Gary, in his own words.
Search listener questions and Gary's answers from Everything Everywhere Daily.
464 indexed questions
Showing 1–1 of 1 matches.
Volume 24In your travels, have you ever found yourself in a potentially embarrassing situation culturally?
Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage
My final question is from AmyElizabeth who asks, In your travels, have you ever found yourself in a potentially embarrassing situation culturally? If so, how did you gracefully extricate yourself?
Not really. I think this is largely overblown. Maybe in the 19th century, this could have been a problem, but not in the 21st century.
The closest thing I can think of took place in Thailand when I was told how to say hello. A woman told me to say Sawadee Ka.
The problem was, the way the Thai language works, what you say isn’t just dependent on who you are talking to, but also who you are.
Sawadee Ka is how a woman would say hello, and I went around saying Sawadee Ka.
Thai people understood that I was a foreigner, so they didn’t say anything. Eventually, someone told me I was saying something wrong. I was saying it like a woman. Men should say Sawadee Kap.
Again, not really embarrassing, but that is the closest I’ve done.
Based on available episode transcripts. Answers are attributed to their original episodes and may contain transcription errors or later-outdated information. Some older volumes have missing source material.