MY ADVENTURES IN AMERICA
As they say in the old fairy tales, once upon a time, many years ago, when
I was living in Thailand I dreamt of going to America. Then one day, as if
my fairy godfather had heard my dream, a friend of my father said, I'll
take you to America and pay you some money if you promise to work very hard
for me in my Thai restaurant. I hardly asked any questions, and I agreed
to go. I had no idea what America was really like and I was not prepared
what I found there. Just the same I got there and here what I found.
So the day came to leave, I took my clothes and toothbrush and boarded a
plane for, I did not know where except, it was going to America. We flew
and flew for hours. How many miles, I didn't know. We flew and gained a
day, we ate and lived on that airplane almost eighteen hours. I should
have slept, I was tired enough to sleep but I could not. I sat looking out
the window waiting to see what America would look like. Finally the noise
of the airplane changed. I felt it dip forward and we headed down toward
the ground. The clouds surrounded the plane; there was nothing to be seen.
Then, suddenly the clouds were snatched away and as I peered out the
window we were floating in a dazzling sun light above a blue ocean moving
toward a brown horizon. "Prepare to Land", the stewardess said. I was
prepared. I had been prepared for eighteen hours. There it was, we came
down on the runways of the Airport of San Francisco(SFO).
Here we were, my father's friend and I walking down the gangway in
America. It didn't seem different, but what it was to be like, still
remained for me to discover. We passed customs and finally we stepped out
freely into this new country.
It was warm, in fact, hot just like Bangkok I had left behind. But wait,
in Bangkok the sweat trickled down my neck and back. Now here, it was hot
but no sweat. Why? I saw a water fountain. I got a drink. Wow!! it was
water but it didn't taste good, not like the water in Thailand. My friend
finally told me we were in a desert and that the heat was dry, so no sweat.
He told me I would get used to the water. It was just treated differently
and that it came from the snow, from the tops of mountains hundreds of
miles away from San Francisco.
We were alone in the airport; nobody came to meet us, but that didn't
matter. It was exciting to have arrived. We moved through the airport
among crowds of people who looked different. There were white (pink)
people, brown people, black people and a variety of Asian people. It
seemed that my friend and I were the only Thai people in Los Angeles. I
was on my way to learn that this was not the case. My friend put me and
our bags into a taxi. Off we went down a high way that the Americans call
a freeway. I guess it was called a freeway because you use it without
paying. Anyway I was beginning to learn a new English word, "FREEWAY."
The freeway was like the super highways in Bangkok except in Bangkok they
were so crowded with automobiles that we sometimes didn't move at all.
Down this free way, the taxi was shooting along at sixty miles per hour.
How nice, we were going to a place called "San Francisco." We were going
to spend a few days with a Thai family until we overcame our "Jet-lag."
This was some more new English language. What was Jet-lag? Did I have it?
Yes, they told me, I did because here in San Francisco everything is
fifteen hours behind Bangkok. When I would have been going to sleep in
Bangkok, I would be waking up in San Francisco. When I would have been
going to sleep in Bangkok I would be eating breakfast in San Francisco.
It was November When I came to San Francisco and a strange event happened
on the way to Pacific Heights. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.
We had changed our watches to California time and my watch said it was
only four p.m. but the sun went down. Something was wrong. I must have
made a mistake setting the time, I thought, because the sun doesn't go down
until seven o'clock. My traveling friend laughed and told me not to worry,
that I had set my watch correctly but that I was no longer in the Topic
Zone of the world but in the Northern Temperate Zone. From now on, the
time between day and night would change as the days went by. Well, here
was something different again. Daytime and nighttime were never the same
length in America. This news followed the information that San Francisco
was in a desert with no water and the water had to be brought to San
Francisco from the snow on top of the mountains hundreds of miles away.
These things indeed were different. How lucky Thailand is, all the water
we need just outside our doors and the daytime and the nighttime never
change.
We arrived at our friend's house on a street where the houses all looked
the same. There was grass in the front of the houses and a place to put
cars right in the house. Well, I had been told that Americans love their
cars, sometimes, more than their children. Each house on this street had a
number and here again there was something different. The numbers were
consecutive, with all the even number on the other side of the street. In
Thailand we did in the right way, by numbering the houses in the order in
which they were built.
The friends opened the door of their house, came out, picked up our bags
and took us in the house. They were proud of their house. There was a
carpet on the floor. It felt nice to walk on it but we never put carpets
on the floors in Thailand. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms and
a third small room with just a toilets in it. Why did they need so many
bathrooms, and toilets? Later, when we saw everything in the house,
including a huge kitchen and a separate dinning room and a recreation room
with a table tennis table and a pool table in it, they realized that my
friend and I were exhausted. They suggested before we go to bed that we
bathe. That sounded good to me. They give me some fluffy towels and sent
me off to one of two bathrooms. There aloned, I peeled off my traveling
clothes and stepped into the shower room. Look they've got two kinds of
water. Hot water and Cold water. I never had to have two kinds of water
in Thailand. So, I turned on the cold water. Excuse me!! but I had to
say, "My God" its cold. I jumped out. I must have yelled, because. They
came knocking on the bathroom door saying, "What's wrong?" I said, "It's
ice water." My host came in and explained that I could mix "ice water"
with hot water to get warm water just like the kind of warm water I left
behind in Thailand.
Later on, I tell you now, I grew to enjoy a hot water shower. Maybe when
I go back to Thailand, some day, I will teach my friends about the American
way of having hot water in their house.
I lay down in the soft bed and soon dropped off into the dreamland of
sleep. The next day would be filled with discoveries I could not expect.
All the things that I discovered on that first day of arrival were
pleasant and interesting. It was however the beginning of an education for
me in the way the people live in the developed industrialized world. I
would never be the same country Thai boy again.