How Learning a Language Makes You Stupid Again

Take, for example, this conversation:

I would like a coffee.

We do not have any coffee.

Then I would not like coffee.

Good.


Or, for your consideration:


Do you like pink?

I do not like pink.

But you are korean?

Yes.

Do you like pink?

I do not like pink.

Koreans like pink.

I do not like pink. I am Korean.

I do not understand. Goodbye.

Club 7

This is where Josh and I hang out when we are feeling cheap. There is a lawn (which is part of an office complex, but no one seems to mind) across the street from our local 7-11 (you might think that 7-11 isn't very Thai, but you would be ever so wrong). So we buy beers at the store and then lay in the grass and drink beer and talk about how we don't ever want to go home. I'm sure if we spent too much time here we would discuss how we wanted to go home, but we haven't gotten to that point yet.

Klong Toei Market

This is the market where Thais go for, well, everything. Need a motorcycle fender? And some superglue? And a pair of gigantic cotton panties? And a kilo of red curry paste? And a live chicken? This is your place.

This is my favorite stall- the curry paste vendor. I love that there are like six different kinds of red curry paste.

These will make your face implode.

Mmmmmm... crabs. Wrapped for my protection.

OH GOD THE FOOD!

Glass noodle salad with peanuts, shrimp, ground pork and cilantro. Tastes like I might never come back to Washington, DC.

Sticky rice.

OH GOD. Som tam with tiny field crabs in it to flavor it like crab. You don't actually eat these crabs, but the crunch of the green papaya and the heat of the chiles combines amazingly with the lime and fish sauce dressing.

Wat Sutthat

A wat is where buddhists go to believe in magic, the same way that church is where christians go to pray to their dad. Summing up religion is easy!

Entrance to Wat complex.

This guy should be a cartoon character, preferably one that sells cereal to children. "Captain Chanachitporn's Chocolate Chomps", or the like.

That's a big Buddha. Don't get in his way.

Roof!

One of these things is not like the other.

Sunset over Bangkok

อนุสาวรีย์ ชัย / Our Neighborhood

This is the view from our apartment balcony. I use the word "apartment" loosely. Bed in a room might be more appropriate.

This is the actual monument our neighborhood is named after. In Thai you say ahnusawarichisumanipum. Or rather, Thais say that. I just point at a picture of the monument and then throw my hand up in the air. As if I just don't care. Jump around! Ok, that got derivative.

Ma ride.

ข้าวเหนียว Tasty Treat

This is my current street food obsession. It's sticky rice cooked with coconut milk and then wrapped in a banana leaf. It comes with a little packet of white sugar ground with deep fried crispy garlic pieces and dried shrimp. You dump the spice packet onto the leaf, break the sticky rice into chunks and dip and snack and repeat.

Krushing Koreans

Yesterday I spent three hours in a small, gray classroom repeating unhearable tones to a thin woman who never stopped smiling, even when the Japanese student got ten out of ten wrong. She is Kruu, or teacher. Kruu started class by having us practice vowels. Having not really thought about vowels for a very long time, it was kind of hilarious sitting in a classroom making the O face to practice long o sounds with five other adults. Also, Thai has some huge ridiculous number of vowels. Did anyone know there are like six ways to pronounce U? I did not.

Kruu gave us some listening sheets and she would pronounce different sounds, and we had to fill in the sounds she made on the sheet. I've always felt I was pretty good at languages, and I'm also quietly competitive, so I was irrationally angered when the Korean girls got perfect scores on the listening. I want to be the best! I want to get all the right answers! It made me feel better that the Spanish guy and the Irish guy did worse than me, but still. Schadenfraude only gets you so far in beating the Koreans.

Luckily, their Waterloo was yet to come: tones. In addition to multiple and ridiculous ways to pronounce the vowels, there are also tones in Thai. There are five tones: low (talk like you imagine a sexy telephone operator would talk), mid (normal), high (like when you get really mad and the ends of words start to go up in pitch), rising (gets confusing here: basically make the word dip, high on each end but low in the middle), and falling (reverse of rising, shockingly enough). While I admit I struggle to hear the tones when regular Thais talk, I can definitely hear Kruu's tones, probably because she talks as if her class is full of retarded bears.

I can't wait to see what today's class brings! Also, I vow to crush the Koreans.

While this looks very impressive, it's actually just me writing all the numbers to 100. I love the way some thai letters have hats.

Bangkok Arts and Culture Center

Some art is about the future. Or being in a tanning bed.

Some art is about fourth-grade gym class.

This art appears to be about awesome paper mache, but actually it's about Burmese migrant workers. Art can be tricky like that.

This art is about twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

This art is about being the food, instead of the food eater.

Pictures from Thailand

New Year's Eve Update: Drunken Finnish Boy Declares Maybe He Likes Guys. Calamity Ensues.

New Year's Eve at our guest house, Respected Older Sister put on quite a meal. I promise pictures, as soon as I can find an internet cafe with a card reader. There was fried mackerel, laap, pad prik king, snapper braised in coconut milk and red curry paste, and more than I can remember, because there were also buckets of booze provided as a New Year's Eve treat. While Respected Older Sister is a hilarious force at this guest house, the yang to her yin is a man that we will call Fake Hippie. FH is maybe the owner, maybe ROS's husband (or brother)- who can know? I certainly couldn't figure it out. FH has long flowing hair, loves pot, and wants everyone to "be happy!" Forced merriment is a concept that simply doesn't work; it's like willing someone to love you. It is doomed to fail. Unless you ply your subject with intoxicants, which is what FH did.

There were eight or nine Thai hipsters that were staying at the guest house, two weird Dutch guys, a Russian couple (his name was Vladimir. No, really. He didn't seem that excited that my bicycle was also named Vladimir), a dude of indeterminable origin, as he never deigned to talk to us, and the three Finnish boys. I say boys because their mom must have had to pry the Nintendo controllers from their hands to send them on this trip. The Finns have unpronounceable, unremembered names, so we will call them Ulrich, Helmat, and Paco. Helmat and Paco were brothers, and Ulrich lived across the street from them in Finland, and they had been friends since kindergarten. Ulrich told us this joke: "Poles drink water. Russians drink vodka. Finns drink vodka like water." And so they did, except it was Thai whiskey mixed with Red Bull.

After dinner, almost everyone walked down to the beach for star-lit dancing and really bad techno, followed by fireworks. On the way, Helmat asks me if I have a girlfriend and I said no, I'm gay, that's my boyfriend, blah blah blah. That's when Helmat says "I think I might be gay too. I mean, I have a girlfriend now, but when I watch porn I usually watch gay porn." I don't really know what I'm supposed to say to that, so I just say "Uhhhhhhhh, maybe you should have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend, then?". He says, with out obvious irony, "I'll think about that."

At this point, the Finns are getting drunk enough that they keep getting lost on the beach, in sight of each other, so Josh and I decide to go down the beach and do some good old proper nightswimming. So while the fireworks went off, I was floating in the South China Sea, thinking that maybe I am the luckiest person alive. The next morning, we wake up to find out that Helmat and Paco had gotten in a fist-fight over his revelation that he maybe likes guys when he is drunk, and their friend Ulrich had to pry them apart. Moral of the story: swimming at night is less dangerous than being Finnish. K Thanx Bai!