Tag Archives: thai

Tumeric and the Hidden Village

Context:

The following informant is a 60-year-old Thai immigrant who heard the following story growing up as a kid. This interview was carried out in a mix of Thai and English. In this I will be denoted as C and the informant will be denoted as S

S: This story, its kind of similar to the Amazonians. In Thailand near Chiang Mai, where I am from, there a place called Muang Laap Lae, which means it is invisible. Like if you look at it you wouldn’t be able to see there is a country there. It is a country that is so hard to get to and the path is so difficult to get there to that if you don’t know how to get there you can’t. this is why people call is Muang Laap Lae (Hidden Country) or Muang Mong Mae Hen (Invisible Country). Only people who are very good persons are able to see the hidden country. Mong Mae Hen means invisible.

There is a one good young man who enters into the forests and sees a bunch of beautiful women in the forest. At the end of the forest the girls hide large leafs. The man takes one of the leafs and wait there. Later the women return and start looking the leaves that they hid. Once they get their leaves they immediate disappear back into, into the forest. But one of them cannot find their leaf because the young man took the leaf. This one woman is very frustrated and annoyed and the young man gives the leaf back in exchange for, uh, in exchange for being able to follow the woman because he wants to see the invisible village people have been talking about. The woman agrees and takes the man to the hidden village. Once he gets to the village he realizes that the village only has women. The beautiful woman who took him to the village tells the young man, “The people who live in this village, are people who have a lot of merit and they never lie. If anyone does anything bad or lies they have to leave the village. And a lot of men tend to lie so that’s why all the men had to leave the village.”

Do you understand?

C: Yes, I understand.

S: So the young man is smitten with the woman who brought him to the village and asks if he can stay there and marry her. The mother of the woman agrees to the marriage on the condition that the man has to have merit and doesn’t lie. They get married and live together until they have one child together. And one day when the wife isn’t home and the man is taking care of the kid. The kid is crying asking for his mother non-stop. So the man playfully lies to his child “Your mom is here! Your mom is here!”

Now the mother-in-law hears this and is angry that her son-in-law is a liar. When the wife gets back she’s very, uh, disappointed that the husband did not keep his word and tells him he has to leave the village.

The pack the man a bag with stuff, his own stuff, stuff he needs to live, and also gave him a lot of heads of turmeric. A lot of turmeric because the husband cannot stay in the village. The wife takes him to the edge of the forest and points to the path to leave the village and the wife returns to the hidden village. The man has to follow the path that his wife pointed to. As he is walking the more he walks, the bag they gave him gets heavier and heavier. And the path is so long. So he eats the food and the drinks the water that they gave him. But all he can find in his bag is the turmeric. The turmeric that his wife gave him. So he starts throwing away the turmeric because it is heavy. When he finally gets back to his village his family and friends ask him where he’s been gone for so long. The man tells the story of the hidden village and also how his wife gave him a lot of turmeric that he threw away because it was heavy. There was once piece of turmeric left and he took it out to show them, and it turned out the turmeric was a bar of gold. It was a bar of gold. The man is surprised and feels regret for having thrown away all the turmeric he was carrying. Because he threw it all away, all the turmeric they gave him. And when he went back to look for the turmeric he threw away, he found it had grown into turmeric plants. And when he dug it up its just normal turmeric not the bars of gold they gave him. When he tries to find the hidden village again he cannot and just gets continuously lost in the forest. So he returns home back to his old village.

Analysis: I think there are two messages in this tale. One is to not lie, something which is important in Buddhism, and also to not take things for granted. The man in the story does both, but it seems like kicking him out for telling his kid a white lie is a little extreme.

Mouse and Cat Island and Dog Mountain

Context:

The following informant is a 60-year-old Thai immigrant who heard the following story growing up as a kid. This interview was carried out in a mix of Thai and English. In this I will be denoted as C and the informant will be denoted as S

Item:

S: When you go traveling in the south of Thailand, where there is a lot a sea. Like Pattaya, Hua Hin, and whatever there are islands named Mouse and Cat, and so forth.

C: Right.

S: Okay, I will tell you how those places got their name. So there’s this merchant, a Chinese merchant. Who is carrying merchandise. A Chinese merchant with merchandise from China brings his merchandise on a boat to Thailand. After selling all his merchandise, before he leave the merchant sees a beautiful cat and dog and brings them with him on his boat. Now once the cat and dog are on the boat it is very boring for them and they want to go back to Thailand. They want to go back to the sea and their house that is next to the sea. They want to go home and go back to being home. So they start trying to figure out how they can make their way back home.

So, the dog, the dog says to the cat that the merchant has, uh, a special glass. This mean a special crystal that whoever holds the crystal will not drown. They will be unable to drown, do you understand?

C: Yes, I understand.

S: Now the cat starts thinking about how it can get the crystal so it starts talking to a mouse and, uh, orders the mouse to steal the crystal in exchange for being able to join them on their journey back to Thailand. So the cat, the dog, and the mouse. When the boat starts going back to Thailand again the mouse sneaks in and steals the crystal, the special crystal, the magic crystal, and holds the crystal in the mouth. So the three of them, the mouse, the cat, and a dog, escape from the ship near Thailand.

When they’re swimming the mouse is swimming in front and starts thinking that the crystal, the one that it is holding in its mouth, is worth a lot and the cat and dog will probably try to take the crystal from the mouse. So the mouse starts thinking it should escape the cat and dog and then crystal will be the mouse’s forever. The cat is also thinking that it should take the crystal for itself so it swims up towards the mouse. When the mouse sees the cat it freaks out and swims away and when it does it the special crystal falls out of its mouth and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Now when it’s at the bottom of the ocean, the uh, the mouse and the cat can’t swim anymore and the cat and the mouse drown. This is why the there is a Mouse Island and Cat Island in Songkhla Bay. The dog is able to keep swimming but since the land is so far away, once it gets to land it dies immediately. This is why there is a Dog Mountain in the Songkhla Bay. And the special crystal broke up in the ocean becoming glassy sand that is white beautiful sand that looks almost like glass.

Analysis: It is very interesting to hear a story about how these islands and locations go their name and also an explanation for why the sand in the south of Thailand is so fine and white.

Annotation:
A different version of the story can be found here. It is printed on a plaque of a statue depicting the mouse and cat in the story. Interesting the mountain is not called Dog Mountain in this version but Tangkaun Hill.
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMBWWY_The_Sculpture_of_the_Mouse_and_the_CatHat_Yai_Thailand

The Hungry Fox and the Sacred Tree

Context:

The following informant is a 60-year-old Thai immigrant who heard the following story growing up as a kid. This interview was carried out in a mix of Thai and English. In this I will be denoted as C and the informant will be denoted as S

Item:

S: This story is, this story is … uh the fox … uh (in English: the fox) and the sacred tree.

C: I see.

S: There is this fox, it is skinny, hungry, it hasn’t eaten, it is very skinny. So it went and it prayed, in other words it went to ask the sacred tree. The fox asked, it asked to become an ox. An ox that people would take care of and become big and healthy. Strong, and had things to eat all the time. Do you understand?

C: Yes, I understand.

S: And now the fox, whose body was very skinny, became an ox. It became an ox and the people around there started to take care of it. Once they took care of it until it was large and healthy they took it to chai naa.

C: What is chai naa.

S: chai naa (in English) means to work in the field.

C: I understand.

S: After having to work in the field the fox goes back to the sacred tree and says “I can’t take this. Once becoming an ox, they took me and used me in the fields. Can I become a horse or something? At least I’d have someone taking care of me.”
But once it became a horse, the king, uh, the king that lived in that country saw how beautiful this horse was and ordered his soldiers to capture it and make the horse his personal horse. Do you understand?

C: What do you mean personal horse?

S: He used the horse to ride around for fun.

C: Oh, to ride around for fun.

S: He also used the horse to ride for work, for religious events, stuff like that. The King’s working horse. After becoming a working horse, the fox felt bored and realized being a king was betterthan being a horse. You understand?

C: Right.

S: The fox felt the kings used horses and were better than them. So, the fox went to the sacred tree and asked to if it could be a king instead. Now once the fox was a king, it wanted to travel on a boat. It wanted to, uh, wanted to travel on the ocean. So, it ordered its soldiers to go cut down trees to, uh, make a very large boat. And the soldiers ended up trying to cut down the sacred tree too.

C: Uh oh.

S: So now the sacred tree was very angry, that it, that it had helped the king, had helped the king since way before when it was a fox, and fox’s soldiers were trying to cut it down. So, it ordered the soldiers to tell it’s king to come cut the sacred tree itself. Once the king came to the tree, the sacred tree blamed the king that “You don’t know, you don’t appreciate, you don’t, you’re a bad person who got whatever they wanted and it wasn’t enough.”

From being a fox to becoming an ox, from becoming an ox to becoming a horse, from becoming a horse to becoming a king, becoming a king and even trying to cut down the sacred tree that helped it. So the sacred tree cursed the king and turned him back into a hungry fox.

C: Uh oh.

S: The end.

C: Okay.

Analysis: This tale is serves as an example of how someone should conduct themselves and to appreciate the things that people, in this case a sacred tree, would give them. There seems to be a greater message to this tale than just the story itself.

Thai Spirit Houses

Not sure if it is a Buddhist thing or just a general thing, but a lot of Thai people have little miniature houses on a pole or a stick called spirit houses. The Thai belief is that every house or every dwelling has a spirit who inhibits the house, so the Thai people build a house which they keep outside in which the spirits may reside. It is where spirits live, usually right on the property in front of the house, and they give it food and water and take care of it so that the spirit of their house may be kept happy. This is also so that the spirit of their house may protect them from outside threats.

This tradition may also be found in an article by Michael Pearce, who writes about it in The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief in Volume 7, Issue 3, 2011.

Michael Pearce (2011) Accommodating the discarnate: thai spirit houses and the phenomenology of place, Material Religion, 7:3, 344-372, DOI: 10.2752/175183411X13172844495939

http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175183411X13172844495939

Background: I had first heard about the spirit houses from my mom, who did not know too much about them. But then she reached out to her aunt (my great aunt) and told me a little bit more about the tradition of keeping spirit houses, which can be seen all over in Thailand. This interview was conducted live; this story was given to me in person. I thought this was a really interesting combination of folk beliefs and folk objects — mainly a folk belief carried out through the implementation of a folk object. I really enjoyed hearing about this and how it really is believed in Thai culture and that is why so many people have spirit houses outside their own houses, apparently usually out front. This is also something my mom remembers really well from her childhood in Bangkok because she said that she would see them everywhere — in front of every house.

Arab Belief: Soles of Shoes

“For a lot of Middle Eastern people, you can’t- you can’t put them so that the soles are facing up because the bottom of your foot is the lowest part of your body, the most dirty, the um..and if you put your shoe facing up, it’s like an insult to God.”

The informant is a Middle East Studies major at the University of Southern California. She says she learned this folk belief within the last year while studying various beliefs of people in the Middle East. This was a response to the belief in Thai culture that the feet are considered dirty and the head contains knowledge. This Middle Eastern belief as the soles being dirty and as an insult to God is an oicotype of the Thai belief, but adapted to its own culture. While the Thai belief believes that it is rude to other human beings in general to point one’s feet at, pointing soles of shoes towards the sky does not offend other humans in the Middle East, but God. It is a regional variant on the folklore that reveals the nature of each culture.