Culture Shock

Yesterday, for probably the first time, I experience intensive culture shock. Obviously when you move to a country that is so far away from your home you expect to encounter a culture that is very different. I came here with an open mind, ready to learn new things and take a view at life from a different angle. But this was something I never expected...

I get paid a salary monthly, all in cash. At first I didn't mind this because it meant I always had cash on me and I have safe place to store it in my apartment. But Ciana and I have been trying to save up for our travels and we realized we would rather not go around SE Asia with that much cash on us. Plus, we have started to buy plane tickets online for these travels, and we want to use our Baht, not American dollars. So we decided to open bank accounts. Our coordinator took us to the bank the school uses, and after two different trips we finally got the accounts open.

First difference between banks here and at home: if you want to get an ATM or Debit card, you have to pay for it. It was 400 Baht for us to purchase a debit card, but we figured it was worth it to be able to use it online. So we get our cards and the lady at the bank tells us the accounts are ready to go. We get home that afternoon and go to book our plane tickets to Vietnam, and Ciana's card gets denied. I figured it was probably just a time lag in setting up the account even though she said it would be ready. So I tried to buy the tickets on Sunday, and my card was denied. We are trying to buy these tickets on Air Asia, which is a very finicky website (it won't accept Bank of America) so we decide to try and book a hostel with it. Surprise surprise, it gets denied again. So yesterday we tell our coordinator and she takes us back to the bank.

We get to the bank and go straight for the ladies that were helping us last time. We tell them, through our coordinators translations, that we can't set up online banking and we our cards aren't being accepted online. This conversation probably takes 20 minutes. Our coordinator is getting confused on what the problem is and the bank lady is asking questions that I think our coordinator was finding hard to translate. She keeps telling us we need to enter the number on the back of the card (like 10 different times), and we are like WE KNOW we use online banking all the time. Then they told us we should enter our account number instead of the 16 digit card number. We were like no...it doesn't work that way. Then another lady comes up and tries to help us. She proceeds to ask us if it's a place that accepts visa...OF COURSE IT'S A PLACE THAT ACCEPTS VISA! Then she said it probably doesn't work because it's a debit card, and again we say no because we can use our American debit cards online all the time. Finally, this new lady understands that we are talking about using it on the computer (somehow she thought we were talking about a store) and goes oh no no no, while laughing, of course it doesn't work on the computer. This happened probably an hour and a half after we walked in the door.

Then the culture shock sets in. It is basically unheard of in Thai culture to buy something online. They always use cash and buy things at the store. Ciana and I were shocked. Our coordinator started asking what kind of things we buy online and how it gets to us if we don't get it in a store. She was seriously befuddled at the thought of buying something online. Who knew that something we consider so basic, so much a part of everyday life, would be so foreign to them and create so much confusion for us.

This was probably the first time I was legitimately frustrated since I've been in Thailand. We had one simply question, why doesn't it work online, and no one seemed to be able to answer that question. Eventually we realized that was just the beginning of a huge cultural schism.

We did some research when we got home about Thai banks, and it turns out we could only find ONE that says the card will work online. So now I think were going to close the bank accounts we have now and switch to this new bank. Wish us luck with this crazy endeavour!