Wheeler’s Summer in Thailand*

 

    We went to the Asian country of Thailand to experience another culture.  We wanted to learn about Thai culture by living among the people, experiencing their lifestyle and not just reading about it in books.  For some time, this had been a primary idea in our plans for retirement, as in: “when we retire, we want to spend some time in Thailand.”  So when friends approached us about teaching conversational English through a Rotary International program, we said yes right away. 

 

    The school to which we were assigned was 9 kilometers outside of the town of Ban Pong, which in turn is about 1.5 hours west of Bangkok.  It was a 4-year college for nursing students.  We were given housing on campus and all meals.  We paid our own airfare.  If we had been Rotarians, airfare would have been covered as well.  We planned to teach for the first two months (July and August) and travel around as tourists until our return flight on September 25. 

 

    The students were truly wonderful.  They wanted to learn for the most part and were eager to please their teachers.  Like many in the world who learn English from a book, they were competent in reading and writing, but their pronunciation was faulty because they heard few native English speakers.  That was our job.  It was a little frustrating communicating without knowing Thai, and it was somewhat confusing because we had been trying to study Norsk for the previous year.  Thai is a tonal language with roots in Chinese and was very difficult for us.

 

    We made several friends and were treated with grace and warm hospitality.  The famous Thai smile was not a myth.  People were extraordinarily friendly.  On our brief visits to neighboring Cambodia and later Malaysia, while welcoming enough, we did not come close to experiencing the genuine friendliness of the Thai people.  Our memories of the place will last forever, and it is amazing how quickly we have forgotten the discomfort of the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes.

 

    Our week end and touring experiences included:  Angkor Wat in Cambodia, snorkeling in Malaysia, exploring ruins of the ancient capitol outside Bangkok, exploring temples and tourist sites in Bangkok, swimming with elephants in the River Kwai, petting tigers, and just sitting on street corners watching traffic.  Night markets and bazaars were filled with Thai handicrafts and we brought back far too much stuff.  A highlight was motorcycling the back roads along the rice paddies, getting lost, and finding our way back again with our handy GPS (global positioning system) unit.  Obviously, it is impossible to list all the experiences we packed into the three months, but suffice it to say, it was a fantastic adventure to start our retirement; we may be spoiled for the rest of life. 

 

    Comparing this visit in Thailand to our visits to Norway, we should start by saying that we did not need our Norwegian sweaters during the hot humid Thai summer!  Both countries are beautiful but in very different ways.  Where we spent most of our time this past summer was very flat.  There were no fjords and the many rivers and canals ran with consistently brown water.  The Thai people, like Norwegians, are very friendly and helpful towards foreigners.  However, the percentage of Thais fluent in English comes nowhere close to the large number of Norwegians who comfortably speak our language.  Actually our Norwegian language lessons probably got in our way at times this past summer.  When we would respond to a helpful waitress with “takk,” we would be met with only a quizzical look.

 

    We were told that Norwegians come to vacation in Thailand mostly in the wintertime.  They reportedly like the warm, sunny beaches.  We met only one Norwegian during our 3-month visit.  This was toward the end of our stay and was on the street of the far northern Thai city of Chiang Rai.  There a stranger came up to Keith and started speaking in some strange foreign language.  When the fellow realized that Keith was totally bewildered, he asked in quite good English, “What language do you speak?”  When Keith responded, “English,” the fellow easily switched to that language.  He went on to tell Keith he thought he was Norwegian because Keith was wearing a cap on which was a Norwegian flag.  Keith had forgotten about the cap and having spent the summer straining to learn a little of the Thai language – and not expecting to run in to a Norwegian in this far north part of the country – he had been completely unable to recognize this fellow’s clear and fluent Norwegian.

 

    More about our Southeast Asia adventure, including way too many photos, can be found by going to this web site:

http://www.wheelerfolk.org/thaiweb/index_thai.htm

 

* This article written for “Fram Clipper,” the newsletter for Fram Lodge #13, Sons of Norway, Eureka, California, U.S.A.

 

Return to Reports from Thailand 2003