Dano Nissen, 134 TESS

I’m pretty sure I don’t know anyone’s full name here. In Thailand, most everyone goes by their cheuu len [ชท่อเล่น] – nickname. Like a petulant child, I thought, “If everyone has one, I need one too.”

“My friends have cheuu lens,” I told my pii sao [พี่สาว], or older host sister, in my limited Thai, as I washed the dishes with her. “But I don’t have a cheuu len,” I sighed, lips pouted, eyes puppy-like. 

We were told Thailand is a “high context” culture, meaning communication relies on context rather than direct messages. I, in an effort to fully integrate, was dropping high context clues to nab myself one of these cheuu lens. It is, after all, bad form to straight up ask for a nickname – in any society. 

Like a catfish at the bottom of the Chao Phraya River, she took the bait. She enlisted her parents to brainstorm a cheuu len. They were at it for two hours, until they came up with the perfect moniker: Bpong Neng [โป้างเหน่ง]. 

It’s a traditional Thai snack that looks like this:

My family said, “คล้ายกับหัว.” In English: “looks like your head.”

Now, this requires a little backstory. 

In the sweltering heat of this steam room of a country, I ditched fashion for function and haphazardly shaved my head with a 350 baht [บาท] ($10) electric shaver. I debuted the new cut at dinner, where my host Mom, in one of her few English utterances, said, “No handsome!” High context my ass. 

Ok. I’ll cut her a little slack. Maybe she was trying to say “So handsome!” Look, I’ve terribly mispronounced a word or two in Thai. I get it. Or, perhaps, she said, “No, handsome!” detecting self-doubt on my part and offering the “No” to negate that, then assuring me that I was “handsome” after a short pause. Orrrrrrr, possibly, she took a look at my head, assumed I was preparing for monkhood, and let me know I was “no handsome” to push me along my way to nirvana as I divorce myself from all Earthly matters. (I was always under the impression monkhood was a lifelong commitment, but apparently in Thailand you can be a monk for as short as, like, three days.)

But ultimately, I appreciate the comparison. A Bpong Neng is a fried flour ball enveloping a meaty sausage. With me, like my snack namesake, it’s the inside that counts. My host mom told me it’s not just that I look like a Bpong Neng; I share a cheuu len with a famous late Thai comedian. There he is:

My host family appreciates that my erudite witticisms and esoteric allusions land on the most sophisticated of audiences: my naawng sao [น้องสาว], little toddler sis Mi Lin.

I make the two year old laugh by making farting noises, the true lingua franca. My Thai family thinks I’m funny so they call me Bpong Neng. Please, feel free to call me by my cheuu len as well. Unless you’re one of my students – then it’s Mr. Bpong Neng to you!

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Read Dano’s previous articles and contributions.