Snake Snake Fish Fish is an ongoing series based around Thai idioms/phrases/colloquialisms, written about and illustrated by Kiera Hurley and guest contributors.
GUEST EDITION: This week, Kayla Kawalec is the contributing author of the Snake Snake Fish Fish column.
Kayla Kawalec, Peace Corps Volunteer Leader, 134 YinD
“ไม่เป็นไรนะ ถือว่าฟาดเคราะห์” mâi bpen rai ná thěuu wâa fâat khráw
This phrase is one of those sticky ones, the kind that evolves the more I’ve sat with it since I first encountered it over a year ago. The meaning is tied up with Thai Buddhism, fate, but also the distinct Thai ability to hold many beliefs at once. These are all topics that I’ve contemplated often throughout my Peace Corps service in Thailand. Last year, I wrote about belief for Sticky Rice. In the article, I mention a Chinese belief (that Thai people taught me about) called ปีชง bpee chong or the “challenge year”. It describes the phenomenon when your personal Chinese zodiac is in “conflict” with the predominant zodiac sign of the Chinese New Year. Your bpee chong is believed to produce a variety of obstacles, including sickness and misfortune, throughout the year while the “opposing” zodiac is ruling.
My bpee chong (along with all my fellow Dogs) occurred during the last Chinese New Year in February 2024, and I did indeed face many obstacles surrounding that time. I injured my knee and then fell in front of the hospital when going in for an X-ray appointment, reopening the wound. A few months later, I slipped again in a 7-11 and fractured my elbow, causing me to miss a trip to Singapore with friends. But even if I had been medically cleared to fly, I still wouldn’t have made the trip because I somehow failed to bring my passport with me despite being a historically meticulous planner. Mostly, I just felt “off”, confused, blurry, accident-prone, not firing on all cylinders – you get the picture.
When I would lament to my Thai friends about these misfortunes, I’d hear that phrase, “mâi bpen rai ná thěuu wâa fâat khráw,” or often just “fâat khráw”, over and over again. It’s a difficult phrase to translate directly, which is one of the reasons I love it, because it’s one of those special Thai sayings that exists most purely in its mother tongue. The closest thing would be to say, “It’s alright, you’ve avoided a worse fate.” This article on workplace accidents does a good job of explaining further, but the general idea is that it’s a phrase used to provide comfort when something unexpected and bad happens in life. The belief is that when we experience small misfortunes in life, they’re actually protecting us from something bigger or are a sacrifice of sorts to protect us from bad omens.
Through the lens of fâat khráw, it was a good thing I couldn’t get on that flight to Singapore because perhaps if I had, it might have crashed. This may seem far-fetched, but fâat khráw permeates many aspects of Thai culture. For instance, it’s common knowledge (at least in the small town in the north of Thailand where I lived) that when some great misfortune happens (a car accident, house fire, or even death) any numbers associated with those events (license plate numbers, addresses, birthdays, age at death, etc.) are fair game to play in the lottery. The idea is that the misfortune “released” the bad luck from the numbers, and they’re now auspicious and primed for some good luck to be summoned from them.
To me, fâat khráw is a reminder that we’re not in control of our destiny. It doesn’t mean that we have no agency in our lives at all, but it relieves some of the pressure. Fâat khráw reminds me to slow down, to not take myself so seriously, to savor the cancelled classes, or meetings running late, or my counterpart forgetting to send a driver to pick me up for my bus, or whatever the frustrating situation is that day. Maybe everything is just happening exactly as it should be.
Sticky Rice 
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