Chooey Dooey and the Bandit

I never fail to be amazed at how advanced supposedly Third World or “backward” countries are compared to us in so many ways. 

In 2000, when we went to Istanbul, I was introduced to the Akbil, a small device containing a computer chip that you could “load” with money to pay to ride the public transit bus, train, metro, ferry boat or subway. A wonderful simple technology that Calgary has still been unable to implement even after spending over $5 million dollars in search of this miracle product. (that has been used in the Middle East for over 15 years already). It still boggles my mind.

Today, I found another small invention that we don’t have. When I went out to get a couple of cups of takeout coffee, they put the two hot cardboard cups into a plastic bag. My first reaction was that it was going to be a challenge to balance the cups and prevent them from tipping over and spilling. Silly me! The Thais have designed a plastic bag just to handle that situation. The bag has two sleeves within the bag so the cups are held upright when the bag is lifted by the handles. Not a drop was ever in danger of being spilled. Someone tell Starbucks you have a deal for them!

Learning a new language is not so much fun! Nothing we do is much more difficult than trying to communicate to a foreigner when you don’t know the language. However, it can provide a lot of laughs. For example some of the Thai words and their English pronunciation can be entertaining. Fish is pronounced blah, chicken is gay, crab is boo and pork is moo. Banana is glooey, beer is bee-a, (that’s handy), chilli is prick, rice is kow, Help! is chooey dooey.  You often have so much fun just chuckling at the pronunciation that you actually forget to learn something that is really useful like, “Where is the toilet?”

Believe it or not I even observed a new phenomenon at Ikea today. For seven baht (about 25 cents) my grandson could buy an ice cream cone. He paid his money and they gave him a cone (no ice cream) and a token. He took his cone and token to the ice cream vending machine, placed his cone into a slot in the machine, inserted his token into the coin slot and voila, the machine filled his cone with twisty soft ice cream and away he went. Pretty high tech ice cream scoop to me!

In a lot of foreign countries taxi drivers can get a bad wrap. They are often accused of taking the long way home or overcharging the naive tourist. They sometimes fall into the same category as gypsies, tramps and thieves. I did a double take in our cab ride home from Ikea when I read that the name of our taxi driver was Mr. Bandit. He didn’t even have to pretend he was honourable, I was suspicious on the entire drive home. PS Upon arrival I even tipped him for being fair and honest!

Question of the Day: What are the chances that in a city of over ten million people that you would run into someone you used to know over ten years ago in Istanbul at an Ikea store in Bangkok where she was buying a Christmas tree while you were contemplating Ikea Swedish meatballs for lunch? I would suspect that the odds were pretty long!

We live in a tough apartment complex. They have strict rules and standards. If you should happen to sit in our lobby in one of the cosy chairs and fall asleep, you will be fined the equivalent of $20. If you are caught smoking in the building you will be charged $80 and your water supply to your unit will be cut off for a week. The management definitely is a “no holds barred” and a “take no prisoners” kind of landlord. Will be taking some of these standards back to our condo board of directors for consideration when I return!