Culture barrier

Even for expats who have been living here for quite some time, it remains difficult to bridge the so different life compared to the homeland. Like The Inquisitor, we fail to master some life habits, falling into the same trap over and over again.

It starts with our physique: too heavy and too bulky, skin color and hair color, most of us have an excellent belly of the good life - we remain a striking appearance. Wherever we walk, sit or stand: we walk way too fast, we need a chair or other seating element to sit, we stand still and we rise centimeters above the natives.

When we try to be a little more inconspicuous we have other annoying traits. Our body language, the expression of our face depending on our mood, we quickly show our cards. Our loudness when we feel a little offended, but even in casual conversation we can be heard miles away, especially when the alcohol kicks in.

Our caution when bringing native food to the table, the spiciness cannot please the majority of farangs let alone the rats, snakes, frogs and bugs on an Isaan menu. No, we remain an elephant in the Thai china shop – whatever nationality we have.

The wonderful climate, so exuberant, is also often experienced by expats as difficult. Rain showers are often so heavy that after five minutes there is already knee-high water in the streets. And we have no idea how long such a shower can last, our Belgian/Dutch roots remember hours, yes, even days of rainfall. So those living in the farang enclaves criticize the minimal sewage system without realizing that XNUMX percent of the country simply has no sewage system.

We look up in surprise at the missing gutters on the majority of the houses. In the event of a sudden local downpour, our motorized rig almost always washes away because of the mass of water coming from a roof – we parked incorrectly, we didn't look up beforehand. In the event of a thunderstorm we panic: black clouds hang menacingly low, the thunderclaps are about ten times louder than we know and the lightning bolts and impacts always seem very close.

While the Thai enjoy the rain: they spontaneously start washing their motorcycle annex car because of free water. They laugh like a child because of the wonderful refreshment that every shower brings, look forward to a few dust-free hours and are happy that their plants can continue to grow refreshed - because without exception they are all edible.

The sun, so adored by tourists, is often a burden in the eyes of an expat. She stings from sunrise to sunset for months. Let's go out and let ourselves be surprised, almost as bad as a tourist, by a red-brown skin color.

Without thinking we park our moped in full sun and then hurt our derrière including that of the female, which is usually still short skirted. Ditto with the car, although we have experience. We do look for a shady spot, but without realizing that the position of the sun is changing. With the air conditioning on the highest setting, the thing cannot be cooled down for the first hour. When we sometimes think about parking the car under a tree, we usually forget to look up. Without exception we stand under a fruit-bearing tree – palm tree, mango tree. And there is a good chance that a fruit will fall on the well-maintained and shiny body.

Are we sitting on a terrace or on the beach. Do we forget to shield our food and drinks – after five minutes your beer has become a kind of hot bitter drink and everything that food should represent has turned into an unrecognizable thick mush.

If we have to go shopping, we start walking way too fast, in the sun. From Tesco to Makro, from Foodland to the Seven. Sweating like crazy, overheated and moody we return home to turn on the expensive air conditioning.

Thais don't suffer from that at all. They park anything that has wheels as close as possible to their target. And, of course, always in the shade - regardless of whether they close off entrance gates or streets, but who is the smartest?

They don't forget to check existing gutters and tree species. They go, well, walking, automatically in the shadows. Working in full sun - they would put on a ski suit including a hat if necessary, but this allows them to maintain their body temperature while we warm up.

Food and drink are sacred to them – they simply don't get time to warm up.

Fauna and flora are so unknown to us, it takes a lifetime to get to know everything. Plants grow and bloom at an unprecedented speed and exuberance. To such an extent that an expat, we Flemings and Dutch people have green fingers, is quite quickly mistaken about species.

Some tree species go up to thirty meters into the air in seven or eight years. Grow into a mastodon that develops roots that work everything out of the ground, including our beautiful and laboriously constructed walking path. Palm trees, with delicious coconut fruits, become much too high over time, you can only look at the fruits, but you can no longer harvest them independently.

All that green attracts insects, in unprecedented numbers and sizes. Ant colonies that are ineradicable. Bees and other house sparrow-sized flying creatures. Toads and frogs that easily drown out a Metallica concert. Various types of lizards including a biting tokkei that we do not distinguish from a more harmless species. Deadly centipedes, wrist thick with a length of over twenty centimeters. Scorpions, black as night, from the tiny ones that deliver painful bites, to four-inch specimens that can take you to hospital. And of course, the snakes. From the harmless tree snake to the king cobra and vyper. We still recognize them, it is all those other species that pose a danger to us. Aggressive or not? Poisonous or a strangler?

Thais don't mind. Accustomed from childhood. Everything they plant must be edible, so no plant or tree has time to grow to adult size. Insects don't bother them much, most of them simply eat them, proteins you know. Snakes see Thai much faster than us farangs, we almost step on them before noticing them, they see them from twenty meters. They usually eat the captured specimen, but sometimes they release the serpent again, a hundred meters away in a bush. The why we have to guess. And why so close to release is completely a mystery: that beast is coming back, surely?

We can't get the hang of the Thai sense of time. Actually, the Thai do not know an exact time, which is difficult to make appointments. And we continue to worry about it. We should know better. Throughout Thailand there are hardly any public clocks or watches. The only thing they used to take into account was the of the temple, a monk who struck a gong on the hour. , a 1 hour. , 2 o'clock.

Now, in modern times, there is still a remnant of it: nung toum is 19 pm, soong toum is 20 pm, … etc. But the sixty minutes in between are just filler. Even if your appointment shows up at 5 to 10 instead of 9, he or she still thinks they'll be on time. Unbearable for a Westerner.

About the only thing we can appreciate and accept is the Thai feeling for . They are partygoers first class and this fits in perfectly with our lazy life. We have to keep our moisture level in balance, don't we? No gossip here when you drink beers 3 days in a row, on the contrary, that is appreciated.

Their taste also fits ours perfectly. Thais like the fat and gristle on a piece of meat, which we ignore. We get the tasty white meat from the fish, they eat all organs including the eyes, the remains of a fish eaten by Thais are comparable to a specimen that a cat used to eat. Scampis with eggs hanging on them go their direction, those without our direction. Homegrown dishes – we the least spicy, they the chillies. And the choice of beer, or any alcoholic drink, they don't care, they like everything.

So there is still hope. Despite the culture barrier, the language difference, the impossible Thai logic.

We'll be here for a while, we're not morbid.

The Inquisitor

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