Bangkok Arrival (or, That Falong Feeling)

Falong: in Thai, white foreigner; lit. "French"

For some reason this image came up when I googled "falong". It's not wrong, really. Just bizarre.

The baseline feeling of not understanding anything starts at Passport Control in the Bangkok airport. Taped to the glass booth enclosing the Passport Control Officer is a warning that it is illegal to disrespect the Buddha. Examples include tattoos and purchasing Buddha figurines. Then, above each passport control booth, there is a blue screen the a single line of text in the middle: "Does your skin match the color of the leaf?"

First instinct: giggle. Second: stop giggling in case it might be disrespectful and/or illegal. Third: feel concerned that this might be an actual question the PCO will ask. I have never seen a leaf my shade of pink. Or maybe "leaf" also means "sheet of paper" like in French, and they want to know if my skin is the color of my passport photo, which it is decidedly not, because my passport photo is of a tangerine-colored serial killer who's borrowing some of my features.

Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok

And so the feeling of containing giggles, with anxiety that we are Doing It Wrong, and a touch of fear/excitement settles in. PCO, of course, asks me nothing of my skin or leaves, being preoccupied with the lady at the booth next door who, in some form or another, is doing things More Wrong than I was. 

It turns out "Does your skin match the color of the leaf?" was just the confusing end of a mistranslated advertisement for Vaseline moisturizing lotion, which must have gotten frozen on the screen by a technical glitch. No cause for alarm. Just a weird ad. They exist everywhere, it turns out.