Restaurant Service

Trip Start Feb 01, 2006

Trip End May 04, 2006

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Flag of Thailand Koh Lanta, Thailand
Tuesday, March 7, 2006

I realize that in trying to blog about what I am doing everyday (alright every 3 or 4 days) that I end up skipping over some of the 'big picture' differences. Things that are pretty darn different from the United States, such as what you can expect for restaurant service, what you can expect to find in a bathroom (not that, I am not trying to be completely disgusting here), and how everyone,Thais and Westerners alike are crazy about soccer, but call it football. SO I will try and cover some of this stuff in upcoming entries, I will start with what you can expect for restaurant service. Not all of these things will happen at a given meal, but it is a guarantee that at least some of them will...

You walk in to the restaurant pick your own seat (no hostesses, and they never seat you), then your waiter will come overand either stand there and wait for you to order, or more often just pull up a seat next to you and watch while you decide to order

Giving the elephant some bananas

. After you order the waiter will proceed to deliver your food as soon as it is done being cooked, that means appetizers will often arrive long after the main course, and if you are eating with multiple people it can be between 10 and 40 minutes before the last meal arrives. And this isn't considered poor serivce on their end, they will come by and tell you after waiting for 30 minutes with a big smile on their face that 'your food is almost ready, don't worry'. But even in this case you should consider yourself lucky, because it is not uncommon at all for parts of your meal to be completely forgotten. And don't even think about trying to order additional food after you have received your meal. At one restaurant I wasn't full after I had finished my sandwich, and asked for some additional french fries. I proceeded to watch the server bring french fries to another table five minutes later, but twenty minutes later I still hadn't gotten mine. It is almost like they decided that I had eaten enough for one meal, and that ordering any more food was against the rules. Which brings me to the last main difference between restaurant service here and in the U.S., the server will literally never bring you your check without you asking. You can sit there for hours and hours and they still won't so much as ask you if you're finished. They can be difficult to flag down too so that can get a little annoying.

There are a few nice things about the service here though

Pretty sweet sunset

. One is that every waiter is yours, and tou can ask any one of them for ketchup or another beer or the check or whatever you want, whether you'll get it or not is another story.

And finally the difference that I like the most is that you are never expected to tip, it saves me 15-20% every time I eat, its great, I'm thinking of bringing that custom home with me!

These differences can get aggravating especially when you are getting very hungry, but in the end you need to adjust to 'Thai time'. The way I see it is that I am the one who is visiting their country and if I adjust to their ways instead of demanding that my own are applied, everyone will be a lot happier. An Australian guy I was talking to put it in a way that made a lot of sense to me, he said "when I visit another country as soon as I get there I take off my Australian hat ,and put on my Thai hat or Indonesian hat (these are proverbial 'hats' here incase you are completely lost), and just try and adjust to that country's cultural norms as much as I can."

I'm working on the pics, so check the old entries...