Here in Thailand, I see all sorts of things I would never see in America. Before I get too used to it here, I want to share them with you.
YUM brands (the parent company of KFC and Pizza Hut, to name 2) has aggressive expansion plans here in Thailand.
What I have not noticed at home is the weird toppings they have here. I do not even know what they are, but I guarantee you that the common denominator is seafood.
The rest of the post is pictureless, but I will continue to list unusual (for USA) things.
- Newspapers that do NOT continue articles on an inside page. I do not know if this is standard, but the Bangkok Post, one of the nationwide English dailies, FINISHES ARTICLES ON THE SAME PAGE THEY START!!!! Obvious question. Do they lay it out that way, or just cut the articles, or both? I do not know. When I was in college, I helped layout our school paper sometimes. We would edit to fit an article. Sometimes the authors of the articles would be quite disturbed about what we had decided to edit. On occasion, one would stay up all night with us until we had the papaer pasted up so he could decide what to delete if we didn't have room. Yeah, I am that old- we had a composer that printed out the columns, but we had to paste them on a board to take to the printer.
- Guy just got 10 years or so for driving into a bus stop full of people and killing one and injuring 2 others. His family said he was a troubled person, mentally. (Here's the not in America part...) The court said, yeah, so it must've been you that made him that way and convicted him.
- It is not part of the culture to actually work for all the time you are being paid (OK, so we see that in America, too, but here it is universal.)
- Escalators designed to accept shopping carts.
- Way more 40W and 60W bulbs than 100W. I finally found some 100W so finally I can see what I am doing!
- Carrefour super mart (Like a French super Walmart/Costco combined) has one entire side of an aisle just for cooking oil.
- restaurants are cheaper than eating at home
- ergo, retaurants everywhere- Mae Sa Laung has about 15 or so in an eyeblink of a little village.
-just to clarify. "restaurant" is sometimes just the front part of someone's residence with some tables, or a place on the side of the road, but the food is ok and CHEAP.
- reverence for government- Ha! that's not true...only for the King and Queen.
- PA announcements, karaoke, and the like that are amplified enough to be heard over several square miles.
- driving on the left, therefore shifting with the left hand and turn signal on the right side of steering wheel
- cheap labor (really cheap)
- 2 months with only light rain one day and nothing turns brown (haven't figured that one out)
- morning and/or evening markets everywhere out in the open, selling at least produce and other food, often much more
- cheap public transportation (really cheap)
- monks ride for free (and have special seats)
- many people whose first language is their (within Thailand) tribal language
- Carrefour has a large selection of guitars- Thailand (and maybe moreso Burma), especially among the hill tribes, has a higher percentage of the population that can play guitar and sing
- dogs roam the streets (and sleep in and alongside them) in the villages. They are not wild, but they roam free and like to hang out where the action is, not necessarily where they live. Dogs are everywhere.
- sweaters on dogs when the nights get below 60
- lanterns with live fire floating all over the sky at any and all occasions
- people all over the place riding in the back of pickup trucks
- humongous billbords, especially at big intersections- I don't get it- these things are enormous and must cost a fortune to build- I cannot imagine that they can charge enough to pay for them
- stream and rivers that are turgid most of the time, even during dry season, like now. Some millennium, the Gulf of Thailand will surely be filled in. :)
- concrete and brick residential construction (more on this in a future post)
- electric wires run *on* the walls not *in* the walls, due to the construction method above
- shower water heaters inside the shower (but not everyone)- no hot water elsewhere
- wash clothes in a basin, dry outside on racks
- old people (usually women) pushing 2 wheeled carts up and down the road- sometimes with trash, sometimes with something to sell, sometimes to and from market
- kitchens without stoves/ovens
Enough for now. I need to do this so I will have something to look back on...my memory is getting so bad...
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