Saturday, March 18, 2006

Speaker Savvy

We are here in Bangkok this weekend. Last night we climbed on a bus at Victory Monument to return to our hotel after dinner. Victory Monument is a central bus stop and lots of buses and bus riders mill about.

In Thailand, buses are usually operated by two characters: the driver and the money collector. Last night's money collector was a woman about 45 years old. When we climbed aboard she was standing at the open door in the middle of the bus, speaking into a megaphone. We took our seats and she continued to speak into the microphone for several minutes, advertising the bus and trying to entice customers to climb aboard.

After several minutes, she pushed a couple of different buttons on the megaphone (it was high tech, I guess), spoke into it some more, and then tied it to the railing of the bus stairs. She pushed one more button and the megaphone began to speak on its own -- continuing to call out to potential customers in her voice while she walked around collecting money from us awed passengers.

We were thus able to listen to the megaphone for several more minutes, but alas, as it was Thai and a megaphone, we could only make out a few specific words. "542...passing by ... and ... and ... ... 10 baht per ticket..."

1 comment:

Stan said...
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