We arrive in Thailand

 

So here we are in Thailand’s newest airport in Bangkok.  The name of the airport is Suvarnabhumi and is pronounced [sù.wān.nā.pʰūːm].  In the suitcases and cardboard boxes are our trikes.  Notice the word in the background.  “Exchange” is a word that means give us your money and we will give you some of ours worth less than you gave us.  It also means sell us back our money and we will pay you with your money again at a lose.  Some how that doesn’t seem fair as I should at lease make a little money sometime

The pilot had the “pedal to the metal” from Norita, Japan to Bangkok so we arrived 40 minutes early.   Usually my sister in laws pick us up upon arrival, but this year we decided to do something different in order to learn how we might be able to make our arrival in BKK easier for all parties.  We decided to take the “light rail” link from the airport to the downtown area near my sister in laws nursing college.  Unfortunately it does not start until 6 AM in the morning so  waiting around the terminal is necessary and we had gotten in 40 minutes early making the wait even longer.  The link is reasonably priced at 45 Baht for a one way ticket, with the present value of 32.8 Baht per dollar.  It is brand new and allows groups of travellers to move to and from the airport to the downtown area without needing to use either taxi or buses.  Access to the train is straight forward from the basement of the airport.  All announcements are made in both clear English and Thai. Clear Thai you might ask? Yes it is very clear as I can understand it which is not always true when speaking with people in other parts of Thailand where the language has been influenced by other countries like Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia. Thailand being the strongest economical power in south east Asia has all the problems every other economically strong country has including illegal immigration which influences the language.  In the north eastern part of the country a large majority of country people are from Laos or were raised by Laotian speaking parents so accents and pronunciation  can be very different from central Thai or what might be called Bangkok Thai. Funny thing is the language in Bangkok is no longer so pure as it was say 30 years ago before the big economical boom.  Many rural people have moved into the cities seeking a better life and and they have influenced the spoken language within Bangkok.  Older residents still speak good clear Thai, but some of the people have accents and pronunciation hard to understand. 

The simplest way to describe the Thai language is that it is based around 5 tones.  There is the middle tone or what might be referred to as the normal tone, there is a rising tone which starts as the middle tone and rises in pitch, and a high tone which starts high and stays high.  With these tones there is a falling tone which starts as a normal tone and then falls and a low tone which starts low and stays low.  How these tones are used determines what is being said.  Take for example a word which is spoken as the English word “MY”.  Depending on tone it can have the following meanings:  Wood, No, Silk, Burn & New. Five tones, five different words. It is still pronounced “MY” but as the tone rises or falls the meaning of the word changes. It is my understanding the people who are good at music learn the language easier.  I once though I might be tone deaf and that is not correct, but hearing the tones and reproducing them is very difficult for me.

So I would imagine those folks in Casper, Wyoming are still very cold, and the winters in this area of Thailand are also cold.  Just yesterday it was nearly 64 degrees at night.  I say that with a smile on my face, but every thing is relative and there are Thais here wearing heavy sweaters and wool caps in the morning as I ride down the street in a light weight jersey.  Once the sun comes up I start to turned into a boiled lobster and need to start covering exposed parts of my body to prevent sun burn. I also ride around the country smelling like an eucalyptus tree for the better part of every day as one of the more popular mosquito repellents is made from eucalyptus .  It smells better than DEET, but is not as effective so it must be applied more often. 

I decided to leave some of my usual riding gear home for this trip. 

All signs indicate that I might be very lucky if I keep my normal weight this trip even with riding nearly daily.  I like Thai food so much that it is difficult to keep the fork on the plate and not in my mouth. I hope once we get to riding on a daily basis that I can lose a little weight or at the very least not gain it.

New Year is celebrated with much noise and glee.  As usual the fireworks especially fire crackers started around 11:00 PM and became intense at  midnight. One would think people were using mortars and artillery rounds from the sound that was being made.  It sounded like the sound track from a war movie. I always worry about windows being broken from the shear volume of the sound and intensity.  This year’s celebration loud as it was didn’t last the usual whole night.  It seems that by 12:30 AM it was tapering off and by 1:00 AM it was quiet, unlike last year where the Karaoke bars were blasting all night long along with the endless firecrackers.  Last year I could still smell the black powder from the fire crackers in the morning at 6:00 AM which was not present this year, so I guess the devaluation of the Baht put a dampener on this year’s celebration.