Thai Lessons with Taxi Drivers
19 Aug
_Gratuitous last day in Bangkok post with unnecessary videos and pictures_
Geng, the taxi driver who doesn’t just take me to Lad Prao Road, through basic Thai 202 (and who eventually gives me a Thai name — Narak — which is simply embarrassing.)
I can count perfectly up to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine in Thai, but keep stumbling over _eight_ and _seven_. In Thai, seven is _jed_ and eight is _bpairt_, which sounds very close to the Hokkien/Teochew _jit_ and _bpoyht_ — my mother tongue — so I can’t stop myself from saying them as such.
*With a friend at a girls’ bar*
Someone: “Hurry up with your drink, I want to go look for _chocolate_.”
Me: “Chocolate? Here? In a bar?”
Someone: “Chocolate, as in… instant gratification. Melts in your mouth but there isn’t mess to deal with in the morning.”
Me: “But I’m here baby, and you want chocolate.”
Someone: “Well, you’re not chocolate, you’re more like candy. Everybody loves candy, we keep on eating it, keep on wanting to eat it, but you know nobody can ever finish candy cane so we just don’t even want to start.”
Me: “Hmmm.”
*Conversations with Thai dees*
B: (Some inexplicable Thai)
Me: “Chan mai kao jai tai!”
Kik: “You, single?”
Me: “Ka.”
B: “You, least-byan?”
Me: “Um. Ka.”
Kik: “What is you name.”
Me: “Adri.”
B.: “A…dro? Adrik? Agro? Ado? Adu? Achu?”
(They spend 15 minutes trying to pronounce my name)
Kik: “Nice meet you. My name, Suttipornchanrangditchankapsongchan.”
Me: “Right. Suttipornchanrangditchankapsongchan. That’s much easier than my name.”
“Zeta”:http://www.zetabangkok.com/, on RCA (Bangkok’s entertainment stretch) — it’s like Herstory and Two Queens put together, but 7 days a week and with live music from girl bands.
Home, tomorrow, sweet home.
