I’ve recently heard a different use of the expression, “Corridor Effect”. Rather than describing spatial changes of landscape patterns, a friend used it to describe the experience of entering a situation with a primary objective but finding unexpected doors of opportunities along the way.

Last month, while getting a haircut in Bangkok, I asked my barber if she could help me find a bilingual assistant to help with my current photography project. She said she knew just the person. A couple of days later, I met with Kamontip (Kamon) Chockthanyarat, a Thai education consultant.

In the course of our initial discussion explaining the purpose of the photo project, Kamon asked if there were other projects where she could help. I told her that there were two other projects I wanted to start but haven’t gotten around to them. The first was about the MlaBri people who I have wanted to learn more about for some time. I first read about them in the early 90’s. The article described them as a wandering nomadic tribe. It has been my intention to locate and photograph them. Kamon told me that she could get me access to the tribe through a friend of hers in Nan Provence where the MlaBri roam.

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Thailand is a land of smiles. And the Thai people are easy to approach, you will see they will be all smiling when you try to speak to them in Thai, which will add to your pleasure during your stay in Thailand.

If you want to learning to speak Thai, there is one important thing you should remember that is the Thai language has five tones with four tonal marks. They are the mid tone, low tone, falling tone, high tone and rising tone.

There are many groups of words which have the same sound but with different tones and meanings. For example, the word suai can mean bad luck (suai), bribe (suai1) or beautiful (suai4), the words meaning is depending on the tone.

To prevent you from pronouncing with the wrong tone and unintentionally cause misunderstanding to the listeners, Thai teachers will use four numbers to represent four tones: 1 = low tone, 2 = falling tone, 3 = high tone and 4 = rising tone. The mid-level tone syllable will be unmarked.

By official system, the Thai language has 8 vowel and 14 diphthong phonemes and 19 consonant phonemes. The Thai language has fixed tones like many oriental languages. Foreigners who are interested in learning the correct tones are advised to learn from a native speaker.

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