Prejudices

In my experience there is a nudge-nudge, wink-wink element to being married to a Thai girl in the UK, something that is thankfully missing from Singapore where there is no connotation to mixed race marriage.

At the extreme, when telling a workman that my wife was Thai, he responded by asking how much I paid for her: but even family and friends, already brainwashed by the press and television, jump to conclusions about a country and people that actually applies (if it does at all), to only a very small percentage. However I do wonder if you become over-sensitised to these things. Let me tell the tale of one couple who seemed blissfully unaware of such issues.

Ploy had met a Thai girl in Tesco's supermarket: she worked at Macdonalds' and Ploy said her and her husband lived within walking distance of our house. We invited them round for a meal. Ploy cooked Thai food but her husband could not eat spicy food so I went and cooked some Western food for him. He was a tractor driver and nearly deaf because of it. He was 62 years old and wondering what to do about retirement as he still only rented his house and had no savings.

Anyway they said we must come to their house next time, but Ploy always refused: she had been alone a few times to chat to the girl and said she could not cook to save her life. The requests kept coming so we eventually agreed: maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, and Ploy said she would help in the kitchen although it meant I would be left alone to talk about tractors.

It didn’t work out like that. Before I had taken my shoes off I was being ushered upstairs: there was a problem with his new computer and could I sort it out as this was what I did wasn’t it. Er, no actually, “Why don’t you call the shop?” “I did but I don’t understand what they say. It is just the Internet that doesn’t work.” OK, I will have a quick look. Three hours later, and four calls to the help centre we had it working. I say we, but I meant I, my lonely vigil interrupted only by Ploy bringing me glasses of wine.

He was downstairs. I tried to show him how to use the Internet but he said they were all waiting to eat so we should go downstairs. Ploy told me quietly that whilst I had been upstairs worse had been happening in the kitchen where the girl had chosen that moment to share with Ploy the discharge she had been getting and did Ploy know what may have caused it.

I found it ironic the girls name was ‘Poo’, (Thai for 'crab'), and asked if she had washed her hands before preparing the banquet before us. (Later Ploy told me that they did not sleep together which is why the husband did not know, apparently he is lacking in that department, must be those tractor seats).

The highlight of the evening was to come. He said, “Do you want to see the videos I made of Thailand?” Oh goody, home movies. Refusal didn’t seem an option, although feigning death (or the real thing) seemed a way out. So we had the elephant farm and the snake farm and the beach and, Soi Cowboy! and a certain bar and, Oh! There is Poo and who is she talking to? “That was the bar she worked in and where we met, that was one of her customers”. How delightfully frank, so much better than the usual answer to that awkward question; “Where did you meet”.

Well it was time for us to go. We do wonder what happened to Poo and her husband and we both look back with some fondness on the evening.

Submitted by Dan