Culture

The World A Playground?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

A friend recently emailed me asking what it is like to have all the world as my “playground.” This was my very brief answer:

Well, the best thing about traveling in developing countries like SE Asia, Africa and China is the smiles that fill the heart. Europeans generally ignore the people…very aloof…Americans are busy looking at buildings and statues and for something to buy. But if you make a cultural mistake and you smile and point to your head in Thailand and say “ting tong” (crazy in Thai) the people giggle and laugh and they love you for it because they are not used to Westerners being humble. Then the massages are wonderful $5-$8 for an hour. The food is incredible everywhere…a feast on the street…a big bowl of delicious noodle soup with pork for 50 cents that would cost $6 in the States. And if you stay in the cheap guesthouses instead of western style hotels that are exhorbitant by local economic standards, you meet wonderful travelers from all around the world. That is the fun part.

Then there is the work part. You get to practice patience and develop flexibility in dealing with inefficiency…and rules and regs that make no sense to a Westerner. You get used to the garbage and broken sidewalks with live electric wires hanging down everywhere…and the hacking and spitting Chinese. Pedestrians have no rights whatsoever so you have to watch you don’t get killed…the biggest vehicle on the road is king. You learn to be tolerant of other cultures…eg. it is considered rude in Thailand to be confrontatory and demanding. You learn that not everyone in the world wants to be American and that they love their own countries. People value their families over material things…and it rubs off.

And then you begin to notice other things. The police are not paid enough so they are always on the take and not to be trusted. Corrupt governments keep people impoverished. In fact, Prime Minister Thaksin in Thailand is being forced out of office as we speak…thousands demonstrating in the streets this week in Bangkok. I won’t even start on Robert Mugabe who is starving his own people in Zimbabwe and ought to be shot by somebody. And because of the government-controlled press, foreigners know more about China than the Chinese people themselves. I learn we don’t have it so bad in America.

So when I am in America I miss the warm-hearted people and the colorful streets and want to be here and when I am here I miss the humor, music, good roads, the efficiency and customer service (non-existent outside the U.S.) and general good governance with the exception of our foreign policy.

So briefly, that is what it is like to have the world as my playground. Actually travel is a very serious business. Besides being married and raising children, it is the most brutal spiritual work there is…needling selfish boundaries…culturing the heart. I think meditation is much less difficult!

Pico Iyer, author of “The Global Soul,” gives me great comfort. An Indian by birth, Pico was raised in England. Moved to California. Now lives with his significant other in Japan. If he can do it I can do it.

International Night On Koh Samui

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We’re back on Samui and I have rented a brand new furnished one bedroom house for $12.00 a night at “Solitude Resort” on a mountainside about a mile from Doug and Luk’s bungalow.

The first evening we were welcomed by our next door neighbors, a hilarious 55 year old skinny Austrian jewelry maker, Stefan, with a shaved head except for a very long salt and pepper pony-tail in back, and his flirty 30 year old Mongolian wife. He was escaping the extremely harsh European winter, he said. The owner of the simple “resort” with six houses and a swimming pool is a youngish Brit, Mark, from Yorkshire, and I understand only about half his English. His wife is a pretty young Hmong tribal woman from Lao. (I confess I can remember the names of neither woman.)

The Austrian and his wife were pretty well oiled by the time we arrived about 6 in the evening…Doug, and Luk and I opting for juice. The 7 of us sat on the front porch fighting mosquitos while the two guys regaled us with stories about how they met their wives (Stefan and his wife were both working in “Czecki” and Mark met his wife in Vientiane, Lao while on a post university year of travel) and about the difficulties in getting married when there are no consolates (Austrian or British) in the respective countries they are trying to get permission to marry in (Mongolia and Lao).

The women, with minimal English, gave up on trying to follow the hurried conversation and lapsed into a smaller discussion between themselves about how they had been married for 5 and 7 years and still had no children. To get married, Stefan had to go through the Australian Embassy in Beijing…Mark the Australian Embassy in Britain. Stefan was told he had to pay $125 for something but that it was “impossible to do!” (We all laughed having heard similar injunctions many times before!) Mark had to pay off officials all the way up the bureaucratic chain to the tune of $1500 to get the usual year waiting period reduced to three months. He had to fill out 25 forms that had to be translated in four different languages (the fourth because Mark’s father is from Mauritius off the coast of Africa). One of the forms Mark had to sign was an affadavit saying he had never slept with his prospective bride…if he had refused he could have been hauled off to jail…it being against the law to sleep with a woman in Lao if you are not married! I thought to myself that the pressure from the local families, probably financial as well as cultural, for these couples to be married must have been pretty strong to get these guys to go through all this rigamarole. Or maybe I have just become cynical!

Then, as usual between expats, the discussion turned to the lack of local efficiency…Mark lamenting about how any tools made in Thailand were sure to break or fall apart as soon as they were purchased…make sure anything you buy is made in China or the west he advises. And Stefan had stories about how gems were glass, earrings made of tin infected his wife’s pierced ears, and the gold he tried to make jewelry with broke apart because the 24 carot gold was so soft. (The Thais won’t have anything but pure gold. It’s a status thing.) This we already know of course. The evening’s black humor produced a lot of much needed comic relief. But, Mark says, even so, every place in the world having it’s ups and downs he would never choose to give up living in “Paradise.” We are all learning to live “mai pen rai!” loosely translated meaning “no worries’ or “never mind!”

This morning as I was leaving the house on the back of Doug’s bike, Mark was cleaning the pool. A 60ish year old Italian guy was animatedly trying to teach Mark Italian…in Italian…Mark patiently nodding and smiling all the while. Mark caught my eye and we had a good laugh!

These experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Now…Not Later

Posted on by Laughingnomad

It is typical for Thais to think only about what to do now…not some time in the future. So when Doug was showing me houses to buy next year, we asked Luk where she wanted to go next…her answer was “the supermarket!” Doug just laughed and said “that is just classic!”

Eurotrash

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I have learned a new ethnic slur…”eurotrash”…which apparently refers to the white Europeans who come to third world countries claiming to be somebody big back home but selfishly feeding off the local generosity…the word, I think, usually used by the Americans. I think neo-nazi but instead of big and burly they are usually heroin thin and covered with tatoos.

The Meaning of Riaproy

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Some friends that spent a year in Thailand with the Peace Corps have said there is an additional Thai value that is called “riaproy.” “It means polite and well-mannered; neat. It also means orderly; ready-to-go. Rarely do you see a sloppily-groomed Thai. Daily baths and freshly-laundered and pressed clothes are the norm. Riaproy also refers to polite behavior, and fits with the concept of “jai yen” (cool or calm heart) and the importance of avoiding confrontation, saving face, etc. You can see riaproy behavior on public transportation, when adults give their seats to children, and teens and adults give their seats to elderly people (or grey-headed ones like me!) Another example of riaproy might be the beautifully displayed fruits, vegetables and fish in the most ordinary markets. When a Thai person says, “She is riaproy”, it is a compliment. A riaproy person is a good model of behavior and appearance admired by Thai people.”

Teach The Children What?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

On National Children’s Day in Thailand, it is a tradition for the Prime Minister to deliver a positive “motto.” This year the wealthy PM Thaksin who owns Thai Air and other assets said that children should read more and think for themselves so they become smart successful adults. A secondary student, however, respectfully asked the PM whether children should value honesty and simplicity over succeeding by any means necessary. Oops.

The irony is that the PM evidently does not believe in advocating the same for the adults ministers under him. Amid flagging popularity in the cities and on-going feuding with the press, Thaksin recently took a dog and pony show to Roi Et in an impoverished province in the northeast. In his “reality show” he says he has done all the thinking and ministers just have to follow his instructions, eg, women should add sticky rice to their hand-woven baskets to add value…never mind that the coconut milk in sticky rice would sour on it’s way to Bangkok.

Most people here seem to think (for themselves) as, one columnist put it, “it’s just a stunt to fool the farmers” into thinking he is doing something for them. “When he comes to camp out in Roi Et just to give us some buffalos, land or knock-down houses it goes to show he doesn’t understand the root causes of poverty.”

Most people reportedly are not even listening to the show as it is on pay for view TV that most cannot afford.

Babies Take Manhattan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Nanny’s pushing babies in strollers are everywhere in Brooklyn, we noticed soon after arriving here, so it was no surprise when the New York Times ran a story December 1 called “The Children Are Back” … “Babies Take Manhattan” a reference to a Leonard Cohen song.

After a decade of steady decline, the story goes, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan increased more than 26 percent from 2000 to 2004. The preschool population reached almost 97,000 in Manhattan alone last year, the most since the 1960’s. The growth seems to be at both ends of the economic spectrum…the growing number of immigrants…and professional families who apparently are wanting to avoid the daily commute into increasingly more expensive suburbs in the outer boroughs and New Jersey.

And…I would venture…the decision by younger educated career moms to balance out their lives closer to the workplace with one of the most important values in a person’s life….family. As for the increasing number of Mexican immigrants in the El Barrio of east side Manhattan…I am willing to bet there was never any question.

Odetta

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We had been years since we saw Odetta so when Bob read that she would be performing in a Village club we jumped at the chance to get tickets. She walked in dressed in a dramatic multi-colored red and purple silk and velvet gown and head dress…walked in very slowly and with help. She is still her inimitable self…but her weight is down to almost nothing and her songs were confined to softly sung spirituals. She is in her late 70’s and we worried about her health. The middle to late-aged folk-singing crowd laughed though when she cautioned everyone that in this day and age we should all be careful to use condoms!

New York Style

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Most everyone in New York is interested in looking stylish. The definition is different, however depending on the neighborhood you are in…whether on the affluent Upper West Side or on the Lower East Side. It also makes a difference what your ethnicity is. Young blacks and Hispanics are just as studied only in a different way. Generally, however, clothing ranges from dark to black.

You generally see denim and sneakers on the hip white thirty-somethings walking down 6th Street in Manhattan. The right accessories are de rigueur; it’s definitely a very studied look…it’s about the right jeans paired with the right sneakers and a white iPod in your pocket. For women, it’s levi jeans that can cost up to $500 (but heaven forbid not with a matching levi jacket) or long gathered skirts and an expensive handbag. And cell phones. “Blackberries are viewed as the professional choke-chains preferred by sadomasochistic bosses. And don’t expect to throw on high-waisted Levis and ratty high-tops and pass,” says Lonely Planet guidebook.

The cult of casual is subtle. “One of the draws of this city life is anonymity,” says Lonely Planet, “which is why New Yorkers prefer to mix their designer items back in with their regular clothes so that what they’re wearing doesn’t scream Prada or look like a glorified ad…” The American couple on our Big Onion Tour were wearing what they apparently thought was the New York Uniform…both were in black leather jackets and spendy slacks…both in expensive black leather walking shoes…and were immediately noticeable. They would have fit right in in Paris, however. I remember being remanded a few years ago in a restaurant in southern France while having a polite conversation with a lone woman at the next table who couldn’t figure out, she mused, why Americans wore those dirty sneakers on the streets in New York. You could be wearing a nice black pair of walking shoes she said, as I slowly tried to hide my all-terrain Adidas-covered feet under my table.

“What New Yorkers aren’t nonchalant about is their grooming,” LP goes on to say. “There is a slavish devotion to scubs, cuticles and perfectly coiffed just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. It takes hard work to make that impression of effortlessness.” Who this is referring to, of course, are hip young whites trying to look prosperous on waiter’s tips.

Maybe this is what we need to learn from the thirty-somethings that comprise the median age in New York…studied casualness… Us? Me? Bob?