Dear Hillary,
You may not have noticed, but when a Thai person rings my number and finds it is a farang on the other end, they just drop the phone. Click, no “Sorry” or anything like that. I find this very rude, and wonder if other readers of your column (keep it up, it is so much fun) find the same?
Phone Phil
Dear Phone Phil,
There is a very simple answer to all this. The person ringing does not want to disappoint you by being unable to speak English, so rather than embarrass everyone, they just put the phone down. “Click” as you say. The answer here is to always answer the phone with a long “Ha-lloww”. This tricks the caller into thinking they have another Thai on the end of the phone and they will launch into rapid-fire Thai language that you can’t understand either. The other response is a series of “Ha-lloww”, “Ha-lloww”, “Ha-lloww”, “Ha-lloww” until eventually they break out in Thai, as per the first response. I think you should consider yourself lucky, and stop handing out business cards with you phone number on it.
