How easy is it to fit in in Thailand?
I have often been asked about cultural adaptation and family life, because I have lived in a family scenario in a small remote rice-farming village in northern Thailand for 20 years.
There are many facets that need to be addressed in order to answer this question: family, village, social, cultural, religious and economic, for example.
Thai
I have been married to my Thai wife for 21 years. However, we cannot do everything together. We tried in the beginning, but Neem kept missing important points in ceremonies and conversations, because she was trying to explain other things to me. That system was never going to work.
Then there is language. Thai is very difficult, even for a linguist like myself. I can, or could speak seven languages fluently, but my Thai is poor. Why? Well, it is the second hardest language to learn in the world after Japanese. A language student has to be prepared to be laughed at when he makes a mistake. I have been using this to make friends for sixty years, but my wife can’t tolerate people laughing at me, because she thinks I am losing face. She cannot stop me learning, but she has never helped me learn either, and this has affected my cultural adaptation.
Language Barrier
That language barrier has many repercussions – unforeseen consequences, as far as my wife is concerned, although they are as plain as the nose on your face to anyone with experience. I can still barely communicate with her/my Thai family… especially the children, and I don’t understand religious ceremonies or Thai TV. I can’t follow conversations, and all that means that I am isolated, because people talk mostly about family and work most. Religion plays a big role here too, but it is all lost on me. It represents a massive hit on my chances of cultural adaptation.
Or most of it is. No one speaks English here except my wife. That means that I stopped going to parties about ten years ago, whereas my wife goes to two or three a week, not that she would call them all parties. Some a funerals, some birthdays, some to celebrate a harvest, or a boy becoming a monk for a trial period. In my eyes, there is drinking and feasting going on at all these events and that means party to a simple Barry boy from South Wales like me.
Cultural Adaptation
I live an isolated existence on the fringe of village life, and my wife has done a great job of explaining that away to the other villagers. She says things like ‘he is a writer, and has to work, so he cannot come tonight’. She explains that I don’t speak Thai, and so can’t keep up. Most people are happy to go along with that.
People know that I spend a lot of money in the village. Some resent it. Some are jealous. Twenty years ago, my wife told me sternly that not only white people can be racist. I have met some of it every year, but it is getting worse. Young children say things that they can only have heard others say, yet those others probably smile at me every day. It isn’t a good feeling. It undermines my trust.
Neem is good on this point though. If I identify the child/person she will confront them or their parents, but it’s like Waka mole.
Nevertheless, all in all, I would rather live here with my wife and Thai family than in the unfair society that is Britain, even though I cope here by sitting on the perimeter fence.
I have always been a solitary man, observing my surroundings, liking or lumping it anyway, and I doubt that that will ever change.
Oh, one last point, a corollary to the above. I started writing books because I thought it was a saner option than talking to myself all day! 🙂
Best wishes,
Owen
Ps: Thailand is know the world over as the Land of Smiles.
Read more about my first novel Behind The Smile