Before we go any further in our journey, we think it’s worth reflecting for a moment on one notable aspect of travel in Thailand. These beautiful people go far out of their way to produce English language translations, for which we are grateful. Most major highway signs have both a Thai and English translation, which is great, considering the written Thai language looks to us to be a near continuous wavy line, up and down, with absolutely no meaning. It’s a big part of what makes Thailand “the land of easy” as we like to call it. There is no problem getting around if you’re a native English speaker for the most part, unless perhaps you’re in a remote village.
If needed simply point at the food you want with a smile, they’ll get it. Most guest houses, in Chiang Mai anyway, have someone who speaks English reasonably well. Perhaps not a philosophical discussion, but good enough to get you checked in and out, feed you and take you where you need to be. When in doubt, Google translate can get you over any major obstacles, so there’s always tech as a backstop.
Our Thai vocabulary consists of a small handful of words, including a basic hello, thank you, too expensive, and the word for pain (helpful during a massage). All of these are probably pronounced slightly wrong, but the Thai people accept our poor Thai with an easy smile, and the appreciation that we tried. The basic greetings vary depending if you’re a man or a woman, so that’s an interesting aspect of the language. Often they beat you to the punch, just by the sight of you, with poorly pronounced English that’s just good enough for the interaction. Which type of massage and how long, easy enough… How dare they assume we don’t speak Thai? (Said jokingly to ourselves, thank goodness they can tell.). Apparently we’re easy to spot for the locals.
Having said all that, for reasons not entirely known to us, they don’t exactly get it right and often in hilarious ways. We think it’s both cultural differences and how they translate to English, but somehow the differences produce some absolutely fantastic results.
Here are some examples of funny Thai signs that are all too common here:
There are some pretty wise Thai signs too:
The Thai people much to their credit, have gone out of their way and made life easy for us. I’m sure some of it is to facilitate tourism, particularly in the more populated cities, but we’ll take the win, with a huge thank you. Traveling in Thailand truly is Land of Easy….
Bonus pic:
There is an aspect of international travel that we find equal parts interesting and fortunate, that some Americans or native English speakers may not know…. We’ll paint a picture. A Chinese person has a need to communicate with an Italian, or just pick any 2 nationalities at random. How do they accomplish this? Well in English of course! We see this interesting occurrence often traveling internationally. A German and a Vietnamese? English! For reasons that we imagine span historical, cultural and linguistic, English seems to be the “common language”. No doubt there are exceptions to this dynamic around the world, but it’s one that we’ve seen often. It’s also something that makes us feel extremely fortunate, no matter where we go around the world, there’s just enough English to get by, in airports, street signs, menus, hotels, you name it. Approximately 43% of people worldwide are bilingual, with another 17% multilingual. The US can learn something here, when people speak multiple languages, we should be impressed and perhaps just a bit embarrassed, not afraid…
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