Siam politics are very confusing

Finally the election took place. It was called at very short notice to try to allay the protests of all the anti-Thaksin camp. The protests were large, and even a little frightening at times. I was worried that they might call a state of emergency (at least Thaksin was asking for that apparently) but the military refused and so things carried on peacefully. All the major parties, except Thai Rak Thai (roughly translates as "Thailand for Thais") i.e. Thaksin's party, boycotted the election saying it was unfair as it had been called so hastily, and called on their supporters to abstain.

So almost everywhere, there was only one party on the ballot sheet - Thai Rak Thai. In Thailand voting is obligatory and many educated middle-class Bangkokians abstained. However Thaksin is popular in the rural areas thanks to his 30 Baht health scheme for the poor (they pay 30B for any treatment) and loans to villagers. He also has support among poor urban workers like motorcycle taxi drivers, who get cheap insurance and less mafia hoodlums asking for protection money as a result of his policies. So despite the vigorous anti-Thaksin protests, he got elected again.

Of course, the protests didn't stop after the election. So finally, this tenacious man gave up 'for the good of the country', and announced his resignation. He's now "caretaker prime minister" (a weird phrase that makes me imagine him shuffling round parliament with a broom and one of those brown work coats) and further votes are now being held to choose a new prime minister, while second round elections are being planned to choose MPs in some constituencies where the abstentions were so numerous that the MPs failed to be eligible for seats in parliament.

To outsiders, it may look like nothing much has really changed. The same party is still in power, the Thais are just changing the prime minister. But in reality, some important changes have come about: the media is now much more critical of the government and Thais believe that peaceful protest can bring about real change.

Picture by Hartfried Schmidt

Good stuff

Expressing gratitude is good! Let's go! Here's a bunch of people and things that I'm grateful for, as they make life better in big and small ways!

- amazing family and friends who make me feel so loved and cherished, and always have advice to share
- being in love :)
- watching the squirrels that play in the trees outside my office window, they're so agile!
- the cute girl who cooks me a fried egg for breakfast, on the mornings when I don't have any fruit left in the fridge
- staying in touch with so many friends even when I'm far away thanks to t'Internet
- interesting conversations about philosophy and spirituality
- the sweet ladies who clean my apartment. They are so smiley and they make everything so much more spick and span than I ever could!
- the smell of jasmine garlands when they've hung on the wall for a day
- beautiful Thai silk in purple with elephants woven into the design
- birds singing in the trees despite being in the middle of a city

That's just a few of the things... :)

Shattered shrine

On the corner of one of the most busy intersections of Bangkok, next to the Erawan Hyatt hotel and several uber-glitzy shopping malls, you find Erawan shrine. It's one of the most visited in the city, and is constantly encircled by people making offerings. Along the street next to the shrine are dozens of hawkers; you can buy garlands made of roses and jasmine, caged birds to set free, incense and fruit to offer to Brahma.

The shrine was originally created because of the bad luck surrounding the construction of the Erawan hotel. Mishap followed mishap as it was built; even the ship delivering the marble for the floors sank en route for Thailand. Workers refused to carry on the project unless a shrine was built. Erawan was Brahma's elephant, and so they claimed that a shrine to Brahma was essential - Erawan would never be without Brahma after all.

But last week, the golden statue of Brahma was smashed to pieces, apparently by a mentally ill man. The statue is so important, that he was beaten to death by garbage collectors just 40 metres further down the street. Full story here.


Or at least that's the official story. There are unconfirmed rumours in the press are that Thaksin arranged the destruction of the statue, so that he could rebuild it with his own mystical objects hidden inside. Thaksin is deeply superstitious, and so some suspect he could be capable of this in desperate attempt to regain control of the political situation. Meanwhile some say that this was an act of self-sacrifice by the statue, to stabilise the country.

I visited the shrine yesterday, to meditate on each of the four faces of Brahma. Along with hundreds of others, I laid garlands, rubbed gold foil on the shrine and left burning candles and incense sticks. Although the statue is now replaced with photos, the shrine is just as popular.

Mobile obsession

In Thailand, no-one should ever be without a mobile phone. The latest mobiles are relatively cheap, and I feel distinctly out of date with my cheap old one. On a recent bus journey, I noticed most girls entertained themselves by talking on their mobile phones for almost two hours without stopping! Even while relaxing, having a massage or spa session, you'd better take your mobile phone to make sure you don't miss an important call. There's even a pop song currently topping the Thai charts, with an all-girl band lamenting that a lover must be cheating because he doesn't answer the phone straight away! "Why must you leave your loved one waiting?" they sing.

Update: I forgot to mention, mobiles are so ubiquitous, that even monks have them. Normally, monks are not supposed to have possessions and beg for what they need. So they are banned from using them in public. But since I've been here, I've seen quite a few monks babbling away on the bus so it's obviously not taken very seriously...

T-pop and you don't stop

Thailand has a strong and vibrant music scene, from strangely catchy sugar syrup-dripping ballads to grungey indie rock. But as in many parts of the world, hiphop is the most popular form of music for savvy urban teenagers. Although the lowriding trousers look (for guys) has not taken off due to the slightly conservative nature of Thai society, MTV is often pumping out the block rocking beats of the controversial Joey Boy, Thailand's biggest rapper.

Joey Boy follows the usual US gangsta style of aggressive lyrics coupled with cute girls in hotpants winding their hips to phat breaks. Apparently the police usually turn up at places where they hear he'll be going as he is so "dangerous". Apparently bad boys are quite attractive to a lot of Thai girls - you see them dressed up in full US hiphop/r'n'b regalia over at RCA (a government designated "night life" area), competing to hang on the arm of the few guys who do dare to wear phat pants.



But the land of smiles also has its own unique spin on hiphop. Almost all of the groups have female singers or rappers involved, and it's become much more of a pop phenomenon, picking up the style and look of boy/girl bands. Some of the MCs are dressed in preppy polo shirts and have neatly cropped hair instead of shaved heads - looking like they'd be eaten for breakfast by Ol' Dirty Bastard. Groups such as 25 Stang (roughly translates as 25 cents), have a cute and scrubbed image, and proclaim "hiphop can be polite" and it can be "gentle, not cheeky or aggressive"!

Siam hiphop website

Kachanaburi, the river Kwai and Erawan falls

Recently I needed to escape from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok, to surround myself in a bit more natural environment. So I jumped on a local bus, packed full of people (but thankfully, air conditioned!) and went up to Kachanaburi, about 2 hours NW of Bangkok. There are a lot of cute little bamboo huts to rent on the river itself, which is really beautiful.

Expecting to find peace and quiet, I was stunned to find that the combined volume of the singing frogs in the reeds, and the cicadas in the trees, made the countryside almost as noisy as the city! But of course, the sounds of nature relax you a lot more than the honking of car horns and clanging bells of street hawkers.

View of the sunrise from my hut:


I took one of the funky local buses from Kanchanaburi to Erawan national park, where there are many really beautiful waterfalls. What you can't see on the picture is that there are ten million Thai people walking up the path behind, with huge hampers, mobile cooking equipment and just about every item you could think of to spend the day in the park.



Luckily I found a very quiet path through the bamboo forest, where I could escape the hordes and walk alone for a while.

Didn't get to see any monkeys though! Gutted. I guess I'm just going to have to make a trip to Lophburi which is apparently "monkey town".

Small creatures

Animals are just so fascinating. I've recently acquired a new flat mate, a gecko. He's extremely cool, and likes to hang around on walls eating mosquitos - which is great because then the mosquitos don't eat me! Unfortunately he moves too fast to get a good picture, but hopefully he might feel a bit tired another day and I can get his good side.

Also, outside my office, there's a whole family of squirrels. A few weeks ago, when I arrived, the babies were still really tiny and didn't have proper fluffy tails yet, so I wasn't sure what they were (I hadn't seen the adults yet). Then the day after I saw the adults leaping around, and scurrying up and down the fire escapes. I'm similarly rubbish at capturing them in photographic form, so here's a Thai squirrel who looks like he's posing for the camera, that I found on t'Internet.



This weekend, to escape the stress and pollution of the city, I'm going up to Kanchanaburi, where there are some national parks. I think a nice long walk in the jungle will be fantastic. And hopefully I'll get to see one of these guys hanging around (look down!).

Women in Thailand

As it's International Women's Day, I thought I'd write a little about women in Thailand.

In the land of smiles, members of the fairer sex are still mostly in low paid jobs, despite often having reasonable levels of education - but at the moment, the economy is mainly expanding in areas like construction and telecoms, which women are rarely qualified to work in. So they are caught, as in many developed countries, in the low paid service industry (take a look at the Asian Development Bank briefing (PDF) for more info).

As a result many ladies go into prostitution, which is rampant, and for some reason, is tolerated by wives in Thailand. I think it's to do with the fact that Thai wives are basically expected to serve their husbands and "make their dreams come true". There's also a tradition of gigs, basically mistresses, but apparently Thai wives prefer that their husbands go to a massage parlour rather than have a regular gig. Although teenage girls are getting their own back on the boys, by having a boyfriend and a male gig!

As a result, HIV and AIDS are a real problem, and most of the development agencies point out that this isn't going to get any better until the status of women improves.
Of course there's also a lot of exploitation and trafficking of women, with many young girls in the North, particularly from minority ethnic groups like Thai hill tribes and the Burmese, being sold into sexual slavery. They are particularly vulnerable as they often don't have national identity cards, and are often sexually exploited by traffickers, who are often members of Thai police and immigration authorities themselves (see this report (PDF) from Physicians for human rights and UNESCO work on trafficking).

Many Thai women want to marry farang (Caucasian foreign) men, as they see them as more considerate to their needs and have a better financial position than Thai men. I've noticed that things we consider gentlemanly behaviour in the west, like holding doors open for a woman to pass, seems to be much rarer among Thai men. But Western guys in Thailand often become more like Thais, and are not very faithful to their Thai brides, as they get constant attention from beautiful Thai girls trying to woo them (even if the guy is really old and ugly), as well as from prostitutes.

Farang women aren't in a great situation in Thailand either. The constant availability of Thai girls mean that Western men are in short supply, and Thai men very rarely dare to chat up a farang. It means that even the most beautiful Western girl normally struggles to keep a faithful boyfriend, and many relationships break up very early on. Also many of the Western guys have sadly left their morals back in the West, and and so many have visited a lot of go-go bars and brothels, which isn't very appealing for most women, particularly bearing in mind the HIV/AIDS risks. As a colleague at work noted, as far as the few men that haven't slept around too much go, girls become "like piranhas"...

BKK: pollution city

Bangkok has a major problem: pollution. There's a strangely high level of awareness of pollution but very few people seem to actually be doing something to stop it. Smog is particularly bad, and you see many people who work outside near the street wearing face masks.

OK they might block very large particulate pollution, but apart from that it's really not going to help much I think. This picture shows buildings on the horizon apparently shrouded in mist, but it's just smog. As the weather is so warm, combined with the very heavy traffic and ubiquitous barbecues blazing all over the sois, smog is really not going to go away very soon. Apparently Asian countries haven't really started cooperating internationally to solve the air pollution problems either, but I'm sure it will happen soon as it's having major effects on people's health.

Then there's just plain old rubbish. There's a lot all over the place. People just seem to dump it in any free corner of the road. They hardly teach anything about respect for the environment yet, although UNESCO is trying to get the Asia-Pacific to start integrating sustainable development into schools' curricula.


Round the corner from my appartment, there's some really bad water pollution. The water looks black, and further down, it's totally eutrophied (i.e. practically no oxygen left in it, so bad news for aquatic life), with green algae growing all over it. But the surprising thing is, just nearby I saw a toad and in the evening I can hear frogs singing out their mating calls! Just goes to show theoretical biology and reality can sometimes differ - at uni, I was taught that frogs and toads are highly pollution sensitive and tend not to live in polluted areas...