Grangai

“Grangai” is a term in Thailand used to describe the concept of “saving face.” Thais don’t like conflict and will lie to you if they feel like it will hurt someone’s pride. Workers won’t speak up to a superior because they don’t want to cause embarrassment.

Some examples of grangai:

“Oh you want to paint your house bright pink and lime green? I think that would look wonderful! Where is the paint let me help you!”

“The car was heavy but my toe will heal and I know you didn’t mean to run over my foot. Don’t worry about it.”

“You want to kick me off the internet so that you can look at porn. Ok, I’ll just sit here and play Solitaire on my computer until you are finished.” (I am guilty of this one.)

“You said that you would pick me up from the store at 3:00 and it is now 4:30…don’t worry about it I just spent an hour and a half talking to a scary Thai guy that somehow tricked me into giving him my phone number (and will call me 2 times in the next 12 hours).” (I am guilty of this one also).

Now grangaiing can be very blatant or very subtle. My landlord cam up to me a few weeks ago and asked me to start locking the front gate to my house. She said that people were using my yard as a shortcut and it was kicking up a lot of dust and the dust wasn’t healthy for me. She said that if she needed to get in she would go through her niece’s yard who lived right behind me. I said ok even though I knew that she was lying to me. (I knew she was lying because we are in the middle of the rainy season…we don’t have dust we have mud! – Sometimes I can be so smart!) So I have kept my gate locked unless I am at home.

Yesterday I figured out what was really happening. I was sitting on my front porch waiting for someone to come and pick me up when I noticed a little old lady walking toward my gate. I could tell that she was looking at my gate & trying to see if it was locked. When it wasn’t she started walking towards it & that’s when she looked up and noticed me. I saw her pause for a moment, but then she continued on her way. She opened my gate and walked up to me and asked why I wasn’t at work. I told her I was going into Nan & she just smiled and walked off towards the back of my house.

My ride showed up about five minutes later and as I got up to go to the car, I saw the little lady walking back to the front of my house…and her arms were filled with herbs and vegetables that she had taken from “my” garden. My landlord knew that this lady was taking fruits, vegetables, and herbs (I have a couple of banana trees and other fruit bearing trees in my yard) from my yard but didn’t want to embarrass this woman so she told me that people walking through my yard was kicking up dust. So I will continue to lock my gate when I am not there and continue to practice the fine art of grangaiing.