Troubles with Thai (language)
One thing I do not like about Thailand is the weather. It was raining in Satun—if not as hard as in Songkhla—and the sky was covered in uniform grey clouds. The weather in Thailand is like London, only stickier.
Another thing I struggle with is the language. It is tonal, like Chinese, and 7 different inflections of the same syllable can mean 7 different things—all sounding the same to my untrained ears. I never even learned to say ‘thank you’, just silently place my palms against each other and bow my head slightly as in the Indian Namaste. Because I often do it hurridly, when grabbing my bags to jump off a rolling bus say, the gesture probably comes across as semi-rude. But the Thai treat Farang a little like children and nobody appeared cross.
And then there is the &*@#$ script: of the beaten track you’re on your own. The script means that if you are lost, you are really lost.
[Let me pause there for a while. As I look up from my notebook, a Blattus cockroach the size of my hand flies across the hall. It has disappeared now—phew!]
Even with traditional-style Mandarin, I learned to recognize the off pictogram for the major towns and certain food items. Not so with Thai. And getting lost is easy: at the Southern Bus Terminal in Bangkok I went to get some food round the corner and when I returned, the whole terminal building had changed. No, really. It looked the same on the outside but inside the grey, mottled floor had been replaced with white tiling and the seating and stalls were all different.
Again, I experienced a slight reality-shift, but I was not fazed and—sure enough—there was another terminal building just like it around the other corner. Just as well that I’d had 3 hours in which to work out exactly where the bus was leaving from. Saying that, the departure destinations were at least written in roman letters, which is more than can be said for Hat Yai. To aggravate things, local buses will often drop you where the driver feels you want to be but which looks like the middle of nowhere. In such cases it helps to have a local map, but even the LP cannot include a townmap to everywhere. So, after walking around Satun for 1h, looking up at the grey sky, I thought fuck it and decided to head straight for Malaysia. Pulau Lakawi was where the Englishman had said the dolphins might be. But getting to Malaysia meant getting to the pier at Thammalung.
I was incredibly lucky to meet probably the town’s only other Farang in a noodle bar: a Dutchman with his bicycle. He gave me a tourist leaflet with a Thai regional map on it and the shop owner pointed out Thammalung—the tightly scribbled word was as long as my thumb. He showed me where to catch a Songthaew from. I had nearly completed one full circle and so it was just down the road—the bus had put me down at the right spot after all, even if it differed from the ‘bus shelter’ described in the guide book. But there were no Songthaew. I started walking, looking for one, and predictably before long a motorcycle driver called out and waved at me.
“Noooo!” I shouted back across the street, waving my hands and ointing at my backpack and my daypack. The guy drove across the road, smiled and pointed at a basket at the front of his bike. I couldn’t very well say no—I’ve seen children stand in those baskets—so I deposited my daypack and asked :”How much?” He held up four fingers, quickly changing his mind and held up five. 50 Bhat, the going rate for Farang. I was out of excuses.
I have been wary of motorcycles ever since coming off John’s old bike, even though it was only at 5 mph. True, I hitched around Taroko Gorge National Park and Lanyu (Orchid Island) in Taiwan, but that was not voluntary. People stopped next to me and so I had to get on or loss of face would be involved. It is also true that they never crashed, but that did little to assuage my fear. By the time I disembarked, after an entirely smooth ride, my arms, legs and knees were shaking to the mirth of the guys on the jetty.
The ferry proved to be an enclosed vessel, no dolphins would be seen, but through a tiny strip in the coated windows, I could make out the string of islands like emerald pearls on the Andaman Sea.
The two monitors in the front were showing a movie so violent that it nearly caused me psychological trauma. It kept me from learning my Bahasa numbers: Sato, duo, tiga, empak, lima, enam, tuju, delapan, sembilan…
Tags: SE Asia, Tag Index
Denni