Thailand-ese

This isn’t a crash-course in language. This is a roving tour of favored quotes from my eight weeks in Thailand.

“Thanks for getting that snake out of the bungalow last night.”

Jace heard something chewing, and got out of bed in the middle of the night to patrol. He had to cross the whole room to get to the light switch, and only after he’d flipped it on did he see the snake on the floor—a small, black snake that arched up from the floorboards near his feet. He shoved his camera bag between the snake and his feet just before it lunged, biting at the bag several times. He opened the door and used a mat to nudge it outside.

The consensus seems to be that it was a baby cobra. We continued to get thumb-sized cockroaches, but that was the snake’s only appearance. Perhaps they battled it out.

“Do you think those are children, or monkeys, we’re listening to?”

From high up on the face of Thaiwand Wall, so named because it’s pillar-like structure defines the skyline like the Eigerwand does in the Alps, you can still hear cries, almost a siren-woop and half laugh or sob. The jungle is full of sounds I can’t name from animals I don’t recognize, and I’ve never managed to match this sound to a living thing. It’s a bit maddening, to know it’s all out there and I have no idea what any of it is.


“Do you need help getting the vines off?”

Leo was climbing up and over the edge of the cliff on an often-neglected face of Diamond Cave. It was the last climb on the face, and the jungle had taken over the wall next to it. So when Leo missed a move high up and peeled off the wall, he crashed into the tree. When he swung from the branches back onto the wall, he was so wrapped in vines and covered in leaves that it looked like I was belaying a bush.

He began a slow, calm speech in Italian, those rising and falling tones and arching vowels dropping softly. Angelo, who was beside me belaying Joe, began to laugh.

“What? What?” I asked.

“He’s talking to God,” Angelo replied. “You know the whole God-dog thing...”

This is, apparently a common exchange among angry Italians. Leo hung there and picked the vines and leaves off himself before finishing the climb.


“So for the next move, you turn around and reach out onto that stalactite.”

There are plenty of climbs that involve holds on stalactites. Hand holds or ways to brace between the rock and the stalactite and get a rest, or options to step away from the wall and onto the stalactite, stemming, as they say. But there’s a route on the Tonsai beach that takes the cake. It involves climbing up onto a ledge, turning around and putting you back to the wall, then reaching out with both hands and grabbing bulgy holds on either side of a stalactite that’s just barely within reach.

I was stretched out in a cartoon character’s move, waiting for a piano or an elephant to drop on my back. Then quickly moved a foot over and climbed up the stalactite, and turned back around to finish the climb on the wall. It was unreal.


“Do you have enough gas to make it to the embassy?”

It sounds a little post-apocalyptic, World War III-ish, until you connect it to the reality that when you rent a motorbike, it comes with an empty gas tank. And that we were only heading to the embassy to drop off my application for my visa to India.


“Dude, I think she’s kicking your ass.” “I think she’s been kicking my ass the last couple days.”

Yeah, this is an ego builder for me. I’ll spare the parties involved, but let’s just say my crimp technique is coming along nicely.


“A ripe mango… The gods don’t eat better than that.”

Among all our laments for the food we encountered in the Thai countryside—chicken foot soup, guts stew, fried liver and possibly fried chicken hearts—we took a moment for homage to the best of the best. With three mango seasons a year, there is almost always a ripe mango to be found. And for this, we are thankful.

“We’ll have the garlic and onion frog.”

I’m not sure there’s a really great way to have frog, that it matters if it’s garlic and onion and not curry powdered, because the flavor is basically irrelevant when you bite down and everything in your mouth crunches. You take another look at a similar piece and realize, yeah, that was the rib cage. I’d recommend the legs over the rib cage any day. Far easier to separate the meat from the bone there.


“Traveling through Southeast Asia is a bit like playing chess in an earthquake. You could plan your moves out, but there’s no guarantee the pieces will be in the same place when you come back for them.”

I’ll get the hang of it sooner or later. Probably later.