Smiling

The biggest marketing slogan for Thailand is that it is "The Land of Smiles" and that is certainly true.  It is also said that Thai people have a difficult time to say "no", which can be confusing, when you mix a smile with a no.
Without a doubt, this country has the largest percentage of smiling people per capita than probably anywhere I have lived. And just like anywhere else, that smile can be deceiving. I myself have been known to be guilty of smiling while telling someone politely to take a hike when I was in Canada. For some reason that was normally in a work situation, especially reinforced if I was listening to the certain Chumba Wumba songs from their Showbusiness!  album, or personal favourite of mine performed by Lilly Allen.
I won't go into the song titles or lyrics here, as some may find it offensive and there are youngsters who apparently look at this blog. But if you want, I will happily email the details to you.

You will most certainly get a smile from someone in the service industry. It is training and practice I am sure, as I have no idea how people who have to deal with tourists maintain their happy, peppy dispositions. I see on a regular basis, being in a tourist destination community, that tipping has no consistency. Talk to a local and they will tell you that by far the best tippers are Americans and the worst are Australian. They do have a hierarchy in between, and it varies from person to person, but the first and last place finishers are consistent. Regardless of how you tip, or do not tip at all, you always get a wai and a smile. A 20 Baht (65 cents CDN) tip is the norm here. When you consider that most of the people in the service industry serving you earn between 5-10 thousand Baht ($171-$342 CDN)  a month, a few 20 Baht tips can be significant. It is however also now almost come to be expected and it never amazes me where it has been adopted. Prior to leaving Canada, I always got a smile from the places that simply added a tip to your bill or put a containers for them at the cash register in the most unusual business, like gas stations that are self-serve.

 My smile moment came a few weeks ago here, when I went to go to the local supermarket. Lest I risk a rebuke or a court date, I will simply refer to it as store V. I go to this store weekly. It is like a small Safeway in it's orientation. You can get lots of Thai foods, but also a huge selection of what I call Farang food. Food that is usually consumed by the non-Thai people here, like cheddar cheese, cookies/biscuits and sausage rolls. The prices are competitive with the other supermarkets here and sometimes the same as the local fresh market. I am known there now and always get some greetings from most of the staff and some beam at me with a big smile, as the consistent purchase of the same style and weight of deli meat has now gotten that it is said to me before I order. One young man follows me between the butcher area and the cheese and deli section and is always trying to get me to buy a pricey prime cut of beef or the imported cheeses. I normally do not take his prompting and we always have a laugh.  So here I am back at the store for my usual run, when I get into a check-out line and pay for my groceries. Normally a 1000 Baht note is exchanged and change given in a very precise fashion, consistently and with some regularity, that when it is not done, you instinctively think something is not right. They ring in the amount tendered. Open the till, count the change to themselves twice and then pass it to you on top of the cash register receipt. On this day at "V", the cashier, entered no tender and counted the change out to herself, twice in 20 Baht notes. My initial reaction is that this is great, as the fresh market sells most goods for between 10-40 Baht and seldom have change for anything larger than a 100 Baht note. As she passes me the money and flashes me a big smile and thanks me. I stood still and rechecked the money and it was 20 Baht short. As I finished doing this the cashier took a new 20 Baht note, folded it in half and placed in into her shirt pocket, still looking at me and smiling. I told here there was a problem and the change was wrong. All of this took a few seconds to click for me, as I had a moral dilemma of asking her for the rest of my change, given that it is a very small amount of money. But somehow the smile and denial set me off. She looked at me and said simply, no. Repeated questions were answered again with a simple, no.  I asked to see a manager, as I glanced across the store and saw a man with a plastic witches broom and a pumpkin hat chasing a shop attendant and swatting at her backside. This was apparently the manager. After a chat between them, he told her to give me 20 Baht from the till. My days of loosing money with her are over as she sees me in the store now, gives me a big smile, puts up the closed sign on her till and waits for another customer to come along.

Having lived here for 6 months now I have grown accustomed to the elderly man next door peering through my gate or fence and pointing out something he believes I need to do. It began with pointing out that there were ants coming from my yard and down the moo. A dilemma as to poison them would be an issue for Clive with regard to killing anything. And I have dogs that would probably lick it up like fresh meat, and it is poison to them too. But I found a way to resolve the issue, which I will not get into, but the ants are no longer crawling around and the dogs are still with us. Then it was the cucumber vines growing in another yard and coming up over the wall. And apparently I do not sweep the outside concrete surfaces enough for his pleasure. For the most part, I just shrug it off, do what he is asking and move on. I do have the time so that is not the issue. I simply named him the miserable old man who is making sure I keep tidy. Daily I have to cross in front of their outdoor seating area and always get a smile from whomever is there, and there is usually someone there. I have even managed to get a smile from miserable old man on occasion. Normally after I have done what he told me to do. Then came the day of the sewer smell. Down the center of the moo is a sewer system that is open to the air. It has plastic venting pipes every meter and every 30 meters is an open grate of about one meter square. I noticed that on some days the smell is a little rancid, but it IS an open sewage drain, so I sort of expect it. The rainfall when it comes is pretty heavy, so it tends to flush it out on a regular basis. Miserable old man does not speak any English and my Thia is limited. As we went to head out with the dogs to the beach in Thunderbird 3, the man was in the middle of the moo, with a garden hose and running water into the sewer vent pipes, holding his nose. He pointed to the dogs and made it clear that he believed the smell was from the dogs. In 6 months this has not been a discussion item of things he wants me to take care of, but for some reason today it was. Moreover, we make a regular habit of scooping poop. We have always picked up dog poop, except when we lived on acreage and it was in the fields. The dogs have acclimatized here pretty well, but using the toilets is not something I had noticed prior to this. If they are using the toilet, then I am wanting to know who's dogs poop I am picking up and disposing of in the trash. Attempts to explain that it was perhaps the sewage itself and not the dogs, went nowhere fast, and his behaviour escalated to the point that whenever you would exit our gate, he would hose down the drains, point to the dogs and hold his nose. In the background the women would sit in a row on the bench and smile at you. One morning, I heard Clive in a loud voice repeatedly saying that it was not the dogs, in Thai. The Thai word for no is Mai. Clive was using the word about 6 times in a row. The word for dog is Mah, this would get interjected as well and it sounded like Mai Mah Mai Mah Mai Mai Mai, Mai Mah. That night I headed to the moo shop to get some dinner and he was holding court with a number of people pointing to me and the sewer. That may have been more accurate, as there are times, I am sure that the smell from the curry dinner last night probably did stink, but I do not believe that was his message. He then rushed to the yellow line in front of his home and began a very exaggerated snorting sound, with the sounds echoing behind me all the way down the moo. And he was awaiting my return a while later, this time with the women sitting on the bench behind him and not a smile was to be seen anywhere. Time has passed and he does not talk to me anymore and the women sit there and look at me, if I catch eye contact they put what can best be described as a strained smile and look away. But it is clear they may be smiling, but it is, I believe, more an involuntary reaction. Meanwhile, I have yet to catch Byron using the toilet. I am also pretty sure that none of my dogs are using the toilet, as they have rather distinctive poop. They do a lot of crab chasing on the beach, which involved digging in sand and snorting to get to the crabs. The byproduct of this is layered bands of sand in their poop.

But all in all, I am normally greeted with big smiles and genuine toothy grins when I am driving along the roadways with the bassets in Thunderbird 3. The woman who cuts my deli meat beams whenever she see's me and most of all, my pups still smile when it is time for their dinner.