Today, Monday, I was invited to take a trip out to the school in Bangkhonthii for a special event that they were having. A senior monk was coming to the school to instruct the students on the Dharma, or teachings of Buddhism.
The ajarn yai (Principal) thought this would be very interesting for me and told me I should come out to see it. I told her that I would make a point of being there. The last time we spoke about it was two weeks ago, as she wasn’t there last week when I was teaching.
Last night as I was going to bed, I had my alarm set early so I could drive down to Bangkhonthii. But I was feeling like the amount of work on my plate was too much to justify being down there twice this week. When I went to bed, I made a note that I’d send ajarn yai a text message in the morning letting her know I wouldn’t make it.
Of course, come this morning I forgot about sending the text message. Actually, honestly, I did remember but chose not to send it at 7:00. By the time I remembered again, about 8:30, I figured that school was already getting underway so it was too late to bother sending the message. At the back of my head, something told me that I probably should go ahead and send it, but I dismissed that voice.
About 10:30 I received a call from ajarn yai, wondering where I was. If I understood her correctly, and perhaps I didn’t as her English is about as good as my Thai, but they had been waiting for me! Yikes!
I apologized and said I would not be making it because of the work I had and assured her I would be there to teach on Wednesday. Her response was a very Thai, “oh, mai pen rai” (“not a problem”) but it didn’t sound like that was exactly what she was thinking.
So now I feel bad that I didn’t let her know if advance. Hopefully they weren’t literally waiting for me… that would do wonders to create a bad impression. We’ll see on Wednesday. Perhaps Emily Post has a suggestion for how I should handle the situation now? Flowers? Cookies?
christao408 
Tawn will probably have an idea how to smooth this one over. But this is like one major cultural difference between me and America that I’ve yet to get use to: Americans don’t realize that a firm plan has been made unless it’s been confirmed with specifics. For example, if I say to some guy, “let’s go the gym on Friday” and he agrees, but subsequently changes his mind, he would not feel obligated to call and cancel. I believe I should be entitled to that courtesy. On the other hand, if we agree to meet “at Starbucks on Thurs at 7pm”, he’d call if he changes his mind.
Point taken. At the same time, I find an incredible number of Thais who make comments like, “we should do/go/eat (verb of your choice) …” and I think that it is meant to be a plan and it turns out to just be statement of desire, we “should” not we “will.”
Of course, in this particular situation I know I should have contacted the principal. No question about it.
One thing I found while in Hong Kong was that people would make general plans (“let’s go to the gym on Friday”) but not make specifics so that if a better offer came along, they could change their plans! Don’t know if that was specific to the different people I observed doing that, or if it is more broadly applicable to the culture.
General flakiness, I guess.