Glai...the Bane of my Existence

Imagine with me, if you will, knowing a word whose counterpart happens to be the exact same word only said with a different tone. This is "glai". This word said in a mid tone means "far"...this same word said with a falling tone means "near". "Glai" rhymes with "sly" or "die" which is what you feel about the word when misunderstanding happens (which it does).

Allow me to relay to you my Sunday evening...currently in Bangkok there are the University Games taking place. This is an international competition with the best athletes from each nation coming to represent their countries in a variety of sports. It's basically the olypics of the university world. A friend and I decided to check out the volleyball and went to watch the Canada vs. France match (seriously awesome!!! Canada won!) but this venue happened to be quite far outside of the city and our taxi there was costly. After the match was over we spent about an hour wandering around asking people where we could catch a mini van back into Bangkok, each of them telling us to go somewhere else. Eventually, we got stuck in a taxi and were heading off in the direction of Bangkok...the very thing we didn't want to do. (This is where "the word" comes in)...the taxi driver mentions where he is taking us, and this happens to be a place that I am familiar with. In my mind, it was much farther than we wanted to go in a cab, so I asked the driver, "Which is closer? Future Park (where we were going), or Mochit (where we could go to catch a sky train)?" (future glai gwaa mochit may kha?), to which he answered "mochit". So, I tell the driver that that is now where we want to go. Without any explanation, he stops the car, waves down another taxi and begins the process of transferring us. At this point, I am so confused that I am not going anywhere until I gain some level of understanding! Again, I use that confusing little word and eventually resort to hand gestures only to discover that Future Park is directly in front of us. We were literally almost in the parking lot. Even though I was really conscious of the tone that I was using it didn't seem to matter. Glai was glai and so was I.