21st November, Krabi, Thailand
Over the last few days, we've seen some pretty places in the south of Thailand. I'd like to tell you that today we did more of the same, but the truth is that today was another chill out and catch up with some odd jobs that needed doing kind of day. We were both tired from the last few days' activities, but there was still something important to attend to today: get some bus tickets to Malaysia. So, that's what I did.
Not a very interesting day, was it? OK, it can't all be day trips to glorious islands, so to make up for the non-event that was Sunday the 21st November, here's a little something that I wrote a while back but 'saved for that [proverbial] rainy day'. It didn't rain, mind, but don't let that get in the way of things ...
In the UK, and the western world in general, there seems to be a certain panache in having Chinese, Japanese, Thai - or any other strange-looking foreign script - characters tattood on prominent parts of the body. Failing that, though, you can always walk down to your local clothing emporium and find a T-shirt or three with similar foreign characters splashed all over the fabric in haphazard but kinda cool-looking ways. But have you ever stopped to ask yourself what exactly your T-shirt says? The chances are that the designer responsible for placing that Kanji character over the right shoulder won't have a clue what it says. Or perhaps he or she did, but in manipulating the image, an important part has been missed off and the word for 'love' might have been transformed to mean something like 'unavailable on thursdays' or something equally nonsensical. I'm sure this is the case, because this seems to be what happens here in Thailand.
I've been sniggering at the T-shirts with English writing on that I see Thai people wearing for some time now. Some of them are funny because they just make no sense, others are just unintentionally funny or ironic - a one letter mishap might change the meaning of the sentence completely. As subtly as I can, I've been noting down some of the bizarre slogans I've seen on T-shirts here and offer them up now for your reading pleasure. So, next time you are tempted to buy clothing with trendy-looking foreign characters on (or worse still, a tattoo that you can't easily remove), you have to ask yourself one question: "You feel the lucky pnuk?"
- Three little my lovely look a girls my a girl love
- Might is right, Right is might
- Herlay Davison (spot the bootleg T-shirt there?!)
- This crakshaft weighs over 48 lbs
- Simple need party
- Don't play with a boy without C.D.
- Dance crazy, till a meal gets
- The seasonedly, I keep up with the fashion, Let's go for a picnic, Hello...! Morning, presented by SP Girl
- Yo man, lay me.
- Only a thing pleasent all the year round is a dome
- And ot's free inside. The time that you. In the f**king much poems. Now You See. Have Nothing. What the difference. Keeping cool while you are out of school. Winner. Get Dog. When you are. Dora the Explorer.
That last one sounds like a made-up load of old nonsense, doesn't it? All true, I promise. And here's the proof:
Having compiled this list of weird T-shirts, I mentioned it to our man Stef back in Bangkok. He added his own experience of dodgy Thai T-Shirts - he told us about a girl who was showing off the new blouse/shirt she had just bought in the market, saying how suay (pretty) it looked. She was completely unaware that the words 'WHITE POWER' and the pictures of Nazi symbols were inappropriate. Just then, as Stef and friend Ricky were trying to lift their jaws back off the floor, looking in disbelief at the words emblazoned all over her front, four black friends of Stef's were making their way into the club. Moments later, the shirt was pulled off this girl and thrown into a dark recess, as she pointed at her recent purchase, repeating the phrase "Suay, suay!", still apparently oblivious to what was wrong with her politically incorrect attire.