In the Kingdom of Siam – Theo’s blog

At exactly 8am, as we hoick our baggage into the homely tile and timber concourse of Udon Thani Station, all the Thai people around us – guards and porters, vendors and cabbies, coffee-clutching business travellers, school kids, blue-haired goth teens and peasant family groups – stop and stand eerily still where they are, like paralysed manakins.  We alone continue our forward momentum, before we recognise over the tannoy the cheesy martial strains of what can only be the Thailand national anthem, and shuffle to an awkward halt.

Nobody looks particularly keen, it’s more like pedestrians waiting for a light to change, and once the forgettable anthem ends, the busy world recommences.  Now though I’m aware that, unlike in Laos, it’s not Lord Buddha who commands the public space from flower-decked shrines and massive framed portraits, but the figures of the regally adorned King and his consort. 

Smiling subtly the tall queen looks elegant, passive and benign beside him, while the King has an awkward expression neither happy, contented, or stern and commanding, but more like a man who has just flown in from his playboy life in Germany to pose in a role he hasn’t bothered to properly rehearse, looking like a distracted stand-in desperate for the photoshoot to be over so that he can take off this ridiculous sword and get back to his private jet.  

I can neither confirm nor deny whether this is an accurate picture of the Millfield educated, thrice divorced, wealthiest monarch on the planet.  Neither would I want to since, as our Chiang Mai cousins explain to me, any public criticism of Thai royal personages – or their pets – could be punished with anything from a fine to a 35 year prison sentence. Personally I have nothing but the deepest admiration for his royal highness and his $50 billion.

The daily royalist ritual feels oddly anachronistic as a visitor to this country, which in other ways is so relaxed, cosmopolitan, and socially liberal.  I’m told there’s no problem here being gay or lesbian, cannabis is legal, and “transsexuality” is part of life without any confusion over sex and gender. The open sex industry I think we all know about, though it wasn’t on display in northern Thailand, and it no doubt involves a darker undercurrent of poverty, trafficking, addiction, child abuse, rural debt and criminal wealth.  But although I expected Thailand to be a country whose innocence and undeveloped economy had laid it open to western exploitation through tourism, what I found was a more self-assured and tolerant picture, in the only nation out of 7 on the Indochina peninsula not to have been previously subject to a colonial power.  Thailand belongs to itself.

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It continues to strike me in Indochina how poised people are between the structure and rhythm of old religion and rural life, and the benefits and chaos of a modern economy.  The Buddhism seems to bring a benevolent and respectful tone to daily life, even if its influence inevitably decreases with modernising materialism.  “Please give seating priority to monks” says a sign on the station platform. Like something from a globalised connectivity advert, monks sit in contemplation of their smartphones, just like everyone else. But maybe it’s a special meditation app!  Our friends suggest that the monks may be getting less respect now, since siding with reactionary political forces in recent anti-monarchy protests.  There’s also separatist troubles further south, where some Muslim majority people feel more akin to Malaysia.

But still the temples and mini-shrines and flowers and figurines are everywhere, lending a beauty to daily life which isn’t created for profit or self publicity.  I think we’ve lost that, and one way or another humans need it, even if it’s just to keep a sense of wonder;  even if it’s just for the reassurance that somehow we’re part of a bigger pattern. Even if it’s just the apparently pointless rituals of prayer uniting a people.

Maybe, even if it makes people practice generosity for purely selfish reasons, like the massive temple of temples, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, on the mountain above Chiang Mai, rammed with hundreds of golden statues of Buddhas, Gods and Abbots – and even a fully decorated Christmas Tree (for Jesus or Odin?) – where people come to trade donations for luck and reassurance.  My favourite feature was a popular sacred slot machine which, after spinning to the sound of a pre-recoded mantra, generates your personalised karmic good fortune advice. .

Thai Retirement

I can understand the attraction Thailand has for older westerners, and not just the lonely aging white men you see with their darker younger wives, bringing to mind Mrs Merton’s question: “What was it that first attracted you to multi-millionaire Paul Daniels?”.  Anyone with modest means who’s ready for a simple life in a relatively stable, friendly country where growing bananas, mangos, passion fruit, star fruit, mulberries, avocados and cashews is easier than growing carrots in Britain, (and you can probably survive speaking mainly English), might easily decide to find a place here.  I feel that attraction myself when we visit our cousins beautiful home in the mountains and dine out at a roadside organic restaurant overlooking its own rice fields.  

The variety of bird life and the chorus of their calls and songs would be enough reason to retire here in itself.  Not to mention the buzzing street markets and flea markets where I believe you could literally find and afford whatever you needed to build a DIY life.  We spent many hours meandering, looking at amazing tools and gadgets we couldn’t possible add to our luggage, serenaded by uniquely mellow Thai rock ballads from competing sound systems, pleasingly  sung in Thai language and style.

But I’m not sure personally that I could adapt this late in life to the heat and dust of the burning season, or the rain and flood of the wet season, both of which are going to either get respectively hotter and wetter, or weirdly stormier and drier, in the atmospheric chaos ahead.  

But oh my Budd, how I’m going to miss those zero-carbon, guilt-free avocados!

Theo, Thailand, October