Is there a center of Thai-Khmer-ness?

[henrik2000]

Hello, is there a center of Thai-Khmer-ness perhaps somewhere around or in Surin? The meeting of these two cultures and languages fascinates me for personal reasons. I have been rather familiar with both cultures in their respective home grounds, but not with the Khmer-Thai Surin variety. I will be in the area with a car + Google Maps + guide books and speak enough tourist Thai and tourist Phnom Penh Khmer (not Surin Khmer) to get food or a room or to talk about the weather and the best live music pub. Not interested (that much) in historic ruins, but in everyday cultures.

Am aware that I had asked a vaguely similar question before. Any recommendations for people watching etc. welcome. Thanks!

[NeverSure]

IMHO, Kantharalak, S. of Surin/Sisaket.

Link Google Maps

[henrik2000]

Neversure, thanks for your suggestion. But are you sure?

[Toknarok]

The local language spoken in the Surin region is a dialect of Khmer known as Suai or Kuai. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuy_language

[DILLIGAD]

There is a nice history museum just outside Surin on the left as if going towards Prasat/Cambodian border. It's about 2k before you cross the Surin ring-road.

Hope that helps.

[henrik2000]

Toknarok and Dilligad, thanks for two interesting hints. Shamefully, i wasn't even aware of the Kuay dialect. I had thought it is simply "Khmer Surin" (having heard it only of Surinetes elsewhere in Thailand).

[Surin13]

Toknarok and Dilligad, thanks for two interesting hints. Shamefully, i wasn't even aware of the Kuay dialect. I had thought it is simply "Khmer Surin" (having heard it only of Surinetes elsewhere in Thailand).

Kuay isn't the same language as Khmer Surin (also called Northern Khmer).

Khmer Surin is the main Khmer language spoken in Thailand. But as you know it's not the same as Cambodian Khmer.

The main Khmer Surin area would be Prasat district in Surin. This is where they hold the big Kantrim/ kontrem (Khmer Surin music) concerts.

If you understand what they are singing about in this clip then you know if you will understand Khmer Surin.

If so tell me what the girl in the second song and I will let you know if your right. 555

www. youtube.com/watch?v=YYUKWV8RmC0

But most areas either side of highway 24 running though Buriram, Surin, and SiSaket would be strong Khmer Surin areas

What do you want to do and see in the area?

[Surin13]

You also won't have much issues getting a room and food if you speak very basic Thai.

You won't find many (any?) live music pubs around the area, there are a few Thai karaoke bars but that's about it.

Just re-reading my earlier post, you do know that Thai - Khmer people don't speak Cambodian Khmer and their culture isn't the same as Cambodian.

[MrTrip]

In my experience from my wife's village west of Kantaralak they mainly speak Laos. Some Suay is spoken by the elders but is dying out I believe.

[NeverSure]

Neversure, thanks for your suggestion. But are you sure?

I have a good Thai friend who teaches school there. She grew up there and her whole family lives there. They are definitely "Thai-Khmer" but I know the area is bigger than that.

FWIW my unscientific observation is that some of the nicest looking women in Isaan are in the greater Buriram, Sisaket, Surin area. Of course that's subjective.

[AlphMichaels]

Good friends who live in Buriram around Non Din Daeng who take me to the border markets when I'm there. Among the nicest people I've found in the world.

[SunSeek01]

My wife is from that area Non Din Daeng / Burriam. We may end up there after I finish work. Had many relationships in LOS and consider myself lucky!

[henrik2000]

Hello, thanks for all your interesting input. Btw, i just overheard some snack vendors making "Khmer sounds" like triphtongs, killer-rrrs, the works, but i wasn't able to understand a word (i would have understood parts of Cambodian Khmer). When i asked about their language, they said they're from Buriram province and speak "Khamen". They wouldn't even call it "Khamen Surin" or "Khamen Buriram" and they had never heard the word "Suay" (at least not in my uninformed pronounciation). But finally i noticed some useful words similar to Cambo-Khmer, like "la'ohr" or "s'aht" or "cheran".

I am not even sure what i want to do there. Some of the best Thai moments happened to me when i had no plan at all, just sat in a noodle shop, picked up hitch-hikers, hitched a ride myself or walked to a half-dry waterfall on a Sunday (i'm selective in this hitch-hiking business).

I am personally fascinated by areas where cultures and languages overlap and after extensive experiences in both N-Isaan and Cambodia, i felt i should at least take a look at S-Isaan, esp the Suay-speaking regions. I also thought that people with "Khmer blood" can be very special.

While i thought there are quite some similarities between Thais and Cambodians regarding food, behaviour etc. i also thought that Cambodians seemed to be decidedly more melancholic and less happy-go-lucky than Thais (very broadly speaking of course). Also the music differs. I don't know if this is genetic or caused by the social, political and historical circumstances, but might find out more soon.

I'm also fascinated by Thailand's deep south, where it blends into Malay culture (and Malaysian is so easy to speak), but won't go there very soon, i think.

[csabo]

Neversure, thanks for your suggestion. But are you sure?

I have a good Thai friend who teaches school there. She grew up there and her whole family lives there. They are definitely "Thai-Khmer" but I know the area is bigger than that.

FWIW my unscientific observation is that some of the nicest looking women in Isaan are in the greater Buriram, Sisaket, Surin area. Of course that's subjective.

I'm fairly sure he was joking...

[Surin13]

You will find that they refer to themselves and their language as Khmer not as Khmer Surin.

I am not surpised they haven't heard of Sauy, it's the same around here.

I live In the middle of Khmer Surin area near Prasat

[facthailand]

The Suay peoples ('Kui' is impolite to Suay, rather like calling South Asians 'khaek') have history dating back to the Angkor empire. One branch of the Suay are elephants keepers, the other farmers. While the people are called Suay, their language is Kui.

[SantiSuk]

In my experience from my wife's village west of Kantaralak they mainly speak Laos. Some Suay is spoken by the elders but is dying out I believe.

Every second village near me (20km north of Kantharalak) is a 'Khmen' village. I think it's the same all the way along the Lower Northeast Cambodian border. The language survives - so much so that my sister in law who is a teaching assistant at a school in one of the larger such villages speaks reasonably credible Khmen after working there for a handful of years. She's married to a Khmen guy but until she worked at the school no Khmen was spoken within the extended family home (where my wife also lived when I met her). I'm still not sure what dialect of Cambodia it is - maybe Suay? - all I know is that when I try out my Phnom Penh tourist peasantries they look at me blankly!

Although people live in segregated villages and there is a level of distrust from some local Thais towards their ex-Cambodian neighbours, at the personal level it seems to be reasonably well integrated - quite a bit of inter-marriage now and my wife has almost as many Khmen close friends as Thai. Everyone below 50 years old seems to speak Thai fluently and reserves their racial language for their own family and village. Education is levelling things out as many kids now and for the last 2 decades go to the bigger Thai-speaking Wittayas in Kantharalak and other smaller towns. Local Thais seem to know nothing about the provenance of their ex-Khmer neighbours and to my shame I've never fought through that ignorance to find out more about the historical/cultural aspects of the coexistence.

When I talk to my family and Khmen other-halves/friends about stuff like Pol Pot and genocide of Thais on Khmers during the great escapes during the war I get blank looks. Anyone would think this was ancient history rather than stuff that took place within adult lifetime.

[plachon]

The Suay peoples ('Kui' is impolite to Suay, rather like calling South Asians 'khaek') have history dating back to the Angkor empire. One branch of the Suay are elephants keepers, the other farmers. While the people are called Suay, their language is Kui.

This is incorrect, I am afraid. The people and their language, historically, are Kui or more correctly, Gui. They were named "Suay" by the Siamese colonisers, who became the dominant force in Isaan and parts of northern Cambodia and southern Lao during the early 19th century, as the Kui were not rice farmers and could not give rice or money as tribute to their overlords. So instead, they gave themselves as tribute, which in Siamese/Thai language is pronounced "Suay" and became corvee labourers in the Central Plains. They also gave themselves and their elephants to the Siamese conquerors, being masters at the art of elephant round-ups in the jungle and taming the animals for work or war. So "Suay" is a non-native name imposed on them by the dominant ethnic group and not their self-identified name. However, in recent times, history has been forgotten and gradually successive generations have come to accept the name "Suay" for the ethnic group and language.

[sbf]

I live just north of the 24 in a Khmer speaking household outside a Khmer speaking village in Sisaket. The next village east of here is Khmer speaking also, then the next village a further 3km or so is Suay. Heading west from us it is predominantly Lao speaking. We have farmland in all these villages and so get around them on a daily basis. There are some distinct differences between the Suay and Khmer villages, with one of them being the foods eaten. The Suay tend to be great foragers, and when we have a party of them helping with a harvest for instance they will go off at lunch break and come back with armfuls of foraged material to take home with them at the end of the day. In my experience although most people rub along pretty well together, some of the Khmer workers we employ will not go to farmland we have in the Suay village due to local tensions. I am not sure if this is mirrored on a wider scale through the area, but it is my local experience.

[MrTrip]

This is a fascinating topic so props to the OP.

My wife just told me that when she was growing up her dad's family spoke Laos and her mums family spoke Suay. They weren't from different villages they were from the other side of the street.

That in itself I find hard to relate to growing up with only English.

She also told me a funny tale. Recently we were in the village at my wife's parents home. They were cooking and talking all together when they suddenly slipped into Suay from Laos. My wife asked why and they said they didn't want me to understand what they were saying, something about their upcoming tractor payment that we help them with each year.

My wife then explained to them that I had a 10% chance of understanding a Thai conversation, a 1% chance of understanding a Laos conversation and absolutely impossible for me to grasp any Suay at all!

Oh how they laughed but so did I when my wife translated [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

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[Hardie]

There is a unique form of Khmer-language music in Surin called 'gantreum', better than most of the showy Thai-influenced schlock on the airwaves now, if not nearly as good as the classic Sinn Sisamouth of Ros Sereysothea of a bygone era... worth a listen...