Thailand's not-so-Urban Legends

Thailand is a superstitious place. You might assume that would be in direct proportion to its percentage of rural populace, but that’s not necessarily so. ‘Thai Town’ in LA, CA, has seen posters sneaking up precipitously over the last few years, advertising the services of ‘seers’, people skilled in the art of charting your life by charting the stars, telling your future by telling your past. My wife’s father is one here in Chiang Rai. I believe he uses a system derived from the Burmese. That of central Thailand may be closer to the Cambodian system, reflecting historical influences. The first time he read my stars before his daughter and I got married, he warned me not to mess with Thai women. He may have had a point, but then, so did I. Nevertheless, many Thais will make no major movements in their lives without first consulting the ‘seer’. Thus Thai Buddhism deviates greatly from the central dogma, which I doubt that most Thais are even aware of, though the monks are, of course. Thai Buddhism is actually more of a combined Buddhist/animism, best exemplified by the jow tee, ‘spirit of the place’, who is usually provided a very auspicious place on the property and in the house of every Thai, a well-lighted corner usually. I’ve seen Thai friends rebuild their carport roofs at great expense in order to accommodate the ratsammee/halo space of the spirit. ‘The Buddhist Middle Path?’ That’s the short cut up the hill here to Wat Mengrai. BTW, the reverence with which the locals pay respect to Mengrai the Great’s statue at the five-way intersection is little different from that accorded monks and the finest graven images. Think eclectic. Think hybrid vigor. Think Thailand.

Thai Buddhism’s hybrid character thus takes on some unique characteristics. Of course any good Buddhist will ‘wai’ any Buddha image in his path, but sometimes that’s not convenient. So when a Thai drives his car past a temple, he’ll honk his horn instead. That pretty much accomplishes the same thing, I hear. These things are not done frivolously, though, mind you. If I playfully wave instead of respectfully wai, it’ll probably be a long cold night in the sack. The spirits must be fed, of course, so they get the same food as anyone else, which can be pretty elaborate on feast days. On normal days, they may have to make do with a little handful of oranges to last them for a week. As my father used to say about ants in the sugar bowl, “they don’t eat much.” Recycle before the bacteria take over. As some of you late-risers here may or may not know, real monks operate on pretty much the same system, making the morning rounds for their one full meal of the day. Other than that it’s pretty much just fruit or the like. Many stores and stalls specialize in providing pre-packaged CARE packages for monks, gift-wrapped and ready for consumption, almost always containing canned and packaged foods. If you go to the temple, then you should take prepared dishes. Yes, they eat just like everyone else, hot and spicy, pork optional. If you want a quickie marriage, just show up at daybreak with plenty of food, and then wait your turn to get your rights read to you. It worked for me. Our monk actually told my wife to obey me, a fact which I continue to remind her of on select occasions, to little effect. If you need it quicker than that, then you might want to re-consider the whole thing anyway.

A hybrid religion such as this is subject to many misconceptions and anomalies of course, one of the most obvious being the troupes of dancing girls that show up in most stage shows making the rounds on holidays, temples being no exception. Sometimes the shows go too far and the village people protest at their temples being used in such ways, though usually the priests and monks are complacent about it. Who knows what sort of financial arrangements are at stake? And if priests are in accord about the human body’s lowly status as a ‘mere vessel’, as the screenplay to ‘Tsunami: the Aftermath’ indicated, the local village populace certainly begs to differ. In the movie, the controversy was over the premature burning of victims before positive identification was made. In reality, funerals typically last a week, limited only by the victim’s family’s ability to pay for the festivities, and are heavily attended. The climax of the show, of course, is the burning of the corpse, and in the final minute, the casket is opened for viewing, probably a good idea given the potential for fraud. Well, the crowd goes wild and anybody who can, will rush the oven for one last view of the corpse, trading opinions on the curious positions a body can twist itself into and maybe the color of the paint of the car that was crashed into.

Other than the official superstitions of folk religion, there are dozens of little idiosyncrasies that Thais swear by, some serious, some silly. This includes a serious over-dependency on ‘magic pills’, little one-hit wonders that cure anything and everything that ails you, usually dispensed from well-handled old boxes with expiration dates conveniently smudged. Yah jeen, Chinese herbs, are also held in high esteem, though with little knowledge of which particular plant has what effect on what symptoms. If you buy in, apparently, then they work. Graven images can be portable and still do their juju, apparently. The Jatukam Ramatep craze currently sweeping the nation, amulets featuring a character from Hindu mythology, illustrates the phenomenon perfectly, though not exclusively. When Cambodians stormed the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh a few years ago, the interviewee claimed he got out with help from all the magic amulets he was wearing, famous priests plasticized into immortality. Thais believe in magic. Thais believe in ghosts. That’s what ‘animism’ is all about, and is still embraced whole-heartedly by many hill tribes, with or without the mediating influence of Buddhism. A ‘mystic’ or ‘holy man’ is thus a maw pee, a ghost doctor, or ‘witch doctor’ if you prefer. Christianity has also made inroads in the hills, pun intended, though maybe in proportion to their development aid. Many tribal people in Thailand have no citizenship, and the government is not especially sympathetic, unless they’re tribal Tai. Then there are the silly superstitions of a jilted lover chopping off all her hair in some act of sympathetic magic casting off the evil-doer. This is much healthier than the related phenomenon of chopping off the bad guy’s most prominent appendage, presumably the devil itself and the source of all the evil. Urban legends have these forlorn members being sent aloft on hot air balloons to prevent any hope of ever being re-attached.

Northern Thais think all southerners are ‘black-hearted’ even though Thais, and only Thais, are ‘good-hearted.’ Thais think all hill tribes are stupid, in direct proportion to the degree to which they’ve maintained their traditions, Thai traditions not on the table for discussion. Isan people are suspected Communists because of their Lao connections, and Laos themselves are the subject of much ridicule, mostly because they don’t speak proper Thai. They’re Lao, of course, so why should they? Still, much comedy is made simply by speaking Lao so that it can be understood, and laughed at, by Thais. Cambodians are held in even less esteem, though their ancestors are the progenitors of much, if not most, Thai culture. Farangs even get into the act with their belief in a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card, some sort of business card or letter of introduction that will scare the pants off any policeman and promptly accord status to the presenter. Whether there is any truth to any of this is irrelevant to me and the fact that fellow Farangs buy into such nonsense is ridiculous. This is NOT necessary to a successful stay in Thailand. Being respectful to your hosts is, even when they generalize you as unable eat chilies, unable to speak anything other than English, and being hung like a horse.

I used to think that unplugging appliances, especially during a rainstorm, was superstitious, but maybe not. All the TV public service ads tell you to do it, after all, and my mother-in-law assures me that TV’s blow up regularly during thunderstorms. I try to suggest that this is not likely without an outside antenna, but to no avail. But considering that electricity here is not grounded and much home-made jury-rigging goes on, she may be right. My clock gained an hour a day in one house where we lived, and I’m sure I lost a laptop to the power fairies. What else would explain the sensation of ants crawling up my legs while using my laptop in my lap, where it belongs. Rabbit-ear antennas can shock you and turning on the lights in the bedroom can send a shower of electrons across the TV screen in the other room. The healthy fear of electricity is probably a reasonable superstition.

Mail Order Bride Biz Booms in Thailand

You’ve all seen the ads directed at single white males: “Get your Asian wife, your Thai darling, your Philippine dream girl, your Chinese fortune cookie, your Japanese cherry blossom.” They all feature a pretty thirty-ish Asian woman smiling radiantly for the cameras, exuding the good old-fashioned values of motherhood, well-scrubbed floors, dish-pan hands, and economic security. They might not directly speak of sex-on-demand or docile submission, but there is definitely a not-so-subtle message to take advantage of the opportunity to get a girl ‘unspoiled by feminism’. Apparently many men still appreciate the old-fashioned stay-at-home wife, guardian of the kitchen, keeper of the keys. Apparently many women do, too. Similar ads tell women to “get your Farang husband,” though the pictures tend to still be of women, since they’re probably better looking. Of course problems do arise sometimes. That Asian wife may not be so submissive after all and that smile may be little more than window dressing, and even serious problems such as spousal abuse and virtual slavery have occurred. This prompted the newly enacted ‘feminist endorsed’ International Marriage Brokers Act in the US, which attempts to monitor and regulate the booming business. This requires potential wives to be supplied with a background check of their foreign ‘dates’ before the relationship can proceed.

The practice of local women marrying foreigners is so wide-spread in Thailand now that the society is being transformed in the process. If it was taboo for a Thai woman to be seen with a foreigner twenty years ago, it’s certainly not now. It’s not only open, but encouraged. My wife’s mother even told her, once upon a time, that she ‘wanted a Farang son-in-law.’ The rest is history, and a new generation of Siamese is being created, whiter and brighter. If that was something once limited to sleazy settings and GI bars, now it takes place on the Internet, the world wide web of social intercourse without borders. Live cameras have revolutionized the process, allowing potential couples to ‘chat live’, more or less in jerky motion, building new lives and healing broken hearts with broken English. Peasant girls in the Thai countryside get up at three in the morning to meet potential suitors in Europe and America, gradually settling on mutual favorites and mutual favors, like ‘going steady’ on the world wide web. The men pay the company for this service, not surprisingly, while women join free. If a potential couple hit it off, then he’ll come visit, and see what happens. Many a happy marriage has resulted, and more than a few dollars have changed hands, lonely men with plenty of money joining hands with women poor in finances, but with lots of love.

The story can get complicated, of course. Many times couples are mismatched by age or life-style, economic or emotional incentives failing to close the gap between cultures. Sometimes the men are abusive or the women are manipulative. Sometimes the companies themselves are little more than outright frauds. One company takes the customer’s money with promises of hassle-free Czech girls, educated and daring, with US entry privileges only accorded EU citizens. Once the middle-class middle-age Americans pay their money, they see girls in tattered newspaper clippings, and arrive in Prague to find equally tattered women who’ve been promised a nice meal. No refunds, no exchanges. East Europeans, in fact, dominate the marriage brokerage transactions, especially Russians, perhaps because their white skin mixes easier in pockets of Europe and America where that still matters. Thai companies seem the most aggressive, however, their ads showing up on Google searches for brides of any nationality, whether Russian, Latina, or any other Asian country. Thai commercial instincts don’t hesitate to find the back door into any market.

Of course web cams have revolutionized more than marriages. Telephone sex was rendered obsolete the day that they hit the market. Now web cam cuties line the honeycomb rookeries of the Net like girls in the windows of Amsterdam’s red light district, scantily clad with little more than a laptop, ready to perform for you in their ‘private room,’ jerky camera but an appropriate little side-joke snicker. Some of the backgrounds look suspiciously like cheap apartments in Thailand, with sparse and uninspiring furnishings. In reality, not surprisingly, most of them are probably in the Philippines. Problems arise when customers for these sites expect similar responses from good girls in legitimate dating services. Kinda’ makes you wonder what’s next. I think the Thai government’s given it some thought, hence recent attempts to make visa applications stricter and 'restore social order' by closing nightspots well before daybreak. I doubt that girls are the number one export in Thailand yet, but, like the slaving period in Africa, you have to wonder if they’re aren’t some profound sociological repercussions in the works as social demographics become shifted. The Philippines, for one, has outlawed the marriage brokerage business locally, though that hasn’t stopped other companies from ‘out-sourcing’ to the Philippines. Pinoys do speak good English, after all. Personally I wonder what happened to the good old days when you could meet women in bars. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be, after all?