I chose to do this for two reasons. Firstly, financial – it will help fund my trip during a year I won’t be earning any money. Secondly, for the experience - I’ve never taught before, I’ve never worked in a foreign country before, and it will be a great opportunity to get to know the Thai people more closely than just buying stuff from them.
Seven weeks in I can safely say I have a better picture of life in Thailand than your average tourist gets from a couple of weeks, or even a month, here. In speaking to the teachers who’ve worked here for some time, in teaching and talking to Thai people and interacting with them as they go about their daily lives, and in talking to Thai people I’ve made friends with, I’ve discovered a country where Western culture is wrestling in a friendly bout with Thai culture (itself an amalgamation of many southeast Asian cultures) and neither is particularly losing.
The casual visitor to Bangkok and the beach resorts in the south of the country will get a sense of this. While Bangkok itself is initially an overwhelming assault on the senses (not least your noise, the smell of the city is indescribable), there is plenty here to make you feel you’re not in a completely alien world. In-between all the stalls selling strange-looking food that take up many a pavement, and the impressive temples in the wats (enclosed holy areas where the recognisable Buddhist monks often reside), there are little touchstones of Western culture to keep the homesickness at bay.
Trusty old Boots is everywhere, for example. The high street chemist is probably more ubiquitous in Bangkok than it is in any other city in the world - yes, even London . And the drink of choice is, of course, Coca Cola, with Pepsi and Fanta also making their presence known. McDonalds is as popular here as it is the world over, with a nod to Thai culture with its rice bun (a strange taste experience but not as disgusting as you might imagine) and Ronald McDonald stood outside the restaurant greeting customers with the Thai wai (a commonly seen greeting where a Thai of inferior social status presses their hands together in prayer position and bows their head).
Not all high profile Western companies have been as successful infiltrating the Thai market, however. Rumours abound about Carlsberg’s brief attempt to establish itself here. Hearsay suggests that the Thais reputation for ripping off Westerners applies to big business as well as tourists buying overpriced souvenirs, and that the beer company suffered at the hands of it. How true this is is unclear, but it’s very believable to a Westerner who lives here and battles the rip-off culture every day.
As a Western tourist you will undoubtedly be ripped off numerous times during your trip here. Spend any time at the markets of Bangkok and you only need to keep walking away from a stall to hear how much the prices drop in order to keep your custom. Most tourists don’t do this, forgoing the bargaining and accepting the first price. And as one Irish traveller said to me, “Even when you’re being ripped off it’s still really cheap.” This is what the Thais know and bank on as well. But when you’re a Westerner living and working here, trying to live off Thai money only, you become very sensitive to the rip-off culture and it becomes something of a battle.
One example – myself and a friend visited Sanam Luang park, near Bangkok ’s famous Grand Palace , and found ourselves amid a flock of pigeons. My friend wanted to take some photos and so we stood there for a minute when a man came up and thrust some corn into our hands to feed the birds. I refused, mostly because I’m not fond of pigeons and didn’t really want to pay to feed them. The man insisted, implying heavily that we didn’t have to pay. Stupidly, we took the corn and fed the pigeons. Ten minutes later he’s hassling us again, with a much more unpleasant demeanour, for 150 baht for the corn. Now, this is not much money – just over two pounds – but I knew it was extortionate and we were being brazenly ripped off. But we paid him, if only because he was being unpleasant, and distinctly more so as we resisted paying. That’ll teach me to hang out in the touristy areas wearing shorts and t-shirt and a lack of tan. The final kick in the teeth was when a boy came up to us 20 minutes later and offered us some bags of corn to feed the pigeons – for ten baht.
So Western culture comes up against plenty of resistance (some healthy, some not so) as it slowly infiltrates Thai culture. While Western music and television ideas make their mark (the radio is full of Thai artists singing MOR tunes that wouldn’t sound out of place on Dido or Westlife albums, and the Pop Idol and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire formats are huge hits on TV here), the nation’s youth still have one eye very much on old traditional values as well.
Dotted around Bangkok are countless shrines where people of all ages make offerings in the hope that Buddha will look benevolently on them and bring them good luck. Whole shops and stalls are dedicated to selling food, flowers, incense sticks and all the other paraphernalia involved in Buddhist worship; it’s big business. Most people will wai when they walk or even drive past a shrine - that’s right, they’ll let go of the steering wheel.
Coming from a society where religion is of decreasing importance with each new generation, the devotion to worship here, especially when it’s people of my age, is quite surprising. Having dinner with some Thai friends one evening, one incident during the meal hit home just how seriously they take their spirituality.
In Thai culture the head is the most sacred part of the body and the feet the least – tourists will come across this when they visit temples where they are told not to sit with their feet facing the Buddha as this is deeply disrespectful. My friends and I were eating at a restaurant on the roof of a hotel which was on many different levels, with stairs taking you up and down to each level. All of a sudden one of my Thai friends became obviously uncomfortable and slightly distressed. We were sat on a lower level and there was a table above us to the right where a man was sat with his feet resting on some railings facing us. My friend was wearing a Buddha necklace around her neck and so, unwittingly, the man had his feet pointing directly at them. The problem was quickly resolved, with another friend going and having a word with the man, who returned his feet to under the table. But what a strange, unlikely problem to occur.
Despite the strong presence of Western culture, then, it has done little to damage the stronger tenets of Thai culture. But the increasing presence of Westerners themselves is causing some problems. Those southern islands and areas that were devastated by the tsunami in 2004 were declared public parks by the local government, who said that hotels and restaurants were to be kept to a minimum in this area that was likely to face such danger again.
Head to Tonsai, the big resort on the island Ko Phi Phi, and you’ll see that this has not happened. The place has sprung up much as it was before - with restaurants, bars and hotels aplenty - and continues to do so. One teacher I work with has visited Tonsai a number of times in the past seven months and has seen a marked difference each time. Big business, it seems, holds no truck with the idea of possible danger.
And so I continue to watch this curious relationship between Thai and Western with interest, never quite sure whose side I’m on, but enjoying the fact I can get a culture hit on a daily basis, while treating myself to the occasional home comfort.
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