Palpable Disadvantages of Not Knowing the Language

We got into our very first motorcycle accident a week ago. Wasn’t my fault, you see, and everybody was fine – the event even ended with ice cream sundaes! More to this later, but one can imagine the difficulties of trying to communicate your innocence to the blubbery teenage Thai girl who just t-boned you in traffic in the heart of a small city and is muttering something about “police” with her cell phone in hand.

Chiang Rai has been both a pleasant surprise and something of a purgatory that may be left to us, the last kid chosen in a pick-up basketball game. After some exploration, we have discovered a whole slew of affordable housing (approximately $50 per month, split between us), a picturesque local beach on a lazy river cutting through the mountains, and perhaps best of all, an internet café with the best brownies this side of Belgium (perhaps the reason that we may have been spotted online rather regularly). In spite of such wonders, Chiang Rai has some rather dour prospects: the city does not appear to have an active or interesting NGO population, but rather a humdrum tourist scene; most NGO’s in the area either do not exist anymore, the husks of which are still festively adorning the internet, deceptively drawing one’s attention, or demand formal applications from overseas.

After Lauren courageously harassed over the telephone the friend of a friend of a former employee listed in Lonely Planet, we had a meeting set up with the hill-tribe organization. This group claimed to be active in five separate projects, including sustainable agriculture, sexual health, and cultural preservation. The lady who met us was affable, spoke good English (an immeasurable relief at this point), and looked so unbelievably like an indigenous Central American that both Lauren and I had to restrain ourselves from accessing our varying degrees of Spanish. After introductions, pleasantries, and assorted sniffings, we felt quite appreciated, and were booked for a trip to a Lahu village two hours away the next morning. And sure enough, at dawn the next day, we found ourselves in the bed of a pickup truck with On and Suk, two 20 year old Akha tribe girls, Ai, a portly and shy 27 year old who looked 16, and Nunchu, a 13 year old who looked 22.

Cut two hours ahead, and we were seated around a hearth with our gang, plus some more interns from our organization, in the Lahu village. We were in a bamboo village, the type so readily recognizable from innumerable Vietnam films and adventure yarns. The elephant grass roofs and thatched walls did nothing to muffle the defiant karaoke from down the hill, nor did the haphazardly allocated bamboo floorboards (which groaned and shifted quite actively under my feet) hide the comings and goings of chickens taking refuge form the sun under the stilted huts.

The villagers had all come out to greet us and had prepared a feast of teas, fish, spinach, chicken, and jackfruit. We sat cross-legged on the floor, the fire active and slowly seeping smoke across the cabin, the elders sitting curiously and quietly observant, lackadaisically consuming the comically oversized tobacco cigars. The shaman, weather-beaten and sage, teeth blackened by overuse and undernourishment, was delighted when I zipped the pant legs back onto my shorts (a novel innovation for travelers, the pants have removable and replaceable legs), a spell that he could not have imagined conjuring. All was going peacefully until the adults of the organization turned to us in unison, prepared to give us bad news and to be forceful about it, ready to tell us the truth about Santa. Our presence had been requested as guinea pigs for an eco-tour planned for the area – “up and out into the midday furnace, tell us what you think!”

After about two hours of traipsing through overgrown forest and clinging tenaciously to uncertain mountain paths, we certainly tried to chime in during the discussion, but nobody seemed to care about the perspectives of the two English speakers. The problem with this attitude – the tour was designed to interest English speakers. The concept of our tour went something like this: the party ambled disjointedly around the countryside surrounding the village in the vague hopes of learning about the culture and its agricultural practices. This was told by the elder guide, who often would narrate for minutes at a time in his native language, his spiel being translated from Lahu by his young daughter into Thai for the benefit of Ai, who might nervously venture to point up and tell us “It’s fruit.” The tour would then recommence. Lauren’s highlight of the trek was collecting approximately two dozen dried palm fronds on her sharpened bamboo walking stick. As for myself, I was overjoyed not to have been grievously injured by the remnant sharpened bamboo pieces on the trees, left hanging precariously at eye level around every turn (though planned for Westerners, the tour seems not to be anticipating any customers challenging the six-foot plateau).

According to the rigidly structured schedule, the next several months were all meant to explore the Community Based Tourism of this hill-tribe or that, seven days a week. Perhaps if we spoke the language, we could participate and feel fully integrated into the work that was being put into the development of these tours; as the situation was shaping up, we would be much more seen than heard, waiting patiently to be fed whatever auditory scraps would be translated and thrown from the table to our awaiting ears.

And this is how Lauren and I decided to leave Chiang Rai on another open-jawed quest to find a salvageable situation (and how I was convinced to bid adieu to the faux Pizza Hut with two-for-one specials, including a bacon and corn pie).

But, before we could leave, I was guiding our rented motorcycle into a little space across the street when our bike had suddenly turned sideways, a loud smack had approached us from the rear, and the aforementioned Thai girl had joined us in a heap of meat and metal on the pavement of Chiang Rai.

Lots of things wander through your mind as you wheel your bike ashamedly off the road: who was that, how did that happen, is anybody hurt, what is the damage, why are these people driving on the left side of the road anyways? Upon addressing the situation, everything looked to be in order, with the small exception of my right-side mirror lying bravely and defiantly in the middle of the right lane. Lauren was safe and seemingly uninjured, though a bit shaken. The girl spoke no English, and I no Thai, and no bilingual passers-by seemed interested in helping resolve the situation, so it appeared that we were at an impasse. She had a small rash on her arm, my bike had lost a mirror (and I was not eagerly anticipating a bill from a bike shop owner to a white tourist with no insurance and a bike that had been rented plenty dinged already), so I was prepared to bow and be on my way when she spoke the word “police.”

Though the police station was less than a kilometer down the road, nobody came for over twenty minutes, with Lauren and I sitting uncomfortably, somewhat dazedly, and rather angrily in waiting. We had no fear about the actual incident – I had been turning right (American equivalent of turning left) across a break in traffic when she had tried to whiz by me in the opposing lane, and in doing so had sent the three of us sprawling across the road. Sitting and watching the culprit inspect her still immaculate motorcycle, searching in vain with teary eyes for any flaw, was not making the long wait any easier. Finally, two girls in uniform arrived on a moped – the Thai girl’s friends. Immediately, fingers were pointed, tears were shed, and the girls blanketed the scene, amateur detectives ready to present their evidence to the jury. How would I explain anything to the cops in Thai against the heated words of loyal and enraged friends? I was given a phone, and in English the man told me that he would arrive in ten minutes.

To condense the following: the friends had, in fact, called the phone number of the rental company of our motorbike, and an English-speaking mechanic had come to inspect the damages to our bike and to instruct me to pay for her hospitalization for her scrape, which was approximately this long: ______________________ and this deep: -. Using the most basic English at my disposal and approximately eight distinct explanatory hand gestures, I explained to the mechanic that I had been hit, and that the Culprit should pay for my mirror (if we ever get our video camera in action, I have promised Lauren a spirited reenactment for the purposes of this blog). Once again, we were at an impasse, until I walked angrily onto the road and called attention to the piece de resistance: the deep scrapes in the asphalt in the right lane.

Cue understated astonishment on friend’s faces, impish smile from the Culprit, and an offer to let bygones be bygones, which included us paying for our own busted mirror. Had we spoken the language, I could have had her pay for the mirror, x-rays for Lauren’s arm (which is still stiff, but in good shape), and a conciliatory ice cream next door. To do so, the following circumstances were necessary to consider:
- The police would have to enforce any punishment meted to either side
- The police probably do not speak considerable English
- The police are much more likely to sympathize with a visibly injured Thai girl than a livid, bearded white tourist
- Given the aggressive and unpredictable nature of foreign policing (even in Thailand, I have heard that drug dealers can be arrested and summarily shot with not due process), a night or several in jail were not out of the realm of possibility for my part in the event

As the estimate for the mirror was 200 baht (approximately $6.50), I chose to shelve my righteous indignation and purchase the mirror and the “I am so sorry for involving you in a motor vehicle accident” banana split for Lauren. But, ah, to have spoken the language on that afternoon!