A little about the Thai Culture

Since I have a bit of free time before my next class, I’ll tell you a bit about our experiences over all.

Misty and I have come to learn that a lot of taxi drivers will not come here or will over charge you to come here. Many drivers flat our refuse to people into the slums because they believe there is a lot of violence that goes on here. Although the slum is not the safest place, and I would never come here alone at night, and I do not think that a foreigner should walk around here alone, I do not think that taxi drivers really have a real reason for not coming here besides rumor. There has not been a history of any cab drivers being killed or mugged here.

One thing you will notice is that there are a lot of unwritten rules in the slums. Furthermore, there is a lot of corruption. Police officers can be easily bought off. During an election votes are also bought.

Another thing we have noticed is that someone’s bad reputation stays with them. If something has happened years ago, everyone knows about it and everyone still talks about it. People believe rumor to be true (whether it usually is or not, we don’t know). However, stories are passed down from generation to generation, person to person. If you walk by someone and you know their story and the people you are with don’t, it gets passed on. This hinders a lot of people.

I do not know if people could ever really be forgiven for something or that a crime could ever really be forgotten. One of the staff here, their cousin killed another cousin to someone working here. Stories like this are passed along, even when it happened years ago.

Being a white person in an Asian country is also quite the experience. When we went to the Safari we found that just as many people were fascinated with us than they were with the actual exhibits. A few even went to the extreme of trying to take pictures of us (in secret…or so they thought). It is not uncommon to get stared at or shouted at. Many times when we are walking to work in the morning, people will completely stop what they are doing and go out of their way to say hello (mostly males mind you). Sometimes it is more of a friendly gesture, other times it is not. I would say that there is an equal amount of people who speak English as there is of those who cannot speak English.

Another thing about Thais is that they hardly say no. If you ask a favor, they often will go out of their way to help you. Many times they will put their own interests and needs behind them.

Time to go, I'll add more later.