A Taste of Thailand July 25, 2009

It’s Saturday night here in Thailand. I’m sitting in my apartment watching the elevators go up and down Bayoke Tower and the rainbow of colors swirling around the bar at the top of Central World. It’s only 9:30pm which means it’s at least a half hour until anything really gets going here so I thought I would crank out a last blog post before heading out into the night.

Ever since I moved here I’ve been deluged with emails from friends and readers who want to ask me what it’s like here. It’s so hard to explain. On one hand it’s like any other large congested city. I always joke that there’s no way I could ever catch Swine Flu because it can’t survive in the Bangkok air.

On another hand it’s completely bizarre. Where else in the world do you have to tell someone you’re not interested in buying his elephant any bananas? And that’s not a euphemism for something naughty. You really do get people who walk up to you with an elephant and ask you to buy said creature some food.

I’ve been studying my Thai recently. It’s a funny language because in addition to not being English it’s tonal. That means the word “mai” (or “my” for a completely Englishized version of the word) can have five different meanings depending on how you pronounce it. Thai has a high, middle, and low tone for each word. They also have a rising and falling tone which gives a word up to five possible meanings.

Before I started taking classes I had picked up individual words. I would guess that I had a vocabulary of about 50 or 75 words in Thai. In my classes I’m learning to string those words together into actual sentences. Knowing individual words is fine and all but without sentences it really inhibits your ability to engage in a conversation. The best you can do is listen and pick up on what others are talking about.

Speaking of language barriers I thought I would share a few.

You know, sometimes in English words can have a more robust meaning than the dictionary might let on. I found that pic so I’m not sure if that was in Thai magazine but it goes to show that you can’t just put everything into Google Translate and hope for the best.

Here’s a pic I snapped the other night on my way to go meet a friend who has opened a new business in Siam Square.

Here’s one I thought just looked cool because it looks like she’s got a bunch of casino chips in her hand.

I’ve been trying to find a YouTube copy of a Thai commercial that has so far proven to be my favorite but I can’t seem to find it. The set up is that a guy is sitting in his office when one of his colleagues comes by to introduce a new employee. She’s a very fit and curvaceous gal with ample breast. So ample in fact that the camera pans down to show her blouse struggling to contain them. Suddenly one of the buttons on her blouse gives loose and shoots across the room like a bullet completely shattering the man’s glasses. Without missing a beat he reaches into his drawer and pulls out another set of glasses as he continues his agape stare at the new girl. The tagline is something along the lines of “Aren’t you glad you went to Spec Savers where you get two sets of glasses for the price of one?”

Here’s another funny one also promotion an optometrist.

This one is pretty amusing as well.

Here’s a really nicely edited video someone put together showing what nightlife is like in Phuket. It really captures the spirit of what a night out on the town is like in Thailand.

And since I’ve received so many emails since my Bangkok Dangerous post asking me about coyote dancers here’s a video of exactly what they’re like. It’s so funny because they use these gals to sell everything. I was at Panthip Plaza the other day and they had coyote dancers selling HP printers. They were up on this big stage on the first level and they were gyrating while some saleswoman shouted into a loudspeaker system about the benefits of HP printers.

BTW, if you didn’t see the film and are curious as to what I was talking about in my Bangkok Dangerous post, here’s a clip from the movie that should help explain.

And from funny to sexy to sad. Here’s a Thai commercial I ran across that’s really powerful and moving. Really well done and it pulls at the heartstrings.