I may be considering Thailand either a few years from now or a decade from now (or maybe in another lifetime if I'm befallen with the same fate of being trans. AGAIN!). I'm really, really concerned about finding my way around the language problem, as I am nearly stone-deaf. I have a little bit of familiarity with Hindi and Sanskrit, but no familiarity with Asian languages, just because they are formidable to me because of the writing system, the transliteration system, and also the tonal system.
How am I supposed to communicate critical concerns to nursing staff who can't speak English? Has Dr. Chettawut ever had deaf patients (either profoundly deaf oral or sign-only)? Another concern is asking street vendors about cooked food to eat and making sure that I'm not getting animal products.
The only thing I can think of doing is building a Thai phrase book so that I can look up by category and then by sentence in English to show them what I'm trying to say in the Thai writing system. I recall the difficulty I had in communicating with people who didn't know English in India (even though English is an administrative language there!). Imagine the difficulty in Thailand! Asians are the HARDEST for me to understand (I worked for REI and had a LOT of overseas customers, so I tended to avoid the Asians, or if I couldn't escape them, I would assess the communicability of that situation, and if needed, I simply said, "Sure, right this way," and led them to another coworker and asked him to take this customer over while I took over his customer.)
It brings up the question of whether Chettawut's staff be required to be fluent in English, since Americans are largely handicapped in the language department because of the Imperial position post-WWII, which has attempted to make English the de facto language all over the world. I'm one of them, though I have the excuse of being deaf and old enough to not have seen the resources needed to pass any language classes in school (sign language wasn't even an option in high school AND college).
