More answers about Bangkok

From Barbara:
they kind of look like they're wearing the uniform required by their job. Does your new clothing for work look like that?
I know from my one Thai co-worker- they really DO feel the king ROCKS!
I'm surprised -shouldn't be, I guess- that there is a 7-11 in Bangkok. I'm glad you're in Asia while it still looks and seems very different from the USA.
Are you speaking Thai on a regular basis? Are you understood?Do you understand people speaking in Thai to you? Any clue about their written language?


The picture only shows the more formal of the yellow shirts. For class I wear a dress shirt, a (dress) skirt and flip flops. I bought a pair of fancy shoes but they still hurt my feet too much to wear them everyday. When we go to schools and when I teach at night I wear the fancy shoes that hurt my feet, otherwise I wear the flip flops. I have yet to purchase a yellow shirt.

An acceptable substitute for the dress shirt would be the yellow collared shirts in the picture or even a yellow t-shirt with the "We love the King" script on it. The boy at reception at the school wear a shirt and tie and suit pants everyday, but on Mondays he wears his yellow t-shirt with a jacket. It's like casual-"We-love-the-King" Mondays I guess.

There are 7-11s all over the place. I've been able to stand in one 7-11 and see 2 other 7-11s at the same time. McDonalds, Starbucks, it's all here. One of the girls at the Starbucks above my school asked me my name one day and now says "Sawatdee Ka, Beth!" whenever I go in. Her name is Nit. Oh yeah, everyone in Thailand has a nickname. They'll have a name like Pimasudamikareatkamnit that means something really deep and profound and then go by Nit. That's great, that's fine. But sometimes it's hard to remember if someone's name was Nit, Not, Nat, Net, Nut or a vowel in between (there are a bunch, don't kid yourself in thinking that just cause we don't have a letter for it, it doesn't exist. It does and we pronounce them all the time.) Or worse, the diphthongs (two vowels together in the same sound) - Niot, Nout, Nuet. Or, still worse, the tripthongs - Niuat (still one syllable). So yeah, it's tough to fit all those sounds into one little name. And then when I introduce myself they said, "Is that your nickname? What's your long name? What's your name mean?" And I say, "Um, this is my full name and my nickname and it doesn't mean anything, my parents just like the name." I wasn't sure if they could handle the official, "House of God" explanation. It would make my parents look a little too proud.


Are you speaking Thai on a regular basis? Are you understood?Do you understand people speaking in Thai to you? Any clue about their written language?

I try to speak Thai with a couple of people a day. My girl Nit at Starbucks (although I don't know how to say "Spinach and Cheese Puff" in Thai yet), the round pork ball vendor (see pictures), sometimes the reception boy at school and sometimes my security guard. Occasionally a taxi driver or someone to ask for directions but it's weird when they ask you to repeat what you've said in English cause they could understand you better that way.

I understand overall about 1/4 of what's said to me. The last time I was in a cab and he said something to me about going to sleep. I answered, "Yes, I'm going home and going to sleep."

As for the written language I actually like that a lot more. I learned the alphabet at the Hunter class I took so I can read alright. There are 44 letters and 32 vowels (see, I told you there can be more than 5) so I don't know them all, but I know the most common ones. Last week I wanted to order chicken and cashews and I actually read it off the menu and knew what I was saying! Gai (chicken) pad (noodles) medmamuang (cashews)! So that was really, really exciting. Usually if I can read it 1)it's just the Thai script for something I knew in English (in the pictures see Pretz and Raja Resort) or 2) I don't know what the word means. So to be able to read something and understand what it means in Thai was very exciting. It happened again with a telephone company ad (I read the Thai word for telephone) and a conditioner ad (I read the Thai words for "Your hairs likes water"). I think I've mentioned this before but another difficulty is that they only put spaces between sentences, and not between words, so itslikeyouhadtoreadeverythinglikethis. Which is really hard! I do have a dictionary with an English --> Thai (script and transliteration) and Thai script --> English and Thai transliteration --> English. So I could read a word, look up how it's said (I don't know the order of the Thai alphabet to look it up the real way yet) and find the English meaning. I did that with a sign in the subway. The English part of the sign says "To Trains" but I know "train" and I knew "to" and the Thai part didn't say either. But, I looked it up and it was saying "entrance" which I guess is a fair substitute.

So the speaking will come eventually. In the meantime, I'm having enough fun with the reading to be entertained. And there's always the security guy if I'm ever in search of a speaking partner.

Last thing, my mom responded to my last post about the love for the King

Everyone's not hostile and
angry about the government?? What's that about!!!!


They are. They love the King, but they hate the Prime Minister (not everyone, just those damn protest-loving Bangkok Liberals! Just kidding.) Huge protests everyday were messing up Bangkok traffic even more than it usually is and finally the PM decided to hold snap election, last April. He did win just over 50% but not the 80% he was expecting, so he said "fine, fine, someone else, be the PM" but then no one did anything, so he's back in but with a different name.

The protests stopped though.

That's why everyone loves the King - he doesn't do anything! I've heard that he occasionally says, "Recycle, Thailand!" (he has yet to say, "Save the elephants, Thailand!") But even when he says, "recycle" everyone says "Ok ok ok! We love the King!" but then doesn't really do it.

So that's more about Thailand.

In cheerier news, my friend Gregg is coming to Thailand for 1 week at the end of August, and we're going to attempt to squeeze my 6 week Thailand trip last time into one week. I'll meet him when he gets into Bangkok, two days after I get back from Cambodia. Then we'll go to Elephant Nature Park, down to the crazy party beach, over to the quiet, peaceful beach and then he'll go back to LA and I'll finally move to Chiang Mai for real and get a job and set up a semi-normal life.

And this morning I taught a lesson based around "Bugs and Insects Sold For Human Consumption In Thailand!" The vocabulary was ant, grasshopper, scorpion, spider, cicada, beetle, snail, cockroach, and worm.

Bon Appetite!