This language is for the elephants

by Brandon Hays

^{Brandon Hays is a budding tropical ecologist and conservationist interested in applying research to policy and management in order to counteract the global biodiversity crisis. At the time of publication, he is a PhD student (and soon to be PhD candidate) in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.}

Sitting outside of Grainger Hall in late fall, I am staring up at pears swaying on half bare branches. It’s a warm afternoon and a perfectly pleasant day to sit outside and write. It’s hard to imagine a stronger contrast with the sweaty busyness of Bangkok, where I spent much of the summer. There I walked through bustling streets alongside unending traffic that filled the air with equal parts noise and smog. A major metropolitan area in the tropics, Bangkok can be an assault on the senses, especially for someone not used to cities.

I was there to study Thai, funded by a language scholarship from the Duke Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI). For a month, I would walk in the mornings from my Airbnb, past the corner 7-11, along streets with no sidewalks, to the Sumaa Language and Culture Institute. In their cozy little building, I would get one on one tutoring with an array of charming language teachers. Sumaa believes in swapping teachers so that students get exposed to an array of accents and speaking styles. With each new tutor, I would undertake to explain why exactly I was in Thailand.

I know how to say “I am a PhD student” (ผมเป็นนักศึกษาปริญญาเอก—phom pen naksuksaa parinya ehk) or “I am doing research about elephants” (ผมทำวิจัยเกี่ยวกับช้าง—phom tam wiichay kiaw kap chaang). But explaining that I want to study how elephants influence forest structure, ecosystem function, and carbon storage was a little trickier to translate. What’s more, translation is more than finding the word-for-word equivalents between two languages.

Explaining why this was interesting or worth doing was an undertaking in cultural translation. My idea of a career path is slogging through a rain forest in pursuit of 8,000lb animals with more muscles in their trunks than humans have in their body. This idea did not translate as a sensible thing to do for many of the people I met in Bangkok (it would seem equally ludicrous to most New Yorkers, I’m sure). Yet that is what I had come to Thailand to do.

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And so, the kind teachers at Sumaa helped me learn Thai for flowers and trees and forests (ดอกไม้,ต้นไม้, ป่า—dawk may, ton may, pa), cats and tigers and bears (แมว,เสือ,หมี—meew, suia, mii). This was likely different from their more usual customers—diplomats and expats working in IT. But I’ve always had a difficult time learning languages by practicing giving directions to a shopping mall or describing members of pop bands. I would much rather discuss (in English or Thai) what adventures the half-wild cats in Lumphini Park are getting up to. These phrases stick in my head better, too. To this day, the French I have retained best are the bits I used most frequently in the forest: “to the left of that tree there” (à gauche de cet arbre là), “walk carefully” (doucement), and the truly unforgettable “look out: an elephant—run!” (attention à un éléphant—sauve qui peut!).

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After three to four hours of Thai tutoring, I would cross the road to the Goethe Institute, where many Thai people were learning German. There I would get lunch in the canteen (Thai food, not German), undertaking a new exercise in cultural translation. I had to convey that I was vegan and did not eat animals, and yes, this includes fish, and yes that means I also don’t eat fish sauce.

Then in the afternoon, I would reverse my steps, walking alongside the now bumper to bumper traffic, passing the corner 7-11, then passing the three massage parlors located all in a row that by this hour were open. The women sitting outside the parlors hawking customers would, without fail, consecutively ask me if I wanted a massage. Everyday, I would say no thank you (ไม่, ขอบคุณครับ—mai, khawp khun khrap) three times in thirty seconds. This hurdle cleared, I would make a right turn into the psychological shelter of the quiet alley (ซอย—soi) of my AirBnB, filled with laundry, enormous potted plants, bicycles, and little old women quietly talking or watching TV at all hours.

Bangkok is a humid madhouse, home to 11 million humans and 10 million cars/motorbikes (but with road infrastructure designed for less than half that many vehicles). Some people enjoy rolling in the chaos of the big apple (big durian?). If you walk about in the evenings, you’ll see hundreds of people sitting at small metal tables centered around a few food carts, eating their dinner right next to a major thoroughfare with stop-and-go traffic. They’re taking in the sights and sounds and smells of the city as they enjoy their delicious street food. My favorite part about the city, though, was escaping it.

There are several pleasant parks with enough space and trees to drown out the traffic, where you can watch half-wild cats cast side eye at water monitor lizards (the name for these lizards in Thai is a really bad word, so in polite company you need to call them ตัวทอง ตัวเงิน—gold and silver bodied animals). The lizards ignore the cats, but you will frequently see them going for a dip in the park pond or attempting to climb trees to snack on bird eggs. Or you might catch sight of the four(!) species of squirrels to be found in Bangkok, scurrying up the trunk of a cannonball tree—watch out you don’t get hit in the head with the fruit!

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A fun but little-known fact—South and Southeast Asia have the highest species diversity of tree and flying squirrels in the world (even though squirrels originally evolved in North America). Even out in the noisy city streets, you’ll often hear the high pitched call of Asian koels, sounding something like a crying child, rising above the drone of traffic. They talk back and forth to each other from their hiding places in the scattered palm trees growing up through the concrete jungle floor.

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Bangkok looked best from a distance, when the freneticism fades into the fuzzy backdrop and you can look upon only the impressive height of modern towers or the glittering thrust of gilded temple chofas and spear-like chedi finials. If you take a boat across the Chao Phraya river, a voyage of less than 10 minutes from busy Bangkok traffic, you can reach Bang Krachao, “Bangkok’s green lung”. This large peninsula-turned-island boasts few buildings taller than two stories, but has many working farms and more greenery than can be seen in the rest of Bangkok combined. Standing on the river shore, hidden from the tropical sun by the comforting protection of cool tree canopy, I looked back at the Bangkok skyline and appreciated how lovely it looked from a distance. From there, you can ride a bicycle to get around, something I do constantly in Durham but would never chance my life on in Bangkok.

Only a short bike ride away is Si Nakhon Khuean Khan Park—a lovely place to go bird watching, since you can find many birds too shy and sensitive to survive Bangkok’s cramped and stressful environs. Like those birds, I found Bang Krachao was a much more suitable habitat for myself. Escaping the city for a Saturday with a Thai friend who loved birds (and for whom a job following elephants was not so strange a notion), was my favorite experience during my weeks in Bangkok.

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Even in one of the world’s largest cities (#31, just behind Paris), you can still find some non-human nature living wild. Outside of Bangkok, there is a great many plants and animals to see too. All the better, then, if you can speak Thai to learn about these interesting ecosystems from park rangers and locals. Thus I am immensely grateful for my time in Bangkok studying Thai. While I had studied Thai the previous summer in a classroom at UW Madison, learning fundamentals and pronunciation and reading, there was little opportunity to practice conversation.

My time with Sumaa was extremely helpful in this respect, giving me one on one conversations with teachers who also spoke fluent English and could help when I got stuck. This helped me dramatically improve my confidence in speaking, always difficult when you are starting out in a new language. No amount of classroom learning in the US can substitute for this.

For the rest of the summer, I was better able to engage with Thai people, both in pursuit of my work and in casual interactions. While I still have much more to learn, I now have the skills and confidence to keep learning in the day-to-day of living in another country.

Below are some additional images from Thailand that Brandon shared with APSI:

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