Thailand Confidential

by Jerry Hopkins

  This prejudice was not exclusively Asian; even in the United States, the last of the miscegenation laws were not overturned until 1965.

  Nowadays, the picture has changed, most remarkably in Thailand, where it is no surprise to see headlines in Bangkok’s English language dailies that read, “Mixed-race superstars most popular artists” and “Best of Both Worlds.” The best example may be Amita Tata Young, the recording and movie star daughter of a Thai woman and her American husband, who serves as Tata’s manager. She’s been a star since she was eleven, when she won a Thailand Junior Singing Contest. A recording contract and film career followed and in 1998, at age seventeen, she was named by Asiaweek as one of Asia’s twenty-five most influential personalities and two years later became the first Thai singer to sign a contract with a major American recording company, Sony Columbia. She’s also had her face on the world’s biggest billboard as Panasonic’s Thai spokesperson and in 2004 was linked romantically (but briefly) with an internationally ranked tennis superstar, Paradorn Srichaphan; was castigated by the Thai government’s uptight Culture Ministry for a single called “Sexy Naughty Bitchy;” then saw her new CD go platinum within six hours of hitting the stores.

  Another, far bigger name whose heritage is split between Thailand and America is Tiger Woods, although to be fair to the son of a Thai woman and a black American ex-soldier, he is a fair golfer whose mixed parentage merely gave his story an added commercial spin. It might be mentioned that Tiger is no favorite in Thailand, thanks to his refusal to leave his five-star hotel to receive an honorary degree from a local university—he had it brought to him!—and lack of interest in anything Thai: not the food, nor the sights, nor the people. This, despite the fact that he was paid a million U.S. dollars to come to Thailand and all he had to do in return was play eighteen holes of a game he was alleged to enjoy.

  There are many more who are lesser known outside the region. Nicole Theriault and Peter Corp Dyrendal, topped “The Global Sex Survey 1999—A Youth Perspective” in Thailand, conducted by London’s condom manufacturer, Durex. Nicole has an American father, too, and Peter’s dad is from Denmark. Another new star, appearing in two films in Thailand, is Ananda Everingham, using the professional name Ananda Eve; mom is from Laos, dad is from Australia, and Ananda grew up in Bangkok, where his father runs a successful magazine publishing company.

  There are so many, in fact—in modeling as well as in television, music, and film—that a phrase, luuk khrung (literally meaning “half-children”), was added to the language to describe them. When Time magazine put what it called the “Eurasian Invasion” (and Tata Young) on its cover Apr. 23, 2001, it said the once-despised offspring controlled an estimated sixty percent of Thailand’s entertainment industry, and informed readers that the country once had sent a blue-eyed woman to the Miss World competition, when Sirinya Winsiri, also known a Cynthia Carmen Burbridge, beat out another half-Thai, half-American for the coveted Miss Thailand title.

  Of course there’s nothing new about this. The “Eurasian” look has been a niche entertainment staple for decades, coming into and going out of fashion several times, not just in Asia but worldwide. France Nuyen, born France Nguyen Vannga of French and Vietnamese-Chinese parents in Marseille, France, starred in Broadway’s The World of Suzie Wong (1958), for instance, and when Hollywood made the movie two years later, it was another Eurasian, Nancy Kwan, trained as a dancer in the British Royal Ballet, who got the part.

  Yet, they were the exception rather than the rule and it wasn’t until fairly recently that Asians and part-Asians were considered first for Asian roles; remember the Swedish born Warner Oland as the inscrutable Chinese detective Charlie Chan (in the 1930s), Marlon Brando as an obsequious Japanese servant in Sayonara (1957), and Yul Brynner as the strutting King of Siam in The King and I (1956)?

  It’s not been explained satisfactorily why the Eurasian “look” works. When asked, many spout clichés about the meeting of East and West or, may the gods help us, “globalization.” Time magazine said Channel V, the Asia-wide music television channel, was one of the first to broadcast the message of “homogenized hybridism,” quoting one of the channel’s marketing managers as saying, “We needed a messenger that would fit from Tokyo to the Middle East.”

  The word “exotic” gets mentioned a lot as well, although the meaning of that word is seldom if ever made clear (even in dictionaries). It’s further explained that when Asians have some western features, they are more readily accepted by westerners, who are known, historically, for assigning second class status to people with darker skin. As for the Asians, it’s easy to say that it’s just a part of a global shift toward western style as demonstrated by their avid acceptance of rock music, Hollywood movies, blue jeans, European clothes and cars, Scotch whisky and French wines, KFC and Haagen Dazs. Thailand is famous for embracing western influence and material goods, during its boom years becoming the largest market outside Germany for the Mercedes-Benz, and consuming more Johnny Walker black label than any country other than the United States.

  Ananda Eve’s father, John, who’s lived in Southeast Asia for more than thirty-five years, gets more specific. And he says it’s about racial stereotypes.

  “It starts with biology,” he explains. “In Thailand, and elsewhere, the flat nose and dark skin are considered low class and the straighter nose and lighter skin are more acceptable because they’re associated with a higher class. My son was ‘discovered’ when he was working in a restaurant entirely because of the way he looks. He has his mom’s eyes and coloring. He has my nose. He also has a serenity from his mom’s Lao side, but it was the look that made him a movie star.”

  How influential is this new look? Very. For many young people of both sexes all over Asia today western clothing, makeup and other adornment are not enough, so they dye and streak their hair blonde and red, while many young women have their eyes and noses surgically “westernized,” and their breasts enhanced. Thailand has some of the best beaches in Asia, but you won’t find many Thais there because they don’t want a dark skin; many carry umbrellas on sunny days and whitening creams are among the most popular cosmetic products sold, even when health authorities issue grave warnings about how damaging some of them may be for the skin.

  Because many of the new stars—in Thailand and elsewhere— have lived and been educated in the West, or attended international schools in Asia, they’ve been westernized in other ways, too. Thus, some have strong foreign accents and sloppy articulation when they speak or sing in what is supposed to be their native language.

  “These people are not Asian any more,” says John Everingham.

  Thailand—Superlative!

  I was heartened when I heard that the powers that be in Bangkok decided to erect billboards boasting that the city has the Longest Place Name in the world, as recognized by the Guinness Book of Records . Soon, visitors and residents were to be informed that the city’s formal name is (take a deep breath) Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahinthar-ayutthaya Mahadilokphop Nopphosin Ratchathaniburirom Udom-rathaniwetmahasa Amonphiman Awatansathit Sakkathatiya Witsanukamprasit.

  That’s a total of 162 letters and according to the Royal Institute, it means, “City of Angels, Great City of Immortals, Magnificent City of the Nine Gems, Seat of the King, City of Royal Palaces, Home of the Gods Incarnate, Erected by Visvakarman at Indra’s Behest.” A total of 146 letters, in English, but the Thai words are what count. On maps, this blessedly has been shortened to Krungthep (City of Angels). The modern name Bangkok means City of Wild Plums.

  I’m not sure why this is to be announced on billboards. Do the officials behind the campaign think this will make residents take pride in their capital, or add to the city’s exotic reputation and thus increase tourism interest? Or is it—as I hope—a demonstration of some newfound sense of official humor?

  Thailand has many superlatives, make no mistake about it. In the Largest Restaurant category, Mang Gorn Luang (The Royal Dragon), a congregat
ion of eating areas spread over four acres of land, with a capacity of five thousand diners who are served by more than one hundred cooks and five hundred servers in national costumes, is the current record holder. So vast is the area, some of the servers wheel about on roller skates, delivering up to three thousand dishes every hour. Surely this is another sign of Thailand’s sense of fun, or sanuk .

  So, too, the world’s Largest and Tallest Hotels are in Thailand, the former being the Ambassador City Jomtien, with more than five thousand rooms, the latter being the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, with an observation deck and restaurants on the 77th to 79th floors. From which guests are told they can see the Gulf of Thailand on a clear day. (Another little Thai joke.)

  Bangkok also claims the Largest Open Air Market Place, the Chatuchak Weekend Market, an overwhelming shopper’s paradise comprising approximately eight thousand stalls spread over thirty acres, where the best advice is if you see something you like, buy it immediately, as you’ll never find your way back. And be sure you do your shopping in the morning, before it becomes the World’s Hottest and Most Crowded Shopping Complex. This is not a joke.

  More serious is the unchallenged record of having the Longest Reigning Royalty. His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), succeeded his older brother on June 9, 1946, putting him at the sixty year mark in 2006 and ahead of the runner-up, England’s Queen Elizabeth, who has reigned since 1952.

  Bangkok is also home of the Biggest Golden Teak-Wood Building, the 81-room Vimanmet Palace, built in 1901 by King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) as a royal residence. Construction began on an island in the Gulf of Siam, but before completion was moved to Bangkok’s Dusit Park near the palace of the present king. There, it served as home for the monarch, his ninety-two wives, and seventy-seven children. Today it’s a museum.

  And let’s not forget the Biggest Gold Buddha Image, located in an otherwise unremarkable temple, Wat Traimitr, just east of the intersection of Yaowaraj and Charoen Krung Roads in Bangkok, near the city’s main railway station. The ten-foot-high statue for many years was covered with stucco and considered unimportant. In 1957, when it was moved to its present location, a transporting sling snapped and the image fell, cracking the stucco covering. Underneath was a solid gold figure, weighing five-and-a-half tons. Historians think it dates from Thailand’s Ayutthaya period (1378-1767), when monks likely disguised the image to protect it from Burmese invaders.

  All this is well and good and I think such tales would make good billboard copy. However, I also hope that a sense of humor will prevail and Thailand’s lesser-known superlatives also get the attention they deserve.

  Did you know, for instance, that the Kingdom boasts the Largest Freshwater Fish, the pla buk or pa beuk, a kind of catfish found in the Mekong River and its tributaries—the biggest documented catch measuring 9 feet, 10.25 inches long and weighing 533.3 pounds? Or the Tallest Stalagmite, rising two hundred feet from the floor of a cave called Tyham Nam Klong Ngu in Kanchanaburi? And let’s not overlook the Largest Grasshopper, a species ten inches long and found along the border between Thailand and Malaysia, a boundary it may be seen crossing in fifteen-foot leaps. A couple of them, deep-fried, and you’ve got yourself a meal. Also not a joke, not in Thailand.

  Parents who are unimpressed by their children’s hair styles might find comfort in knowing that two brothers in a Hmong village north of Chiang Mai, Yee Sae Tow, age ninety, and Hoo Sae Tow, eighty-eight, have the Longest Hair, measuring 4.84 meters and 5.2 meters, respectively. It’s worn deadlock style and carried about like a length of coiled rope.

  Probably we shouldn’t even talk about Thailand’s having the Fastest Economic Expansion and Decline, rising to 9.8 percent in 1995, making it the world’s fastest growing economy, then falling to -0.4 percent three years later. And do we really want to talk about the traffic, the humidity and the air?

  Decidedly not. That’s not funny.

  Tourism

  Bob Levy—not his real name, I’ll spare him that—sent me an e-mail to remind me that we’d been university classmates in the United States. He said he and his wife were coming to Thailand and would like to meet me for a drink and whatever. They would be staying at the Oriental Hotel, he said, and because I didn’t remember him—it’d been more than forty years since graduation, after all—I asked them to meet me at another nice hotel closer to where I lived, for cocktails in the lobby bar, dinner to follow in an nearby cozy Thai restaurant that specialized in northeastern dishes.

  Once our first round of drinks arrived, Bob confessed that he and I never knew each other; rather, he’d seen a story about me in the alumni magazine and figured it might be interesting to spend an evening with me on their first visit to Bangkok. He didn’t exactly put it that way, but it was obvious. He was paying for the drinks, so I ordered another and while I didn’t like being deceived or patronized, I figured what the hell, it was just one night and maybe he or his wife would be fun to get to know.

  You’ve already guessed. I was wrong.

  I won’t bore you with the details, just take my word for it when I say it was one of the least interesting and at times most infuriating evenings of my life in Bangkok, many of which are spent entertaining out-of-towners. Over a period of five hours we uncovered nothing we had in common other than the university, about which I had only distant memories.

  Worse, they refused to leave the bubble in which they arrived and, from my point of view, they expected to leave the Land of Smiles without much of anything to smile about. Ordering a meal for them—their first taken outside their hotel, they said—was hampered by their belief that Thai food would either (1) poison them, or (2) merely invoke less than amusing damage to their gastro-intestinal systems. The appearance of sticky rice, part of the restaurant’s cuisine, actually made them ask if it were possible to get a potato.

  The Levys seemed terrified by their excursion. The air was polluted; the traffic was worse than it was back home in Kansas City; the heat and humidity were insufferable; the food looked as if it were alive or, worse, dead; the language was abrasive and undecipherable; the river that ran past their hotel was brown; and they were sure they would contract AIDS from some passing doorknob or toilet seat. Why, I wondered, had they come to Thailand?

  As we walked along the soi (street) to the main road to catch a cab after dinner, I spotted a small elephant being led by its trainer, who was selling bananas to passers-by, on the opposite side of the street. I thought this offered a perfect opportunity to introduce the Levys to something really Thai, and explained how the animal’s native habitat had been destroyed, forcing the elephants to come to the city to beg. They wouldn’t go near the tiny beast, practically withdrew into the wall in fear (on the opposite side of the street, mind you), and showed visible relief when they clambered into a taxi, to be hurried back to the security of their five-star hotel.

  The Levys were what another writer, Carol Hollinger, author of a truly fabulous little book called Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind (1965), called “the ‘Humph’ people,” the visitors to Thailand who greeted each new experience with a “Humph!” of disdain or disgust, the visitors who “stayed at the fancy hotels and hurried down to Jim Thompson’s to buy Thai silk.” And then went home.

  Good riddance, say I, but the Thai government loves these awful people because they spend more money here than other visitors do. The backpackers are welcomed, reluctantly. The sex tourists, too, but never openly. And it’s those two visitor categories that give the country much of the reputation that the nation’s leaders claim they would like to shed.

  In an effort to move in that direction, the Thai government in early 2002 announced plans to create two new tourist destinations that would appeal to the well-heeled traveler. Both schemes were hare-brained, but in Thailand you expected that. One was to turn a relatively unspoiled island in the southeast, Koh Chang, into “another Phuket” (the government’s phrase, not mine), but this time for the rich. The intent was to attract the kind of money that Phuket does, withou
t the bars and trashy souvenir shops.

  “We want to build a five-star image for Koh Chang by focusing on the environment,” said Pornchai Kaemapuckpong, a member of the government’s Koh Chang Development Committee. “People coming here should be proud that they can afford its high-end lifestyle.” How high-end? The goal was to attract tourists who could spend between US$1,250-1,500 a day. That Koh Chang was a national forest seventy five percent owned by the Royal Forestry Department and that the entire fifty-two-island Koh Chang archipelago was established as a Marine National Park in 1982 appeared to be regarded as irrelevant.

  “For many, this has a depressingly familiar ring,” Vipasai Niyamabha wrote in The Nation (Feb. 2, 2002). “And just who stands to benefit? We have witnessed parts of Pattaya become another Patpong; Koh Tao like Khao San Road, and Koh Phi Phi another Patong Beach. Is Koh Chang destined to fill her coffers yet lose her soul?”

  The other scheme was even crazier. It involved the governments of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia cooperating to construct a five-star resort that would be in what was to be called “The Emerald Triangle,” because at the time it was nothing but green jungle located where the three nations meet. The idea was to build a golf course that would allow players to swing their clubs in all three in a single round of play. There were problems, however, one being that much of the territory under discussion was heavily mined from the 1980s, when the Khmer Rouge were fighting in the area.

  Major General Kitti Sufksomsatarn, director of the Thailand Mine Action Centre, estimated the cost of the de-mining would be in the neighborhood of US$10.2 million, not including construction of an access road required to reach the site, and take at least a year; he also said that his organization could not assist because the scheme was planned for commercial rather than humanitarian reasons. Talk about the Emerald Triangle stopped.