Blue Crabs Cry

We’ve just come back from a great weekend with friends at their home in the rice fields of Ubon where we lay and swigged late night drinks to the sound of cicadas and frogs under the grass roof of the floating pavilion on their fish
pond. Was it really a weekend though? Well in Thailand, every day’s a Sunday anyway, unlike in England where life’s a sad succession of Mondays.

Among other delights, they took us to see the Pha Taem National Park which overlooks the River Mekhong. There, for the usual entry fee of 400 baht we had a spectacular view across the river to Laos, saw the most amazing inland cliff I’ve
ever not fallen off, some half-decent rock paintings from four millennia ago, and one of the best silly signs I’ve ever seen anywhere.

At the top of the cliff was a newly painted sign saying, “Danger! No Poke”. And hell’s teeth, I didn’t have my camera with me! Both Cat and I usually vie to be first to make off with the camera and wrongly thought
the other had already grabbed it… so we’d left in the house. Fortunately our hosts stepped in and took the pictures with one of these amazing, new-fangled cameras they’d just bought that even makes phone calls! Whatever will they
think of next!

Later I picked up a nicely produced National Park leaflet which contained some more linguistic gems. It told us that an island in the river is ‘covered by delighted dry evergreen and teak forests’, and it recommends a particular
place to see the early morning view, ‘covered with misty seas of frog’.

While we were there it was so blazingly hot you could’ve boiled an egg on a brass monkey, but the leaflet assures us that in the National Park it’s ‘cool and comfortable all the year round’… and they go on to
say it twice more. ‘Cool and comfortable! Like hell! Methinks the writer doth protest too much! It then says, ‘This waterfall flows from a high cliff to the creek below, which do colourful flowers surround’. Shades of Shakespeare
again!

I also liked the sign at the foot of the cliff saying, ‘No writing on the walls.’ Too many damned rock paintings already, I guess. Also there’s a message at the top of the cliff… ‘Do not throw anything away’.
Something to do with the sufficiency economy I suppose.

It’s a bit like an item in a seafood menu we ate at in Bang Bao on Koh Chang… it was called ‘Blue crabs cry’. Crabs are said to scream when thrown into a pot of boiling water but I think this was a version of the dish
they usually call ‘Weeping Tiger’.

Menus often enliven meals in Thailand and I remember ‘fried special wild bear in spicy taste’ and ‘soured telly vermicelli with thaw’, though I didn’t try them.

The Nigerian newspapers always used to be fun too and I remember a couple of favourites. ‘Much can be achieved in life by pressing the right bottoms.’ And… ‘The wedding picture shows the happy couple outside St. Mary’s
church where their marriage was consummated before a large congregation.’

In comparison The Bangkok Post and The Nation, with their expat sub-editors, are disappointing for connoisseurs of the mal apropos. Other places in Thailand however, do not disappoint.

I regularly spend a part of my life at the Department of Immigration in Bangkok sitting waiting under a sign that says, ‘The visa extension process paid only fees, do not believe anyone’.

Soon bored with trying to work out what it means, I flick through my application papers, concerned that I’ve not brought with me a doctor’s certificate certifying as required, that I am ‘free from any defect’ and
free of the ‘dangerous step of tuberculosis (step that causes disgust to society)’.

I even fear for my life though, because as I read their glossy leaflet about re-entry visas, I learn that a, ‘Foreigner who already has an approval to stay in Thailand wishes to leave Thailand for another foreign country and re-enter
Thailand during the validity of his/her existing approval will expire immediately.’

My condescending arrogance expects my hosts never to put a foot wrong with my language while I mangle theirs and I’m beginning to have a conscience about writing all this. Perhaps I’d better mention that even in my own country
you’ll see a double entendre or two… like the warning signs outside a family planning department (“Use Rear Entrance”) and the sign on the platform in Penrith station telling you not to stand too close to the edge, (“You
Might Get Sucked Off”). Promises, promises!

But I can’t stop myself drivelling on because I’ve a few more favourites to share. At Wat Arun in Bangkok there’s a sign saying, ‘Do not dangle any doll’.

At the elephant show in Surin, the brochure assured us that the performance would begin with, ‘Surin deva on the back of charming elephant evacuating from the clouds’. Better bring umbrellas!

While you can almost forgive government departments for not losing face by asking the farang around them to check their English, it’s more surprising in the commercial sector when they expose themselves to ridicule. In the seventies,
the handbook for my Daihatsu car had the legend at the top of every page, ‘Daihatsu spare parts make always nice driving’. The Japanese have now swallowed their pride and produce handbooks that are exemplary, but when will Thailand
get its commercial act together?

An English language programme on Thai television was teaching the phrase, ‘Too much talking plagues!’ Eh?!! Thai Airways did a special promotion called, ‘Buy one, get one’. Outside a glitzy, mega-buck dental clinic
in Bangkok is the slogan, ‘Living in a vibrant world where every eyeful stimulates’. You can say that again!

The slogan for Cat’s Schengen travel insurance policy reads, ‘Take always the risk and can do anything’. And the label on the fireworks says, ‘Warning! Shoots flaming balls with reports.’

Sadly, I can only conclude that the end of term report on Thai English is not very good.

The non-PC in Thailand can be a giggle too. For example, there’s my box of ‘Negro Hair Dye, our ‘Black Man’ brand mop, and the black and white minstrel style, ‘Darkie’ toothpaste, now re-branded with
great racial sensitivity as ‘Darlie’ but still retaining the darkies. And I should mention the Miss Jumbo beauty contest for fatties and the penchant for dwarves and other funny freaks on Thai TV. It’s a different world in
Thailand.

Maybe I’d better go and shoot myself in the head for being horrible to the Thais before they shoot me first, or just shut up.

I sort of wish there was no such thing as languages and that the whole world spoke the same language as me. It would have to be Queen’s English of course, but then the world would be a marginally less funny place and there’d
be no jobs in Thailand for expat English teachers.

Yes, maybe it’s better to have one universal language, though stupidly ‘No poke’ kept me in a good mood and humoured for several hours as we sweated in the blazing sun seeing the less funny sights of the national park.

Stickman's thoughts:

Indeed the way English is mangled around the world cam make for some quite delicious double entendres!