Oh where do I even begin with language? Let me tell you how my first weekend traveling with a couple friends went. We woke up at 5 in the morning to catch a cab to a local bus station to make our pre-booked 6AM bus ride. We went to the side of the road and flagged down a taxi. I had printed out the piece of paper with our booking information on it. The paper also included the located of the bus in Thai just in case the cab driver couldn’t understand what we were saying. I showed the bus driver and they seemed to understand. Off we went, in the hands of the cab driver. We show up at a bus terminal and walk through and everyone is yelling different things at all, trying to get us to get on their specific bus and also trying to charge us again. We had already paid for our bus ride so obviously we refused, but were confused why we couldn’t find the location of our departure. Barely anyone could speak English so people would just point at someone else so we would stop bothering them. Finally, we walked back out to the front and someone who could somewhat speak English said we were at the WRONG bus station. Now, it was about 5:50 AM and we were about 20 minutes from the other station we had to get to (we still didn’t know if it was right or not). So, what else could we do but hop in another taxi in the hopes of getting to the other bus station on time? I think the taxi driver could read our body language that we were in a hurry, so he drove so fast I think 3 out of the 4 of us peed our pants in fear (just kidding, of course). We made it to the other bus station exactly at 6:10AM and ran inside. Immediately, the driver noticed us and we hopped inside the minivan (which is another form of bus they use besides a big bus which I’m sure you might be picturing). Once we got on the minibus, I think all of us just fell back asleep as if our chaotic morning never happened.
You would think that we were all stressed out and frustrated, but it was actually the opposite. We all just sat back, cracked jokes, and enjoyed this new, foreign experience. We had no idea where we were going to end up that morning because we couldn’t speak the same language as the cab drivers and people at the bus stations. Yet, we all just knew it was going to work out and acknowledged that hectic miscommunications like this were all a part of the learning experience. We came here knowing there was a language barrier and knew very well that traveling wasn’t always going to be easy. One girl in my little group of friends kept cracking jokes and the rest of us didn’t even have time to be stressed because we were laughing to hard.
That trip set the basis for the rest of trips and it only went up from there because we knew that anything was possible or anything could go wrong at any time, but that it’s something we didn’t let bother us because that comes with any place where there’s a language barrier. The best thing to do is just smile and always say “Kob Khun Kha,” which is thank you in Thai.
