Kreng Jai

Today's Thoughts...

Kreng jai. It took me quite a while to figure out just what those words meant. Kreng jai. I don’t mean a literal translation. A monkey could decipher that (albeit an exceptionally intelligent monkey perhaps.) Kreng jai. Those were the first words that stuck in my head when I came to Thailand nearly a year ago. Kreng jai, na kha. I was huffing or fussing over something, visibly frustrated and on the brink of tears. Funny thing is, I can’t even remember what I was upset about. I just know it was the first week of school and jet-lagged, overwhelmed, and terrified of the year ahead, I sat at my desk with my head in my arms trying my damnedest not to cry. Breathe, I kept telling myself. Just breathe. At that moment, our secretary walked by, her too-high high heels clicking loudly on the marble tile as she approached. She beamed at me, her bright pink lipstick peeled back to reveal a glistening toothy grin. It was true what they say—the Thais do have good dental. Gradually, I forced my lips to curl skyward. Yes? Part of me wanted to shout: “What?” What more do you people want from me? I’ve traveled for 36 hours, slept for about six and now am nearly through a week of suffering the mind-boggling labor of trying to determine what the heck it means to teach. WHAT!

But I didn’t say that. She started to hand me a piece of paper but thought better of it. “Mai pen rai,” she mumbled, backing away. Suddenly I felt guilty. “Wait,” I offered. “Mai pen rai, she repeated. Kreng jai, na kha.” With that she clicked away the way she had come. She carried a letter she had painstakingly penned to her future fiancé, an American lieutenant, that she wanted me to proofread. Well, that part I didn’t learn until some time later. In fact, her words fading from my mind, it was quite some time later that I figured out what she had meant and felt all the worse for it. Two weeks later, I pulled out my already weathered Thai dictionary to search for the meaning of kreng jai. Kreng jai. Kreng jai. I flipped until I found the right page. Kreng jai, or cool heart. ‘A foremost concept in Thai society, kreng jai refers to the sentiment of avoiding any and all situations where you might put someone else in the position of losing face, or being enmeshed in a difficult situation, the resolution of which might give a poor impression of the individual in question.’ In other words, she had backed off because she did not want to make me look bad. She could tell I was tired. She could tell I was frustrated. She knew I didn’t want to be bothered. And asking this small favor of me, she equally knew would give her kreng jai for having put me in the awkward position of doing something I didn’t want to do, or refusing her and coming off as an unapproachable colleague. Kreng jai. Sigh. Smacks of something of a distant past. Funny I think of it now.

When I decided to come to Thailand, my parents were hesitant for all the reasons that parents are about sending their children to wander in foreign lands. But I wasn’t going back to Africa—been there done that. I was steering clear of the Middle East—try though I did to convince them otherwise. I was going to Asia, to Thailand, the land of sunshine, smiles, and some damn good pad thai. Nothing ever happens in Thailand. To them, they were sending me to the safe zone. I look at the images now plastered on the TV screens of broadcasts the world wide. Thailand is a war zone. Thailand is a land of destruction. Thailand is burning. Thailand is in shambles. Scanning the gory images, I barely recognize the country I’ve come to call home, however un-Home Sweet Home it may appear at the moment. And to think, a few months ago I’d actually considered leaving because I thought Thailand looked too easy on my resume. I needed a place with some tension, some heat! Ha. And yet, knowing as I do of the horrors unfolding a few hours away; frustrated as I am by being locked down on a military curfew; uneasy as I feel for the tension weighing heavy in the air, to me, Thailand is still the land of smiles and sunshine, hard as that may be to believe.

Thailand is still Thailand, whatever the smoke, guns, and mayhem the TVs display. Whatever the goings-on of a patch of land no bigger than an NYC borough, of the waves of red shirts, red flags, red trucks, red blood that spread through the cities and countryside, Thailand remains Thailand still. In truth, my greatest fear is not getting hurt, but getting stuck. Being trapped with nowhere to go. Having to wait it out in a city under siege. You see, to foreign eyes (and ears and mouths and noses and all sorts of bodily appendages), Thailand is the land of coconuts and smiles. Where ping pong shows and ancient temples line the same streets. Where the smooth paved sidewalks of cosmo Bangkok sit alongside the rolling hills of an idyllic lush northern countryside. Where people giggle at their mistakes and laugh to keep from crying. But the Thais aren’t laughing any more. For so long, too long, this country has hidden its pain behind a veneer meant as much to lure the hordes of obscene and curious tourists as the steady capital flowing in from foreign banks. Meant to cater to the crowds that line their beaches in dental floss bikinis, boasting their Singha and Chang tanks with something one can loosely call ‘pride.’ Kreng jai. Not anymore. Mama, the dirty laundry is hanging out to dry.
People are speaking up, shouting back, demanding that right be right and wrong be wrong. But it’s not just some proletarian revolution like the media would have you believe. Nor is it Cambodia, nor Vietnam, nor any other nation of SE Asia. Thailand is the land of the Thais and as recent months have shown, smiles and wais aside, there’s a whole lot more to Thailand than fancy ads and promos can show.

This struggle is not just about some ages-old feud between the serfs and the aristocracy. It is about a people and a place that is tired of the manufactured smiles and plastic grins. That is ready for some change, whatever that may take. Yes, there is fighting. Yes, there are protestors that have rallied and to the shock of the Western world, held firm for over two months until now. But no, not all of those people are poor farmers waving their pitchforks in revolt. Nor have all of those people have donned masks and taken to the streets, a trail of arson in their wake. Destruction and democracy do not go hand in hand for everyone in the crimson tide.

Let’s set the record straight. There are problems. They might get far worse before they get better. But at this particular junction, it seems time to put kreng jai to the test—to speak up, speak out, and risk losing face while the world watches on.
Santiphap, Thailand. Santiphap. Peace be with you wherever this may lead.