Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  TRAVELERS’ TALES BOOKS

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Preface

  Introduction

  PART ONE - ESSENCE OF THAILAND

  Sixth Sence

  Monk for a Month

  Love in a Duty-free Zone

  The Secrets of Tham Krabok

  Moonsong and Martin Luther

  “To Eat” Means To Eat Rice

  The Reverend Goes To Dinner (at 8 a.m.)

  Ghosts of Siam

  Elephant Scream

  Meditation in a Thai Forest

  Island Entrepreneur

  Echo of the Forest

  Who Was Anna Leonowens?

  Where the Footnotes Went

  PART TWO - SOME THINGS TO DO

  Lure of the Chao Phraya

  Siriraj Hospital Museum

  Bite-sized Buddhas

  A Cooking School in Bangkok

  Wat Massage

  Paradise Found, Paradise Lost

  The Alms Bowl Village

  Take to the Hills

  Relics of Old Siam

  Highland Carnival

  Cycling Rural Thailand

  The Burning Hills

  A Pa Dawng Postscript

  Sport in the Land of Sanuk

  PART THREE - GOING YOUR OWN WAY

  Mein Gott, Miss Siripan

  Farang for a Day

  Bridge to Yesterday

  The Spirit Likes a Little Blood

  Roaches and Redheads

  Flying Kites

  Farang Correspondent

  In the Dark

  Tapir Tracks

  A Meditator’s Initiation

  In the Akha Village

  Sin, The Buffalo Man

  Could This Really Be the End?

  A German Monk

  Thai and Dry

  Under the Golden Triangle

  Mekong Days

  PART FOUR - IN THE SHADOWS

  Dark World of Gourmet Soup

  Fooling Yourself for Fun

  Walking South

  Poppy Fields

  PART FIVE - THE LAST WORD

  By the Sea

  THE NEXT STEP

  Glossary

  Index

  Index of Contributors

  Acknowledgements

  About the Editors

  Copyright Page

  CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR TRAVELERS’ TALES THAILAND

  “This is the best background reading I’ve ever seen on Thailand.”

  —Carl Parkes, author of Thailand Handbook, Southeast Asia Handbook

  “I loved Travelers’ Tales Thailand. It parts the curtain on a country that has long fascinated and mystified me.”

  —David Lamb, author of A Sense of Place

  “…The breadth and color of the collective portrait they provide of Thailand is remarkable.”

  —Colman Andrews, Los Angeles Times

  “Travelers’ Tales Thailand provides a rich and varied look at this ancient and exotic nation…[it] showed me parts of Thailand I never would have found with a map and a standard guidebook. Many of these pieces read like short stories and that’s the beauty. The places and the people are real; the events could happen to anyone.”

  —Judge’s citation, Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards

  “O’Reilly and Habegger have not settled for the obvious…. As a result this anthology offers a comprehensive and fascinating introduction to the ‘Land of Smiles.’ ”

  —The Elliot Bay Book Company, Seattle

  “For travelers who want a wider introduction to a country and its culture, Travelers’ Tales is a valuable addition to any pre-departure reading list.”

  —Tony Wheeler, publisher, Lonely Planet Publications

  “[The] essays…compose a highly personal geographical and cultural portrait of Thailand.”

  —Travel & Leisure

  “It made me homesick for Thailand.”

  —Seth Jacobson, Epicurean International, Inc.

  TRAVELERS’ TALES BOOKS

  Country and Regional Guides

  America, Australia, Brazil, Central America, Cuba, France, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, Spain,Thailand; American Southwest, Grand Canyon, Hawai‘i, Hong Kong, Paris, San Francisco,Tuscany

  Women’s Travel

  Her Fork in the Road, A Woman’s Path, A Woman’s Passion for Travel, A Woman’s World,Women in the Wild, A Mother’s World, Safety and Security for Women Who Travel, Gutsy Women, Gutsy Mamas

  Body & Soul

  The Spiritual Gifts of Travel,The Road Within, Love & Romance, Food,The Fearless Diner,The Adventure of Food,The Ultimate Journey, Pilgrimage

  Special Interest

  Not So Funny When It Happened, The Gift of Rivers, Shitting Pretty,Testosterone Planet, Danger!,The Fearless Shopper,The Penny Pincher’s Passport to Luxury Travel,The Gift of Birds, Family Travel, A Dog’s World,There’s No Toilet Paper on the Road Less Traveled,The Gift of Travel, 365 Travel

  Footsteps

  Kite Strings of the Southern Cross,The Sword of Heaven, Storm, Take Me With You, Last Trout in Venice, The Way of the Wanderer, One Year Off, The Fire Never Dies

  Classics

  The Royal Road to Romance, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, The Rivers Ran East

  Tham dii, dâi dii; tham chûa, dâi chûa.

  “Do good, get good; do evil, get evil”.

  —THAI PROVERB

  Preface

  TRAVELERS’ TALES

  We are all outsiders when we travel. Whether we go abroad or roam about our own country, we often enter territory so unfamiliar that our frames of reference become sorely inadequate. We need advice not just to avoid offense and danger, but to make our experiences richer, deeper, and more fun.

  Traditionally, travel guides have answered the basic questions: what, when, where, how, and how much. A good guidebook is indispensable for all the practical matters that demand attention. More recently, many guidebooks have added cultural and experiential insight to their standard fare, but something important is still missing. Guidebooks don’t really prepare you, the individual with feelings and fears, hopes and dreams, goals.

  This kind of inner preparation is best achieved through travelers’ tales, for we get our landmarks more from anecdote than from information. Nothing can replace listening to the experience of others, to the war stories that come out after a few drinks, to the memories that linger and beguile. For millennia it has been this way: at watering holes and wayside inns, the experienced traveler tells those nearby what lies ahead on the ever-mysterious road. Stories stoke the imagination, inspire, frighten, and teach. In stories we see more clearly the urges that bring us to wander, whether it’s hunger for change, adventure, self-knowledge, love, curiosity, sorrow, or even something as prosaic as a job assignment or two weeks off.

  But travelers’ accounts, while profuse, can be hard to track down. Many are simply doomed in a throwaway publishing world. And few of us have the time anyway to read more than one or two books, or the odd pearl found by chance in the Sunday newspaper travel section. Wanderers for years, we’ve often faced this issue. We’ve always told ourselves when we got home that we would prepare better for the next trip—read more, study more, talk to more people—but life always seems to interfere and we’ve rarely managed to do so to our satisfaction. That is one reason for this series. We needed a kind of experiential primer that guidebooks don’t offer.

  Another path th
at led us to Travelers’ Tales has been the enormous change in travel and communications over the last two decades. It is no longer unusual to have ridden a pony across Mongolia, to have celebrated an auspicious birthday on Mt. Kilimanjaro, or honeymooned on the Loire. The one-world monoculture has risen with daunting swiftness, weaving a new cross-cultural rug with it: no longer is it surprising to encounter former headhunters watching All-Star Wrestling on their satellite feed, no longer is it shocking to find the last guy at the end of the earth wearing a Harvard t-shirt and asking if you know Michael Jordan. The global village exists in a rudimentary fashion, but it is real.

  In 1980, Paul Fussell wrote in Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars a cranky but wonderful epitaph for travel as it was once known, in which he concluded that “we are all tourists now, and there is no escape.” It has been projected that by the year 2000, tourism will be the world’s largest industry; some say it already is. In either case, this is a horrifying prospect—hordes of us hunting for places that have not been trod on by the rest of us!

  Fussell’s words have the painful ring of truth, but this is still our world, and it is worth seeing and will be worth seeing next year, or in 50 years, simply because it will always be worth meeting others who continue to see life in different terms than we do, despite the efforts of telecommunication and advertising talents. No amount of creeping homogeneity can quell the endless variation of humanity, and travel in the end is about people, not places. Places only provide different venues, as it were, for life, in which we are all pilgrims who need to talk to each other.

  There are also many places around the world where intercultural friction and outright xenophobia are increasing. And the very fact that travel endangers cultures and pristine places more quickly than it used to calls for extraordinary care on the part of today’s traveler, a keener sense of personal responsibility. The world is not our private zoo or theme park; we need to be better prepared before we go, so that we might become honored guests and not vilified intruders.

  In Travelers’ Tales, we collect useful and memorable anecdotes by country to produce the kind of sampler we’ve always wanted to read before setting out. These stories will show you some of the spectrum of experiences to be had or avoided in each country. The authors come from many walks of life: some are teachers, some are musicians, some are entrepreneurs, all are wanderers with a tale to tell. Their stories will help you to deepen and enrich the experiences that you will have as a traveler. Where we’ve excerpted books, we urge you to go out and read the full work, because no selection can ever do an author justice.

  Each Travelers’ Tales is organized into five simple parts. In the first, we’ve chosen stories that reflect the ephemeral yet pervasive essence of a country. Part Two contains stories about places and activities that others have found worthwhile. In Part Three, we’ve chosen stories by people who have made a special connection between their lives and interests and the people and places they visited. Part Four shows some of the struggles and challenges facing a country, and Part Five, “The Last Word,” is just that, something of a grace note or harmonic to remind you of the book as a whole.

  Our selection of stories in each Travelers’ Tales is by no means comprehensive, but we are confident it will prime your pump, and make your use of guidebooks more meaningful. Travelers’ Tales are not meant to replace travel guides, but to accompany them. No longer will you have to go to dozens of sources to map the personal side of your journey. You’ll be able to reach for Travelers’ Tales, and truly prepare yourself before you go.

  JAMES O’REILLY AND LARRY HABEGGER

  Thailand: An Introduction

  Thailand should satisfy just about any traveler’s hunger for the exotic, the beautiful, the thrillingly different. But it is a country whose very lure for the foreigner threatens to make it a parody of itself.

  It is a country with a deep respect for family and monarchy, and a country with a huge prostitution industry and a corrupt military. It is a thriving place for business, but has serious problems with international copyright and trademark piracy. It is a physically lovely country that is, like many others, being degraded by logging, wildlife exploitation, and overdevelopment. It is a microcosm of all that is right and wrong with tourism, and the traveler’s special role as pilgrim, adventurer, and consumer.

  But above all Thailand is Buddhist. You’ll see evidence of it everywhere, in cities, towns, remote villages, deep in the forest. It influences all segments of society and cuts across all economic levels. Anyone who hopes to gain an understanding of Thailand must understand this. Failure to do so would be like going to Ireland with no appreciation of Catholicism, going to Saudi Arabia thinking Muhammad was just a boxer.

  This doesn’t mean the country is inaccessible to non-Buddhists. On the contrary, one of the Thais’ singular traits is that they don’t let religion disturb their lightheartedness and love of life. If eating meat conflicts with the Buddhist tenet proscribing the killing of any creature, never mind, the animal is already dead when the Thai obtains it. Likewise, the killing of insects such as mosquitoes cannot be helped, and the good Thai Buddhist balances such transgressions by “making merit,” giving donations of food to monks or gifts to temples. When things go haywire you’ll hear the expression mai pen rai, or never mind, it doesn’t matter. Letting petty matters get in the way of enjoying life just isn’t acceptable.

  At the same time, Thais take Buddhism seriously. Almost every male spends time as a monk, whether it be a few days or several years. Donning the saffron robe, for whatever period of time, is a highly respected endeavor. Monks are supported by the public, receiving donations of food each day as they wander the streets and byways. This tradition not only provides sustenance for the monks, but also offers a simple way for all to make merit, to learn compassion and generosity, and to enhance their progress with reincarnation.

  Thailand, the only country in Southeast Asia never to be colonized, has a long tradition of outsiders in its midst. There is a word to describe foreigners from Europe, America, or Australia: farang. It is widely used, often without negative connotation, but some descriptions are indeed unflattering. One states that farang are “exceedingly tall, hairy, and evil-smelling.” The slang word kee-nok likens them to bird dung, something that falls out of the sky. Thais are perplexed by farang obsession with time and the future and their apparent disregard for the present. They do not understand Westerners, but for the most part they take us in stride and welcome us with a unique warmth, as we should them, should we have the good fortune to go to this marvelous place.

  A Note on Spelling, Meaning, Exchange Rates, and a Warning on Other Matters that Affect the Traveler

  As with any tonal language, there are many different ways to spell transliterated Thai words, some of them more correct or less misleading than others. But for the most part we have not tried to be the arbiters of Thai-English spelling, and in most cases have used the spelling our authors chose.

  All Thai words are italicized. They are only translated the first time they appear in the text, so for those who dip in and out of the book instead of reading cover to cover, we suggest you turn to the glossary or the index for meaning.

  This is not a travel guide in the traditional sense, in which prices and accuracy of exchange rates figure prominently. Consequently, we have not tried to convert figures used by authors to current exchange rates as long as they are in a ballpark with admittedly ill-defined borders.

  We are not endorsing products used, trips made, or anything featured in the stories in this book. We urge every traveler to consult not just one, but two or three guidebooks on Thailand, and make careful inquiries about the safety of travel to remote areas. Check with your physician about any health issues that you might face. When in doubt about anything, be a good ambassador.

  Above all, talk to people who’ve been where you want to go or who’ve done the things you want to do. There is no better source, no travel habit more worth cultivat
ing.

  PART ONE

  ESSENCE OF THAILAND

  ROBERT SAM ANSON

  Sixth Sence

  Bangkok, for many, has become synonymous with sex. Robert Sam Anson begs to differ, redefining the pleasures of the flesh in Thailand’s capital.

  THE TOURIST BROCHURES WILL TELL YOU THAT BANGKOK IS THE Venice of the East and that its Thai name translates as City of the Angels. They will rattle on about the splendor of the Grand Palace, the awesomeness of the Emerald Buddha, the goldenness of the sands of Phuket, the magical charms of the hill tribes of the north. In tones no less rapturous, they will tell you that this improbable, fairy-tale kingdom—where members of the reigning Chakri dynasty are revered as demigods and where there is a coup attempt, on average, every three and a half years—is the Land of Smiles. All of which, more or less, is true.