Bpai Ying Kratthai

Every time I go to Thailand, I pay a visit to Wat Pho. No exceptions; every time. Pay is the right word too, as there is an admission fee for non-Thai visitors. The admission fee doesn’t matter too much to me, it is not a big sum of money, and it provides access to all sorts of genuine Thai services, including personal fortune-telling, which goes down well with any Thai women that you might take with you, and it is also the centre for traditional Thai medicine in Bangkok. Traditional Thai medicine includes Thai massage, which is what attracts me. Last time I was there, there were two sala buildings devoted to traditional Thai massage, and one could expect to wait up to two hours for a massage. Yes, they are busy places. A sala is a building without walls, or with minimal enclosure; there are plenty of them to be seen on the Rangsit-Vhipavhadi road from the old airport into town. I think they are used as shelters at bus stops. The salas at Wat Pho are much bigger in floor area than the bus shelters, and the roof is lower. They also have a wall on one of the long sides.

As I understand the workings of the massage school, anyone who wishes to get a qualification in traditional Thai massage can attend the school, and eventually qualify for a certificate of attainment. This is both an advantage of, and a drawback to, the massage you can get from Wat Pho – you can get an experienced masseur/masseuse who takes care of business competently, or you can get a new release who may be struggling to remember all of the “adjustments”. On the other side of the coin, the cost at Wat Pho is lower than that at any other commercial massage place I have visited in Bangkok.

So there I was in Bangkok, I had just arrived last night, I phoned my wife this first morning in country, and she would be arriving from dusty Isaan tomorrow afternoon. A visit to Wat Pho was definitely going to happen today, and maybe even tomorrow as well.

I waited my turn, and was conducted to the mattress by the young masseuse. At this point, I must mention that there are no screens in the massage salas, meaning no privacy, so there can be no undressing, and absolutely no sexual activity. The sala has a central aisle running down its axis, and there is enough room for three mattresses parallel to the aisle on either side of the aisle. There might be fifteen mattress-lengths in each sala, making room for a total of ninety mattresses.

The massage was more than satisfactory, meaning that my masseuse was more experienced than the average, but not fully experienced. Fully experienced staff will drive their elbows mercilessly into the customer’s large muscles, and to me, a massage should be comfortably invigorating, not a painful experience. I got it the way I like it.

I like looking at women. The day that I stop turning my head to take a look at a pretty face or a lissom figure is the day that I will be ready for burial. I don’t have to lust, I just like to look. And of course, I looked at my masseuse of the day, and the masseuse working on the semi-presentable western woman on the next mattress. Yep, I checked them all out, and I have to admit that on the day, the Wat Pho massage school had some very watchable staff. I decided to try to impress the few near me with my knowledge of their language, I wanted to see what result I could get. Having a former wife [from Isaan] with a foul mouth, I knew that I had to tread carefully in this linguistic minefield as one can blunder into a faux pas very easily. At this point, Lady Luck came to my side, and pointed out the piece of Thai art hanging on the wall above my head. It was – as my memory tells me – a wooden relief carving which had been painted. In the lower left corner of this piece of art were two white rabbits hiding in the bushes. This provided me with a sudden inspiration; I would be able to use a Thai slang phrase that I knew was sufficiently polite to use with the two masseuses.

When my massage time was more or less over, I pointed to the carving and asked: “Suay mai?” [pretty?]

Masseuse told me “Suay!” [yes, pretty]

“Song kratthai” [two rabbits]

“Kaa” [yes]

Knowing that my time on the mattress was over, I placed both of my hands on my lower abdomen and told her “Bpai ying kratthai!” Her blank look told me that she was not an Isaan import, but the masseuse next to us laughed, wordlessly telling me that she was from Isaan. This other masseuse told the one who had worked on me what my phrase meant in Isaan.

Literally, “Bpai ying kratthai” means “[I] go shoot rabbit”. In the context in which I had used it, and taking note of my sign-language, it has the slang meaning of “I need to empty my bladder so badly that it will have enough power behind it that it could kill a rabbit when I do it in the field, and that’s where I will do it”.

I walked to the exit of the sala with many Thais sharing the joke around, and presumably all of the non-Thais wondering why their massages had been paused and their massage personnel were laughing. As I hurried along the aisle to the exit hunched over with my hands over my groin pretending that I was busting for a leak, I knew what had been said.

But I wasn’t telling, I was just smirking into my shirt. Same as I would have if I had left a fart in an office-building elevator on the ground floor at 8 AM Monday.