Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides) Page 2
But that is not why I come here, and—eschewing such worn-out destinations as Paris, London, and Rome and the whole of the sun-splashed Caribbean—have been coming here off and on for nearly twenty years. What brings me to Thailand are reasons far more basic and far more elusive. It is, you see, the most sensuous spot on earth.
All right, I know what you are saying. Even from here, in my orchid-filled aerie high above the Chao Phraya river, with the smell of cooking curries wafting in and the sun glistening off the spires of Wat Po—even from here, literally halfway around the world, where I awake each morning to the sound of crowing cocks and chanting monks, I can see the smirks. “Sensuous, huh? What this guy really means is sexual.”
There are three specifically Thai concepts you’re bound to come across and which may help you to comprehend a sometimes laissez-faire attitude to delayed buses and other inconveniences.The first, jai yen, translates literally as “cool heart” and is something everyone tries to maintain—most Thais hate raised voices, visible irritation and confrontations of any kind. Related to this is the oft-quoted response to a difficulty, mai pen rai—“never mind,” “no problem,” or “it can’t be helped”—the verbal equivalent of an open-handed shoulder shrug which has its base in the Buddhist notion of karma. And then there’s sanuk, the wide-reaching philosophy of “fun” which, crass as it sounds,Thais do their best to inject into any situation, even work. Hence the crowds of inebriated Thais who congregate at waterfalls and other beauty spots on public holidays, and the national waterfight which takes place every April on streets right across Thailand.
—Paul Gray and Lucy Ridout, The Rough Guide Thailand
You have a point. Pleasures of the flesh there are in Thailand, and in ingenious profusion, as anyone who has been here, including a million or so R&Ring GIs—not to mention innumerable “boom-boom” touring Japanese businessmen—can attest. But though I am informed (secondhand, of course) about these wonders and have had described to me, almost quiveringly, the salubriousness of the Patpong Road-style “body massage” (for a modest fee, an amiable young lady employs hers to rub yours), such is not the stuff I am talking about. By sensuous, I mean just that: having to do with the five senses, to which I would add a sixth, the imagination. In the excitation and stimulation of these, Thailand has no peer.
Given the competition from the likes of, say, pre-hippie-invaded Bali, that is a heady claim. But throughout the years, a lot of others have come to the same conclusion, including a young Polish seaman who put in here a century ago, before taking up his first command. His name was Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, and from what he recorded about his arrival in this “Oriental capital which had yet suffered no white conqueror” (it still hasn’t), he seems to have been impressed. “Here and there,” he wrote, “towered great piles of masonry, king’s palace, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated, crumbling under the vertical sunlight, tremendous, overpowering, almost palpable, which seem to enter one’s breast with the breath of one’s nostrils and soak into one’s limbs through every pore of the skin.” Smitten by the sensuality of Bangkok, the seaman was to return here frequently. Later he became a writer and changed his name—called himself Joseph Conrad.
Sometime after Conrad, another writer—this one named Somerset Maugham—came to Thailand, contracted malaria, and nearly died. None of which diminished his enthusiasm for the place. At twilight, he wrote, he would sit on the veranda of his hotel and gaze out across the Chao Phraya at the distant trees, whose lacelike silhouettes reminded him of a Japanese print. One evening, he went on, “a flight of egrets flew down the river, flying low and scattered. They were like a ripple of white notes, sweet and pure and spring-like, which an unseen hand drew forth, like a divine arpeggio from an unseen harp.”
By my own first visit to Thailand, as a holidaying war correspondent from Vietnam, the egrets Mr. Maugham had written about had long since departed, casualties of Bangkok’s urban sprawl. There were still trees along the Chao Phraya, but fewer of them, because of the apartment buildings that were springing up. The sunlight Conrad had described so vividly remained, of course, as did the crumbling temples and palaces, even if they were becoming soot-stained under the capital’s choking pollution. In my hotel room (the same one in which Maugham lay delirious from malaria), I could hear the sounds of the city, though not, I fear, the soft susurrus of the casuarinas. Instead, there was the honking of cars, the sputtering of samlors, and the cries of hawkers promoting “look-look” shows. Other things were missing as well, including Jim Thompson, the former OSS man and Thai Silk King, who had lately disappeared in Malaysia, the victim, depending on who was telling the tale, of either a tiger or an unnamed intelligence agency. I wondered, on that first brief visit to Thailand, what all the hoo-ha was about.
Later I learned, which is the way it is, both with Thailand and with sensuality. Neither of them immediately smacks you in the face. Rather, the country and the quality unfold: gradually, languorously, like the petals of a water lily at first light.
In short, you can’t go looking for sensuousness, here or anywhere else. You have to let it overcome you, and the way to start is by getting hot. For some reason, heat and sensuality go hand in hand (when, for instance, was the last time you heard Siberia described as sensuous?), and the heat in Bangkok, where the Thai start donning sweaters when the temperature drops below 85 degrees, is an extraordinary kind. Five minutes in it and you are drenched to the skin. After an hour, your mind is on its way to being parboiled. It starts playing tricks. The noisy tuk-tuks, which from the tinted-glass windows of the air-conditioned hire-car seemed like so many three-wheeled menaces, take on an inexplicable charm. The street sellers’ sweets, which had previously aroused only worries of dysentery, seem indescribably tempting. Even the smell of urine, which permeates many a Bangkok back alley, seems, if not agreeable, pungently natural. The hotter it gets, the longer you stay out in it, the more you find yourself seduced, lured. And then, even without realizing it, you are captured.
Once Bangkok has gotten hold of you, it begins revealing its sensual treats. There is, for starters, the food, which has an effect quite unlike any other on the palate.Thai cuisine is famous—some would say notorious—for being hot, and much of it is. Its spiciness, though, is not of the Mexican or Indian variety. Bite into a chili relleno or spoon down a mouthful of no-holds-barred Bengali curry and your taste buds are not so much tickled as bludgeoned into submission.With Thai food, even the brings-tears-to-your-eyes sort, it’s different, not in the BTU level but in the kind of warmth it brings to the tongue. Sample, say, a chicken-in-coconut-milk soup or a fried catfish salad, and you find your mouth percolating with the complexity of half a dozen tastes and spices—a little mint here, a little ginger over there, a little cilantro, garlic, and sweet onion somewhere else—all conspiring to bring pleasure. And fiendishly conspiring, at that. For no matter how incendiary the initial experience, how sincere the vows not to tempt gustatory fate again, one finds oneself unable to resist another bite.
Tuk-tuk
At this point in the meal, you are ready to delve into some of the more arcane items on the menu, like serpent’s head soup, horse balls (they aren’t what you think they are), or, my personal favorite, urgent beef—so named, apparently, because of the urgent need one has for liquid refreshment after consuming it. All notions of dieting (a concept welcomely alien to Thailand) are put aside. The ingredients are healthy and fresh, and besides, the Thai at the next table, none of whom have a millimeter of fat, are shoveling down helpings from eight different dishes. Thus assured, you signal for several more of your own—and after that, dessert. Invariably, it is fruit, except that it doesn’t look or taste like fruit. The slices of pineapple, watermelon, papaya, and mango are recognizable enough, as, after a bit of examination, is the tangerine, whose top rind has been quartered and pulled back so that it resembles an oversized camellia. The intensity of their flavor, however, comes as a shock. Even more startling in appearance, texture, and
taste are a number of other fruits—mangosteens, Chinese apples, and rambutans—which are all but unavailable in the West. And even they pale in sensual significance next to the appeal of the durian. Supposedly a member of the fruit family, the durian, which resembles a pineapple crossed with an armadillo, has a teeth-chattering sweetness that, by Thai standards, is rather conventional. It is the aroma one never forgets. The best description I have heard of it—from a Singapore hotelier who refuses to allow it on his premises—is “one ton of overripe Limburger cheese, only more so.”
Another way to describe the durian experience: “Eating durian is like sitting on the toilet eating your favorite ice cream.”
—JO’R and LH
Durian fruit
The essence of Thailand is simply expressed in its fruits—exotic, sweet to the taste, and almost infinite in variety. Here are some of the common ones:
Durian—the prickly skinned fruit known for its fierce smell has a shell so thick that it is regarded as an offensive weapon in Thailand. Some say it’s an acquired taste.
Longan—a relative of the lychee, round, about the size of a large grape, it has a sweet, white flesh. Mangosteen—its maroon-colored skin reveals delicate white flesh that is a favorite with foreigners. Pomelo—looks like an oversize orange with a similar, but sweeter taste.
Rambutan—smallish, hairy-looking; appears to be the last thing you would ever want to put in your mouth, but its white fruit is enchantingly sweet.
Also be sure to taste the Thai variants of the banana (kluai), mango (mamuang), papaya (malako), and pineapple (sapparot).
—Gault Millau: The Best of Thailand
Suffice it to say that the food of Thailand, like the country itself, leaves an impression on the senses that lingers long after the experiencing of it is done.
Of course, it never is quite done. The Thai are among the world’s great snackers, and they can be found munching day and night. There is much to tempt them, not only in the dozen-per-block food stalls and sidewalk soup kitchens that together give Bangkok the smell of one vast stewing pot but also in pile after shimmering pile of fruit, vegetables, spices, fish, meat, poultry, and condiments of every size, color, manner, and description. And the edibles are only the beginning. Any market of consequence will also be piled high with bunches of fresh-cut orchids, roses, and chrysanthemums (for use at home, or in devotions to Buddha, whose enigmatic image peers down from everywhere), to say nothing of glistening bronze ware, iridescent silks (Thailand’s are among the world’s finest and are certainly the most acidic in hue), gleaming cutlery, and, in many markets, “never-can-tell, boss” imitations of Calvin Klein jeans, Gucci luggage, Izod shirts, and Rolex and Cartier watches. All of which— along with puppy dogs, cats, squirrels, goldfish, monkeys, and mayor-may-not-be-real antiques, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds—are sold, bartered, hawked, and bargained for to the accompaniment of native and American music turned to ear-splitting volume.
If you keep your head in these places, you can get a good buy. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you can also gain an appreciation of some of Thailand’s sensuality. There are, for instance, the colors—a spectacular array of them, from the coolest blues to the deepest crimsons—and the at once chaotic yet ordered way in which goods are displayed. Even the humblest street vendor labors to ensure that his small store of whatever—be it a mound of peppers, a cache of scarlet runner beans (they’re like the American variety, only five feet long), a sackful of religious amulets—is arranged to please the eye, his own and those who might chance to buy. Unlike in the West, where so much of what we consume is spread out in prepackaged, flash-frozen, take-it-or-leave-it heaps, in Thailand, presentation is, if not everything, a whole lot of it. You see an item and you instinctively want to touch it, handle it, smell and taste it. After a time, even the cacophony around you makes sense. The music, the saffron-robed monks, the chattering women, the sing-song tonal language, the astonishing natural bounty—it is all part of a piece.
The shards of this piece lie everywhere in Bangkok: in the markets; in the temples (one of which, Wat Trimitr, features a Buddha image constructed from five and a half tons of gold); in the gaily painted tuk-tuks; in the sinuous rhythms of classical Thai dance; in the woven lotus necklaces that festoon the rearview mirrors of the taxicabs; in the constant smell of burning charcoal and smoldering joss; in the wind chimes and temple bells that really do tinkle; in the skyful of kites that “fight” over the Grand Palace in February and March; in the candy-colored, ever-pulsating neon lights; in the stylized serpent images that guard the gables of buildings; in the water towers designed to look like flower blossoms; in the palm leaves that are used to wrap purchases, the twisted reed that doubles for rope, and the bamboo that substitutes for metal scaffolding; in the huge multicolored trucks adorned with flags and beaten-metal Buddha images; in the naked children splashing unself-consciously in the river; in the New Year’s custom of laughingly dousing strangers with water bombs; in the sight of an elephant turning up incongruously in a rush-hour traffic jam (and being given the right of way); in the barber who massages your fingers and shoulders after she cuts your hair; in the laundry that comes back gift-wrapped with an orchid attached to it; in the songbirds that are purchased for the express purpose of being set free; in the constant parade of honking, chugging, wheezing traffic up and down the Chao Phraya; in the royal topiary that is clipped, literally, with tweezers; in the torpor of the ceiling fans and the gauziness of the mosquito nets; in the sweet, sugarcane taste of the local whiskey; in the hand-holding habit of male Thai friends; in the eyes of Thai women, who, when you look at them, look right back; in a million other ordinaries that are the stuff and fabric of Thai life.
I have been trying to understand and give in to this life for nearly two decades now, and every day brings a new sensual discovery.
Often, it comes from the unexpected. Like driving to an appointment and finding, on one of Bangkok’s busiest street corners, just down the block from McDonald’s and a stone’s throw from the local VD clinic, a throng of Buddhists paying bowing, jossburning, gold-leaf-laying homage to a flower-bedecked image of Brahma. As you watch, open-mouthed, the Thai dancers in glittering sequined costumes snaking gracefully through the crowd, it suddenly strikes you: Brahma is a Hindu god. No matter, he is a sensuous, good-hearted fellow, capable of all manner of great deeds, and for the Thai, who are nothing if not catholic in their tastes, that’s what seems to count.
In the sensual mélange that is Bangkok, you are always finding things like that, often in the unlikeliest of locales. Go, for instance, to the Rajadamnoen boxing stadium and you witness not just two young pugilists beating each other’s brains out with fists, elbows, knees, and feet (everything but biting goes) but almost a ceremony of carefully choreographed aggression, complete with a ringside orchestra of drums, cymbals, and flutes. The protagonists enter the ring dressed in multicolored embroidered robes, bow to each other and to the crowd (which is engaged in a frenzy of betting), then fall on their knees for several minutes, seeking Buddha’s intercession (“O Lord, give me a good left hook.”). Then, something that can only be described as very Thai happens: the fighters begin to parade around the ring, not so much exercising as dancing, and a very feminine, sensual sort of dance it is. There’s nothing in the rules of Thai boxing that requires them to do this, but invariably they do, as if they are proud of their bodies and want to strut their stuff. The fight that follows is nearly as exotic. It’s vicious enough—there’s no knockout like the one that results from a swift kick to the chin—but in its own peculiar way highly sensual, too, like a confrontation between a mongoose and a cobra. The fighters slowly circle each other, the crowd rhythmically chants, the flutes play and the cymbals chime, and when it is over, everyone—even the poor fellow who picks himself up off the canvas—seems very glad to have been a part of it.
There is a lot of noise at these matches, as there is nearly everywhere in Bangkok. The Thai are mad about so
unds, and they like to hear as many of them as possible, preferably several different ones going on at the same time. There is, for instance, the riverboat anchored beneath my balcony, which, before setting out on its evening cruise, honks its whistle—the first stanza of “Oh Susanna.” Call the Federal Express office and, when you are put on hold, an electronic tone plays “Home on the Range.” Call me and my phone will play you a rendition of “Happy Birthday” followed by “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” And so it goes, not merely on the phone or in elevators or in markets or in shops, but everywhere. Always the sound of something engaging the ear.
The sounds, the sights, the sensations—the sheer sensuality—are what keep me coming back to Bangkok. And still I am discovering more.
The other afternoon, for instance, I was returning from the Foreign Correspondents Club, where every Saturday a two-week-old edited version of five days’ worth of Dan Rather is shown. With satellites, we could no doubt have Rather’s revelations the same day, but I, for one, am glad for the delay. It makes what Dan says less ominous, and, no small wonder, Dan himself seems rather funny. In any case, I was coming back the way I always do, which is to say, up the river by longtail boat, then by foot down a little soi off one of the main drags. In hardly more than a hundred paces, I had entered a large wat, or temple, and an entirely different world. Instead of traffic, car horns, and filth, there was a huge, palm-lined courtyard, where the only sounds were the padding of monks’ feet and the occasional screeching of parrots. A pair of ponies ambled by; then a water buffalo; then a brace of bulls, massive and white; and finally an aggregation of dogs, cats, and roosters, off on some mutual adventure. Emerging from the wat, I was, in a moment, back in modern Bangkok, where as usual the traffic was snarled, this time by a pair of half-dressed sewer workers who, apparently not having much to do, had curled themselves up, one atop the other, for a midday nap in the middle of a bustling intersection. No one seemed especially bothered by this. At length, I reached my apartment and, following Thai custom, doffed my shoes before walking barefoot across the cool, polished teak floor. It was then that it hit me: not the wat or the Rather newscast or the longtail boat or the laborers dozing in the roadway, all of which I was used to by now, but the feel of the floor on my feet. A very small thing, but a way of letting you know that you have entered somewhere different; a way, too, of conveying that, for all the barriers we place against feeling, we are still alive. That, I suppose, is what the sensuality of Thailand comes down to: a constant reaffirmation of the astonishing variety of life.