I am proud to say that I am once again participating in Mama Kat’s writer’s workshop. I chose the following prompt this week:
Describe a time when you had difficulty communicating with someone who speaks a different language than you.
This happened to me so many times in Thailand that I don’t even know where to begin.
I could tell you about the countless disagreements with taxi drivers over the price. I really got into it with them. Or getting lost and unable to find someone who could understand my question: where the hell am I? Or the confusion in restaurants. Even after asking for “no spice” in my subpar attempt at speaking Thai, I would end up with little red chilies in my lunch. Or fish sauce.
Papaya salad was one of our (Faren, my cousin-turned-travel-partner, and I) favorites. It is made of green papaya and is one of the few authentic Thai salads. As mutual health nuts, Faren and I like to eat raw foods. So this was a staple of our diet.
Papaya salad also happens to contain fish sauce and lots of chilies. It’s not a papaya salad without fish sauce and chilies, you know? We figured out how to ask for a minimal amount of spice and fish sauce. Thank. God. This saved us on many occasions.
Except once. This papaya salad contained so much fish sauce, neither Faren or I could take a bite without spitting it out. It was positively rancid. If you know fish sauce, you know that the right amount can be very tasty. It can mean the difference between authentic pad thai and boring pad thai. But the wrong amount? The food becomes inedible. At least to me, and probably to you.
So, we did what any respectable American would do. We sent the salad back, asking for less fish sauce. The server was extremely gracious and apologetic. He brought us another salad.
Still too much fish sauce. Way too much. I don’t think they changed a thing.
Their attitude made us believe that they weren’t doing it on purpose. Plus, it was a tourist-friendly restaurant. They were accustomed to catering to the strange preferences of foreigners. Right?
Apparently not, because the server insisted on bringing us a third salad. He could see by our faces that it was still nasty. To us. Nasty to us.
After the fourth or fifth salad, we stopped trying. They didn’t get it. Each one had just as much fish sauce as the last. We tried to eat them all, we did, but it wasn’t possible without hurling. It was that bad.
Thai is a hard language to learn. Two words that may sound the same to us are completely different to them, depending on the pitch of your voice. Faren and I thought that our attempts to speak Thai were halfway decent. Until that day.
It was a while before I ate another papaya salad.
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