"Hoiy-kom", my embarrasing phone ettiquette and a fortuneteller in Pattaya

I was in Bangkok when I received a phone call I thought was from my friend Lauren, who had just come up to Bangkok for New Year’s on her way to Cambodia. I saw the unknown number and assumed it was her because she had to use public phones to call and though I heard a Thai voice on the other end, I thought it was her trying to be cute and funny, acting like she was the room service or something. So I even asked her, “Ohh… eees deees room ser-veece? You give me sucky sucky?” And then I heard a pause and an “Arai-na?” which is Thai for “excuse me?” Lauren may have picked up some Thai since coming here, but there was now way she knew, “Arai-na?”

Back-peddling and asking politely who I was talking to, I found out it was Pee Nok, a great friend of mine and also the Buddhism teacher at the high school. She was calling because, she said, her young daughters Bam (7) and Tam (10) missed me and wanted to say, “Hello.” I talked to each of them on the phone, a feat in and of itself. As good as my Thai might be, talking over the phone has always been a problem.

After talking to the girls Pee Nok told me she had good news; she no longer had to get the back surgery she had been worried sick about. Several years ago Nok had been in car accident and injured her back. She had been okay until the past year or so, when it had gotten worse to such an extent that she traveled all the way to Bangkok where a doctor told her she must have surgery to fix her back. The surgery though, he warned, was a difficult one with only a 50% chance of success. If it did not work, Nok would be a cripple for the rest of her life.

So it’s no small understatement that finding out she wouldn’t have to go through with the surgery was good news. It was the best possible gift she could ask for as the calendars turned to 2550 (2007 for all you falang stateside.) Still, given my inability to speak Thai over the telephone I was unable to figure out how Pee Nok was able to fix her back problems with out going under the knife. Last night I finally found out what happened.

When Nok traveled down south to Bangkok she also made a trip to her cousin’s house in Pattaya (no she’s not a “working girl”, though we’re close enough that I can make that joke without being offensive.) Her cousin decided to take her to a fortuneteller to look into the future. It is better to know about the future so you can approach it carefully, Pee Nok explained to me. The fortuneteller told her that she did not need to go to the hospital but instead needed to heed some ancient Buddhist superstitions in order to heal herself. She would have to “blooy” or set an animal free.

It is common for Thai people to “tamboon” or make merit by setting animals loose and I have seen it often with birds or fish at lakes in touristy cities. These places aren’t the real thing though, Pee Nok explained, because you’re not actually setting the animal free from any real danger. These animals have only been caught in order to be sold and then released and thus, unless they die in their often tiny captivity, they all will all be let go eventually without ever really being in danger. Where you have to find the animals, she told me, is at the market. At the market the animals are next in line to be dinner; they are animals that can be “saved.”

Picturing the market in my head, I the only live catches I could recall were fish and eels and sometimes shrimp but everything else I could remember was already slaughtered and probably cooked. Pee Nok did not blooy any of these animals though, instead she let free a “hoiy-kom” or what we translated to be a river snail. A river snail. I know what you’re thinking: they eat river snails? And: she let a river snail “free”? Yes and yes.

Given the severity of Pee Nok’s back problem I am hesitant to joke about her letting the snail go, but I can’t help but try and picture her releasing it back to “the wild.” Of all animals I think a snail is the least able to show any sort of emotion for it’s renewed freedom, just sitting there, probably doing nothing, perhaps not even realizing it was ever near becoming dinner.

A dramatic release or not, saving the snails has turned into a miraculous recovery for Pee Nok and she no longer has to get her back surgery. She’s walking around comfortably again, can drive her car and all kinds of other small things her problems use to prevent her from. I’m not sure I fully understand it but I guess I have to believe it given her new health.