On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:20:16 +0000, Larry wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

On Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:59:43 +0000, Larry wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote in
:

It will be pointed at the Marina and if they catch me I'll just say
I'm stealing from the foreigners - a traditional Thai custom :-)


And they'll say, "Wait a minute! You ARE a foreigner!"


NO, I just say "I live here - see I got a driving license :-)

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)


That didn't work in Bahrain....

They said, "Anyone can get a driving license in Bahrain, even me!", with
a big smile on their face.

They did like it when I wore the custom-tailored Arab dress I had made
with the Nehru collar and sleeves with big pockets in the ends.
Bahraini women used to stop me on the street to compliment me, an
American, on looking very nice in traditional dress. Then, they'd
correct my headwear to get the proper gullwing crease under the fan
belts....

The tailor I bought the clothes from insisted I wear it back to my
hotel. I was afraid the locals would be upset as if I were making fun
of them, but the exact opposite was true. I had grown a nice goatee and
moustache before coming over on that trip, which seemed to even please
the customs agent at Bahrain's airport. But my lilly white skin was a
dead giveaway in an Arab country.

I got many compliments. My own co-workers from the Charleston Naval
Shipyard didn't recognize me, though. I opened my hotel room door when
one of them knocked and he backed out apologizing profusely because he
though he had the wrong room....(c;]

The other Americans refused to eat with me in the restaurant when I wore
it. Americans are so queer in foreign countries. They were the same in
Tehran in the late 70's. They shied away from the Iranians, staying
pretty much to themselves. I wouldn't eat in a restaurant where they
spoke English. I was learning Farsi and needed the practice.

Do you speak and read the Thai language. That would be as hard as Farsi
or Arabic to me. My fav Chinese restaurant here keeps trying to teach
me Mandarin. They all laugh at my stumbling. "You just ordered a
girl!", she said to me blushing and laughing. I knew what I ordered.
She would do, the little tiny thing....(c;]

I used to get away with saying all kinds of horrible things in Farsi in
Iran, just because I was a "dumb American"....hee hee.

Whenever I had to sign something in the Iranian Air Force I worked for,
I signed my name in Farsi. "No, no!", the Iranians would say, "You must
sign in ENGLISH or they think I signed it!" I'd act all indignant as I
was signing in English. Iranian AF officers are terrified of being
blamed for something. That's what foreign contractors are for...(c;] I
spent millions of Rials on all kinds of stuff. It was like owning the
bank! I had my eye on a Gulfstream II to fly home on leave, but that
might have been going too far....unless I made a deal with the General
to come home, too...

Thai "traditional dress, varies from era to era but all wear a sarong
sort of lower dress. As a result that only place you see that amongst
men is on the stage or perhaps in a particular Thai restaurant. The
sarong in all it various versions is commonly worn though. Among
women, of a certain age, quite commonly as "full dress" and by the
commonality as every-day work clothes. Men frequently wear it as
at-home wear and almost certainly as night wear.

As far as speaking Thai I can get along pretty well in a day to day
conversation. The difficult part is vocabulary size as every trade
uses its own jargon (some of which is English) and there is a lot of
slang and Chinese words mixed in. Sizes frequently are in 1/8 of
something, using the Chinese, Hokien I believe, word for one eighth.

I tried, years ago to learn to read Thai and got to where I could
figure out where to stop on roads and which toilet to use, and then we
went to Indonesia for some years and I forgot most of it :-)

One of the problems is that English speakers simply do not hear the
tones and when you have a language like Thai that uses them, to some
extent, it makes it hard to remember. The work Kye (pronounce as in
"eye") for example can mean "about - approximately" as in about that
big, if you use a rising tone, but "kye" spoken with a neutral tone
means "sell". Even worse, "Kee Ma" can mean either "ride (a) horse" or
"dog ****" depending on the tone used.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)