Farang! or: Into the Great White Open

The Thai term farang originates from the country’s Ayhuttaya period, one during which the kingdom’s trade relations began to grow in scope. Story has it that it was a bunch of Frenchman who were the first Westerners to arrive at the ports of the then capital of Siam ,Ayhuttaya, in search of silk or rice deals and thus caused a great deal of confusion amongst the locals.

It was apparent to the people of Ayhuttaya that those folks on the ships were not like them. They had brighter skin, larger eyes and were taller. Being used to merchants from other Asian countries, this arrival excited their curiosity. Therefore they inquired in aw who those people where. The reply was:” nous sommes français!”

The people of the kingdom of Ayhuttaya could pronounce the phrase as little as most present-day Thai 7-eleven clerks can say ‘Marlboro Lights’. All they could catch and mimic was ‘farang’. That was good enough as it helped to label the new intruders and, at the end of the day, the people of Ayhuttaya were busy loading and unloading ships and could not be bothered with phonetic hodgepodge.

As the years went by, the Thai capital was moved to Bangkok. Since then, it is not only French folk which comes to Thailand and the purposes of stay aren't always mercantile endeavors. The word farang remains. It is exclaimed when Caucasians stray a little from trodden tourist paths and, generally, used to give reference to the portion of mankind which is obviously not Thai, or at least not Asian. Over the centuries, the term has become broader and now encompasses the whole white population of the world. One world united; at least terminologically. Naturally, since being all the same, those people all speak one language, which is farang speak, and all have the same customs and believes, which are primarily North American ones.

A while back, the mobile phone provider Dtac supplied free sunscreens to taxi drivers, saying:”We love farang, we speak English!”, which still can be seen attached to the side windows of plenty of cabs throughout Bangkok . They must a huge hearts, those cabbies, to accommodate all those white folks from Australia, over Norway and Canada to Argentine in them! And even bigger confidence in themselves, as usually the sole phrase ‘Hey mister’ does not qualify as “speaking” a language - something which can hardly be attributed to Caucasians and expats referring to themselves as ‘farang’. One will hardly find somebody from Japan call themselves Chinese when staying abroad.