Which Bus Do We Catch?

Friday, 10 September 2004

This afternoon, we had our hour language tutoring class at Silpakorn University. P'Aot (our English Program Director, also the principal's daughter) offered to drive us there. We hadn't caught the bus by ourselves yet, and there are so many different buses here...all which only have Thai writing on them, except for the big ones that go to other big cities and provinces. Those are the nice ones with air condition and a TV. Then there are the white buses that go around Nakhon Pathom, and then there are these open air truck buses, where you climb in through the back, which also take you around town and are the cheapest. Our class was great as we learned how to tell time.

Thais use a 24 hour clock here, but only in written form, not in speaking. When telling time, you must first know what time of day it is, and the day is broken up into about 6 different parts. You still have to know your numbers well in Thai, but then there's morning, daytime, afternoon, evening, and nighttime, which you have to indicate beforehand. Plus, you only use those periods of time for certain times: 1 am - 5 am, 6 am - 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm - 4 pm, 5 pm - 6 pm, 7 pm - 11 pm, noon, and midnight, all have different parts to say before or after the number. Plus, when it's nighttime, you don't call it 7 pm, but the hours after 6 o'clock start back at 1 again. So, it would be "neung thum" ("neung" means "one") for 7 pm, but 7 am is "jet mong chaao" (which literally means "seven hour morning"). Oh, and "khreng" means 30 minutes, so you use that for the half hour instead of "saam sii" (which is the number 30. All the other minutes, you just use numbers). Very confusing to say the least.

Well, after a successfully challenging language class (and I thought I had all my numbers figured out!), Christy and I headed off the university campus to find a bus back home, only we had never caught it before, but we knew we had to look for the white bus. Buses here have specific stops, but you can also wave a bus down on any street along the route. We weren't sure what a bus stop looked like, and so we saw one that had a bench and stood there. So, as tall buses, colorful buses, and smaller trucks passed, no white bus. And, no other people came to join us. We pondered whether it was really a bus stop. We saw buses stop down a ways, where some school students were standing on a street corner. After unsuccessfully trying to wave a bus down (they probably thought we were waving hello), we walked to where the crowd of people were across the street.

I decided to ask some nice student in Thai if there was a bus that went to the bus station or chedi. After her confused look, I pulled out the Thai phrasebook, and then she left to board a tall bus that pulled up. She asked the driver something, then motioned for us to come with her. We followed, even though we knew this wasn't the right bus. We were supposed to catch a white bus, and this was a fancy bus that often goes for longer trips to Bangkok or other provinces. You can usually get off anywhere, you just have to ask, so we figured we'd keep our eyes open, or else we would end up in Bangkok.

There was confusion on how much the ride cost, but the girl who helped us said something to the man collecting the money, and we figured that helped us so we wouldn't get cheated. Then we saw the Chedi, our stop, and the bus started to turn the other way. The girl motioned to us to get off, and we did in my Thai request (before we didn't know how to say "Stop"). We ended up about 8 kilometers away from where our school was, and headed back on a long walk home, hoping our sense of direction was correct. We made it, and thank goodness, the humidity has cooled down over the last couple of days, as the 90 degree heat was more bearable.

When we got back to the classroom at 5:30 pm, Matt, our Thai IA, couldn't believe we walked all that way. Normal people would have caught a moto back instead of walking, but my Thai is still not good enough to do so and not get ripped off without Thai friends, and besides walking is good for us to find our way around. She drew a little map with landmarks so we could figure out where to go, wrote down some Thai and taught us how to request the right bus for next week. We all went to dinner, then went to the open market to get some eggs and visit our nice old lady who sold us bananas the last time. She was happy to see us, and surprised we were coming back again to get more bananas!