This is probably my shortest post, but it’s so good. My friend John recited something very funny to me today, a quote from around the 15th century from a Thai person describing the then-strange sight of white European explorers. We laughed a lot because, despite being written about half a millennium ago, it’s still an amazingly succinct and strangely accurate description. I imagine that it still sums up your average Thai person’s view of us whities.
It says: “They are exceedingly tall, hairy and evil-smelling. They school their children long and devote their lives to amassing wealth. Their women, though large and round, are beautiful. They do not grow rice.” Awesome.
I know I’ve read this before.. do you know the source?
I’ve searched and searched. No luck. But the guy who wrote it was a (comic) genius.
I was able to track down where I must have read it, though not the original source.
The book I read it in was Borderlines: A Journey in Thailand and Burma, 1988, by Charles Nicholl. You can see enough of the quote from the Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=nJlGAAAAMAAJ&q=%2B%22do+not+grow+rice%22+%2Bsiam&dq=%2B%22do+not+grow+rice%22+%2Bsiam&ei=wfK-SbegH47OkwSUvaDHAg&pgis=1“ rel=”nofollow”>snippet view to recognize the quote.
To save me from digging up my paper copy, turns out the 2002 book Traveler’s Tales Thailand also http://books.google.com/books?id=e3BUWILHSDcC&pg=PA63&dq=%2B%22do+not+grow+rice%22+%2Bsiam&ei=wfK-SbegH47OkwSUvaDHAg“ rel=”nofollow”>quotes the 1988 book. You can see the whole paragraph there.
According to it, Nicholl gives the source as Thai Nya Phuum, a “chronicle”. I can only guess that this title in Thai is ไทยเนหือภูมิ, but I’ve never heard of such a book, and neither has Google. I wonder whether Nicholl had an original source, or if he was passing on something pithy he heard/read elsewhere. I want to get to the bottom of this.
Also, for anyone who reads the full paragraph, Nicholl is wrong about “farang” coming from “francais”, of course. I wrote ever-so-cursorily about it http://rikker.blogspot.com/2008/10/farang-stuff.html“ rel=”nofollow”>here. Just throwing it out there.