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decreaseI wrote these incidents in the order in which they returned to my mind, not in the order in which they happened.
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To continue:
Thursday, 25th August 2005 [early]
So Long And Thanks For All The Samlon (apologies to Douglas Adams and Larry Niven)
Salmon – a fish. In the time that I have lived in Thailand, I never could find canned salmon, which would be called in Thai “pla kapong”. That term literally translates as “fish (in a) can”. It can be any kind of fish, but usually refers to sardines.
So there I was in the house of the parents-in-law one morning, having opened and consumed a bottle of breakfast, and my darling wife appears and suggests that I make a trip to the house of one of her grandmothers as there is some sort of gathering happening there right now. I am also instructed to bring something to eat, something from Australia if possible.
Now I can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered a travelling supermarket, but as it happens, when my wife was previously in Australia, she developed a taste for canned salmon, so, being the considerate soul that I am, I had included several kilograms of the cans in my checked baggage.
As mellow as I felt at that time, I picked one of the cans (salmon, not beer) out of storage and dutifully followed my wife around the corner to the house in question.
As I was led through the gate, I happened to notice a poster on the front of the rice-storage facility, and the photo of the man on that poster struck me as being someone that I knew. A quick google search of memory determined that it was my wife’s uncle, the man who had acted as the Master of Ceremonies at our wedding. In a box next to his picture was a tick, and next to that was another box with the number 3 in it. Wow! The family politician. Elections were last week, and he has been re-elected [I discovered that later when he attended the party to “press the flesh”].
Well, there we were – my wife, our 13-month-old son, can of salmon, and me. And about 15 or so old crones, all sitting around a bamboo sitting-table under my wife’s yaai’s house [yaai is maternal grandmother]. There were noodles available to one side, cookable in a large pot using a net-spoon, but the can which I was bearing, with the unreadable English lettering on it, sparked a bit of curiosity. Nothing to do but open the can and share out the contents, I assumed, but so many women...
At this point in the story, I wonder how many readers have actually been to a real country bumpkin [bucolic] type Thai village. If you have actually been to one, you will know that there is a certain “atmosphere” to the experience. If you haven’t, well, you will just have to take my word for it. I can write my words, but that can not really convey much of the actual experience, you really need to be there. However, I’ll try to pass on the feel of the place.
One sort of focuses on what is happening in the main arena, but there are side arenas – children playing, cocks sparring, dogs sniffing around, cats hiding from the children... And so I broke from the main arena of events and asked one of the family children [there are so many of them] to run around to the family home and bring back another can of salmon. And instantly, it was done.
With these 2 cans of mystery – that’s what they were to all of these old Thai ladies – I became the focus of attention; I was expected to produce some wondrous delicacy to tantalise their taste buds and satisfy their curiosity.
Was I up to the task? Given a mortar and pestle, a handful of froots [red hot chilli peppers], a similar quantity of garlic, and the juice of 2 or 3 limes, anything is possible.
There was a small problem. I had to open the cans [they were not the pop-top type], so in my best fractured Thai [remember, my breakfast was out of a bottle] I asked for a can-opener. I was met with blank and questioning stares. It seems that they don’t have can-openers in Isaan. Never mind, send one of the ubiquitous children back to the homestead to rummage through my bag and find my personal can-opener. When the can-opener was produced, yaai wanted it and another to give to the monks. My wife suggested that it might be a good idea to buy a dozen or so of these “turn-the-windlass” type can openers and pass them around amongst the family. And so, when I next visited my friend in Korat, I bought a shipload of can-openers.
After donating another 2 Baht to the little lady who went and got the device, I applied said device to each can in turn [sorry, bad pun] and dumped the contents into a bowl. In an obsequious attempt to gain a few brownie points with the yaai, I shared the salmon bones with her, and we both declared them to be “aloi” [delicious].
I set my wife to the easy task of breaking up the salmon into very small chunks while I pounded the garlic and froots with the pok-pok instruments. I don’t like the thought of losing the fruit of my labour onto the earth through a broken bamboo sitting-table, so I did it all in my lap. I never saw who said it, but I caught the sequential Thai words “farang chuck-wow” [foreigner is masturbating].
I spooned the two concoctions together and mixed them thoroughly. I gave the yaai the first spoonful, and she was pleased both with the politeness I had shown by giving her the first taste, and by the taste of the dish itself.
Until the moment that the yaai had pronounced the salmon dish “aloi” I had been the only adult male in the yard. After that moment, men started appearing – lots of them, and fairly quickly too.
That’s when the family politician appeared. He got a spoonful of the salmon concoction, and diplomatically declared it edible, then he posed for a photo next to his poster on the rice-barn with his thumbs up – a winner.
Someone had pressed a can of bia chang into my hand a bit before I had started the pok-pok/chuck-wow business, and the scoundrel had ensured that empties were quickly replaced with new ones, so things started to blur slightly a little after I had taken the photo, but something that really stuck in my memory of the events of that day was the two women who were intent upon sharing the dregs of the salmon-bowl with one another, and were [figuratively, and NO pun intended] beating off the man who wanted to make it a 3-way split.
In talk with my wife’s political uncle, he made it quite clear that his (re?)-election would be good for the family. That all makes me wonder about foreign politics.
I’ll certainly take a heap of canned salmon with me when I next visit my wife’s parents’ village.
End of part 2
(To be continued)
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