Thai Language - and - Dominoes with Motorcycles

Phuket, Thailand, Kata Beach
March 23, 2010


Thai Language Lessons - why to learn a language young
We are doing our best to get rudimentary language knowledge of the countries we are visiting so we can say, "Thank you, please, yes, no, hello," etc.. In Bangkok we were able to take a two hour Thai lesson from the same teacher who teaches our host, Jeff. The teacher went over numbers for about 10 minutes and then she quizzed us - reading numbers out loud in Thai and having us write them down without looking at a book. So, for example she would say, "Saawng-phan-haa," and we were supposed to write down 2,500. She read up to numbers as high as 659,842 - and Ben was getting them all right - after ten minutes of learning! Amazing! Amelia did really well with conversations and pronunciation! Both did much better than mom and dad - a clear reason to learn a language young.


Motorcycles and Dominoes Don't Mix
We have seen so many injured tourists with taped up ankles, scrapped up arms and bandaged shoulders and we wonder if they are from motorcycle accidents, as we've read and heard from everyone including ex-pats to local residents that motorcycles are so dangerous for tourists to ride as they are mostly new drivers in crazy traffic. Tourists on motorcycles are everywhere and in the last two days alone we've seen two motorcycle accidents. In one case, right across the street from a restaurant we were eating, the motorcycle driver came around a corner too fast and ran right in to a motorcycle parking area and, like Dominoes, took down nine parked motorcycles! The Thai police arrived and the street was soon filled with unhappy motorcyle owners. We'll stick to dominoes on the table - no motorcycles for this family.

All the best,
Jackie