Buhay Bangkok

My wife was three months on the family way when we transferred to our new apartment in Bangbon district. It was part of my wife’s benefits for teaching at Sarasas Bilingual School.  

Being on the top floor has its perks. Aside from the privacy it afforded us (out of the six units, only three, including ours, were occupied when we moved in), we also enjoy a good view of Sarasas school and the other apartment buildings nestled among the vegetable patches surrounding us.

The centerpiece was the large fishpond behind our apartment. It has a small man-made island in the middle accessible only by a footbridge. Lizl said she once saw men from the large house in front of the fishpond harvest some of the fish. Most were tilapia. The whole place looked like a hacienda, the main house, with Italian influence, done in white and blue, nestled in a sprawling tract of land, with a big fishpond, surrounded by vegetable patches, coconut trees and some shrubbery. Thais describe such a place as an orchard. If they call that big piece of real estate orchard, I wonder how huge their rice fields are.

In the evenings we’d always open the windows, leaving only the screen panel to prevent mosquitoes from invading our abode. The breeze would always be gentle and cool and we found no need to turn on the aircon.

A few weeks later, something happened to mar this tranquility.

Grace, one of Lizl’s co-teachers who lives with Maricel and Lisa two units down ours, gave warning to my wife.

“Ate, I think you should start placing lots of garlic in your house,” she said on their way to work.

Lizl later told me she already knew what Grace will say next, for any Filipino woman who bears a child has a deep abiding fear of that mythical creature of the night—the aswang.

“I heard the sound of ‘tik-tik’ when I went out to the kitchen last night,” Grace told Lizl.

Really? There is a tik-tik in Thailand?

The tik-tik, according to old folks from the central Visayan provinces, especially Aklan, Antique, Ilo-ilo and most notably, Capiz, is an alter ego of the aswang. They say it’s a bird that serves as a spotter for its master, looking for prey. When someone hears the loud chirp-like sounds of ‘tik-tik-tik’ (hence the creature’s name), it is said that the aswang is still far away. But when the sounds of the bird become faint, then you can be sure the aswang is already right beside you, ready to strike.

The aswang is a well-known (and feared) mythological creature in Philippine society. Almost all ethnic groups are familiar with this nocturnal fiend, though it enjoys the most popularity (and dread) among the Visayans.

According to lore, the aswang is usually a woman who turns into a monster and preys on pregnant women. Some say the aswang can turn into a big boar or a big dog or cat, in which case, it is described as a ‘shape-shifter.’ Other versions of the story claim that the aswang raids funeral wakes and steals the corpses, substituting it—by its magic prowess—with the trunk of a banana. But the most fearsome incarnation of the aswang is the manananggal. As its root word “tanggal” (remove) suggests, this creature segments itself into half, with its upper torso sprouting bat-like wings (other versions say the woman’s hair grow long) and takes flight. The bottom half is said to be hidden among banana groves, to which the aswang returns after its foray, attaches itself to the other half and returns to its normal appearance.

Aswangs of the manananggal variety allegedly prey by landing on the roofs and deploys its tongue, described as tubular and hollow and very long, down into the bedroom of its victim, searching for bodily orifices through which it can enter the victim’s womb and suck out the coveted fetus. This is a dated modus operandi, as galvanized iron roof has long replaced the nipa as roofing material in many houses.

There are many ways to kill a manananggal, the old folk say. Like getting hold of the bottom half, sprinkling it with salt and vinegar so that the creature can not form itself whole again, until the rays of the rising sun kills it, much as vampires are said to be burned by sunlight.

Old folk tell of how aswangs could be killed with sharpened bamboo spears, or of sharp machetes called either a bolo or a talibong wiped with morning dew.

But as another old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

One effective deterrent against aswangs is the humble spice, garlic. Dracula is said to be afraid of it. So do the aswangs of the Philippines.

So the following night, I went to the nearest sari-sari store and bought 10 Baht’s worth of garlic. Together, Lizl and I broke down the heads of garlic into cloves and distributed them in strategic locations, like windows and doors.

It might seem amusing at the least, and crazy at the most, to be so affected by such superstitious beliefs. Lizl and I are not rural folks who reached only Grade 1, cowering in every corner because of some ancient lore.

But being by your lonesome in a foreign country, with a different culture, can sometimes play tricks on one’s mind. You can ask sociologists or some experts, but in one interview I conducted on a similar topic years before, I learned a new jargon: “urban stress.”

Perhaps in our case, we can paraphrase it into “expat stress?” Or how about a more Pinoy term like “OFW stress?” Whatever.

OK, so there we were, placing garlic cloves in every windowsill and doorway, laughing at the absurdity of it all. But then, there’s only one question in our mind: What if it’s true? This only motivated us more in our anti-aswang efforts.

But are there really aswangs in Thailand?

I have searched the Internet and found no reference to Thai aswangs. The nearest creature the website wikipedia can offer is a creature called a “penanggalan.”  Take note, since Tagalog belongs to the same linguistic tree as Malay, mananaggal and penaggalan share the same root word, “tanggal.”

One of my officemates, though, was the one who offered a more satisfactory answer. Pick—who prefers to be called Kate, as that was how her American friends called her during her brief stint in Florida in summer last year, finding her Thai name, Ketkanok, a bit difficult to pronounce—is an aficionado of horror films. It was from her that I first heard of the phii kraseu (pronounced PHEE-ka-SEAW), a Thai mythical creature similar to the Philippine manananggal. Upon closer study, though, the phii kraseu bears more resemblance with the Malay penanggalan.

She said the phii kraseu is a staple in Thai horror stories and films. I read from another Thailand-related online source that a phii kraseu is created when a woman who was terribly wronged dies with a curse on her lips vowing for revenge. This thirst for vengeance animates the spirit of the woman as it looks for a host. Usually, this evil spirit possesses another woman’s body.

The one big difference between the phii kraseu (and penanggalan) and the aswang is that this Thai creature can detach her head. Somehow, her disembodied head can fly into the air. But there’s another disturbing trait, for as the head of the phii kraseu removes itself from its body, it also brings with it the host’s entrails, lungs, heart, liver and other internal organs.

From Pick I learned that this creature does not necessarily hunt for human fetus, but human flesh. So, this means, for a phii kraseu out for lunch (or breakfast…or should I say dinner?) any human being is fair game. The atmosphere was getting a bit scary that early morning at the office as Jay, the research department manager, and I were listening to Kate’s stories.

That is, until she revealed that what the phii kraseu really loves to eat is…shit. Yes. Shit. You know, excrement. Yeah, you’re having a laughing fit now. I did too, when Pick said it to me the first time. And I can not help but tell her and Jay, that if the phii kraseu only wants to eat shit, why does she have to go to the trouble of detaching her head? She can just go to the nearest septic tank, open it, and have a feast. By then, Jay and Pick and I were having a good laugh at this. The phii kaseu’s one helluva janitor fish! I said. This caused them to burst out laughing even more, replacing with humor the dread creeping in a moment before.

But in the nights that followed I can not summon the same mirth we have shared in the office every time evening falls and Lizl and I would close the windows to the kitchen that overlooks the fishpond behind our apartment, and the coconut trees, and the shrubs, and the vegetable patches and the dark night outside. For in the midst of the hooting of the night birds, I would sometimes hear the ominous sound of ‘tik-tik-tik’…