Thailand

Vibrant Bangkok

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Bangkok Air From Koh Samui to Bangkok again. Not a pretty city but it’s vibrant. The populace, as with much of Asia, lives outdoors-almost all 10 million of them. It is increasingly cosmopolitan and this year seems to have more farangs (Westerners) than I can recall in my several former visits here.

It is a paradox of a city. Some big money and big establishments with big prices but the vast majority is poor and the cost of living (by most western standards) is inexpensive. Traffic predictably chaotic with frequent gridlock. Travel by sky train and new subway system redeeming (and air-conditioned).

Walking is an adventure with uneven and poorly constructed sidewalks, often with holes, open pits, and unstable underfoot tiles– exposed haphazard electrical wiring and the mangiest dogs anywhere –all of them breeding exponentially. Hard to tell if they have any owners. Half of the dogs have orthopedic disability either from vehicle vs dog and/or intracanine squabbles. They sleep on the sidewalks during the day and roam at night occasionally in packs that cause a pause and change of direction for us pedestrians.

Shops, vendors, food stalls on wheels, open front restaurants, open sewers, tuk-tuks; all contribute to a cacophany of sound and smell that paradoxically continue to be both enticing and repelling. Bangkok is not renowned for it’s aesthetics. It is visited for it’s populace…the Thai people.

Smiles and accomodation prevail—but who knows what is lurking beneath…best to accept the presentation at face value and not analyze. The attitude, dictums of the Budda prevail. Mei pen rai (“whatever”).  As a passenger on a motorcycle taxi the driver, without looking, pulls out and speeds into the flow of traffic. “Slowly, slowly”, says I. “Mai pen rai, Budda will take care of us,” is the nonchalant response. The concept of liability has not reached these shores. Persons or events are either lucky or not lucky. Inevitable comparison of societies is fraught with subjectivity and tilted by one’s biases. Perhaps it is best (and more just) to live and let live. Enough. RLG

Stamp-Out to Burma

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“Stamping out” consists of leaving Krabi Thailand at a border crossing…in the case of Ranong the border is with Burma…and then “stamping” back into Thailand. To do this they went to the Thai immigration office at the port in Ranong to officially exit the country called “stamping out.” Then they hired a boat ($12) for a 40 minutes ride across the estuary to Burma. They paid $5 US (had to be a US bill) at the Burmese immigration office for a stamp in their passports to enter Burma. They walked around the little dumpy Burmese border town trying to avoid the sellers (the big sales item was Viagra…probably from India) for 30 minutes and then took the boat back across to Thailand where they returned to the Thai immigration office to get stamped back into the country for another 30 days.

In my case I had purchased a 60 day Thai tourist visa in Kunming China so I had another couple weeks in my passport. While Bob and Doug were monkeying around with this, Luk and I found a nice air-con hotel that would accept their little Shimizu “Ting Tong” (the name means “crazy”) for the night…having take-out dinner purchased from the local night market and eating it in our room … one of the best meals we had in Thailand…all of us feasting for about $3.

The next day we drove east to Surat Thani on the east coast of the Thai peninsula …visiting a famous Buddhist meditation teaching center (in English) on the way. Had strong thoughts of being dropped off here for a month but there was no air-con or even fans in the rooms and that even I was not ready for. I just settled for my good old TM mantra in my comfortable air-con room in Krabi.

Tsunami In Khao Lak

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Before we left Krabi, Bob and Doug both had to “stamp out” of the country at Ranong (on border of Burma) so they could get another 30 days in Thailand. We rented an SUV and drove over to Patong Beach on the west side of the island of Phuket where so many people lost their lives in the tsunami. You would never know anything horrible happened here…businesses up and running and tourists lying on the beach although in minimal numbers compared to before the disaster…but a lot of bare areas where store-houses once stood facing the beach.
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Driving up the coast north to Ranong we passed through Khao Lak…a 50 mile stretch of beach that took the worst beating in Thailand. For miles there was nothing but bare bulldozed land…bulldozed in order to remove bodies that were trapped among the roots of Mangrove trees and under rubble. Much of the land here is flat from the beaches to the foothills inland so in places the devestation extended across the road and into the countryside for more than two kilometers. Halfway up a hillside we saw a wrecked coast guard ship sitting at a crazy angle that we understand will be preserved as part of a memorial to all who died here.

We passed a volunteer center that is accepting volunteers for a month at a time and for as long as a year…many of them young people who scrambled down from the backpacker streets in Bangkok…others flying in from the U.S. and Europe…many of them professionals in their fields. At the web site at http://www.tsunamivolunteer.net you can read heart-rending and life-changing message boards…many in English.

Luk’s Family In Trang

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We rented an SUV and drove to Trang, about 150 kilometers south of Krabi, to meet Luk’s immediate and extended family. We were greeted with the traditional Thai wai greeting with head bowed and hands folded…a greeting that feels so incredibly respectful. Grandfather is 81 and lives at home with Luk’s graceful grandmother who is 72.

Before a visit to the market with Luk’s mother we stopped by a fish farm to buy fresh fish for dinner. Luk’s mother, a professional cook, prepared a half a dozen dishes for us and for various cousins and uncles who appeared on the scene throughout the evening.

Luk’s mom lives out in the countryside with a woman friend. Luk’s brother is 19 and works in a grocery store. One of Luk’s cousins has been a surgical nurse for four years in the Trang Hospital…her boyfriend works for the police department. Another cousin is in the army and works as a dive master on the side. We struggled to communicate…but we all laughed together at Luk’s mom’s tiny Laborador puppy who was terrorizing Luk’s 8 month old Shimazu! On the way to the car after dinner Luk’s mother and I walk hand in hand. We are family now.

Ao Nang Beach Krabi Thailand

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Bob and I have been here in Krabi Province of Thailand with Doug and Luk for three weeks now…a welcome respite after a month in smoggy noisy Bangkok where I had some dental work done and a 6 month routine check-up at Bumrungrad Hospital.

Bob left a couple days ago to do some hiking in Khao Sok National Park up north. I stayed here in my little 2nd story bungalow on lazy Ao Nang Beach watching the dark wiry young boat guys guide their long tailed boats to various karst islands and isolated beaches out in the deceivingly placid blue and green ocean and return again. Bob and I will either meet up in Bangkok or he will return here first…who knows what he will do. The breeze cools down at night until about noon…then air conditioning goes back on again.

Doug and Luk come over every morning (my place is 10 minutes up the road from their house) and we breakfast together. Then we all pile on the motorbike for a ride through the karsts and banana tree forests looking for a little fantasy house for me to rent…can get a house with tile floors, bathroom, hot water, kitchen facilities and bedroom and main room for about $200 a month if you are not on the water. A bottom floor bungalow on the water like Doug had before the tsunami is about $450 a month.

Weird to see inaugural celebrations on Fox News and then to drive by the Krabi Wat with hundreds of pictures of victims and piles of burial boxes.

An internet friend of mine who just married a Thai girl is staying on Patang Beach on Phuket Island where most of the damage was done. He said the beaches have been cleaned up…chairs and umbrellas are back up and the local businesses are begging for tourists. Reconstruction has already begun on some of the lost and damaged hotels. The second worst place in Thailand to get hit was Khoa Lak…just up north from here. They are still finding bodies in the Mangrove Forests and the village water well ended up with a car and 92 bodies in it. Several thousand bodies have not been found yet, many of them illegal immigrants from Burma. We hear they will not even try to rebuild at Khao Lak.

Post Christmas in Bangkok & Escaping The Tsunami 2004

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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A month in Bangkok

On the morning of December 26, 2004, after a bowl of spicy Thai soup on the street outside my Bangkok hotel, I returned to my room and flipped on the satellite TV to find both CNN and BBC running astounding commentary and amateur video of the tsunami wave that had hit the Krabi coast earlier that morning. Son Doug and his wife Luk had been living on Khlong Muang beach 15 feet from the water in Krabi Province just SE of Phuket. The telephone circuits were all busy but after four tries and 30 minutes trying to reach them with my heart in my throat, Luk finally answered. What sweet voices that day!

About 10:30 that morning Doug and Luk had been in bed when they heard what they thought was a bomb. When he opened the curtains to the sliding glass doors, he instead found that it was the first wave of the tsunami that hit their glass doors facing the beach leaving the bungalow under water. They were lucky the doors were closed. Many lives were lost when water entered open doors and windows leaving people with no way to escape.

Doug said he immediately threw a bottle against the door of a sleeping couple behind their bungalow to wake them while Luk climbed screaming to the roof. Then when the first wave went back out, he and Luk scrambled to safety up the hill behind them.

When the 2nd wave washed detritus and some of their belongings back up on the beach, they made a little pile of stuff on the country road above the house. Doug had just sunk a lot of money into a cozy cafe/bar in front of his beachfront rental unit only to lose the whole investment…but not his life. He also luckily didn’t lose his new motorbike, that he retrieved as it was out swirling crazily in the 2nd wave.

They were able to quickly arrange for a friend with a pickup to take them and what was left of their belongings to a rental house farther inland on the road between Krabi Town and Ao Nang Beach and later to the island of Koh Samui.

About a week later, Bob appeared in Bangkok from wherever he was and he and I flew from Bangkok to Krabi Town…all of 6 people flying with us…not a good sign for the tourist industry here, I thought, as I stepped off into the humid tropical air. It felt very strange to be flying into the tsunami ravaged area on a colorful holiday plane. Son Doug and Luk, met us in the terminal…Luk, smiling, handed me a nicely wrapped gift. A friend that was in the Peace Corps in Thailand says the name “Luk” is an endearing name in Thai. She is a dear.

Krabi Province has about 500 people known to be lost so far to the tsunami. After spending a night in Krabi Town, a busy dusty town of about 18,000, Bob rented a motorbike and we moved about 30 kilometers up the coast to the beach town of Ao Nang.

On the way out of town we passed the Buddhist Wat that is providing space for a Krabi assistance and communication center under wide green awnings by the side of the road. Volunteers assist families looking for the missing on computer terminals. Color photos of the dead, disfigured and unrecognizable, and pictures of the missing cover rows of standing sheets of plywood. I was shocked and revolted by the appearance of drowned bodies. I had no idea they would swell like they do. Most of the photos of the dead attempt to show anything that may be identifiable by an intimate family member…a ring, a bracelet, a tatoo, a logo on a t-shirt…flowered undergarments…

Workers are still building several hundred wooden boxes that will be lowered with their contents into a mass grave in the cemetery beside the Wat. Driving along the roads in Krabi, here and there can be seen covered memorial areas with casket and flowers for funerals by some family members who have been able to identify their dead. We had been told that Krabi Province’s worst hit area is Khao Lak, farther north up the coast where the wave penetrated three kilomaters into the Mangrove forests and where people are still being found as debris is cleared. There are no plans to rebuild the area we are told.

The immediate crisis is over here in Krabi province. Smiling Thai people are some of the most positive people in the world and they are trying to make the best of a bad situation. They are not waiting for the wheels of international aid. Here in Ao Nang beaches are quickly being cleaned up…an attempt to salvage the devastated tourist high season. The local boat school is donating student workers and materials to repair about 50 damaged long-tail boats. A local company is donating time to desalinate long-tail motors. Boatmen are again taking what few tourists are left here out on diving expeditions and trips to outlying islands. Window glass is being replaced.

Patang Beach on Phuket Island had the most deaths and got the most publicity, but many beaches have been cleaned up already. It is indeed strange how one area could be hit hard and how the next area 10 feet away would not be damaged at all. Destroyed businesses and homeless families will get help.

But unfortunately, international coverage by CNN and BBC filmed the devastation to the exclusion of all the other areas which frightened away prospective tourists. On top of that, both Sweden and Denmark issued travel warnings so the tour companies have rescinded their travel insurance for those people…prompting travelers on two and three week holidays to return home. Restaurants and guesthouses here are empty. One restaurant owner told me that they have heard that some business owners will get some money to pay their rent but that still leaves them with little source of livlihood.

Koh Samui on the other side of the Thai peninsula, not hit by the wave, is packed at 100% capacity…only families getting hotel rooms and tents being set up on the beaches for backpackers. But here on the west side of Thailand, local expats and long term tourists are writing home and telling people if they really want to help now, to buy a plane ticket and come visit. If taking a vacation in SE Asia right now seems repugnant to you…as it did for us…think of the living here instead. The opposite side of the coin is the economic struggle of the survivors as they lose their source of income…60% of which comes from tourism. We are going to Phuket in a few days. Maybe the hospital there could use some help.

Bob’s Thai Village Visit

Posted on by Laughingnomad

While Jana and I were playing with Chinese teenagers in Ruili in the south of Yunnan, Bob spent some time in an ethnic village in the mountains in Issan Province southeast of Chiang Mai in Thailand. The people were Thai but smaller and darker…probably with a Lao or Cambodian background… and were very concerned about getting too much sun because darker skin color is discriminated against by other Thais.

Bob said he learned something about Thai culture from the people in this village when he hired a pick-up to take him to a Khmer wat (temple) high in the mountains…only to realize that nearly the entire village was going along when he saw them all piling into the back. And of course before the day was over when they all got hungry he was expected to buy the food! After a couple days feeling like he had been gouged, as he puts it, he discovered that it is the custom for the person with the most wealth and social rank (and foreigners are often perceived to be in this category since they have enough money to travel) to foot the bill.

Relationships in Thailand are governed by connections between the phuu yai (big person) and phuu nawy (little person). Ranking is defined by things like age, wealth, status and personal and political power. The phuu nawy is supposed to defer to the phuu yai and show obedience and respect. So Bob got to ride in the front seat of the pick-up but in turn he had to pay for the pick-up and the dinner. While eating dinner (three barbequed chickens and several spicy papaya salads) he received the choicest portions and they wouldn’t let him sit on the ground but gave him a prime position on the mat. The idea is that whatever wealth you come into is to be shared with the less fortunate and this especially applies to friends and family.

The school aged kids just stared at Bob…considering him a novelty…the little ones were frightened as they often are told by their mothers that if they don’t behave they will be eaten by a farang, a semi-derogatory term for a Western foreigner!

One of the villagers was an elderly blind woman in her 80’s who had never seen a farang so she wanted to feel Bob with her hands. She felt the hair on his arms and, touching each of his fingers and exclaimed, astonished, that the “farang hand was just like the Thai hand”…which cracked up all the bystanders. Bob had no idea what was going on until someone translated. He was very touched by her discovery that a farang was not a monster.

The next day Bob had an encounter with Thai justice when he was stopped on his rented motocycle by a police barricade. Apparently the motorbike license had expired. Three hours later and 500 baht poorer, the key to the motorbike was returned and he was allowed to go on his way.

After a few days kayaking and biking on Koh Chang, an island in the south of Thailand, Bob spent Christmas and the next day on a bus back to Chiang Mai. There he picked up a plane for the short hop back to Kunming, China and met Jana and me at the Camellia Hotel.

Ayutthaya

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Our friend Jiraporn let us gas up her car for a trip to Ayutthaya, ancient capital of Thailand about 60 miles north of Bangkok.
Founded c. 1350, Ayutthaya became the second Siamese capital after Sukhothai. It was destroyed by the Burmese in the 18th century. Its remains, characterized by the prang (reliquary towers) and gigantic monasteries, give an idea of its past splendour. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Talad Nam Lam-Paya Floating Market

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Our friend, Jiraporn, who lived in the U.S. ten years and has a doctorate from Oregon State University in Fisheries and is now a lecurer in the Department of Fishery Management of Kasetsart University, generously drove us to the weekend Talad Nam Lam-Paya Floating Market about an hour north of Bangkok. No tourist would ever find this market unless they knew exactly where to make the various turns and even Jiraporn got off the track a couple times. Only the locals go to this market that sells food and useful household items.

After choosing more food than we could eat in two meals, we feasted on a cruising ferry while it meandered down a river to a Buddhist temple. Then Jiraporn and I had a Thai massage in an open air pavilion…this day…one of the most pleasurable I have spent in Thailand.

Expatriates

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There are many expats in Bangkok who love this city and it’s people for many reasons. One day I struck up a conversation with a Brit woman sitting next to me on the SkyTrain who worked for an international finance company. When I told her we had been traveling for several months she noted that Thailand is addictive…people don’t go back to Singapore or Hong Kong she said…but they always come back to Thailand. “Write a book,” she says to me and then disappears out an exit.

After pleasuring sorrowfully to Mozart’s Requiem on September 11 at 8:46 am at St. Joseph’s Convent, we were invited to join a couple of retired expats from New York City to a breakfast of pastry and a huge bowl of caffe latte at La Boulange across the street. “What brought you to Thailand?” I asked one. “I came for a two week vacation and have been here 20 years now,” he says with a smile. How much longer do you think you’ll stay? They both quickly exclaim: “this is it!” “Do you have many Thai friends?” we ask. “No,” they say, “being retired we have no status. Regardless of how much money we have or what we have done with our lives or how much education we have, we have no status among the Thais… and status is everything here. “But so what?” they said.