Would you believe five years alreday?

Posted on 31 October 2010 by christao408

After more than a year of planning, my move to Bangkok occurred the morning of Sunday, October 30, 2005. I departed from New York, spending my final two nights in America there. As with most of my trips, visiting friends and eating food were the main pastimes. Saturday evening was a 5-course tasting menu at Blue Hill just off Washington Square. The fantastic menu and wine pairings were a perfect goodbye gift from the land of my birth.

Thankfully, Daylight Saving Time ended at 2:00 Sunday morning, giving me an extra hour’s sleep before having to head out to the airport. The friend with whom I was staying flagged a taxi while I pulled off a minor logistics miracle and got my three large/heavy suitcases, one heavy trolley bag, and fully-stuffed backpack down three flights of stairs and through the front entry doors.

A few hours later, I was situated in seat 44D aboard a THAI Airways A340-500 as we rolled down the runway for a more than seventeen hour flight to the capital of Thailand. Since the flight crossed the International Date Line, it arrived on October 31 at 4:20 pm. Exactly five years and fifteen minutes ago. My, how time flies when you’re having fun!

If you’re curious to read all the details of that flight, which has since been discontinued, check out my trip report here on airliners.net. An interesting bit of trivia, that picture above is of the actual flight I was on that day. Through sheer coincidence, a member of airliners.net was taking pictures at JFK airport that morning and shot my flight. After reading my trip report, he emailed the pictures to me.

The Flooding of Amphawa

Posted on 20 October 2010 by christao408

While some guests were in town, we took a trip to Amphawa, a town in Thailand’s smallest province, Samut Songkhram, to visit the weekend evening floating market that is there. We arrived late afternoon and had no trouble hiring a long-tail boat and heading out on a tour of the khlongs, or canals, of the province.

For those of you who have never been, here is a three-minute video with commentary to give you a sense of what such a boat ride is like.

Above, a flower vendor about to set out for the market.

One of the buildings at Wat (temple) Chulamanee. This building, interestingly enough, was not the main Buddha image hall. Instead, it was a recently built building that houses the remains of the temple’s former head monk, who was apparently highly revered.

Inside the building there is an altar like display, a wax effigy of the monk, and his mummified body in a glass coffin. Uncommon as in Buddhism bodies are normally cremated, but I’ve seen this a few times before.

Wat Bang Khae Noi, another temple on the western shore of the Mae Khlong River. This one has beautiful teak carvings on the interior walls depicting the stories of the Buddha’s previous lives.

A new, more modern arrangement of statues at the temple, overlooking the river. The kneeling figures are not Buddhas but are disciples, praying to the Buddha image in the center. On the right is the depiction of a Buddhist angel. This display wasn’t here last time I was at this temple a year or so ago.

Bruce and Howie enjoying their ride along the river.

Sunset along the Mae Khlong River. (Note that this is not the same as the Ma Kong River, which runs between Thailand and Laos and Thailand and Cambodia.

The flooding in Samut Songkhram province has been very severe. They had just experienced three days of heavy storms and the water level was very high. To get an idea of just how high, notice that in the picture above, the customers at the floating food stalls are sitting on benches that go down one or two steps. Compare that to the picture below, taken in July, when there were at least ten or twelve steps above the water, consistent with where I’ve seen it on all my previous visits.

Misuse and Abuse of Language

Posted on 2 August 2010 by christao408

Even as a native speaker, I recognize what a messed-up langauge English is. Because of that, I have a lot of sympathy for non-native speakers. When I really need a laugh, I’ll stop by Engrish.com to see some of the ways in which the English language has suffered at the hands of non-native speakers, particularly in Japan and China. One lesson I draw from all this, though, is that one shouldn’t use a language if you don’t really know what you’re doing.

This gets me to wondering about people who cross the line from innocent mistakes – of course a non-native might easily write “corn poops” instead of “corn pops” on a breakfast cereal sign – to intentionally disregarding a language, using it more for decorative purposes rather than for communicating. I’ve written before about the dangers of getting a tattoo in a language you don’t understand. What about those who choose to use language for interior design but obviously don’t understand it?

Case in point, the “pan Asian” restaurant RockSugar at the Century City mall in Los Angeles. Owned by the Cheesecake Factory chain, the entry to the restaurant is decked out with Buddha statues (which, if you really want to get to the heart of the matter, are objects of veneration, not decorative items to place by the front door) and “exotic” looking Thai script. The Thai phrases appear in odd places, vertically along some of the outside walls (note that Thai isn’t written vertically), in random phrases on their website, and in the entry vestibule, pictured below.

Wow, looks exotic, huh? Boy, I bet I’m about to get some authentic Oriental food here… maybe I can get a slice of green tea cheesecake afterwards.

Putting aside the fact that these are nonsense phrases, much like some of the entries at Engrish.com, they are also written in some absurd out-of-order combination of font sizes that makes it harder to follow in Thai than it is in the English translation, above.

I understand the fascination with other cultures and who wouldn’t want to open a restaurant featuring a mish-mash of Asian cuisines? But perhaps in doing so we could use a little bit of cultural awareness and sensitivity in the process of designing the interior of the restaurant? Is that too much to ask?

Thai Language Newspapers

Posted on 6 March 2010 by christao408

One aspect of living in Thailand that has caught my attention is comparing Thai language newspapers to the English language papers. There are some interesting differences.

For starters, there are approximately ten daily Thai language newspapers and two English language papers here in Krungthep. Bear in mind that the population of the greater metropolitan area is between six and ten million. The lower number represents the officially registered population, but the higher number represents the many laborers who come in from the countryside but never re-register their address from their home province.

It amazes me that there are so many newspapers here. Now, they aren’t all newspapers in the way you might define a newspaper if you are from the US or Canada. Some are more political, some focus mostly on sports, others are mostly tabloids. But they are all daily news publications.

The English language papers – the Bangkok Post and The Nation – looks and feel much more like a traditional Western paper: news section, sports section, business section, and lifestyle section. One could argue about the quality of their reporting, but that’s for another entry.

The Thai language papers, even the ones that profess to be serious news outlets, are not shy about using shocking, barely redacted images on their front pages.

Almost every day there is a scene from an accident, a murder, a bomb attack in the South, etc. The bodies are pixelated in an attempt to protect the sensitivities of the readers, but they don’t try very hard.

These two examples are pretty tame. The worst image I’ve ever seen was in the case when a young man rather stupidly climbed a pole supporting high-tension power lines. He was electrocuted and his charred body was caught up in the lines. The image on the front page of one paper showed the unmistakable image of a charred body, twisted up in the power lines. Gory.

I guess you could make the argument that showing more graphic images keeps people from living in the illusion of a sanitized world, free of death, violence, and ugliness. However, I’m not sure I need to see such graphic sights over my breakfast to help me fully apprecaite the world. Thoughts?

Then Why the *#%! Did You Decide to Learn It?

Posted on 27 February 2010 by christao408

Thursday afternoon I was chatting with Khruu Kitiya (“Khruu” = “Teacher”), my Thai tutor, and she told me about her other job. While she has a few private students like me, her primary job is working at one of the ubiquitous Thai language schools here in Krungthep. As Khruu Kitiya explained, her Level 3 class, the one in which writing and reading Thai is first introduced, has been giving her trouble. Of the six students from six different countries, one of them is proving to be difficult.

It seems that there is always at least one in every class. He (almost always, it is a “he”) asks too many questions, leads the conversation down rabbit trails, and is always demanding the teacher justify why the language is the way it is. As near as I can tell from my own experience, it is the analytical types (yes, you engineers!) who seem to have the most trouble just letting go and accepting that there are some things in this world – and particularly some things in languages – that just don’t have a rational explanation. They are called the exceptions to the rules.

In this case, Khruu Kitiya’s one student spent a half-hour debating with her during class about why the Thai government should just march right in (between coups) and fix all the problems with the language. Those unarticulated consonants? Get rid of them! Those confusing spellings that come from Sanskrit? Change them! He wanted to know why, if the language had these “problems,” someone didn’t fix them.

Khruu Kitiya, with extraordinary patience that is characteristic of the Thais, tried to explain that even if the government wanted to change the language, they couldn’t. The language is a deep part of the Thai people’s culture and it is the way it is because it is a reflection of the many cultures and people who eventually became a part of the country. (In fact, as a historical side note, the Thai government has tried to change the language before under the military leader Field Marshal Pibulsonggram during the World War II era. The changes did not stick.)

The student used the analogy of an old sofa. If you had an old sofa in your house and you knew it no longer was useful, why wouldn’t you just through it out? Needless to say, Khruu Kitiya was not won over by that analogy.

What I don’t understand is why someone would come to a country and choose to study the language if he or she was not prepared to accept it on its own terms. Why would someone be so arrogant as to think that his or her perspective on what was “right” or “wrong” for another language was superior to the way the language already is?

While Khruu Kitiya wanted to remain non-confrontational, I encouraged her to ask the student next time – in a friendly and non-confrontational way – whether in his country (Italy) it is considered polite to go into someone else’s house and criticize their furniture. She could explain that in Thailand, one doesn’t go into a house as a guest and then suggest the sofa be thrown out.

Anyhow, this is the type of thing that keeps me from hanging out with many expats. Whether it be the language or a dozen other things, there are many people who seem to lack any understanding of how to appreciate the culture they have chosen to live in.

A Deep Conversation

Posted on 30 December 2009 by christao408

Christmas Day I managed to have a muscle spasm in my lower right back. I wasn’t lifting, bending, stretching or doing anything at the time. The muscle just had an unexplained spasm. The following day I went to the hospital and had an acupuncturist look at it. Upon review it was decided that physical therapy would be more effective than acupuncture in this case. So the following two days I came in for physical therapy.

After an ultrasound treatment (it’s a boy!) and twenty minutes of heat pad and traction, I spent an hour working with a physical therapist who stretched, pulled, and massaged my torso and taught me exercises I could do to strengthen my back muscles.

The staff seemed to really like that I spoke Thai. This therapist in particular, who spoke English quite well, fell into an easy rapport with me and we ended up having a very wide-ranging conversation, mostly in Thai, over the two days he worked on me.

The conversation was, in fact, the longest conversation I’ve had with any Thai whom I did not already know. We talked about language, life upcountry (where he went to university) versus in the big city (where he was born and raised), how Bangkok has changed in the past thirty years, and we even talked about the political situation in Thailand. Generally, Thais are very hesitant to discuss politics with strangers, but he was very candid with me, although he spoke in very veiled terms since lèse majesté laws are strictly enforced in Thailand. The long and the short of it is that he worries about changes that will inevitably come.

I walked away from our conversation with a deep sense of satisfaction. Although I’ve lived here for more than four years, I rarely have the opportunity to interact in depth with Thais whom I don’t already know, especially on any meaningful level. At the physical therapy clinic I must have been viewed as a pleasant change from the usual foreigner so was able to chat with the staff a great deal.

Interestingly, upon learning that I was married to a Thai – and being only slightly shocked that that Thai is a man – I was asked what seems to be a litmus test question: “Do you like Pattaya?” Pattaya, a seaside resort two hours southeast of Bangkok, has a reputation for trashiness particularly with regards to sex for sale and, less so these days, child prostitution. I answered that I had been to Pattaya only once, for just a few hours on an errand, and had found it very distasteful. That seemed to be the right answer.

Saab Bor Hok – the Sixth Grade Test

Posted on 29 August 2009 by christao408

Settling back into the routine here in Krungthep, I’m reminded why I carry my camera with me most everywhere I go. There is always something interesting to see. On Wednesday I had to run some errands. I drove to the Ministry of Labor to retrieve my work permit book, the address of which I had modified to reflect the “annex” unit we bought next door to our condo. Then I continued to the post office to mail wedding thank-you cards. Next I headed to UOB Bank to drop off some paperwork. Finally, I stopped at Emporium mall to have some pho at Little Hanoi restaurant.

While sitting in traffic on Sukhumvit Road, I noticed something odd about the cement truck in front of me. Dangling between the rear wheels was a dirty pink stuffed animal, akin to an Ugly Doll but probably not a branded one. I’ve seen this before. In fact, about a year ago I was noticing this on cars and trucks of all types here in Krungthep. To this day, though, nobody with whom I’ve spoken has an explanation. Why would you tie a stuffed animal at the back of your vehicle?

From the carpark at UOB Bank (the Sukhumvit 25 branch), I snapped this picture of an unfinished hotel. This is supposed to become a Crowne Plaza property at the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 27 but the developer halted construction about six months ago, ostensibly in response to the lousy tourism market. It is very well-located, just a few blocks from the Asoke/Sukhumvit junction and the Skytrain and Subway stations there. to the right of the picture you can see the Windsor Suites hotel, managed by our friend Ben. Very nice hotel and also well-located. If you’re looking for a place to stay in Krungthep, I recommend it.

Tawn was very inspired by our trip to New York, taking careful notes on the styles and looks he saw on Manhattan’s busy streets. Above is one of his work outfits that he put together as a result of his inspiration. What do you think?

Speaking of New York, I returned from my 24-day trip to the US only to discover that a Dunkin Donuts kiosk has opened underneath the escalator connection from the Asoke Skytrain station to the Sukhumvit Subway station. See, the Big Mango is just like the Big Apple!

Since my return, I’ve resumed my twice-weekly classes with my Thai tutor, Khruu Kitiya. For the past two and a half years, we’ve been meeting at the same place, a small coffee shop and restaurant called Bitter Brown, also close to the Asoke/Sukhumvit junction. They make cute latte art, like the flowers above. After having been gone for nearly a month, the owner was a bit shocked to see me again. “We thought you must have graduated!” he said, upon seeing me.

No, I haven’t graduated. Although, Khruu Kitiya is suggesting it might be a good idea for me to take the government administered “Saab Bor Hok”, or Sixth Grade Examination. While it isn’t a requirement for me, this examination represents the level of linguistic skills the government expects for certain types of visa holders such as missionaries or those applying for permanent residency. The test, which lasts about five hours, has four parts:

Dictation of questions and multiple-choice answers, in which you have to indicate the correct answer on an exam sheet.
Reading of questions and multiple-choice answers, in which you have to indicate the correct answer on an exam sheet.
A writing section composed of two parts: Dictation of paragraphs which you have to correctly write on the exam sheet, and then the composing of a short essay based on a question or subject given during the exam.
An oral section in which you have to engage in a ten-minute conversation with an evaluator.

Khruu Kitiya’s assessment, with which I concur, is that the first two parts would be very easy for me, the writing section would be challenging (the essay would be harder for me than the dictation), and the oral section would be a killer. This is because the one thing I don’t spend much time doing is actually speaking with Thais, since I work from home and my work is in English. As she has suggested before, Tawn and I should probably start using Thai as the spoken language at home.

Contrast this with Jon, a 19-year old Canadian with whom we had dinner Thursday night. Jon first contacted me through this blog more than a year and a half ago, when he was on a one-year Rotary Club exchange program here in Bangkok. He finished that program and returned to complete his senior year in Edmonton, with the plan of returning to Bangkok after he has his university degree.

Jon spent most of his year here immersed with Thais – Thai students, Thai friends, living with a Thai family. Then on this current two-month trip, the circumstances have been the same: all Thai, all the time. Needless to say, his spoken Thai is way beyond mine and I was humbled by the ease with which he and Tawn were able to converse. Clearly, there is still some work for me to do!

The good news is, the “Saab Bor Hok” isn’t until the end of November, so I have time to prepare for it as well as time to decide whether or not I even want to take it at this time.

View from my balcony on Friday late afternoon. We’re in rainy season and there were some spectacular storms this week. The best part about it, in my opinion, is the way these awesome (and I mean that in the original sense of the word) clouds form: huge, complicated things that build into dark, angry towers. They are amazing to watch.

Lots of cooking to update you on in the next entry.

Ancient Coffee

Posted on 16 July 2009 by christao408

I’m a coffee drinker, an addiction that I purposefully nurtured in university. No kidding. There was a cafe across the plaza from the movie theatre I was managing, back in the day when Starbucks were few and far between and espresso was still eyed with a little suspicion by drinkers of a regular cup of joe as a fou-fou drink.

I had never been a coffee drinker but always enjoyed the smell. My earliest coffee memory was when I was about five years old. I was visiting my paternal grandparents back in Kansas City and my grandfather and I got up early one morning to drive the two hours down to Cole Camp, Missouri, to visit my great-grandmothers. As was their morning habit, my grandparents had a percolator going, coffee bubbling up into the glass handle on top of the lid and the aroma filling the house.

My grandfather filled an old red plaid Thermos with the black coffee and we set out down the highway. Somewhere along the way, he asked me to pour him a cup of coffee while he was driving. I made a comment like, “Smells good!” and so he offered to let me taste it. All I can remember is that it was as strong as iron and as hot as sin, so hot that I actually burned my tongue and had no taste of sweet for several days.

Needless to say, I didn’t have coffee again for a long, long time.

Some fifteen years later, a few years after my grandfather’s death from cancer, I started nursing a coffee habit. Recognizing that espresso drinks were becoming more common, I decided to build up a taste for espresso. I started with vanilla mochas with whipped cream, a drink that leaves unmasked only the slightest hint of coffee flavor.

Then, methodically, I worked my way to less adulterated beverages: Eventually the mocha went away, leaving me with vanilla lattes. Then the vanilla went away, replaced with lots of sugar. Then I cut back on the sugar until I could enjoy my latte unsweetened. To this day, nearly twenty years after starting the process, I rarely drink my coffee black and only take my espresso straight if it is really tasty. Otherwise, at least a little sugar has to cut it.

Throughout Southeast Asia, sweet and strong coffees are common. There’s the white coffee of Malaysia, the Vietnamese coffee – slow drip espresso served with sweetened condensed milk, and there’s caffe boran – literally, “ancient coffee” – here in Thailand.

Caffe boran is the coffee sold by street vendors (well, the ones who don’t use Nescafe, which is something of a national habit) and it involves very strong but not terribly good quality coffee which is steeped for an hour in a pantyhose-like sleeve. This sludge is then poured over ice with a large dollop of sweetened condensed milk and then some evaporated milk tops it off for richness.

Needless to say, despite its cheap price (10 to 15 baht, about 30-40 cents), it isn’t the most refined way to get your coffee.

Nonetheless, you can now buy Ivy brand caffe boran in aseptic boxes in your local Thai supermarket! To advertise the launch of Ivy caffe boran, this display was set up at the Asoke BTS Skytrain station, showing an ancient Thai warrior (who seems dressed to do some muay thai boxing) roasting the coffee beans over the fire, while two Thai maidens (notice the fair skin) hold boxes of the coffee.

It is so wonderfully kitschy!

I haven’t bought any Ivy yet. It seems that if I’m going to buy caffe boran, I might as well support one of our neighborhood street vendors.

What’s your coffee story? (I already know Meg’s!)

Learning Thai Online

Posted on 5 May 2008 by christao408

When you live in a country for any length of time, I feel you are obligated both by good manners and cultural consideration to try and learn some of that country’s language. Even if you are just going to visit another country for more than two or three days, I still feel you are again obligated by good manners and cultural consideration to try and learn at least a few key phrases. “Please”, “Thank you”, “Excuse me”, “Hello” and “Goodbye” are good phrases with which to start.

My experience traveling is that I’ve enjoyed the places I’ve visited much more and received much friendlier, warmer interactions with locals when I’ve made some attempt to speak their language. This was true in Italy, France and even Australia. It has also held true when I lived in Hong Kong as well as now that I’m in Thailand.

Learning Thai can be intimidating for foreigners (especially those from Western countries), both because of the non-Roman script as well as the tonal nature of the language. There are no shortage of tools to help people learn Thai. If you are in the country, you have many schools as well as private tutors available. These can be pretty effective resources, as I’ve shown.

Outside of Thailand, there are books, CDs, and several websites to use. These are less effective, as nearly everyone who has used them can testify. Over the past year, my friend Stuart has been designing a website that takes a very different and, in my opinion, much more effective approach to teaching Thai. The website, ITS4Thai.com, has been running for a few weeks now and is getting a lot of traffic from around the world.

Not to make this sound like an advertisement, but there are a few things that I think are really effective about the website:

Its highly interactive website uses a variety of games and activities to engage the learner. As a professional trainer, I know that different people learn in different ways. Some are visual learners, some are aural learners, some are tactile learners, etc. ITS4Thai incorporates all those learning styles into the lessons. Plus each lesson is just a “bite” of learning – only about ten vocabulary words and three or four sentence patterns. By the time you’ve done the various activities, you’ll find it easy to remember because it is an easy to digest portion.

The format provides a lot of flexibility and real-life applicability. You can conduct the lessons in whatever order makes the most sense for you. It is easy to track your progress and choose the direction you want to take. If you are going to be here on holiday, then choose the lessons that are most applicable to your interests. If you are going to be here on business, make the appropriate choices. If you’re going to live here… well, you get the idea. Unlike a lot of other learning resources, that are laid out in a linear A-Z fashion, ITS4Thai gives you much more flexibility.

Finally, ITS4Thai is inexpensive. All packages are less than US$20, so you can get a lot of learning without putting down a lot of money. I truly wish that this option had been available to me in the year and a half before I moved to Thailand. Had it been, I would have arrived much better prepared.

Tawn and I have both been helping out Stuart. Tawn has been providing PR, doing his first freelance job, and I’ve been helping with the editing of more than 100 additional lesson which will build upon the 60 that are currently on the site. Needless to say, Tawn and I are both closely involved and enthusiastic about the site.

The results of the PR efforts have started to pay off. After crafting a press release in both Thai and English, Tawn pitched a story to the education reporter for the English language newspaper Daily Express. This past Friday, Stuart, Tawn and the reporter met at Starbucks Ari, above. I tagged along and wound up being used as a model in one of the photo shoots. Thankfully, those pictures were not used in the story!

Yesterday morning the story ran on page 3, a half page above the fold. This was very good coverage and a success for Tawn’s freelancing efforts. It was also, of course, a success for Stuart and ITS4Thai. In addition to other press coverage and additional PR events, I’m hoping that many people will be drawn to this resource.

And as for you, dear reader, if you are considering a trip to Thailand, I hope you’ll take a look at ITS4Thai.com. Stuart is offering ten free lessons at the site, so you can visit it, learn a little Thai, and evaluate the effectiveness of the website for yourself without having to commit any money.

The Big 0-2

Posted on 1 November 2007 by christao408

As hard as it may be to believe, yesterday marked my second anniversary here in Khrungthep. Sure enough, on the evening of October 31st, 2005 I arrived on the THAI Airways nonstop from New York to begin the next stage of my life with Tawn.

What’s transpired since then?

I’ve had the opportunity to learn to read, write and speak Thai and, I’ll say with a mix of modesty and satisfaction, I’ve had some success availing myself of that opportunity. Many days it is a struggle and there’s plenty of times when I still don’t know what the heck people are talking about, but my confidence and skill is pretty high and – the best measure – I don’t hesitate to use the Thai I know.

I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer for a year as a once-a-week English teacher in Samut Songkhram province. While I’m very sorry the opportunity has come to an end, the experience has shaped me and the lessons learned will stay for a lifetime. I also hope that the influence I’ve had on the children has been positive and that the lessons they’ve learned will shape them, too. Also, I’m very thankful that I could share this experience with so many other people including Kobfa, Ken, and Markus as well as numerous visitors including Pat, Aaron and my family.

I’ve built the beginnings of a wide network of good friends. While they are predominately gay men – admittedly, there is still room for some more diversity – they come from a variety of backgrounds, countries, cultures and walks of life. In the first half year here, Tawn and I didn’t have much to do most evenings. Nowadays there is something going on most every night, to the extent that we have to excuse ourselves from participating in many of them.

I’ve started getting to know some areas of the city from on-the-pedal experience, gaining the confidence to navigate on two wheels and to explore stretches of the city and the surrounding countryside that you cannot fully appreciate from inside a car. I’m convinced that this is one of the best ways to see the real Thailand.

Finally, and most importantly, I’ve started to gain an understanding of Thailand, Thais, Thai culture, and “Thai-ness” in general. I say this with utmost awareness that the minute I say it, I’ll wind up getting bitten in the ass, and I say it with the awareness that I have taken but a single step on a journey that I cannot complete in just one lifetime. But from time to time, I can look at things here and “get it”. Those are fleeting moments, to be sure, but are a rich reward for the time and effort spent learning to “be” here these past two years.

Here’s to another year in this extraordinary adventure.

Below: For about five minutes yesterday afternoon at 5:50, the entire sky in all directions was bathed in an ethereal pink light.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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