No Money No Honey 4x4
Not every one feels this way. At church the Sunday school class was divided into two groups, "kon Thai," and "farang" (the farang group, incidentally, included two "kon yipon," I suppose due to their inability to speak Thai, while the "kon Thai" group included one "kon filipin" fluent in at least three languages). The Thai group was further subdivided into men and women. Each group was given a scripture to discuss. Ours was the raising of Lazarus from the tomb. I conjectured that we might be stuck with that scripture due to the undead hues of our guava colored flesh. Farang also means guava, though the version of the word used to indicate a foreigner of European descent is probably a corruption of the word "frances". Africans are called "black guavas", or "black frenchies" depending on how you care to read the phrase. Asians get to be called by the names of their respective countries. Lucky Asians. Before we came here we learned a bit of Thai from the Pimsler CDs (or as I call them "eight easy lessons to ask your hotel clerk out to dinner"). Hopelessly naive, one of the major lessons is about how to answer if you are an American (kon amerigan) or not. No one will ever ask you if you are an American. In over half a year it has happened to us only once. They already know you're a farang, they can tell from the guava colored hues of your pasty flesh.
