Curtains Draw when the Waitress Arrives
Palm-sized pink bowls mark the glossy stage. A steaming hot pot sits centrally in the florescent spotlight, its floating garden of phak bung (cabbage) and ka lam (cauliflower) is a moat; its dome of pork and shrimp is a castle. Rising steam guards the gleaming, edible treasures. Chopsticks stretch forward, dancing between garnishes and slabs of meat. With flexible gracefulness, they reach through the steam.
Mu kratha is an art. Most likely a performance art. Its cast includes: my gleeful, hungry family shrieking about fresh vegetables and additional orders of wontons. My cousins’ chewing jaws bite through manaw (lime) coated meats, their shiny foreheads drip with excited perspiration.
Mu kratha is Thai barbeque. It literally translates into English as “pig pan”. When explaining mu kratha to me, my cousin P'Soon accidentally referred to the grill as its direct translation, which was met with uproarious laughter from my relatives. Now, “pig pan, pig pan” mockingly resounds at every meal, as my family’s comedic inside joke. It was layered as the soundtrack to Christmas dinner.
Christmas in Bangkok was definitely a different type of Christmas than the type I have always experienced in the US – with flashing fairy lights and gaudy peppermint patterns plaguing America. Christmas in Bangkok is like any other day in Bangkok: marked with massive meals, stuffed stomachs jiggling with laughter, family-crowded dining tables and backseats of cars. On Christmas morning, my aunt P’Sung treated us to a breakfast at the outdoor food court, which is like a glorified Global Market (in Minneapolis). Then we went to work like usual and I sat at the table in the back of the office and worked on internship applications until my other aunt J’Rat rescued us, the kids, and swooped us to the crane arcade in Siam Square. We spent the next hour glossy-eyed over neon-lit machines and adorable stuffed animals.
After bruising our egos with the impossibly-defeated crane-machines, we made our way to the humid mu kratha restaurant, where we huddled around the glossy table and feasted over "pig pan". And as I stuffed my face with my shrieking relatives surrounding me, a thought reoccured in my mind. With each day, each meal here in Thailand, I think: "this makes sense to me." I think "this makes sense to me", not in the sense that Thai culture is a solvable equation. I think "this makes sense to me" because I feel extremely comfortable here.
When I realize that I am comfortable here, I question if it is because of the wealth and privilege I experience when I travel. I experience a lot of wealth and privilege wherever I go. When I am at my grandparent's apartment here, I kick off my shoes and climb to the third floor, passing the second-floor servants' quarters. With arms full of plattered food, the cooks push their backs to the walls to let me pass them on the stairs. They nod, deeply, like their foreheads are tethered to the floors. Each time this happens, I think "I've seen this before. I have experienced this before". I think about the maids in my host-family's villa in Dakar, Senegal. I remember their bare feet and their cracked hands sweeping up the messes we made. I remember them nodding in reverence to my host mama, just like the cooks in Thailand do to me. With these thoughts, I realize "We are 'the rich', nearly everywhere we travel".
It feels like wherever I go in this world, there will be some ensured level of comfort. Even when I travel to a developing country like Senegal, I do not experience the struggle of the people, I do not live amongst them, I do not live life like them. I observe them, from the separating windows of an air conditioned tour bus, and I zoom past them only to return to a gated villa-home of my elite host-family. In Thailand, we zoom around in new BMWs, swerving past civilians on the street, and pulling aside whenever we see a desirable store or restaurant. In Thailand, we order whatever we want at the cafe and we order more if we are simply curious about a taste. In Thailand, we go to the massage house every two weeks and we spontaneously get fake eyelashes installed when we are at the shopping mall. In Thailand, I am almost never hot, even though it is almost always 90 degrees. But in Thailand, I am always sitting comfortably in perfect air conditioning. In Thailand, we drive through neighborhoods with over-crowded apartments and we only stop the car when we have entered our gated neighborhood, guarded by men in uniform. In Thailand, doors are opened for me, tables are set for me.
And this is probably why I am so comfortable all the time.
It's important for me to recognize these privileges and my social status, when I am traveling. I recognize that most of these privileges transfer across the globe and that I am lucky to feel comfortable.
However, I feel that my comfort extends to a deeper and more dynamic type of comfort here in Thailand. I think that this type of comfort is familiarity.
Thailand makes sense to me because I am familiar with its language, food, people.
When I am walking through a crowd outside a Thai church on Christmas Eve, I recognize the scolding phrases that parents toss at their sprinting children. I recognize the words of requests, as people order food at the free-food stations. I recognize the affectionate words of lovers conversing in line. I am familiar with this language, as it has always sat on my mother's tongue like a flower.
When I am walking through food stands in Bangkok, I am overwhelmed with familiar senses that make my body feel full. I smell cilantro, bean sprouts, coconut milk. I smell lime, bone-broth, garlic. I am filled with the aromas of my mother's kitchen. And though I cannot name all the smells by specific garnishes, I feel all of the senses inside me, as if warm khao tom broth is coursing through my veins.
Lastly, when my family is huddled around each other in a busy Bangkok street, arguing about the best restaurant for the night, I feel like I have lived with them for my entire life.
This is the type of familiarity that I have not felt elsewhere. Because of my privileges, I may feel comfort in places across the globe. However, I believe that there are very few places that will familiar. There are very few countries, cities, in this world that I will feel like truly belong to. But even after returning after more than a decade, Thailand is feels extremely familiar. Maybe this is a place that I truly belong to.
Thailand, you make sense to me.
Comments