I’ll start by saying no, I’m not getting married, and have not ordered a Thai bride. The title is merely what I saw written on a sign in a shop window. Obviously in this case, “alien” refers to foreign nationals. But living here in Bangkok, I find myself feeling like a bona fide alien more often than not.
A motorcycle passes. The driver’s a man. Behind him sits his wife, arms clasped around his waist. Behind her perches their son, holding onto the bar behind the seat for dear life. Oh, and the daughter’s sat in her father’s lap up front. A family of four, on a regular motorbike. They stop and ask a policeman for directions. He points them on their way. I pass them by in the other direction, sat on the back of another bike. This one’s a taxi – the driver is taking me to the skytrain (overground “subway”) stop at the end of Thong Lo – a three mile journey – in return for ฿20. That’s UK £0.30, or US $0.50. None of us are wearing helmets. Nobody cares.
I jump off at the BTS station, smoke a cigarette (฿46 for a 20-pack – say £0.70 or $1.20 – I’m approximating here) and head up the escalator to catch the skytrain into the heart of Sukhumvit – tourist ghetto. I could get a taxi, but it’s the middle of the afternoon – the traffic will still be gridlocked for hours. Three years ago, the underground subway system didn’t exist. Ten years ago, the skytrain didn’t even exist. Even today the mass transit system covers only a fraction of Bangkok.
The Thai language is a tonal one, which whilst entertaining, can be more than a little frustrating:
Words are pronounced with a tone that is either low, mid, high, rising, or falling, allowing many similar words to have different meanings. Thus the sentence, “The new wood was not burnt, silk burnt,” is translated in Thai as, “Mai mai mai mai mai mai.” Correctly pronounced, this sentence would sound like this, “Mai (with high tone), mai (with low tone), mai (with falling tone), mai (with falling tone), mai (with rising tone), mai (with falling tone).” #
It’s easy to criticise or judge Thailand with an understanding of the language – it can seem incredibly primitive to us. People seem to do so with alarming regularity. The Thai phrase for “train” (as in locomotive) is “rot fi” – literally “car with fire”. The skytrain is “rot fi fa” – “car with fire in the sky”, and the subway system similarly translates as “car with fire under ground”. Yes, it sounds primitive. But the culture and background of this country is so incredibly different to ours that perhaps we will never truly understand it enough to judge.
In short, primitive or otherwise, I’ve been here for ten weeks now and am having the best time of my life.
