These really aren't all that exciting, but I found this style of packaging food to be particularly Thai. At the very least, I haven't yet run into this anywhere else: everything from tiny bags of soy sauce and bags of fruit/desserts, take-out soup - it's all packaged up in ballooned plastic bags like this:
Photo credits: P
Almost every place we stay at has some signature key chain that is never quite what I expect. I start taking photos of them a few days into the trip so I can remember them and I've put a few here as samples.
Several of the rooms we stay in have electricity that shuts off whenever the key chain is removed from a custom wall cradle - this way you never forget your TV/AC/fan on all day while you're out:
The thinking behind most other key chains seems to be "If we make it big and clunky maybe the bloody tourists will stop forgetting them." It works - you definitely know when you have your key on you.
This one came with a glasses case attached:
Another key came with both a doll and a rectangular slab of wood attached, complete with a picture of our bungalow:
The winner for classiest key chain is definitely the P. California guesthouse in Nang Rong with its handmade ceramic thingy:
They're tiny compared to a metal garbage can, and don't hold all that much garbage. Thai's tend to burn a lot of garbage so most trash goes up in smoke rather than out to the curb. Very smelly, and even resorts will burn trash near restaurants if and when they feel like it.
Photo credits: D
...but also on buses, in restaurants, in homes. Every town has it's own image of the king and queen outside on display, often 10 feet or more high with a thick gilded frame. There are rules surrounding how to treat the king's image, which extends as far as not licking a stamp that has his image on it - the proper way to attach one of those stamps is to use the damp sponge made available by the post office.
Thais seem to not only have a deep respect for the king, but also a real affection for him and it ends up rubbing off on me. I know that the information I read is propaganda, but my inch-deep-mile-wide tour of Thailand leaves me with the impression that the king was a hip cat in his day. By far, my favourite picture of the king is what I call "The king and The King" (assign the capitalization to each man as you please):
Oh, skinny Elvis, you were so fine.
I searched around but wasn't able to locate a copy of this photo for myself, so I took a photo of the photo as a consolation prize.
Photo credit: D
When graphic warnings first became mandatory on Canadian cigarette packaging, it sounded like a good way to get the point across. We have kids on packages (title: Don't poison us), droopy cigarette ash (Tobacco use can make you impotent), people on life support (Cigarettes cause lung cancer) and more.
Thai cigarette packaging is way more intense. Every time I walk by a cigarette stand it blows me away. The pictures show tracheal-tube holes, rotting teeth, cancerous lips, last rites on corpses - the Thailand's ministry of health decided that gritty was the way to go with their messaging.
Thai payphones are unreliable. There are multiple types of payphone, owned by multiple companies and which each seem to prefer a different phone card. Even if you manage to locate three identical payphones side-by-side, each one will react differently to your attempted call - this one won't accept 10 baht coins, that one won't accept phone cards and the third one just won't dial your number. Pierre had the worst time trying to find phones that would let him make calls to Canada, and even local calls were sometimes a gamble. To change Pierre's mood to "seethe" all I have to do is bring up Thai payphones.
The only thing in their favour is that some of them are pretty:
We watch a number of movies in bars while we're in Koh Tao - it's hard to resist the floor cushions, leather couches, and large screen TVs. The bars on the island are all open-walled, like a birdcage (if the birds could come and go as they pleased). To compensate for the ambient noise of motorcycles on the street and drinkers all around you, the staff puts on the English subtitles.
All of the movies in Thailand seem to be bootlegs - the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is available on DVD at the bars only a few days after it opens in theatres. To meet the demand of getting these tapes out onto the streets, the Head Bootlegger seems to pay someone to whip up some English subtitles.
It's not that I haven't seen bad subtitling before. Closed captioning, for example, is consistently bad on most North American shows. The best example I have of this is from New Year's Eve 1997, when I found myself stuck at Ottawa U's then-campus bar The Nox (or as I like to think of it: The Obnoxious). Around 1:00 am I happened to look at the TV above the bar and noticed the closed captioning had degenerated from "hurry canes have been spotted in the yeast" to "dfas fgrw ga assfagrrt." I assume the closed captioner was pounding on the keyboard with one fist while pounding back a beer with the other.
Subtitling in Thailand has a bit more finesse than a drunk on New Year's Eve, but is still more misleading than helpful. During movies, I write down just a few of the mis-transcriptions so that I wouldn't forget them:
Movie: Tropic Thunder
Spoken Line: Back in '98
Subtitle: Recognize deal.
Movie: Pineapple Express
Spoken Line: You didn't think of that.
Subtitle: Your bigger ass.
Movie: Get Smart
Spoken Line: Oh, a pocket knife.
Subtitle: Oh, punk. Nice.
Spoken Line: Sorry, sir.
Subtitle: Send it to the entrance.
Spoken Line: Unusual but effective.
Subtitle: A loser or a fat boy.
Spoken Line: Why Los Angeles?
Subtitle: Violence angels.
Spoken Line: Chief!
Subtitle: Jesus.
*The title is set to the tune of These Are The Daves I Know by The Kids in the Hall.
Just because.
Photo credits: D, D
