Crossing cultural borders in a single blurb!

I was chatting online with a Thai friend recently and reminded very quickly of why I started this blog in the first place... I had intended my blog to be a Westerner's view of living in the Far East (read that as Orient).

Some of you may remember a posting I wrote way way back about "Your chest is in your pants"?

Well, did I ever tell you about having dinner and coffee and beachside bistro?

My girlfriend and I had taken a four day weekend vacation and flown down to the cozy and cool (cool as in neat, not cool as in not hot (and that's hot and in sweating like a pig, not hot as in awesome. (and that's awesome... oh you get the idea))) Island of Koh Samui. About a 1 hour flight south of Bangkok.

We'd been out wandering the island and doing things that couples do... (get your mind out of the gutter! I meant like taking pictures of each other next to various landmarks)... rented a motorbike and toodled around the roads seeing the sights. Evening came and we found this nice little cozy open air Italian place. Well, it said it was Italian, and was decorated with the red and white checked table clothes, and had the ubiquitous wicker-n-wine bottle candle holder on the table, but that's about where the stereotypical resemblance ended. Regardless, the food was yummy, and the service very good.

After dinner we ordered some coffee. When it came I realized there was no cream or sugar. So, feeling proud of my newly building skill with Thai language, I called the waitress over and asked her very clearly, and with a smile and good accent, "Nong. Khun mee nom mai khrub?"

She looked me straight in the eye, and without hesitation pointed to herself and responded, "Mee ka." with a smile and nod in the affirmative. ...? ...? umm...? She stayed where she was standing. She wasn't leaving to get the cream. What the...?

Then I heard my girlfriend giggle. I glanced at her. Glanced back at the waitress whose smile was getting broader by the second. Then the lightbulb clicked on in that dark dusty place in my head reserved for epiphanies, "duh" moments, and self-inflicted slaps to the forehead.

VERY quickly I looked to the waitress and said "nom sud! nom sud! I meant 'nom sud!' " and with a laugh and a bounce in her step she moved off and retrieved the cream service. Returning to our table, depositing the cream service with a flourish, and a jubilantly spoken "Nom sud ka!" and moved off to other less embarrassed customers.

What was all that about you ask? Well, the tricky part in Thai language (I mean, YET ANOTHER, tricky part!) is that the word for milk "nom sud" is the same as that for BOOBS "nom"!!! So what I actually asked was if she had boobs. That's what she was pointing at when she said "mee ka," which means "Have."

Maybe I should have asked her for them and seen what her response would be then! :-)
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