Do You Hear What I Hear? Part 2

In one of my earlier posts, I described the aural landscape at my first host family’s house, which featured a variety of animals, a village PA system, and chanting monks from the temple next door.  Now that I’m coming up on one year in Thailand, I can with all honesty say that one of the things that was originally most surprising, that continues to amaze me, and to which I am still not fully accustomed is the sheer level of noise that I experience on a daily basis.

Some of it can be chalked up to infrastructural factors, such as driving surfaces that can only nominally be called roads, to a general lack of adequate (from my perspective at least) muffling, to the prevalence of personal transportation with small, loud engines, to an economy with a booming manufacturing sector and the subsequent rise in the construction of factories and housing for workers, along with the sounds that accompany aforementioned construction. 

But most of it comes from individual people.  I had been told both before I left the States and also shortly after arriving in Thailand that Thais are reserved and quiet.  And to a certain extent this is true.  Except when it isn’t, which is all the time.  It’s been quite some time since I was last in an American elementary or secondary school, but I doubt that they can have changed that much since I attended, at least in terms of the general noise level.  Here in Thailand, in an attempt to stimulate their enthusiasm for whatever activity is at hand, the students are encouraged to yell as loudly as possible in response to the teacher’s inquiry of “ready?”  They are also encouraged to shout triumphantly when working in teams if their team finishes first, or simply gets an answer right.  Just today I watched various first-graders holding their hands over their ears to shield themselves however slightly from the shrieks of their teammates.

My desk is in the main office of the school, which is a room approximately 20x25 feet, shared by six people, including me.  This means that the furthest distance between any two people is about 20 feet, but most conversations happen over a distance of about half of that.  This, however, does not prevent any and all persons who enter the office from shouting as though trying to converse with someone 20 yards away.  And of course once any two people start talking, anyone else who joins in has to match or exceed their decibel level in order to be heard.

Teachers are constantly yelling across the school grounds, giving orders to students, asking questions or giving information to colleagues.  My neighbors also yell across distances of 20 feet or so to ask where someone is going or has been, if they’ve eaten yet, if they want to go to the market.

I’m not sure of the reason behind all this shouting.  My sneaking suspicion, however, is that everyone is slightly deaf from the ear-splitting music that accompanies most if not all (social) events: weddings, funerals, parties for monk ordinations, celebrations at school, public celebrations and festivals, karaoke buses, i.e. all buses.  This last phenomenon has to be experienced to be believed and has come within a hair’s breadth of driving more than one volunteer around the bend.

In short, thus far Thailand is right up there among the loudest places I’ve ever been, and that includes Italy during the World Cup and New Delhi at rush hour.