OznAsia

I love vegetables but it hasn't always been that way. As a kid I probably agreed with most of my peers that vegetables were yucky. Even now, while I'm happy to eat the occasional choko I admit to finding them a little boring.

One morning Ead appeared wearing a t-shirt that I'd never seen before. On the front was a picture of two chokos and a Thai word that I could not read. He read it for me. It says 'fukmau' which is the Thai word for choko.

'So why wear a choko t-shirt?' I asked.

He explained that the shirt was created back in the days when Mr Thaksin was still Prime Minister of Thailand, ie before the coup. Many were dissatisfied with his leadership and there were protests. This shirt was created to be worn by the protesters. Of course this still doesn't make sense until you know that 'Mau' is Mr Thaksin's nickname.

The message on the back of the shirt says, 'We don't like fukmau. It's an endangered species.'

Labels: thailand