A Taste of Thailand - December 6, 2009

I decided to try a new Mexican food joint that opened up on Soi 14 called Los Cabos. Well, they haven’t officially opened yet. It’s more like a soft launch while they work the kinks out. Word on the street is that it’s pretty decent for outside of the US (or Mexico, obviously).

So I walked down to the skytrain station and I couldn’t help but giggle a bit as I heard them pumping Christmas carols over the PA system. Not just “Santa Claus is coming to town,” sorts of carols but “Joy to the World , the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King,” carols.

Notwithstanding the fact that Thailand’s King is like a god to the Thai people and they refer to Buddha as the Lord (but different in the Christian sense of the word as all he every claimed to be was a teacher), I guess it struck me as funny because Thailand is 90% Buddhist and many of the carols they played had serious Christian religious overtones. The Thais are very tolerant of other religions so it wasn’t really a matter of surprise at their willingness to adopt a western holiday. It’s just that I’m not 100% sure that the person who picked the songs had any idea of what the lyrics are or what they mean. For many Thais they just think of it as a time of year when Christians think Santa Claus comes and brings little boys and girls presents for being good.

All of the malls and the hotels are decorated up for Christmas. Again, sometimes I just think the Thais don’t fully grasp it though. For instance, at the Four Seasons Hotel up the street from my apartment they put out a huge display scene. Everything is decorated all Christmas-like but they’ve placed the seven dwarfs from Snow White out in front of it. I’m guessing someone thought they looked like elves but they’re 100% Disney characters. What does Snow White have to do with Christmas?

What else is up? Well, it’s the King’s birthday. He’s 82. In Thailand his birthday is also Father’s Day (and the queen’s birthday is Mother’s Day). The whole country goes wild for the King’s birthday. Everybody dresses in pink and there are celebrations and festivals all over the country.

Friday night (the night before the King’s birthday) we had a little birthday celebration for our friend Arndt at the Tawandang brewing company. Now, I’m not sure what the details are but it’s supposed to be a Germany brewery but some people have told me the place is owned by a famous Thai pop star. How Germany brewery and Thai pop star come together is beyond me.

Anyway, I love this place. I’ve been before but every time I go I find another reason to like it.

Basically, the place sits about 200 - 300 people. There’s a main stage and all night they have dancing and singing acts that come out and entertain you while you sip back some cold ones and order Thai food.

My friend Rob and I got into a debate about whether or not they were lip-synching the western songs (and by western I mean Rhianna, Black Eyed Peas, etc). He insisted it was them really singing but I thought it was too pitch perfect and there were no tell-tale mispronunciations. There really aren’t that many local bands that can do western music well. There are some who can pull it off but most can’t.

One thing I really like about the place is that it always has a really friendly vibe to it. In many places like this where the crowd is 98% Thai people seem to be more curious than friendly. It’s more like “Hey, what the heck is a foreigner doing here?” kind of look you get. Mind you it’s not hostile in any way. They genuinely curious. But at Tawandang it’s almost like they dig that you’re into their scene. Overall it just makes for a really comfortable feeling.

Here’s a picture a friend took of me. I was trying to go for a goofy look but I think I failed.

I met up with a faithful reader of my blog on Saturday night. He’s in town from the US getting an MRI and dropped me a line. We met up around 11pm at a pub called the Big Mango. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the place here before. It’s a cool little place away from the nightlife chaos where you can just sit, get some good grub, and watch some sports.

I usually pop in here after my Thai classes to get dinner so I know the owners, the manager, and all of the staff pretty well. I thought it would be a good, neutral place to meet up before we decided where we wanted to go.

I also invited my friend Ken to come along with us. He’s an American too. From Atlanta originally. He teaches English over here.

Ken’s a funny guy. Really funny. He and I were supposed to meet at the Mango at 9pm. He calls me around 10pm saying he’s at another pub about a mile away and asking why I’m not there. I told him it was because we agreed to meet at the Mango, not our usual meeting spot. Aha! So he says he’s going to jump in a taxi and will see me in a few minutes.

About 20 minutes later he calls and says the taxi driver misunderstood him and took him to Siam Square. I’m like “Dude, Siam Square is like three BTS stops past here. How did you not notice when the driver passed lower Sukhumvit? I mean, once you get out near Ploen Chit or Chit Lom it’s pretty obvious you’ve gone way, way too far.” I don’t even remember what his response was. I think he just laughed.

So even though Ken and I were supposed to meet up at 9pm and my blog reader, Greg, was supposed to meet us at 11pm, Greg showed up first. Ken showed up about 11:20 or so making it longest trip ever from his place near the river to lower Sukhumvit Road.

We had a few beers and Greg told me how he found my site. He’s a cool guy. He’s a poker player living in South Dakota where he owns a bar. We chatted a bit about poker, life, my blog, and why we’re here on this planet and then decided to head down to Soi 22 where my friend owns a bar that stays open until whenever you want it to.

This is the same place that we eventually ended up on Halloween so Greg recognized some of the people from the post I did. In particular he recognized Meaw.

She’s the one on the left grabbing my man-boobs.

When I originally posted the photos several people emailed me asking about Meaw. She’s married but she got a kick out of it when I told her about the emails. So when I introduced her and Greg and Greg said he recognized her from her Halloween pics she just let out her evil laugh.

I guess I picked a good night to take Greg out because it was someone’s birthday and Jack – the owner of the bar – had made up a ton of German dishes for everyone. Jack is one hell of a cook and knows how to make up a mean German meal.

VJ, is this ultra-cool dude who I’m always running into. He had whipped up some nan and a wicked curry which I was unfortunately too late to get a full portion of but I did go to town on what was left and he promised to hook me up with a proper Indian meal one of these nights.

I’m not sure what time I decided to head home but I checked with Greg to make sure he was okay getting home. I know he’s not really familiar with that part of town so I wanted to give him a quick briefing on how to get home from there and if all else failed he could just ask Jack to put him in a taxi and tell the driver where to go.

Hmmm … what else?

Well, Thai classes are coming along. I really like it now that we’re getting into the reading and writing. You feel a little bit naked learning phrases and words but being unable to read. The hard part about learning a language like Thai is that first you have to be able to read and then you have to get the translation. As a very simple example, ยา is “Ya.” You have to do a double translation. First you have to be able to read the characters ยา and then you have to translate the meaning of “Ya” into medicine.

The other part that makes it difficult is that the Thai language treats vowels very strangely (at least to western language speakers). Sometimes the vowel comes before the consonant. Sometimes the vowel is on top of or under the consonant. Here’s what I mean:

Take for example โมง which is hour or o’clock. ม is pronounced like “m” and ง is sort of like “ng” but different since there is no equivalent sound in English. โ is the vowel and is pronounced like “oh.” Now, reading that as it’s written would be oh-m-ng. But in Thai the โ is actually pronounced between the m and ng so it’s m-oh-ng.

Another example would be the Thai word for “to study” or “to learn” which is เรียน. Here again the vowel เ comes before the consonant ร and the consonant ร has something over it รี. Now, with just the consonants, ร is an “r” sound, ย is a “y” sound, and น is a “n” sound. Together the word is “rian” or “ree yan.”

I love it though when the teacher makes us read in Thai because you have this room full of adults sounding like school children. You’re sounding out every single letter and there’s the pace is childlike as you try to recognize each letter and sound. R-R-R-Ree um, Y-Y-Y-an, Ree yan. Ahh Rian.

That’s pretty much it at the moment. So … I guess that’s it for now.