Living In Thailand Blog
Saturday 30th June 2018
The cave rescue is now into week two. Here's a good summary from the BBC.
Thai cave rescue: Drones, dogs, drilling and desperation
This report makes the point that even if the boys are found alive, getting them out will be no easy matter and could take weeks because the normal exit ways are flooded.
One suggestion is to give them scuba equipment, but even learning to dive in open water takes time and cave diving requires a whole new set of skills after that. Giving them scuba gear and expecting them to exit a flooded cave in difficult conditions when they have never used scuba gear before sounds very risky to me.
It is more likely that food will be taken into the cave to keep them alive while rescuers continue to search for another way out.
It turns out that the football coach has taken his team into the caves previously, and it is natural human curiosity to want to go deeper and explore - especially for young males.
Apart from the small public section, it has been illegal to enter the Paris catacombs since 1955 but if you look on YouTube you will find lots of videos created by so-called 'Urban Explorers' who find ways to get in. The fact that it is illegal and dangerous only adds to the thrill.
However, in a maze of underground tunnels that stretch for 250km under the French capital it's very easy to get lost and a couple of teenagers had to be rescued last year after going missing for three days.
Boys will be boys and as a teenager I was no different.
Friday 29th June 2018
For several years in Thailand political shenanigans have divided the country, but I don't think I have ever experienced as much unity as there is at the moment with everyone praying and hoping that the young boys in Chiang Rai will be rescued soon.
'Come home': Thailand clings to hope for boys trapped in cave
My wife puts on the TV news as soon as she wakes up and as soon as she gets home from work for the latest updates. Around 800 military personnel are involved along with volunteers and experts on this type of situation from Thailand and abroad.
This morning on TV I saw lots of drilling equipment and drill pipe at the scene and rescuers will attempt to drill holes in order to drain water from the cave. Divers from Thailand and abroad are attempting to get into the cave from the main entrance and attempts are being made to access the cave from above. Some locals know of openings in the ground that possibly go into the cave.
Also on TV was the member of the football team who didn't go into the cave - I believe he had some things to do at home so didn't join his teammates. He will have lots of mixed feelings at the moment.
Shoes, bags and footprints have been found inside the cave, giving some encouragement that rescuers are on the right trail. Some messages the boys sent before they entered the cave indicate that they took some food and torches with them, but food and batteries have probably run out by now. Today is Day 7.
Is my luck starting to run out?
This is now my eighth year of driving regularly in Thailand and that time has been incident free. I drive extremely defensively in Thailand, but when you drive every day in the country with the second highest road accident rate in the world that's not enough. You also need a lot of luck.
On Sunday I was in a Bangkok taxi that was rear-ended on the main expressway from Don Meuang airport and this evening I knocked a girl off her motorbike.
I was waiting to turn left on to a main road. My indicator was blinking left and I was looking right waiting for the traffic to pass. The last car passed and I started to pull out and turn left.
Just as I did this a young girl on a bike decided she would try to squeeze through the gap on my left-hand side. As I pulled out, this gap disappeared and I hit her. I didn't see her at all before the collision.
Earlier this year, very close to my house, a Burmese construction worker on a motorbike tried the same trick with a container truck. He ended up under the truck and was crushed to death.
Another favourite trick with Thai motorcyclists is to overtake cars that are turning right. The English guy I used to work for hit a motorcyclist who did this.
Motorcyclists in Thailand are a law unto themselves and many completely disregard traffic laws. They are forever jumping traffic lights and trying to get through gaps in the traffic. Thailand is actually number one in the world when it comes to motorcycle accidents.
This insurance company ad says that Thailand has the highest motorbike accident rate in the world
Anyway, I stopped, got out of the car and asked if she was OK. She said she was and that she wasn't hurt, although I could see she was quite shaken up. I picked her bike up, she dusted herself down and rode off. Her bike was virtually untouched and my car was completely untouched. The collision was at such slow speed it was more of a push than a hit.
I also ride my wife's scooter occasionally and apart from being the slowest motorcyclist in Thailand (I get overtaken by little old ladies of 90 and families of five on one bike) I see motorcyclists doing things that I would never dream of doing. They seem to have no fear (whereas Thai drivers terrify me) and they never anticipate what might happen.
In the case of the young girl today, if I was on a bike behind a car that was indicating left I know that it would be dangerous trying to pass the car on the left because the gap would disappear as soon as the car moved. It's the same with overtaking cars that are indicating right, but it doesn't stop them. She obviously had no idea, and in Thailand she's not alone.
Thursday 28th June 2018
With every day that passes there is an increasing risk that the young boys trapped in a cave in Chiang Rai won't be found in time. They are aged 11 to 16.
Thai cave: Rising water stops divers searching for missing boys
Support team races against clock to install water pumps as water levels rise in cave
Cave search suspended as flood water rises after more rain
Thai news is covering the situation extensively and a massive rescue operation has been taking place this week. Three cave-diving experts from the UK arrived to help a day or two ago and more expertise is arriving from the States.
With so much rain water entering the cave it has made access impossible and now the authorities are looking at other ways to get into the cave. One possibility is to find a natural chimney that goes into the cave and the other is to drill a hole.
Chiang Rai's provincial governor has told everyone concerned to imagine that it is their own children trapped inside the cave. When I first heard about this story, and whenever I hear about similar situations, that is always my first thought. They could be my kids. As a parent I have found this news story deeply upsetting.
People can survive for about three weeks without food and there will be water in the cave. Provided they have found somewhere above water the greatest risks are hypothermia and lack of oxygen.
My wife heard on a Thai news report that if they are found they will need to undergo very stringent medical checks having suffered such an ordeal.
On the positive side, it restores my faith in human nature to see how many people are working so tirelessly to find them. I mainly use this blog to talk about differences between Thais and Westerners, but there are many things that we all have in common.
After the 2004 tsunami many Thais drove to the affected areas with clothes, food and other supplies to give to the survivors. After a fairly big, but not disastrous, flood in 2005 I was up at the local university and the staff and students were preparing meals and bottled water for those people whose homes had been flooded. There is a lot of empathy, compassion and a real pulling-together community spirit.
Let us all hope that they will be found.
Wednesday 27th June 2018
The BBC published an informative article on language learning, which is one of my interests. I even learnt a new English word and this is relevant because even though I consider myself to be perfectly fluent in English I only know a small fraction of the total words currently in use in the English language.
According to the BBC, a 'lemma' or 'word family' is the root word and all its inflections, for example: run, running, ran; blue, bluer, bluest, blueish, etc.
The article asks, "How many words do you need to know before you can actually get by in a foreign tongue?"
The news for learners of a foreign language is encouraging. A students who learns the 800 most commonly used lemmas in English will be able to understand 75% of the language. Therefore, even if you only learn two words a day you will be able to reach a fairly high level of proficiency in just over a year.
Over the years I have heard quite a few foreigners living in Thailand claiming to be fluent in Thai, but I have never believed them. As far as I am concerned, being fluent is being able to talk about any subject in any situation and I don't believe they can do that.
In everyday life in Thailand very few words are used. When you understand what Thais are saying, most of the time it is extremely simplistic and when they converse with foreigners they always say the same things and ask the same questions.
These kind of conversations require very little vocabulary and it is very easy to give the impression of being fluent when, actually, that is very far from the truth.
I can understand most things in everyday conversation, but when I take my car in for a service or talk to a doctor I don't know a lot of the vocabulary used because it isn't used in everyday life.
My Friday afternoon coffee shop
While I wait to pick my children up from school on a Friday I sometimes go to a small cafe where the owner keeps lots of cats. We share a love of felines and I have become quite friendly with her.
Last week I was chatting with her about various things and the conversation moved first to the rule of law and then on to the death sentence, which is still in use in Thailand. I didn't know the Thai verb 'to execute', as in capital punishment, because it is a word that doesn't get used very often.
ประหารชีวิต - bpra-haan chee-wit (to execute)
I suspect that many foreigners in Thailand claiming to be fluent in Thai know the 800 lemmas, or so, that are required to get by in day-to-day conversation, but not a lot more.
The BBC article goes on to say that to follow the dialogue in a movie or TV you need to know 3,000 lemmas, and that to read novels and newspapers you need to understand 8,000 to 9,000 lemmas. That is genuine fluency.
How many words do you need to speak a language?
Here's another language related subject. In the past I have made my feelings quite clear about this matter, but I would be interested to know what other people think. If you have time, drop me a line.
After arriving in Bangkok on Sunday I was quite rushed. I missed lunch and by the time we got to Jatujak market I was quite hungry. There is a food court there and although it looks like individual food stalls, it all appears to be one operation.
Lots of foreigners eat there as well as local Thais. The service is minimal. The wait staff are quite brusque, almost to the point of being rude, and they just want people in and out as quickly as possible. Eating there wasn't a particularly enjoyable experience, but it filled my empty stomach.
They gave me a menu. On one side it was in English and on the other it was in Thai. That's fair enough - Thai for the local people and English, the great lingua franca, for the many tourists. Arabic numerals were used for the English menu prices, and Thai numerals for the Thai menu prices.
My Thai reading ability is limited. I don't know the 8,000 to 9,000 lemmas required to pick up a Thai novel or newspaper, but I can read a Thai menu almost as easily as I can read an English menu. I can also read Thai numerals. I compared a few prices.
English readers will see that chicken fried with cashew nuts is Bt200. Thais will see that exactly the same dish is Bt100 - gai put met ma-muang. The pricing for soup with chicken, galanga root, coconut milk (dtom kaa gai) is the same. Bt100 for Thais and twice as expensive for foreigners.
Pat Tai, which seems to be a dish that all foreigners want to eat in Thailand, is Bt100 for those who can't read Thai. The Thai price is Bt60. The entire menu follows the same pattern. Every dish is more expensive on the English side of the menu compared to the Thai side, and many prices are actually double.
The difference is less for Coke and Pepsi - Bt30 vs Bt25 - and it's interesting that roselle juice doesn't appear on the English menu. Naam gra-jiap is one of my favourite drinks in Thailand. Perhaps Thais think that foreigners won't know what it is , so they won't order it.
Also interesting that there is no beer on the Thai menu. When Thai men go out in groups a lot of alcohol is drunk, but generally Thais don't drink alcohol with food. On the other hand, they consider foreigners to be virtual alcoholics.
I stopped drinking some years ago, but whenever I eat in a tourist resort in Thailand the first question is always about what kind of beer I want. It is simply assumed that all farang men drink copious amounts of beer, and indeed, many do.
Dual pricing is standard practice in Thailand and wherever you go you will find one price for Thais written in Thai numerals and a more expensive price for foreigners written in standard Arabic numbers. I have heard various opinions about this practice from foreigners.
Some extremely naive foreigners (who must walk around with their eyes closed) maintain that all Thais are poor, thus dual pricing is perfectly acceptable. In actual fact, there are far more wealthy Thais in Thailand than most tourists will ever imagine.
Some foreigners regard it as a form of racial discrimination.
Other foreigners say that it's not necessarily a problem, but at least allow foreigners to choose. The fact that Thais use their own writing system and their own numerals means that what goes on is hidden from the vast majority of foreigners. Don't hide what is happening. Be transparent and let foreigners know that they are being charged twice as much as the locals and allow them to make the decision whether they pay the higher prices or not.
The English side of the Jatujak restaurant menu
The Thai side of the Jatujak restaurant menu
By the way, if you are wondering what I paid, I paid the Thai price. I called over one of the wait staff and asked why the prices were different. He obviously didn't want to explain and just said, "OK, OK." Farangs are simply supposed to pay the foreign price, they aren't supposed to ask dumb questions.
Tuesday 26th June 2018
A few thoughts for the young boys trapped in a cave in Chiang Rai and their families. If they are still alive, which hopefully they are, they must be terrified and their parents must be going through hell.
A few weeks ago another rescue effort was streamed live on Thai TV. A container truck had turned a corner too fast (what a surprise) and the container it was carrying toppled off and fell onto a Toyota Fortuner.
The Fortuner was crushed down to wheel level and despite the attempts of the rescue workers I didn't have a lot of hope for the driver. However, they persevered and got him out. He survived the incident with minimal injuries. The other good news for Thais was that the numbers 9 and 5 from the Fortuner's license plate then appeared in the two digit lottery.
This is why Thais are always interested in numbers when an accident or tragedy occurs.
I know that the military and other rescue services will do all they can for the young lads and their football coach.
Navy SEALs join effort to rescue youths trapped in Chiang Rai cave
Thai teenage football team trapped in cave may be 'still alive'
I have just returned from Bangkok, where I was involved in a collision while in a taxi just after I arrived at the airport.
As usual, every car on the expressway was travelling too close to the car in front. I've mentioned this many times, but this is how Thais drive. When I learnt to drive in the UK 40 years ago there was a lot of emphasis on leaving an appropriate braking distance between vehicles, but Thais don't believe it is necessary.
Suddenly the taxi driver encountered stationary vehicles ahead of him and braked heavily because he had left an insufficient gap to brake. There were no seat belts in the back and I grabbed my daughter to stop her sliding forwards.
The taxi stopped just in time to avoid hitting the car in front, but the Mercedes A class behind us didn't and went into the back of the taxi. These rear end collisions are extremely common in Thailand due to the Thai love of tailgating.
A useful accessory to have on your car in Thailand
The collision was fairly light, fortunately. No airbags were inflated and both cars were driveable, even though the rear of the taxi was caved in. Bangkok taxis are converted to run on LPG and with the gas canister in the boot/trunk they can explode into flames in the event of a heavy collision.
The taxi driver wasn't at all happy, but the woman driving the car behind remained completely emotionless. I found her reaction quite strange.
Many taxi drivers rent their taxis and they need to get a lot of fares just to cover the rental and fuel costs even before they start making a profit. The driver on Sunday would have lost money that day because instead of being able to collect fares he had to spend time sorting out the collision with his insurance company.
It is beyond me why Thais tailgate the way they do. You don't get anywhere faster by driving two meters behind the vehicle in front and it increases the probability of a collision by a massive amount. There are so many aspects of Thai behaviour that I simply can't understand because they make absolutely no sense.
This was my third incident in a Bangkok taxi. The first, many years ago, was because my driver had just arrived from Isaan and was clueless about Bangkok. There were no GPS devices at the time.
He found himself approaching the tollway for Don Meuang airport and decided he didn't want to go that way, so just stopped in the fast lane. As we sat there while he waited for an opportunity to exit left, cars and large trucks were approaching us from behind at very high speed. It was terrifying.
I was rescued by a traffic cop. He asked the driver for his license, which he didn't have, and then arrested him. The cop flagged down another (legitimate) taxi, who took me to my destination.
A couple of years ago another taxi I was riding in was in an altercation with a bus, but the larger vehicle won. The taxi driver lost a door mirror and kept going on about it being the bus driver's fault, but it was his fault.
After the collision on Sunday we took another taxi to the hotel, checked in, and then took another taxi to Jatujak market. The driver of this taxi, like many Thai men, had a great love of amulets and talismans - several were hung around his neck.
Amulets and talismans (this isn't my taxi driver)
I mentioned this to him and he was doubly surprised that a farang could speak any Thai and would know anything about such things. He then started talking about his amulets and wouldn't stop. There were three little figures sitting on the dashboard and he told me that the figure on the right is the Number 1 protection in Thailand against car collisions. I took a photo for the benefit of my blog readers.
How to protect yourself from road accidents in Thailand
It then became apparent why my earlier taxi had been involved in a collision. The silly man had obviously forgotten to place the correct talisman in his car.
When I called my wife later and told her about the collision, regular readers will probably already know what piece of information she asked me for. Obviously, she was concerned that me and my daughter were unhurt, but what she really wanted was the taxi license plate number so that could buy a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately, not adhering to the Thai belief system, this was information that I didn't have.
Bangkok's famous Jatujak flea market
Used books for sale at Jatujak market
Part of the rabbit warren of small lanes inside Jatujak market
Apart from the collision, my experience with taxis on this trip was actually quite good. There are rogue taxi drivers in Bangkok, but there are also some real gentlemen - especially some of the older guys. One driver that I flagged down had been driving a cab in Bangkok for 30 years and knew the city like the back of his hand. Not once on this trip did a driver refuse to use his meter. A couple of years ago this was a really big problem, but it seems to be better now ... or I was just lucky on this trip.
Every time I visit Bangkok I like the city a little less then my previous visit, and I have visited so many times since 1987 that now I have very little love remaining for Thailand's capital.
I don't like the way Bangkok has developed and even the places I used to enjoy visiting look so familiar now that they have become quite boring. The lack of enjoyment, the heat, the pollution, the incessant traffic jams, and the constant hustle and bustle make me feel extremely tired.
For a long period of time I could manage about four days in Bangkok before I needed to get out. Nowadays, I find myself wanting to leave almost as soon as I get there.
The pollution is another issue. When you are down at street level you don't notice it, but when flying in or out of the city it is often quite noticeable from above. The asthma problem that started to affect me around seven years ago is only a minor problem most of the time but after returning from Bangkok yesterday my breathing was quite laboured.
There is lots to do and see in Bangkok and tourists should definitely make a point of visiting one of the world's great cities, but the overall quality of life is so poor that I would never choose to live there. It's a personal choice, of course, and many other expats seem to love it.
I have many concerns about the way technology is being used, the dependence that people are placing on technology, and that way it seems to be making people more stupid, rather than cleverer.
When I checked out of the hotel yesterday I asked the receptionist to call me a cab, expecting a member of staff to flag down a passing taxi at the front of the hotel.
Instead, she reached for her mobile phone and opened the Grab Taxi application. After messing around for several minutes she told me there would be a 25 minute wait and the fare was a fixed Bt119, which I knew to be expensive. With so many taxis in Bangkok, this also seemed a very long wait.
I told her, "No thank you," and walked about 100 yards to the nearest main road where I flagged down a taxi immediately without having to wait. The driver was a good man and took us to the hospital where my daughter had an appointment. The metered fare was Bt51, which was slightly better than the Bt119 Grab Taxi quote. I gave him Bt70 because he was a pleasant man.
A few days ago I watched something on Thai TV about a 'Smart Farmer' initiative. The Thai agricultural industry has faced many problems in recent years and now, it seems, the answer to everything is to give farmers smart phones and Farmer apps.
Education surveys in this region regularly place Thailand near the bottom of the list. When Yingluck was PM there was a big project announced to give every school child a tablet computer. This was going to be the great panacea to cure all the wrongs with the Thai education system but, of course, everyone knew there would be a lot of corruption and that the kids would use their new tablets mostly to play games.
I've encountered people whose attitude to language learning is that it isn't necessary these days because of technology. Some people seem to have the attitude that it isn't necessary to think or learn nowadays because everything is on the Internet.
Technology is wonderful. I wouldn't be writing this blog without technology and the technology has made living in a foreign country so much easier than it used to be, but it's only a tool. It's not a substitute for using our brains and continuing to learn.
Wherever I went in Bangkok, when I looked around half the people I saw were playing with mobile phones. The addiction is very real. Where is this all going to end?
Friday 22nd June 2018
Why is life always so busy? This week I thought I would be able to sit down with time on my hands and get some things done, but it didn't work out that way. I have errands to run today, children to take to tutoring lessons tomorrow, and I am going to Bangkok on Sunday.
I have hurriedly finished the first draft of my Phattalung guide. When I have some more time I will add some more information and photos.
After I moved to Songkhla province in 2003 the first province I visited was Phattalung and since then I have returned many times. It is only 90 minutes away from Hat Yai, but it is a completely different world. There is so much hustle and bustle in Hat Yai, far too many people, and at times the traffic jams resemble those in Bangkok.
Phattalung is just nature and the traditional way of life in Thailand. Visiting Phattalung is very relaxing and I find that it's a great way to relieve stress and recharge my batteries. I should have written something about Phattalung long ago, but ever since my children arrived I never seem to have any time.
Thursday 21st June 2018
After looking after my son at home last week, this week hasn't gone at all how I expected and I've had a few more issues crop up.
During the last few years I haven't had any luck with car repairs and unfortunately that run of bad luck seems to be continuing.
A couple of years ago the car went in for a routine service at the main dealer. They called me during the day to ask permission to change the sump gasket as it had a problem. I agreed.
When I got the car home there was oil leaking from the engine, which there wasn't before, and I immediately assumed they hadn't fitted the sump gasket correctly. They insisted they had and told me that lots of parts needed replacing to fix the leak, even though there hadn't been a leak before the service.
Once more I agreed for them to do the work. They called me again to tell me that another expensive part needed replacing. It turned out they had broken the flywheel while stripping the engine down, but I had to pay.
I lost my car for about a month, although they did give me a Fiesta loan car. When I eventually got the car back (after paying another big bill) the red battery light on the dashboard kept coming on. I took it back again, and again they told me this was nothing they had done even though I had never seen this problem before.
The simple routine service I had originally booked the car in for turned into a major (expensive) headache.
Last year the engine started making a very strange noise and I took the car in again. They changed various parts that they thought was making the noise, but to no avail. They couldn't find the problem and were getting desperate. At one point they were talking about finding a replacement engine or stripping down the engine completely and rebuilding it. I was told that to do this the bill could be up to Bt100,000.
Eventually, their expert from Bangkok diagnosed a faulty rear main seal (RMS). This cost just Bt2,000 and had it been diagnosed sooner I wouldn't have lost my car for almost three months. During that time they did loan me a pickup truck.
Everything was fine after that, apart from a strange squeaking sound that only occurs on long journeys after an hour or so and which, so far, they haven't been able to trace.
On Monday the car went in for another routine service. They wanted to keep it in overnight and look for the cause of the strange squeaking sound on Tuesday. I went into town with my wife on Tuesday morning and left home at 7am. After waiting most of the day, the car was finally ready at 3pm.
I started to drive home and noticed three problems so immediately returned to the dealer. Problem 1 got fixed, problem 2 needed parts, and they told me that they couldn't hear problem 3, which was another noise. I was tired at this point so went home, but the noise - a horrible graunching sound on full lock when turning right - was still there.
It seems that every time I take the car in for a service it comes back with more problems than it had when it went in. This has only been the case for the last couple of years. When I first started getting repairs done on my car I was always very impressed with the workmanship.
I went back again on Tuesday morning to get problem 3 fixed and this time I dealt with my favourite mechanic. He's a fantastic man - super friendly, super helpful and super competent. He fixed the problem and followed up on the part for problem 2, but from Monday to Wednesday I wasted a huge amount of time.
Today, I took my wife's motorbike in for a repair and what a difference between motorbike and car repairs in Thailand. The front disk brake had become very stiff and this was because of a fault in the master cylinder.
If there is a problem with a part in my car the policy is to replace the entire assembly. There is no policy to repair anything. Even if a 2 cent part breaks, the whole assembly is replaced and the cost is normally very expensive. This isn't the case with motorbikes.
The motorbike repair shop had master cylinder rebuild kits and fixing the brake problem plus changing the engine and transmission oil cost just Bt400. On Tuesday, my car service cost me Bt5,500 and when the new part arrives (a cooling system expansion tank) the bill will be another Bt3,000.
Using a motorbike to take produce to the local fresh market
The bike gets almost no attention, but it always runs and it has never broken down. Repair bills are ridiculously cheap and quite a few repairs I've had done in the past have only cost Bt30. It costs the same amount to repair a puncture.
The bike annual roadworthiness inspection costs Bt60, the mandatory government Por Ror Bor insurance is Bt350 and road tax is just Bt101. I filled the tank today and it was just Bt80. A few weeks ago I filled my car and it was Bt1,500. A tank full of petrol lasts us ages because the bike doesn't get used that much.
Cheap family transport in Thailand
Motorbikes in Thailand can be really annoying, but these little Japanese bikes have revolutionised transport for the masses in Southeast Asia. It is the same in Vietnam. Whole families get around on a bike and bikes are modified in various ways to run small businesses. They have sidecars fitted to transport goods or they are turned into mobile food stalls. They are so amazingly reliable and so amazingly cheap to run that it's easy to see why they are used by so many poor Thais.
On another subject. This morning I started something that I've been meaning to do for years, and that is to add a section about the province of Phattalung to my site. It should be ready soon. I'll post a link here when it is ready.
Sunday 17th June 2018
Dear readers, so what the crap.
Microsoft have been going crazy with Windows 10 updates this past week. When this happens I assume that most of the fixes are for security issues. New features occasionally appear, but mostly they are of no use to me at all.
Yesterday, for some reason, I clicked on the link to get information about new features. I found, for example, that I could start writing something on my phone, which I never do, and then magically continue writing on my computer. I read about some other new features I would never use and I was about to close the window when I saw something about the addition of dictation software. Mmm, that could be useful.
Voice recognition software isn't new. Years ago when I was working at IBM using a first generation laptop running OS/2 there was some voice recognition software. Unfortunately, it was so bad as to be unusable. However, this is now 2018 and computer hardware and software has come a long way since then. I decided to give the Microsoft dictation software a shot.
I was impressed. I only did a quick test, but even when speaking softly and not very clearly the speech recognition was quite accurate. Despite having used a keyboard for longer than I can remember I never progressed beyond two finger typing and I feel this is something that could actually save me time.
Another thought then occurred. Does this work in Thai? I was eager to try for two reasons. Firstly, would the software detect the change of language and switch automatically? Secondly, Thais never expect Thai words to come from farang mouths and when I speak to Thais who don't know me I often get blank stares. Is my Thai really that bad or can it be understood by voice recognition software?
I started with a simple hello, "Sawatdee krup." The voice recognition software interpreted this as, "So what the crap." At this point I gave up. First question answered - it doesn't automatically switch language. I will have to change the language before I can get an answer to my second question.
To use this feature on the latest version of Windows 10 just press the Windows button and 'H' to get into dictation mode.
More on language. At the start of this month I wrote something about how Thai school children learn tones compared to how foreigners learning to read Thai learn tones. It's completely different. Foreigners must remember lots of tone rules, but Thais learn in a very natural way with no rules at all. They just use a LOT of repetition.
Recently my Learning To Read Tutorials have been getting a few more hits than usual and this has encouraged me to do some updates. I've added a few more photos and examples to various tutorials and also described the way in which Thai kids learn tones.
This will be boring to most readers, but may be of interest to those who have an interest in the Thai language.
Will men ever understand women?
At least when you are married to a woman from the same culture you only have the gender differences. When you have a Thai wife you have the gender differences plus the myriad cultural differences. In addition, most foreign men with Thai wives choose women who are considerably younger and then there are also age differences. My wife is great. She bakes fresh bagels for breakfast and last night made a fantastic roast chicken dinner, but it's not always plain sailing.
A major element of Thai cultural behaviour is this thing Thais call, 'sanook'. It's often translated into English simply as 'fun', but the actual meaning is far more nuanced. Just like the concept of 'sabaay' it is very important to Thais.
There's something else called 'bpai tiaew', which is also very important to Thais because it is 'sanook'. I hope you are following so far. Basically, this involves taking some form of motorised transport and going somewhere. It doesn't matter where. Anywhere. Many Thais have low thresholds of boredom and just don't like staying in one place for very long.
All I've heard from my wife recently is that she wants to 'bpai tiaew'. When I ask her where she wants to go, she doesn't know. All she ever says is that she wants to go somewhere she hasn't been before.
It's like my kids when we go shopping. They tell me they want a toy, but they don't know what toy they want. They just want a toy. Any toy.
This 'bpai tiaew' thing has been driving me crazy recently and I have started to dread weekends because I know that if we don't go anywhere she will start acting up and telling me she is bored.
This weekend I tried to preempt the problem. I sat down yesterday and thought about places we could go to where she hadn't been before. Near the Malaysian border are some tunnels that were used by communist rebels from the mid 60's to early 80's when there was a communist insurgency in Thailand.
I have known about these tunnels for years, but have never actually gotten around to visiting. The tunnels have some historical interest and the setting is in a national park near where there are also waterfalls. It's about 70km from where we live and it seemed an ideal location for a family day trip.
I spoke to her yesterday and told her the plan, to which she agreed. I did a bit of research on-line and plugged the coordinates into my Garmin GPS. The plan was to leave around 9am today.
This morning I was busy getting prepared to go, but I sensed that she had no enthusiasm. She then asked me if I still wanted to go and it was obvious that she didn't want to go.
Every week I get nagged if we don't go somewhere and when I do make plans to go somewhere she doesn't want to go. Women. Can't live without them. Can't shoot them. Perhaps we shall go to the tunnels next week? It depends on her.
Thursday 14th June 2018
Our four year-old wasn't well on Sunday. Hat Yai has literally hundreds of private dental and medical clinics that are open weekends and evenings, and we took him to a local pediatrician. After a short wait we saw the doctor. She has studied and worked in the USA and her English was very good even though I could understand everything she said to my wife in Thai. She prescribed some antibiotics and the total charge was Bt300. It was all very efficient and satisfactory.
After almost 15 years in Thailand I can count the number of negative experiences I have had with doctors and dentists on one hand ... and still have a few fingers left over.
Last year on my trip back to the UK I tried to see a doctor. Having used a different brand of shower gel that I must have been allergic to, the skin under my arms had turned extremely dry and uncomfortable. Also, I had forgotten to pack my asthma medicine. I can buy it over the counter in Thailand, but it needs a doctor's prescription in the UK. Many drugs that need prescriptions elsewhere can be bought over the counter in Thailand.
It was the weekend and there wasn't a single medical facility open in my home town in the UK. Not one. And the town is quite large. I drove to another town, but upon arriving at the surgery was told that there would be at least a four hour wait. I decided it wasn't worth waiting and drove back to my father's house again. Wonderful. Thailand isn't perfect but there are many ways in which life is far more convenient than the UK, and the cost of living is significantly cheaper. The trip to the UK was one that I had to make for personal reasons, but from the minute I arrived at Heathrow airport I couldn't wait to get back to Thailand again.
Anyway, we decided to keep our lad at home on Monday. I looked after him while my wife went to work. There was a huge improvement on Monday and no need to keep him at home any longer, however, my wife was advised by the school to keep him at home because there has been a major outbreak of hand-foot-and-mouth disease at the school.
My daughter suffered from hand-foot-and-mouth disease on three separate occasions when she was younger. It's viral and spreads very easily among young children as they cough and sneeze everywhere and lick each other's lollipops.
The disease isn't dangerous, but it's unpleasant. The child suffers from ulcers in the mouth and small blisters elsewhere on the body, especially the hands and feet. It's generally not a problem for older children and adults.
The school is closed today while the teachers disinfect the classrooms and tomorrow is a holiday because it is the end of Ramadan.
The school is run by an order of Catholic nuns and the vast majority of the students and teachers are Buddhist but, as I have pointed out before, Thais will never turn down the opportunity of having a holiday and are quite happy to celebrate a Muslim festival if it means getting a day off.
The bottom line is that I have been looking after a four year-old child all week and it has put rather a damper on my ability to sit down and do anything. Hopefully, everything should be back to normal next week and I will be left to my own devices at home while my wife and two children are at school.
Thursday 7th June 2018
Today's post is amateur economics hour. However, this is something that has been hurting me for a long time now and continues to hurt me. There must be quite a few other expats in Thailand who have also been adversely affected by the world economy in recent years. Let me know if you have any comments.
When I first came to Thailand it was quite feasible for someone in the UK with a house they were willing to sell, but with no savings, to go to live in Thailand and live quite well.
At that time the average house price in southern England was around £200,000 and it wasn't difficult to get 4% on a savings account.
UK interest rates history
In addition, each UK pound was worth around Bt70. Using these figures, if you sold your house and put the money into a savings account before converting it to Thai Baht you would get around Bt46,000 per month.
If your house was worth more, if you could get a better rate of interest on your savings, or if the exchange rate was higher (which it was sometimes), you could get more.
It's not a huge amount, but it's more than you would get for teaching English in the Thai provinces, and a single person could live reasonably well in Thailand with this amount of money.
This model of financing a move to Thailand worked for a number of years, but then the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) arrived in 2007/2008.
Within no time at all bank interest rates had fallen to almost 0%, meaning that the income from interest on savings that many people relied on became almost worthless.
In addition, the pound to Baht exchange rate also fell dramatically. Before the GFC the rate had fallen to below Bt70, but it was still in the high 60's. By January 2009 it was less than Bt48.
There was a kind of dead cat bounce and by July 2009 it had risen to almost Bt57, but then it started to drop again. For almost two years (2011-2012) it was quite flat at just under Bt50.
Many UK expats in Thailand would love to see Bt50 again now, but for those of us who remembered Bt70+ it was a bit of a shock. It started to drop again at the start of 2013 and within four months had dropped another Bt5.
However, there then began a steady climb. This ran for over a year and by July 2014 the rate was over Bt55 again. After this, there were more fluctuations, but another big shock was coming in June 2016. The Brexit referendum.
I didn't complete the paperwork to vote by proxy, so I didn't vote. I felt that the UK was getting a bad deal from the EU, but I didn't think that the UK would actually vote to leave. When the votes were counted and the Leavers had won it caused shock waves around the world.
As a result the UK pound to Thai Baht rate dropped dramatically yet again. Before Brexit it had been over Bt52. By October 2016 it was less than Bt43. Since that time it hasn't exceeded Bt45. Today it is around Bt43.
In addition to problems with the UK economy, the low exchange rate has been made worse by a very strong Thai Baht. This has affected Baht exchange rates with other currencies.
In October 2015 Americans were getting over Bt36 for each dollar. In April this year it was just over Bt31.
Financial markets don't like individual countries looking after themselves and just as the UK has been punished for Brexit, Trump's strong talk and actions regarding trade deals and tariffs have hurt the strength of the dollar.
The strength of the Baht is a little more difficult to figure out. The Thai economy relies heavily on tourism and exports, and a strong Baht is detrimental to both. A strong Baht makes exports and vacations in Thailand more expensive.
However, this doesn't seem to be hurting the Thai economy at all. Tourists keep arriving in Thailand (even though these days there are a lot more Asian tourists, especially Chinese, compared to Western tourists) and the export trade appears to be doing well.
The country is pushing ahead with Thailand 4.0 and the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and is well positioned to share the benefits of China's New Silk Road project.
Workers in Western countries are expensive, with burger-flippers demanding wages of US$15 per hour plus benefits, and Western employers have all sorts of financial obligations in addition to paying salaries.
Graduate workers in Thailand are paid Bt15,000 (US$470) per month with very few benefits. Government workers have a pension plan, but it is quite unusual in non-government jobs. Workers with degrees are paid less. It isn't difficult to figure out why companies set up factories in Asia to do their production.
My Thai friend who works for the Patagonia clothing company in the US was here earlier this year. Patagonia used to have factories in Thailand, but now most production is done in Vietnam. When I was working on assignments in the States in the 90's I liked to buy certain clothing and Timberland shoes, etc, but noticed that they were all made in Asia.
There is a degree of welfare in Thailand including subsidised medical care for Thais and a very small old age pension, but it is nothing compared to the amount of welfare that is paid out by Western countries. Not only do Western countries have to take care of their own citizens, but they take care of many immigrants who simply show up at the border and who have never paid into the welfare system. This isn't a problem in Thailand.
I think that responsible societies should have some kind of a safety net for those who really can't cope, but it has grown out of hand in the UK and many people abuse the system. Thais try to arrange their own safety nets in case they get into difficulties because they know the government won't step in.
Lee Kuan Yew was scathing in his attitudes towards welfare when he was in the process of transforming Singapore. The following is from his memoir 'From Third World To First'.
"Watching the ever-increasing costs of the welfare state in Britain and Sweden, we decided to avoid this debilitating system. We noted by the 1970s that when governments undertook primary responsibility for the basic duties of the head of a family, the drive in people weakened. Welfare undermined self-reliance. People did not have to work for their families' well-being. The handout became a way of life. The downward spiral was relentless as motivation and productivity went down. People lost the drive to achieve because they paid too much in taxes. They became dependent on the state for their basic needs."
I've read a few things about the Bank of Thailand manipulating the currency strength, but there are valid underlying reasons why the Baht is so strong.
None of the above is good for people like me living in Thailand on an income from abroad. I wish I could see some light at the end of the tunnel, but I can't at the moment.
What became clear after the GFC was that it changed the world forever. The world isn't going back to how it was pre-2008.
It seems that most Brits, including British politicians, thought the same way about Brexit as I did - that it wouldn't actually happen. When it did happen no one was prepared for what would happen next and two years down the line the UK is still having a nightmare negotiating an exit strategy.
After the Brexit referendum and the dramatic fall in the strength of the pound I read a few articles suggesting that the pound would recover by the end of 2018. We are now half way through 2018 and there seems no chance at all that this will happen.
I really hope I'm wrong. Nothing ever stays the same and most things in life are cyclical. Some time in the future it will change, but at the moment I just don't know when. No one does.
Sunday 3rd June 2018
If you decide to live in Thailand, even if you elect to live in one of the well-known expat bubbles or choose to live a solitary life in a Bangkok condo and not have much to do with anyone else, there are certain skills and knowledge that will make life a lot easier.
Language skills are obvious. In Bangkok and all the tourist resorts local Thais can speak a kind of English, signs and menus are in English, and there are lots of fellow expats. You can get by being mute and illiterate, but wherever you live in the world you will always be extremely limited if you can't speak or read the local language.
In addition, in a country such as Thailand where the underlying beliefs of the locals people are far more different to the beliefs of Westerners than most foreigners will ever imagine, it is important to have knowledge of the local value and belief systems.
Regular readers will know that most of my blog topics revolve around language, value and belief systems. The reason is because these are the most important aspects of life in Thailand related to foreigners.
The other stuff is just fluff. Anyone who goes to live in Thailand will work out what kind of rental accommodation and food is available after just a week in the country. These superficial concerns aren't important and knowledge will be acquired in no time.
The important aspects of living in Thailand take years to learn, which is why I tend to focus on them and I don't spend a lot of time discussing the trivia.
The difference in value systems is the big one and this is the main reason why many cross-cultural relationships fail. In order to have a successful relationship, both people in the relationship must share the same values.
By the time you realise that the things your Thai partner places importance on aren't at all important to you, and vice-versa, it can mean that the relationship doesn't stand much of a chance. A farang once told me that Thai/farang marriage never last more than four years.
I'm almost at the eight year mark and I know foreigners who have been married to Thais for a lot longer so this isn't always correct, but it is probably isn't too far off the mark. It takes a long time to understand the Thai value and belief systems - probably around for years. A coincidence?
Many years ago I met a foreign man who was in Thailand for a kind of speed-dating event. He went to a hotel where he met lots of Thai women who were looking for a foreign husband and spoke to each one for a few minutes. When I say 'spoke' I'm not sure what kind of communication was used or whether there was an interpreter because he couldn't speak Thai and most of the women couldn't speak English.
He told me that he liked one and his ace card was promising her that if she married him she would have a semi-detached house in Grimsby or Scunthorpe, or wherever he lived. His assumption that having a house would be very important to the woman because it is important to Western women.
Recently, my wife accused me of loving our home too much. Yes, I do. To me, there isn't anything much more important in life than having a comfortable, attractive house. It's very high up in my value system, but it isn't in hers.
To her the house means to things. Firstly, it is a store of financial value that should rise with time. Secondly, it is functional - a place to sleep and a place to prepare food. She doesn't take any particular pride in the house and it is me who tries to keep the house and garden looking reasonable.
I enjoy being at home. I enjoy making my home attractive and comfortable and I enjoy spending time there. She doesn't. She's obsessed with the Bpai Tiaew part of the culture. This simply involves getting in a car, or on a motorbike, and going somewhere ... anywhere.
As far as I am concerned, it is a waste of time on most occasions, but Thais hate being in one place. She also criticised me recently over our trip to Vietnam last year. We stayed for four nights in the same hotel, but she wanted to stay in multiple hotels.
Again, this is a clash of cultures - a clash of value systems. If I go somewhere I want to be relaxed, comfortable and I don't want to be continually packing bags and moving from place to place. She does.
When you enter into a marriage and after a while find that your values about virtually everything are completely different you either end the marriage or compromise. There is some common ground as well and in my marriage that common ground is the children. Regardless of what we want for ourselves, we both want the best for the kids.
These differences are normally referred to as a 'culture gap', but I find this term a little nebulous and all-encompassing. I prefer to use the term 'value system', which narrows it down a little.
Thai fortune teller
In Thailand there are also huge differences with belief systems. These don't pose as many problems, but it doesn't help to understand some of the beliefs. There are times when living in Thailand that you seem to be engaged in battle with the locals and it is always advisable to know your enemy.
The difference in belief systems goes way beyond attending temples and belief in reincarnation.
I was waiting for my wife in her car yesterday and listening to one of the local radio stations. A phone-in talk show was being broadcast.
The presenter asked callers their name, profession, where they lived, and their telephone number. He then analysed this information and told the caller whether they need to change their telephone number, or not.
He told one woman to definitely change her number because it was tired. With other people he told them that they could keep their number, but it would be better to change.
Since living in Thailand I have noticed that many Thais change their telephone number frequently. It's annoying when you try to call someone you haven't contacted for a while and their number no longer works.
I used to assume that the SIM card had expired or something and that the change was forced on them, but it isn't. Most Thais don't lead great lives, but if they experience a run of bad luck that is worse than usual they will look for a reason.
Thai females, especially, will go to visit fortune tellers or monks to find out what is causing their bad luck.
Sometimes it will be their name and quite a few Thais I know have changed their name. My ex-girlfriend changed her name and also her daughter's name. Sometimes it will be their telephone number and it is easy and cheap to buy a new SIM card.
Sometimes the fortune teller will tell them the bad luck is because their car is the wrong colour. When I began learning to read Thai a long time ago I read everything while out and about (I still do).
This (silver) truck is red
It puzzled me that on the back of a red car there would be a sticker saying 'This car is white'. I saw lots of these stickers and the colours were different each time. It just seemed weird.
I spoke to some Thais about it and they told me it was related to fortune tellers and bad luck. A telephone number is easy to change, but it isn't as easy to change the colour of your car. Apparently, putting a sticker on the car saying that the car is a different colour has the same effect without actually respraying the car.
If Thais witness a fatal accident they will want to know specific information about the deceased related to numbers - age, house number, apartment floor, etc. The reason is that these numbers can be used to select a winning lottery ticket.
Thailand on the surface, especially urban Thailand, seems very similar to the Western world. Thais dress in a similar fashion, drive similar cars, and seem to be doing the same activities in life - working, shopping, taking their children to school, etc.
However, once your experience of Thailand goes beyond being a tourist and you start living in Thailand among Thais, you start to realise that the way of thinking - the value and belief systems - are completely and utterly different.
It's not a quick process. It took me around four years even to start scratching the surface and after almost 15 years I still learn new things all the time.
I'm certainly not saying that Thai are wrong and that foreigners are right. All I am saying is that values and beliefs between Thailand and Western countries are very different, and that after a period of times these differences can start to cause some major issues for foreigners living in Thailand.
Saturday 2nd June 2018
As a result of the saga yesterday, my site was down for around 20 hours and even though it is back again now this is only because of a temporary fix. According to my hosting company, "A temporary overground fix has been put in place. Please note that service is still at risk and there are likely to be interruptions."
If the site disappears again, you will know why. The patched up fibre optic cable is now above ground in a farmer's field where potentially it could be eaten by a goat or trodden on by a cow.
Now that my wife has returned to work, my new regime is working out well. There are two main benefits for me. One is having more time to myself, but this is a benefit I expected. The other benefit is equally as welcome, but it was unexpected.
Regular readers of this blog will know only too well my thoughts about driving in Thailand. Quite frankly it is something I wish I didn't have to do, but because of where we live - and having two young children to ferry around - it is something that is unavoidable.
This week I haven't driven since last Sunday, when we drove over to the east side of the peninsula for a look at a very quiet spot on the Gulf of Thailand coast. It's been a real pleasure not having to drive.
Normally, I pick the children up on a Friday when my wife has a teachers' meeting after work but I didn't even have to do that yesterday. She drives a lot, but doesn't seem to mind. She has only ever driven in Thailand and the anarchy on Thai roads is normal to her, which it certainly isn't to me. Thailand has the second most dangerous roads in the world.
Yesterday, at her teachers' meeting it was announced that the husband of one of the teachers at the school had been killed earlier in the day in a road accident. He was killed in Nakhon Sri Thammarat. Yet another Thai family has been devastated because of the carnage on Thai roads. The teacher has lost her husband and her children have lost their father.
The main road that fronts my housing development is lethal and accidents occur every day. A few months ago very close to my house a Burmese construction worker was killed on a motorbike when he was crushed by a container lorry.
A few weeks ago my neighbour told me of a very serious accident in almost the same place. It was a high speed collision (Thais drive at crazy speeds and there is zero enforcement of speeding laws) and apparently someone was decapitated. The person's head ended up 50 meters from the accident scene.
When you see how Thais drive it is obvious that people will die. And they do. In the UK I didn't know one person who had been killed in a road accident. In Thailand everyone has a relative, friend, colleague or acquaintance that has been killed in a road accident. Thailand has something like 7 times the road fatality rate of the UK for a similar size population.
Road fatalities are extremely common and the unnecessary loss of life causes so much pain to families in Thailand that you would expect things to change. However, the thing I will never be able to understand is that nothing ever changes. Thais won't change the way they drive and the authorities won't do anything to clamp down on reckless driving.
I'm sorry to labour this point, but for me it is the one thing that makes living in Thailand miserable. Everything else is good, but Thais and motorised vehicles are a lethal combination and it is beyond me why the Thai authorities won't do anything to improve the situation.
Friday 1st June 2018
My website was down for several hours today. Apparently, two fibre optic cables were severed in a farmer's field in a part of the UK close to the Manchester United football ground. It's undesirable, but this kind of thing happens occasionally.
This site is actually hosted in the valleys of Wales. If you listen closely while you are reading you can hear sheep bleating and choirs of coal miners singing in the background.
What is a little concerning is that this is the second major outage in a couple of months. I've generally been quite pleased with the hosting company (and a farmer digging a trench and severing cables with his tractor is out of their control), but it seems they don't have much backup when major problems occur in the network.
The weather in southern Thailand is highly variable at this time of year. There was torrential rain a couple of days ago and the drip, drip, drip above my bedroom false ceiling reminded me again of my leaky roof. The weather yesterday was grey, wet and miserable. It didn't rain hard, but the drizzle lasted a long time. It was like being in northern England or Scotland, except that it wasn't cold.
The weather this morning was perfect, although it became quite humid around lunchtime and then rained heavily again in the afternoon.
The real rainy season in the south doesn't begin until October, but the rainy season elsewhere in Thailand starts around now. There has been heavy rain in parts of central and northern Thailand and already there have been reports of flooding on the TV news. I have a trip to Bangkok planned later this month and Bangkok will probably be quite wet.
A Thai person asked me recently whether I thought English or Thai was more difficult to learn. How do you answer? Thais think that speaking Thai is the easiest thing in the world, but many believe that being able to learn to speak English is virtually impossible. I noticed this with many students and the reason they were so apathetic about learning was because there was no belief that they could actually succeed. It is exactly the same with many foreigners in Thailand.
For Thais learning English the different grammar tenses, with different sentence structures and different verb conjugations, is very difficult. This kind of thing doesn't exist in Thai and the concept is very difficult for Thais to grasp. When speaking English, most Thais think in Thai and do a word-by-word translation using just the simple present form of verbs because Thai only has one verb form.
Native English speakers don't have any problem with English grammar tenses, but most would have a lot of problems learning Latin in which the grammar is a lot more complex than English. It is the same for Thais learning English.
For foreigners learning Thai the simplified grammar makes learning sentence structure quite easy, but the tones are very difficult. With five tones in the central dialect - high, low, medium, rising, falling - using the wrong tone completely changes the meaning of the word. The southern Thai dialect also has a kind of high-and-rising tone.
I have been through the process of learning Thai myself (a process that will continue until I die), I have met many Thai students learning English, and since my kids arrived I have observed how they are taught language. It has all been very interesting.
What I have found interesting is that when young children learn their native language they acquire the difficult skills without having to remember any rules. They learn in such a natural way that when asked to explain something about their language they can't. It seems so obvious that their isn't an explanation. It just is.
When I taught myself to read Thai I asked Thais questions, but I could never get answers. I would either get answers from books about the subject written by foreigners or, most commonly, I would figure out things for myself. When learning to speak Thai, definitely find yourself a Thai teacher. However, if you have questions about reading Thai it is normally better to ask foreigners who can read Thai.
During my formal education in the UK I never studied English grammar. I started high school at around the same time the UK government did away with grammar schools and replaced them with progressive comprehensive schools.
I could speak English fluently, of course, as can every other native speaker, but I had no deep understanding of the structure of the language. I had to learn all this when I did a TEFL training course and it was quite difficult.
The reason TEFL teachers have to learn is because speaking English isn't natural to foreign learners and the teachers have to provide rules. There are all kinds of rules when different tenses are used, but native speakers don't think about rules. They just speak naturally.
There are also tone rules for Thai, but as I have seen with my children learning to read Thai, they aren't used in Thailand. This is what makes learning a second language so difficult later in life. When we learn our native language naturally there are no rules, but if we learn a second language later it's all about rules.
There are no grammar articles in Thai and this is another area in which Thais have major problems. Native English speakers never think about it because it is so natural, but Thais have big problems knowing whether to use a, an, the or not to use a grammar article.
When I was teaching I thought it might be useful to give the students a set of rules on grammar articles. I was horrified when my set of rules came to about nine pages long. How were they supposed to remember nine pages of rules?
Thai tones aren't at all natural to foreign learners of Thai and, once again, there are rules. There are different rules for words with and without tone marks. I won't go into detail here, but if you are interested I have covered them in one of my Reading Thai Tutorials.
Rules again, and it is these rules that make learning a second language so difficult.
My four year-old is now in the second year of Kindergarten and after a fairly relaxed first year there is now a lot more emphasis on reading Thai at the school. Below is a page from one of his books.
When I was learning to read Thai the tone rules were very important to me, but when I asked Thais questions about tones and rules it was obvious they didn't understand what I was talking about. Now that I have seen how my children are taught tones, I understand why.
Thai tones
The following symbol is a Thai vowel that makes a long 'aa' sound, as in 'car' or 'bar'. This is commonly transliterated as a short 'a', thus the common Thai to English transliteration for house is 'ban', when it should be 'baan'.
า
On my son's worksheet this vowel is preceded with various consonants. Thai consonants are classified as low, mid or high class. There are no tone marks - those will come later. This vowel is long and the consonant/vowel syllables are live.
If I had to read the words on his worksheet in the correct tone I would first have to remember the class of the initial consonant and then remember the tone rule. The first example uses the consonant gor gai, which is a mid class consonant. The tone rule for mid class consonants and long vowels forming live syllables is mid tone.
The second example uses kor kai, which is a high class consonant. The tone rules tell us that a rising tone should be used.
For foreign learners of Thai this means having to remember the class of each consonant and then, depending on the spelling of the word, having to remember the appropriate tone rule. There are four tone marks and if a tone mark is used above the initial consonant or consonant cluster there is a different rule for each tone mark.
None of this happens when Thai children learn tones. Teachers or parents will just say 'gor-aa-gaa' or 'kor-aa-kaa' and when they say 'gaa' or 'kaa' it will be said in the correct tone. Perfectly naturally. Absolutely no rules.
The child learns the correct tone, but doesn't know why. The tone is correct because this is how it was taught by the teacher or parent, but the reason why isn't known because it wasn't taught. This is why Thais haven't been able to explain tone rules to me. Obviously, Thais can pronounce tones correctly, but most don't know the tone rules and thus can't explain to foreigners why certain words have certain tones.
It's the same with English. Native speakers can use the different tenses perfectly well in normal speech, but most people would probably have difficulty explaining to a foreigner when and how to use the past perfect, present perfect, future perfect, etc. If you are going to teach a language you need to know more than simply how to speak the language.
The problems with learning a second language are known in language teaching and you often hear teachers and organisations claiming to teach in a 'natural' way, but once students are above a certain age and already have knowledge of their native language it can't really be done.
I go along with Chomsky's theory of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) in the brain that only exists in children up until a fairly young age. Very young children can acquire language in a completely natural fashion simply by being in an environment in which they are surrounded by people speaking the language.
This obviously doesn't happen when we are older. If it did, every foreigner who has been living in Thailand for a few years would speak fluent Thai. Instead, there are many foreigners in Thailand who have lived in the country for 20 years or more and still speak hardly a word of Thai. There are even fewer who can read Thai.
I have heard of young foreign children who move to Thailand and pick up the language within a matter of months. For most adults, that doesn't happen. A few people are gifted with natural language learning skills and learn to speak Thai very well fairly quickly. For most of us, however, it takes a lot of time and effort even to be able to learn to speak enough just to get by.