abby talk thai

I have a friend, Tricia, who is out here working for the Thai Embassy for a month (well...since that military coup, her timeline is a little up in the air...) and last night, I got this BRILLIANT idea that we could go to Thai Square, a restaurant that I had heard was very authentic. I figured, the girl lived in the country for a year and a half, she'd know the difference, right? Right? Tricia neglected to tell me that she eats Thai for lunch EVERY DAY. My bad. But she was a good sport.


I didn't know it would turn into a culture lesson. In between bites, Tricia filled my head with all sorts of gems of information. For example:

* Pad Thai is NOT a "very common Thai dish that everyone eats every day." In all her time there, she ate it thrice.
* If someone asks you if you speak Thai and you actually understand the question, you should say, "ngu ngu ba ba," which, directly translated, means "snake snake fish fish." Somehow, this is one of their colliquialisms that succinctly conveys the message "No."
* When you see someone you know in Thailand, you don't ask how they're doing. You ask if they're hungry.
* We think we have bad traffic in DC? Try driving in Bangkok.
* Speaking of Bangkok, its real name (which doesn't even have "Bangkok" in it) is the longest name of a city in the world. It's about six lines long, and is basically a long string of superlatives that says something about a city of angels and the god Indra.

And, of course, the food was awesomely delicious.