Fat in Thailand

There are stories that become part of a family’s lore. These are the stories that are pulled out at dinner parties like an old, time-tested joke. Even if people know the punchline, it’s a guaranteed laugh.

The story of my husband taking our five-week-old twins for a stroll in our Bangkok neighbourhood may be one such story. I wasn’t present, but somehow it’s become my story too.

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August 2004 — To give me an hour alone in our apartment, my husband decides to take our twins out in the stroller. After he ferries them down in an elevator smaller than our refrigerator, he deposits Thing 1 and Thing 2 into the limousine stroller (which is too long to fit in the elevator).

It is important to note that Bangkok is not stroller – or wheelchair – accessible; it’s barely even pedestrian accessible. If you’re on a fairly quiet street (relative to Bangkok traffic, that is), you push the stroller on the actual street. If you’re on a busy street, you brave the sidewalk and steer around street stall vendors and over two-foot curbs.

On this fateful day, my husband opted for the middle-of-the-road approach, literally.

So they’re off, bypassing the Chinese-duck-soup woman, the fruit guy, the truck with the squawky loud speaker selling vegetables, the traffic, the elevated sewer grates. You get the idea. It’s mid afternoon which means, like most other times of the day, the sun is relentless and the air is heavy. Breathing can cause you to perspire. If you do the push-the-twins-in-a-stroller obstacle course, a full-scale tourist sweat is guaranteed.

Now my husband is generously proportioned. Plus, he’s in Thailand. To put this in context, I generally wear a medium shirt at any Gap. Plop me in Thailand and I can’t even fit into an XXL top from any Bangkok department store. So, my husband, being big, is supersized in Thailand. This is our fifth year in Bangkok, and –nice as the Thais ares — we’re both more than a little sick of looking out of place.

It’s minute forty of the stroll. My husband’s dodging another tuk tuk and turning the corner, which is as easy as trying to steer an overloaded supermarket cart that has two locked wheels. His shirt is stuck to his back, he’s squinting in the sun, and he’s trying to ignore the jingle of the ice cream bike that’s never quite out of hearing distance.

He’s approaching the motorcycle taxi drivers. On this corner, there’s about twelve of them, outfitted in matching vests, joking with each other, playing the odd game of checkers with bottle caps. They’re doing what they do: entertaining each other while waiting for customers.

Smiles on, they watch as my husband heaves the twins past them. They look at the stroller, and chat to each other in Thai.

Then, as my husband trudges further along, one says, “Hey, farang! Fat!”

My husband pauses. He knows farang means foreigner. And he’s sick of the fat jokes.

“Ya,” chimes another, “fat!”

My husband stops and looks back. “What did you say?”

“Fat!” one repeats.

My husband yells obscenities at them. I would exceed the word limit of this blog if I bothered to list them all.

He takes a short cut home.

Later that day, we share the story with a Thai friend. She proceeds to tell us that “fat” (or something very near to that pronunciation) means twins in Thai.

Cultural confusion 1, Cultural harmony 0.

For our remaining months in Bangkok, my husband avoids the motorcycle drivers…especially when he’s pushing our fat.