Visit to the 'real' Thailand

Wat Sang Krajai

I went to see a foreigner friend who lives in a remote part of town, near Sang Krajai temple in Issaraphap Rd.

It took me only 45mins to reach it, but then I set off in the middle of the day. My friend, farang M, lives with his Thai girlfriend at a house owned by her boss, a property owner in the Khao San Rd area.

This was my first trip across the river to see any friends in the six months since I moved from the Thon Buri side of town to our new place close to the city centre.

Farang M, 48, who is in poor health, looked little different than the last time I saw him, which is a good thing.

However, his house and garden were in a shabby state. ‘The owner rarely comes to do the garden, and I am not strong enough to handle it myself,’ he complained.

Farang M does not work, so lives on his girlfriend’s meagre earnings as a receptionist. We have known each other for years, since the days when Mum’s shop in Thon Buri, where we used to socialise, was still a busy place.

Back in those days, farang M lived just down the road from Mum’s shop. Since then he has moved, so rarely sees it.

In fact, he seldom gets out at all, as he doesn’t have the money.

'I met up with my girlfriend in that area about a week ago, as it happens. She was coming home from a trip to see her family in the provinces and I had gone there for a drink in her absence. It was my first time out in five weeks,’ said farang M.

We sat in his overgrown garden, drinking whisky and watching the sun go down. A storm came and went, and I left for home.

The main road outside his place looked dilapidated, as if it was barely holding up against the recession. But the Thais I met were charming.

On my way to farang M’s place, I dropped in to a store to buy a bottle of whisky. The young man serving me asked where I came from.

‘I live in town, but I come here to see a friend,’ I told him. I also chatted briefly to his Mum, who gave me directions.

Later, as I went to fetch a Coke, a young man in another shop held up one finger of one hand, and two fingers from another.

He couldn't, or wouldn't speak English, so sign language had to do. ‘What’s that – 30 baht?’ I asked him.

He laughed and turned to a guy sitting behind a computer. As I left, I saw him tell his friend about our small encounter.

As I waited for a taxi home, I parked myself in front of another shop, where three youngsters in their late teens were chatting. They smiled, and one said hello.

Before moving to our new place, I contemplated looking for a house to rent in this neighbourhood. I decided against, as it is even further away from my office than was my old condo, itself a good 30-minute's bus ride away.

The road is barely wide enough to walk down, and in peak hour is packed. However, the temple is attractive, and the atmosphere lively.

Youngsters gather in hairdresser’s shops or email cafes. Issaraphap Rd is close to several tertiary outlets, so the place has a vibrant ‘demographic’.

Families live in shophouses, which have a basic shop on street level, and sleeping quarters above. When they get home from school, many youngsters help Mum and Dad run the shop.

It is very different from the safe, middle-class neighbourhood I inhabit, where neighbourhood dogs mill about more often than the well-heeled residents.

‘I’ll come back again soon, as this place is fun,’ I told farang M.

His neighbourhood feels a world away from my concerns at home or work - more like the 'real' Thailand which I came here to experience nine years ago, but which lately appears to have slipped through my grasp.

It's all Thai to me: Bikes, dogs, and slum guys

We’re shut up in our own home, like rats in a hole. How else to keep out the construction noise from the condo next door?

The workmen shoo-ed away by one of my neighbours on Friday are back, drilling, and bashing away with a sledgehammer.

My hot-tempered neighbour told them to go, as he was tired of their noise. Today he is away, or perhaps has decided he has no choice but to let them get on with their work, for I have heard nothing further from him.

I have closed the sliding doors on the balcony, and the windows against the noise and the dust.

The owner of the building next door did not bother to tell his neighbours that he was hiring a gang to refurbish it.

Thais assume everyone will just put up with noise and inconvenience. We find out when the labourers arrive, and have to tolerate their presence until the work is finished, which could take weeks.

The same care-free attitude explains why we also put up with young men charging through the condo precinct on souped-up motorbikes, just for a lark; or why in our high-value neighbourhood we also tolerate packs of stray dogs inter-breeding, fighting and howling at all hours.

When Maiyuu peddles his bicycle to the market, he is chased by dogs snapping at his heels. The mutts live and breed on vacant plots of land, though a few also have taken up guard duty at the entry and exit to this condo.

When I walk home at night, the dogs bark, as the place is in darkness, and humans aren’t supposed to be out at that hour.

Last night, half a dozen mongrels were fighting each other on the road I take home. I am grateful they let me pass.

Thailand is a laid-back place, so noisy labourers, teenagers and dogs are part of the deal.

As I walk home, I also pass a block of slum housing, opposite a school. A young man who lives there likes to wander about on the road outside. He wears nothing but boxers.

When I come across him, he is talking on his cellphone. Presumably he has come out to get some privacy.

The other night he had taken off the boxers, and was wearing just a pair of briefs.

He sees me pass each night, but doesn’t seem to mind that I witness him in such a state.

Young men in a state of near-undress who don’t care what other people think are another part of what makes this place Thai.

Such scenes of near-naked abandonment would be hard to find in my buttoned-down neighbourhood in the West. All in all, I’d rather still be here.

Fiery Thai, tackling biker noise

"Stop that noise this minute!’ a Thai man yelled.

Sitting at my computer, I heard the noise come through my window, and sat up with a start.

I hardly ever hear Thais around hear raise their voices.

It was almost 5pm last Friday, and a Thai living in my condo had obviously had enough noise for one day.

His target was a group of labourers, demolishing part of a condo next to us (see picture). In the several weeks they have been working there, the noise levels have grown steadily worse.

The labourers promptly stopped work. No one stood up to the man who lost his temper. I barely heard a peep from the labourers as they packed their tools for the day and left.

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I would like to borrow the services of the hot-headed man, should I ever identify him, to tackle another noise problem around here.

A teenager who lives in the slum section nearby races through the precincts of this condo on his motorbike many times a day.

His motorcycle is fitted with one of those noisy exhausts which teens love. He passes through this condo on his way to the main road.

It is a convenient shortcut, and the security guards obligingly lift the barrier arm at the entrance and exit to the place whenever he approaches, to let him through.

‘Why do you lift the barrier?' I asked one security guard the other day.

'That young man races through this place at all hours of the night, just for fun. He wakes up residents, and doesn’t even live here,’ I said.

Aged in his 60s, the guard speaks softly, with his head bowed so I can barely hear what he says. ‘If I don’t lift the barrier, I am afraid he will come back with his mates from the neighbourhood in the middle of the night and beat me up,’ he said sadly.

I will have to fix this problem, I told myself. I could tell the condo office that they are employing a security guard who is too timid to do his job, but that would be mean.

I could try finding the hot-tempered Thai man in my condo building, to ask him if he’s as annoyed as I am by the young man with the noisy bike.

Or perhaps I could try tracking down the lad himself, or his parents. I know where he ‘hangs’, as young people like to say. Shall I risk it?

Where do old scent bottles go?

Maiyuu found on the internet a trader wanting to buy empty bottles of imported scent.

He polished a collection of empty bottles, then took them in to see the man. The price paid by the trader varied according to the brand, or make of perfume. From 15 bottles, he made the impressive sum of B700.

The biggest return from any one bottle was B200, for Calvin Klein’s ckin2u.

The trader also offered B100 each for three or four other popular scents; B50 each for two others; B100 for a handful of lesser-known brands, plus B5 each for two bottles which the trader didn’t want but paid him for anyway.

Maiyuu did not ask him what he intends to do with the bottles, but we might be able to guess.

‘He might buy a small bottle of the original scent, in the form of oil, and mix it with alcohol,’ says Maiyuu. 'He will sell the scent, packaged as the original but at a cheaper price, in the bottles he bought from me.'

The trader wll probably sell his scent, in the bottles he obtained originally from Maiyuu, at Klong Thom market near Chinatown.

The trader also buys in used printer cartridges (is there a market for knock-off printer ink?), used CDs, and old currency, among other items.

Where do we get them from? Maiyuu buys scent in bulk from a gay friend, who gets it from the perfume counter of a city department store, where he is on good terms with a couple of staff. Pictured are some of the bottles in Maiyuu's collection.

We buy the real thing, mainly in the standard size available at any store, though we also have a few bottles of scent in tester size.

Airline stewards, who get them from the manufacturer, offer testers to traders, who sell them on to the public.

‘The guy who bought my bottles asked me if I had any Polo Black. I do, but it is in tester size, which is too small for his needs,’ said Maiyuu, showing me his stubby-looking bottle of Polo Black.

Under pressure from the US to enforce intellectual copyright law, the government launches occasional crackdowns on pirated and counterfeit goods, such as imported CDs, clothes and scent. Police raid stalls offering the goods in tourist centres such as Silom.

I wonder if they also tackle the problem at source, such as traders who buy empty bottles to refill with knock-off scent, or second-hand CDs which they slip back into a new CD cover to make them look new?

Tabloid trash, rich girl's sneer, red rally

‘Jacko’s last wish! Secret notes found in tragic star’s home...’

Farang C took me to Molly Malone’s Irish pub in Soi Convent, which carries the latest copies of Irish and British newspapers.

That was the headline which one screamed at me from from the newspaper stack. I didn't see any newspapers in Thai.

Inside the pub, I saw only farang. A few were eating dishes from the menu.

A vendor was selling noodles from a right outside the front door.

About 6pm, as the skies clouded over and office-workers were heading home, I left the pub and sat down for a bowl.

Here on the street outside, I saw only Thais.

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Farang C and I walked to Molly Malone’s from the top of the soi on Sathorn Rd, past BNH Hospital, and a couple of Christian schools. We passed Italian restaurants, bakery joints...

I like inspecting wealth. We saw plenty of it, and not just in the shops.

St Joseph’s Convent School was disgorging children to a queue of rich-family cars waiting outside.

Most of the children were pale-skinned Thai-Chinese. Little girls with tight bangs in their hair sneered at us, or at least I thought they did.

'Little bitches!'I exclaimed, for farang C's hearing.

'I haven't been here long enough to tell the difference between ordinary Thais and those with Chinese blood,' he replied.

I passed one father, who was talking to his daughter in Chinese.

This is the Bangkok elite, I thought. they would have little contact with their poorer countrymen from the provinces - many of whom move to Bangkok to earn a living, especially in the off-cropping season.

How many of these people speak to dark-skinned Thais from the provinces in the course of a day, unless they happen to employ one as the office cleaner?

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One of those dark-skinned workers took me home in his taxi.

A father of five, he lives in Bangkok, but comes from Ubon Ratchathani, where he owns a farm. I shall call him Uncle.

Uncle, 55, has worked as a taxi driver in Bangkok for more than 30 years. His three sons live with him here, and they too ply the streets in taxis.

His daughters live in Ubon. One girl is a teacher, and the other one about to graduate from university. She wants to be a policewoman.

‘My sons weren’t academic, but the girls were,’ he said.

I asked him if he was proud to have fathered five children who are now successful young adults.

‘It’s just normal,’ he said.

His wife lives on the farm with one daughter, the teacher. Uncle gets home once every three months to plant or harvest rice.

‘When my other daughter graduates in a few months, I shall retire as a taxi driver, and return to the provinces full-time. I am tired of Bangkok,’ he said.

Uncle has driven rented taxis for a living since he was in his late teens. He is looking forward to a change.

Like many rural folk from the country’s North and Northeast, he supports former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

‘He ran a government for the poor – the one we have now, Abhisit Vejjajiva, runs a government for the rich,’ he said.

We talked about prominent southerners who support the Abhisit-led government.

Abhisit may be a wealthy Bangkok boy, but his Democrat party is backed by southerners such as Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban (‘Abhisit’s boss’, sniffs Uncle) and Prem Tinsulanonda, head of the Privy Council. Most of the party's support base, in fact, is in Bangkok and the South.

‘Thais are still as divided as ever. When I was a boy, we had unity, but now we are split,’ he lamented.

This Saturday marks the third anniversary of the coup which ousted Thaksin.

The red-shirted United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, which supports Thaksin, will mark the occasion with a rally. ‘I will be there, wearing red. I am from Esan [the Northeast], so I have to go,’ he said.