Mutual Butchering of Language

Our 1 month anniversary of Thai language study has come and gone and while my understanding of spoken Thai has increased my own spoken Thai is, umm, leaving much to be desired. Namely, the correct tones.


Thai is a tonal language. There are five tones in Thai: mid, low, high, rising, and falling. English speakers understand this a little as we generally change our tone when we ask a question, but that's about where our familiarity stops.


When I first took formal Thai lessons it was for one quarter as an undergraduate at the University of Washington. It was the hardest class I ever took and the only class I ever changed from graded to pass/fail. I figured that if there was a remote chance that I did pass, the grade would still be so low that it would bring down my whole GPA. I did manage to pass, barely.


Picture 1: Is this a threat?



The class was only 10 weeks and I spent the first five seriously doubting that there were tones. Language tone deafness. . . miracuously I awoke on the sixth week and finally heard the difference in the tones.


Sadly, the fact that I understand that there are different tones doesn't mean that I remember which one to use when I am speaking.


This results in some bad mistakes. The more vocabulary I learn the more I realize the potential to make mistakes. Currently I am in fear of trying to say that something is beautiful. Beautiful in Thai roughly transliterated is 'suway' said with a rising tone. If you say 'suway' with a mid tone it means unlucky. Thai people like to make things look beautiful and there is a cultural appreciation of the aesthetic. They also (as a general population) take their luck seriously as the majority wear amulets for protection and good fortune. Thus you can see my weariness at trying to compliment someone's handiwork as beautiful for fear of calling them unlucky!

Picture 2: 'miss are we she am you' ????



If there is any consolation in this it is the knowledge that Thai speakers generally have as difficult a time learning English as I do Thai. We have noted this on every trip we've taken to Thailand mostly in the hotel information guides or signs. One hotel welcomed us to try their 'potato sheep' in the minibar (meaning potato chips).


Recently, on an adventure to Big C, the Thai equivilant of Walmart but sooo much more exciting, we perused the clothing section hoping to find shirts that fit me. We eventually did find one in the men's section (hmmm. . . not unlike my wardrobe choices in the states). Anyway during the hunt we managed to find several gems - t-shirts with really confusing English. I can empathize with my really bad and confusing Thai, which I now believe I have license to put on mass produced t-shirts.


Enjoy the wisdom of Big C. :)



Picture 3: Front of the shirt, 'Seriously Inventive Bank Chat Him' HUH!?








Picture 4: Back of the shirt: 'Seriously'












And the winner of the Best Worse English is. . .


Picture 5: (on a notebook cover) This poor tomato is about to get eaten on a hamburger, but his cry of 'Hell me, Hell me' probably won't save him.



Andrea

The Girl Next Door. . . is Locked Inside a Brothel

Our living room window looks down on a large three story building. This building has no windows and from 12pm until 12am the parking lot is full. It is one of many brothels of this size in Bangkok, but is advertised as a massage parlor and coffee shop. We have only ever seen one woman go in and we have never seen any come out. A few days ago, Duncan heard a truck selling fruit (they advertise with megaphones) down by the railroad tracks behind our building. By the time he reached the truck it was parked by the back entrance to the brothel. A woman in full makeup and a red ‘working’ dress was buying some vegetables and fruit through the barred and padlocked back door. These are not women who have a choice.

It is ironic to us that the brothel strictly obeys the regulation that states opening and closing times of entertainment venues but that it completely ignores that prostitution is illegal let alone its abuse of human rights. Everyone knows what this building is. Everyone. And it is not supported with the dollars, euros, or yen of foreign men. This is Thai supported as is the majority of prostitution in Thailand.

There was an op-ed piece in the Bangkok Post several weeks ago where the author, Voranai Vanijaka, implores his fellow Thais to stop tolerating injustice. It is titled No More ‘Mai Pen Rai.’ ‘Mai pen rai’ loosely translates into English as ‘nevermind.’ You hear this all the time. It is closely tied to the Thai concept of ‘cool heart’. Do not get angry, don’t show frustration or anger. While several cultures could take some cues from this and limit anger over trivial things, I’m afraid that this concept has permeated everything in Thai culture to the point where there is an unhealthy level of apathy. Sometimes there is a righteous anger required in the face of injustice. Every culture, nation, and person (including me) should remember this.


Here’s an excerpt from the No More ‘Mai Pen Rai’ article:

“That seems to be our attitude. We don't express outrage. We don't demand justice. We don't monitor action. We just sit back and let the authorities pay lip service to having an investigation, then a few months later everyone forgets about it. Mai pen rai.

We Thais have it easy. There's fish in the sea and rice in the fields. When we run out of fish in our sea, we just fish in other people's seas and either get kidnapped by Somali pirates or thrown into prison by Burmese authorities. But that's okay, mai pen rai. They are just poor people.

Mind you, this attitude of mai pen rai, this cancer of apathy isn't just confined to just Thailand. It's a worldwide plague. However, at least to my knowledge, no other country has ever used "mai pen rai" (or the apathy of a culture) as a proud tourist attraction. There are even books written about the beauty of the "mai pen rai attitude".

Dear people, this mai pen rai attitude, for the sake of our King, our country and for the future of our children, we need to stop it. We really do.”

Read the full article at: http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/12098/no-more-mai-pen-rai

Andrea

P.S. The pictures are as follows: 1 & 2) the women's work clothes hung out to dry, 3) A graffiti message on a bridge overpass in Bangkok

Bangkok, The City of Angels

How do you describe Bangkok?

In trying to write this post I’ve sat here and looked at a blank computer screen for 20 minutes.

How do you describe any city?

In my work with Northwest Leadership Foundation, Center for Transforming Mission, and other influences like Pastor Ron Vignec, I’ve learned to recognize cities as living, breathing things much loved by God. And much like each individual person reveals something unique about the character of God, cities (as conglomerates of people) can reflect Godly traits and personality as well as the way people fall short of their potential.

Bangkok is a city of between 10-12 million people. The official census says 6 million but for many reasons, including how census questions were asked, this is not accurate. Over the last four trips to Thailand (this time being my fifth) I have come full circle with Bangkok. My first trip to Thailand (when Duncan was testing me out to see if I could love Thailand and thus if I was marriage material :) ) we walked outside of the airport at midnight tried and failed to find a taxi so we took the only available vehicle option - two motorcycle taxis. My taxi sped off into the night with one of my hands tightly grasping the handhold on the back of the motorcycle and the other arm hugging my suitcase to my body, trying and failing to make it more aerodynamic. My driver, having heard Duncan speak Thai assumed that I could also and kept turning around and asking me questions that I believe were about our destination to which I couldn’t answer. We sped along on a 4 lane road, deserted except for food carts being pushed home and then. . . an elephant (with his/her mahout) ambling along. While there were many other events and feelings (namely the sheer busyness and chaos of this huge city) that threw me into culture shock in the following days, I think this story of my first ten minutes of introduction to Bangkok summarizes it well. The first time to a new country is incredibly overwhelming if you don’t understand customs, culture, religion and language.

The second and third times that I visited Bangkok were through my work at Northwest Leadership Foundation. These trips provided an excellent opportunity to partner with another organization on excursions to experience, see, feel and hope for Bangkok. Finally the last time I was here was on vacation where Duncan and I spent one week in Bangkok exploring and meeting up with people who call this magnificent city home.

These trips were building the foundation that I have come to rely on now. Living in this city (even for a short while) is and will be an amazing adventure. As with any honest relationship, I love Bangkok and I hate Bangkok. There is a kind of indescribable beauty here that I have not experienced in other cities but this is coupled with some of the ugliest and darkest things I have ever witnessed. There is a heaviness to Bangkok that cannot just be attributed to its humidity or chaos. This heaviness, I believe, is directly related to Thailand’s and more specifically Bangkok’s position as a center of human trafficking and its huge sex industry. Thailand is not alone in harboring people (traffickers, pimps, mamasans) who make a living off of selling others, in fact, I think you would be hard pressed to find a country that did not harbor, willingly or not, such individuals. However, there is a difference here. Thailand for the most part tolerates these injustices, especially the sex trade. Like most evils of such magnitude in any country, it is accepted (because what can be done?) or at best it is ignored. These are blanket statements that do not accurately reflect the heart of every Thai person, but as an outsider, the blatancy of the sex trade speaks volumes.

Prostitution is illegal in Thailand, but walk down one of the notorious sois (small road) in Bangkok and you will pass beside bars and brothels that house 1000’s of prostituted women, children, and men. It is not hidden, in fact it is advertised, sometimes with glossy menus set up outside the brothel, not listing food but tricks.

How do they operate so openly if it is illegal?
Bribes, economics, lies, desperation, apathy, indifference. . .

Eventually this blog will have many postings on Thailand, some silly, some showing great beauty and innovation, some day-to-day descriptions of how things work, but I feel it is accurate to start out our thoughts on Thailand with the background on what consumes us the most and will receive many more postings – the sex trade (and human trafficking).


Andrea

Getting Started in Bangkok

We arrived in Bangkok the afternoon of February 5th, made it through immigration with our two month tourist visas (secured at the Portland, OR Thai consulate before we left the States), and proceeded to jump in a taxi and quickly get stuck in Bangkok’s notorious traffic. We were headed to meet up with two friends (Iven and Kashmira) at the condo of another two friends (Roy and Bonita), who graciously let us stay at their condo while they were back in the States for a couple of weeks. Iven and Kashmira are working with YWAM in Bangkok with prostituted males. Before moving to Bangkok they had been living in Seattle. We never got a chance to meet them in the States but connected with them in Bangkok on our last trip here in November 2007 because of a mutual friend. We really enjoyed their company and they evidently didn’t dislike us because this trip they have truly welcomed us to Bangkok and done whatever they can to be helpful in getting us situated. (We will write more about both Iven and Kashmira and Roy and Bonita in coming posts.) That night we ate the first of what will be many wonderful meals from street vendors with Iven and Kashmira along with Van, another mutual friend of both of ours from Seattle who also just happened (unbeknownst to us) to be in Thailand exploring opportunities in her native land of Laos. It really is a small world.

The last three plus weeks here have been a bit of a blur. We hit the ground running. Thanks to Iven and Kashmira we started Thai lessons the first Monday after our arrival with their former Thai tutor. Phii Oo comes to teach us Thai 4 days a week for 3 hours each day (we each get 1.5 hours with him). Despite Phii O insisting that “Thai is easy, easy,” there are sounds my tongue refuses to make and I have literally had to resort to holding my tongue with my fingers (not in polite public of course) for a certain sound I still cannot make. I’ll let you know when I can.

After our Thai lessons during our second week here we pounded the pavement in different areas of Bangkok looking for an apartment. We were hot, tired, very dirty (SMOG!!!), and a little irritable (okay just me). Finally at the end of one day after walking miles, we came along New Petchburi Road, a very busy street, to look at one more place, called Union Tower. When we saw the outside of the building it looked a little run down and partly because of the busy road and immediate surroundings we thought, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ But we decided to look at it anyway and when we saw inside it was the nicest place we had seen, and of all the places (about 30) it was the only place that we liked, could afford, AND could actually move into right away. You can't judge a book by its cover. . .

The next day (Friday Feb. 20) we told Phii Oo that we were going on a field trip for our Thai lesson, and he graciously agreed to go back to the building to meet with the manager again to make sure there was nothing we had missed due to lack of language ability. It was really encouraging to see him negotiate (in a very Thai way of course) with Phii Fai, the manager, over anything that he thought we could get cheaper, looking out for us but also helping build a great relationship with her at the same time. Everything looked good and so the following Monday (a week ago today!) we loaded all of our stuff into a taxi and drove the ‘short’ distance (short being a very relative term depending on the traffic) to our new home which you can see in a previous post.

We had hoped to get a place here between US$200-$300 per month and with everything included (including internet but not electricity) we are paying about $310 a month. Thank you to those who were praying. We could have found something cheaper but by paying just a little more we got much more in terms of space and light so we are very grateful. And we have a pool up on the roof which we are also really grateful for.

The windows in our living room face west toward many of the high-rises of Bangkok including the Baiyoke Tower, the tallest building in Thailand (85 floors). Thus we have some nice sunsets brought about from the not so nice pollution. The busy Petchaburi Road runs in front of our building east –west and is parallel to Sukhumvit Road which becomes Ploenchit. Immediately across the road is Saen Sap Khlong (Canal) which is an easy and cheap way to move east or west through the city. More on transportation later. Behind our building, or the view from our balcony/sink is to the North. Right below is a set of railway tracks that are in regular use throughout the day as well as a new rail system that is due to open in August linking the downtown corridor with the new International airport to the south-east of us. There is still a lot of work going on around this new transportation link so it feels a little industrial and is a little loud some of the time. Beyond the tracks you reenter somewhat normal (albeit pricier) Bangkok neighborhood, with large houses intermixed with high-rises.

Andrea