Big Noodles

The taxi driver who took me back from Sunday night movies at Bob's didn't fit the classic driver profile. He dressed well in clean khaki slacks and a neat T-shirt that showed off his slightly muscled arms. He didn't barrage me with the standard littany of questions about where I come from, how many kids I have, what do I do blah blah. His affect seemed deferential without being subservient.

"You haven't always driven taxi, have you?" I asked. No, he first drove one of the small passenger vans that offer better-then-a-public-bus and worse-than-a-private-car transportation options to the thousands of people who commute from the outer Bangkok burbs. After that he chauffeured several rich Thai businessmen around until he got tired of being treated like a piece of dirt. (Moneyed Thais typically regard their staff as subhuman gofers.)

"So why do you drive taxi?" I wondered. Turns out his wife just had a baby and had to give up her cashier's job at Tesco/Lotus (9 hr/day, 6 days/wk for 5,800 baht/month!) and he had no "sen sai" to get a better job. "What's sen sai?" I asked. Most taxi drivers can't find other words to define their expressions, especially to someone with such limited vocabulary as mine. But this one managed just fine.

Sen sai means connections, he explained. And being poor and under educated, he didn't have any. Of course he was more than smart enough to discuss Thai nepotism in all it's myriad and horribly unfair guises but that doesn't count for anything in Thailand. As he said, it's not what you know, but who you know and how important they are. (Of course after 15 years here I know that, but hadn't ever learned the term for it.)

Apparently important movers and shakers get classified like noodles--lek (thin) or yai (thick). A top of the line nepotistic connection is a sen kuay chap, named after very wide rectangular rice noodles. Could this be why I've always hated the Chinese-inspired Thai dishes that feature these flaccid creations?