Friday, June 20, 2003:

I’ve been driving the motorbike quite a bit lately, a small, new Suzuki Smash, maybe 110 cc. Driving in Thailand is like being in a living videogame. I feel like I’ve won a round each time I make it to a destination in one piece. Obstacles come from everywhere and there doesn’t really appear to be strict rules, like, sure, there are one-way streets, but as long as you only go one way, it doesn’t matter which direction you go. People, dogs, chickens, goats, potholes, construction trenches, collapsed sewer pits, cars, trucks and motorbikes can appear from anywhere- and often do! Driving on the left side of the road doesn’t help, especially at in-tersections and, oh my God, at traffic circles. There are three main north-south roads in Pattaya, Beach Rd, 2nd Rd. and 3rd Rd., and two main east-west roads, Pattayatai and Central Rd. The north-south routes are mostly, technically, one-way streets, but, it seems that, if you only want to go a little bit, like a block or so, in the wrong direction, it’s OK, as long as you stay to the left and yield to almost everything. Central Road is 2-way, but they are re-paving one side, so the concrete is torn up and only one side is open. But, does that stop anybody? Nah- motorbikes drive on the torn up section and they drive the wrong way on the good side. I’ve got to put the video camera on the front of the bike and record a drive. Ba-sically, traffic goes round and round in a couple of large, intersecting circles. You can tell when you’ve been sitting in a Pattaya beer bar too long when you see the same baht bus go by 2-3 times!

Food is another crazy journey. We shop at either Foodland, a “big” modern supermarket or get things at one of the literally thousands of small markets and shops that line every street, alley and empty lot. I try to avoid farang food- pheng maak (expensive too much). I bought 7 oz of coffee today and it cost $9.25 USD, more than $20/pound. Cheese, cookies, peanut butter, bread, butter, western style meats are all way out of line. However, chicken cutlet can be had for about 75 cents/pound and a whole sa-pha-rot (pineapple) is only 50 cents- not per pound, but for the whole thing! Fon is an excellent cook. We eat fish and ei-ther chicken or shrimp at every meal (including breakfast). I actually own an electric rice cooker now- just throw in rice and water, flip the switch and it does everything automati-cally. We eat rice constantly. Basically, every meal is a plate of rice and several plates/bowls of something else. You just spoon a little bit at a time over your rice and eat it, using a fork to push the food onto your spoon. Most of the vegetables and fruits are unrecognizable, even the ones you know. Oranges are small green things that look like large limes, except they are incredibly expensive. Eggplants are small things, about the size of ping-pong balls. We seem to eat a lot of morning glories. Much of the food is literally inedible, like large chunks of bamboo, lemongrass stalks, ginger and other tough plant parts that end up in eve-rything. You know you’ve settled into Thai food when your poop looks like the same sticks and twigs that you had for dinner the night before. On the streets, food is available 24 hours/day, with an incredible variety at low prices. We’ll often have a complete, multi-course aa-haan yen (dinner, literally “food night”, versus aa-haan chao, “food morning”), including shrimp and chicken, for under $3 for two!

I know 36 of the 44 Thai consonants now and about 10 of the 20 or so Thai vowels. Some of what follows may be incorrect, but it is my best take on the Thai language so far. Weird lan-guage: some letters actually change the way they look, depending on where they occur in the word- in the middle or at the end. For instance, the vowel for the sound “oh” (sara o), when in the middle of a word, is COMPLETELY DROPPED!!! You just “know” it’s supposed to be there! To complicate matters, there are no breaks between the words in a Thai sentence. A word can only end with one of 8 specific consonants, but these same consonants can also ap-pear at the beginning or in the middle of a word, so that is not really helpful. Also, vowels may be written before, after, ABOVE or BELOW a consonant or in any combination of these! However, as I go through the ABC’s with Fon, I realize how dastardly our English alphabet is. Now, you might think that Thai is difficult, given that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 letters, compared to only 26 in English. BUT… there are both upper and lower case letters in English, which appear different to foreigners, and then there are block letters and script! Total of 104 characters. Plus… I use a sheet of English ABC to help Fon (I’ve got the same thing for Thai). Each letter has a word and picture with it. So, I try to tell Fon that she can say words phonetically, that the sound of the letter is the sound in the word. OK: “A” is “ant”, but then “B” is “bird”. The “i” doesn’t work. OK, we’ll move on C-A-T, cat. Should be K-A-T. ...! The tonal aspects of Thai are difficult. There is nothing similar in the English language that I can think of, where in Thai a word takes on a new meaning if you say it with a mid, high or low tone, or with a rising or falling tone. Same exact pronuncia-tion of the sounds, but 5 different tones. And don’t even get me started on the different fonts used everywhere. It’s hard enough to learn the little squiggles, without having to guess what the stylized fonts are. Think of the fonts used in advertising in English and you will know what I mean. As I learn more characters, I have begun to be able to read signs in Thai on stores that are written in Thai transliterated from English. I feel like I have a brain injury though, as I sound out loud: em-ee-ni-ma-ro-te, mee-ni-ma-rote, meenee-ma-rote, meeneemarote- oh, I get it: minimart!

Best hotel lie that turned into “farang must be confuse”: Ambassador Hotel, Soi 13 (?), Bangkok: After seeing my room, I return to reception. “Please change my room. The maid cleaning station next to my room makes my room very small.” “OK, sir, we give you new room” Having been fooled before, I think to ask, “King bed in new room?” “No, sir, only have king bed in room next to maid station. You want?” Me: “Last week, I stayed in room with king bed, room number 2096” Them: “OK sir, we change room to king bed” Me, thinking, but not saying, “But didn’t you just tell me …”. TIT. BTW, this is after arriving at midnight, after a 28 hour series of flights from America, and showing the clerk my PRINTED CONFIRMA-TION OF A PRE-PAID RESERVATION and being told “Reservation cancel”. By whom, I ask. “Lady”. “What lady?”. “Not know”. Me: “OK, no problem, look at the copy of my confirma-tion”. “Sorry sir, reservation cancel.” ..., I think, looking at the row of keys behind the desk and realizing that they have, at best, 20% occupancy that night. Anyway, as I stand there with my luggage containing everything I need for 3 months, I say, “Give me a room”. “OK sir, B1700” “But I have a confirmed, PRE-PAID reservation for B1200. I’ll pay you now and straighten this out later, but I only want o pay B1200”. He shows me the rack rate card, as if this adds any legitimacy to his extortion and, eyeing my luggage and my haggard face, tells me, “Up to you, sir. You want room or no?”. “OK,OK”. After paying, I see that the receipt is for 1 person and my confirmed, pre-paid reservation is for 2, for my Thai wife and I. I tell him, “I need a room for 2 people please”. “OK, sir. B200 more” so I end up paying B1900 for a room which, did I mention yet, I have a CONFIRMED, PRE-PAID RESERVATION FOR 2 FOR B1200!!!

****Caveat emptor: Latin for “Welcome to Thailand”.****

Another great Thai business decision by a farang who has been here too long: I went to The Golden Crab Apartments in Pattaya, Soi 13 (?), directly across from the Sandy Spring Hotel (“Hotel Sandy”, to the girls) to rent a place for the next three months. Nice apartments, all amenities, good pool, ½ block from the beach.. In April, I was quoted B12K/month for an up-per floor, 2 BR apartment by the Thai wife of the farang owner. Now the sot of an owner sits there and tells me B20K/month. I mention the 12K. Only for a 1-year contract, he tells me and won’t budge a satang on the price. Went back yesterday to look: only 2 of about 15 units are rented. Smart move, Chucko, during this low season, SARS-decimated tourist time. Let’s do the math, class: Which is greater- B12K/month times 3 months or B20K/month times ZERO???