Second Day ที่กรุงเทพฯ

[justben]

Hello all,

I'm Ben and had just arrived here in Thailand yesterday after 6 years of absence. I'll be mourning my 27th birthday on the 2nd of July Basically I've yet to introduce myself on this forum so it seems fitting to include it here. I'll be staying in Thailand indefinitely as I'm 3/4 retired. The plan is to go to Chiang Mai on the 4th of July and look at some condos for a 1 year lease. However at the moment I'm staying in Bangkok, just opposite the MBK. The guesthouse (Wendy House) is quite good and I can only recommend it for passers by. Spotless rooms, friendly staff etc blah blah..

I've been making Thai friends over the net since last July, though have not had much time to communicate with them during the past 6 or so months. I can credit to myself the ability to read Thai fluently, speak rather poorly (small vocab issue here) and write like a 5 year old. I must say though, displaying some knowledge of the language is very well respected by Thais and has opened up a different Thailand to me than the Tourist Thailand I'd known til now. Just an example is sitting in a taxi and passing by some scantily attended square, with a sprinkling of street vendors dotting the vicinity, where there was a pretty angry guy wearing a red shirt, barking enthusiastically into a microphone. The driver stops and looks for a moment and shortly after that I say to him: เสื้อแดงมั๊ย (red shirts?). He replies to me while maintaining his view of the square: "ครับ". He drives off and a long drawn out conversation which was, for the record totally initiated by him about the intricacies (or basics?) of Thai politics and "double standards" (his words not mine). I'll admit though I could only comprehend about 60% of his words but 100% of what he was saying since he soon sized my capacity up and was very accommodating using hand gestures to depict some of the stuff he was saying. It was fascinating and boring at the same time for different reasons (I hate politics and love learning language).

Ok, now I feel good, Thailand is "open" to me, empowered, invigorated, the hours of MSN chats and skype calls are paying dividends from day 1...?

Let's scroll forward a day.

I'd set up a meeting with a net friend to meet at The Big Swing. She'd never been there before and according to a hole in the wall/street vendor map from some website I won't mention, there were great places to get some food around there. So after a wait of over an hour due to the fact she didn't know how far it is from where she's coming from we'd finally got to meet and decided to go to get some Khao Mun Gai on Thanon Dinsaw, taeeee it was closed to we went to the next place marked on this food shack map. It was Tien Song Ped Yang (Tien Song Grilled Duck). That place was rubbish. I had the grilled duck with rice, and my friend had bamee noodles in a broth with duck. Both dishes really blew. I ordered ขาหมู (braised pork shank meat in aromatic spices, or whatever) and received some totally unknown meat in a foul tasting gravy over some rice. The menus were sticky and disgusting too. Bottom line don't go here.

However on the previous night I'd been to this area and had a a cool, hard-to-mess up meal of ส้มตำ and หมูย่าง next to the snooker place in Thanon Mahannop. As I sat down the guy sitting in the admission booth for the snooker looks at me, comes out and we started chatting in Thai (language at work here.. the joy) and pours me some เหล้าขาว (rice whisky) from his own bottle which was 3/4 finished and which was really smooth and delicious. Anyways, back to our story.

Away from the god aweful place we agree to go "to the river". We both like "the river" and both are keen on touring said magnificent vessel of flowing waters. We hopped into a taxi which took us to the Pin Glaou pier if memory serves me right, then got a river crossing ferry thingymageee @ 6 bhat per head to the other side, which according to some unknown folk on the street, will most definitely lead us to said extravegantic flowing water channel tour. Off we go and off we get. The other side is here. As expected, surely, there is no tour leaving from here, but there is a ferry taxi thingy which will take us to it. Now we know it's called Riverside. We have a name. We have power. We go. ไปๆๆๆๆๆ 15 bhat and about 15 minutes of waiting and 15 minutes of boating later, we're near Riverside. We find our way to the entrance appx 300m from the pier at which the ferry taxi thingy left us we walk through the Riverside building and embark on this restaurant/tour boat @ 150 bhat per head (no dual pricing, not including the meal price). It all seemed pretty cool at the time. Howwwwever, nearly all the seats were taken by the time we'd got on and were seated at the very last remaining table on the open air part of the boat. There was an innocent looking speaker strategically placed directly behind my head, which was very innocent looking at the time. About 20 minutes and 0% alcohol (dry day) later, off we go touring the Chao Phraya river. We'd ordered a bunch of seafood. Everyone around us is already well into their meal since they'd got on quite a bit earlier than we did. Populated almost completely by upper-middle Thais, I thought to myself "this is cool".

All of a sudden the speaker begins to bark at me, in Thai, but there were no soi dogs to be seen. A never ending cocophony depicting the sights the the left and right of us in a language I now simply can no longer comprehend even to the slightest degree, there must have been a brain damage inflicting dementia ray at the entrance. It's all waffle to me, and it's being mainlined into my สมอง hardcore.

Our food fails too arrive in its entirety and we ask a waitress how long the ride is, and her reply was that it is 2 full hours (2:20). Soon it dawns on me that what I'm feeling is probably not far off from a Ben Hur re-enactment in the Roman Military Galley. I'm trapped on this water-able vessel with a charismatic barking noise coming from directly behind me at full octane. Hold on though, it gets a little bit worse. Now, most of the people on the boat have eaten to maximum capacity and all at once as if commandeered by the Pied Piper himself, decide to get up and look around at the various landmarks which the barking speaker must be referring to in its brutal onsalught of neverending sentences and attempted comic reliefs. We're still seated, barely through half of the first 2 dishes we had. I'm sure you can surmise, this is not pleasant. I can tell you though, the seafood was very fresh and delicious. At least one thing to take comfort in. We joke about how it's so ไม่เป็นไร if I lose an ear on this tour, because I've got another.

On we row in the Galley- "Attttaaaaccck speed"- Our crab finally arrives and we eat it while trying to ignore everything else. By now I'd moved to sit next to my friend so the barking doesn't hurt as much. However now the limitations of 2 people with a language gap kick in. I forgot all Thai, the dementia ray had gotten me already at the entrance on the pier, remember? So I'm fairly incapaciated. A quiet hour goes by, but it seemed like eternity to me. This is not my sort of passtime, I explained to her, that regardless of all the mis-haps on our little journey, I seek huge rushes of adrenaline or total solitute (for my work) and not quiet times looking at water or monuments etc.

We disembarked and parted ways, not before setting a meeting tomorrow, to go to somewhere in Samutphrakan. Objective: Unknown (to me).

That sums up my second day in Bangkok. This little nightmare would probably had been fun if the timing and seating were better. I guess it was pure bad luck. Oh, and the bill at the end was 1200 bhat including the 300 bhat for the ride, tipped 60 bhat. Quite fair I think, given that we ate some premium seafood.

Til next time,

Ben

</vent>

[Sateev]

"Any comment would be superfluous."

Sorry Trink.

[lazygourmet]

"Any comment would be superfluous."

Sorry Trink.

I am missing the "Nite Owl"... from time to time!

To the OP: consider blogging...

[vont]

just curious....

in reference to poster's preamble.... learning how to read thai fluently.... before learning how to say thai....

how many of us could recognize configuration of lines as a thai word....?

how many of us could recognize certain sound as a thai word or human language....?

how many of us recalling our childhood.... learning how to recognize words.... before learning how to produce funny sound as word....? just how do we know, that particular configuration is indeed a thai word and its meaning....?

looking at my nephews and nieces running around half naked.... can they recognize squeaky lines as words before they learn how to speak the language....?

then i as myself.... did i learn how to utter funny sounds first, or did i learn how to read thai words first....?

i surely, as best as i can recall, learned to say many funny thai words first....

i am going to ask other farang around here.... which comes first for them.... reading thai or speaking funny thai.....?

the poster seemed to have uncanny linguistic ability being able to read thai before speak thai.... very unusual for me.... any way.... welcome to thailand.... agree that personal blog.... would be a more appropriate avenue....

Edited June 26, 2011 by vont

[bifftastic]

Hi justben.

I like the style of your post

It would be nice to see it as a blog, you should, in my opinion, set one up.

If you decide to do one, you can put a link to it on your profile page.

All the best,

Biff

[justben]

hi vont,

It's not to do with some special linguistic ability, but all to do with the fact it's what I'd set out to do from the very first days of my Thai learning. When we learn as children from our parents; every word is repeated hundreds of times in many many different patterns and then even depicted by hand gestures. As adults we don't have that available. So the first thing I did was learn the alphabet, learn the tone rules and then the various exceptions

Within a week or so I could already read at a slow pace. Being able to read doesn't mean being able to understand though, I can internalize the text and utter it but often with little understanding.

just curious....

in reference to poster's preamble.... learning how to read thai fluently.... before learning how to say thai....

how many of us could recognize configuration of lines as a thai word....?

how many of us could recognize certain sound as a thai word or human language....?

how many of us recalling our childhood.... learning how to recognize words.... before learning how to produce funny sound as word....? just how do we know, that particular configuration is indeed a thai word and its meaning....?

looking at my nephews and nieces running around half naked.... can they recognize squeaky lines as words before they learn how to speak the language....?

then i as myself.... did i learn how to utter funny sounds first, or did i learn how to read thai words first....?

i surely, as best as i can recall, learned to say many funny thai words first....

i am going to ask other farang around here.... which comes first for them.... reading thai or speaking funny thai.....?

the poster seemed to have uncanny linguistic ability being able to read thai before speak thai.... very unusual for me.... any way.... welcome to thailand.... agree that personal blog.... would be a more appropriate avenue....

[justben]

thanks bifftastic, I'll consider that.

Hi justben.

I like the style of your post

It would be nice to see it as a blog, you should, in my opinion, set one up.

If you decide to do one, you can put a link to it on your profile page.

All the best,

Biff

[EnhancePlus]

too long. didn't read. Blogging is a good alternative

[ashacat]

Can't believe I actually read all of that OP. 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back

[justben]

<br />Can't believe I actually read all of that OP. 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back <img src='http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/sad.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /><br />

<br /><br /><br />

agreed, i don't know why anyone would want to read that as well.

[remiss]

I thought it was interesting enough..