Countdown to Re-Entry: Weirdest Things I'll Miss

This isn’t a list of the things I’ll miss most about Thailand – trust me, I’ve got that list, and it’s a doozy – but of the ten weirdest things I’ll miss.  I realised when I was writing up my post on my final trip to Immigration that it’s possible to feel melancholy about leaving behind something you don’t necessarily like, or even something that’s actively unpleasant or inconvenient, just because it’s become such an ingrained aspect of your life.  So, here are ten of the strange things that have become so commonplace that it’ll feel stranger without them:

• Terrible Thai cover bands.  Forget actually going into the bars – there are nights when you can’t so much as drive along the moat without hearing a group of teenagers in adorably 90s backwards baseball caps massacre a Western pop song.  Which is not to say that there aren’t good Thai cover bands; there certainly are, and great original Thai bands, as well.  But it’s the epically awful ones I’ll really miss, because terrible bands are a bit like unhappy families – they’re unique.  Sure, there are times when I think that if I hear Maroon 5’s “One More Night” warbled off-key from the stage of one more outdoor bar I will stab someone, but life won’t be the same without it.

• Bizarre gelatin desserts.  When I get back to the land of warm scones, pub cake, and Hummingbird Bakery, am I actually going to pine for the taste of taro gelatin, squirmy little shreds of pandan-flavoured rice flour, and condensed milk?  Probably not – but there’s something satisfying about looking at a buffet of what appear, at first glance, to be luridly coloured alien body parts, and actually knowing what goes with what.

• Toilet paper everywhere but the toilet.  I’m actually not referring to the fact that you’re not allowed to flush toilet paper in Thailand, but rather to the fact that Thais don’t usually bother with varied paper products.  Runny nose?  Toilet paper.  Cleaning supplies?  Toilet paper.  Looking for something to wipe your hands in a restaurant?  That posh toilet paper with the puppies on it if you’re lucky; otherwise, the ubiquitous pink sheets that tear if you breathe on them.  Using the toilet?  …That’s what the squirter/water barrel and plastic pan combination is for.  What are you, a barbarian?

• The smell of the moat in hot season.  It’s difficult to describe – sort of rich and oily and sickly-sweet all at once – and it’s not a lot of fun to experience, but it’s a distinct, instantly recognisable seasonal marker, and it’s going to feel odd when neither the moat nor the smell nor the season itself is part of my life anymore.

• Spicy cheese ramen.  Words cannot do justice to the wonder of the Spicy Cheese variety of instant ramen.  Imagine store-brand mac and cheese in a box back in the States.  Now swap out the macaroni for egg noodles, and add desiccated crab stick and cayenne pepper.  It’s one of those foods that makes you feel ashamed for even being in the same room with it, and yet it’s insanely tasty.

• Thai (and Burma) bluntness.  “Blunt” seems, at first, not to fit in terribly well with the usual stereotype of Thai people or folks from Burma as deferential and absurdly polite, but there are a lot of ways that people from this region are straightforward to a degree that shocks Westerners.  I remember Margaret Cho (who’s of Korean descent) joking in one of her standup routines, “I’d hate to be the only white person in a room full of Asian people, because we’ll talk shit about you right to your face,” and I kind of get that now. :)  Thai and Burma people don’t think of it as talking shit; it’s just that they don’t see anything insulting about saying, “You’re very fat!” or, “Oh, you know, your colleague, the really old one.”  It’s a statement of fact.   Thais in particular also like to greet each other with what we would consider weirdly intrusive questions:   “Where are you going?”  “Where were you?”  “Have you eaten yet?”  The consolation is that it cuts both ways.  I remember ending a training for a group of women by asking, “Is there anything else you want to bring up?”  After a lively conference with the trainees, the translator said, “They say you are very beautiful.”  Another quick exchange with one of the women, and she added, “She like your face, how it is red.”  Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t before you started complimenting me, but thank you!

• Your soup is in a bag.  Because of course it is.  Actually, I’m amazed this never made it to the West, because it’s a great idea.  The usual Western solution of styrofoam bowls with plastic lids produces way more waste, and is prone to spilling, leaking through the paper takeaway bag, and scalding your hands (not that I have any experience with that ever, ahem).  Pour the soup in a plastic sandwich bag and secure it with a rubber band, though, and you can toss it around or even throw it in the basket of your motorcycle for a jaunt down a dirt road without losing a drop.

• The way my motorcycle helmet leaves a little red slash across the bridge of my nose.  It’s rakish!

• Struggles with language.  This is, in a way, one of the things I’ll be happiest to leave behind; it can be isolating to be surrounded by a language (in both written and spoken forms) that you only slightly understand, and exhausting having to remember a completely new system of grammar just to go to the corner store (not to mention the embarrassment when the Thai person you’re talking to breaks out of the usual script for the interaction and tries to make small talk, and you’re suddenly foundering).  At the same time, though, it can be freeing to sit in the middle of a coffeeshop or a public square and not understand a word being said around you; it means you don’t get distracted by other people’s conversations.  And in the same way that the language difference complicates everyday interactions, it also gives you a little thrill of triumph when you manage to get a tricky conversation right.  Besides, it is pretty funny when my inability to master short vs. long Thai vowels means that I end up ordering eight plates of noodles for lunch.

• Singing colleagues.  If you’d asked me even a few weeks ago what annoyed me the most about my workplace, I’d have said without hesitation, “The singing.”  People from Burma have a long tradition of singing while they work, and that’s transitioned from the fields to the office.  And it drives me insane.  It’s not the singing, per se, as they all have lovely voices, but when one of my younger colleagues starts putting on his comedy falsetto, or the woman across from him sings the same line of a song over and over at five-minute intervals, I get the urge to drive a pencil through both my eardrums.  At once.  And everything in between.  And yet… I’m going to miss the randomness of the song selection (why did we have that one week of Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch”?), and the occasional invented tunes (with the modern work songs “Looking for the January 2012 File” and “I Will Fucking End You, Google Chrome” being at the top of my personal charts).  I may even miss the comedy falsetto.  Occasionally.  Because the thing about breaking into song while you do a spreadsheet is, whether it’s endearing, irritating, or both, it’s my life in Thailand all over.
  
  And very soon, it really will be all over.