Back to Blogging

It has been a very long time since I’ve blogged.  By the evidence of my last blog post about sweet potatoes I buy on the street you may have figured out that no matter where you are in the world, you pretty much have to settle into some routine.   I have gotten over my initial phase of wanting to try everything just to try it and going out of the way to do things I normally wouldn’t do because I want to establish a normal routine and by normal routine I mean by physical activity, rest, and social activities.

Things I’ve Done since Last Blog Entry

I found a very cool bike path to Lumpini Park which has almost no pedestrian or motosai  (scooters, motorcycles)  traffic.  It is actually an actual bike lane and it travels in between the express way and another busy road.  It goes for about 1.5 miles then there is this cool skywalk bikepath, which is made of that hard tenniscourt material and again is devoid of motorized traffic although there are sometimes soccer games with kids.  The skywalk travels in between and over a residential neighborhood and ends up 1/8 of a mile from Lumpini park.   I found a full outdoor basketball court in Lumpini Park which motivated me to buy a basketball so I can ride bike to the park and shoot hoops which I am woefully awful at, but nobody in Thailand will care.  It is something I can do for hours because it gets addicting.

Buying a Bike at Big C

I blogged a while back about the Thai answer to K-Mart or Target called Big C.  I kind of ranted about how cheap Big C was but I went there of all places and bought a bicycle.  The bikes ranged from 1250 baht (~$35) to 5000 ($150) and for some reason I bought one of the double spring mountain bikes instead of the basket street bikes.   I bought a 4,000 baht bike which has to weigh 60 pounds.  It is cheaply made and on the ride back home, I actually wrenched the handlebars off and almost fell off the bike.  When I got back I put the little wire lock that wouldn’t last 5 minutes in San Francisco in between the bikes’ back tire and frame so nobody can ride off with it.   It’s sitting in the parking garage right in front of the security guards so hopefully it will not get stolen.  I have been used to a very nice and light Specialized Sirrus Comp which I can already tell will be sorely missed although I don’t see myself going very far, at least yet…

Got on Channel  7 Thai News Broadcast!

I ran to Lumpini Park which I planned to workout at the gym which is there but as always I got caught up in the park’s main attractions, the monitor lizards.  The park is so laid back, peaceful and relaxing it’s hard to not stop and rest.   I started talking to a Brit who was videoing the monitors and we got to chatting.   He was vacationing in Bangkok and he caught a story on BBC world news about the monitors in the park so he made a trip to visit them.  Next thing we know, we see a Thai news team given away by the pretty reporter with the microphone and the camera man with the giant pro camera.  We chat with them and they want to interview the British guy, Jeremy and they do.  As we were walking away they videos walking down the street which is what was on the news.   I turned on channel 7 and started watching and continued for 2 hours and didn’t see myself on the news.  I found out there were 2 channel 7′s and I didn’t know which one was the correct one.  A couple hours later I received an email from Jeremy telling me we were on the news.  Hopefully he’ll email the video to me so I can post it.

Taking Time Off: Also a Trip to Vietnam

My good friend Jae who owns the fitness studio I trained at for the past 4 years is visiting from San Francisco.   This reminds me, we have to get a Vietnam visa before we can go.  We got very cheap tickets on AirAsia.com which amount to only $75 round trip from Bangkok to Saigon and back to Bangkok from Hanoi.  How we’re getting from Saigon to Hanoi is probably another cheap flight.   I’m supposed to be gone from September 15th through the 23rd although I may want to visit Hong Kong which is one of my favorite cities and is close to Hanoi.  This trip will give me much needed time off from the keyboard but also some great pictures and videos for future blog posts.   You can read about the primary reason why I haven’t been blogging as much about living in Bangkok and traveling in Southeast Asia here: AskTheTrainer Blog

What you see above is NOT the entire Thai alphabet!  It is what makes the language so difficult to read, write and speak.  It is actually the list of vowels along with the tone marks.   What you don’t see on the list is the 44 consonants in the Thai Language.

I took Japanese for an entire year and I can tell you, as a native English speaker who can read/write Spanish Japanese is far easier to learn than Thai.  Japanese is very systematic and orderly.  The two sets of Syllabaries in Japanese the hiragan and katakana were easy to remember as each consonant sound had 5 vowel sounds for example ka, ki, ku, ke, ko.  It makes it easy to read, write and speak basic Japanese (w/out Chinese characters).  Japanese is not a tonal language so you can say it pretty much any way to ge the point across.

Thai Vowels

The chart above has all the Thai vowels.  Confusing right?  You don’t even know the half!  You see the dash which is surrounded with a red dot?  That is where the consonant is supposed to be.  So for example what the vowel above is “sa-ra aah”.  Sa-ra aah is the name of the vowel as all vowels, consonants and tone marks have.

The name usually includes the sound the vowel makes as well as something else.  I will get into that more with consonants.  There are 44 consonants which all make different sounds.  A simple example is adding the first consonant people learn which is called gaw Gai, which means means chicken and makes the g sound.

So you see all the vowels above right?  Some have symbols on both sides, above and below the consonant.  This makes reading very difficult as you must look a group of a bunch of symbols which is complicated by the addition of tone marks and the fact that there are no spaces or punctuation!

Thai Tone Marks

The Thai language is a tonal language.  This means that words that are spelled the same phonetically and sound relatively the same in Western ears, mean something COMPLETELY different in Thai.   For example if you say mai in Thai 5 with the 5 different tones (no tone mark = no tone) it could mean either mile, new, not, right? or silk.  Maybe now you can realize the difficulty of speaking and understanding Thai.

The tone marks are located on the top right of consonants.  To complicate matters, sometimes different vowel and consonant combination have automatic tones which do not have a tone mark!

Thai Consonants

Thai consonants are probably the easiest part of the Thai alphabet to master compared to the vowels but this doesn’t mean they are easy at all.  There are 44 Thai consonants but some look very similar and some make the exact same sounds as others!

What makes Thai consonants complicated is each letter, has a name, a sound, and a meaning.  The name, for example is like double U (W).  The name means nothing and has nothing to do with the sound but in Thai the names has the sound as well as a meaning.

For example the first character, gaw gai (above) means chicken and makes the g sound.  Like I already mentioned, it gets confusing because some look very similar and some sound exactly the same.

Speaking Thai

Speaking Thai is easy if you are reading the phonetic spellings w/out taking into consideration the tone marks.  The problem with this is, it is completely worthless as you are not speaking right.  You may as well be speaking Chinese.

Speaking the words with the correct tones even slowly is difficult and speaking it fast like the people in the street is virtually impossible at this point.  I want to go back to Japanese because it’s about 1/10th as frustrating.

My Class

My class at Language Express is pretty fun.  The structure of each class is pretty much exactly the same for this beginning section.  The first hour is spoken in English.  We start off by going over new consonants and vowels, how to say and right them and their meanings.  Then we have listening exercises then finish the first hour with a game.

The 2nd hour is the speaking hour in which the teacher speaks Thai the entire time.  We listen and read a set of words and phrases then say them outloud in the class.  Next we get in partners and read these conversations in which we have to substitute words we are supposed to memorize which gets very frustrating.

The interesting thing about the class is the demographics.  Even though the teacher speaks perfect English over 1/2 of the class is from non-English countries.   My classes which have different people from time to time had a student from, USA (2 counting me), Australia, France, Japan, Italy, India, Singapore and China last time.  Even though many people use English as a second language there seems to be no problem with the class being taught in English.

Below is a List of the Thai Consonants.

We’re not talking about a horrible movie remake starring Nicholas Cage.   To someone who has never left the “friendly confines” of the USA you may not know much about Bangkok.  You may not even know the difference between Taiwan and Thailand.
Whether you think  elephants trampling people and huge protests with soldiers overthrowing the government are a day to day occurrence or you think Bangkok is just another peaceful Southeast Asian city you may be interested in the top 5 most dangerous things about visiting or living in Bangkok, Thailand.

5. Sidewalks

Sidewalks in Bangkok are always crowded, often disgusting, and sometimes dangerous.  I am an avid runner who likes to run to the gym to kill 2 birds w/ one stone but in jogging down the sidewalks in Bangkok every step you take could be your last.

The uneven sidewalks in Bangkok are complete with loose bricks, broken mane covers and of course stray dog bombs.  Compound this with the presence of the #1 danger and a trip or fall could mean a whole lot worse than a trip to the hospital.

As a guy wearing sneakers the sidewalks present a certain danger but to the women who wear heels, I can’t image how difficult it is to pay attention to every step to avoid a face plant onto a present left by one of the 300,000 stray dogs in Bangkok.

4. Water

Water is tricky to avoid because there are numerous ways you can come into unwanted contact with it.  From swallowing shower water, getting splashed in the mouth while in a water taxi, or the inconspicuous melted ice your iced tea, most foreigners who consume a generous portion of the water in Bangkok get terrible stomach aches.

Where the tap water comes in most residential buildings (to my knowledge) is roof tanks which are either filled by rain water or a water company.  I have heard that each year they check the tanks and find dead birds, rats and insects.  The worst water has to be that of the Chao Phraya river and Bangkok canal.   The canal has a smell the raw sewage which is pouring out of pipes into the canal 24/7.   Here’s a story of a governor candidate who fell into the water and got a rash before her campaign manager drowned in the dirty water.

I have been running to the gym along the pedestrian free canal path, but I am debating whether the evaporated canal water and occasional spashes from the river taxis will eventually be the slow and painful death of me?  I will leave that up to the experts but you don’t have to be an expert to know that the water is one of Bangkok’s dangers.

3. Street Food

The street food which exists all around Bangkok creates a barbecue smell which is a welcomed replacement of the usual bus exhaust mixed with raw sewage aroma which emanates from the Bangkok streets.  I’m not talking about the delicious fruit here.  What I’m talking about is any of the many meat products which taste good when you don’t think about where they came from.

I’m not talking about the typical Chinese food mystery meat but the conditions in which the animals were raised.  I visited Ratchaburi province and stayed with a traditional Thai family and remember the chickens running amok in the mud mixture of river run-off, sewage, and litter.  I really didn’t think about it too much at the time and ate chicken meat but when they served the Tom Yum chicken feet soup I couldn’t help but think of what the chickens were running around in.

I have never really researched (other than hearing preaching from San Francisco yuppies about free range meat) too much about whether how much an animal’s upbringing will effect the quality of the meat but if I see fried fish on the street and can’t hep but think it was fished out of the filthy canal.  I also see people living in next to piles of their own garbage by the canal with chickens freely walking around while they await their death, soon to be featured on the nearby chicken satay street stand???

I have been pretty lucky so far with the street food.  I have had some stomach pain but no problems with dysentery, severe stomach cramping, death or any other terrible symptoms which which are associated with contaminated food.

2. Thai Women

Thai people are so laid back and reserved you wouldn’t think that Thai women could be so dangerous but if you watch the video you will know how dangerous they can be.  Thai women are polite, beautiful and traditional but if you get on their bad side you could be heading to the local hospital!

My friend Jon who has a blog bout teaching English in Thailand told me that two of his friends had been stabbed and hospitalized by their angry Thai girlfriends.  Compound the language barrier with the Eastern-Western culture class and evidentially fireworks are possible and everyone knows how bad it is when they blow up in your hand.

1. Traffic

Bangkok is a city which has had a long-term traffic problem.  I cannot imagine how bad it was 20 years ago before the BTS which provides easy transit via skytrain and the MTR which is the subway system.

The traffic not only pollutes the environment it is dangerous in many ways.  I have not yet witness any accidents but I remember reading about the the week long Songkran Festival in which there were “Songkran’s “373 deaths and 4,332 injuries in 3,977 road accidents nationwide.”

The dangers of the traffic in Bangkok are out there if you’re in a car or a pedestrian.  In taxis you have to first search for the seat belt which is only available 25% of the time then all you can do is watch as the driver navigates through the extremely confusing and seemingly lawless streets.

As a pedestrian the streets seem even more dangerous.  The never ending traffic flow of cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, and motorcycles extends beyond the streets.  Often you have to dodge motorcycles and motorcycle taxis driving on the sidewalk.  The streets have lanes but the are only as guides as drivers weave in and around them.  Driving in a lane of oncoming traffic is a regular occurrence.

Perhaps the most dangerous part of the Bangkok traffic is crossing the street.  I personally use what I call ‘human shields’ which are the Thai people I wait for to cross some busy streets.  Often times there is no sign or signal which you can use to determine when to cross the street.  Even if you do cross at a little green guy walking light you still have motorcycles weaving in between cars.  You have to be on the lookout on both sides of each car for motorcycles as you cross any street.  Compound all this with the fact that the sides are switched from the USA and traffic is the most dangerous thing about Bangkok.

Decisions, Decisions

I just had to get it over with. As I explained previously I needed to leave Thailand to get the education visa process finalized so I don’t have to do these rediculous border runs every 30 days. Border runs actually give you the freedom to travel but I personally hate having deadlines. I like to be under total control of my schedule while I travel. I had a few places where my Thai language school recommended and I couldn’t choose with any logic so I just closed my eyes and checked AirAsia.com to find which flight I could take on Monday to get it over with. The only place where there were a plentiful amount of cheap flights day and night were to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I haven’t heard much about KL other than it was cheap. People in Bangkok even say KL is cheap which leads me to believe it is dirt cheap.

Flying Air Asia

I took the 6:15pm Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur which (along with a return flight on Wed Night) cost me 5,725 baht or $166USD which believe it or not, is way overpriced for the 2 hour flight. If I booked it in advance like any responsible traveler would have, it would have probably cost around 4,000 baht or $116. The AirAsia flight which happened to be on a Airbus A330 which AirAsia publicly hasn’t modified since the news of the crash of Air France Flight was as smooth as any flight I’ve ever been on. Seeing lightening in the distance kind of freaked me out for a second but when the flight is so smooth there was no stress.

Keep this in mind it doesn’t include the 1,000 baht rape by the taxi driver to the airport who I evidentally paid for his return back to the city or the hour plus taxi ride with a Malay grand-pa taxi driver traveling around 80km/h on a wide open expressway. You can tell upon arriving in the Kuala Lumpur airport it is going to take a while to get to the city as you see NOTHING in all directions.

The hour drive reminded me of driving on highways in Oregon. Lots of trees is about all you see until about an hour when huge high-rise apartment buildings pop up out of nowhere. These apartment buildings looked modern. They were all wide, rectangular buildings as opposed to the narrow, square apartment buildings (slums?) in Hong Kong. The apartment buildings are everywhere you look and they block the most famous site of KL the Petronas Towers. They look cool but it seems no matter where you are there is a large building obsuring their view like in the picture (which I did NOT take). I ended up at a hotel semi-near the Thai embassy which I must goto bright and early in 6 or so hours tomorrow morning.

Finding a Hotel in Kuala Lumpur

My first night I’m staying at the Flamingo Hotel. It’s the second choice after the first hotel which was recommended by the information kiosk at the airport the DePalma was booked except for the rockstar suite which I didn’t even want to know how much it was. The Flamingo hotel is one of those wannabee nice hotels which over charges for crap that I don’t care about. The room cost about 325 Malaysian Ringgits ($90) per night which is why I’m up at 2am looking for cheaper hotels.

I still have no idea how to pronounce their money (EDIT:  ringgets ), more on that later. I was looking for cheap hotels for short trips like this one and I came across a new looking cheap place called Tune Hotels in the flight catalogue in the airplane which I may check out tomorrow.

I have to wake up and get to the Royal Thai Embassy early so I can come back to this wanabee fancy, 32inch Sony Bravia (which I won’t turn on) having, no food anywhere in Kuala Lumpur after midnight hotel and check out to find a cheaper place with less bells & whistles which I don’t care about before noon. Sorry about the pathetic attempt at English Grammar but its late and know it’s going to be tough to wake up in time tomorrow if I don’t get to sleep like now!!!

Sawatdee Khrab! Today was one of the very few days in the past 2 months where I actually had to be somewhere at a specific time.  I had to go look at apartments (read about apartment) then I had my first Thai language class which takes place Monday and Wednesday from 5-7 pm at Thai Language Express and gives me the all-important 1 year Education visa.

First of all, it felt kind of wierd actually having to be somewhere.  Keep in mind that for the last 5+ years I’ve been running around from workouts to personal training appointments 6 days a week.  I went from a schedule heavy in appointments to a schedule heavy in sleep. I managed to arrive to both appointments last minute.

To get to my language class I even considered running  the wrong way down two escalators from the BTS skytrain but I decided I didn’t feel like spending the night in a Thai jail so I took the long way around.

Tonal Languages are Difficult

You can see the Thai alphabet is very different from the letters you are reading but that is only half of the story.  Each word can have 1 or more tones.  There are 5 different tones in Thai, mid, low, falling, high and rising.  Each letter which has a little mark on the top right signifies a different way to pronounce the word.

As we learned there are different tones in English but they do not completely change the meaning of the word.  In Thai they do which makes it extremely difficult for me to grasp on the first day of class   For example you can say mai 5 different ways.  Each tone completely chances the word which could either mean, mile, new, no, right? or silk but western ears won’t likely be able to tell the difference.

How the First Thai Class Went

Anyone that knows me can pretty much see how my first class went.  Of course I was staring at the pretty girls walking by and spacing out while I got my ass handed to me in group activities.  Evidentally, like most Thai things, the cirricululm was not put together with strict rules in mind as some members of my class of 8 or so have been taking Thai for weeks and others have just started like me. The first half of the 2 hour class was tought in English, explaining some rules, etc. while the second half was the total immersion style with the teacher Nana speaking all Thai.

I have heard the immersion method of learning a language is the best but I cannot see how.  I am in living in Bangkok, Thailand and would think that living my day to day life would enable me to become immersed in the Thai language enough. I will leave it at that as it is 5am (my usual bedtime) and have more on Thai language very soon.