The average Thai in the gogo bar world is not know for their math skills. In fact, mamasans are hired on their ability to not be capable of simple addition. Most bar boys, dressed for the occasion, however, can at least count to eleven. Except post-op ladyboys.

Using your fingers to count should be the same anywhere in the world. Despite differences in race and culture, we all tend to have the same number of fingers on each hand. It may be nueng, song, sam, see instead of the sounds you are used to, but the result should still be the same. Or would be if not for the strange Thai practice of only using their fingers to count; thumbs don’t count and are not used in addition. Unless it is a vendor at one of the markets using a calculator. Then they tend to use their thumbs to hit each key.

I’m a big fan of using a calculator when shopping in Thailand. It’s the best English to Thai translator you can find. At least when you get down to the important detail: the price you want to pay versus the price the seller wants to realize. With the opening negotiation, not so much. If you ask, “How much?” and the vendor answers with a figure thumbed out on his calculator, you’re doomed. Bargaining for your purchase is half the fun of shopping in Thailand. When a vendor immediately moves to figures – ones important enough to express by calculator – there’s no room left for fun. What about the vendor’s plea of poverty? What about your answering tale of woe about your dieing grandmother? As a farang you are always going to over-pay anyway. You should at least be allowed the entertainment value of making your purchase.

As popular as calculators are among street vendors, you’ll seldom see them use any of those useless math-related functions calculator manufacturers mistakenly think need to be part of their product. Calculators are used to say 1,800 baht in English, not to arrive at that figure. And if the deal is struck for two items at 900 baht each, everyone knows that is indicated with a 900 figure on the calculator and two fingers of your free hand. If it is five pieces we’re talking about, then you need to put the calculator down so you can use four fingers on one hand, and the remaining digit showing on your other.

That’s why you never see mamasans using a calculator at Bangkok gogo bars. The cost of a drink, the cost of the off fee, are already known quantities – there is no need to use a calculator to express those. And since calculators are not used in Thailand to do addition or multiplication, who needs one? You may think that would make the mamasan’s job easier in calculating the total of your check bin, but if the gods didn’t intend you to use your fingers to count with, then why did they give them to us in the first place? Silly farang. Besides, when you are dealing with a culture where a specific number, 108, doesn’t mean one hundred and eight but ‘lots and lots of’ . . . well, try calculating that sum on your little machine haole boy.

Noom, my bar boy friend and current love of my life, likes numbers. Especially those found on baht with nice long rows of 0s. When he uses his fingers to count beyond eight, his hands start throwing a series of mudras that have little to do with the numbers streaming in his head. At least that I can calculate. But I have learned that when his forefinger is placed on the tip of his thumb, it means we’re into the tens of thousands of baht. Or 108.

Unlike many of his countrymen Noom does understand a calculator can be used for something beyond speaking English. On a trip to Laos where he needed to convert kip to US$ and then to Thai baht to figure out the value, he’d put out his hand for my calculator and then would get busy thumbing the hell out of it. Several minutes and innumerable calculations later, he’d hand it back and ask, “How mutt baht?” And quickly learned to raise a fist in warning against my smart ass answer of 108 being repeated yet again.

When we have to deal with large numbers – and with 1,000 baht worth a mere $30, large numbers are a must – I have to remind myself that whatever figure I use is being expressed in English, which is a language not a number. And which does not always correspond to a number known to a Thai. For example Noom knows the number twelve. That’s two hands and a foot. But twelve hundred brings him up short. Which in Noom-speak is, “twelve” accompanied by a repeatedly nodding head with a deeply furrowed brow. Until I correct myself and say, “One thousand, two hundred.” Those two numbers correspond to baht denominations. And Noom speaks baht well.

Big numbers are often a part of our hotel ritual. On the first night at a new hotel, while he strips off his clothes as he enters our latest home away from home, Noom always ask, “How mut?” Thanks to the sight of naked male flesh I always forget to transcribe my English into Thai and answer, “Thirty-two hundred baht” before catching myself and restating the room fee in a number he can understand: Three thousand two hundred baht. And his reply is always the same, “Oh, too mut!” But I know that isn’t about the worth of the room but rather the comparison of a night’s lodging against what he pays monthly for his loom. When we stay in a down-market hotel, which for some odd reason I tend to do when we’re visiting Chiang Mai, he doesn’t ask about the room’s cost. Instead he asks, “Why we stay here?”

Travel also brings up the question of, “How long we go?” My reply of, “Five days,” means having to translate numbers into days of the week. It’s a shame they don’t have a calculator for that:

“Tueday . . . ,”

“Friday . . .”

“No, Wednesday.”

“Friday . . .”

“No, Thursday.”

“Friday . . .”

Saturday, of course, gets ticked off on his other hand.

But then numbers are not just numbers to Thais, and even when they are just numbers they are not the same numbers you may be familiar with back home. For example the number 63 on a taxi meter is the same as the number 60 in Thai. Sitting in the same seat, 94 can be the same as 90. Or 95. Or if you have too many one baht coins in your pocket, 94. And 200, when quoted instead of on the meter, is the same as ‘too mut.’ Which may as well be 108 ‘cuz that’s a taxi Noom will refuse to allow us to ride in.

To compound matters, when Thais use numbers to count off birthdays or anniversaries, they start at 1. So the first time your birthday rolls around again, to a Thai you are 2-years-old. That works to your advantage when counting how many years you’ve been together; nothing spells relationship success like adding another year to its length. So I go with Noom’s count on how long we have been together. I also defer to his numerical wisdom when it comes to us too.

With a large group out to party and ready to fork over the admission fee to G.O.D. one night, Noom was counting how many of us were in the party, he kept coming up short by one. Or so I mistakenly thought until I counted heads with him.

“You, makes one. With me, that’s two . . .”

“No. Us is one.”

I may not be a whiz at math, but I can do simple addition. And what Noom adds to my life is greater than what any number known to man can express. Or as a mathematical formula: 1+1>108.

Related Posts You Might Enjoy: