A True Compliment

I walked up to the ticket counter to enter Doi Inthanon National Park, home of Thailand’s tallest mountain, Doi Inthanon.  The following brief conversation took place (in Thai):

     Me: Two adults and one car.
     Ticket agent: That will be 110 baht.

I walked away with my 3 tickets (one for each of us and one for the car) with a smile, having received one of the best compliments I’ve ever received for Thai speaking abilities.



You see, in Thailand, attractions such as parks and museums often have two prices—one for Thai people and one for visitors.  The visitors don’t often know this because there will be two signs-one in Thai and one in English—with the Thai one using Thai numbers (0-9=๐ ๑ ๒ ๓ ๔ ๕ ๖ ๗ ๘ ๙) to help conceal this fact (most of the time they use Arabic numbers).

Sometimes, they will let foreigners with a long-term visa pay the Thai price.  Usually to get this price, one has to request the price and then show their visa or a Thai driver’s license (which I had to do the following day at another park).  However in this case, I was offered the Thai price just on my speaking ability.

To me this was a better compliment of my language skills than a direct one.  In Thai culture, being nice is a higher value than being truthful.  So people might sometimes give a false compliment because they don’t want you to feel bad.  There are occasions when I have been given compliments about my Thai speaking abilities when I KNOW I just butchered their language.  (And I’m sure there are many more times when I’ve been given a compliment when I UNKNOWINGLY butchered their language.)

Learning this cultural aspect of language use is just as difficult as grammar and pronunciation.  We are much more used to direct and even confrontational speech.  Here the emphasis is on making the other person feel good and especially to NOT offend.  And we can offend not just with our choice of words but also with they way we say the words.

The apostle Paul wrote: Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer everyone. (Colossians 4:6 (NET))

I pray, then, the God would help me not only know the correct words to use when I speak Thai, but that I would also use the correct words correctly.

Reflected light

I remember a night, many moons ago.  Our team of 3 guys had climbed up in the hills above Montrouis, Haiti, to a place called Kournol.  It was my first time in the tropical mountains under a full moon.  It was so bright—Randy was out reading by moonlight.

But as bright as that moon was, it’s nothing compared to the light from its source, the sun.  For the moon only reflects a small portion of the light from the sun.  So even under the most optimum conditions, I would not want to try to do things like driving by moonlight (unless I was going really slow) or doing something like embroidery.

Here in northern Thailand, the air is seldom clear enough for the moon to be anywhere near as bright as what I experienced that time in Haiti.  In the rainy season the moon is obscured by the clouds and in the dry season, smoke and smog dim the its light.  Though there was that day last week—the day before the eclipse—when the haze wasn’t too bad and I was able to capture a great photo of the moon (wish it was so nice the day of the eclipse.)

Almost full moon the day before the eclipse

Trying to understand God can be like trying to do delicate embroidery by the Hazy moon of Wiang Kaen.

Hazy view of the moon coming out of the eclipse

Paul writes:  Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. 1 Corinthians 13:12 (NLT) 

I’m grateful that God is a God of revelation.  He has revealed Himself through His creation (Romans 1:19, 20), through the prophets (Hebrews 1:1) and ultimately through His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:2).  And I’m grateful for all those who faithfully recorded the activities and prophecies and words of God in the Bible.  So there is a lot we can know about God.  Still, even with the Bible there is so much I don’t know about Him.  Not only don’t I know a lot of things about God, I am incapable of it.  And so, like Paul, I look forward to that day when I will see God face to face.