A Little Insight Into the Mind of an Exchanger

This trip has already shown me such a vastly different outlook on life. The culture and the lifestyle that the Thai people have here is poles apart from what I have grown up knowing in The Great White North. Their mannerisms and behaviours are different, their weather is different, their language and alphabet are different, their food is different, heck, even their toilets are different. It can be a struggle to find any similarities whatsoever between Canada and Thailand.
But this is exactly the reason I wanted to come to The Land of Smiles in the first place. I wanted somewhere so dissimilar from my comfort zone, so unalike in every conceivable way, that I would have no choice but to learn and grow and adapt to my new world. I got exactly what I wished for, and then some.
See, last summer, I spent 2 months canoeing over 1,700 kms through the Northwest Territories, sleeping in a tent every night, combatting ceaseless waves of gnawing insects, cooking over a fire, and often enduring relentless winds and rains. But that was easy. Adapting to that kind of lifestyle was a breeze for me, in a relativistic sense of things. I can deal with physical changes with ease.
I've found that not to be the case here though. Here I have to learn to have dealings with people I have never met before. I have to adapt, not so much physically, (excluding to the tormenting heat...), but more so psychologically. And that, for me, is much harder than what I have had to do up until now. It's hard for me to realize that not everyone has the same basic thought process, that we don't all see the world with the same light. Even simple day-to-day things are done differently here, things that I would have thought would be done universally across the globe. The adaptation to these little, insignificant differences is proving to be my biggest challenge. They eventually all culminate into a big mess of cultural discrepancies that seem at times completely unreasonable to me. And yet, their lives move on, just as before, and they will continue to do so, despite me not being able to thoroughly accept them for what they are yet.  It is coming along though. I am working on broadening my perspectives, and although it is a slow process, it is progressing. Turns out I DONT know everything. Surprising eh? But moving forward, I will continue to do everything I can to take advantage of every opportunity and learn with every obstacle, and trudge ever closer to a better understanding of this strange, strange land we call Thailand, and this wide, wide world we call Earth.

Much Love from Thailand!
Sawatdee Krap