Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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Returning to Flooded Ayutthaya… On October 6 I visited Ayutthaya to see the extent of the flood. If you haven’t read the post, go to Ayutthaya Underwater. Areas located by waterways were difficult to get to by car but with perseverance we finally made it to our planned destination, Wat Chiawatthanaram. Photos of four separate [...]

Primer on Thai disaster words… The Thai great floods of 2554 have affected almost everyone in the country. The rains in Chiang Mai, where I live, have subsided and the floods only lasted a short while. But the water had to go somewhere, and it did. And now Ayudhaya and Bangkok are getting the water [...]

Bangkok bracing for the predicted floods… For weeks we’ve been reading conflicting news on whether Bangkok will flood or not. First the Governor states that Bangkok is ready, come hell or high water. Then that very same day, Yingluck, the Thai prime minister, warns of floods threatening Bangkok. Soon after we had an expert assuring [...]

Ayutthaya underwater… Late last week I drove to Ayutthaya to see how the area was bearing up under the onslaught of flooding. I especially wanted to visit Wat Kasattrathiraj, the Wat reported as being underwater. I went on Thursday, when the roads were still passable but waterways were starting to encroach onto highways, closing down [...]

Chuvit: The Angry Man… The Thai press is calling Chuvit the colour of the election: สีสัน การ เลือกตั้ง /sĕe-săn gaan lêuak-dtâng/. And comparing Chuvit to the other candidates, who can argue? Chuvit is colourful, dramatic, and evocative. In your face even. So it’s no surprise that Chuvit’s powerful posters are the talk of the town. [...]

Does Written Thai Need Spaces? Not! I recently read a post titled Reforming Thai Language Structure which advocated changing the Thai written language by adding spaces between words to make written Thai easier to read. The writer mentions that written Thai is a “scriptura continua” language, one that does not use spaces between words. He goes [...]

Nang Songkran by Thai Artist Sompop Budtarad… About this time last week saw the beginning of the Songkran bare breasted ladies debacle. For those who missed it: Three extremely young lasses danced topless during the Songkran celebrations in Silom, Bangkok. A YouTube video of the three minutes (?) went viral. The Thai Ministry of Culture [...]

Luke with Farang Pok Pok: Episode 2… Thanks to everyone for taking the time to watch the first episode of Farang Pok Pok and to leave comments. One comment, from Emil, stands out in that he asked if it was possible to turn off the subtitles. The subtitles are added by me to the video [...]

The first episode of the Thai TV show that I co-host, ฝรั่ง ป๊อก ป๊อก (Farang Pok Pok), aired in January 2011. In this episode I traveled to Samut Sonkram to live with clam farmers. Filming the first show was much harder than I expected. Speaking Thai with friends is easy enough, but having to perform [...]

Living with the Tiger… Yesterday I received an email from my buddy Talen, who blogs at Thailand Land of Smiles: Baan Gerda and “Living with the Tiger” need your help. Living with the Tiger is a full length documentary about Thai children who have HIV/AIDS and were orphaned and or abandoned by their families to [...]

How many rainy seasons are you?… I was watching TV the other day and the announcer came on and told us that His Majesty the King was 83 พรรษา /pan-​sǎa/. I did a little guessing as we all need to do when picking up a foreign language and figured that they were telling us the [...]

A house is a home… In English the word “house” indicates a structure whereas “home” includes the idea that this is where you “live”, thus we have the song “A House is Not a Home”. But all my Thai dictionaries (I have 8 now) define “house” and “home” the same – บ้าน /bâan/ บ้าน /bâan/ [...]

This Thai learning Thai… Learning Spanish seemed counterintuitive to retaining any Thai that I had acquired but that is exactly what I did. When I moved to Ecuador I thought I could keep up with my Thai and learn Spanish too but I couldn’t. There wasn’t enough room in me brain for both languages. Acclimating [...]