Lust in translation

A new member of the Thai staff at the school, a girl called Fa, asked me the other day if I like ‘lice’ (she meant rice). I said yes. Then there was an uncomfortable silence and I suddenly realised ‘oh, she means now!’ So I stood up and started following and realised that all the Thai staff were going for lunch and as I was the only teacher in the office presumably they thought they’d better be polite and ask me to come along. But as I made my way outside Fa had a phone call and then everything got confusing. With her bad English and my even worse Thai I couldn’t really understand but she said something like “sorry, farther, tomorrow” so I said “you’re going further? Ok, never mind” and went and got some food by myself.

Then at the same time the next day she came up and fetched me from the office. A tuk-tuk was waiting outside, which I thought was odd because tuk-tuks are never there when you need them, but always aggressively hoot at you when you’re happy walking. Anyway, I got in and we were whisked away and then she explained the tuk-tuk was being driven by her father. Ahh, father not farther. Through the small window to the driver’s seat I could make out a powerful looking man with a long ponytail. Fa and I chatted clumsily in the back of the tuk-tuk and she kept putting her hands on my arm. After what seemed like a bit too long, perhaps about 3-4 miles, we turned up at a restaurant I’d never been to before, with buffet food from disgusting-looking giant bowls. I slowly realised that her father wasn’t just driving us; the three of us went inside together to get food. Fa dragged me by the hand and pointed at all the different foods and tried, bless her, to explain what they were but I ended up just guessing and when I sat down I realised everything on my plate was its own unique shade of green.

Conversation was minimal and awkward so I did my best to instigate some chitchat. I tried, partly using gesture to ask Fa how long she had lived in Suratthani and she responded by showing me her wristwatch. Then, making polite conversation, I tried to ask whereabouts she lives and she started fanning my face. Meanwhile her father just sat there silently eating lots of food, occasionally grunting approval at just about everything, whether he understood it or not.

My brain was ticking over trying to remember as much Thai as possible. Fa asked if I wanted “chaa yen” and I pulled a confused expression before remembering that that means “ice tea”, which normally I don’t like but I was so excited at understanding something that I said yes anyway. Then the woman who had served the food said “arooy mai?” to me and I know that “arooy” means delicious and “mai” is a word Thai people use to turn anything into a question, so that wasn’t too hard to work out. “Arooy!” I said, patting my stomach.

Fa and her father paid for me despite my protests and I got whisked back to the school in the noisy tuk-tuk, this time with Fa sitting in the passenger seat next to her father, me in the back by myself trying to work out what was happening. Did I just have a date? Is that what happened? Did I agree to it? Did I enjoy it? I don’t know. I just don’t know. In all the confusion I hadn’t even considered whether Fa is attractive or not. I still don’t have an answer for that and it seems strangely irrelevant. I’ve barely seen her in the two days since and as long as I don’t do anything stupid like invite her out for dinner to return the favour, then the whole thing might be forgotten within a couple of weeks.