Peeps at Many Lands: Siam

by Ernest Young

With the rice various kinds of curry are eaten. They are made from vegetables, fruit, and fish. Frog, decayed prawns, stale fish, and other choice morsels figure in the menu. All the curries are highly flavoured with vinegar, pepper, and strong-tasting spices. The Siamese are so accustomed to these highly flavoured dishes that they would look upon a meal of turkey and plum-pudding as utterly tasteless and insipid. One of the sauces in common use contains chillies, stale prawns, black pepper, garlic, onions, citron-juice, ginger, and brine!

When the members of the family sit down to take a meal, they squat on the floor. A big bowl of rice is placed in the centre of the ring, and round it are arranged smaller basins of curry. Everybody helps himself, so that the fastest eater gets the biggest share. Forks and knives are not used, and very often spoons also are lacking. In such cases fingers take the place of spoons, and they seem to serve the purpose equally well. Of course, the fingers get greasy and sticky, but they can be put in the mouth and licked clean again quite easily and quickly.

Each member of the family knows how to cook—father, mother, and children—for there are few dishes to prepare, and the preparation of these is an art soon acquired. Two meals only are taken each day—one in the morning and another in the early evening. Between whiles tea is drunk, tobacco is smoked, and betel-nut is chewed. The hours for meals are rather irregular, and often the hungry members do not wait for those whose appetites are less keen, but begin as soon as ever the rice is boiled. Amongst the rich the men eat first and by themselves. What they leave serves for their wives and children, and the last remnants of all are thrown to the dogs.

As dessert there are many kinds of fruit, some of which are unknown in this country. Amongst the most popular fruits are young coco-nuts; the ripest of bananas; mangoes, that taste at first like a mixture of turpentine and carrots, but which, after a few efforts, are found to be as pleasant to the palate as the apple or the pear; mangosteens—little sweet snow-white balls set in crimson caskets; durians, that smell like bad drains, but taste, when one is used to them, like a mixture of strawberries, ices, honey, and all other things that are pleasant to eat.

When the meal is over, each person washes his own rice-bowl, and turns it upside down in a basket in the corner of the room to drip and dry till it is needed again.

Dress is a very simple matter. There are no such things as fashions. The smallest children wear no clothing at all, except, perhaps, a necklace of coral or beads. The garment worn as a covering for the lower part of the body is the same for all—King and peasant, man, woman, and child. As seen in pictures and photographs, it resembles a pair of baggy knickerbockers. It consists of a long strip of coloured cloth, about the same size and shape as a bath-towel. The method of draping it about the body is not easily explained on paper. This much, however, may be said: there are no pins, tapes, buttons, or fastenings of any kind; but the panoong, as it is called, is so cleverly twisted and tied, that it can be worn at all times and under all circumstances without any fear of it ever becoming loose. You may run in it, sleep in it, or swim in it, and you will always be perfectly cool and comfortable. This is the only native garment for men, though in the capital, and in other places where white men are seen, the people have learned to wear white linen jackets. These are buttoned to the throat, and collars and shirts are not required. Shoes and stockings are not known, except where the European has taught their use. The soles of the feet get so hard that, in time, they are like leather itself, and cut or wounded feet are very seldom seen.

The women wear a coloured scarf, called the pahom, wound round the upper part of the body. This is the only addition to the costume of the men ever invented by the ladies of Siam. As for hats, there are no such things, except a few big straw-plaited erections that look like baskets turned upside down, and which are worn by the women who sit selling their goods in the markets.

The panoong and the pahom are of brightly coloured material, and a Siamese crowd is always a picturesque sight. According to one of the many superstitions that prevail in the country, every day of the week is under the rule of some particular planet, and to be fortunate throughout the day one should wear garments and jewels of the same colour as the ruling planet. Many rich people do actually observe this custom, and wear red silk and rubies on Sundays in honour of the sun; white and moonstones on Monday, the day of the moon; light red and coral on Tuesday, the day of Mars; green and emeralds on Wednesday, the day of Jupiter; stripes and cat's-eyes for Jupiter's Thursday; silver blue and diamonds on Friday, when Venus rules; and dark blue and sapphires on Saturday, when the chief planet is Saturn.