This one is out of order. I couldn't quite find my way through it when it occurred.
English is the lingua franca on the road. From time to time I’ve tried on my broken French and my Spanish has failed me altogether. Sometimes one acts as translator between two people of different nationalities who are both speaking English but can’t understand each other. For me it is one of the great pleasures; having a conversation about some simple or difficult subject, navigating through hand gestures (fish swims like this), smatterings of other language, pidgin construction and best-guess. Sometimes it is hopeless but often it is wonderfully rewarding. Even accidents can be fun if they don’t lead to death or dismemberment.
Food-pointing at street stalls is a relatively easy means of selecting a meal but occasionally the sauces and additives of the featured foodstuff render the dish sufficiently ambiguous that one resorts to onomatopoeic verification E.g. “Quack, quack?”(is it duck?). Response (with a smile that is either amused or evil) “Cock!”. Hm, is it cooked? Rooster? Penis of some animal that is hopefully not a higher primate than, say, John Wayne Bobbit? Or is that a Thai word for pig’s brains? Discretion is the better part of indigestion; move on .
When in doubt descend on a white or black passer-by. If they don’t have a recommend they will usually have a discrecommend. Old Brits will seek crepes and steaks so give them a pass. Germans are usually negative about everything. French are very reliable – they know good food when they taste it and communication is usually not too broken telephone. Everyone loves to tell about their trophies - great hotel finds or marvelous excursions or fantastic guides or fixers.
When taxi, tuk tuk or minibus drivers are silent and one can’t communicate a single word it can be a concern. Almost all of them understand ATM and one can be reasonably sure that a hotel or casino is nearby.
Familiar-looking words read from guide books can provide blank or angry stares – the tonally expressed tongues of these countries are heavily mined with the potential for international incident They will giggle when you stagger through 'thank you' but don’t try too much or you will become one of the legions of disparacido(sp?).
As difficult as it was in Vietnam with respect to communication, most of the language was written in Roman characters on street signs and address slabs. The moment we landed in Laos we realized we were in hot lemongrass soup. To my eye, the alphabet is not parseable – still, some signs had English translations and we survived. Thailand has quite a lot of English translation but it is unreliable and buildings rarely have an address on their sign. You can travel blocks with no clue of what street you are on. And we have. We got lost briefly in a walkabout in Luang Prabang but by watching the moon, dropping crumbs and tossing coins one is usually able to divine the proper route.
I’ve probably revealed my xenophobic nature by all my projections on nationalities. (and I’ve got a few more in the bag) After all, what is a Canadian like? Surely we are all individuals, but somewhere there is a sort of pattern that people discuss and foreigners like to explore. When a hotel in Hanoi didn’t keep our reservation despite a healthy prepayment I went ballistic in the foyer. I was yelling and requesting the owner of the hotel and threatening to talk to my friend who is an author for Lonely Planet (they didn’t buy that one either). Very un-Canadian I knew – so I apologized the next morning to an Aussie woman who was in the audience. Very Canadian.
We haven’t had any really awful communication breakdowns but I hope to capture a good tale or two along the way. I am reminded of the time when JO Saunders and I were wandering through the spiderweb alleys of Mykonos looking for a pensione back in the late seventies. A bent old fellow was following us along the cobblestone maze swinging his cane and shouting ‘Stupid, stupid!’. ‘Why is that guy so rude?’ I asked Owen. With the copyright flex of eyebrows and upward gaze to Zeus that Owen uses to express his reaction to such inanity he laconically replied, “He is saying he has two beds (you moron).”
Nic e ones too.
Today's image: For three days I was convinced that playing the bugle in Laos carried the death penalty.
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