Goodbye, Hat Yai

We were pretty punchy flying back to Bangkok, and in a semi stupor I experienced a kind of exaggerated form of a sense of dislocation that has afflicted me ever since coming here. And not just because I actually am dislocated, either. But there's something deeply disorienting, so to speak, about westernized Asia, and you find yourself rather hopelessly trying to separate the familiar from the strange. On the taxi ride into the airport, to take one fleeting instance, we passed a skyscraper with a big lighted sign saying Kassetart University. Now, Kassetart is probably the name of a prince or something, but I found myself trying to parse it out. Could they mean "Cassette art" perhaps, in which case the school taught recording engineering, or "case of tarts," in which case the curriculum was baking? It's strange little things like this, presented familiarly with an English word attached, juxtaposed against this mad mixture of the recognizable and the un' and multiplied by thousands that puts a running strain on my brain, which hasn't learned yet when to abandon the attempt. I am almost grateful when a sign turns up entirely in utterly inscrutable Thai, and I can relax. But then the strain goes both ways, as the above sign, posted outside a wat (a temple) -- A wat? A temple -- attests.