The Epiphany of Language- It’s Only a Medium, Neither Rare nor Well Done

The American lady got on the Taiwan to US leg of my trip, where I stopped to change planes. She spoke fluent Chinese, even reading it in her spare time, which there’s plenty of from Asia to the US, even with a tail wind. If you were blindfolded I doubt that you could’ve picked out the non-native speaker from the group. I felt sorry for her. She may have even been a native speaker, for all I know. That would be insult to injury, because no matter how good she spoke, the flight attendants would always switch back to English the first chance they got, even though they probably knew no more than a hundred words of English each and the American lady probably had a Ph.D. in Chinese language. That’s just what they do. Welcome to Thailand. A South American flight attendant once explained to me, in Spanish, that they’re trained to look at people to make a determination of what language needs to be spoken. She did that after telling me, “I assume you don’t speak Spanish,” to which I promptly answered, “porque no?” Of course she was right if referring to native language, which does tend to follow traditional racial and facial patterns, which works until someone finds himself on the wrong side of a line, or until a person speaks multiple languages, the more diverse the more bizarre. I felt sorry for the American lady regardless, Chinese to the end, making calls in Chinese while the plane was still taxiing on the runway. I would’ve liked to have gotten more of her story but wo bu shi zhongguo ren.

Would multiple languages imply multiple personalities? Could you invest your identity in more than one or two languages even if you wanted to? Score one for Chomsky. French-speaking Belgians like to refer to the Flemish (Dutch)-speaking areas as something totally distinct culturally, though as a matter of historical fact, the ‘Dutch’ are merely Franks who remained un-‘Romanized,’ in a poorly-documented process that continues to this day, though Belgium itself was born in the early 1800’s European confusion of Spanish succession and Napoleonic conquest. If there is indeed a cultural difference between Germanic Franks and Germanic Dutch, then it could certainly be reflected in the language whether or not a direct result of it. Score one for Sapir and Whorf. Notwithstanding their linguistic imaginary Maginot line against the creeping onslaught of English in Quebec and elsewhere, the French are guilty of the same in Belgium where the line of ‘Romanization’ crawls northward, claiming Brussels already with no end in sight. What would Chomsky say about that? Feel free to comment, Noam, or I’ll vent my spleen about you making me parse sentences as a grade-schooler. How many of you even knew that Chomsky used to be a linguist? I suppose political commentary pays better, considering that foreign language is more typically the realm of hotel clerks, taxi drivers, and ladies of the evening looking for pick-ups with stick-shifts. Thus some of the best-educated people in the world know the fewest languages, it being a muddy field without even the most rudimentary maintenance, while a tribal person may know five or six, being largely unconcerned with technical perfection, and more focused on the means to an end. Certain sounds bring a certain result; that’s the important thing.

Thais seem to think language is a racial thing, largely disallowing it in a person of foreign extraction unless it appears that they may be ‘half-breed Thai.’ Not only do they allow that, but revel in some of the unique combinations that might arise. Those chosen many, both bastard and legit, find ready work in the entertainment industry, singing and dancing and acting in soap operas. In a sense Thailand is almost like a giant breeding experiment, not unlike the produce section in your local ‘fresh market’ or Big C. There you’re likely to find at least three or four varieties of ordinary fruit like papaya, orange, banana, pineapple, and mango in addition to exotic mangosteen, jackfruit, guava, tamarind, custard apple, durian, litchi, and others, some of which you might find in Spanish or Latin American markets, but likely never in the ‘super’ markets of Northern Europe or the USA. Top-of-the-line oranges are invariably the ‘honey’ line, juicy and thin-skinned with no fiber but very sweet, like honey I suppose, until they go bad. Any comparison to Thai women would probably be inappropriate here. If faced with a foreigner speaking Thai well with no obvious genetic relation, Thais will even be satisfied conceptually if the foreigner has a Thai wife, as if traits that couldn’t be passed along blood lines might instead be passed along in other bodily fluids. In reality the typical Thai woman is frequently hostile to her partner speaking the local language, as inexorably linked with status as it is and the Thai obsession with such. Even when sympathetic the Thai woman herself might hardly qualified to teach beyond the elementary level to which she herself has probably studied, maybe not enough to satisfy a Westerner truly looking to master a language. Modern ‘pop’ Thai has so much English in it that speaking Thai correctly frequently involves learning how to speak English incorrectly.

I’ve often wondered if my slowness in picking up the French language was because I just wasn’t ‘French’ enough. In reality it probably has more to do with finding a French-speaking place that I like enough to hang around and learn the language. It’s hard to learn the language of a place you don’t especially like. There are very few places in the world where French, and French only, is spoken, especially since its quirkiness inspires simplified pidgins around the world, not necessarily mutually intelligible. French-as-a-second-language is only partially effective, also, since it’s the ability to comprehend the speech of others that is the true measure of one’s progress. Speech fluency itself is totally subjective, and subject to shifting motivations. If a Thai bar girl decides she doesn’t want to condescend to speak Thai with old man Chomsky, then he effectively can’t speak Thai, no matter how much he may indeed know, no matter that he may indeed be the ‘smartest person in the world.’ Many women also may see it as their duty to adopt the language of her husband when they’re from different backgrounds. Maybe that’s the ‘something borrowed’ being talked about. In Thailand if a girl has a checkered past and would rather play chess the acquisition of a foreign husband and/or some English language is one way to turn a pawn into a queen in a country where such things carry high status. In many other countries it would carry low or no status. In Asia ‘marrying up’ seems to have a long history which remains unchallenged to this day, whereas in the West such notions are largely discredited. About the time American women were declaring that they don’t want to be sex objects any more, Asian women were declaring, “We do!” The rest of course is history.

It’s hard to shut a foreigner out verbally, of course, when he can understand every word the locals say and jump into their conversation any time he wants. I personally like to watch the evening news to test myself and my comprehension in countries where I want to learn the language. The language of news is correct, well spoken, and getting the content itself is a motivation factor. The scuttlebutt was that Margaret Mead in fact couldn’t speak Samoan worth a damn, so what does that say? If true does that diminish her work? Do the sexual mores of Samoa depend on her command of the language? Take a lesson from the taxi drivers- if you see a short cut, then take it. What the American lady maybe didn’t realize is that to a Chinese person all languages are Chinese, whether the words are or not, nouns and verbs like meat and vegetables prepositioned into word-ordered recipes, chopped and stir-fried in a blazing hot wok, sparks gently slapping your face in light hot licks, and then emptied in front of your face on to the plate, a little pool of oil draining off to lubricate the rice. It’s all digital now; anything is possible when you can count to ten in base two and get 1010 without a bunch of ritualistic magic squiggles intervening. The complicated old conjugations and declensions are a thing of the past, outmoded formulas ‘going Chinese’ for greater speed and adaptability, isolating and analytic, every word equal and multi-tasking. English has long led the Germanic languages in this direction, as French has somewhat less for the Romance, coincidentally each the strongest nation in its linguistic family. Does heterosis, hybrid vigor, occur in language? Let’s ask Noam.

Thailand Redux: Jet Rag, Medical Tourism, and Government by Goons

Home is where the heart is, they say. I figure they’re right, so my idea is to make as many places in the world feel like home as possible, something of a network of safe havens, you know, just in case… just in case all that apocalyptic symbolism becomes more than a metaphor; just in case things don’t work out like I have planned for my life; just in case I have a case of incurable wanderlove and feel like I’d be happier following the sun than following orders… ouch! Somebody pinched me a little too hard there! Where am I anyway? Searching searching searching… for a memory, a point of reference, anything… oh yeah, I remember now. If it’s Sunday, then this must be Thailand, and if this is Thailand, then that pinch in the butt must have come from (sound of blankets rustling) aha! The memories come flooding back now. That was a pleasant dream, though, the little bit that I can remember through my jet lag haze. Obviously all safe havens are not created equal. You wouldn’t want to try this at home anyway; concepts of home and nomadism are mutually contradictory. In reality it turns out to be not much more than a travel ethic, to feel like you’ve lived in a place you visited, as opposed to just seeing the tourist sites. I’m the lousiest of tourists actually. Friends come visit the Golden Triangle region of Thailand, where I’ve lived more than half of the last ten years, and see more in one day than I’ve seen in my whole time here. I’m jealous. My ethic may or may not be more ethical, but being a tourist is probably more fun.

People travel for all sorts of reasons now. I almost feel like everyone’s following me around, or maybe I’m following them. First there was simple backpacking, back when you’d actually carry a sleeping bag with you, and maybe even a tent. Then there was adventure travel, seeking out remote areas simply because they’re there. Then there were the world craft searches, seeking out interesting ethnic arts for sale to the Homies back stateside. Then there were the blue gene tours, looking for potential recombinant DNA possibilities. These days medical tourism is catching on quickly, not surprising given the disparity between Eastern and Western medical costs and the fact that we’re all getting older. If the US Democrats get elected and institute a health care system, Thailand may be out of a job. Don’t worry; I’m sure we can find some other work for them to do. When the cost of a simple tooth extraction can mean the difference between a few dollars or a few hundred, the logic is as simple as the arithmetic. The opportunities are endless- root canal tours, hair transplant holidays, sex change vacations, etc. The only problem is that many procedures require multiple visits, that and the fact that a day-long trip to Thailand is usually counter-indicated for emergency care. If you may need multiple visits, of course you could just hang around a while, and voila! Another new industry is born, retirement care. Bring on the private nurses! The average nurse in Thailand with ten years experience makes about three hundred dollars a month, is between thirty-five and forty years old, single, speaks enough English to get past first base, and has a little smile cute enough to melt hardened hearts. Interested? Keep checking for a Google Ad to appear somewhere on this page, and then click on it. The robots and web spiders don’t seem too smart, though. I told you I’d help you cheat the Eurail Pass, and then their ad shows up a day later, so go figure. No matter what I talk about, the ads for Thai girls keep coming up, so that seems like a growth industry. I only wish I’d clicked on ‘Timbuktu- Know Before You Go,’ before I went.

Tourists can’t get the same rates for medical care as the locals here, part of Thaksin’s legacy, but you probably wouldn’t believe it if you did. Appendectomy for six dollars? I’d be scared maybe they left a lug wrench inside or something. Even so, my wife’s scar wasn’t pretty, but it was cheap. To some extent, you do get what you paid for. Going to an American dentist after my Thai dentist was like riding in a Cadillac after a VW beetle, but guess which one I can afford the easiest? I wouldn’t advise buying into the whole Thai system of health care, though. Conceptually it can be a bit disturbing, particularly in the overemphasis on antibiotics. The EU called them on it when they started using them as food preservatives in export food products, though. The dairy industry anywhere in the world is no better of course. Livestock feed routinely includes antibiotics. Still, Thai conceptions of health are quirky. For some reason, Thais get a form of diabetes that seems to come and go. It’s typically a contributory cause of death also, usually one of four for some reason. Maybe they’re right and there is no single cause of death. I advise just taking the mechanical treatments and leave the high concepts to others, maybe yourself. I passed a remote hospital in the Isan outback once advertising brain surgery. I’d pass on that, but some Bangkok hospitals are getting a world-wide reputation, and Chiang Mai’s certainly acceptable for most procedures. I went in to a hospital in Chiang Rai a few days ago to get my kidneys checked and it was okay, if a bit factory-like. X-rays and medical advice for less than ten bucks is hard to beat.

The health care is better than the government; that’s for sure. At least Thaksin’s regime had some bright faces and some bright ideas, even if the main man was, and is, a megalomaniac who brooks no competition, nor criticism. His second-team cronies are like a re-visit to the dark side, Darth and the boys. The premier seems to think nothing really happened back in the student massacre of 1976. He must be studying conspiracy theory like others study The Art of War. But you’re supposed to wait longer than thirty years before re-writing history. Even Germans alive during WWII do it, though, using logic to make the Nazis seem more human, even though Nazism wasn’t especially logical. They like to rationalize that they wouldn’t have treated their workers ‘like that’, as though Jews had applied for work at the day labor office for temporary assignment to Auschwitz. The new Thai Interior minister is father to the son who executed a police officer point-blank in a crowded bar a few years ago for the crime of stepping on his foot. After a long runaround giving his father time to grease palms he was cleared because no one really saw anything. Now it’s payback time for daddy I guess. Mix me a Molotov.

Anything sounds better than jet lag right now. For the uninitiated, that’s something between a hangover, an attack of sleeping sickness, and Coriolis effects. I’m writing this in the dark by the light of the TV in my room, in some new take on the Lincolnian ethic. The best movies on cable TV come on in the wee hours of the morning btw. When’s the last time you saw ‘Nashville’ or anything by Robert Altman for that matter? I miss him. I love it, a kind of signature American film, even where it falls short. It’s long and sprawling, funny without really trying too hard, meaningful while trying even less, just like the America he manages to capture perfectly in the rear-view mirror. Did you know that everyone wrote the songs they sang in that movie, even Henry Gibson? And the metaphor is perfect, too. I love America most through the rear-view mirror.

Marseille without Bars, American without Tears

So first this was supposed to be a European trip, focusing on the Arctic, with a side trip to Africa. Then it became a Mali trip, with a side trip to Norway. Then it became something else altogether. Why the interest so far north? Well, I’ve got an obsession with the Arctic, and I’m considering writing a travel book on it, so I gotta’ see it in the depth of winter, too, just to know what it’s like. It’s not exactly like I’m chasing the Chukchis in Siberia or anything like that. The west coast of Norway, and Iceland, are the greatest temperature anomalies in the world, with the possible exception of Lima, Peru. The temperature there, right at the Arctic Circle, in the dead of winter, is about the same as Flagstaff, Arizona, cold but tolerable, and much much darker. That’s what I needed to see. That’s the definition of ‘otherworldly’ for me, watching the sun rim the horizon, a few degrees above being summer, a few degrees below being winter. Phenomena like this can give real empirical clues that the old sun gods driving chariots across the sky were a little weirder then the ancients imagined. In reality, however, explaining the actions of Venus’ was probably the bigger clue. Even as late as Marco Polo’s era, readers were astounded that he didn’t fall off down there rounding SE Asia. Columbus read carefully. Anyway, that still doesn’t mean I want to do my big Norway adventure in darkness, so when I got the good Iceland Air rate to Europe with stopover included, that was an easy fix. It’s hard to pack for the Arctic and Africa at the same time, though, so I’m not really prepared for cold and wetness. I tend to put about as many miles on my shoes as my Dad put miles on the tires of his Gremlin, so they’re about falling apart by now. If the sky gets cloudy, my feet start getting wet just out of habit.

So it turned out to be something of a European trip after all. That’s the nice thing about multiple flight segments rather than one long round-trip from Arizona to Africa. Not only can you save money, and get stopovers, but you can cancel out partially and still salvage the trip. Actually, even losing half my Air France flight and buying the one-way on Iberia, I probably still came out cheaper than round-trip Arizona-Africa. Air France just laughed when I suggested that some consideration for a ‘medical emergency’ would be nice, since I’d taken the trouble to cancel my return and all. Maybe I’ll get the frequent-flyer miles anyway. But Europe’s still nice, even with the new weaker ‘bushy’ dollar. It’s hard not to like a place that names its main cities after sausages and mystery meats, e.g. Frankfurt, Hamburg, Vienna, etc. Budget airlines are proliferating like Thai food restaurants, threatening the old state-subsidized flag-carriers and giving real options for budget travel. The only problem is that you miss the scenery in between. This is ominous in an era when the real social and economic gaps in the world are between urban and rural. Our brothers and sister in the outback are in danger of being forgotten. This is especially dangerous in poorer countries that are heavily centralized. Fortunately most of our north European heritage is less like that, probably why it took them so long to show up in the history books. This is the good thing about Internet and advance telecommunications. It allows civilization’s greatest accomplishments to accommodate, and exist in communion with, Nature.

So life starts to take on a certain regularity after a few days, wherever you go. That’s not tourism; that’s traveling. Marseille is no different. I walk down the main thoroughfare of La Canebiere, named for its historical hemp, every day as if it were my own. It always looks different at night. I try to avoid getting hit by the streetcars that are so quiet they sneak right up on you. ‘Desire’ was noisier than that I believe, all clanging and clattering and keeping me awake at night. I check the price of avocadoes every day out of habit, dumbfounded at prices that vary from one to three dollars a pound. There are no wi-fi cafes here, but that doesn’t matter, since I can usually steal a signal from the fancier hotel next door. I check my e-mail and see how work is going for the Dengue Fever concert I’m promoting. I check to see if I’ve got any export business. I check to see if I’ve got the rejection notice for my novel yet. I send out this little message in a bottle as if I somehow know it’ll come back to me with interest paid, in love if not money. I’ve even been reading my junk mail, something I rarely do. I still don’t check to see how Amber1967 looks at 40; that’s a little too spammy for me. I’ve stopped working out every morning to avoid antagonizing my longsuffering kidneys, but that’s probably not a bad idea anyway in a place where showers cost five Euros a pop. I take a long walk or two a day instead, trying to discover new neighborhoods. I stick post-it notes on my laptop as if it were my office. I maintain an intravenous (coffee) drip, so that I won’t fall asleep at my keyboard and wake up to find myself in the Matrix. I’ve learned to eat Nutrella, which I’ve long noticed imported to Thailand, but never given a fair trial. It’s not bad, on bread for breakfast or whenever, even makes a decent cup of hot chocolate.

French TV is all backwards, though, ‘Days of Our Lives’ on at 9am and the good science documentaries on after midnight, but that’s OK. I’m just trying to understand the French. They’ve got Hannah Montana of course, Billy Ray’s achy breaky daughter. ‘Hunter’ re-runs still play here. That’s weird, but not as weird as ‘Alf’ reruns playing in Peru. At least Hunter’s a person. I’m not sure what time the flab-&-abs exercise ads come on. I try to keep up with the Clinton-Obama match-up. According to French TV, les Americains sont fatiguees’ de Bush. Tired of Bush? That’s an understatement. According to another columnist, Obama is the cowboy hero riding in to save the day and secure the happy ending for America and the rest of the world. Maybe they’re right, but I’d take whichever candidate can beat the oil mongers. The French liked Jerry Lewis after all. I go change money, since my hotel takes no plastic and the ATM’s are a rip-off internationally now. They even changed my West African CFA francs, not surprising here in Little Africa I guess, so that’s cool. I’m so blissfully bored I’ve even considered shaving my beard, which I started on the long train ride in Mali, then became attached to. Don’t tell my wife. It’s nice to be able to be bored anywhere in the world. It’s like home, not some border-town curio market with over-zealous salesmen hustling and hassling and drawing lines in the sand between us. I walk the red-light district after dark, listening to the cooing and purring of tired old service workers who probably got too old for Pigalle and came to work the provinces. They’re trying to get all romantic calling out from sleazy bars in dirty alleys. It doesn’t work that way. The desire for youth and beauty are hard-wired into our urges for merges like footnotes to an evolutionary dead end, sacrosanct and inviolable even when we’re just going through the motions. Almost anybody would rather go to Amsterdam and see young filles from anywhere and everywhere ready to get all Germanic for a lot less. Me, I’m just looking for halibut. Boredom can be dangerous.

I feel like Nitiphoom Naowarat, the guy on Thai TV, who travels around the world to check the prices of rice on the shelf and to see if they’re from Thailand. He interviews Thai people around the world as if they were really Chinese who just… don’t go there. He’ll go anywhere that hates America or globalization, so that he can join in the demonstration, donning the local garb and banging a drum. He even got his Ph.D. from Moscow University, but long after the USSR had folded. It’s easy to be Communist when it’s all over. He came in first in the elections for Senator in 2006. He even helped stir up sentiment against Thaksin, so that’s cool. He was doing just fine until a phone conversation was leaked to the Internet of him in a dispute over a half million dollar debt in a five million dollar business deal gone sour. I guess he doesn’t look so revolutionary anymore. But mostly he travels to interesting places, and then does nothing. I like that. What are you supposed to do anyway once bar-hopping is a thing of the past? You find pleasure elsewhere. I’ve seen hepatitis-C friends go through this for years, and now it’s my turn. I may never go back, even when the kidneys are healthier. The thrill of intoxication has slipped a notch or two over the years, thank God. The bars don’t represent a prison so much as a waste of time. There’s only one vice left; fortunately the ulamas OK’d it long ago for halal consumption. I’ll have a double macchiato, espresso with a head of steamed milk. It’s the drug of choice.

Flagstaff: Might as well be Chiang Rai or Huaraz or TJ

Welcome to the new era of the generic ex-pat. It used to be that people would ‘end up’ in remote corners of the world because of some curious connection- marriage, work, research, ethnicity, or such. The highly motivated immigrant would likely be well-versed in local lore and quite proficient in the local lingo. He had to be. He might even ‘go native’ and adopt the local garb and hang out with the local residents. All that’s changed now. These days the connections are more spurious than curious, and the local garb is Kmart classic. The only question facing the would-be ex-pat now is “Which country?” as though the only differences were quantitative, particularly financially. Though many countries are wary of casual ‘unofficial’ immigrants like me, there is a plethora of those courting the retiree trade, especially those with a surplus of nurses, like Thailand. These guys usually are largely ignorant of the local culture and rate their experience by its similarities to ‘back home’. Similarly, they rate locals by how Westernized they are, particularly linguistically. Thais even rate each other by how well they speak English, as if any of them were qualified to judge. The Mexican border area also rates well in this area of service and, accordingly, those areas have their fair share of retirees and weekend adventurers, Americans usually, of course. But you can go to the Dominican Republic, Philippines, Morocco, Guatemala, Brazil, Bali, India, or many others, and find similar situations. This is a growing trend, pasturing the herds. What they all have in common are low prices (relatively), nice weather, appropriate services, and a reasonable level of safety.

‘Convenience’ ex-pats like this tend to follow geographic and linguistic lines. So Spaniards, Portuguese, and especially, Italians, tend to gravitate toward Central and South America, linguistically and culturally similar. French can go both ways, of course, but heavily support their cultural and linguistic cousins in North and West Africa. Au contraire that they are, they tend to grant higher status to black Africans in France itself than they do to Arabs, different from most other ‘high’ cultures. Familiarity breeds contempt I guess. If they hurry they can still find some francophones in old French Indochina, that is Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, though those numbers are fading fast before the onslaught of English. Englishmen and northern Europeans tend to prefer those who prefer them, cultural pragmatists like Thailand that prize the English language above all else, and the genuine English speakers like the Philippines, India, and Anglophone Africa. Southern Europeans are conspicuously absent in Southeast Asia and the ones who do wade through the mental confusion might wish they hadn’t. Once I was summoned to translate for an Italian who found himself lost in my neighborhood. He and I had a nice conversation in Thai while a group of Thais stared on dumbfounded, finally ‘getting it’ toward the end. He spoke no English. We didn’t get around to Spanish.

Many times I’ve spoken ten or fifteen minutes in Thai with Thais when they suddenly felt inspired to ask, “Can you speak Thai?” What can you do? Patience, patience, suffer it gladly; or suffer it still, whether gladly or not. Still the pragmatism and wifely flexibility shine through. One prominent Thai web dating service has information in eight languages, including Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese, and Swedish, none of them major languages, but excluding Chinese and Spanish, the world’s first and third most-spoken languages in the world. They know where the bread is being buttered. It even has Thai language; what the Hell, why not? It’s surprising how many Western men in the Thai dating service are in their thirties. The women are overwhelmingly in their twenties. That may be more the medium than the message, youth being more ‘net’-oriented. The reality ‘in-country’ is certainly toward older foreign males. Maybe the new generation of Thai females doesn’t want to wait around to be dumped by their Thai husbands as they turn thirty.

Then there are the ex-pats like me, long-time travelers and avid adventurers, imbued with ethnicity and in love with language. It’s not necessarily like we could be anywhere, though we almost could, it’s more like we want to be everywhere. We don’t look for the easiest places to be, the paths of least resistance; we look for challenges. We look for authenticity. Personally I wouldn’t be in Thailand if I weren’t inextricably involved at this point and a bit over the hill where oats are usually sowed. Thailand’s really almost TOO easy, too willing to emulate the northern European model to the point that authentic Thai culture has to be searched for at deeper levels, with mixed results. You can avoid the interface people and the interzone girls, refusing to speak English, but ultimately you can only do that effectively by moving to areas where that is minimal, and those are few. Everybody wants the new hybrid reality, almost in direct proportion to the extent that they celebrate their ‘Thai-ness.’ It’s always been that way, the Siamese being a hybrid Chinese blend long before they ever thought about affiliating themselves with their tribal ‘Tai’ and Lao cousins. The word ‘Tai’ entered the English lexicon in 1895. The word ‘Thai’ followed in 1902. Siam changed its name to Thailand in 1939, under an onslaught of Chinese immigration.

This is similar to the Irish celebrating their Gaelic ‘Irish-ness’ while following customs and language that are generally English. The English and Americans do it, too, ‘Celtic’ traditions apparently being transmitted through Irish pub culture and traditional music. In reality the last stronghold of Celtic language in the British Isles is in Wales, though it’s not Gaelic, and it’s hardly acknowledged. Nobody goes to Welsh pubs. The language closest to English language itself is to be found back across the channel in the Frisian islands, those who never left with their Saxon and Jute cousins, speaking another modern tongue whose ancestor was Anglo-Saxon, just like ours. It’d be interesting to hear how intelligible it is, if at all. Do the French celebrate the same thing as the Irish when they remember their Roman-era ‘Gallic-ness’? I wonder. Do modern Turks celebrate their Roman-era ‘Galatian’ roots, now long assimilated? I doubt it. They aren’t usually kind toward minor cultures within their boundaries. Ask the Armenians and Kurds. The Celts, probably one of the earliest of Indo-Europeans to break away from the pack, seem to have abandoned their language at every juncture. I suppose it wasn’t a very good one. They were better at applied mechanics, and beer. The culture hangs on precariously. Score one for Sapir and Whorf. Pragmatism loses a point.

So where do you go if you want the third world without leaving your modern developed country? After all, that’s what people like me are after, regardless of where we actually find ourselves. We’re culture jocks looking for culture shock, in the downtown slums and in the remote border areas. If you’re European, you head for the far reaches of the Carpathians and the Pyrenees, and even then you might not be satisfied. Cost is a factor, after all. You’ll do better in America. There are still ethnic enclaves in Cajun Louisiana, the Mexican border areas, and Indian country, especially the southwest. When I first came to Flagstaff twenty years ago, you could still see Navajo women on the street in full silver-and-turquoise regalia, not to mention street drunks frequenting several Indian bars. They’ve long been replaced by lawyers and dentists, Deadheads and Trustafarians. The ethnicity may still be there, or out at the WalMart, at least, but the scene has been sanitized. That random element of disorder is priceless. It can’t be mocked-up at tourist-oriented ‘Indian villages.’ That’s what the Third World is all about, and to some extent, any place will do. When I’m stuck in the States, I found solace across the border in Ensenada. If I’ve got a month to kill, hardly enough time to go back to Asia, I’ll catch a cheap flight to Peru and a seven-hour ride to Huaraz- instant Andes (and no jet lag). Or maybe go to Guatemala and hang with the Mayans in Quezaltenango or the Garifuna at Livingston. The possibilities are endless. The flights are cheap, probably cheaper than living in the US full-time, certainly Europe. Of course, there’s always Alaska, where you can kill two birds with one stone, ethnicity and the elusive Arctic Circle. I saw the northern lights at Fairbanks in my first hour there. It’s like Flagstaff twenty years ago, Indians and college students. Athabascans across the border in Canada even call themselves Dene’. It’s a small world… and a narrow strait. Is Tijuana really any different from Tangier (Tanjah), the ‘other TJ’? When you get the itch, head for the border, any border.

Thai Women are Digital and Now Online

There are a lot of lonely people in the world, true, but come on, Google, you’re going to give me a bad rep here. I know, I know, scientists and philosophers need love, too, but ‘local sexy singles?’ For those of you who don’t know, I have no control over the ads that grace the halls of this blog. When I post a new update, ‘spiders’ and ‘bots’ crawl through the virtual woodwork like ants at a picnic, devouring my humble verbal offerings and rendering them into easily digestible keywords and ‘meta-tags’. So I was curious to see what ‘content related’ ads would show up at the party, given a rather hodgepodge collection of posts loosely falling under the heading of ‘travel’, and sure enough, the first results were rather predictable- apartments in Chiang Mai, townhouses in Phuket (pronounced ‘poo-get’), cheap flights to Thailand, condos in Hua Hin, condoms in Pattaya. Huh? What’s that? OK, I’m exaggerating, and admittedly, it wasn’t surprising to see “Single Thai Girls” popping up sooner or later, given the legendary beauty of Thai women and the legendary incompetence of Thai men. After all, it’s a feminine culture, and the same traits that are attractive in women are not necessarily attractive in men. Conversely, the same might be true in ‘masculine’ Western culture. Vive la difference! That’s legit anyway, women with genuinely good hearts looking for something better for themselves and their families. In Thailand, working-age offspring typically not only support the children, but the parents also. They find it hard to believe that it might be any other way any where else, despite my protestations to the contrary. So the practice of women ‘marrying out’ is now widespread and respectable, given that impeccable Thai knack for commerce through any open door, unfailing publicity, and uh, pragmatism. I wouldn’t say it’s Thailand’s number one export yet, but maybe…

So the running joke has always been that I accuse my wife, and Thai women in general, of being digital, that is, on or off, hot or cold, sweet or sour, no middle ground. “I wouldn’t know what to do with an analog girl,” I tell her. They tend to see things in very black and white terms while the rest of us are watching the movie of life in HD DVD with a helping of JPEG in HTML on the side. They’re like LCD screens with a push-button control. That’s liquid crystal display, not lowest common denominator. It’s like you turn on the tube on Christmas day and there’s a fire burning, or you buy the DVD and watch tropical fish swimming around your flat screen aquarium, probably even got a snail super-model cleaning the inside of the screen. So push the right button on a Thai bar girl and ping!, she turns on with a smile. As the liquid goes down in the cocktail-style hour-glass, so do the edges of her lips until you’ve finally got a perfect frown to go with that empty glass. “Wa ma ding?” she’ll then ask you in fluent Pidgin English and the fact that she’s merely running sweet red liquid through her veins like the stuff you put in your hummingbird feeder is irrelevant. You’ve got to feed the meter, and the meter is an old-fashioned Thai water-clock, complete with an ice cube on top that will clean your nose at no extra charge. Why is that extra cube always there? Nobody knows. Where’s Seinfeld when you need him? But the girl always smiles on cue even when she doesn’t understand a word you say, nodding her head agreeably like a flower waving in the breeze. Order up another round and the screen refreshes itself, and you, with a smile. Sound good? Apply here. My wife always told me that people would want to hear about Thai girls and lady boys, not the abstract considerations that tend to preoccupy me.

But ads for ‘local sexy singles?’ That’s different. What did I do to deserve that? That has nothing to do with Thailand and everything to do with sex. Lord knows there are plenty of other blogs out there that deal with that subject a little bit more, uh, directly, than I do. Do a search on most-used Google search keywords and it’s the same in every category: sex, or maybe boobs. Search politics: it’s sex; religion: sex; hardware: sex; software: sex. But what does any of that have to do with me? Okay, I did do an expose,’ heh heh, of webcam girls and I am always rather interested in the various manifestations that can ensue culturally out of our obsession with that one seminal event that sustains us- the reproductive act. That’s okay; it’s good for evolution. But that’s not the same as selling sexual services. I feel like a pimp… Actually, it doesn’t feel that bad. Anyway, I was curious to see what would happen with the ads when I stopped writing about Thailand so much, simply because I’m not there right now. Well, the first clues came with my blog on Cambodia. All of a sudden, instead of ads for tourism, travel, adventures, and single girls, I’m showing ads for veterans’ benefits, war videos, and genocide ring tones. Huh? Genocide ring tones? I don’t make this stuff up. If you don’t believe me, follow my blogs one at the time, only one blog to the page, to see them change with each page. Don’t know how to do that? Google me, or google the blog’s main keywords, ‘Thailand’ and ‘Timbuktu’, that is. On a good day, I’ll come up number one. Click on that and they’ll send you to the site, but only one page. Then creep through older or newer posts. Or, just trust me, and I’ll walk you through it. The next blog we’re back in Thailand and now not just ‘meeting Thai girls (for serious relation)’ but taking ‘Thai gay tours’. I wonder what sights they visit. I bet there are a lot of statues and monuments. Did you know that ‘Ladyboys of Thailand’ has good prices? I wonder what they’re selling. I can’t click my own ads for fear of being accused of ‘spamming’. But you can. Some people like canned ham, especially out in ‘da islands’, where commodities are scarce.

With the immigration blog we get ‘green card’ ads and with the ‘dark side’ blog we get Thai ‘yoga’ massage ads, all the while flogging and blogging ‘single Thai girls.’ Hmmm. Then the funniest one comes up with the Thai food blog, an ad by Pepto-Bismol. Ya’ gotta’ love it. Well, when I do my first American blog it takes them a while to adjust, and they’re still doing Thai ads. Come the ‘tsunami’ blog and they’re right on top of it, with ads to ‘help disaster victims’ and ‘adopt orphans’. Cool. But what will they do when I mention ‘jihad’? Drum roll here, please. Depending on what day you check, you might get something on politics or George Bush or maybe even ‘learn Arabic online’, but guaranteed you’ll get something on, guess what? Travel insurance. Do a blog on world music and blues, and they manage one music download site, but other than that it’s travel to Thailand. They like me there, plenty of advertisers that pay. I bet the next one will be more gals, or gays. Nope. Talk about over-population and gas prices and they freak, nothing but one banner-sized ad about Gulf hurricane relief, and empty spaces, when I usually have four small ads. Don’t try to pin a meta-tag on me, mother-flipper (just when they thought they had me figured out). You can’t exactly sell Thai girls in the same breath as talking about over-population, now can you? Nope. Kills the urge. All these decisions are made at the speed of light, mind you, millions of little bits and bytes, 0’s and 1’s, flickering on and off, semi-conducting, each second. The full multi-blog home page now shows ads for NGO’s and teaching English overseas. Sounds boring and depressing. I’ve let Google down. We could use some Thai girls to liven up this bash. I have a feeling they’ll be back. Mr. Google misses them, and he’s letting me know that, by keeping me out of the search engine rankings this week after that last depressing blog. Over-population indeed! We want more Thai girls! You got it, bro. You got it. I miss my Thai girl, too (though on second thought next time they placed two ads side by side top dead center one with ‘Arabic Classes’ and another with ‘Learn Hebrew Abroad’). Salaam. Shalom. There is a God.

Thailand and Mississippi-- Tsunamis, Hurricanes, and Home

When the tsunami struck southern Thailand three years ago to this day, Christian Thais asked me, “Is this it, the Apocalypse?” That’s what I want to know. You tell me. I felt that one, too, the earthquake that is, hundreds of miles away up close to the Golden Triangle. I was lying in bed on the upper floor of a house we’d just moved into. I thought it was falling down. Then I turned on the news a couple of hours later. Of course, other countries got hit much worse, but they were not major tourist destinations. Thailand had less than five thousand casualties, while Indonesia had more than one hundred thousand, but Thailand got the movie. Indonesia got dried food. India and Sri Lanka both had far more casualties than Thailand, but Thailand got the sympathy vote. Thailand markets itself so aggressively, that sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s just publicity. It’s doubtful that half of what is taught in Thai schools as history is accurate. Immigrated from Mongolia? Huh? Why, because the region is called ‘Altai’? O-kay. Nobody’s sure who ruled the historical kingdom of Nanchao, so Thais claimed that, too. It’s like the old SNL ‘liar’ character played by Jon Lovitt. “Yeah, that’s right…” The psychology section of a typical Thai bookstore is filled with books on marketing. I shit you not. “I’m OK, you’re OK?” Naaa… How about, “I’m rich, you’re not.” The local Big C supermarket in Chiang Rai goes by the textbook in its marketing ‘techniques’ designed to confuse the customer, get him lost, and make him overpay. They’re evil. They’re the only game in town. I don’t want to talk about last week’s elections.

Then the next year a swath of coastline from Mobile to Houston was removed from most maps, and even worse than that in New Orleans, which got something of a double-bypass ‘soulectomy’, unlike anything seen since the War of Northern Aggression. I watched that from a stool in my favorite watering hole back home by the triangle. Let’s clear the air right here right now- nobody could have prevented the Katrina disaster, short of moving the entire city. I’m no big fan of the Bushmaster, but calling ‘racism’ because of N’awlins is a little irresponsible. He IS sleeping with Connie after all. It’s true; I read it on the Internet. But everybody ‘down there’ always knew that the Big Easy was a disaster waiting to happen, just a little too big and a little too easy for its own good. Maybe the people actually straddling that river of denial didn’t know, or care to acknowledge it, but in Mississippi we all knew. N’awlins was where you went to get lost, where you went to die if nobody loved you any more, where you went to do things ungodly. Sometimes those things ungodly would find you whether you went looking for them or not, part of the Napoleanic Code of Injustice. Everybody was in on the corruption. It can’t go back like it was before. Everything’s different now. Everybody’s watching. New Orleans will be re-born better, if not bigger. Global warming? Apocalypse? Why Aceh, New Orleans, and Phuket, home to thousands of jihadis, junkies, and other assorted pragmatists? Eschatology is the starting point of religion, mortality sandwiches.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about home. This is America. This is Christmas Day. Channel 28 here has nothing but a fire burning on TV all day. Talk about reality TV! But that triggers memories, just like it’s supposed to. You can go home again. Maybe Thomas Wolfe can’t, but I can. I have to, to see what I missed. Many histories are possible. How do you know which path you took until you actually arrive somewhere? Everything is relative to the point of measurement. That’s what time travel is all about, experiencing the same place at different times, without necessarily having to travel the entire distance to get there. You’re only limited by speed and memory. You can do it in pure memory alone or you can actually get up off your butt and go there. The only question is: what home? Americans have no ‘home of birth’ the way Asians do, the way Latinos do, the way most of the traditional world does. In Thailand you never lose that; that piece of land is your claim to nationality. Without a house registration, you are nothing. Rents are low, btw. A few years ago all Thais had to go to their ‘birth home’ to vote, like Mary riding Joseph’s ass all the way to Bedlam, belly full with baby and the future of the world. Fortunately it was a bright clear night. Except for the Deep South, America knows little or nothing of this. Up north the kids grow up and move out west while the old folks move to Florida. Nobody’s left on the old block except the second-string team, the ones who wanted to go somewhere and be something but couldn’t break the pull of gravity.

Hub and spoke traditional systems still hold sway only in the old South, so maybe you move away then move back, on and on in some succession of tentative pokes at the outside world, testing its limits against your own, with some sort of ‘breakthrough’ more to be feared than welcomed. This is possible largely because most ‘outsiders’ don’t especially want to move there in the first place, though that’s changing. Little by little the restless mobile virtual America is taking over, allowing people the freedom to fail without being subject to ridicule ‘back home’, simply because there is nothing there. Killers go berserk to seize their moment of fame simply because that’s all there is left in a virtual world, a body count and ads sold. In Mississippi everybody still knows everybody, and you can go back and find your best friend still sitting in the same old comfy chair you left him in ten years ago, older Budweiser. This conveys a certain responsibility upon all parties involved, kinda’ like village Communism, rule by jealousy and judgment.

But that’s still the dark side. This is not N’awlins, long drowning in the swamp, choked on its French roots and its Spanish moss, and Mississippi’s maybe a little too close to home. That’s the hand I was dealt, after all, not the one I chose. I still love it, of course, but with the love of family, not the love of spouse. I’m not Asian, my wife keeps reminding me. I’m American, forever young and rebelliousness by definition. After many trial runs, Flagstaff was the home I chose, or at least the US ‘home base’. It’s a dry cold. After ten years of semi-residence, I still keep a mailbox and a storage unit and a contingent of safe havens and various unresolved projects. Welcome to my world. After many more geodesic meanderings and tentative pokes and partial penetrations of South America, the elliptical orbits began to center around some ‘strange attractor’ in Asia. This took the form of a little brown-haired brown-eyed girl that could figure out a way to be a pain in the butt to the statue of Lincoln, all the while propping him up with enough faith and courage to keep coming around for more, though not enough to ever feel totally fat and sassy. I stay hungry. Who really knows what ol’ Abe is doing when not looking honest for the tourists, anyway? Scratching that pain in his butt, probably.

Well, the girl and I tied knots, literally wrapped at the wrist in white twine, and that meant that Thailand was to be the home I inherited, albeit with conditions. Chaotic love keeps you in random orbits that only appear normal when averaged. Call it the ‘flutter-by’ effect, related to the inverse ‘squared squared’ law of love in chaos, in which gravitational love is felt in direct proportion to the square of the distance from the source, not the opposite as in classical physics. Any closer and you crash on the rocks of bankruptcy and dependence; any farther and you drift into the ether, attached only in memory. The moon is slowly drifting away, after all. We just tend not to notice. It looks to be the same size as the Sun. That will change. This is a quantum world, after all, contrary to common sense, where familiarity breeds contempt, and everything is the opposite of what it seems. Your beer-drinking good-time buddies are the people who hold you back and you rely on the kindness of strangers to accept you at face value, your own best face. Only a few friends transcend the ordinary back-slap of gratuitous condescension and become a surrogate family, still there when the old man’s long gone and old age is coming on. This is my America, positively Fourth Street. Every city’s got one.

Thai Food: a Survival Guide

I have old-hand friends in Thailand whose first introduction to Thais and Thai culture was along the canals in Amsterdam. For me, though, it was along the canals of Venice, Beach that is, LA, CA, USA. There I discovered my first Thai restaurant back in 1984. If it seems hard for some of you kids born since then to realize that there was ever a time when there were no Thai restaurants in the US, then believe it. It’s true; I’ve got witnesses. Though I wasn’t long in LA, so won’t swear that that little place along Robertson Blvd. was the first, it was the same in the Bay Area the next year, where I stayed for several, one Thai restaurant amongst a sea of Chinese and Mexican and Italian, back when that was considered ‘ethnic’. I remember it like it was yesterday, a little family-run place along San Pablo Ave. just outside the Berkeley city limits in Oakland, BYOB. Those creamy curries were like heaven for someone raised on soul food, enlightened by Mexican, and surviving on Chinese, colors and flavors mixing and mingling on the palate and palette in a playful synesthesia of the gods. The smart money was on the continued success of Thai food in America, and sure enough, they multiplied like Mississippi mushrooms in cow shit, like Farang bars along Sukhumvit in Bangkok. It’s nice to be right. A quick Google search of ‘Thai Restaurants—Los Angeles’ at this juncture is still going strong after a hundred pages, and that says nothing of the multifarious locations around the country and the world. Nothing succeeds like success. If you don’t have any new ideas, then copy someone else’s. You can’t get any more Thai than that. It’s nice to be safe. It’s nice to be in Thailand. It’s warm.

The reality here at ground zero is a bit different of course. For one thing, those creamy curries are not necessarily the most representative food of Thailand, and indeed can be hard to find for a first-time tourist. For another thing, those curries should probably not properly be considered ‘Thai’ in the first place. If their scarcity in the northern and eastern provinces is the first clue to this, then their presence in Malaysia and close similarity to the ‘Padang’ (Sumatra) curries of Indonesia is the next, presumably adapted from Indian curries by the same people who adopted and adapted Indian culture and religion. The Malay language was full of Sanskrit loan-words long before it was full of Arabic ones, after all. But Thais are the ones who introduced wet curries to the US and the world, so such food will forever be ‘Thai.’

Perhaps most importantly, those curries are not especially healthy, despite the universal tendency of ‘health-food’ counters and eateries in the US to include some mock-Thai dishes to lend some mock-cachet and currency to their selection. In addition to the excessive use of oils, frequently palm oil of lubrication fame, and the unnecessary use of sugar, which the Malays fortunately tend to avoid, the ingredient that makes those curries creamy is coconut, in a form known as ‘ka-ti’ in Thailand, the water/milk recombined with the meat into a thick creamy paste. Well, this is some tasty sauce that goes down easy, but there’s only one problem- it stays there. That leftover curry in the fridge next day has a crust on top, a breakable crust. “What kind of oil are you using?” I scream at my wife. But it’s not the oil; it’s the ka-ti. Like nitroglycerine, ka-ti apparently freezes at about 55F/13C degrees. Unlike nitroglycerin, it’s bad for your heart. So say the posters on the wall of Thai hospitals. The posters in the US would probably say the same if the product were widely used there. My HIV friend says that coconut in any form is strictly proscribed for him.

The Thai food available in Thai restaurants overseas is central Thai food. Maybe the best representative of this style is tom yam goong or tom kha gai, right tasty dishes if you don’t mind pulling weeds out of your mouth while you eat. Except for lahp, which is starting to be found more in the US, almost no dishes come from the north or northeast, which are more influenced by Burma and Laos, respectively, than the Malaysian-inspired dishes of the south. Some popular dishes in US restaurants, like pat thai and kaow pat, are street food in Thailand, and quite different from the stylized US restaurant versions. The curries and soups, on the other hand, might be difficult to find in street stalls in Thailand. They are usually found only at stalls specializing in curries, and not usually tourist oriented, though those dishes may be simulated in fancy restaurants. Spring rolls are also nearly impossible to find. That’s Vietnam. Probably the single most popular street food in Thailand, noodle soup, also originally from Vietnam, would be hard to find in a US-based Thai restaurant.

Then there’s the dark side. Northern Thailand has its own food, most famous of which is probably kaow soi, though more typical would be nam ngieow, a hot murky tomato-based concoction served over khanom jeen or rice noodles, and which people here in Chiang Rai go ape-shit over. Actually kaow soi in Laos or Xishuangbanna is closer to nam ngieow than it is to the standard kaow soi islam to be found here, a kati-based concoction brought from Burma. Then there’s gaeng awm, something like lahp that apparently got lost and then rescued a few days later, older but wilder. They also go ape-shit over som tam, which is shredded unripe papaya salad mixed with peanuts, tomatoes, crab, hot peppers, and only God knows what else. He ain’t tellin’. If you’re eating papayas to help promote bowel movements, this’ll get you there in a hurry. Naturally it’s eaten with sticky rice to help repair the damage. Does raw papaya sound strange? Thais also typically eat their mangoes green. Go figure. By the time they get ripe, supermarkets are discounting the price and I’m stocking up. Some varieties are actually quite tasty green, but I can’t help feel they’re missing the boat on this one, ripe mango being one of the finer flavors in the world. So, if you like green mangoes, hot spicy raw papaya salad, and gut-slashing spicy noodles, then northern Thailand might be just the ticket for you, especially if you like Mexican food already. Mexicans in LA are some of the best customers for Thai food in the not-so-fancy restaurants.

Let me clarify something for you people overseas or too down-country or up-scale to know or care. Sticky rice is not rice that somebody decided to ‘stickify’ for reasons culinary or esthetic. Sticky rice is properly called ‘glutinous rice’, because of its higher gluten, or protein, content. This makes it a staple food among the protein-poor country folk, who may eat it with little or nothing besides chili paste. It calms the stomach excellently, though you may pay for that with subsequent constipation. They don’t call it ‘sticky’ for nothing. At least is has some nutritional benefit. ‘Polished’ white rice has little or none. Nevertheless, the main problems plaguing Thai food are simply the indiscriminate use of salt, sugar, and hot peppers. If the food’s too hot or salty, Thais will add sugar. The inverse is also true. If the food is too sweet, then they’ll add salt or peppers. This totally misses the point, which is that the minimum of any these would be preferable, especially for health considerations. Thais tend to maximize for ‘intensity’ of flavor. Anybody who puts sugar in noodle soup needs a psychiatric examination, in my opinion, but there it is, every time. Sometimes the soup seems but a base for the combination of condiments within it. I’m finished eating while some Thais are still taste-tasting and stirring. Nearly every dish has sugar in it, and nearly every elder in Thailand has diabetes. Fortunately this is the type that comes and goes from one medical exam to the next. Huh? That’s the rap. When an American dies there is usually a single cause of death, of course. When a Thai dies, there are usually four, I’ve noticed. One of them is typically diabetes.

The over-dependency of Thai food on superficial condiments and less reliance on freshness and originality is what keeps it from becoming one of the world’s great cuisines. Though much is made of balancing the ‘five food groups,’ judging from the results, you might assume that these would be peppers, sugar, salt, and oil. And oh yeah, rice. A master chef could change all that, and indeed, some of the less-authentic ‘Thai’ dishes in the US are indeed tastier, and almost certainly healthier, than the home-grown varieties. My solution is to eat it with brown rice, which is becoming increasingly available, and eat it at home, reducing all measurements of oil, sugar, and spice by half. Not only do you increase the nutritional value, but now you can actually taste the flavors, since your tongue doesn’t have to run for cover. I swear by it. And oh yeah, beware of curries sitting out all day in stalls. Thais think that a ‘pie-safe’ will keep food safe. It’s paradise for bacteria. Curries are best mid-day. You’ve been forewarned.

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.