Another week, another collection of folktales from Southeast Asian countries.
Thailand is a country known for its rich history and culture. As the country expands as one of the hottest travel destinations all over the world, many people start to delve into local culture to understand the country better.
Here are four Thai folktales that the locals grew up with.
1. Pla Boo Thong (ปลาบู่ทอง)
Also known as the Tale of the Golden Goby, this folktale is one of the many tales that is described as dark and twisted.
Some claimed it was the twisted version of Cinderella because of how gruesome the protagonist was treated.
The story revolved around the protagonist, Aueay.
There was once a rich merchant who had two wives. The wives were polar opposites of each other.
Coincidentally, both wives gave birth to one daughter each and by some miracle, the two girls looked alike.
But it was easy to differentiate them. Aueay was like her mother who was kind and charitable whereas her half-sister, Aai was the opposite of her.
Aai was full of hatred and jealousy. Along with her mother, they plotted to make Aueay miserable.
They hired someone to kill Aueay's mother. They succeded but their glee went out the door after finding out that the mother had come back (not in a scary way).
Aueay's mother reincarnated as a golden goby because of her good deeds. She wanted to be near her daughter.
The wicked would not give up that easily.
After Aai and her mother realized what was going on, they caught the fish, cooked it, and fed it to the whole family. It was heartbreaking because Aueay was forced to eat her own mother.
Tension was at its peak when a prince came into the picture. The prince met and fell in love with Aueay.
It was her chance to escape all the unhappiness at home.
Aai would not let Aueay be happy. She was drunk with jealousy and she wanted all the good things for herself.
She started off by tricking Aueay that their father was gravely ill. When Aueay headed towards their father's bedroom, she was caught in a trap filled with boiling oil and died.
After the murder, Aai took over her sister's identity and wanted to live the life Aueay had.
But the story does not end there.
Aai got a taste of her own medicine after she was exposed of her lies and was executed for her gruesome crimes.
As for Aueay, she was brought back to life by a wizard and lived happily ever after with the prince.
2. Nang Sip Song (นางสิบสอง)
This tale is also known as The Twelve Sisters.
The tale started off with a merchant and his wife who longed for children. One day, they went together to a shrine and made an offering of twelve banana hands to a tree spirit.
Their deed became fruitful. Soon after the offering, the wife became pregnant. The merchant prayed and hoped for a male offspring, but his wife gave birth to a girl instead. After that, the wife conceived again and again until they had twelve daughters in total.
At the same time, the merchant was going through hurdles with his business. His ships that carried goods to be traded and sold in other countries were robbed. He attempted to borrow money from his peers to fix the issue, but everything turned for the worse.
With so many mouths to feed, the merchant made a plan to abandon his daughters in the forest without letting his wife know.
His first attempt failed because the youngest daughter made marks along the way. But they were not so lucky on the second trip to the forest.
They spent days walking deeper and deeper into the forest and became very hungry. Their father had given them twelve packets of rice, but when they opened them they found out that eleven of them were filled with sand and only one had rice in it.
They walked into the forest deeper and deeper until they arrived at the Kingdom of Giants called Yaksha Kingdom. There lived a powerful ogress named Santra.
When Santra saw those girls, she transformed herself into a beautiful young queen and adopted the twelve girls as her daughters. For many years she treated them as her own daughters and under her care the twelve girls grew up into beautiful young women.
One day, while Santra was away hunting, the twelve sisters met an old man who told them that Santra was not a human, but an ogress who liked to eat young women. Terrified, the sisters fled from the kingdom and wandered for days until they arrived at a clear river. They decided to take a bath to refresh themselves.
That was when the local king saw the twelve ladies playing in the water and fell in love with them. So, he brought them back to his palace and married the twelve sisters.
Back in the Kingdom of Giants, Santra was enraged by their betrayal. She decided to take her revenge on them.
How? She turned herself into an enchanting woman and went to meet the King. The King was spell-bounded by Santra and married her too. He doted her and promoted her to the rank of the first queen.
It was time to serve up the real essence of revenge. Santra feigned sickness and told the King that the cause of her disease was the ill-treatment of the other twelve wives. The only way to heal her was a medicine distilled from the eyes of the Twelve Sisters and the King believed her.
Under his orders, eleven sisters had both of their eyes gouged out, while the youngest one had only one eye removed. The twelve sisters were banished to a deep dark cave with no way out. The King also instructed his servants to not bring any food to them in any way.
All the while, the twelve sisters were already pregnant.
The good news was they all gave birth to their child.
The bad news, however, was the ending of the newborn babies. The sisters killed their babies and consumed them because the King had not provided food.
The only baby that survived was the youngest sister's baby boy. She lied to her sisters, saying the baby died at birth. She secretly took care of the child and named him Rothasen.
When he was older, Rothasen found a secret passage out of the cave. He found a magic club that could kill Santra and defeated her.
The story ended with Rothasen who saved his mother and aunts from the cave.
3. Lilit Phra Lo (ลิลิตพระลอ)
This is a tale of a deadly triangle love.
Song and Suang were two cities with royal rulers. When Suang attacked Song, the king of Song was killed, but the city was defended. The son who succeeded had two daughters, Phuean and Phaeng.
When the king of Suang died, he was succeeded by his son, Phra Lo, a man of "incomparable beauty."
Princesses Phuean and Phaeng heard of Lo's beauty, they immediately fell in love with him. Their maids, Ruen and Roi arranged traders to sing about the princesses' beauty so that when Lo heard it, he would fall in love with them in return.
They sought the help of the Old Lord Tiger Spirit to bind a love spell on Lo. Despite the countermagic of Lo's mother, Lo fell in love with the princesses and set on a journey to meet them.
Along the way, he was torn between thoughts of his queen, consorts, and mother left behind, and his obsession with the princesses ahead.
Lo and the two princesses met in a pavilion in a royal park and asked for their hands in marriage.
But the former Queen of Song plotted to avenge her King who died in the battle of the two kingdoms. She secretly sent a team of killers.
During the ambush, the three lovers were killed by a poisoned arrow. The three were cremated together and memorial stupas were erected in both kingdoms in their honor. Their deaths drove a reconciliation between the two rival lands.
4. Sano Noi Ruen Ngam (โสนน้อยเรือนงาม)
This folktale is also called The Princess Who Carried a House.
In a small hidden country called Rome Visai, lived a kind king and his queen. They had a beautiful daughter named Sanonoi.
Sanonoi was a special child. When she was born, she was holding a traditional Thai-styled wooden house. Yep.
But don't worry, her parents loved her anyway. Sanonoi grew up playing with her wooden house. She would sit with it, examining the walls and doors with her fingers, and dreaming of a future where she could live inside it.
One day, she dreamed so hard that when she opened her eyes, the house had grown before her. For the first time, she was able to look behind the outer walls of the house. When she closed her eyes and opened them again, the house had reverted back to its original size.
One day, the royal astrologer told the king that Sanonoi's fate was in danger. She had to leave the palace and go on a journey on her own to save herself. With a heavy heart, the royal couple obliged and told Sanonoi to not reveal her identity when she traveled. She could not bring her wooden house either.
Along the way, she saved a girl's life. The girl introduced herself as Kula and she offered to be Sanonoi's servant because she had nowhere else to go.
The duo traveled forward and arrived at the country of Nope Pa Rat. They overheard people talking about the prince, Vichit Chinda who had been bitten by a poisonous snake.
Sanonoi decided to save the prince. She dressed herself in a royal robe and went to the palace, saying she was a royal doctor.
She requested for curtains to be drawn around the prince's bed so no one would see them. She also asked for a bathtub.
The princess took out a potion and poured it over the prince’s wounds. The poison left his body, burning bright and turning into steam. The steam quickly filled the space between the seven curtains, and Sanonoi sweated and coughed as the poison surrounded her.
She pulled off her clothes and headed for the bathtub to wash off the poison before she was infected.
Meanwhile, Kula had been watching from a distance. She climbed under the curtains, stole Sanonoi's clothes, and impersonated her.
Soon, the prince woke up and saw Kula standing by his bed. She told him that she had been the one who saved him.
When Sanonoi came back from her bath, she was stunned to find Kula in her clothes. When she tried to explain, Kula shunned her and told the prince that Sanonoi was her servant.
That was the start of Sanonoi's life being Kula's servant. However, it did not take too long for the prince to notice something wrong. Kula lacked the poise and manners of a princess.
During his voyage, the prince found out that Sanonoi was the real princess and helped her retrieve her wooden house from her parents.
The prince suggested sending Kula away but Sanonoi refused, wanting to give the girl a chance to 'find her own path'.
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