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I did my exchange semester in Thailand and
the five months spent there was probably the best experience so far. During my
exchange, I sometimes found myself in difficult situations when it comes to
every-day life. The reason for this was very often communication problems
between me and a Thai because I did not speak Thai apart from basics and every
Thai person did not speak English. Also some cultural differences were a reason
for this.
It had been around two months of my
exchange semester in Phuket when we went out to eat like we did every day. We
decided to try a new restaurant with other exchange students. The place was quite basic Thai restaurant. We usually ate at places where locals also eat because those have usually most delicious food. This restaurant was also like that. The food was really good and when we were about to
pay our meals, the check we received had totally different prices than in the
menu. We told about this to the waitress who didn’t really speak English that
well and she was really confused. We were staying calm and even tried to draw
something on the paper. They were still not able to understand the problem so
we had to call our local friend who then explained the situation on phone to
the waitress. After this the waitress brought two menus to the table and we
found out that the menu we ordered from was for locals and more expensive
prices were from the menu for foreigners. The waitress was just smiling as all
Thai people do no matter the situation. At this point, one of the German
students was losing his temper and he tried to make them understand that we
should be able to pay the amount which was on the menu we ordered from. Soon we
realized together that this wasn’t going anywhere and we didn’t want to put the
waitress in a difficult situation or to make her to lose her face because she
was probably just doing as told. We paid the check where the price was two
times more expensive.
Later at our Intercultural Communication
lecture we came familiar with dual pricing. It happens a lot in Thailand, especially
where is lot of tourists. It means that a restaurant or other shops have more
expensive prices for foreigners. This happens because people think that
everyone from western countries have lot of money. It was dual pricing what we
faced at this restaurant and it felt unfair. After this we were more aware of
this but you can’t do anything about it. I personally understand why Thai
people are doing this and their motives but people like students or foreigners
who have been living in Thailand for a long time can get offended.
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