Silence

In America, when you see ants crawling through your office you immediately take action to get rid of them.  People shy away from bugs and insects; running from them, screaming at the sight of them, or stomping on them with your foot to kill them.  In Thailand, a whole slew of ants is no cause for alarm.  Yesterday afternoon, I looked down from my desk to see about a hundred ants roaming around the floor near me.  Normally, this is where I would have gotten any liquid I could get my hands on and drowned them.  In the past, ants that are indoors have grossed me out like no other, but now they are a way of life.  I have trails of ants that walk through the wooden house that I live in, and I often have to brush them off of me if I sit in one space for too long.  Now, this is not to say that I have become an ant lover, but I have begun to accept that they are a way of life in Thailand…just as many of my fellow PCers have had to accept hand sized spiders and scorpions in daily sightings.  

Silence takes on a different meaning in Thailand as well.  I think the only time that I have experienced true silence was one time in training at about 1am when I woke up to the lights suddenly going out.  For just a moment, dogs stopped fighting, cats stopped yowling, and the insects were shocked into silence.  It was only a second, but, I didn’t realize until that moment, that I had not had a silent moment since coming here.  Since then, I have experienced different types of silences, just as you do if you live in the country or in the city.  

When it rains, I mean really pours; you have a deafening silence as the rain pounds against the tin roof.  Lying in bed, I imagine that I would not be able to hear anything except the downpour even if I tried.

At night, silence consists of geckos calling out to one another, insects buzzing, dogs barking, and sometimes the occasional pounding as a neighbor works on a project at an ungodly hour. 

At 6am every morning, the speakers across the Tambon are turned on and various voices give the announcements for the day to each community.  People start chatting in their homes (There is no insulation in any homes so you can hear all of your neighbors), pans start clanking, and motorcycles start streaming down the street.  This is the silence that I attempt to sleep through for an hour and a half before I have to get up.  You know you have to get up when the national anthem plays at 8am sharp or you’re going to be late for work.

Silence is different here.  I wonder if I will miss all the noise when I travel back to the US in a couple of years…or will I sleep well for the first time in a long time…