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Acclimating?

Posted by Stuart at 02:04 AM on September 27, 2002

My friends and family back home often ask me if I am getting acclimated to life in Thailand. Well, I have to say that I am definitely getting over the initial shock of being here. When I first arrived, it was sensory overload: new sights, sounds, smells, tastes. Now I actually blink every now and then. Some things are starting to fade into the background noise, like street vendors and tuk-tuk drivers constantly vying for my attention.

Now that the big picture isn't so overwhelming, some times I notice new details. For example, when I first arrived in Bangkok, I thought to myself several times, "It would be nice to have a Walk/Don't Walk sign at this busy intersection." I never saw any of them at first, but now I see them all over the place. I have no idea why I didn't recognize them before. I guess there were just too many other new sensory inputs for my brain to process.

Yet even though in some ways I feel more comfortable here, at the same time I still feel very much like an outsider. I have picked up a few words of the language here and there, but I am hardly fluent. I am learning my way around Bangkok, but every day I hear of somewhere new that I have never heard of. It is almost like an out-of-body experience: I am living here every day, but I am not a part of life here. A large part of my effort still goes into day-to-day survival. Where is Place X on the map? How do I get there from here? How do I eat when the menu in front of me is all written in Thai script? How do I conduct personal business with my bank accounts from thousands of miles away?

Meanwhile, I have spent much of my time the past two weeks looking for a job. If I can't find one here, I want to return to the U.S. knowing that I at least tried. When I was job hunting back in San Francisco during the past year, I found the experience exciting ("Oh, here's a cool job posting!") and depressing ("I wonder why no companies have called me back.") After a few weeks of looking here in Thailand, I have to say that I feel the same way.

But now that I have caught up with all the postings on the job sites and can check for new postings for an hour or so each day, and I am starting to feel restless, anxious, and a bit stagnant, I think it's time to hit the road again. I've been reading in my Lonely Planet Thailand and I think Kanchanaburi and Ayuthaya, west and north of Bangkok respectively are next on the travel itinerary, perhaps starting this weekend.