Thailand and Google Translate - a love-hate relationship

March 10, 2024

A new day, a new canal walk. Hunger drove us out the door and into the already heated air [Image 1], but our route was still beautiful and in a good mood we went to our "food hall" [Image 2].

If you were lucky, the labels for each dish were also written in English, making life much easier, as it was never clear from the pictures what exactly was in the dish. [Image 3]

However, we were often not so lucky and so we resorted to a Google function that allowed you to take photos of foreign language texts and then have them translated directly. Unfortunately and to our great amusement, the translation did not always work (if you often use an online translator, you might know what I am talking about) and so the result was often a huge amount of nonsense. For example, the translator turned "mango salad" into "perverted mango forest" or another dish name into "Cham Moo asks for egg yolk, he loves fish" [pictures 4 and 5]. We had a lot of fun.

There are many strange things that can be seen on the streets and I discovered this small fish that looked like it could have come from a horror movie [Image 6].

In search of a suitable dessert, our path led us again to the "Central Pinklao" Center ("our" shopping mall).

Funnily enough, Thais often displayed their dishes in the window of a restaurant [Image 7]. Perfectly modelled plastic Phat Thai, duck with rice, noodle soup and all kinds of other delicacies invited people to come in.

Once again we found what we were looking for at colourful stalls that lured us with their sweet scent [Image 8].

Small footprints showed us the way home [Picture 9] , where Arian was working on his deck of cards and I was working on another tattoo [Image 10].
Arian then supported me a bit by digitally contributing some tattoo ideas [Image 11] . Our goal of working together was expressed in moments and projects like these.

Of course, it was and is never easy for artists to work together "just like that", as everyone had their own ideas, methods and means, but we saw how much potential there was and were prepared to put a lot of work and time into it. In the end, it wasn't about us, but about a productive result. Of course, that also meant working on ourselves and our own issues, as these would show up in every relationship, regardless of whether they were professional, family or romantic.
Supporting and complementing each other was wonderful.