Double Birthday in the Midwest

The blurry picture below, taken around 1980, got a nice update last weekend as we all gathered for a double celebration of the big round-numbered birthdays of our parents, who were born a month apart in 1930. Fall Midwestern temperatures were perfect for a Saturday picnic and slumber party.

The highlight was watching the beaming smiles on the two guests of honor, as they floated around chatting with their seven kids, six grandkids, and a swarm of significant others. If Jip had made it, we would have had 100% attendance. That turnout—21 showed up for Sunday brunch, from four different time zones—was a fitting tribute to these two marvelous people.

Thai Politics, Update

Thailand remains a tinderbox, nearly five months after the capital burned as opposition protesters scattered following a military crackdown on their extended central-city demonstration. Since then, opposition leadership has been silenced through jailings and selective blocking of radio and web communication. Nobody can say how many back-channel conversations are taking place that might lead to reconciliation between people at opposite ends of the political spectrum here.

A bomb went off yesterday in another part of the province next to Bangkok where we just moved. The explosion was quite a distance from our place, but it does serve as a reminder that lots of bitterness remains, in spite of a “Together We Can” campaign started by people representing the silent majority.

An emergency decree outlawing gatherings of more than five people remains in place for Bangkok and surrounding provinces. If elections were held tomorrow, the prime minister’s party would lose and the current government would be replaced by one that would like to bring back Thaksin. It’s still a potent mix here of globalization coming to the villages, obstinacy coming from the old guard, testosterone, fear, and legal mumbo-jumbo.

Somehow, Thailand’s economy churns along. Tourism seems to be rebounding, and the baht has rarely been stronger.

Nailbiter

Tennis doesn’t fill stadiums here the way that soccer and Thai boxing do. Just the same, net sports get lots of play—it seems like there’s a game of badminton or takraw in every side street—and some well-regarded pro tennis players have emerged from Thailand in the last decade.

A friend called to offer me a spare ticket to the qualifying rounds of the annual Thailand Open, sounding almost apologetic about the no-names who would be on the program. I didn’t care about seeing Nadal. A day out sounded fun, and it had been a long time since my last chance to see professional sports.

We settled in as Warut Korkiatthaworn took on Alex Bogomolov. It was easy to tell these two apart. One of them won nearly all the points. Isn’t that how things are supposed to turn out on the first day of a pro tournament?

Next up were Dmitry Tursonov, on our left, against Marinko Motosevic, on our right. Or was it the other way around? Who knew? Each of them won his serve. Every time. After an hour of remarkably even play, the first tiebreaker finished 10-8. I was exhausted.

Now I know this wasn’t Roger vs. Rafa at Wimbledon. In the grand scheme of things, these guys were competing for peanuts, in a match that next week will be long forgotten. Yet I wasn’t sure my poor old tired body could handle another set like the first one. It wasn’t just that an hour’s labor had come down to a single point. Nor that tennis etiquette discourages yelling among the spectators, even when yelling is clearly called for.

No, the true cause of my tension was the full-blast air conditioning. This match was taking place in a refrigerated arena, which at that moment housed only a sprinkling of people. If by some chance one of the players hit a ball out of the court and into the stands, most likely it would have landed in an empty seat.

Where were all the tennis fans? Outside, shopping for gear at the crowded exhibition hall. Snapping photos next to the life-size cutouts of Paradorn and his glamorous wife. Lunching on countless varieties of fast food.

Hardly anyone besides my friend and me knew about the battle of nerves going on inside the deep freeze.

The second set followed the same pattern as the first. By this time we had finally identified Tursonov as the one most anxious to move things along. Unlike Motosevic, he never argued a line call or dawdled during the breaks between games. Perhaps his confidence came from experience: we learned later that at the 2006 Thailand Open, he had won the whole tournament.

Whatever the reason, he prevailed in this match… barely. This time the tiebreaker ended 7-3. Out of 194 points played, Tursonov won only 12 more than Motosevic did. As they walked off the court after two hours, both players looked relieved that it was over. Yet their emancipation was nothing compared to the joy I felt as I walked out into the thawing mid-afternoon sun. I would gladly watch a rematch some day. As long as it is played at room temperature.

New Digs, cont.

I already knew that I liked our new neighborhood. Lately I’m appreciating more and more the apartment itself. Though built a couple decades before our previous spot, it has gorgeous and well-maintained gardens, a little lake out back, no peeling paint. The cheerful staff even encourages recycling—not many places in Thailand can say that!

New Digs

Jip and I moved to a new section of the city this week. Technically, we’re in a new province, just over the official Bangkok boundary. On our first morning in the new apartment, Jip identified bird sounds outside the window that she hadn’t heard at our old place. She asked if we had moved to the countryside.

I didn’t want to tell her right away that Nonthaburi no longer looks the way it did before she moved to the U.S. nearly twenty years ago, and that in 2010 it might as well be a part of the Big Mango. If Jip wants to picture the area as mostly open space, I’m not going to pop her balloon.

We’re now surrounded by fewer shophouses and sky train stations, but more car repair chains and coffee shops. The neighborhood includes a small university and a golf driving range. Instead of the elephant carvings that are traditionally offered at Thai temples in appreciation of answered prayers, wooden zebras surround some Nonthaburi temples.

There’s no less traffic here than where we were, but the distance to my office is much shorter— the major reason for the move. We’re also now further from the areas most likely to be centers of political protest. I wish we didn’t have to consider that factor, but it was no fun watching Bangkok burn from our balcony last May. It would be unrealistic to believe that Thailand has seen its final demonstration of the year.

After just a few days, no regrets. In fact, I’m walking around wondering why everybody doesn’t live here. We’re saving tons on the cost of an apartment. An inexpensive van leaves for downtown every 15 minutes or so from a nearby parking lot. Just beyond that is a good massage shop. What more does a body need?

Best of all for us, Jip’s entire caregiver team came along enthusiastically. I had expected we would lose at least one of them in the move. When I first brought up the subject, I was pleased to learn that one has a sister living close by, and another would be shortening her commute considerably. That left the one who is completing her bachelor’s degree at a campus far across town. Even she didn’t mind our new location—it’s just down the road from the mall where her boyfriend recently got a job.

Not Muzak

At our offices on the campus of the Ministry of Public Health, outdoor loudspeakers sometimes broadcast background music—pleasant, traditional sounds, usually a woman singing softly. Never a loud guitar, never an advertisement. The kind of thing you might hear at a trendy cafe.

So it’s been quite a jarring and reverberating change to have big construction happening next door. We’re treated throughout the day to the poundpoundpound of a giant hammer, several stories tall. This device whacks its business end against an eighteen-inch-wide, one-hundred-foot-high cement chopstick, again and again and again, until only a tiny fraction of the piling is still visible above the ground. Then the huge machine rolls a few feet and clobbers a new piling, overandoverandover.

Hundreds of pilings await their turn to be brutally pummeled into the earth. Why not drill many holes first, and then bury these long poles that will become the foundation of a future building? Because apparently you have to dig a long way down in Bangkok before you reach anything that can be considered solid. The Earth’s crust in this corner of the continent—once known as the “Venice of Asia”—is mostly muck. We’re talking sea level and below! Can you say “water table?” Can you say “we’re sinking!?”

No wonder nobody in this town props up their structures on rectangles of concrete. Instead, every new project, from simple garden wall all the way up to high-rise hotel, starts with the pounding of pilings. That way, the finished product has a pretty good chance of staying level.

The engineer who explained all this for me also solved a mystery that had been bugging me for some time: he said that Bangkok’s sidewalks crinkle because they rarely have pilings underneath them. Unlike the buildings they pass in front of, the sidewalks float on the city’s slurry soil. That’s why they often consist of small pavers or bricks instead of poured cement blocks, and why it’s not unusual to see large gaps form between the sidewalks and the steps of buildings.

Some day I’m sure we’ll forget these few weeks of trying to tune out what sounds like a hardcore punk rock club next door. Today, I’d rather have Muzak.

Leap of Faith

Going back to a place can be tricky when your memories are happy but dated. I knew I was taking a risk returning to Koh Si Chang, the island with the deceptively industrial façade off Thailand’s eastern coast. It had been two years since a pleasing day trip there made me think an overnight would be twice the fun.

But when on arrival we couldn’t find a decent spot for lunch after several minutes of sweaty walking, my friends began to make noises about suddenly needing to be back in town that evening. Things looked up after we hailed a passing “skylab” (the dominant transportation on the island has a unique shape), though our plans remained decidedly uncertain throughout the afternoon.

We had tracked down food and explored a well curated museum of marine life (lots of touch tanks) before we again broached the subject of where to sleep. Our skylab driver mentioned Paree Huts, a new resort at a far corner of the island. However, his credibility had suffered somewhat after we discovered that he had been double dipping—ferrying around other passengers rather than waiting for us at each new circle tour destination as promised, and as my driver two years before had done. I began to have the return-trip-is-never-as-good blues.

That was before we reached Paree Huts. Looking out at an empty Gulf of Thailand rather than at the expanse of supertankers we had navigated on the way to the island, the resort felt far removed from the big city. The manager welcomed us warmly before sending us off across a series of limestone ledges with an intrepid guide to look over the available bungalows.

These bamboo structures seemed to have been designed for the African veldt rather than for the steep side of a rock-strewn island—they were tall and tufty, as though spores had blown in on the wind and established themselves randomly among the crags. Each hut was an engineering marvel, perched on skinny scaffolding but solid when walked in. They never swayed, even when the wind picked up and a rainstorm passed through during the night.

Equally impressive was the design of the swimming pool, which integrated rock outcroppings and cement to form a strange shape that hugged the contour of the hillside. I took a quick dip, my habit when surveying any new lodgings, and quickly determined that the true star among the resort’s water attractions was elsewhere. Sure enough, when we registered, a sign caught our eyes that began, “Please wear a life preserver when jumping off the cliff.” As soon as I saw that, the blues were gone for good.

My friends talked me into waiting until morning to make the leap. The light will be better then, they said, rightly suspecting that I would want photo documentation. I couldn’t wait to get out of bed the next day and head for the edge. Nobody else on land seemed to be awake, so I waited in a life jacket for my cameraman as a seabird and a fisherman each plied the now calm waters in search of sunrise catches.


When the time came to jump, I never hesitated. New memories were being made. Koh Si Chang had risen to the occasion once again.

Grandma Rests

Jip’s grandma passed away peacefully on Monday. She took a nap around noon and never woke up. That morning she refused breakfast for the first time in the 99 years and seven months of this existence (rounded up to 100 years by the designer of a large banner that hung outside the house all week).

Everyone in the village knew her. She wasn’t born there, but since arriving in the 1920s she hadn’t left often. For both of the relatively long periods she spent away from Ban Krud, she was with Jip. They lived together during Jip’s tween years, when her parents sent her to the next province north to attend middle school, a luxury that Ban Krud couldn’t afford at that time. Several years later, Jip took a job in the far north of the country, and invited Grandma to join her for a year. While there, Grandma added a few new basket making tricks to her repertoire.

Just as it takes a village to raise a child, everyone also participates in sending a grandma on to her resting place. This week dozens of people helped cook, put up tents, arrange flowers, and hang the blankets that recently have replaced wreaths as the tribute of choice. It used to be that a coffin would sit surrounded by decorative wreaths, many of them on tripods bearing a sash with the name of the donor. Nobody ever recycled those wreaths. Somewhere along the line a new tradition was born, which allows the merit associated with such a gift to keep on accumulating as the blanket gets donated to a monk at a temple or some other worthy recipient.

Five Thai kings reigned during Grandma’s life. Many years’ worth of stories about her got told during the mourning rituals at the house each evening. This afternoon’s cremation ceremony at the temple was filled to overflowing. At around 11 a.m., loud explosions were set off to let the whole village know that the ceremony would begin soon. By noon every seat was taken and the big open room was buzzing with conversation.

Jip chuckled and grinned throughout, glad to be surrounded by old acquaintances. We brought along two caregivers, which meant that she didn’t have to repeat her story endlessly to the many neighbors and classmates who hadn’t seen her for a while—in some cases over thirty years! Jip’s mom was also in a good mood. Grandma’s health had been good until about ten months ago. Since then the demands on Mom have been pretty exhausting.

Monks chanted. Boe, the only great-granddaughter, did a fine job reading a biography of Grandma that Jip’s brother Chao had done a fine job of writing. Various people went to the altar for various reasons. And then with a minimum of melodrama, the simple casket was delivered to the crematorium that is a standard part of Thai temples. Chao lifted the large photo of Grandma off its stand and walked it away from the altar, never looking back.

For much of this afternoon’s drive back to Bangkok, Jip closed her eyes and smiled. She had worn the same expression all weekend, shedding a tear only once when Boe read aloud a mention of the time Grandma had spent up north. We both were tired. Outside our bedroom window, card playing, dominoes, and chatting had lasted into the wee hours. Most likely they’ll continue till dawn tonight, as often happens on the seventh and final night of a Thai funeral.

French Street Scene

Five weeks after a fantastic reunion in Europe with mes amis and mis amigos, the memories were just starting to fade. Then Jennifer sent these pictures and instantly I was right back there.

Selective Enforcement of Emergency Decree

Hundreds of people gathered in Bangkok a couple days ago, to protest (again) Cambodia’s claim to an ancient temple along the border. Normally such a protest isn’t big news, as the issue flares up every few years. Thai politicians tend to stoke it when they hope to divert the public’s attention away from something more immediate or embarrassing.

But this time an emergency decree was supposedly in force that prevents the assembly of more than five people. Not only that, this protest was led by a fellow who has long been associated with the same group that shut down the airport with impunity during a chaotic week at the end of 2008. (Nobody has yet been prosecuted for that upper-class sit-in, while several people from lower spheres who were involved with this year’s downtown protests have not only been arrested but had their assets frozen.)

Several international human rights groups criticized the government for extending the state of emergency earlier this month. Then last Sunday, a bomb at a bus stop in central Bangkok killed one man and injured several others, around the same time that the government-backed winner of a close parliamentary by-election was announced, leading the prime minister to comment that the extension had been the right decision.

To be consistent in applying the “rule of law” (a concept politicians trot out when it suits), the government would have had to break up Tuesday’s temple dispute gathering. However, in this case the protesters’ cause has wide appeal, as often happens when issues get associated with patriotism. The protest leader acknowledged flouting the decree, but said he was willing to risk the consequences for the sake of “safeguarding Thai sovereignty.”

Pee Rahat

Here’s a Thai tradition I hadn’t known about before it was brought to my attention this week. College freshmen routinely receive the name of a sophomore who will shepherd them through the first year of school. The older one (“pee”) gives without expectation of return, providing books, treats, advice, rides home. Assignments are random—based on the students’ ID number, or code (“rahat”)—but not voluntary. Everyone gets a pee rahat who is studying the same thing they are. This intradepartmental social service, for some, is the first experience of helping or being helped by a non-family member.

Of course the system’s success varies. Some people I asked about it told me that they couldn’t remember the name of their pee rahat, and admitted that when it was their turn they didn’t take it very seriously. Yet one woman I spoke to remembered the connection to her freshman as “much better than a boyfriend.” She is still in touch with him and his whole family, and feels more like his older sister than like a mentor.

At the core of the tradition is the patron-client relationship that plays out so often in Thai workplaces. People never forget their place in the hierarchy.

Half a Decade

The verdict on Thailand, five years after arriving here: it’s still working for us. Whether or not it’s working for the average Thai person is another question.

Jip and I continue to be grateful for the many ways both of our lives have improved since we moved from Seattle. We neither expected nor earned that improvement, yet it’s undeniable. We’re healthier, richer, and much sunnier than we would have been had we stayed in the States.

OK, it’s true this place has had its ups and downs in the past year. My return to Bangkok from Spain last month didn’t generate the same little jolt of glad-to-be-home excitement that I’ve felt on most previous returns to Thailand. (Then again, any place would have seemed a little discouraging by contrast with the two weeks I had just spent with some of my favorite people anywhere.)

I'm over that little letdown now. Rainy season in the land of smiles is floating my boat. It’s a great time for running and reflection. Not to mention, Jip is in great form.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could say the same thing about the Thai political discourse? Alas, progress along the reconciliation roadmap is all but invisible. The country’s institutions just don’t seem up to the task of talking.

Maybe those conversations are going on beneath the surface. To the casual observer, though, there’s been virtually no change to the established order here, in spite of the damage done to Thailand’s reputation and economy by the airport occupations and street confrontations. Elites (and that group includes Jip and me, by the way) still follow a different set of rules from everybody else.

Or maybe, in this part of the world, change doesn’t happen through talk. Lots of people here feel it’s best if a few “phuu yai” make the decisions. Democracy, despite its many trappings throughout the region, is often seen as defective at best, pointless at worst.

Having said that, restlessness is definitely in the air. Although right now appears to be an intermission in the ongoing drama of Thai politics, the times they are a-changin’. The 21st century has brought information and influence to people from all walks of life in Thailand. The country’s mood is temperamental, and unlikely to get less so any time soon.

Composite Sketch

A copy of The Economist magazine’s year-end special issue came my way this week. Though it was already several months old, “The World in 2010” seemed worth skimming. An article that asked “Will 2010 Be a Year of Social Unrest?” caught my eye, and I thought of Thailand’s recent troubles.

Falling incomes, rising unemployment, and weakened middle classes led off the story—not much new there. Then the piece suggested that a given country’s “vulnerability to unrest depends on a host of factors.” My eyes widened as I scanned the list: degree of income inequality, state of governance, levels of social provision, ethnic tensions, public trust in institutions, history of unrest, and the type of political system (“intermediate regimes that are neither consolidated democracies nor autocracies seem the most vulnerable”). Lots of countries fit lots of those descriptions, but the article described Thailand particularly well.

Last week the government chose to extend the state of emergency in most of the provinces where it had first been declared in April. Western reaction to that decision so far has been critical, suggesting that the continuing arrests of red-shirt leaders and closing of opposition-friendly media outlets can’t help but lead to more violence. The Thai ruling class probably fears that anything hinting at compromise with the demonstrators is an invitation for the military to stage yet another coup.

Even though things are calm at the moment, and signs promoting Thai unity (“Together We Can”) have sprouted up everywhere since mid-May, 2010 will likely be a long year.

The Cup in Southeast Asia

Fresh from watching Germany take apart Argentina, let’s review Thailand’s reaction to the World Cup so far.

Wound up? Not much, unless you consider most of the country staying awake until 4am, when the marquee matches finish around here, to be a sign of excitement. Caught up? I’d have to say yes, given how many taxi drivers have been able to recall for me the scores from group stage matches that concluded more than two weeks ago (“Greece-Nigeria? That ended 2-1, if I’m not wrong.”) Vocal? Well, having lived in the same apartment for more than three years, we’ve hardly ever heard a sound from our neighbors… until the past few early mornings.

In a word, the Cup is consuming. Walking in to any of the thousands of 7-Eleven stores here, customers are greeted by clerks sporting t-shirts of the favored teams. Flags of the surviving countries hang from the ceilings. Strangers ask each other who they’re cheering for.

Next door in Burma things are apparently even more energized. According to the Irrawaddy magazine, officials there have magically become able to supply the capital with enough electricity to ensure that all of the games are broadcast live and without interruption. Normally Burmese citizens can count on only a few hours of power per day, particularly during the dry season, when hydro plants run at less than full capacity. Finally, the peoples’ interests overlap the government’s!