So last year, a friend kept getting text messages from a Thai friend who was clearly using google translate with minimal success. We did find some of the messages amusing and then thought – let’s try and turn some of the stranger phrases into something creative. The result was a few silly poems.

‘and are eager to start back would inspire a raft for khabang’

Khabang.

How many nights had he thought of Khabang?

With its dewdrops of light

Hanging still by a thread

and the clouds and the stars

just a little out of reach.

To Khabang!

he’d tell them

and he’d weave long tales of

lazy days spent peacefully hanging.

Life by a thread.

They now think of Khabang

and are eager to start back.

A pencil shaving dropped by the wayside

Inspired a raft for Khabang.

So the spiders they huddled

and they sailed through the puddle

all the way

to Khabang.