A Thai way of dealing with a mishap

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

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

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!

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

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.