Asia 2008

On our way between Chiangs Mai and Khong we stopped for lunch outside Chiang Rai - which is, incidentally, in the Golden Triangle. Over the road was Wat Rong Khun, a modern wat, designed and built by an artist by the name of Chalermchai Kositpipat. Construction began in 1998 and is nearly complete.

It is a modern take on an old theme, and unique in Thailand in being all white; it looks as if it was carved from sugar candy.

The bot is one of the less rectilinear buildings I have seen.

The finials look like winged elephants. Species mixes are common in Buddhism, as in Greek and Rowlingian mythology.

To get into the bot, you have to walk over a bridge guarded by a couple of spirits. Demonic hands stretch out from below.

The walls of the bot contain a representation of “an escape from the defilements of temptation”. It’s uncannily like a Last Judgment, which Buddha in the place where Jesus would be. The style is sci-fi art. Darth Vader appears. There is a plane crashing into the Twin Towers (its position in the picture implies opprobrium, not glorification).

Did I mention taking an elephant ride in Chiang Mai a couple of weeks ago? I don’t think I did. We got to Chiang Mai early in the morning and while some of the group went off to a cookery class, Rae and I took a minibus to an elephant reserve outside Chiang Mai. We spent about an hour perched on top of a balding forty-something elephant as it strolled around the nearby landscape.

It’s not a comfortable way to travel, and it was unbelievably hot. We had both pointlessly brought rucksacks with us, as well as cameras. We had bought bunches of bananas too, to feed the elephant. I ended up covered in banana as the bunches disintegrated in my lap. Elephant power consumption must run well into the kilowatts, so they can eat an endless number of bananas. They also get through 40 or 50 kg of feed a day.

Elephants are a bit of a problem in Thailand. They used to carry loads, provide power, and function as tanks in battles; now all that is done mechanically. You see small elephants sometimes in the streets of Bangkok and Chiang Mai. This is, obviously, not their natural environment. Their keepers ask for money for the elephants, but then abandon the elephants when they get too big. Inevitably, these abandoned elephants cause problems. So the advice is not to give to these people.

Quite often our elephant would stop and lift its trunk, demanding bananas. So long as we had any, Rae would oblige. It was a long reach forward.

Occasionally the elephant would stop altogether and trumpet.

There are all sorts of words for elephant in Thai, for immature female, mature female, mature male and so on. The only one I can remember, other than Chang (which is a brand of beer with a picture of an elephant on the front) is Phan, an immature female. This is Phan Dii, an 8-year old female.

I'm joining the tour to Laos this evening and I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing in the next couple of weeks.

Here are some photos which I don't have the time to link to any narrative.

Escalators at MBK

Siam Paragon Centre

Walkway to MBK Centre

Chao Praya and the Peninsula Hotel from Saphan Thaksin

Traffic outside Chatuchak Park

Puppies on sale at Chatuchak Market

Food stall on Thanon Sukhumvit

Small child encouraging a dependency culture, Sanam Luang

Kites in Sanam Luang

Every evening there are muay thai shows in Bangkok, in either Rajadamnern or Lumphini Stadium. Yesterday I went to Rajadamnern with a couple of people I had met on the museum tour earlier in the day, Dominic and Catherine. There is a dual pricing arrangement – much, much more for foreigners – and the tickets for farang cost 1000, 1500 or 2000 baht. For B1,000 you get to be in a cage at the top. Like being an English football fan in the 1980s. Most go there.

We plumped for the intermediate tickets, closer to the action but not ring-side. B1500 is getting on for £25, which is very steep. There were 8 or 10 bouts on the programme at weights from 48 to 55 Kg.

The stadium is like a small covered bullring or theatre in the round. Aside from a ring of neon ads around the top of the walls, the only lighting is straight down on to the ring, like a snooker table. Very theatrical.

The boxers can punch – they wear boxing gloves – and kick with foot or knee. Only the groin is out of bounds, and that not strictly, it seems. The kids who started the bill couldn’t generate much power with punches and they mainly kicked to the side of the torso. The older guys could pack a punch too. There were at least three knockouts. At every contact, sections of the crowd exclaimed in unison – something like “Eee!” with a sforzando in the middle of the syllable. While those of us unfamiliar with the sport could easily see the kicks and punches, the crowd particularly appreciated the closer work, when the fighters were clinched, kneeing each other in the ribs.

The urgency of the action is amplified by the house quartet: two drums, cymbals and oboe. They play during each three-minute round and also during the warm-ups.

When the fighters enter the ring they are wearing noose-shaped head-dresses. Studiously ignoring the other, they pray at each corner and then conduct a stylised and not entirely graceful warm-up dance.

Then each goes back to his corner, where his trainer prays over his head and removes the headgear.

Many of them keep amulets tied around their upper arms for luck.

The fighters were in fantastic shape. Most were built like light middleweights, although one very impressive fighter, who maintained an obvious calmness in the middle of the exchanges, was relatively scrawny.

All had overdeveloped abs from all the kicking (the knee is usually raised well before the foot strikes). And all were hard as nails, never showing any pain and always dashing immediately back into the fray after being hit.

The enthusiasm of the crowd was connected to the betting action. The upper and intermediate tiers were filled with tic tac signals both before the bouts and between rounds, and most of the crowd was laying bets. The trading in contingent claims was frantic. Gambling is illegal in Thailand, but pretty much everybody does it, apparently.

Like any middle-income country, Thailand has very high income and wealth inequality. This is also expressed geographically. Bangkok has about 15% of the population and 90% of the wealth of the country. So, like all cities in the history of civilisation, Bangkok is richer than the country surrounding it.

So let’s guess that Bangkok has income per head of $15,000 compared to the Thai average $8,000 (purchasing power parity basis, from the CIA website). Even allowing for the large regional income disparities in Italy (income per head $30,000-35,000), Bangkok should be poorer than, say, Naples.

No doubt it is, if you look at the proportion of households with fridges, for example. But (central) Bangkok seems much richer than (central) Naples.

This is partly due to the relative absence of visible poverty. The number of beggars is also about the same as in London, for example.

It also has plenty to do with rubbish: littering is an offence in Bangkok and a norm in Naples. In Bangkok, an army of street cleaners sweeps the streets; in Naples the Camorra dumps the nation’s spazzatura on to the streets.

Thirdly, it has something to do with the building stock. Most edifices in Naples appear decayed and there’s little completed new build, in the centre at least. Buildings, shacks apart, don’t appear decayed in Bangkok, and all the tall buildings - of which there are many - have sprouted in the last 20 years.

As usual, I don’t know whether to give to beggars or not. You get feelgood (and Buddhist merit) by giving. On the other hand, unemployment is officially 2% in Thailand and there are plenty of economic niches available: selling lottery tickets, for example. Furthermore, children are trafficked from Cambodia to be put to begging here. They don’t get to keep their revenues.