by Ken Austin
Choose a topic and there are myths. For example, food. Myths about food can be so pointedly absurd that I lose friends when I hear them repeated by otherwise sane people because I have to start barking with laughter in their faces. The one that always gets me is the “there’s a certain beer that’s manufactured in Thailand that has formaldehyde in it.” Now, formaldehyde is used in the pasteurizing process of many beers and trace amounts may remain once it has been bottled. But the inane insistence that it is added as some kind of special ingredient makes me want to start throwing haymakers. Do the credulous louts who repeat these dimwitted claims honestly think through what the meeting sounded like where the decision to add formaldehyde was made?
“We’ve got a quality product here. It’s won over people in taste tests. We’ve got a solid distribution network sorted out. Hell, we’ve got a government ensured monopoly. We’re ready to roll. But we’re missing something.”
“How bout we add some ingredient that could possibly poison people, damage our reputation beyond belief and result in endless lawsuits? Like say, formaldehyde.”
“Are you insane?”
“No, imagine the cachet we’ll gain from countless lovers of the “sinister mysteries of the orient” type of horseshit repeating this fact while they continue to chug back our beer? Hell, we don’t even have to add it. Let’s just employ some shady looking locals full-time to go around to bars telling this tale to the most gullible looking foreigners.”
“But won’t the knowledge, even if it’s really false, dissuade people from drinking our beer?”
“No, it’ll make them think they’re hard cases. They knock back a few bottles and then scurry down to the local phone box to telephone their mommies for a cash infusion to be wired so they can continue drinking and acting like hard cases.”
“You’re a genius!”
The other one that grates is the “street vendors use motor oil to cook food.” Again, the asinine aspect is rarely considered as this bromide is repeated time and again.
“Hey, we can buy reasonably priced cooking oil which is available anywhere or we could buy much more expensive motor oil which would make our food taste like crap and would drive away what few customers we have.”
“Well then, there’s really nothing to consider. Buy the motor oil.”
Apart from these absurdities, there are other nastier realities that somehow don’t rate the same exchanges of knowing looks and furtive glances. For example, the amount of pesticides used on fruits and vegetables and the amount of oil—the proper kind for cooking—used to fry foods.
Many people outside of Asia or those who have never visited may have a vague, general idea that all Asian food is inherently healthy. Some northern Asian cuisine, such as Japanese, with a great deal of steamed seafood and vegetables is much healthier than a lot of Thai food.
Depending on where you eat, a lot of Thai food is soaked in oil and fried in it with abandon. Big greasy woks filled with lakes of sizzling oil rammed full of food swimming in the artery hardening swill. Though it definitely isn’t motor oil, it certainly isn’t of a high grade. Walk down any sidewalk lined with street vendors hawking their grub and a greasy veil hangs in the air and stings your eyes.
Whippet thin, lean-arsed Thais are being replaced by slothful hogs with piggy little eyes buried in mounds of flesh on their swollen faces. The children are the worst. As in the west, a generation of bloated porkers are being fattened up on rivers of sugary drinks, awaiting the day when they can ride the wave of a full-scale national health-care crisis directly into their early graves.
Another assumption made by every tourist sprinting to the bogs to spray the contents of his or her guts into the toilet, is that Thais suffer no such annoyances. “They must have guts made out iron,” the thinking goes. “They’ve been slamming back chilies since they day they were squeezed into existence. Those lucky bastards can eat whatever they want and suffer no ill health.”
I can confidently report that Thais suffer percolating guts with just as much frequency as the rest of us. And like with tourists and expats, their stomach problems are just as often related to poor food hygiene as to overly spicy food. Sadly, there seems to be a good portion of Thais in the business of serving up food who just don’t take common cleanliness very seriously. It’s still not uncommon to see uncooked meat sitting in trays at the front of an open air restaurant exposed to the sun, as if the sight will entice people to order up a few dishes. Apparently, the ploy often works.
Slop-houses are restaurants which precook large helpings of a number of different dishes and then display them in stainless steel pans, ready to be slopped onto plates. In fact, many of these places have some great food. The trick is in ensuring it’s a popular place and the slops haven’t been stagnating for too long.
It is interesting to note that the popularity of Thai food in the west in recent years doesn’t give the merest glimpse into the real culture of food in Thailand itself.
Take mayonnaise for example. The sickliest, sweetest bastardized version you can fathom. In great stomach churning gobs on just about anything. Thais absolutely love the vomit-inducing stuff. Squeezed onto any and every type of food imaginable. There is a putrid, ersatz type of pizza that is sold at some shops which has in place of cheese, that’s right, yellowing dastardly mayonnaise. Blech!
Especially prone to the nastiness are pastries, for which Thais truly are the world’s absolute worst purveyors—don’t worry, we’ll get to what they are good at in the culinary world, of which there is a lot. Travel to any of the handful of neighbouring countries that were colonized by the French in years gone by and you can sample high quality baguettes and croissants. Not in Thailand.
When I am surveying the shelves in the bakery section at the local supermarket, the ones loaded with croissants, cakes and breads of all types, all oozing with that nasty otherworldly breed of mayonnaise, I always imagine what led to such an atrocity.
Maybe it can be traced back to the training days for new hires.
“Alrighty ladies and gentleman, welcome to Phlegmco. We’re a huge chain of British supermarkets that has invaded your country in the past few years. We’re going to pay you a kick-in-the-teeth salary every month, and for that we expect professionalism and diligence.
“Now, you are lucky enough to be working in our bakery section. There are detailed recipes for all our products, ones that have been perfected over weeks of trial and error. Our customers in Britain have been stuffed full of our delectable baked goods for years.
“The four of you gathered here today are the lucky ones. You are being fitted with a special hygienic backpack with an 80-litre drum filled with mayonnaise. As you may well know already, many of our top selling products include mayonnaise as an ingredient. Therefore, it your job to walk throughout our vast production plant adding those lovely, beautiful dollops of flavour to various creations.
“You will have a list of tasks to accomplish every day. Specific batches of freshly baked treats that require the finishing touch of mayonnaise. You will also be summoned by other workers at various times to add mayonnaise to pieces that may have been insufficiently covered. And, when communication breaks down on occasion, or it is unclear whether the mayonnaise is necessary on a specific item, you will have the responsibility and authority to make that decision.
“Therefore, you are very important to this operation.
“Now! Go forth and smear, spread and smother without fear, with a judicious sense of duty, honour and respect for how much Thais crave this nasty goop we call mayonnaise!”
“Oh yeah, I can get used to this,” Somchai thinks as he starts getting a feel for the pump action lever that sends out a stream of mayonnaise.
“Does this freshly baked pan of scrumptious croissants need to be soaked in mayonnaise?”
“Ahhh, mmmm, let’s see. I’m not too sure, yeah might as well give em’ a hit.”
“Hee, hee, hee!” Somchai starts to develop a thrill at the power
he has over determining the taste of most of the baked products on the shelves.
“What about these delicately baked, tender and flaky pastries? Do they need any mayo?”
“Well, they seem to be topped with some expensive strawberry filling and dusted with icing sugar. You know what? Lay the damned mayonnaise to ‘em. You can never be certain!”
“Heeeeyaaa!”
He develops a glazed look in his eyes, similar to the shiny gloss that develops on the lumps of rancid mayonnaise he starts blasting onto any pastry that comes within his line of vision. He walks with a strange kind of stiff-legged purpose, holding his arms ridged in a way he remembers from Hollywood movies where the characters spray machine gun bullets at will. Those other workers who dare offer any resistance to his onslaught promptly have mayonnaise blown into their faces.
“He’s laying the mayonnaise to everything without regard for recipe, good sense or logic. Run!”
Later, Somchai gets called on the woven mat. He suspects the gig is up. His days of spraying mayonnaise with abandon are all but over.
“Somchai, we were going to sack you when we heard of the crazed shooting spree you’ve been on over the past week. However, sales have skyrocketed! People are lapping up the mayonnaise encrusted lumps of dough you’ve been creating. Even the chocolate cakes and donuts slathered in the swill have become some of our most popular items. Keep up the good work!”
No doubt the Thai palate does differ from the western one in many ways.
As with mayonnaise, there is a raging culinary love affair with corn. Corn on pizza, in ice-cream and yoghurt, and in just about anything really. When all else fails, cups of corn niblets served up absent any other flavouring. Other treats slightly alien to western taste buds include fried maggots and other insects, bird beaks, blood, frogs, and uncountable numbers of other various types of local swill. The other day I saw a street vendor stuffing some young, undeveloped and still alive prawns into a bag full of vegetables.
These are just a sampling of the things Thais happily cram into their gullets. The dishes westerners hear about are those ones that have universal appeal and have crossed the ocean, along the way getting the usual bastardized addition of seasonings and other ingredients that appeal to our appetites.
Thais, as people in all nations, do this as well: Japanese food in Bangkok does not taste the same as in Japan or North America. When you stay at a nice hotel in Bangkok and eat in their restaurant, you’re likely to get the best of both worlds: the best local ingredients with the taste tweaked ever so slightly for your grinning bovine face.
Like all aspects of life in Thailand, the world of food is stratified according to class. Street vendors, low-level slophouses, sidewalk restaurants, moderately priced joints, some of which serve meals equivalent to European four starred places listed in the Michelin guide, and top rated restaurants that rank among the best in the world. All can be found in the same city block in Bangkok.
Most Thais haven’t lost the real, all encompassing nature of food that infuses every part of their lives. At the same time, western influences abound, from the rampant fast food outlets to 7-elevens—there were no fewer than ten on the university campus where I once lived and worked—to the previously mentioned supermarket chains.
The good news is that the positive things you hear about Thai food are true. On my travels through Asia, I have not come across any country-specific food that is as varied and delicious as it is in Thailand. A certain meritocracy exists amongst restaurants and street vendors in Thailand. While department of health inspectors may not patrol restaurants and vendors with the same frequency as in western countries, word of mouth and simple observation will guide you to the best locations.
Take advantage of the bounty of great food in Thailand if you get the chance. It can be an escape and a blessing in a place where so many other things will drive you off the deep end.
Suicide Solution
South American countries have a macho image fueled by a sneering, womanizing male culture that values bravado, honour and never backing down from a fight. It fits in with the strong-man political regimes that have ruled for generations in various Latino nations. There is no need to convince people of the nastiness of corrupt police forces controlled by even more ruthless governments in places like Brazil, Chile or Argentina. They speak for themselves with their actions and emulate the societies from which they originate.
Many tourists have traveled to such destinations and returned with tales of good times and friendly hosts. Yet perhaps a handful of situations reinforce the notion that there is a hot-blooded and emotional undercurrent that can explode. A menacing glare from a man walking hand-in-hand with his wife or girlfriend. Women shamelessly groped. A small dispute over a hotel charge that heats up beyond its importance in an instant.
There is no disconnect from the experience people have and the broader social happenings related to crime and politics.
Compare that to Thailand.
A medium-sized South East Asian country whose tourist industry continues to grow and brings in more than 10 million visitors every year. The vast majority of those people enjoy a memorable trip and go home raving about Thai food and hospitality.
But the violence and mayhem that exist in Thailand rivals that of any poor South American country that also relies on tourism to keep its economy ticking along. A murder rate that ranks the country amongst some of the highest in the world, and corruption rankings that place Thailand as worse than other bastions of fairness such as Italy and Colombia.
The country’s most respected forensic pathologist made a public comment a few years ago regarding the number of “mysterious deaths” that occur in the Kingdom every year. She ranked the number at approximately 1000. These are deaths that are unexplained and largely go uninvestigated by Thai police.
So, on top of the high number of murder victims, there are 1000 deaths deemed completely unworthy of looking into. Perhaps due to the social status of the departed or the possible murderer. Or maybe the mind-numbing heat plays such havoc with corpses that things go beyond the solvable stage a lot faster than in other parts of the world.
While not the freest press in the world, this news does get reported. But somehow it doesn’t resonate outside the country as much as it should. That image doesn’t jibe with the experience most people have had while vacationing here. The winsome, ever-smiling Thais with a rich and varied culture are just so darned nice in the short, hazy doses of a two-week vacation. And of course, most Thais are genuinely decent people. Still...
Tourism provides millions of jobs and billions of dollars every year. Disconcerting tales of murdered foreigners, dual-pricing or rip-offs targeting tourists are dealt with as quickly as possible and then forgotten. Thais are remarkably adept at narrowing their world into a blinkered and carefree existence that is unperturbed by social upheaval gripping other parts of their own country. The nation is still overwhelmingly poor. Most people are pre-occupied by the struggle of day-to-day survival. The wealthy are busy screwing the poor into the ground and trying to maintain their image as some kind of progressive nation in a squalid part of the world.
The end result is an inexpensive and impressive tourist destination that has maintained a fairly unsullied image despite its track record. Thailand has taken far fewer hits from a litany of disturbing attacks, murders and other untimely deaths of visitors and expats than a person might expect.
So far as the negative incidents do take hold and contribute to Thailand’s image, they almost act as a positive. Many of the tourists to Thailand are attracted by the mystique of the orient and cheap sex. The backdrop of seediness and intrigue just adds to the overall appealing weirdness. Like you’re a supporting character in a grand crime noir drama that takes place in the sweltering heat of South East Asia.
The first visit hooks many. For those who have achieved little happiness or satisfaction in their home country, making the move to Thailand and giving it a go as an expatriate ha
s a nothing-to-lose feel to it. Unfortunately, instead of being the move that turns their lives around, cultural differences regarding right and wrong and unwise personal relationships result in a lot of misery and heartache. Overwhelming poverty in Thailand drives many people to desperation. Perhaps the mirror-image sense of an unreal and strange culture represented by foreigners in their country drives many Thais to see expats as an opportunity.
Or maybe many foreigners tie up loose ends in their home countries and head off to the unknown with the niggling sense that they will never return. While many of the thousands of Europeans and North Americans who start over as expats in Thailand end up leading normal and productive lives and either return home one day or live out their days in their adopted country, a disproportionate number decide to end it all.
The suicide rate amongst expats in Thailand is shocking. Who are these people? What are their stories? Why does the method of choice seem to be a swan-dive off a tall building? Or are some of those individuals getting a helping hand?
Suicide Solution
Everyone has an opinion on suicide. For the simple fact that everyone at some point in their lives has, to varying degrees, contemplated the notion of severing their connection to the world. Most have also been touched, at least indirectly, by its effects.
The act of suicide is so common that there are a handful of ready made clichés and platitudes that can be vomited forth at a moment’s notice. It’s one of those no middle ground topics. Most people heap pure loathing on those who take their own lives or they exhibit an empathy and regret that no one reached the individual at their darkest moment.
Just as killing yourself is the ultimate in self-criticism, so too a person’s opinion on the most desperate of actions says something about them. Perhaps those merciless individuals who curse and degrade those who have exited the world by their own hand are similarly hard on themselves. Quite possibly they have contemplated such an ending more than they care to let on.