Challenging, bizarre and chaotic

Last week, I renewed my Thai driver's licence.  I had had my first licence for one year and now it was time to get my permanent licence for five years.  Well, I had done all the hard work, I thought, when I went a year ago to apply the first time for a Thai licence.  Not to be so as it was to be a repeat experience of tests and paperwork for which I was totally unprepared.  What transpired was a three hour ordeal at the hands of Thai government bureaucracy. 

On finally getting my licence and having a sense of achievement, I victoriously posted this comment on Facebook. 
"I am no longer a P-Plate driver in Thailand.  I am now Permanent with a five year licence.  The process for getting it is challenging, bizarre and chaotic.  It reminds me that once you go beyond Darwin you enter a different world." 

As I read this later, I realized that I was reflecting on much more than just getting a driver's licence.  I was reflecting on my experience of living here in this culture.

Life is so different once you go beyond Darwin.  From there you enter a different world or should I say different worlds.  Yes, you enter Asia but an Indonesia is not a Thailand while both are so different from Australia. 

Your world here is full of people and activity around you all the time.  It is life lived at close quarters and at very intense levels.  The way of dealing with people and issues is different.  They do not like confrontation.  Actually who does?  What this means here though has real consequences for they do talk or act directly with each other, or that is the general rule.  Rather you deal with issues by not dealing with them or by being accommodating.  Or else you just go around instead of facing the issue head on, as we do, and so by that more circuitous route arrive at a different and more desired result. You do find your ways of making your point when needed but in different and less direct ways from back home.  As a strong westerner, I find it frustrating but what can you do as you have to learn to act so as to get the best results where you live among the people with whom you share your life.

One rule I keep is to never compromise my integrity. 

So as I go for my licence, I do the silly tests required for getting it, not asking any dumb or logical questions about why we are doing this.  I go for my medical certificate, knowing that the doctor does not even look at me and what he is about is signing certificates to get money.  I wait and wait with many others, being corrected on which forms to complete and which documentation to copy, while just acting to stay patient.  I remain amazed that they never check if I can read Thai as the road signs are in Thai.  Little do they realise in this government ministry that I can read it better than I can speak it.  It struck me that the whole process was not about assuring that you could drive safely in Thailand but about completing a bureaucratic process with all its hurdles and anomalies that gave a prize - your driver's licence.  Just one thing do not question it and do not try to change it. 

Life is so different beyond Darwin but maybe that is part of the attraction of being here.