Undemocratic democrats and the perils of being a flaneur in Thailand.

On this gorgeous morning your correspondent finds himself sitting in a rather comfortable armchair on the upper deck of a two storey raft moored on the River Kwai. The raft itself is the property of the Noble House Hotel, an establishment whose hospitality I have enjoyed the pleasure of during the past week. The main grounds of the hotel are located on the river bank in the town of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The place itself is eminently peaceful. My reveries are only briefly interrupted by the groaning of the raft as she settles ever more comfortably down upon the water and the amorous calls of a variety of tropical birds who seem, unlike myself, undismayed by the ever-present heat. Tropical fruit bearing plants grow abundantly on the small islet in front of me: mangoes, bananas, coconuts and more. The odd lizards scurries across the decking. In some ways it almost seems too pleasant, as if one is on a film set rather than reality, so perfect is the setting.

All this peace somewhat belies the political conflict going on in this land at the time of writing. Although Kanchanaburi seems completely serene, apart from the odd drunken reveller or Chinese person letting off fire crackers to celebrate the imminent arrival of the Year of the Horse, it is not so in the capital, Bangkok, nor in many other areas of the South. Thai politics, it seems, are horrendously complicated. The enmities between the rival factions are deep and bitter. The main parties are locked in a death-match to gain control of the governance of this country. As ever with politicians, they promise all kinds of reforms and changes if only you will vote for them. Also, as ever, the reality usually degrades into one form of corruption or another once they actually achieve the sought after power. This patterns seems ubiquitous the world over although in the West we are often better at hiding, or even institutionalising, our corruption. We sometimes speak of advisers from industry on trade missions when what is really meant is arms dealers (suitably suited and booted of course, but arms dealers nevertheless) or lobbyists in parliament whose soul raison d'etre is to influence government in favour of whatever corporation they represent.

Here in Thailand the main parties have wonderfully idealistic sounding names such as the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship or the People's Democratic Reform Committee.

The latter has been the main instigator behind the problems in the capital of late. There is an election due to take place on February 2nd. Unfortunately for the PDRC it is an election they are very likely to lose. Therefore, rather than campaigning harder to convince people of their relative merit, the party has decided that what the country needs is an interim government that is to be appointed rather than elected before any further elections are to take place. Naturally such a government would have a large number of representatives from the PDRC. How's that for democratic reform!? The democratic reform they seem to have in mind gets rid of democracy itself!

Unfortunately, in human affairs, and particularly those involving politics and politicians, these oxymoronic paradoxes are all too common place. The eminently wise George Orwell ably pointed this out in his political opus '1984'. In that book the Ministry of Truth was responsible for propaganda, the Ministry of Love oversaw the imprisonment and torture of those deemed threatening to the system, and the Ministry of Peace was primarily engaged in prosecuting wars. Old George knew a thing or two about how these things work. Years later, another George, who unfortunately didn't seem to know very much about anything at all, was still cunning enough to use similarly misleading euphemisms when describing the activities of his government (you will understand that I use the word 'government' in its loosest sense when referring to the regime of George W. Bush).

Perhaps, amongst the many examples of double-speak that spring to mind when talking of the doings of GWB, the most obvious examples would be the employment of such terms as 'enhanced interrogation techniques' (read – torturing people), 'extraordinary rendition' (read - moving people to places where they could be tortured) and 'protective custody' (read – imprisoning people without charge or trial). Such semantic machinations would be merely amusing if it were not for their dark intent.

Meanwhile, back in Thailand the election is fast approaching and the PCDR is preparing for the big day by promising not to disenfranchise people or block them from expressing their democratic right to cast a vote. They say their intention is merely to protest and make their point at the polling stations throughout Bangkok and the South. What this actually means in practice is that they intend, if at all possible, to disenfranchise people and block their democratic right to cast a vote.

Tis ever strange how such promises on the lips of politicos so often mean the exact opposite of the words spoken. One thinks of a certain Nick Clegg and his promise not to raise tuition fees in the UK or George's dad, George Bush Snr, who once famously stated: “Read my lips, no new taxes” and then promptly created some once elected.

Some things never change it would appear – the dissimulation of politicians seems to be as unlimited as their desire for us to trust them, despite the long and inglorious history that would indicate that, for the most part, it would be wiser not to .

Back on the raft floating gently on the Kwai all remains the very essence of serenity. The amorously inclined birds know little of such political shenanigans and care even less. I sip my coffee and wonder at the gullibility of people to forever believe in such characters. They come, they fool a few people for a time, they go again only to be replaced by the next generation.

Sitting here in the morning sun it is hard not to be impressed by the sheer beauty of this country. As I look over to my left the river bank is ablaze with colour as the bougainvillea cascades down towards the water. Here and there orchids hang gracefully down, so exquisite, seemingly so delicate. It all feels so calm,  so serene right now. I only hope that this peace remains in the days and weeks following the upcoming elections. Your nomadic flaneur has no wish to become a war correspondent.

 Only time will tell.

Son of Sun Tzu

“Gumbei” said Master Sun as he held up his glass of beer. “Gumbei” I responded, clinking glasses before consuming half the contents. Master Sun, in the true style of an advanced Taiji practitioner, downed the whole glass in a few brief seconds. A smile broke out upon his features. A smile for Master Sun was a slight narrowing of the eyes and the most minuscule curl of the lips, maybe a sixteenth of an inch, maybe less. The Master was the very quintessence of Eastern inscrutability.
       I had met Master Sun the day before at morning Taiji practice. He had strolled in amongst us quietly, not even needing to announce his presence. He wore Western style clothes on his thick-set body and even sported a pair of Nike sneakers on his feet. If I had to estimate, I would have said he was around 5 feet 9 inches, perhaps a fraction more. It was not so much his height that was impressive as the sheer solidity of his frame. He was build like an extremely solid out-building....a brick one at that!
       I was asked if I would like to practice with Master Sun, just a simple exercise known as 'push-hands', it would have seemed churlish to decline. The Master took up position opposite me and I crouched a little to bring my much taller frame into line. The procedure starts with the two practitioners opposing the backs of their hands. One then turns his palm inwards, attempting to push into the opponent's chest whilst the opponent using the back of his wrist to turn the blow to one side and then return the attack to the other person. In theory, the power for the deflective movement is not supposed to come from the hand or even the arm, but originate from the shoulder and the turning of the hips. The arm should actually stay relaxed during the process. In practice, this is easier said than done...
       Facing Master Sun that morning I could feel the power of the man. It seemed as if he were rooted to the ground, a seemingly immovable object that I nevertheless had to attempt to move. Within a few passes the muscles of my upper arm ached and were sending urgent messages to my brain, begging me to stop. I tried to remain impassive and ignore the steadily raising levels of discomfort and pain, attempting to give no clue to my opponent of the difficulties I was experiencing. Master Sun looked totally impassive, almost a little indulgent, as if he were playing with a small child rather than a six foot eight, 100 kilo opponent. Strength just seemed to ooze from the man, each movement so sparingly economic yet so profoundly powerful.
       Rumour was that Master Sun's lineage was from the famous Sun family. The family are known throughout China for their martial expertise, both in the sense of their military involvement and in the sense of specialising in the martial arts. Master Sun himself had served in the military with distinction, teaching the receptive soldiers of the People's Liberation Army the skills of Taiji and Kungfu. The Sun's were a family whose due was immense respect and reverence.
       It was even rumoured to be the case that Master Sun himself may have been related to the same branch of the family that produced Sun Tzu, the author of 'The Art of War'. This volume was penned some fifteen hundred years ago by General Sun Tzu of the Wu Kingdom. Under threat from a neighbouring and much larger kingdom, his strategy guided his king to a great and resounding victory and, more importantly, a productive peace. Sun Tzu's strategy did not stop at the cessation of hostilities but continued on into the nature of occupation. Throughout history, Sun Tzu's treatise has guided many a fine military leader in both war and peace. Unfortunately, these lessons, ancient and venerated as they are, seemed to have bypassed more modern American thinkers in campaigns such as Iraq. That particular case could be held as a fine exemplar of how not to execute a war, particularly in regard to the occupation phase.
       Not all Americans were as ignorant as those in power at the time of the Iraq war. Perhaps the greatest American general of all time, General Douglas MacArthur, was a well-known student of Sun Tzu's masterpiece. He applied the lessons of war very successfully in the Philippines campaign of World War Two and again the lessons for peace in his reconstruction of the defeated Japanese nation.
       The greatest exponent of all though has to be the renowned Vietnamese general  Vo Nguyen Giap who sadly died at the beginning of this October 2013 at the venerable age of 102. He successively defeated the Japanese in the Second World War, the French in the 1950's and the Americans in the 1960's and 70's. During the Vietnam conflict, after achieving considerable success against the Americans using the methods advocated by Sun Tzu, the politicians forced him to adopt different tactics during the Tet Offensive of 1968. This turned out to be one of his few defeats. After that, the politicians left the strategy and tactics to Giap, resulting in a victory against  perhaps the most powerful military nation on the planet at that time.
       Meanwhile, my own struggles against Sun Tzu's descendant were not going that well. My arm felt like it was about to desert my body, it ached so much. Not a flicker of expression from Master Sun though. After about three minutes, the Master relented. I think he knew he could defeat me with even the slightest extra push at this stage but was gracious enough to forego the victory. We shook hands and he walked away to talk to the other practitioners. After a few moments he returned, card in hand, inviting me to come to him for further instruction in the subtler aspects of Chinese martial arts, if I so desired.
       Back in the restaurant the next day I glanced across at the table to my right. The empties of the previous seven litres of beer stood there as evidence of our session. Master Sun may well be far more proficient in martial arts but I can still drink with the best if called upon. The more we drank the more I found myself enjoying the process and going from a 'ban bei' (half glass) to the full amount each time by the end. I still made sure that I gulped it down slightly slower than the master – this as a measure of the respect he was due – but enjoying the competition and the feelings of camaraderie it engendered. Indeed, the whole meal was turning into a very pleasant experience. Although we shared barely any language my friend Huang Mengxue was able to make some of the more important points and body language and gesture seemed to cover the rest.
       One final bottle to consume – two last glasses to fill. Master Sun's expression, still the essence of inscrutability was, at the same time, warming considerably.
       We clinked the glasses together one last time, each of us echoing one of the few words we both understood:
“Gumbei!”

Lifestyle choices, minimalism and being a nomadic flaneur

A little personal history to start this piece. Six years ago I had a seizure; basically I stopped breathing for about two minutes and was in a world of pain for the following six months. Two and a half years ago I had a heart attack which came, more or less, out of the blue. At the time my blood pressure was 120/80, my pulse around 60 beats per minute and my cholesterol reading a very low 3.2. All good readings it would seem but I still had the coronary incident. The old cliché 'you never know' is horribly true in these things.

Such incidents are marvellous, if you survive relatively intact, for focussing the mind and making you realise what does and does not matter to you. One would think that such a realisation would come easily and naturally but the reality is that most of us, most of the time, buy into dreams sold to us through advertising and the media or simply go along with our societies expectations of who and how we should be.

At the time I owned a house, a car and much stuff. I say 'owned' because that is the way we tend to refer to such arrangements but in many ways it could equally well be said that these things 'owned' me. Much of my time and money was spent in looking after this detritus. Cars need to be maintained, fed and serviced, houses needed the provision of electricity, gas, water and general cleaning. Every now and then something would go wrong – a leaky pipe at one stage, a domestic appliance needing replacement at another. On top of all this one was obliged to pay various taxes to 'own' these things.

When I eventually sold up just over a year ago the idea was to move into another house in a pleasanter part of the country, hoping to breathe fresher air, explore new horizons, all that sort of thing. Indeed, for a time, I went down this path. I travelled to the town of Glastonbury in Somerset on several occasions and made various offers on properties which, fortunately, were completely unsuccessful.

At this stage I thought I would take a holiday, a few weeks away would seem like a pleasant distraction from worrying about owning property. I chose Thailand for my destination. At the time, it was the furthest East I had ever travelled so the journey was undertaken with a certain degree of trepidation. I travelled on my own although I did meet a friend for a few days whilst out there. I found that after a initial feeling of disorientation I began to enjoy the experience very much. In fact, the longer it went on the more I enjoyed it.

On returning to England I found the place to be cold, wet and generally pretty dowdy. Because I had sold the house I had enough money in the bank to consider another trip. In fact, I began to realise, that I had enough money to consider several other trips. One of the odd things I had noticed whilst living in Thailand is that you really didn't need anything like as much money to live as you do in the UK. This is especially the case if, like me, you do not smoke, scarcely drink and enjoy good food but not pretentious restaurants. It was slowly dawning on me that another lifestyle altogether was possible. A lifestyle where one is not tied to one's possessions, to place or society. Although it had seemed that I was more or less obliged to buy a new house and 'settle down' in another location, the notion that this was not necessarily so was slowly forming in my mind. It was like awakening from a dream.

I planned my next trip. I wanted to make it more adventurous and even further flung. I had, for several years, intended to visit a close friend in China but health and other issues, some of which stemmed from house owning, had always thwarted me until now. I remember reading a line from a book around this time:" If not now, then when?" I decided to take the plunge and booked a flight that would allow me to spend three months away.

The flight was expensive, as were the visa and the insurance but, oddly, after three months away spending only a few pounds a day on accommodation and food (and even including some fascinating internal journeys to Shanghai, Hangzhou and the garden city of Suzhou) I came back to find that, in real terms, I was actually a little better off than when I left! This was quite a revelation. When one does not have to pay the myriad expenses of house owning it is curious just how much further one's cash goes. I did still have a car at the time and there were ongoing expenses in connection with this so it could have been even better if these also were no longer part of the equation.

We live at a time and in societies that value 'stuff'. Lots and lots of stuff. Stuff that you buy but need to replace a year later because new stuff has superseded the old stuff. Stuff you need to buy because other people have got this stuff. Stuff you buy that is used for a few days and then sits idly buy cluttering up your house until you retire it to the shed or the loft. Stuff, stuff and more stuff.

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution, put this rather succinctly:

“Ok, here it is: Having more shit (cars, TVs, houses, shoes... you know, crap) does not make you happier. In fact, it makes you unhappy and whittles away your life and causes you stress.”

By now, I was re-evaluating so many assumptions that I had previously lived by. I say assumptions somewhat ill-advisedly. Really, these things are just taken on from the people around you, from the expectations built into us and, to some extent, from advertising. So much of this was seeming quite false and hollow by this stage.

I began to realise that the life of the nomadic flaneur was well suited to one such as myself. It is not a lifestyle that would suit everyone. In fact, it is not a lifestyle that would suit that many. But it is a choice. It is not a default setting that is one has gone along with because one never questioned the assumptions that it was based on. It may not be right for you but there will be other choices, other ways of being. It is your life and there is a big old world out there. Why tie yourself down to one tiny patch of it?

Instead of owning houses, cars, washing machines, iphones, whatever...own your life!

The Joys Of Flaneurie

This site will follow my meanderings from city to city, coffee shop to coffee shop, metaphysical mumblings to pragmatic possibilities…

I start this blog sitting in a rather crowded Cafe de Coral in the town of Zhangmutou, Guangdong Province in the People’s Republic of China
This particular range of cafes has become a firm favourite of mine during my three month sojourn to the orient. It seems to supply most of the requirements that a nomadic flaneur such as I need of a watering hole; tis warm, comfortable and pleasant with a decent internet connection and staff that happily leave me to my machinations. This particular cafe comes with the added bonus of a smoking ban, a fairly unusual situation for China, which makes the times spent writing, thinking and cogitating here far pleasanter than might otherwise be the case.

Joys of Flaneurie

The notion of the flaneur, the stroller through the urban landscape, the observer, he who takes his time to take the time to observe, to note, to think is profoundly at odds with the modern world and its need for endless busy­ness, endless rushing, endless haste. He acts as a counter-weight, as a challenge and a demonstration that it need not be so.

Like so many of the best things in life, the joys of flaneurie are taken slowly, very slowly in fact. The flaneur takes it slowly as there is no rush. There is no rush because there is no destination. There is no destination because he is already and always exactly where he wants to be.

For the past two hundred or so years the World has been beset with the so-called ‘Protestant work ethic’. This awful mind-set has humanity believing that it is only through work, and hard work at that, that a man may be something in this life. It decries idleness and the taking of excessive time. It decries the leisurely stroll and constantly nags at the conscience of the individual that there are things to be done and they must be done quickly. It was not always so…

The ancient Greeks believed that the main reason for working was to free one’s self from the need to work. There was no particular merit in work for its own sake in this view of the world, it was viewed as merely a necessary evil to be curtailed whence one had achieved a measure of economic independence. The contemplation of life, the arts, the leisures and pleasures of life were all considered to be of greater merit. It was considered desirable, and indeed noble, if one could reach that stage in life where one was freed from excessive drudgery. In the modern World we seem to have forgotten these ideas and instead indulge in drudgery for its own sake, even foolishly attaching some misbegotten notion of virtue in such tawdry occupation.

For centuries the Chinese had a similar notion. Those of intelligence and education often spent their careers in the employ of the government but, upon reaching a certain age, usually around the 40 mark, they would often retire from public life and commence what was known as bia hao. To mark the significance of the change these people would even take on another name. The later stage of their lives would be spent reading, writing, painting, collecting the finer things of life and filling their studies with them, indulging in the Chinese love of fine teas and good conversation.

The role of the flaneur is an important one. It is he/her who holds the mirror up to modern society and show it for the frenetic and desperate chase after meaningless baubles that it has become…and to demonstrate that there is another way.