{"id":283,"date":"2005-05-05T15:11:04","date_gmt":"2005-05-05T15:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drtu.com\/blog\/?p=283"},"modified":"2008-06-13T05:45:32","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T05:45:32","slug":"have-no-skills-learn-english-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/05\/have-no-skills-learn-english-first","title":{"rendered":"Have no skills? Learn English first"},"content":{"rendered":"

Traveling in SE Asia, I was constantly annoyed by the service people who do not speak much English.<\/span><\/p>\n

I booked a trip from Ko Chang Island, Thailand to Siem Reap Cambodia at 11pm, last night. I was supposed to be picked up by a bus at 700 \u2013 800 am from the hotel lobby. As expected, the bus did not show up. So I called. \u201cWill my bus come?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cWhen will my bus come?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cBut it is already 800am and my bus did not come.\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, I had no choice but to get into a taxi and went back to the travel agent. After much talk, the travel agent owner decided to drive me to catch up with the bus which was supposed to have left. Any way, to cut the long stories short, I was finally in the Cambodian side and sit in a Toyota, Camry driven by a Cambodian young kid. He had a driver\u2019s license displayed on the wind shield which showed a totally different picture but has a birth year of 1979.<\/p>\n

The ride from the boarder to Siem Reap was a pleasant one. I was sitting on the front and there was a French family sitting at the back. Finally, we arrived at the Siem Reap. The night street was lighted by the glow of the shinning new luxury resorts. I had already booked a hotel so as the French family. I showed the driver my hotel name card. \u201cCan you get to this place?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cDo you know the place?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cHow far are we?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d Well, here comes the yes again. We all read that the taxi driver will some times drive you into a dark part of the town and have all of you stay in a partner guest house where you will be over charged. Actually, I do not mind at all as the surcharge was no more than a few dollars. But I had already booked the hotel so I need to get to this hotel as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

After struggling with the driver and on and off the busy street for over one hour, I found my hotel. I shake hand with the driver, \u201cGood drive, I enjoyed it\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

I checked in and sit down to have a delicisious Cambodian dinner with Angkor beer. I called the taxi driver who was recommended to me by my friend back in Bangkok. \u201cHe speaks a bit English.\u201d She added.<\/p>\n

I am now in the internet caf\u00e9 again. I happened to find out that both the hotel owner and the internet caf\u00e9 owner speak a bit English. I would happily pay a bit more for any service people who speaks English.<\/p>\n

I will tell my taxi driver tomorrow to put a sign on his taxi: \u201cI speak English.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Traveling in SE Asia, I was constantly annoyed by the s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-english-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drnantu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}