There's Always at Least One Day Like This

I’d heard that everyone who moves to a foreign country has a crappy day every once in a while. That everyone has an “I hate this country day” and a “why did I ever come here” kind of day. I’d heard about it, and seen people have it.

I was determined not to be that person.

Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t think I was going to be that person. I mean, I had nearly two months under my belt. I love Thai food, so no complaints there. I could easily do without a burger and fries for two years, no problem – though I don’t have to – every day, I pass a small burger joint called “Mike’s Burgers and Fries.” (I haven’t been tempted yet – just the smell coming out of that place is enough to make one gain 5 pounds).

On this fateful day, I was getting ready to start some hard core work – after language, I stopped at the mall here and picked up a wall map of a few southeast asian countries to decorate my cubicle wall. On the way back, the road was dreadfully congested. But that’s natural – traffic rules seem to be more the stuff of myth and legend rather than actuality. I came close to several vehicles through the course of the road, but navigated the jungle successfully – or so I thought.

I arrived back at my apartment, and just piddled around for a moment. Started my computer, scavenged some leftover food from the refrigerator for lunch (which, I must add, my refrigerator has little food – it focuses far more on water bottles. We have enough water to survive a nuclear holocaust, but would starve to death if that actually happened). Rather than staying in my apartment to heat my food, I went up one floor to a friend’s apartment, which I had the keys to. I like their toaster oven far better than mine.

I got to the top of the stairs and the security guard was standing right outside the door. “Are you looking for someone?” I asked.

He looked confused. “You drive Honda?”

“Yes, I did,” I told him.

“Come with me.”

I put my food in the room, rather than taking it down with me. We rode the elevator downstairs in a totally awkward silence. When we got to the lobby, he beckoned towards an angry-looking woman standing there.

“Saa wat dii kha” I said, the traditional Thai greeting. “What’s going on?”

I was thoroughly bewildered, I might add.

This woman looked angry. “You bumped me.” She said, rather loudly.

Now, let me give you a side note here. Thailand is the land of smiles. Thai people speak softly, and they don’t yell ever. So to have a Thai woman basically yelling at me took my off guard. That just doesn’t happen; it’s losing face.

“What do you mean, ‘I bumped you’?” I asked.

“Come.”

She took me to the front of my car, which, I might say here, is battered from years of use. I’ve looked at it many times and thought you’d never be able to tell if someone hit something with it.

“See?” she said, triumphantly, pointing to the front bumper. “You bump me!”

Every bit of Thai I knew flew out of my head as I attempted to explain that surely I had not bumped her. The mix of English was not helping – every English word I spoke deepened the frown on her face. She looked angrier every moment, and insisted again, when I finished, that I had bumped her.

“Where’s your car?” I asked. She pointed to a songtaew out in the small street in front of the apartments.

I wracked my brain, trying to think when on the street I had last seen a songtaew. It had been several blocks, from what I last remembered. So this woman would have had to follow me for quite some time. And, if she had followed me, traffic had been so bad so that she surely could not have been right behind me (trust me, I’d notice if there was a songtaew on my tail). So she’d have had to search for me. Plus, I’d been home for a good fifteen minutes, more time for her to get angrier about this situation.

And I wasn’t making it any better by being stupid. It was time for professional help.

I have a friend, C, at the office where I study Thai who speaks excellent Thai. So, with my angry songtaew friend standing right there, I called C, and explained what had happened.

“Hold on a moment,” C said. “I’ll have one of the Thai staff speak to her. That would be better than me talking to her.”

So I handed the phone to this woman. She exchanged some sharp words, and then, I could see her calming down. Finally, she handed the phone back to me. I could hear a little bit of the Thai woman on the phone explaining what my “friend’s” story was – apparently I had hit her, and you could see songtaew paint all over the front bumper of my car, and that her songtaew was damaged, and she needed money for the incident.

C came on the phone. “She says that you hit her with your car, and wants a thousand baht to pay for damages,” he said. “Do you have that?”

“Yes.” I had that – it’s the equivalent of a little more than $30 USD.

“Go ahead and pay her,” C said. “Since it’s such a small amount, it’s worth it to pay it and be done with the situation. Make sure you give her some kind of receipt and have her sign it. Take a picture of the damage if you can, okay?”

“I can do that,” I said. “But C, I’d think I’d have felt it if I’d hit her.”

“Right,” he said. “Maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t. Perhaps she saw your car, and mistook it for someone else. Like I said, it’s worth the cost just to make this situation alright.”

I hung up the phone, told her I’d be right back (again, using my limited Thai mixed with English), and ran upstairs to get the money, make a receipt, and get my camera.

She signed the paper, and seemed to calm down when I handed her the thousand baht bill. I took the picture, and she went on with her day.

Now, when I write this at least two weeks later, it doesn’t seem so bad. But that day, it was pretty bad. I’d been followed to my apartment, yelled at by a Thai person, and paid for something I was certain I didn’t do. I just didn’t handle it well that day. I didn’t want to go home, per se, I just didn’t want to be in Thailand. I just got in bed and slept all afternoon, and ate some very America food that evening.

Lest you think that it was all bad, I’ve gotten some great jokes out of it. I leave sticky notes on my friend’s cars saying “I BUMPED YOU!!!” When I got to language school the next day, people had already heard about it. We stood around my car and searched for the red paint that she said was on my car. It wasn’t. I told them that I hadn’t been out scrubbing it off my car at midnight after that.

And, the next day, I was back to my chipper “I love Thailand” self. And I love Thai people, and the Thai language and culture, and anything Thai. It was just one of those fluke events that was good for me to go through. I was blessed that it wasn’t worse – what if she’d wanted 10,000 baht? What if I hadn’t had someone to call who spoke Thai? What if I hadn’t been there and she’d been at the apartment complex all day looking for me and I walked back in there and run into her? The possibilities for this to be worse are endless.

I share this with you in hopes you get a chuckle out of it. Everybody has a bad day, whether it be something simple, or bigger. I didn’t think that I was going to have such a bad day here – and sure enough, I did. And you know what? I realized that it’s okay. And, I've only met one Thai person like this in my more than two months here, so that's a pretty good batting record.

Oh – and you wanna see the picture?