It's amazing how Thailand is never still. You think I'd be used to it, having lived in cities since I was 18, but this is a different kind of noise. It isn't a steady, low-level buzz that you eventually stop hearing. The baseline is actually much quieter than it would be in a major city, but that only makes the individual noises stand out more.
It's almost 4.30 am, and from my back balcony I can hear:
- Music, possibly from a temple
- Hammering and sawing
- Motorbikes
- Dogs
- Roosters
- The occasional truck pulling up in the gravel drive behind the apartment complex
- The loud thrum of the water heating system, indicating that someone in the complex is taking a shower
- My next-door neighbour either going out or coming home (probably the latter)
The only constant (and kind of soothing) sound is the night insects.
Noise in Thailand is treated very differently, socially, from noise in Western countries. There's no cultural rule that you're supposed to refrain from disturbing others; noise is just a thing that happens. One of my friends here told me that the most hostile response she ever got from a Thai person was when she went downstairs at three in the morning to ask two women who were blaring music beneath her window to keep it down. The women were very friendly until they understood what she wanted, at which point they got pretty pissed off. "No, this is Thailand," one of them told her. "You shut your window."
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