You and I, the last refugees

Same same but different?

I've come to the realization that if I keep my mouth shut everyone thinks I'm Thai (or at least not foreign) as I stare at them with no comprehension. An upside of this? I might be able to pass off as native and get into the touristy places for free, I'll have to test this out when friends come to visit so I don't go to the same place 5 times when here. :-)

Over the past couple of days I've gone about on tuk-tuks, motorcycle taxis, and normal taxis, greeting them with a sawasdeeka. That's all fine and well until they start responding in Thai whence I stare and then hand over the address of work or home. So, the only problem with this is sometimes they don't know the small soi off of Rama IV where I live and therefore some confusion occurs. I've resorted to saying instead, Tesco Lotus, Rama IV, which is directly across the street and this miraculously clears everything up.

So, Thai accents, oh how I love tonal languages. As I try and learn some Thai, I'm hoping this won't interfere with the Vietnamese tones, which of course it could as I learned after attempting to learn Chinese. I might come back with some odd hybrid English (from the Singaporean Singlish) as well as jumbled tones in Vietnamese, oh the horror.

Today, for the first time I had a taxi driver who spoke English. I've had others who spoke broken almost nonexistent English, but I could actually carry on a conversation in English with this driver. Now, most people never think I'm Vietnamese, so I've gotten, "you look Thai, or Japanese, or Chinese." When I go, "no Vietnamese," they resond, "what?? no, you no look Vietnamese." It's even more complicated here, as the ones who speak some English ask (once they figure out I'm not a native, which takes about oh 5 seconds of staring) "where you come from?" I answer, "America." They then stare, "no, where? not America." So, it comes down to the real question, "what's your ethnicity?" I think the question comes up in almost every conversation I've heard whether here or the US upon meeting someone new. In any case, I'm thinking of just jumping over that extra question and responding with "vietnam" everytime someone asks me that here. It'll save some explanation until they say of course, "you no look vietnam."

posted by Mai-Lan @ 20:42