Word for the Travel Wise (06/21/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

Tonight’s word is another easy and functional one to use in both Thailand or your favorite Thai restaurant around the block. So practice, practice, practice…

Today’s word is a Thai word used in Thailand:

sawatdee khrab – hello said by male, becomes sawatdee kaa if said by female

Learning Thai dot com is a great starting point for some basic Thai words and referrals to additional resources. For a brief history of the language, Thai alphabet, and pronunciation guide go to Omniglot. (A pretty clean and simple site with good details.) Another good source would be the Pimsleur language audio CD’s. I used these to prepare for my trip and they worked great! Before making the purchase look into your local library. There are several libraries carrying these audio CD’s and many more.

Past Thai words: hàat sai, wan sao

Pology – June Issue

by Adrienne Wilson on

Should you be having an easy going kind of Saturday evening with nothing on your agenda except doing the laundry and viewing a few World Cup games you may also wish to swing by Pology online. We’ve mentioned it before here at Gadling, but the June issue is so darn good I felt the need to give it a plug once more. I usually head over to get the latest in culture topics around the planet, but today I was only there for the eye candy. Start with Thailand in pictures where you’ll find women in hill tribes playing on laptops and a smiling toothless Thai woman. It may sound odd here, but you’ll need to see it for yourself. I haven’t seen such a beautiful well-rounded batch of photos from the area in a long while. That alone makes it worth the visit.

Tattoo Mistakes

by Erik Olsen on

Years ago when traveling in Thailand, I came upon an American guy who had just got a new tattoo of which he was very proud. He was one of those white-boy dreadlocked hippie travelers who had recently discovered Buddhism and found it an appealing belief system whose humanism contrasted nicely with what he saw as the raw and mean culture of selfishness of his own country. The tattoo, he told me, said something like peace and love. Sadly, after he left, one of the Thai folks at the bungalow where I was staying explained to me that the tattoo actually said chicken fried rice or some such thing. I laughed a hearty laugh at the travelers expense. There was a very amusing irony there, I thought.

Well, seems he was not alone, and other folks like this lost soul have now been heading to tattoo removal parlors en masse to get rid of tats they once deemed cool, but now find awful little mementos of their reckless youth. This story over at Fox News examines the trend and cites some other fine examples of tats gone awry, including some whereby folks who thought they’d gotten tattoos for Chinese characters for attractive concepts like “power” and “love” discovered they actually read “General Tso’s Chicken special” or “gullible white boy.” That is just too damn funny. The article goes on the describe other Chinese tats where the symbols were upside down or one he thought said “spirit” actually said “gas”. Poor fellow.

Word for the Travel Wise (04/08/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

You would think the weekend would have
come to show me some sort of mercy. Offer a little rest and relaxation, but such is not the case. There is much to do
on this Saturday evening so I’m cutting to the chase with this one with updates to follow.

Today’s word is
a Thai word used in Thailand:

wan sao – Saturday

There is an accent mark over the ‘a’ in sao that I didn’t have, so double check with another
source and while you’re there seek out the rest of the days of the week.

Learning Thai dot com is a great starting point for some basic Thai words and
referrals to additional resources. For a brief history of the language, Thai alphabet, and pronunciation guide go to Omniglot. (A pretty clean and simple site with good details.)
Another good source would be the Pimsleur language audio CD’s. I used these
to prepare for my trip and they worked great! Before making the purchase look into your local library. There are several
libraries carrying these audio CD’s and many more.

Past Thai words: hàat sai

One for the Road: LP Cities

by Erik Olsen on

I hope to get my hands on this fine
new book out from Lonely Planet so I can review it for our readers, but in the meantime, y’all might be interested just
to know about it. Yes, Lonely Planet, ye of the ever useful, sometimes too heavy, guides to everywhere, has assembled an
all-new coffee-table sized compendium called The Cities Book, that
takes a close and visually-pleasing look at the world’s 200 best cities.

Of course, one man’s
"best" is another’s "worst" (i.e. Bangkok), but you can usually trust the sensibilities of the LP
folks, and it is they who have put this thing together…along with the help of dutiful readers who contributed
comments based on their own whims and experiences. One thing: it ain’t cheap ($50). But that’s probably because they
have filled the book with many vivid photos from their extensive photo catalog. You know you want it. Well, you CAN
register to get your hands on a free copy over
at the Guardian…but you’ll have to do so lickety-split, the deadline is March 30.