Do you speak English?

Posted in Uncategorized on February 5th, 2007

Anyone who has ever been to Bangkok has a story about getting lost. I have now joined that not-so-elite fraternity. I ventured off to Bangkok on Saturday to meet up with a friend at a shopping center, Siam Square. I did not have a cell phone at this time, so I just knew to meet her at the entrance at 11am. Well I got there and realized that there were about 4 different entrances. No big deal, I’ll just call her on her “mobile” and everything will be just dandy. Well, I can’t read Thai and I couldn’t read the pay phones. I was just putting money in the phone and blindly trying to make a call. This wasn’t working. I walked around the square trying to figure out a plan. My brilliant idea was to approach a herd of 12 year old girls in hopes that one may speak english and allow me to use their phone. As usual, my plan was a success and I placed my call. To my dismay my friend left her phone at home but gave her roommate deliberate instructions for me to meet her at the skytrain entrance at 12:30. Again, multiple entrances. After a half hour of wandering around I just screw it I’m going into central Bangkok. This was fine, I took a right and just started walking. I stumbled upon numerous street markets and saw downtown for the first time. You will never be hungry walking downtown. Smog+ fresh fish and meats+ heat = gross. I grew tired and felt it was time to meet up with my friends for dinner. Luckily I found a phone with english options, allowing me to actually make a call. I now had the address to my destination, all I had to do was hail a cab. Taxi drivers do not read English instructions. Now I have to find someone to translate my directions in Thai. A lovely girl (did you expect me to ask anyone other than a nice girl?) wrote me the Thai directions. I hailed another cab and got in, only to be kicked out because the numbers were still written in English. So much for numbers as a universal language. This was the first time I was getting really upset with the language barrier. I was starting to wonder how the hell I was going to get out of this mess. I slipped into a 7 11 to buy a pen so I could write down new directions my friend gave me. Here I see another nice Thai girl and ask her for assistance. Woohoo, she spoke decent english! Cheer ( all Thai have short nicknames) and her friend Poo hailed about a dozen cabs for me, but no one would take me :( Turns out it was too far away during rush hour so that is why no one would take me. They finally took me to the skytrain and made sure I knew what stop to get off at. Then they wrote down instructions in Thai so I could just give the cabbie the piece of paper. My journey that day was 7 hours, the last 3 were trying to get to the AIESEC house. This story does not seem as dramatic on paper as it was when it was happening. I’m sorry that you wasted your time reading this. Next time maybe I will write about the hip hop clubs, my fear of the ladyboys, and my future trips to Pattaya and Cambodia.

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    Thailand: Missing 25 Years After Taking Wrong Bus

    REUTERS
    Published: February 7, 2007

    Jaeyaena Beuraheng, a 76-year-old woman from Malaysia, has been reunited with her family 25 years after she got on the wrong bus, local reports said. Ms. Jaeyaena, who cannot speak, read or write Thai and speaks only Yawi, a dialect also spoken by Muslims in southern Thailand, where she was bound, ended up in Bangkok, 750 miles north. She boarded another bus, thinking she was heading south, only to end up in Chiang Mai, farther north. She eked out a living as a beggar for five years before being arrested in 1987 and put into a homeless center. She was thought to be mute, until last month when three students from her province came to work at the center and spoke her language.