blanca

In the west, we value a good tan. As a redheaded decendent of the pigment-challenged Irish, I am acutely aware of this fact. In our highly industrialized society, there's a belief that the working class labors indoors under flourescent lighting while the rich have the leisure time and money to lie on a beach. So a tan implies wealth, health and status.

Thailand, and apparently much of Asia, are different. The poor laborers here spend their time in fields, on the water, and on construction sites, where it's impossible to avoid a deep tan. The rich work in offices (speaking very generally). So here, a tan is a marker of poverty and low-class status. Much like being pale in the west, this is considered unattractive. Of course, this falls mostly on women and girls; perception of female beauty is largely dependent on skin shade. And as with our slew of bronzing, self-tanning, sun-attracting products back home, this insistence on an arbitrary feminine ideal gives rise to a really, really stupid industry.

I ran out of deodorant last week. I'd brought a few months' worth from Spain because I'm picky (that gooey roll-on stuff grosses me out and is ubiquitous everywhere I've travelled) but I finally exhausted my supply and went to the store. What I encountered was at least ten different brands of deodorant, each that messy goop, and each containing skin-whitening components. For my armpits. And to think, I had no idea! All those years of off-white armpits, all those sundresses and tank tops in which I flaunted them to my oblivious humiliation!

And it's not just deodorant. While your sunscreen prevents that disgusting tan, it's making your base-level white a shade lighter. Your dead-white liquid foundation will bleach your face for you. Moisterizer, lotion, shaving cream, cleansers, body wash, masks, powder--every skin product imaginable. For some of these products, like deodorant, it's challenging or impossible to find something that doesn't offer to make some part of your body porcelain white. Your face, your hands, your legs, your freaking armpits. This horrifying article discusses vaginal whitening wash. (After several attempts at a snarky remark on this subject, I've decided that it lampoons itself just fine without my help.)

Given no other options, I purchased the one with the least offensive packaging. It smells like bug spray and gets all over my clothes. But I'm sure no one will be able to resist me and my glaring white underarms.

moto

My motorbike, like that of every foreign teacher I know, is secondhand. Realistically, it's probably more like fifthhand, but it's impossible to say. The origin, age, and previous ownership of these bike is mysterious, at least to those of us who can't read the paperwork. The condition upon purchase is what you see; if you don't notice some grave problem in the course of the round-the-block test run they allow you, then it becomes your grave problem.

A secondhand dealer requires two things: your money and a signature. Not necessarily your own signature, either; registering a bike to a foreigner cost twice the registration for a Thai person, so it's best to bring a local friend. Hand over your cash, and the bike is yours (well, it's your friend's). They don't try to sell you a helmet, they don't ask to see a license, they don't brief you on the Thai rules of the road (as if there were any), they don't ask if you've ever driven a motorcycle or if you have the foggiest idea what you're doing on one. Just the cash please.

So we blunder through our experience with this unfamiliar form of transportation. I don't know what type of gas I need, so I assume the attendant got it right. I'm not sure if that noise is normal, so I do my best with Google and crossed fingers.

My current problem is a common one, at least for my rickedy Honda. The thing dies if I let it idle too long. It starts doing this every few weeks, and the fix is simple and cheap. Thing is, I don't have the faintest idea how to express that to a mechanic. So I can't bring it in until the problem gets very, very bad. Several times I've gone to the shop and sat there, the mechanic's ear to bike, waiting for it to die. Of course, like any piece of machinery under the eye of a hired expert, it chooses this moment to behave perfectly. He shrugs, and I'm defeated. I leave after a brief, awkward thanks. I'll be back in two weeks when it starts reliably dying at every stoplight.

sidestreet

There's a place on a dark sidestreet downtown with an English sign and a beautiful outdoor seating area. It's got a trendy hideout vibe to it and some European beer signs and it's close to work, so Levi and I decided to check it out. We got there before their dinner rush and enjoyed an empty beer garden. Literal garden: it was decorated in the jungle style common to Thai restaurants, with enormous banana trees, flowering bushes, hanging moss and vines. Lovely. We asked our exceptionally pretty waitress for two cocktails from the rather large cocktail menu, and were informed that they had only beer, and no imports. Alright, disappointing, but Thai beer it is. We ordered some food as well, to the apparent confusion of the waitress, who called over another gorgeous girl to confirm that this was ok.

They decided we could eat, and the two of them scurried off to the kitchen. As they left, we noticed they each had a ring of little bells tied around their ankles that jingled pleasantly as they moved. We also noticed the dangerously high slits in their matching form-fitting, strapless dresses.

The food turned out to be pretty good, and we were rather enjoying ourselves when the place started picking up. More of these beautiful, similarly-dressed women appeared to wait on the additional tables, which we came to notice were comprised almost exclusively of men, either on their own or in groups of two or three. Once these customers had arrived, we found it highly difficult to get the attention of a waitress; they all seemed exceptionally absorbed in conversation with the gentlemen at their respective tables.

When the waitress finally brought the check, I left the standard tip, which generally gets a grateful response from servers. She looked at it, looked at me, scoffed, and turned back to the solo diner at the next table, who said something that prompted her to show him her tummy.

We left hastily.

sangre

American expats don't tend to be the most nationalistic Americans you'll meet, but our distance from home leads us all to strange bouts of patriotic fervor on two occasions: Independence Day and Thanksgiving. I imagine we get all watery-eyed about these, rather than Christmas or Easter, because even our non-American expat friends can't relate. So we do silly things like launch fireworks until the neighbors fire off warning shots and call the cops (happened), and throw Thanksgiving barbeques where we improvise with local ingredients and drink too much beer.

Anyway, the latter happened the other night, at least for most of my friends. On the way to the party, a coworker crashed her motorcycle and woke up in the hospital in need of a friend. So Levi and I ditched the dinner and drove out to lend some moral support.

I'd only ever been to the private hospital in Surat. By western standards, it's extraordinarily cheap so there was never any reason to go to the public center. But for the typical Thai person, the modern, clean, centrally-located hospital is prohibitively expensive. Our routine visa health checks there cost 500 baht, which is only $15 for us, but for the average working person here living on 10,000 baht a month (a little over a third of what we foreign teachers make), that 500 baht is a healthy chunk of cash. With that money you can fill up your motorbike tank 4 times, or buy 15 meals, or take over 30 rides in a tuk-tuk to anywhere in town.

So when you get hurt and aren't awake to tell the medics where you want to go, they'll take you to Surat Thani Hospital, the publically-funded medical center. It's cheap, I'll give it that.

We arrived at the Motorcycle Accident/ER (yes, it's called that). A waiting room full of cracked plastic chairs was full of typically calm Thai people, sitting around patiently under the flickering florescent lights, watching infomercials and staring at the broken clock on the wall. Through this room a slow but steady stream of motorcycle patients was being wheeled in on rusty stretchers. Many of them were carrying their own IV bags. They were, on average, bloody messes, and they would stay that way for a while in the crowded, understaffed ward.

A receptionist pointed us in the direction of our friend, the only foreigner there. She was banged up and had fractured her collarbone and bumped her head pretty good, but was thankfully alright, awake and not in too much pain. As we waited for the results of her x-rays and then the sling they decided to give her, we watched the arrivals come in, more and more frequently as the night wore on. A doctor came over at one point to grab the oxygen tank stashed under my friend's stretcher; as he carried it off I noticed it was entirely engulfed in rust.

I was struck by the relaxed demeanor of everyone there, doctors, patients, and family. As another friend put it after his own serious motorcycle accident, Thai people have an incredibly casual attitude towards terrible injury. I seemed to be the only person flinching at all the blood and gore around me.

When we finally left, the bill was a little $30, x-rays, sling, and meds included.

rey

The Thais are a patriotic bunch. The king, the longest-ruling monarch on the planet, inspires more adoration and awe than any celebrity or leader I've ever seen. On Mondays, the weekday of his birth, a striking proportion of the population wears a polo with his crest, in yellow, his personal favorite color. His birthday is the biggest holiday of the year. His face graces (by law, I've heard) every business, every public building, and most houses in the whole of Thailand. There's a law in place that makes it illegal to do anything to an image of him that could be considered "defamation." People have been arrested for drunkenly painting on posters of him, placing pictures of other people above a picture of him on websites, and sending unfortunately intercepted text messages expressing distaste for him. I can't figure out if it's actually illegal, but the Buddhist taboo about feet, combined with the image of the king's face on the currency, means that it is completely unacceptable to step on a coin to keep it from rolling away from you. You may think this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but I'd bet you do it way more than you realize, and it's a tough habit to break. It also tends to happen when you're fumbling for change in crowded places with lots of witnesses. Awkward moments had by all.

Probably the most obvious manifestation of this legally-enforced lovefest is the national anthem. It's not actually called that, but referred to as "the King's song." It plays at eight am and six pm in every public place, every TV and radio station--everywhere. And it stops everything. Everyone drops what they're doing, however important, to stand at attention. No one walks or moves. Cars driving by the schools in the morning, upon hearing it on the loudspeaker, hit the brakes. A friend once joked, probably inappropriately, that if you ever want to wreak some unopposed havoc in Thailand, do it at eight or six.

Our neighbors have two little white puffball dogs, poodle mutts or something. They're generally pretty quiet and relaxed (very Thai), only getting yappy when we drive our motorbikes too close to their house or when a cat goes by. But through some weird training regimen that I can't fathom, their masters have gotten them into a habit of howling like maniacs ("singing," they insist) when the King's Song plays. They start when the music starts, and stop immediately after the last note. I thought at first that it must be a fluke, that they just barked when music played on the TV, but that TV runs all days, and those dogs are quiet as can be, except for 8 and 6. Like clockwork.

When I was reading about the king for this post, I found out that people have actually been arrested for remaining seated while the song is played before a movie at the theater. They don't bother with this for us foreigners at the English-language movies, but at Thai movies, they run it before every film, regardless of the time. My boss told me that he recently went to a movie with his Thai wife where they played not only the song, but a long and highly emotional slideshow of photos of the king, from his birth, to his coronation, to his present advanced age. My boss watched, bemused, as his wife and everyone else in the theater broke down in tears.

But my favorite King's Song anecdote came from a fellow teacher at Thida, the Catholic elementary school where I spend my mornings. The building is a gorgeous modern construction, a giant, domed circle lined with four floors of classrooms overlooking a tiled central courtyard. Every morning, the children line up in front of their classrooms, facing the center, to say morning prayers, do some calisthenics, and sing the song.

Like many Thai buildings, Thida has a wide open entryway to encourage much-needed airflow. This allows stray dogs to occasionally wander in, and since strays here are treated well and are therefore generally docile, no one bothers to shoo them. So one morning, while the children were lined up, two dogs entered the building and made their way to the center of the courtyard. After hanging about unmolested for a few minutes, they decided to make some puppies. Normally, someone would break this up quickly to avoid the awkward questions of the over 2,000 watching three-to-eight-year-olds. Unfortunately, this went down at 8:00 on the nose. No one could move. No one could do anything. The dozens of nuns, teachers, parents, janitors, administrators and lunch ladies were all frozen in place by a lifetime of twice-daily renditions. So for the sixty-second duration of the song, 2,000 pairs of little eyes watched as two muddy street dogs banged in the middle of their school, during the King's Song, right in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

My friend could barely tell me this story with a straight face. Thai teachers--less amused.

dishwashing

We don't have sink at our house. This generally proves to be less of a hassle than you might think. I brush my teeth in the shower or, on those days when the tank dries up, with a water bottle over the drain. We have a spigot in the bathroom for handwashing, and the trusty hose next to the toilet serves well for cleaning.

The only time this omission becomes particularly glaring is when it's time to do the dishes. We eat out most dinners and nearly all lunches, but breakfasts and the occasional carry-out meal usually create a pile of dishes at the end of the week. These dirties are stored outside, on a rotting wooden table furnished with two big plastic buckets, a drying rack, and a hose. The setup is covered in termites, ants, and the mosquitoes that breed in the water under the house. We do our best to rinse all the food out of the dishes and keep the table free of standing water, but the rain thwarts our efforts, and washing dishes is such an ordeal that there's no way we could do it daily. So the sticky stuff stays sticky, and the bugs go mad.

On Saturday mornings, I tackle this chore. The first step is to empty the buckets, with are undoubtedly full of rainwater and the resulting mosquito larvae. Lifting up the buckets usually reveals a termite smorgasbord; apparently weary of a wood-based diet, they've started working on the tough plastic, to an impressive degree of success. I rinse the little bastards away and get started on the ants, who, their feast on the crumbs under the table rudely interrupted by my assault with the hose, are now climbing angrily up my legs. I wash them off, often with some high-pitched squeals of which I'm not proud, and clean out the buckets. Both get filled with water, and to one I add soap. As I scrub and rinse, I'm doing battle with the swarms of mosquitoes; this "sink" is unfortunately located at the edge of the water, and they can't resist this rare bag of warm blood that has wandered into their realm. They're the bad ones, too, the nasty ones who fear no bug spray, so big you can clearly see the stripes on their backs and their horrifying needle-noses.

By the time I've gotten through the pile, I'm soaking wet, sweating, and covered in mosquito welts. A shower is in order. Sadly, the dishwashing process uses so much water that the tank is unlikely to contain any more, and I am often forced to sit in the house in filth until it is refilled by our landlord, the incoming tide, or the water fairy (it's unclear how the Thai water supply actually works). Thank god (vodka fairy?) for screwdrivers.

gac

Levi sipping a coconut on the porch

The landlords of our little jungle box are our neighbors, a family who live in two houses on our lane. The elderly patriarch of the family, a giggly, toothless, sun-weathered fellow, spends much of his time in galoshes and a straw hat, splashing around in the swamp and tending to his various crops of fruit, flowers, and the carcinegenic nut he chews as a stimulant. The result is the verdant setting of our weird, wonderful house, as well as a few treats.


Yesterday a member of the family dropped by with two coconuts. He hacked off the tops with a machete and instructed us to stick a straw in it. Yum.
 

Unripe gacfruit in our "yard"

A little while later, his sister sold us, for about 75 cents each, two bottles of the juice she and her husband have been squeezing from gac fruit, an orangey-red spikey thing that grows outside our living room window.The juice is a vivid red and tastes sweet and mild and fantastic. I threw some vodka and soda into it and enjoyed an immensely relaxing Sunday afternoon.