then I couldn't pick it up again because it was so covered in sauce! I used my spoon to put it on my plate and then I continued eating. However, because of this small clumsy moment one of the women at the table asked the waiter to bring me a fork and spoon. AS IF I NEEDED A FORK AND SPOON. I am a clumsy person - I walk into things, I drop things, I stub my toe - I can't even eat with a fork and spoon without dropping rice on the tablecloth. I told them "I don't want a fork and spoon". They didn't bring me one, and the rest of the lunch I ate perfectly with my heavier-than-normal chopsticks.
For the rest of the lunch the women at the table kept pushing food at me, telling me to eat more. I was full, I had just eaten KFC and then they took me out to lunch which I had eaten my share of. I could not eat anymore, and yet they kept telling me "Just try this one, you'll like it." When I didn't eat it, they made comments that I didn't like it, that I wanted to eat falang food.

Sometimes, being a foreigner drives me insane - you are never accepted as a Thai person, your natural habits are always judged as a "falang thing".

At other times, however, the shopkeepers at the floating market give you discounts on merchandise because you sound just like a Thai. (:

"It is not how we are the same, but how we are different"