To Run Across the Sea

by Norman Lewis

  The Patpong and Petchburi Roads are the heartland of novelty and make-belief. Bar-girls may wear absolutely nothing but a belt of silk around the waist, school uniforms or wedding dresses. In one restaurant, topless waitresses career from table to table on roller skates, while in another less inclined to mobility, they actually feed the guests. Massage parlours are scattered by the dozen throughout the area, the best-known being Atami’s which accepts Diners’ cards, and raises no objection to visits clearly motivated by curiosity. Externally, Atami’s looks like a supermarket, its outstanding internal feature (and this is typical of such establishments) being a brilliantly lit room behind a glass screen. In this a number of ladies in pink evening gowns are seated on what must be the largest sofa in the world. Elsewhere each of these women has a number pinned to her dress, a form of identification rejected by Atami’s as crude.

  The secrets of the trade were recently disclosed by a young Thai woman, Suleemarn Naru, researching this weird oriental half-world for a master’s thesis in sociology, whose devotion to her studies was so great that she actually worked for six months in a massage parlour with a staff of 1,000 girls. She noted that girls between the age of 12 and 22 were recruited by agents in impoverished hill villages, sacrificing themselves for a down payment handed over to their parents which—although small enough—was equivalent to the family income for a year. In the matter of prostitution, her finding was that, apart from the middle-aged practitioners of traditional massage, the majority of the masseuses were involved in this.

  Chiang Mai, capital of the North, remains beneath a veneer of development Thailand’s most pleasing city. Between morning and evening rush hours it is sedate enough to be explored by bike, with everything worth seeing compressed into the old town within the mediaeval walls. Parts of Chiang Mai recall scenes from old movies of China before Mao, and a glance at the map confirms that the remotest provinces of China are not far away. Men and women wearing hats like enormous lampshades hobble past under the weight of a pole balanced on the shoulders with heavy burdens at each end. Time-defaced human and animal figures, ribald and threatening or merely grotesque lie abandoned among the rubbish in odd corners. The department stores offer a range of spirit-houses to suit all pockets, from a clearance line in plastic to deluxe versions carved from teak. They are everywhere, giving shelter to the ancestral spirits of the family and to such vagrant ones as might be tempted to take up residence, just as a bird may take over a nesting box. My hotel had put up one, and so had a filling-station fifty yards down the road, both furnished with protective miniature elephants and galloping horses. The roofs of old Chiang Mai, curling at the eaves, lie upon the city like autumn leaves, and from these arise the gilt spires of many temples, spreading the faintest of haloes into the misted sky. There can be no more poetic scene than the line-up of archers, who station themselves just after dawn with their crossbows along the moat to shoot at the shadowy outlines of fish in its intensely green waters.

  Among the multitude of pagodas throughout the Thai kingdom, two in Chiang Mai demand a visit, as much for the permeation of their surroundings with the aroma of ancient Asia as for their architectural distinction. Wat Phra Singh, built in 1385, enshrines one of the most venerable Buddha images, which, as a notice informs the visitor, deposited momentarily in this spot while being taken to the King of Chiang Mai, refused to move. The second, Wat Chedi Luang, is remarkable for the splendour and antiquity of its spire, guarded by a wonderful assortment of stone serpents and elephants. Both temples have been presented with a selection of majestic old grandfather clocks, which tick away resolutely in the profound religious calm, and both have set aside areas where male citizens over 50 come to sleep one night a week in order to benefit from holy emanation.

  From Chiang Mai, I drove up to Mae Sae, Thailand’s northernmost village, on the frontier with Burma—a place of stunning ugliness, based upon opium trade prosperity. The two countries are separated at this point by a narrow river, and I stood for a moment on its bank to watch Thai children on one side and Burmese on the other stoning each other across the water in a friendly and ineffective fashion. This area—the Golden Triangle—had been part of the territory of the Shan warlord Khun Sa, and was dominated by him until 1983. From here he controlled most of the world trade in opium and heroin. In 1983 he was finally defeated in an all-out assault by the Thai Army and driven back across the border into Burma. Here—although equally unwelcome—he remains in command of an army of some 5,000 men and controls, as he claims, the destinies of eight million Burmese Shans.

  Khun Sa’s successful partnership with the CIA has been described. The Shan warlord grew the opium and processed the heroin, and the CIA, in the guise of wholesaler, flew this into Vietnam, the handsome profit thus derived helping to finance the covert operations of those days. This once valued ally is now a thorn in the American side. He has recently proposed a deal by which he guarantees to cut off virtually the whole of the world’s heroin supply at source in return for US economic aid totalling 95 million dollars a year for five years.

  At Mae Sae, hilltribes people, women and children, some weeping and in rags were crossing the bridge from Burma. Their lot is a sorry one, whether in one country or the other, for they are without nationality, and it was highly likely that this particular group of refugees would in due course suffer eviction from Thailand as they had from Burma. They are unpopular on both sides of the frontier, the common complaint being that their slash and burn method of cultivation is detrimental both to environment and climate. It is an argument that ignores the fact that the hilltribes, with a current population in Thailand of 830,000 have always been there, although it is only in recent years that marked climatic changes have been recorded.

  The climate of such tropical countries depends for its stability on the presence of rain forests, and an often catastrophic drop in rainfall follows their destruction. On the whole the hilltribes try to avoid the labour involved in felling large trees, contenting themselves with the cyclical clearance and cultivation of land upon which secondary forest has taken a decade or so to restore a measure of fertility to the soil. The clearances that change the climate are those carried out by logging firms and coffee and rubber planters. In 50 years nearly two-thirds of the big trees have gone. The nation is, therefore, two-thirds of the way along the road to climatic disaster.

  Whatever the true facts may be, the wretched hilltribes carry the can, and are often the victims of brutal treatment by the state. In 1987, it was announced that 2,000 tribal people were to be ‘repatriated’ (i.e. shoved back across a border that for them did not exist). The spokesman added that 160 families had already been cleared in the style of the Scottish Highlands of the last century, and their villages burned. In February of this year a further 5,000 hilltribes people were ordered to pack up and move down into the plain to facilitate a private company’s reforestation venture upon what was regarded as their ancestral land.

  Tribal wretchedness has been increased by a crackdown on the small-scale, although widespread, production of opium, grown as a cash crop with which to pay for rice. Thus Khun Sa’s competitors in North Thailand have been wiped out, although by all accounts the big-business narcotics trade carries on as before. Happily, at this moment of crisis, a new income from tourism is helping to keep the hill-farmer’s head above water. Last year 120 package-deal operators in Chiang Mai despatched 100,000 clients into the mountains in search of primitive and often strenuous pleasures. ‘Jungle adventures’, as they are termed, may include such imaginative trimmings as a mile or two of transport by bullock cart, or on the back of an elephant, or in a sampan, but there is a fair amount of foot-slogging involved. There may be the occasional glimpse of an impressive snake, and once in a while an encounter with bandits, as a result of which, on one occasion in 1988, fatalities were sustained. Trekkers are promised guidance to villages rarely visited before. Here the deal may include a pipe of opium smoked with the headman, and a rudimentary massage by one of the t
ribal maidens who has been rushed down to Chiang Mai for a crash course in the art. To the excitement of the local tourist industry, a border conflict between Thailand and Laos flared up at the beginning of February and the most enterprising of the Chiang Mai operators laid plans for a ‘battle experience’ tour in which trekkers could have experienced the audial excitement of distant cannon fire. Within days, however, the war was called off. As reported in the press 1,000 shells and rockets rained down in a ceremonial bombardment of the previously vacated area under dispute, after which the generals of both sides, their staffs and their wives got together for a conciliatory night of revelry, hot whisky-drinking and the Ramwong.

  Down in the relaxed and hedonistic South the hair shirt is gratefully laid aside and visitors surrender themselves to the beach ritual in the usual way. Thailand has learned little from the fate of the Spanish Costas. Thirty years ago Pattaya, now the leading resort, was a fishing village with fretwork-adorned fishermen’s shacks, a few mad little seaside castles built by the rich, and painted boats strewn among the nets drying on the immaculate sand. It is now the most expensive as well as the most garish of Thai cities with 400 hotels, guest-houses and condominiums covering the site of those once engaging scenes. Despite its jazzarenas, its glittering nightlife, and its many widely advertised ‘pampering facilities’, Pattaya, even according to the local newspapers, is far from being what it was. Coming straight to the point, the Bangkok Post complains that the penalties imposed by the management of the several hundred bars upon bar-girls who absent themselves momentarily from normal counter duties for a pampering session with a customer have been unreasonably increased. Fines of 100 baht have shot up to 400 baht (42 bahts to the pound), while an unheard-of 1,000 baht are demanded for a few moments of sexual satisfaction as compared to a reasonable 300–400 baht paid until quite recently ‘for an evening of entertainment’. The newspaper goes on to lament the loss of the old easygoing atmosphere in the city’s nightspots, particularly when police in uniform enter a bar to hustle for drinks: ‘They are driving so many customers away because foreign tourists become uneasy when they see an armed official consuming alcohol when he should probably be on duty.’

  Ruling out Pattaya with its pampering and its gun-slinging cops, I went instead to Phuket, Thailand’s largest island, down close to the border with Malaysia—a younger arrival in the field of pleasure. Here I stayed at a comfortable but isolated hotel, in appearance half-way between a pagoda and a railway station, with mock-Tudor half-timbered additions in which artfully painted concrete stood in for wood. The central feature was a series of still pools in the lobby, which, at a touch of a switch, could be set in motion to feed a river flowing through open doors over a flight of concrete steps into a lotus pond below. Everything had been thought of here to further the guest’s pleasure down to the orchid laid on the pillow at night, attached to two wrapped peppermints and a quotation—sometimes from Shakespeare—in praise of sleep. The only trouble was there was nothing whatever to do and nowhere to go in an immediate vicinity of sand-dunes and stagnant ponds from which I was assured a leisure complex of unprecedented dimensions would shortly emerge.

  In Patong, a few miles further along the coast, something like this had already happened. It had been first in the field of development, and here had arisen a concrete jungle of the most fanciful kind. In a rabid assortment of architectural styles, the pacemaker seemed to have been modelled on a Dayak long-house with a soaring, gabled roof under which the wooden idols of Borneo might have been stored. There were a number in this style. There were also a little suburb of snow-proof mountain chalets built for Swiss occupation under this refulgent sun, a German speishaus with a sweating employee in lederhosen at the door, what looked like a Spanish model prison, and for the Brits, the usual nostalgic pubs.

  Nothing much in Patong seemed to be working at the time of my passing through, for the sewers were being replaced and 100 yards of swamp spread from a burst water-main. Pyramids of building materials obscured all the views, such as they were, while newly opened-up terrain on all sides was spiked like a fakir’s bed with iron reinforcements awaiting the concrete. In the background, tremendous earth-moving machines charged about like an armoured brigade in action. A dried-out part of the town contained scuttling whirlwinds full of calcine dust, through which the visitors struggled, handkerchiefs clamped to their noses. From the invisible bay below a despondent howl arose to announce the presence of the long-tail boats of Bangkok.

  Beyond Patong, the newer resorts, Karon, Kata and Naihan had some way to go before reaching this extreme. Nevertheless, here too, the shape of things to come was to be discerned in the new roads slashed through the contours of the landscape; the ironed-out dunes; the drained marshes; the streams corseted with cement; the hills sliced away.

  Of the unique charm of South-East Asia where it borders the Andaman Sea, little survives in Phuket but what is to be found at Mai Khao—a long and deserted beach north of the airport, which, with its hinterland, has mysteriously been spared. For a while the road leading to the mainland via the Sarasin Bridge runs within a mile or so of the shore, to be reached by any track taken to the left. Here a seascape of oriental antiquity remains. The beach is feathered by the mossy shade of huge cassuarinas, from which fishing owls as large as eagles come planing down to the waves in the early hours of the evening. Within hearing of the planes taking off, painted storks mince in casual fashion among the lilypads of a shallow lake. In the rainy season, beginning in July, orchids flower in the branches of every tree. When I was there in February none were in flower, but this was the month when the turtles come ashore at night by the hundreds to deposit their eggs, and in the morning their scuffled tracks—strangely industrial-looking in their regularity—are everywhere to be seen.

  KHARTOUM AND BACK

  THE PEOPLE WHO SHOULD know differ strangely as to which is the longest river. The Times Atlas casts it vote in favour of the Amazon, the Encyclopedia Britannica says the Nile, while the Guinness Book of Records cannot make up its mind. Whichever the winner in this photo finish, one thing is certain: the importance of the Amazon in the human scheme is slight, that of the Nile huge. The one, majestic and aloof, has no history, enriches no land, supports only a handful of fishermen. The other is currently responsible for the existence of 50 million people, and even in the time of the pharaohs may have supported a population half that size, which, ruling out China, would probably have exceeded the number of the inhabitants of the rest of the globe.

  The Nile brought glittering civilisations into being, wholly dependent upon the annual bounty of its floods, and a single year’s withholding of its waters from the parched lands awaiting them would have been enough to obliterate an empire. ‘Egypt,’ said Herodotus, ‘is the gift of the Nile.’ And not only Egypt but that 3,000-mile-long ribbon of fertility which uncoils through the deserts of the Sudan, where local wars of extermination have been fought when an occasional drop of a few inches in water levels meant that there was not enough food for all.

  Khartoum, capital of the Sudan, seemed a likely starting-off place for explorations of the Upper Nile. It turned out to be a somewhat caved-in town with an embalmed colonial flavour, an occasional leper in sight, isolated grand hotels, and a Sudan Club where the many British expatriates that remain appeared to spend much of their lives. The Chinese had built a sumptuous Friendship Hall and glutted the town with Double Happiness matches—now serving as small change—while the Japanese kept the broken streets filled with yellow Toyota taxis. A thousand elephants had died to stock main-street shops with banal ornaments carved from their tusks, and the skins of such endangered animals as leopards, cheetahs and crocodiles were on offer at bargain prices.

  I stayed at a new hotel in the centre where the novelty and the charm of Orient fully compensated for faltering Western technology. A little Arabic, not well learnt so many years ago, had been resuscitated for the occasion, and this permitted a proper exchange of courtesies with spotlessly robe
d fellow guests queueing for the lift. ‘Peace on you.’ ‘And on you peace and the blessings of God.’ ‘They say today that if you wish to reach floor three you must press button six.’ ‘Let us do that. Inshallah we shall arrive.’ ‘Inshallah.’

  The doorman swept off his hat in the way Sudanese servants probably did 30 years ago. Fifty yards from where he stood smiling and bowing, a beggar advertised his plight by a strong-voiced cry, ‘God is merciful,’ repeated with unflagging conviction every 10 seconds throughout the daylight hours. According to a printed warning it was as strictly forbidden to photograph him, or any other ‘debasing sight’, as it was a power-station, a military establishment, or a bridge.

  Down on the waterfront the scene was a lively one. Khartoum is built at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, the first gathering its waters in the Ethiopian Plateau; the most distant source of the second being the Kagera River in Burundi, some 1,500 miles to the south. It came as a surprise to find that one river is actually blue, and the other, if not quite white, at least a palish green. It is regarded by many visitors as an emotional experience to discover a spot on one of the sand-banks where this separation of colours is clearly visible, enabling the pilgrim to stand with one foot in each river.

  Hotels and government buildings impose a stolid conformity along the city waterfront—one could be anywhere—but at Abu Rof, just outside the town limits, the Nile comes into its own, and could almost be mistaken for the Ganges. Here people strip off to wash down, having pushed their way down to the water through the herds of cows and goats that are brought to drink. Here, taxi drivers back their shattered Toyotas into the shallows to sponge off the dust, and here—inevitably—the donkey-drawn municipal water-carts are brought to be filled. This is a playground to which men bred in deserts are attracted by the mere presence of water. They sit here in rows in barbers’ chairs to have their heads shaved, and before the lathering begins the barber adjusts the mirror to enable his customer to enjoy the reflected scene of all that is happening down by the river at his back.