Gecko Smoothies

January 23rd marked the one-year anniversary of our arrival. We seem to be over the ‘hump’, as the long-stay expats put it – the moment when the exotic experience of life in Thailand melds its way into commonplace day-to-day activities. We’re feeling very much at home and many of the tense question marks that stippled the horizon over the past twelve months are now memory wisps floating over the Andaman Sea.

Amazingly, our bodies seem to have adapted to the daily onslaught of heat and humidity and a day in the sixties would probably feel far too chilly. The bizarre anarchy of the highways no longer hold surprises and the unexpected has become expected. Thais, for the most part, are a very conservative and polite lot and we’ve melted down our steely, boorish western ways to suit. Human nature is, I suppose, just that, and common denominators are universal, but customs vary and, when you plunk yourself into an alien culture, your personal comfort depends a lot on how well you read the subtleties of the society you’ve chosen to join. And then, of course, there are the environmental quirks that must be learned. Twice now, we’ve come close to dumping fruit, yogurt and wheat germ over geckos who found their way into the bottom of our blender. We have, so far, avoided drinking a gecko smoothie for breakfast. So we’ve adapted and feel as if we’ve been adopted by some special Thai friends and, after a year, we feel as if we are almost here. It’s a lovely feeling, but we have yards to go before we touch down.

We arrived armed with Thai language tools – CDs, books, bookmarked Thai language sites, primers and the desire to immerse ourselves into learning this complex, tonal tongue. Well… it hasn’t quite happened yet and we won’t truly be here until we honestly knuckle down to the task and are able to communicate easily with our Thai friends in their idiom. This island encourages laziness about it all, because so many Thais speak varying degrees of English. Phuket is a tourist haven and English is the most communicative currency in the world these days, so the locals, those that have the best paying jobs anyway, stumble their way through the intricacies of English quite well, while we blurt out a few common greetings and Thai phrases that only impress foreign visitors who speak no Thai at all. We see the appreciation in the eyes of Thais when we attempt to communicate in their language and I can only imagine what a joy it would be to have a real conversation with them. We’re isolated by the language barrier and we know it’s something that must be tackled and fixed before we can honestly feel at home here.

Language barrier notwithstanding, we are very comfy in this culture and perhaps, just perhaps, we are better off for not being able to speak the language, because I'm sure Thai conversations, as in conversations in every country of the world, revolve around politics and sports. Maybe we're so happy because we're being spared the repetitive boredom of it all.