Thailand Confidential

by Jerry Hopkins

  Why didn’t Lamyai’s sister tell the boors to leave? Kreng jai . They were her husband’s relatives. Why, I asked, didn’t she say something to her husband? Kreng jai again. A good wife didn’t complain.

  I will add this, however. After Lamyai and I married, and I’d been around for a couple of years, I was welcomed in the garden.

  May the Force Be With You

  Not long after I moved to Thailand, I witnessed a fender bender involving a taxi and a car. The drivers, both male, emerged from their vehicles like angry animals. It was clear they were going to settle the matter of responsibility on the spot.

  Then something happened that I didn’t understand. The cab driver quickly removed his shirt and just stood there, his torso bared to the mid-day Bangkok sun, shimmering with elaborate tattoos, his back covered in Thai script. The other driver ran to his car and drove away. What I had witnessed, a friend later explained, was the magic of Thai tattoos. The driver who ran knew he couldn’t win a fistfight with a man with that much supernatural protection.

  When my wife Lamyai and I spent a long weekend in Hua Hin, staying in a bungalow near the beach, before we went to bed that night she put a one-baht coin under each pillow and when we left a few days later she said, “Good-bye, house. Thank you for sleep. See you next time.” She told me that both actions, unheard of in the part of the world I came from (the United States), were to appease the spirits in the house and the land on which it sat.

  To the outsider, Thailand may look like a modern country, with cable television available in all seventy-six provinces, internet cafes virtually everywhere you look, and what surely might be Asia’s greatest saturation of mobile phones. The vast majority of Thais also are Buddhist, or say they are, yet over centuries, the national religion has been thrown into a spiritual blender with a much older belief in supernatural forces. Thus, there are tens of thousands of men and women who make their living as astrologers, numerologists, fortune-tellers, shamans, feng shui experts, and other types of spiritualists, and tens of millions of people with computers and cell phones who follow them.

  In the West, many disparage such beliefs, calling them groundless superstition and irrational bunk. Yet, it is helpful to remember that while it is true that the wife of Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, a prime minister in the 1990s, worshipped Rahu, the god of darkness who is said to swallow the moon during eclipses, it also is true that the wife of American President Ronald Reagan consulted an astrologer and then advised her husband accordingly, and that 60 percent of all Americans say they read their horoscope regularly.

  John Hoskin explained in his book The Supernatural in Thai Life (1993) that Buddhism “is concerned primarily with man’s ultimate release from suffering, from the cycle of death and rebirth. As such, it does not address mundane problems. At the same time, it is a tolerant faith, not necessarily negating additional beliefs that may be deemed relevant and beneficial to daily well-being. Accordingly, the Thais have inherited from their animistic ancestors a host of beliefs in supernatural powers that interact with ordinary life. Rather than contradict Buddhism, these convictions are held in such a close and complex relationship with the national religion that an outsider can scarcely differentiate the dual elements.” In other words, the Thais aren’t taking any chances, and for the man with all the tattoos, they certainly protected him the day I watched him take off his shirt. Nor did any unpleasant incidents occur during our stay in Hua Hin.

  It’s probably accurate to say that a majority of Thais believe strongly in the protective power of tattoos, amulets and blessings given by monks. Lottery tickets are purchased on the basis of numbers remembered from dreams or divined while visiting a “magical” tree or shrine. Family members and village elders tie white and gold thread around others’ wrists to bring good luck. Caged birds are released for the same reason.

  The omnipresence of spirit houses in Thailand—you’ll even see them outside modern skyscrapers—stems from the belief that prior to human occupation, spirits inhabited the site and lest they become angry and bring misfortune to the new arrivals, they must be given a home of their own and daily recognition in the form of incense, food, and drink. (Often a bottle of pop with a straw in it, which always makes me smile. As does the occasional hog’s head or kilogram of bacon, two other frequent offerings.)

  Every year when new vehicle license plates are issued, fiercely competitive auctions are held for those with “auspicious” numbers. A plate with “9999” has been sold for as much as US$100,000, the cash from these sales going to the Land Transport Department’s road safety fund. Ordinary, everyday currency with “lucky” numbers is sold in shops for hundreds of times the face value.

  A shrine outside a Bangkok department store is visited by teenagers every day from nine to ten in the morning so that the “god” residing there may bless and help the lovesick. Those seeking good luck in school or in the office or any other endeavor including winning the lottery go to the Erawan Shrine, lighting candles, offering flowers, burning incense, and paying women in traditional costume to dance…then perhaps buy a lottery ticket from one of the many vendors outside the gates. Others on Tuesday nights visit a bronze stature of Rama V, the beloved King Chulalongkorn who ruled as absolute monarch from 1868 to 1910; many believe he will return to rule Thailand again, saving it from its many sins and weaknesses.

  Ghosts are a constant, a staple in magazines, books, movies and television soap operas as well as in daily life. When Lamyai’s brother Pairuen died in a motorcycle accident, an elaborate ceremony was performed at the time of his cremation to reunite his body with his spirit, which was believed to have been jarred from his body by the violence of this death. This was followed by a seven-day-long “ghost watch,” with some twenty or so relatives and neighbors spending the nights in our house; several reported sightings and the next week the house in which he died was dismantled and sold as scrap lumber.

  I remember going to a bar one night to find the movie Ghost on TV. When this film, starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, was released in Thailand, it became the most popular foreign motion picture of the year. Now I watched all the Thai women in the bar, frozen in place, mesmerized, ignoring customers as they sat staring at the box over the disc jockey’s booth, or stood nearly motionless on the stage; business practically halted until the movie ended. Another time I took an ailing computer to be examined and after half an hour the repair man said he couldn’t find anything to fix, thus my problem must be a phee, or ghost. (We in the West fear viruses; Thais fear ghosts.) Some other examples:

  In 1991, when Banharn Silpa-archa was finance minister, he ordered the removal of two wooden elephants from the front door of the Finance Ministry to a temple on the advice of a fortune-teller who said elephants would endanger his position; the surname “Silpa-archa” means “horse” and as everyone must know, pachyderms trump equines every time. Six years later, the new finance minister moved them back, hoping the move would cure the economic problems the country was having. A month after that, the baht was devalued and the economy of the entire region crashed.

  In 1996, when astrologers told Banharn that bad stars had moved into his horoscope, he changed the date of his birth from July 20, 1932, to August 19, 1932, so he could be a Leo rather than a Cancer. A government spokesman explained that the traditional Thai way of counting days differed from the international method and said that this was the source of the error. Someone else pointed out that Leo was the sign of several previous prime ministers who served long terms, implying that was the real motive. Banharn lasted a year.

  In 1995, The Nation reported that nearly one-third of all members of Parliament collected amulets as a hobby. Some of the amulets were said to be five-hundred-years old and worth as much as US$400,000.

  In 1997, the wife of Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh insisted she and her husband moved house when a fortune-teller told her that a leak in the roof and a crack in the wall of their present abode would cause troubles for the family. She and he
r husband then conducted a five-hour-long religious rite—she worships Rahu, remember—to dispel the bad luck during the time they moved temporarily into another house while the leak was fixed. It was reported that they both wore black and burned more than one hundred black candles to say farewell to the god who, presumably, remained behind to supervise repairs.

  In 2000, the army demolished an official residence for top brass because it was believed to be shrouded in ill omen; apparently bad luck had come to those who lived there. A new house was built at a cost of US$125,000.

  In 2003, it was widely reported that the 443 Thai military personnel sent to Iraq to support America’s war took with them more than six thousand Buddha amulets, pieces of blessed cloth and sacred phallic images to assure their safety. The following year, all but two of the men returned.

  In 2004, when two historians cast doubt on the authenticity of an inscription reportedly found by a thirteenth century king in Sukhothai, some five thousand residents of the former capital gathered in front of the monarch’s statue and burned chilis and salt in an act of protest, believing the ancient rite would consign the historians to a purgatory of endless flame.

  It all sounded to my “rational” Western mind like something you encountered in a novel by Stephen King and I thought a good argument could be made for the benefits that would come if superstition were somehow to vanish from the earth. I also acknowledged the possibility that the world might be thrown into chaos if these belief systems disappeared overnight…and that it would be a much less colorful place. I further knew that one of the quickest ways to get into trouble in Thailand was to examine things logically.

  As reported in the Bangkok Post (Sep. 27, 2004), some people believed that delays in construction of Bangkok’s new international airport stemmed “not from man-made errors but supernatural phenomena.” Srisook Chandrangsu, the transport permanent secretary and chairman of the New Bangkok International Airport was quoted as saying he thought the absence of a proper shrine might have caused many of the problems. When a shrine was constructed to house all the deities in the area and troubles continued, experts recommended a larger shrine.

  “A Thai-style pavilion was also built to house a foundation stone laid at the site by His Majesty the King,” the Post continued. “Before, the foundation stone was stored in a poorly illuminated place, which some believed was unbefitting, and might also have caused troubles. It has now been placed in a brightly lit place.

  “Mr. Srisook said he was confronted with countless problems when he was asked to supervise the project. But after he placed a Buddha image in a meeting room…many of the problems and arguments were peacefully resolved. ‘We have to believe that supernatural powers are real,’ said Mr. Srisook.”

  However mismatched these notions and practices may be to mine, I do not scoff. The Thai friend who explained the incident involving the tattooed taxi driver also gave me some good advice. “Not your country,” she said. “Don’t want to see you falling down.” Her English may have been somewhat quirky, but her message made good sense.

  Almost as much as my crossing my fingers, knocking on wood, throwing salt over my shoulder, worrying about broken mirrors and black cats, walking under ladders, and numbering the floors in high-rise buildings so they skipped “13.”

  Thai Time

  Nittaya Phanthachat, a friend who stayed with me from time to time when she was visiting Bangkok (she had a home in Chon Buri), told me one morning as she left my flat that she’d be back in time for us to have dinner together.

  She called at four o’clock and said she was running late, but promised to be back at eight. We still had time for dinner. No problem.

  She finally showed up two days later.

  Was I angry? No, not really. I was concerned about her safety and health, as anyone might be, but the worry, if that’s the correct word, was tempered by the knowledge that Thais don’t have the same concept of time that westerners do. In fact, not only is it different, to many of us raised in the West, it makes no sense at all, as if we’d suddenly awoken on a planet that moved around the Sun at an unfamiliar speed, with, literally, a different sense of gravity.

  Consider being on Mercury. Mercury moves with great dispatch in its journey around the Sun, averaging approximately thirty miles per second and completing its circuit in about eighty-eight Earth days. Yet, this tiniest planet and the closest in the solar system to the Sun, rotates upon its axis so slowly, the time from one sunrise to the next is equal to about 176 days on Earth. Try setting your Swatch or Rolex to that. And think about how long Happy Hour might be.

  Compared to Mercury’s, Nittaya’s sense of time was easy to grasp. I’d moved to Thailand after living for many years in Hawaii, where there was something called “Hawaiian time,” a complex system of measuring the duration of all existence, past, present, and future, that was defined by a single word: late. So, “Thai time” was just another excuse. Yes?

  That’s the farang point of view, of course. Hawaiians are never late, according to “Hawaiian time.” Identically, Thais are never late. They’ve merely been delayed, or perhaps distracted. The ancient Greeks, in whom farangs perhaps put too much faith, advised us to be “ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all” and while that may have worked in ancient Greece and back home in the twenty-first-century United States, as any fool knows, Greek thought is not included in the Thai primary school curriculum. End of discussion.

  A little harder to grasp is the Thai’s understanding of “time” as a concept. For this part of my tale, you need some patience, and perhaps a beer or a nice cuppa tea, so put this book down and get the drink of your choice—take your time!—and then take a deep breath and for just a minute, no longer, I promise, let me turn you over to William J. Klausner, a farang who came to Thailand in 1955, lived for a year in a village in Isan, was an editor of the annual publication of the Buddhist Association of Thailand, and taught at both Thammasat and Chulalongkorn Universities. A wise man.

  “One of the central concepts of Buddhist philosophy is anicang: the transitory nature of the material world in which we live; the uncertainty and impermanence of all,” he wrote in Reflections on Thai Culture (1981). “The Thai version of mañana, the tried and true answer to failed appointments and the lack of successful and timely task completion, is mai pen rai, or ‘it is nothing,’ ‘never mind,’” he continued. “Sociologists have referred to the present-oriented aspect of Thai behavior and personality. Certainly, the Thai find more psychological fulfillment in the chase than in the attainment. It is the voyage, the journey that is fun; the end result is less important. Thus, one shouldn’t be too concerned if one is some minutes or some hours late.”

  Did everybody follow that? Mai pen rai .

  It all has to do with Oriental thought, and most specifically the Buddhist vision of constant and cosmic flow. That thing about the wheel that keeps turning without any real beginning and end. I don’t know for sure, but this may be one of the reasons the Thai language doesn’t have any tenses, and for that alone I’m grateful. While English speakers have the audacity to include such things as “past perfect” and “future perfect” but no “present perfect” in the way they speak. If you ask me, it’s not a matter of Thai time making no sense, it’s the other way around.

  As for my friend Nittaya, she’d just run into some friends with whom she caught a bus to Bang Saen for a day at the beach. So her return to my flat two days late merely meant we had dinner on Tuesday instead of Sunday. No problem.

  Where a Dildo Means Good Luck

  BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!

  It’s nine o’clock at night at the Hog’s Breath Saloon when suddenly there’s a horrific pounding, as if a carpenter has been sent to remodel the place just as the first of the leggy darlings are climbing onto the stage to dance.

  No. It’s only the nightly phlad kikh ceremony, which begins the evening’s fun. In Thailand, the phlad kikh (translation: “honorable surrogate penis”) is a phallic symbol usually c
arved from wood that is believed to bring the owner—or even someone who touches it—luck. It may be small enough to hide in a pocket or wear on a chain around the neck, as big around as a man’s arm or leg, or even several meters in length.

  The one in play at the Hog’s Breath is about thirty centimeters/twelve-inches long and eight centimeters/three inches in diameter, and it’s being banged against the bar’s open front door frame, top, bottom, and sides. The scantily clad young lady holding the object now dunks the head into a glass of Thai whisky, draws a series of circles on the floor, then bangs the floor and door frame again.

  As she does this, a dozen other dancers line up behind her, extending into the bar, their legs spread wide. Now the lead bar girl bends forward at the waist, removes the glass, and slides the big wooden dick along the floor between all the high heels behind her. All the girls scream in mock ecstacy.

  The phlad kikh is returned to the young woman in charge of the ceremony, and she now makes a circuit of the bar, touching its rounded head to the loins of each girl in the bar, an act that brings more squeals. And from the male customers in attendance laughter and encouragement.

  This is no joke, or at least not entirely. In Thailand, the phallic symbol and its worship is regarded seriously, by bar girls and millions more. However it may seem to an outsider, especially in the Christian world, the phlad kikh’s origins are as legitimate as they are worldwide, going back to cave drawings of Paleolithic times, embracing the cult of Priapus in classical times, through witchcraft and paganism in early Europe, to the sensual religions of the East, as epitomized today by the Shiva lingam in India, found in every Hindu temple and in many city squares—most often as a symbol of fertility. Though Christian moralism almost totally banished phallic worship, Joshua and Solomon paid homage to a stone in the Bible (1 Kings, 3,4) and there is a similar report of Jacob’s prayers to a pillar in Genesis 28. Not everyone would agree, but the architecture of Islamic mosques bears more than a passing resemblance to phalluses.