In our previous blog we went over various legal terms. The top two reasons a foreigner will find himself in a Thai prison would be from insulting royalty, and narcotics possession. Quite often foreigners are caught at the airport, trying to smuggle (ลักลอบ) the drugs (ยา) to their home country.
[disclaimer] My position is that the use of any substance that negatively alters your brain function is a very bad idea. You only have one brain, and if you damage it (สมองเสีย), it’s never going to fully heal itself. Money given to the Asian narcotics market can also potentially fund gang/mafia activities, including but not limited to murder and the trafficking of women.[/disclaimer]
So why learn these words? I have found that on rare occasion the use of the various drug names was needed in conversation, but for the longest I didn’t know them. I finally gave in one day and asked my Buddhist monk teacher to teach me . . . I got a lot of suspicious comments that day . . . Lucky me, several of these words turned up on my Federal Thai language proficiency test a month later, so I felt vindicated.
After learning a few of the words below, try practicing them by watching this video:
