I am very conspicuous in Thailand. I’m very tall. I’m white. And I constantly do silly farang (foreigner) things — like sit on the ground and eat my lunch.
A captured this excellent 30-second video of me today at an outdoor market about 500 meters from my apartment. (Click on the image above or go here to watch it.) I’d bought some chicken with roti and decided to sit on the ground to consume my snack. Unfortunately for me, a gaggle of Thai ladies saw me do this and were consumed with laughter — why would I sit on the dirty street when there were tables nearby? They found this to be hilarious. They guffawed and pointed at me, which I quite enjoyed. Then, with characteristic courtesy, they directed me to a table to sit down.
Indeed, making a fool of myself in Thailand is something of an inadvertent past time. Longtime newley.com readers will recall that I did this for the first time way back in 2001. And I wrote about it in an essay called “Soup to Nuts.”