I have never known how it feels to be completely unable to communicate with people until now. In Central and South America, I could at least try to speak Spanish and guess what the signs said. And when that didn’t work, I had teammates that spoke Spanish.
In Africa, enough people spoke English that I didn’t need to speak the local languages. But here, there are few people that speak English, and we speak no Thai. Fortunately, a lot of the signs are also in English, but the ones that are not are impossible to even try to guess at. It’s just a bunch of pretty characters that mean absolutely nothing to me.
I can’t order food by name, I just point at something that looks good and hope that it isn’t too spicey. Thais love their chilis. Whew!
We took a tour of the Buddist temples today. Thankfully, we had translators to show us where to go and to help us with communicating. We road buses, a sky train, boats, and a tuk tuk (motorcycle cart). I never would have been able to figure all of that out on my own. I don’t even know how to ask how much something costs, much less understand the answer.
It has been a great adventure though. We went to the mall yesterday. Seven stories! It started as the most depressing shopping trip of my life. Thais are very small. Their extra large is about two sizes too small for me. Then, praise God, we found a store that sells all of the left over American clothes for really cheap. That made my day.
I had not really planned on shopping much this year, but we learned that Thais are very influenced by appearance. They set a very high standard for cleanliness and dress, which is very different than most of the places we can from. Africans like to be clean too, but it is so dirty there that even if you bathe daily you still look dirty. Here, we were told that Thais may bathe up to 3-4 times a day, and they dress very nice. Our casual camp style just wouldn’t cut it here.
We were told that if we didn’t look nice, they would not pay much attention to what we have to say. That would make an already difficult ministry environment almost impossible. So, we went out in search of cheap clothes. Unfortunately, due to size restrictions, our options were pretty limited. But, we do all look a little nicer. At least our clothes are not worn our and stained now.
If you can’t tell by the rambling, I am a bit tired. Okay, exhausted. It has been a long day of a lot of walking and jet lag. It is very hot and humid here. Thank God our room is air-conditioned to sleep.
