Why such crazy ideas get any attention at all led inevitably to the doors of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, then a highly politicized arm of the government. In adopting a tourism master plan the same month that these two schemes were announced, the TAT, as it’s known, identified five tourism categories, all aimed at the “quality” tourist. These ranged from beaches and islands with potential for development to nature reserves and forests to historical destinations. It was suggested, for instance, that the ancient capital of Ayutthaya be turned into a “living museum” like America’s Williamsburg.
That was in 2002, when Thailand called tourism the key sector leading to economic recovery following the Asian meltdown of 1997. In the next two years, the government had to deal with a slew of new challenges both at home and abroad. TAT figures showed arrivals climbed from under seven million in 1995 to almost eleven million in 2002, but that figure fell by more than a million in 2003, thanks to wars in the Middle East, SARS and terrorist incidents in the region. Sunny predictions regarding a comeback in 2004 subsequently were torpedoed by repeated bird flu outbreaks and separatist violence in Thailand’s Muslim south.
There were other problems, and these could be longer lasting. In a report to the government, the TAT (quoting The Nation on Feb. 25, 2002) concluded that Thailand was “caught in a trap of low prices and profits growth. Although the country welcomes around ten million tourists a year, foreign visitors are spending less time here, and less money, and perhaps looking to alternative destinations such as Vietnam and Cambodia.”
Thus, the country was “caught in a vicious circle of being a cheap destination.”
Over the years, Thailand’s image took other hits so serious they made “cheap” sound almost flattering. Most (in)famously, Newsweek (Jul. 12, 1999) said the country’s economic advantages over its neighbors were limited to “sex and golf.” In 2002, in a special section devoted to Thailand’s economy, The Economist said two growth industries that merited special attention were “sex and drugs.” And in 2004, when the TAT hired a group of researchers at California State University to explore ways the nation might attract more long-stay American tourists, it was told that something had to be done to overcome the perception that the entire country was “dirty, polluted and traffic congested.”
Still tourism boomed. Some of the growth could be attributed to the violence and political unrest in other Asian destinations (Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia) or political incorrectness (Myanmar). When terrorist bombs destroyed Bali’s tourism in 2002, travelers came to Thailand’s southern islands instead. In 2004, a Lonely Planet survey named Thailand the number one destination in the world (ahead of Italy, Australia, India, and New Zealand); Condé Nast Traveler magazine ranked the Land of Smiles number two (behind Australia) for long-stay visitors and seven out of the top twenty hotels named were in Bangkok, Krabi, Chiang Mai and Phuket.
But there was a basic flaw in the figures. Ten million arrivals per year made Thailand one of the top twenty travel destinations in the world. But more than one of every ten were weekend shoppers and sex tourists from Malaysia who came for what they couldn’t get at home. Other repeat “visitors” were long-term foreign residents who left and re-entered to satisfy visa requirements. (I once took a five-hour bus ride to Cambodia eleven times in a single year for that reason, thus was counted eleven times.) Can the tens of thousands of resident business people and their families making frequent exits and re-entries honestly be called “tourists?”
(For the record, according to the Police Department’s Immigration Bureau, in 2003, of the ten or so million arrivals counted, 1.3 million came from Malaysia, one million more from Japan, 694,000 from Korea, 650,000 from Hong Kong, 629,000 from Singapore, 624,000 from China, 545,000 from the UK, 521,000 from Taiwan, 459,000 from the U.S., and 379,000 from Germany.)
In addition, there was concern about where the money went, once it was spent. Lisa Mastny, a researcher for Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC, wrote in State of the World 2002 that “an estimated ninety percent of the world’s tourism enterprises are small businesses, from family-owned restaurants to one-person snorkeling operations. Yet governments are under increasing pressure to grant large-scale investors, including international airlines, hotel chains, and tour operators, easier access to tourism assets. Under a special economic relations treaty with the United States, for example, Thailand must grant companies owned and operated by U.S. investors the same legal treatment as those owned by Thai nationals.”
The result? Small, local businesses get crowded out and much of the revenue eventually generated by the big new development goes rushing back out of the country like the withdrawing waves on a beach.
No matter. Travel gurus nowadays advise against sustaining a low-end reputation, and Thailand seems to be going along. Not everyone agrees. Don Ross, a travel writer for the Bangkok Post, said in March, 2002, that “moving Thailand out of the cheap tour league might be counterproductive. Rather than raising the country’s profile, it might be interpreted as a reason to travel elsewhere.” Thailand needs to “keep its eyes on all market segments without belittling one at the expense of another.”
On the other hand, should the government manage to change its image and pull in more of the high rollers, the “Humph” people (including the Levys) might come back in force. I have an elephant on the street, standing by.
Country Music, Thai Style
Thirty or forty years ago, a fiery green papaya salad known as som tam was called “peasant food.” Because it originated in Thailand’s impoverished and densely populated, rural northeast, called Isan, it wasn’t regarded as fit for “proper” Thai mouths. With the migration of at least a million people from that region— to work in the factories and the tourism and construction industries that fueled much of the country’s economic boom—they brought the dish to Bangkok and began selling it from street stalls where others from Isan congregated, near the big hotels, building sites, and in poor residential neighborhoods. In just a few years, it started appearing on mom-and-pop menus and then on “proper” ones, and now it can be found in Thai restaurants around the world and may fairly be called a national dish.
Some people say the same thing could happen to Isan’s music. At least, it’s now sweeping Thailand, expanding from the niche market it once claimed and going “mainstream,” the way the papaya salad did, and the way country music did in the United States.
The comparison to what once was called “hillbilly” music in America is not inappropriate, because the various strains of music from Isan frequently describe the lives and social problems of Thailand’s poor the way country music sometimes still does in America, and they are performed emotionally, providing a refreshingly vibrant alternative to the formulaic and instantly forgettable Canto-Pop that fixes so much of the music across Asia, including Thailand. The music itself is characterized by the playing of traditional folk instruments and an insistent keyboard that almost sounds as if there might be a stoned snake-charmer nearby with a basket of sleepy snakes.
Generally, this Southeast Asian country music is called luuk thung (pronounced “look tung” and translated “child of the fields”), although there are several variations. Isan borders Cambodia and Laos and the traditions and instruments of the smaller countries have influenced their bigger, more modern neighbor. There are significant differences between Laotian mor lam and mor lam sing and Khmer kantruem, for example, but all generally are put under the luuk thung umbrella in the way blue-grass and western swing and other distinct sounds share space on a single Billboard country music chart.
Luuk thung first emerged from Thailand’s poor central plains and northeast in the 1960s and 1970s about the same time that the United States built air bases in Thailand (several of them in Isan) and Bangkok became a preferred R&R destination for GIs during America’s Indochina war. The cultural and political impact of a suddenly intensive foreign presence in Thailand made an impression on the local musicians, a
s they adopted jeans and tee-shirts, let their hair grow and embraced rock and roll.
The local musicians kept the sound of native instruments of wood and bamboo, however, and lyrics rarely strayed from the problems and causes of the Thais, even when some English phrases were added, as in Carabao’s hit, “Made in Thailand,” an eco-nationalistic song that told Thais to stop buying stuff made by foreigners. Others took up the cause of the farm girl pressed by poverty into prostitution.
As was true in American country music, the tone often ranged from poignant to angry—success coming from musical talent, but also lyrics that were relatable. Several bands, notably Caravan, strongly identified with Thailand’s growing democracy movement, along with leftist balladeers associated with the student uprising of 1972, calling their genre plaen phua chiwit, or “Songs for Life.”
Luuk thung went into semi-retirement in the 1980s as Thailand experienced a period of military coups, social uncertainty, and massive industrial development, beginning its comeback in the 1990s following a decade of dominance by western recording acts. (Even Michael Jackson appeared in concert in Bangkok during this period.) The revival was fueled in part by the success of Luuk Thung FM, which began broadcasting twenty-four hours a day in 1997. Two years later, the life of Phumphuang Duangchan, known as the Queen of Thai Country Song (think Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette), who died in 1992 at age thirty-one, was made into a television mini-series.
A number of odd events occurred during the production of the series, the singer’s songs emerging from a computer that wasn’t turned on, a missing script that reappeared only after the writer paid her respects to a statue of Phumphuang built after the singer’s cremation in a Suphan Buri temple, etc. When these eerie stories became known, and someone claimed to win the lottery after visiting the statue, the temple became a pilgrimage site. Today, thousands rub the bark of a big tree on the grounds, looking for those magic numbers, and four more statues have been erected.
Once snubbed by the urban hip and the Thai “Hi-So,” short for high society, the music found new fans in the expanding middle class, especially among white-collar workers and trend-conscious teenagers. Bangkok schools formed luuk thung clubs, presenting regular concerts; Rangsit University even produced an album of anguished songs about campus life. At the same time, leaders of the two most popular “Songs for Life” bands of the 1970s performed together with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra and new clubs opened in Bangkok and elsewhere featuring groups led by similarly inclined activists. This continues today.
Many of the new singers, such as Apaporn Naskornsawan, Chakrapan (Got) Jakraphand, Dao Mayuree, Suda Srillamduan, Nujaree Sri Racha, and Yui Yartyeoh, became teen idols. Today’s stars even include a blue-eyed Norwegian social worker-turned-singer, Jonas (pronounced Jonat, as Thais have trouble with “s”)
Anderson, and the Dutch-British daughter of religious social workers, Christy (Krit-tee) Gibson, who have learned to enunciate the lyrics properly, and also to howl from the lungs and duplicate the severe vibrato that help telegraph the music’s emotion. Such techniques come naturally to Thai vocalists, and Anderson admits he has to learn the songs note for note.
With all this new popularity and social acceptance, the number of country music companies has grown ten-fold and there now are more than a hundred vocalists with recordings, triple the figure in 1996. Where once luuk thung singers didn’t need to be physically attractive and success relied solely on vocal prowess, now young, good-looking stars predominate, several of them making feature films along with music videos that get regular exposure on Thai language television stations. For some performers, tee-shirts have been replaced by flashy costumes reminiscent of traditional Thai dress. The line-up of eight or more dancers—key to any luk thung performance—is now choreographed and singers are taught by their record companies how to project more appealing personalities. An increasing number have their own web pages. And although they haven’t been particularly successful, Sony, Universal, Warner, EMI and other international companies have set up Thai music divisions. So far, none of this music has been exported.
Nor is there much money to be made at home, at least not by western standards. A popular luuk thung singer may be paid as much as US$500-1,000 per concert, not bad considering the country’s average annual per capita income is under $3,000. Most fees are much smaller, however, and personal appearances often generate more income than record sales, in part because of the widespread counterfeiting; the leading label, Grammy, in early 2002 reduced its CD price by half in an effort to compete with the bootleggers.
Where once a patronage system in the luuk thung business saw famous singers with up to a hundred dancers, musicians, comedians and other less famous singers on their payrolls, and the star vocalist owned everything from the dancers’ dresses to the instruments, now most performers work alone, managed by their record labels or independent production companies.
Only a few of today’s luuk thung singers have their own bands. Most travel a circuit alone, at its basic level appearing in several venues in a single night, backed by each club’s house band, performing familiar songs that everyone can sing. Many of the older vocalists work for tips from the audience, earning $100 or more a night.
Bangkok’s Tawan Isan Daeng is typical club. It’s a huge, dark warehouse of a room that serves a menu of Isan dishes and is popular with families as well as with young men and women lonesome for Isan and looking for a cheap night out.
After nine, when a seven-piece band appears, accompanied by a lineup of dancers in matching outfits and a round-robin procession of vocalists, the small dance floor in front of the stage fills with the middle-aged and young alike, repeating the easy, gliding steps and the sinuous waggling of arms and wrists held above their heads that characterizes simple Isan dance, backed by the drone and thump and lyric message that, for an evening, takes them home.
Greasing the Reels
Foreign film companies loooooooove Thailand.
After dozens of foreign productions—from The Ugly American, casting Kukrit Pramoj as a fictional prime minister opposite Marlon Brando, and the early James Bond extravaganza with Roger Moore, Man With the Golden Gun, which turned an island in Phang Nga Bay into a tourist attraction; to most of the Vietnam war films and no-brainers by Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Dame—Thailand has cultivated a behind-the-camera labor force comfortable working with foreigners, and it has become recognized as a location of choice for filmmakers at affordable rates.
It has mountains and jungles, tropical island beaches, rivers and canals, ancient ruins and villages little changed since the Stone Age. It has vintage aircraft and tanks and elephants, all in working order. It has five-star hotels, where cinema egos can get the room service they believe they deserve.
That isn’t all. Thailand also has a reputation for cooperation. Virtually anything you want, if you are willing to pay for it, can be had. Want to close down traffic on one of the major roadways in Bangkok (as was done for Oliver Stone and others)? No problem. Want to halt shipping on the Chao Phraya River so you can blow up and sink a boat (as was done for Van Damme, an effort that required permission from police on both sides of the river and the marine police)? Easy as pie. Need an army of men with weapons or a fleet of helicopters? Say where and when you want delivery. Did one of the stars or production principals get thrown into jail, and you want him released? Piece of cake. Did someone die on the set and you want it to go unreported? Have a second piece of cake.
Filming is big business in Thailand, if not for the home-grown productions—whose budgets still rarely go over the US$1 million mark—then for those imported from Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, the U.K. and, most profitably, the U.S. Most of the Indochinese war films made in the past twenty years— The Deer Hunter, Air America, Good Morning Vietnam!, Platoon, Heaven and Earth, Uncommon Valour, Casualties of War and Operation Dumbo Drop among them—were filmed in Thailand.
So were Van Damme’s earlier Kickboxer and Street Fighter and h
is more recent Quest; Cutthroat Island, in which the Krabi coastline masqueraded unconvincingly as the Caribbean; The Phantom, based on the American comic strip; Mortal Kombat (both of them), The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles; a remake of Around the World in 80 Days, Angelina Jolie’s Beyond Borders; Oliver Stone’s Alexander; Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, John Carpenter’s Vampires 3; another James Bond film, this one starring Pierce Brosnan, Tomorrow Never Dies; Steven Seagal’s Belly of the Beast; and, believe it or not, something called Surf Ninjas of the South China Seas.
Plus there has been a regular stream of documentaries, music videos and commercials. No one knows exactly how much this is worth to the Thai economy, although official revenues by 2003 from foreign productions had tripled since 1998, when the take was US$10 million. This is miniscule compared to the $10 billion spent by foreign visitors, but add the exposure that Thailand’s sights and scenery get, presumably easing the job of the state Tourism Authority, and add to that all the unreported exchange that takes place under the table.
“You know what it cost to lease the choppers and planes for Air America?” a Hollywood production manager said, insisting on anonymity because he wanted to work in Thailand again.
“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of it going straight into Air Force pockets. There were these aircraft that were supposed to be self-starting, but the batteries were dead, so we had to pay a fortune to fly in a battery starter from Lopburi. Back in the States, I could’ve bought an entire airplane for the same price.
“It doesn’t matter,” he continued, laughing, “because if the script is set in the tropics, this is the place. Apocalypse Now was shot in the Philippines and The Bridge on the River Kwai in Sri Lanka and not even tourists go to those places these days. Vietnam? Forget it. The communists didn’t invent red tape, but they perfected it.”
Thailand Confidential Page 17
