Bangkok Post
HORIZONS - Thursday 24 February 2005

If you're new to the Sukhumvit tourist strip and see strange hand signals, don't worry _ it's just stallholders making conversation
Story by MIRANDA SCHOONEVELDT
Street vendors near the BTS station at Nana chat in hand language while waiting for customers.
Like other mute vendors in the area, this photograph seller aims at the tourist market.
A calculator is in front of your eyes before you know it. It shows the cost of a beautiful photograph you wish to purchase. Getting into the Thai tourist spirit you start to bargain and then you realise that you're the only one speaking. You look again at the Sukhumvit stallholder. He makes a quick gesture and suddenly it dawns on you that he is deaf.

It doesn't take a tourist, or even a local, long to notice the furious hand gestures that fly around Sukhumvit at night, from street seller to street seller, confusing and fascinating at the same time. But perhaps it takes a little longer to realise these quick hand signals are not designed to rip off members of the public; they are the most obvious sign of the large deaf community working in and around the area.

Backpacker Ben Phillips, 27, from Ohio in the US was one of many tourists who at first found the gestures threatening.

"I thought it meant, 'This one's an easy target'," he said.

However Phillips said that after negotiating with one seller over a photograph he quickly realised the truth of the situation.

"He showed the price on the calculator, which a lot of people do around here," he said. "I realised he was deaf when he made a gesture indicating that he could not speak or hear."

The hearing-impaired stallholders mostly work the stretch of road between Nana and Asoke, and some of them have been there for years. They sell a wide range of products, principally aimed at the tourist market, including T-shirts, silk scarfs, wooden souvenirs and photographs.

They communicate with customers through a series of near-universal hand gestures, including the classic "thumbs-up" sign for "yes", and by showing the price of each item on a calculator. As Phillips found, bargaining then takes place, using gestures, with the tourist indicating how much they wish to pay via the calculator. A selling price is then negotiated.

But why do so many hearing-impaired sellers work around Sukhumvit? While there is no formal organisation that looks after this particular group, they are clearly friends who rely on and support each other. When we spoke to one seller, another would come and look after his or her stall during the interview.
With a calculator and a good attitude, deaf vendors have no problem doing business with foreigners. - PONGPET MEKLOY
According to the National Association of the Deaf in Thailand there are around 2,000 deaf people living in Bangkok and around 50 work in the Sukhumvit area while others work in different tourist areas such as Patpong and Silom. The association's manager, Sithipong Kongprayoon, said they move into a particular area to make the most of the opportunities it provides.

"The reason they pick this area is because it's near the hotels. It's a tourist destination and with the many people who visit these areas, they have more of a chance of selling," he said.

Statistics from 1999 estimate that there could be as many as 177,000 deaf people in the country. Sithipong, who himself is deaf, said that he believed the number across Thailand was more like 300,000, of which around 200,000 were congenitally deaf _ born deaf as opposed to becoming deaf through accident or illness.

With no formal sign language in Thailand, for the hearing-impaired it is often a case of developing their own ways of communicating. In Bangkok a special form of sign language has evolved to help stallholders and sellers communicate with each other and with their hearing colleagues.

"For those that are born in Bangkok, or those that move here to live and work in Bangkok, they have a different sign language to that found in other areas where they have their own sign languages," Sithipong said.

This is true for many of the hearing impaired. Narumon Ngoenruang, 32, is originally from Mae Hong Son. Born deaf, he has been working in Sukhumvit selling tourist items for around eight months. When we asked him why he moved to Bangkok, he replied that it was simply for economic reasons.

Sithipong said that lack of work locally often drives deaf people into Bangkok.

"Most of the hearing-impaired people outside Bangkok have difficulty in finding a job. So they decide to move to Bangkok, to the big city. And the reason is simply that they want to find a job more easily," he said.

This difficulty in finding a job in their local communities is due to two major factors according to Sithipong: The attitudes of employers towards the hearing-impaired and a lack of educational opportunities.

Education in local schools outside of Bangkok is limited. As Sithipong explains, schools often have no special curriculum for hearing-impaired children, but simply adapt the normal learning programme.

"In the schools the teachers don't teach them Thai properly. They leave out some of the difficult words," he said.

This is being countered by the introduction of special bachelor's degree programmes for hearing-impaired students at Ratchasuda College, Mahidol University and other universities. It is hoped that having a recognised qualification might improve hearing-impaired people's chances of finding work, particularly when their studies involve a normal classroom environment.

"They can develop better writing skills and because they study with hearing people they can better adapt to society, where they will have to interact with hearing people," he said.

However, Sithipong said even a university education was not enough sometimes.

"The major problem in Bangkok is with the hearing-impaired who have graduated [from university] and still can't find a job," he said.

Sithipong also said many hearing-impaired people have difficulties finding work because of employers' perceptions that they won't fit into a normal office environment.

"Most companies don't accept this group of people working with them because they say there will be communication problems," he said.

Sithipong said that while street sellers in Sukhumvit were not organised as such, the National Association of the Deaf in Thailand ran many programmes specifically aimed at this group.

"They don't have a specific organisation, but most of the people there are members of our organisation," he said.

But most of the street sellers we spoke to said they were not members of any organisation. Kritsana Noi-song, 29, who started selling on Sukhumvit 10 years ago to provide for his family said he received little help from any organisation.

"I do it myself, because I prefer it that way," he said.

So how do the hearing sellers react to their hearing-impaired colleagues? Surat Giri, 22, has been working on a clothing stall near Soi 11 for three years and told us that there are no problems between the two groups.

"We love them, whatever they say, whatever they do we just forgive. Sometimes their thinking and ours is different, but we just get along. They are very good people," he said.

Surat said that despite the communication difficulties the hearing-impaired often do the best from the Sukhumvit-area tourists.

"Western tourists around here bargain a lot so when they [the hearing-impaired traders] sell they don't bargain that much. They [the tourists] know they cannot speak so they don't bargain too much," he said.

Sithipong agrees that selling on Sukhumvit is one of the area of business at which hearing-impaired people can be very successful.

"They have a skill of doing their own business, but they do have a problem with communication. So if we can find any way to help them with that or any other ways to assist them maybe they can do better than hearing people," he said.

Or as stallholder Boonta Phuekphot, aged 30 and congenitally deaf put it, "The deaf rule here."