There are 32,000 Buddhist temples in Thailand. From our sixteenth floor hotel room in the northern capital city of Chiang Mai, I can easily spot at least a dozen of their golden spires. 32,000 temples, and x-number of monks to serve each. That adds up to a large segment of the population engaged in professional meditation and doing little else that is productive. Is it any wonder then that the country is mired in bone-deep poverty?
In addition to the ubiquitous temples and orange-clad monks, the entire country is plastered with images of the king, celebrating this year his 80th birthday and sixtieth anniversary of accession to the throne. During his long reign, King Rama IX, or Bhumibol Adulyadej, has cultivated a benign persona of caring kindness depicted in the various poses he strikes, (though he never smiles.) Photo-montages in various guises are affixed to every lamppost and billboard in the country.Thais really adore their king, who in reality is a mere figurehead. Yet he and his family are credited with some good deeds as well.
We were immediately struck by the similarity of the Thais' and our Hawaiian Filipinos' features. Both obviously come from the same genetic stock, despite the vast geographical spread. Our tour guide Panu Apasat who met us at Bangkok airport is part Chinese, and taller than most locals. He had spent a couple of years in the U.S. and is quite fluent. On our first day, we visited a temple (of course) and toured the flower and produce markets.
Both major cities - Bangkok in the south and Chiang Mai in the north - were like teeming anthills. It would seem that commerce is the life-blood of the Thais. Currency is the Baht, about 35 to the dollar. Every street is lined with shops and counters offering a dizzying array of goods, including authentic-looking knockoffs of any brand-name one can think of. I bought a pair of nice Birkenstocks (proudly stamped "Made in Germany") for $7, and Marion found a perfectly fitting pair of elegant sandals - for her a real rarity - for $5. The problem was that everyone was selling the same stuff - for which Panu instructed us to pay about half the asking price. There are entire city blocks or even neighborhoods devoted entirely to clothes, or lumber, hardware, auto parts or building materials. The lack of imagination is amazing. Certain streets in the cities we visited are designated as "night bazaars" - though "zoos" would be more appropriate to describe the hundreds upon hundreds of stalls taking up the entire width of the street and both sidewalks. A few are open most of the time, but the majority operate from dusk to past midnight. The goods offered are all the same - it makes no sense at all - and the heat, noise, crowding and jostling are pure bedlam. Bargains abound, but is it worth it?
Our hotels in Bangkok and Chiang Mai served Western-style meals with a local touch, but in the countryside, we were introduced to Thai cuisine. Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai restuarants in the US tailor their menus to American tastes, but the "real thing" here was an altogether different kettle of fish, which - despite some very artistic touches in the presentation of dishes - we did not like at all (and this even before we both - in spite of all precautions - became very sick. To be expected, really, since the entire countryside is an open sewer. More on this later). During the trip, we enjoyed some lovely lunches and dinners served aboard converted rice-barges on various rivers.
Brush and weeds are not cut here but burned. This is surprising in a country where rural areas are grindingly poor, and where pineapple leaves and elephant droppings are recycled into paper). The combined smoke from thousands of small fires (plus everyday pollution and a humid climate) create a pall of stinking smoke, resulting in blood-red sunrises and sunsets, with no visible horizon. Trash-cans do not exist, and plastic bags and other rubbish are everywhere.
We visited the (in)famous bridge on the Kwaii river. Here, the Australian authorities created two museums (much in the manner of the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem) depicting the living hell that their POWs were subjected to while building the railway through Burma. By their own admission, the Japanese concede that their prison camp guards were "not really fit for combat" - misfits and psychopaths good enough to inflict unspeakable, sadistic cruelty on half-dead prisoners. Over 100,000 mostly Aussies perished here, and several cemeteries are maintained. The Holocaust is never far from our minds, even if its enormity and ghastliness are beyond human grasp. In these museums, however, it's possible to come to grips with the daily, interminable misery that these poor bastards lived and died by. The historic old bridge had been replaced by a new all-metal one. A locomotive and passenger car run back and forth across the river, for tourists.
