The Different Ways Two Cultures Collide
in Transnational Marriages
May 11, 2015
Veronica Inveen
Represent the mixture of two vastly different cultures large
populations of transnational couples have established their homes in
farming village Nadokmai, about an hour outside Udon Thani city.
Running around her yard with
a squirt gun left over from
Songkran, a little girl blissfully
shoots everything she is
running past. Smiling ear to
ear, her big eyes adorned with
long, thick eye lashes glisten.
Her porcelain skin stands out
against the deep green grass
she is skipping through, and
the grass fluorescent alongside
the dirt road that separates the
road and the yard.
A transnational couple weds in traditional Thai style in
Nadokmai, Udon Thani.
In typical Issan style, wooden
houses standing on stilts
decorate the main street of Nadokmai village in Udon Thani province. If not out
on the farms, people can likely be seen lounging outside on the hammock that
hangs underneath their house, or huddled around a basket of sticky rice with
their family. It only takes a turn off the main road to discover the abnormality of
this village.
A couple houses down a soi off the main road, a white gate is visible, unusually
placed between two Thai style houses. The gate is guarding a rather western style
yellow house. In the front yard, the same little girl continues to play with the
water gun until a white man emerges from the house to work in the perfectly
manicured garden on the side of the house.
The two make playful conversation in French until a woman on a motorcycle
pulls into the house sways the attention of the girl. The little girl approaches the
motorcycle to meet her dark skinned mother with a wai, the traditional Thai
greeting.
Like many children in Nadokmai, Nidia, the young girl is luk krung meaning she
is only half Thai. Her father is from France and her mother was born and raised
in a house only minutes from where they are now all living. Speaking to her
mother in only Thai and her father only French, Nidia is living proof of crosscultural collision.
Nadokmai is about 40 kilometers southwest of Mueng Udon Thani, home to
4,229 people and 1,045 households. In 2008, one hundred and fifty-nine women
in the village were married to foreign men (Lapanun). It only takes a few
conversations with villagers in Nadokmai to see presence of the transnational
marriage phenomenon.
Although typically a small farming village far from the city would show less
exposure to the western world, Nadokmai has become the exception. Villagers of
all ages can communicate in English, foreign men are frequently seen driving
motorcycles around the village, often with their half-Thai children on the back,
and without doubt, everyone knows a farang from at least two different countries
living in the village.
Like Nidia and her family, the language dynamic within the households of these
cross-cultural families is unusual to not just the average Thai household but also
the typical transnational marriage couple. English, which is often seen as a
common language for communication, isn’t being spoken as a medium for the
couple, rather most women have learned the native tongue of their partner and
use that as the language spoken in their households.
Nidia’s mother, Rasamee met her husband, Paul, knowing no French or English.
Seven years of marriage later, the couple has made it work. “We lived in France
for two years, that is where I learned the most French.” Still not fluent, the two
depend heavily on hand gestures to communicate. But by being fluent in both
languages, Nidia communicates with both her mother and father with ease.
“I never went to university, if I didn’t get married to Daniel, I’d probably be
working with my parents in the fields.” Ow, 28, is married to a French man,
Daniel. The couple lived in France for six years before building their house in
Nadokmai, bringing Ow’s 10-year-old daughter from her first marriage with
them. Both Ow and her daughter now speak fluent French, a skill that most
people can only attain after years of vigorous study in school.
It is not an unusual dynamic. Peter, a Swedish man living in Nadokmai with his
partner and two daughters speaks only Swedish at home. He has been coming to
Thailand for more than 20 years, recently moving permanently, yet has never
learned Thai. “My girlfriend speaks fluent Swedish, so there is no reason for me
to learn Thai,” he says. “My children are in a Thai school so outside the house
they speak Thai, inside Swedish, it’s simple.” Down the street from his house,
Peter has other Swedish friends who have started families in Nadokmai, all
speaking Swedish as the language of their households.
Peter talks about his family at a table outside a make-shift bar down the street
from his house. Shirtless and wearing fisherman pants he touches the large
Buddha pendent hanging around his neck. “I love Thai culture. I don’t mind
taking a shower with a bucket or waing to my neighbors.” He looks to the floor of
the house we sit in front of and points to the woven mat, “But I won’t sit on the
floor to eat a meal, I can’t sit like that.”
Touching his necklace once again, Peter alludes to his religious stance. “I am
more Buddhist than my girlfriend,” He started to practice Buddhism before he
met his partner seventeen years ago and became more devote as he learned more
and traveled around Asia. He speaks passionately about the religion explaining,
“I might not have ended up here if it weren’t for my interest in Buddhism.”
Brani, a women married to a Swiss
man even has a large room in her
house dedicated to meditation and
prayer. “It wasn’t my idea, he
wanted to build it. He spends two
hours every morning meditating.”
A room dedicated to meditation built by Brani’s Swiss
husband in their home in Nadokmai.
Not far from where Peter lives,
another transnational couple has
established their home between
two gardens growing herbs. With a
tall fence surrounding a big yard
enclosed by an impressive gate, Ow
and Bills home sits quietly.
The couple met forty years ago when Frank was stationed in Thailand. Ow who
grew up in Nadokmai leaving at age nineteen when the couple moved back to
Frank’s hometown in Texas.
“The first time I went out with Frank he invited me to eat watch baseball, that day
I had my first hotdog and popcorn.”
Now that Frank has retired, the couple has chosen to move back to Ow’s
hometown to take care of her grandson. But after forty years away, Nadokmai
doesn’t feel like home for Ow anymore.
Not only does her passport say she is American, but when walking into Ow’s
house, guest’s would never know they weren’t in the United States. Three large
lazy-boy couches surround a flat screen TV playing a Thai dubbed American
drama. “I miss being able to get my hair done somewhere where there is AC and
not just a fan. I want a relaxing experience without having people come in and
out of the salon being loud,” Ow says in a nearly perfect American accent with a
slight southern drawl.
Warming the walls of her house are frames with family photos, and inspirational
quotes. “I miss just being able to walk to have my Starbucks in the morning, or
walk around without the annoyance of the heat.”
Pointing to a cross that hangs above the TV, Ow explains, “I was raised a
Buddhist but became Christian after I got married to Frank, his family taught me
a lot and I met a lot of my friends at church.” In contrast to Peter, Ow feels out of
touch with living in a primarily Buddhist country and in a village with no church
community. But she isn’t deterred, “Even though I can’t go to church every
Sunday and the rest of my family here is Buddhist it doesn’t stop me from being
in touch with my religion.”
Ow is lucky to have a husband that understands the importance of caring for
extended family in Thai culture, “Frank loves my grandson so much, he helps pay
for his school and always buys him toys.”
Several women had expressed the difficulty for their new husbands to get used to
the dynamic of family in Thailand. Pointing admirably the Thai-style wedding
portrait of her daughter, Ashama and her Belgian ex-husband that still hangs in
their living room, Agnoon explains the difficulties the couple had.
“He wanted a Thai wife to take care of him, and my daughter was very beautiful,”
The couple was married for six years, living in Belgium but Ashama wasn’t living
the life she expected to be when she packed up to move across the world. “He
wouldn’t let her have any money aside from the money he have her to grocery
shop. But still it was a small amount and she couldn’t afford to buy Thai
ingredients like she wanted to.” Most importantly, she wasn’t given the money
she needed to send back to her family in Nadokmai.
A difficulty many foreign husbands have is agreeing to the notion of sending back
their money, which is often just their retirement fund, to the family of their wives.
The different ideas of family dynamic seem to often get in the way of crosscultural marriages, like Ashama, and lead to divorce.
That is why Alexander, from Sweden, and his girlfriend have chosen to live with
her parents to save money. Like most of the men in Nadokmai, Alexander is
living off his pension and is trying to spend money sparingly so that he can live
comfortably while still being able to help support her family without restriction.
With the new addition of their son to the family the couple has decided to stay a
few more years with her parents until it is necessary to expand.
Other families living off the husbands pension have built a simple house with
only the things necessary, including a kitchen, a bed in each bedroom, a table to
eat and a bathroom . Six months after they’ve moved in the house of Rasamee
and her husband’s house is still completely empty. In one corner, a family photo
hangs up on the wall with scotch tape, a pile of Nidia’s toys lay on the ground of
another. The cold white tile transmits a lonely feeling, “now we only spend time
working on our garden,” Rasamee says as she scans the empty room.
Orathai Piayura, professor at Khon Kaen University is an expert on gender studies in
Thailand. She studied Thai women in transnational marriages in London finding
that “Eight out of ten informants had to work and make their own money to support
their parents and extended family in Thailand.” Women were able to find jobs
working in Thai restaurants, or in one case start a nail salon out of her home.
Another woman found herself doing sex work after a job as a masseuse took a
turn and other opportunities failed.
The differences in languages, family dynamic and lifestyle all seem to create
different lives for the different couples in Nadokmai. Nevertheless, women
seemed happy with their lives with their husbands and made impressions on the
single women of the village
Noi, a forty-eight year old divorcee has never been with a foreign man but
desperately wants a relationship with one after seeing the lives of the other
women in the village. “Foreign men are just nicer, and can take care of their wives
with beautiful things.”
With the amount of men seeming to flock to Nadokmai, Noi’s wish doesn’t appear
to be too far off.
Resources:
Lapanun, Patcharin. Logics of Desire and Transnational Marriage Practices in a
Northeastern Thai Village. Diss. VRIJE Universiteit Amsterdam, 2013. N.p.: VRIJE
Universiteit Amsterdam, n.d. Print.
Piayura, Orathai. "Thai Women, Cross — Cultural Marriage and
Sexuality."International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 2.2 (2012): n.
pag.International Journal of Social Science and Humanity. Web.