A Thai Girl Who Hates Snow

I am a fan of the readers' submissions section of Stick's site. Because the authors are mostly Farang males, there should also be submissions from a Thai girl like me, an expat Thai girl who is in Farangland. Besides that, I need
to practice my English. I often have a problem with my language switching mechanism. My language knowledge gets mixed up. Sometimes I just forget some easy English words and the English sentence structure. At the time of writing this submission
I use dict.leo.org, the popular German-English online dictionary. Sometimes I forget how to spell some Thai words. Nevertheless my German is far from perfect…hahaha, especially my pronunciation. The German language is quite difficult for Thais.
German nouns have three genders, and you have to change the end of each adjective to match the gender and the case (nominative, accusative, dative and genitive) of the noun it precedes.

Last night the temperature was -10 Celsius here. Fortunately I did not have to go outside. Two days ago it snowed a lot. I feel the frostiness everywhere, and I hate it like I hate Mathematics. The weather is cold, and people here are mostly
cold. Hopefully I will not become a cold-hearted westernized Thai girl. Honestly, I think I am not a typical Thai girl anymore. I have difficulty cooking rice using a normal pot instead of a rice cooker. Moreover, I am not good at cooking. I do
not clean my boyfriend's apartment (we do not live together), and I do not put his clothes in the washing machine. Nonetheless I love my boyfriend dearly.

Many Thais dream about having a chance to touch snow. A boyfriend of my Thai friend visited her during the previous weeks in Germany. He was disappointed that it did not snow here. One week after he went back to Thailand, it snowed like crazy.
I think snow is beautiful as long as you do not have to live there. In Thailand every time I go outside, I do not have to worry about the weather. I hate to wear a thick layer of clothes before I go out. It is so uncomfortable for me. I have noticed
that here in winter the heater is turned on to the very warm temperature in my university buildings, in the trams and in the department stores. In Thailand it is often cold in the department stores and in offices. Thais like to go to the shopping
malls to feel the cold air from the air conditioning.

If you ask Thai people which foreign country they most want to visit I bet 90% will answer Switzerland. Because in Switzerland there are mountains with snow. In summer I had a chance to meet my best Thai friend and her relatives who came
to Europe for a vacation. They were quite excited to arrive Switzerland. Unfortunately they did not make any hotel reservations before they went there. I, who can speak German, and a native Laotian who was our chauffeur and can speak fluent French,
had to find a hotel for them. And it was about 10 PM. It is true that Thais do not like to plan something in advance. My friend's aunt who took that trip said that she thought it would be like in Thailand. She meant, "We do not know
which town we are going to make a stop in. We will find a room when we arrive in that town." Switzerland is a beautiful country to take a vacation in. But life and the atmosphere there seem boring and not as colourful as in Thailand. The
cost of living in Switzerland is very high. Most stuff is available cheaper in Germany.

Farang cold tap water is really colddddd. It is even colder than a refrigerated Singha water in Thailand. Ahhh… Thais often have problem with water when they have to live in Farangland. Farangs do not waste much water like Thais do. Some
Thais still take a shower twice a day even though it is cold outside. Farangs often wonder why Thais, mostly the girls, spend a long time in a bathroom. Moreover, observe a Thai when he / she washes the dishes by hand and compare to how a Farang
does it. However, I prefer the Thai dish washing method. At least I can feel that the dishes are really clean.

I miss summer, but I do not miss the hot weather in Thailand. It is way too hot. You will start sweating after just a few minutes after you take a shower. Here in the town that I live the weather is warm in summer, but summer lasts only a
few months. I miss buying ice-cream from my favourite Italian ice-cream shops. But in winter I can still go to my favourite cake shop to get various kinds of cake. The vendor of that shop is always friendly to me. She explains the ingredients
of each cake to me almost every time I go there. She does not always sell the same cake every day, and as a foreigner, I am not familiar with the 108 kinds of Farang cakes.

Oh…I have to end this submission now. Today I will prepare dinner for my boyfriend. Yam Ma-muang with sausage and tofu massaman curry.

Stickman's thoughts:

I liked the bit about the waste of water when washing the dishes. That really used to rile me. Now I just do the dishes myself.