In 1973 I was sent to Thailand for two years as an LDS missionary. After my marriage ended in 1991 I went back to Thailand to work as an English teacher for five years. It was then I met Joom, a native Thai woman my own age who had spent most of her life since the age of fifteen as a maid in Bangkok hotels. We became affectionate lovers, our passion for each other supplemented and finally supplanted by our sense of the ridiculous. She thought all 'farangs' (foreigners) were rich crazies, and I thought all Thais were just plain crazy. Turns out we were both pretty much right.
I had a perfectly good air-conditioned bedroom at the school where I taught. Joom lived down the street in what is called a 'duk' -- a narrow storefront with three stories above it. At various times she intended to turn her storefront into a Mexican restaurant, a pearl jewelry store, or a beer garden with lots of jolly bar girls to fleece the sodden farangs.
Want of capital, MY capital, kept her from accomplishing any of these dreams. Since she couldn't inveigle enough money out of me to start a business, she changed tactics to lure me into home ownership. This was a lead pipe cinch, since I wanted a nice place to live near the beach. Lo and behold, Joom just happened to know a lady with an empty 3-bedroom bungalow down by Ban Phe Beach. It was on an acre of land with a fish pond and dozens of fruit trees infested with orchids. I took one look at the place and signed a mortgage for half a million baht the same day.
Joom immediately took over, as I knew and expected she would. She hocked her first husband's wedding ring to buy a washing machine ("What happened to your first husband?" I asked her at the beginning of our relationship; she replied "I stabbed him when he came home drunk and tried to beat me!")
Before signing the papers I had told her in no uncertain terms that while her family was always welcome to come visit I would absolutely not have them living with us. This was initially a bitter blow for Joom, since the Thai family dynamic demands that the richest person take care of everybody down to second cousins twice removed. Seeing the steely glint in my bloodshot eyes, she acquiesced, but insisted on having a 'phu chooey' to help out around the place. That I could agree to, and so the very next day her daughter-in-law Geh-Teh showed up on a motor cycle with all her belongings wrapped up in a pink plastic shower curtain. Her husband, Joom's son by her first marriage, was working as an electrician on a kibbutz in Israel -- he had a ten year contract to fulfill.
Geh-teh, by the way, means squirrel; so I called her Squirrelly.
I initially strutted around the bungalow, helpfully pointing out cobwebs that needed removing and kitchen tiles that could be scrubbed a tad whiter, and otherwise demonstrating I was the cock of the walk. Joom and Squirrelly glanced slyly at each other, like those Siamese cats in Disney's Lady and the Tramp, and smiled their big smiles at me and then went on with the housework the way they saw fit -- never mind what the idiot farang man says.
I requested only Thai meals be served. Which fit in exactly with what Joom wanted. She hated farang food anyways. Most Thais do. They can't stand butter, cheese, french fries, breakfast cereal, and are only slowly coming to terms with bread and milk.
Joom's skills as a cook were superb, but she also harbored an imp of the perverse that wanted to see how high she could make my gorge rise. One of the first meals she served in our bungalow consisted of pale white palm grubs -- obscenely fat and wriggling creatures that lived in the heart of palm trees and were considered a toothsome delicacy eaten raw. I saw through her game, and politely declined the grubs on the grounds that there were so few of them that she ought to eat them all and I would be content to fill up on sticky rice along with the fruits and veggies from the garden. She sucked them all down, smacking her lips, and then went back into the kitchen to make me some fried fish.
Round one was mine.
Round two had her sieve tiny crayfish from our pond, mix them with sugar, salt, and red chili powder, and then offer them to me for an evening repast. How her eyes glittered with mischief just this side of malice in the tropical moonlight as she pushed the bowl of still pulsating crustaceans towards me! I couldn't believe this was actually a Thai dish, so I called her bluff. Without batting an eye she downed half the bowl before my astonished eyes. I ran out of the kitchen before I lost more than just my manly dignity.
Round two to Joom.
Round three was a draw.
Joom and Squirrelly constantly netted minnow-sized fish from the pond, chopped them up coarsely, and packed them in a five gallon plastic tub with roasted rice bran and lots of salt. They called this obscenity pla ra, or 'fermented fish'. At first they kept this tub of rotting fish guts out on the porch, but one day, when it was about full, they moved it into the kitchen, where the odor, even with the lid tightly on, played hob with my delicate nostrils. I commanded Joom in no uncertain terms to remove that Hazmat in the making, but she stood her ground, arms akimbo, telling me the tub of pla ra was the most necessary condiment in the Thai cooking arsenal. It had to stay in the kitchen, where she could get at it to season all future meals.
So be it. I coldly told her that I would be moving back to my air-conditioned bedroom at the school until such time as the odoriferous pla ra was banished back out onto the porch. She flung a few unladylike wishes about my physical well-being at the back of my head as I slammed the door on her.
We remained incommunicado with each other for five days, until I got really tired of eating soggy rice and canned curry in the school kitchen. That night I walked back to the bungalow, braving the feral dogs that lived in the scrub by the side of the road, and went up on the porch to knock on the door and apologize to Joom.
And there sitting on the porch was the plastic tub of pla ra.
Did I gloat or even grin? I ain't that stupid, friend. I merely came inside, swept Joom up in my arms, and asked what was for dinner. I don't remember what we ate, but it was delicious, and at the end of the meal I asked Squirrelly to bring the tub of pla ra into the kitchen so Joom wouldn't have to walk out to the porch every time she wanted to use it.
Peace was restored to Casa Torkildson, and my waistline flourished like the green bay tree.
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