Yesterday we met a friend (who shall remain nameless) at a restaurant. He was telling us of another friend’s plan to marry a lady from Thailand. Yumi and I know first hand the difficulties of international marriage. Even getting to the point of ‘marriage’ is difficult. Dealing with the INS (Or whatever it is called these days) is like having all your teeth pulled, paying the dentist and then saying, “Thank You!” with a toothless smile.

Anyway, my friend was talking about his friend and mentioned he was studying the language. He paused for a moment and said, “Do they speak Gujarati or Hindi in Thailand?” I looked at him and said, “They speak Thai in Thailand.” He said, “Oh.”

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That isn’t a big deal. Many countries in that area have (English) language names that are very different from their (English) country name. But…
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Not five minutes later when talking about his friend getting ready to go to Thailand to meet his bride, he said, “He’ll have to change his Dollars for Bahts…”

I stopped him cold and said, “What a second. You knew the currency name which isn’t a common currency name like dollar or even yen, but you didn’t know they spoke Thai in Thailand?!”

I asked permission to post this. Despite that, I hope he’ll forgive me.