Travel with Indigo

Without a doubt, this wonderful country is among the very best Indigo has ever visited on her long voyage thus far. It attains this distinction mostly through its people, who are among the most gentle, serene and kindly I have come across. When you encounter a Thai, even in the most perfunctory circumstance, you’re greeted by hands clasped together prayer-like, finger tips nearly touching the chin, head slightly nodded. The greater the difference in age or social status the deeper is the nod from the younger or less prominent person. With this gesture of gentility comes the all-purpose hello (in phonetic Thai, sweaty crop spoken by males and sweaty ka by females) expressed in a soft lilt. The smile of welcome that accompanies this gesture is almost always genuine, or at least you will think it is.

If they know your name, you are called, whether male or female, by the honorific Kuhn followed by your first name. Thus I would be Kuhn Phil and my wife Kuhn Kitty. It is a rather serious social infraction to raise your voice, which will be taken as a sign of both your incivility and your low regard for the listener. They are anxious to avoid giving offense and so when asked a question that calls for a direct answer, perhaps an answer they worry might offend you, they resort to indirection. This can be maddening to a Westerner until you come to appreciate the self-effacing culture and adapt yourself to it.

In struggling to understand these remarkable people, I came to the conclusion that their easy serenity is due in part to their essential nature, quite different from the nearby Burmese, Laotians and Cambodians, but mostly to their religion. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, Thailand is a nation with the soul of a Buddhist temple. Thais are 95 percent Thai Buddhist, an adaptive strain of Buddhism that mixes their ancient history and animist practices with traditional Buddhist teachings of the Theravada sect. Though called a religion, Buddhism is essentially a transcendental philosophy. Siddhartha Gautama, born into a wealthy and privileged family, lived in what is now India during the sixth century B.C. After an ascetic journey of self-discovery, he renounced his birthright in favor of a life seeking inner tranquility by abnegating all temptation. Ultimate human perfection though rarely achieved is nirvana, a state Siddhartha is said to have reached, thus becoming Buddha, the enlightened one, manifested in all statues of him by a beatific smile.

Though statues and iconography of Buddha abound in Thailand and its adherents genuflect at these and burn incense and make offerings, Buddha is not worshipped as a god but is revered as a perfection of the human being. To achieve this lofty state and the perfect happiness that accompanies it, a Thai Buddhist must embody The Four Divine States of Consciousness:

• The desire to make others happy and the ability to show loving kindness;
• Compassion for all who suffer and a desire to ease their sufferings;
• Rejoicing with those who have good fortune and never feeling envy;
• Regarding one’s fellows without prejudice or preference.

It’s hard to argue with any of these. Unlike most other religions, there is no compulsion to attend temple, contribute money, or live in a particular way. You are free to do as you like, live as you wish. Monks are only teachers there to help you along the path toward nirvana but not to hector you or preach to you. It is an entirely personal journey unburdened by guilt, shame or collective regimentation. It is also greatly appealing to Westerners with a rational turn of mind, though the part about renouncing temptation is sure to be troublesome. And their notion of reincarnation is for us mystical and baffling. Imagine too how it must complicate a family genealogy.

The effect of Buddhism on the Thai people can be seen easily in daily life. In one hotel, I visited a shop to buy a rustic article of local clothing. The shopkeeper was sold out of the piece I sought but had a colorful waist band typically worn by farmers in a pattern common to the area. With sincere apologies, he presented the waist band as a gift to atone for not having what I wanted. Now where else in the world does this ever happen?

One night I took the crew to a fine Thai restaurant in the midst of an intensely touristy jumble of shops and clamoring hordes. In paying the check I discovered I didn’t have the proper bills to leave the customary ten percent tip so instead left one of 35 percent, which by U.S. standards she richly deserved. A few minutes later while walking along a crowded pedestrian path the waitress chased me down and returned the tip saying I had left the cash on the table by mistake. I said that no, it’s a tip, and please accept it with my complements for a fine job. She replied that she would in no way accept such a sum, that it was far too generous. Thus began a reverse negotiation in which I finally persuaded her to accept 20 percent, though she did so with evident reluctance.

On another occasion, the crew and I went ashore on an island in a national park where we hired the park rangers and their extended families to prepare for us a wonderful dinner cooked outdoors on a flaming grill in rustic Thai style. It was a memorable event for us all eating on the beach under the stars, and we gladly paid the bill, about ten dollars a person. But when I tried to leave a tip they courteously but adamantly refused to accept it.

These experiences were so discordant, so utterly at odds with what we customarily encounter in similar situations, that I was taken aback and had to think on just what it might be that would prompt these people to act in this way. If you re-read the Four Divine States of Consciousness above, only then does their indifference to economic gain in the face of their own poverty begin to make sense.

The Thai language has 56 characters in its alphabet and in written form resembles a mix of Arabic, Cyrillic, and first grade scribbles. Family and given names are lengthy jumbles of the alphabet utterly unpronounceable and unspellable by Westerners, so in an apparent gesture of goodwill the Thai people long ago adopted a most fitting and delightful solution to our befuddlement. It is the universal practice when a Thai child is brought into the world to assign the baby a nickname, usually chosen by the mother and always thankfully concise. The name sticks with the child through its entire life. What I found especially charming about this practice are the names themselves. I encountered people whose Thai nickname, rendered in English, were Sand, Moon, Star, Timber, Pig, Water, Watermelon, Chicken, Black, Red, Fat, and White. How can you not love a people with a playful sense of humor like this? The practice does have a minor flaw. One lady I met, who in later life had grown to generous proportions, bore the unfortunate though apt nickname Watermelon. She bore it with great pride and a cheerful nature that endeared her to everybody she encountered. After all her nickname might have been Fat.

Thailand is an unstable constitutional monarchy but its royal family is nevertheless treated with great reverence. In practice this means that postage stamps bearing the king’s image are never licked for adhesion, currency with his image is never stepped on as in the case of a dropped bill, or kept in a shoe. You will never here a Thai speak disparagingly of the royal family if for no other reason they may be charged with the criminal offense of lese-majesty and sentenced up to eight years in prison. I once made a jocular remark about the king’s unfortunate choice of eye glasses and was quickly admonished. This reverence for a monarch is about as antithetical as you can get for an American.

Thais are remarkably modest and rather fastidious in their dress and public behavior. Despite the hot, humid tropical climate, they are always neatly turned out, wear spotless garments, and practice good hygiene no matter their station in life. Thais outside of the more cosmopolitan Bangkok usually swim fully clothed, rarely wear shorts and never tank tops. Couples don’t hold hands in public or otherwise display affection toward each other. There are many other social and language conventions, taboos and matters of religious etiquette, not easily apprehended by an outsider, that make the Thai culture rich and varied and offer the visitor a minefield of opportunity for social blunders.

The country is not without its flaws, mostly minor imperfections you would expect from a country with a GDP per capita about a third that of the U.S. But it does have in my judgment one glaring deficiency and that is that its immigration policies not only fail to exclude but inexplicably encourage visitation by Scandinavians arriving on low budget package tours. Those we encountered had DNA that, it seemed, had been successfully cleansed of any trace of the affable gene. Offer them a friendly wave, a cheerful grin, an attempt at kindly eye contact, even an amiable hello and they respond with the charmless vacant manner common to a man suffering the advanced stages of constipation. Thanks to generous social welfare programs and lengthy vacations, they appear in hordes on the beaches of Thailand each winter all doughy and pallid and remain there for several months. At times there are no other people in sight.

There is one other matter of note, this one of rather larger importance. Its domestic airlines, like the grandly named Royal Thai Air, don’t serve alcohol either in flight or even in the first class lounges. Can you imagine? I think it has something to do with reverence for the king, but still there is just no satisfactory excuse for this disregard of the innocent traveler. Apart from these few imperfections there is hardly a finer place on earth than Thailand.

One day I needed to see a local doctor to get a prescription so our agent in Phuket set up the appointment for a few days hence. On that day I was driven to a fine modern hospital in whose reception lobby I was warmly greeted by a most comely English-speaking administrator. After completing a few perfunctory forms, I was ushered into a gleaming, spotless, apparently refrigerated, waiting room. There I sat for all of ten minutes before being called in to see the doc, a diffident tiny Chinese guy sitting at a desk in an examination room, everything sterile clean and frigid. After a few questions, he scribbled my prescription and handed it to me, I walked out and paid his and the hospital’s charges, a total of, I promise you this is the truth, seven U.S. dollars. I then took the prescription to the hospital’s pharmacy, the only place where his prescription was valid, got the meds at a similarly laughable price and departed. The entire experience consumed not more than thirty minutes of my life. Hello, U.S. Congress!

Medical tourism is a big business in Thailand and in no place is it bigger than the resort island of Phuket. It has become common for the malformed people of the world to go there in the hope that deftly done plastic surgery will make them perfect. Medical facilities and the quality of their doctors and staffs in Phuket are first rate, and there is the added advantage of a lovely place in which to recover from the ordeal. I don’t know whether it’s of interest to you or not, but it’s said that the transgender conversion surgery available in Phuket, indeed in most of Thailand, is among the best in the world. Just thought you might want to know.

Since ancient times, going all the way back to Buddha himself, massage has been part of the medicinal arts of Thailand. Back then, and until quite recently, if you were ill you went to your local wat, or temple, and were administered a massage by a monk. From that humble origin, Thai massage has grown to the point that in some resort towns massage shops outnumber bars. The best and least costly are those found in thatch roofed, raised floor pavilions found along most beaches. Differently from conventional massage techniques, the Thai version is administered without oil and is essentially a form of forced stretching. Done properly at full strength, it can be quite painful. Though its therapeutic value for creaky joints and sore muscles is impressive, the Thai massage seems to have no beneficial effect on hangovers, a regrettable shortcoming.

The social elites of Thailand, as with other countries of Southeast Asia, are part Chinese and as such have generally lighter skin. This fact and its corollary—the darker your skin the more you will be thought of as a common laborer—leads to noticeable efforts to block the sun. Ever since Bali I have seen people riding along on motorbikes, working in the hot sun, even strolling along a street, covered in clothes more suitable to fall in New England.

Long sleeve shirts buttoned to the neck, broad brimmed sun hats, and even shrouds draped over the head and tied under the chin are common and it’s not to prevent skin cancer. Chemist shops are filled with emollients and pills intended to lighten the skin. Thais will even remark to each other about their skin color. One Thai lady who very uncharacteristically liked to sunbathe said she was frequently asked, “Why are you so black?” We whites lie in the sun all day trying to acquire the color of fried chicken while they want to look like raw chicken.