Thai Traffic and Fun Things about the Language

Recently I rented a motorbike from my co-worker Stuart. Among ex-pats a motorbike and a Thai girlfriend/boyfriend are the ultimate sign of status; if you have those then everyone takes you seriously. Today I broke up with my girlfriend, so I'm not really sure where I stand, but I'm sure I can regain my street cred quickly enough. Regardless, I still have my motorbike.

Prior to coming to Thailand, I had sort-of, kind-of ridden motorbikes, and after a rough start (I fell over within 10 seconds of driving), I've gotten pretty comfortable on them. Unfortunately, the difficulty in driving comes less from driving and more from the traffic. To be frank, there are no traffic laws in Thailand that I'm aware of. Remember the oft-quoted line from Pirates of the Caribbean, "They're not so much rules as guidelines"? Yeah, that can be applied to Thai land. Because of the English influence, you drive on the left side of the road...except when you feel like driving on the right side. People generally respect stoplights, but there aren't very many of them. There are several major intersections where they have traffic lights, but they are never turned on. As far as I can tell, at these it's simply go when you feel like it. At these I just follow the "safety in numbers" axiom and wait for someone else to go first and ride beside them. Also: to my understanding, there aren't speed limits. So yeah, that's fun.

If there's a benefit to all this stupidity, it's that the Thai's understand the traffic laws as well as I do. What separates me from them is that they're just a lot braver (read that: insane). Thai's, especially the ones on motorbikes, are absolutely fearless. Every culture has its own mental exercise that they like to ponder when they're bored. For example, Germans look at a car and wonder, "How many people can I fit in there?" Thai's see a small space and must think, "I wonder if I can fit a motorbike through there?" Lord knows, they certainly try to squeeze them anywhere and everywhere they can. Their other mental exercise is, "How much can I fit onto a motorbike?" It's quite common to see a whole family of 4 squeezed onto one motorbike...with their shopping bags (apparently, Rob and Oanagh saw one that had their dog with them as well).

Pa Sa Thai: Esoteric

As I've mentioned earlier, I've been studying Thai at night. To say the least, Thai's a funny language. I've mentioned that it's tonal, which makes it damn near impossible for non-Thai's. Essentially, every word has up to five different meanings based on the tones (every word in Thai is one syllable). I can hear tones fairly decently, but I can't really speak them. This is unfortunate because a lot of Thai's are mentally lazy and don't bother trying to figure out what you're saying. For instance, on Saturday Rob, Neil, and I went to this mall Future Park (about halfway between Ayutthaya and Bangkok) to see Avatar. Afterwards, we tried to find a minibus back to Ayutthaya. I asked a Thai, "Minibus Ayutthaya yu tii-nay khab?" ("Where is the Ayutthaya minibus?") She understood everything but Ayutthaya, so she disappeared and came back with someone else. I repeated myself and after scratching his head for 10 seconds, he said, "OH! AyutthaYA!" and pointed to the minibus.

So, I realize my pronunciation wasn't perfect, but to be fair to me, everything was right except for the second syllable of "Ayutthaya." This might have changed the meaning to rhino or something, but the first woman should have been able to figure it out contextually. I mean, three phrang are probably asking for a minibus to Ayutthaya and not your mother's spoon. However, rather than work that out she just grabbed someone else. This especially irritates me because we were really spoiled in Chiang Mai. No matter how badly we butchered Thai, they always understood us in Chiang Mai.

Some other intricacies of the Thai language:

• There's no actual word(s) for "yes" or "no." Khrab can sometimes function as "yes." Chai ("It is") is often used as "yes," but there's no actual word for it. Instead if someone asks you if you are hungry, Kun Hiu Ma Khab?, you reply Hiu ("Hungry").
• I mentioned it earlier, but in Thai things are often defined by what they are not. Ma Sa bay dee ("sick") translates to "not well." Mai Khab ("no," kind of) translates to "not yes." The full name of Bangkok takes about a minute-and-a-half for a Thai to say (no joke). Our theory is that it translates to something like, "The city in Thailand that is not Patthaya, not Pai, not Chiang Mai, not Phuket, not that city in the South, etc."
• One of the highlights of Thai is that it is written exactly how it sounds. This makes it very beneficial to learn to read Thai. So far, I can read about 15 characters (there are 44 total). Hopefully this will help with the tones.
• Thai's have added tones to many words that they've borrowed from English. Ironically enough, it can be quite frustrating to use English words. Sometimes I'll get a mocha in the mornings. Everytime I say, ao mocha, the cashier shouts back at me, "MochAAA!" Ok, listen for a minute, my country is the home of Starbucks; I'm pretty sure I know how to say mocha, thank you very much.
• One of the biggest insults in Thai is to call someone kwaai (like "Qui" in "Quiet"), which means buffalo. This means that you are stupid like a buffalo. I have a group of boys in my 4/1 who are obsessed with saying "buffaloes." Right now we're working on environmental slogans. They came up with two gems: 1) "Wear one pair of underwear per 2 days" and 2) "Use less vehicles, use more buffaloes." This is the kind of creativity that I love. One day, I'm going to bring the Bob Marley song "Buffalo Soldier" in and play it for them. It will blow their minds.
• Ko Tot ("Please," "Excuse me," and "I'm sorry") is kind of similar to Ko Toi ("lady-boy"). I think I accidentally called about 50 people lady-boy during my first three weeks in Thailand.
• Pronouns are dropped all the time in Thai. This never makes things confusing (/sarcasm).
• Almost all Thai's giggle incessantly whenever you try to speak Thai. Most of the time I don't really mind, but sometimes when I'm in a foul mood I want to laugh in their face when they try to speak English.

By the way, I feel stupid for not having done this earlier, but two of the guys that were in my TESOL class have a blog that is insanely good. One of them is photographer/filmmaker so he has lots of legit pictures of Thailand (lord knows, I never post any). Check it out. A particular good entry is on the various teaching certifications, which I'm almost afraid to link because it really puts my epic 3 posts on teaching to shame. Then I realized I lost my dignity a long time ago; here it is.