Lexa Lotus [everywhere]

A Thai way of dealing with a mishap

2006-07-25T15:46:00.000+07:00

When I was in Samui a few months ago with my fiance, something interesting happened... One day we grabbed a taxi to go down to the south of the island, where there aren't many villages or houses. The driver and his 'assistant' had been trundling along for quite some time among the coconut palms and makeshift settlements, while we were admiring the view.

Then suddenly, disaster struck! One of the tyres blew out, so the driver had to stop the car. After many years of experience with European taxi drivers, we braced ourselves for a stream of expletives and anger. To our surprise, the driver and his friend burst out laughing! They got out into the heat of the afternoon (at least 34 degrees) to start replacing the tyre, still roaring with laughter.

First of all winching up the tyre went all wrong, with the two guys plus my fiance all making efforts to get the wheel up. Then, just taking the tyre out of the boot seemed a massive challenge, prompting some Laurel and Hardy-style banging of heads and similar tomfoolery. Then putting on the wheel and tightening all the nuts and bolts. One nut was missing - the guys were practically crying with laughter until the found it again. The whole process was accompanied by giggles, snorts and guffaws. In no time, the tyre was back on, and we were all in the car with smiles twice as wide as before! So even an accident can actually make your days better...

Things you think are normal but actually aren't

2006-07-24T13:17:00.000+07:00

After a while in Thailand, I've realised that some things I take for granted are actually quite weird from the European point of view. Here's a few...

The girl working at Boots, who gives great makeup tips, is actually a guy

For any given job, you may as well have at least three people doing it instead of one

People give you really big smiles all the time

There are traffic jams at random times, even at 3am. It takes half an hour to drive 100m.

You can go out for a good meal at any time of night.

... but you can't drink legally after 2 am.

There's no prime minister, instead there's a 'caretaker'.

The inspirational public toilet

2006-05-22T10:50:00.000+07:00

To my mind, being a toilet attendant has to rank very highly on the worst jobs list. I always thought it must be quite a degrading job. But recently I came across a public toilet that gave me hope in humanity, and our ability to transform negative to positive, or in this case, poo into perfume. Normally, public toilets in Asia are very grim, dirty and smelly affairs which make you long for the (relative) bright shininess of Virgin trains toilets - and you have to pay the princely sum of 5 baht (less than 1p) to get in!

But this one is different. Down near Thaksin bridge, in SE Central Bangkok, there is a public toilet that makes me smile every time I pass it. The attendants have turned it into a magical haven of toiletitude. As you walk down the path, you are surrounded by small trees in pots, and even a water feature full of lotus flowers.

You pay 5 baht to a smiling attendant, who hands over a whole packet of fresh white tissues, and sends you into a shiny bright white bathroom scented with the eucalyptus-menthol perfume that Thais so adore. The walls are adorned with posters of nirvana; psychedelic lotuses floating on sapphire-blue pools. Towels are neatly folded, and the mirrors decorated with little plastic flowers. The toilets themselves are scrubbed until they shine.

Every time I walk by, it makes me think that even if we complain sometimes about our jobs, there is a way to transform any kind of job into something special. We don't have to be high-flyers, or glamourous super-models, the important thing is to make the most of what we have.

Happy Songkran!

2006-04-12T08:58:00.000+07:00

On 13 April it was the Thai New Year, so most of Bangkokians went on holiday, and those that remained turned the streets one huge water fight. Most of the shops closed for once!

The first thing to do is acquire water pistols. To celebrate Songkran, you need to be armed! There are little groups of people - particularly kids of course - with every possible kind of water throwing implement: hoses, pistols, buckets... The Thais also smear white paste on your face, as some kind of blessing - but it gets absolutely everywhere and tastes disgusting.

We went to join in the celebration in a Buddhist temple. Everyone was throwing water over each other, and quite a few people were drinking beer. People calmed down for the more religious parts of the ceremony, and queued up with bowls of water scented with flower petals, to pour over the statue of buddha and the local monks.

Then after that, they turned on a soundsystem and blasted out Thai luuk thung (Thai comedy country) music and everyone started dancing! After a bit more partying, the monks announced the prayers and everyone sat down to join them.

In the Northwest centre of the city, hundreds of thousands of people were going crazy with their water pistols and white paste. Particularly mean people throw iced water. It was like an extremely wet Notting Hill Carnival minus the Jamaican soundsystems. People dance and singing along to loud music - from pop to hiphop and weird Thai gettotech - blasting from stereos and bars all around. The party carries on until very late at night...

Pictures by E. Meleisa

Siam politics are very confusing

2006-03-29T14:24:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-27T11:04:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-25T21:15:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-21T16:41:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-21T09:05:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-16T10:57:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-09T11:04:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-07T15:42:00.000+07:00

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

2006-03-06T14:03:00.000+07:00

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...

Thai politics

2006-02-27T13:51:00.000+07:00

Politically speaking, Thailand is quite weird. On the surface it looks quite free and Westernised, and democratic. Compared to neighbouring Myanmar, it's doing well but there are also some dodgy things going on. Lately, many people are trying to impeach the prime minister, Thaksin, because of some dodgy share deals that he was involved in. If I understand correctly, he basically sold off a bunch of shares in a Thai corporation to a foreign investor without paying any tax on the sale, and involved various lurky offshore companies in the process.

At the moment, he's dissolved parliament and is calling a new election next week. The opposition parties are refusing to take part in the election, and calling for his resignation. So the saga continues...

Apparently one of his mottoes is "Better to die than to live like a loser". In my apartment block, a cartoon version of Thaksin illustrates the lift rules card (check out the pic).

So there have been quite a few protests, and mysterious things going on... Some stuff that surprised me:
- one of the Thai TV channels stopped broadcasting during a speech against Thaksin due to a "technical problem"
- a high level police officer declared that protestors were harassing his staff, and said it was much better in the past when he could round them up in vans and beat them
- some of the main media critics of Thaksin have been fired from their jobs
- due to the complaints, the government has unveiled a bunch of populist policies, like giving poor people a certain amount of additional social money per day
- protestors are putting on traditional Thai/Chinese opera as a form of protest
- despite all the unrest, it's likely that Thaksin would get elected again apparently! I think this is because he has a lot of support in the poor, uneducated regions of Thailand.

The man himself (picture from Metroblog Bangkok, an interesting team blog based here)

A good source for news about Thailand - The Nation newspaper

First impressions of Bangkok

2006-02-23T11:22:00.000+07:00

I've been here now for a couple of weeks, enough to get some first impressions about this crazy city. It's beautiful, noisy, polluted, exciting, spiritual yet consumerist. It's a huge clash of Western and Eastern values, rich and poor, pure and debauched.

Here's a few things I've noticed so far.

1. Thai people are very sweet, respectful and friendly. Until they get behind the wheel of a car, or especially, on a motorbike. Then they become psycho killers and want to mow down all pedestrians that might get in their way.

2. You can't escape fish. Everything has fish sauce in it. The seafood is fantastic, particularly the prawns, which are always cooked to perfection (Tom Yum ruuuuules). On the street, they sell fishball kebabs, which are about as enticing as they sound. Or if you're feeling adventurous, there's always barbecued octopus on a stick...

3. Lady boys. Yes, I know, everyone's heard about lady boys, or katoeys as they're called here. The really strange thing about lady boys is mostly you just can't tell! OK, some are overdramatic, but mostly they blend in freakishly well. Mainly because Thai women are not very curvy, and Thai guys are not super macho. I guess it makes it easier to fake it.

4. Rich Thai people, a.k.a. "Hi-Sos" are really rich. The posh hotels here cost more than in Europe. There's quite a few swanky malls full of designer goods, which always seem to be very well visited.

5. Many places here have incredible architectural design, and venues for going out at night are very glamourous. Like this places for instance, called the Bed Supper Club. Early evening it's a restaurant, then they get rid of the chairs and it becomes a club - and yes those are beds on the side, for people to chill out on!

6. Shrines and spirit houses are everywhere. Outside most buildings, people have a little shrine to the Hindu god Brahma (not Buddha as I thought before), plus a tiny house that gives a home to the spirits of the land that was built on. People make offerings to both, like garlands of flowers, food and incense.

A shrine

A shrine plus a spirit house

7. If you don't have a shrine or a spirit house, you can always leave offerings at a special tree, similar to the old wishing trees you get in Europe.

8. Flowers are everywhere... Even in the most dingy and poor neighbourhoods, people still grow plants and flowers on their balconies.

9. Sweetness. There is sugar in almost everything in Thailand, even the fruit juices. They love cakes and ice creams, and there seem to be little patisseries all over central Bangkok! There's little street shops selling deserts which look slightly strange to me - tapioca pearls, weird bright green balls and strange little jellies that go into coconut milk or other sweet liquids...

10. And sweetness extends to the graphic design, the Thais seem to have a similar 'kawai' fascination as the Japanese have. Here's an example.