Today
the joys of nomadic flaneurie have brought me to a quiet and pleasant
little guest house in the Northern Thai city of Chang Mai. Sarah's
Guest House lies just a couple of hundred metres from the the moat
and city wall of the old town. The place has a pleasant, although
slightly run-down ambience of the sort that one often comes across in
Thai cities. In such a hot country, the architectural emphasis is
often on maximising air-flow and coolness and so it is that I find
myself sitting beneath the stilted verandah listening to the sounds
of water trickling from a small fountain whilst enjoying the first
bowl of porridge that I have had the pleasure of consuming for many a month.
Chiang
Mai is Thailand's second city and lies in the extreme North of the
country. At the time of writing there are still some uncertainties as
to how the current political turmoil here will pan out and the future
looks somewhat uncertain for this beautiful land. One of the
possibilities that has been mooted is the division of the country
between the North and the South. If this did indeed come to pass then
the city of Chiang Mai could, one day, find itself the capital of
Siam. Oddly, the name Siam was originally used to denote people with
dark brown skin (from Sanskrit) and was meant in a slightly
derogatory sense. The people of the north are indeed slightly darker
than those further south. Present day Thailand is a curious mixture
of various ethnic groups held together by the oft asserted notion of
'Thainess'. Much work is done in schools to reinforce the idea of
this identity but there still exists tensions between the different
groups that all too often flare up in political strife and sometimes
even violence.
Thailand
does, at times, feel like a dangerous place to be, despite its undeniable beauty. Not only do the
politics appear to be potentially problematic but day to day life in
Thailand can be risky in itself. I read only last week of the very
common practice here of injecting formalin (a form of formaldehyde)
into fruits and vegetables to maintain their freshness longer. It
does indeed have that effect, but unfortunately also leads to health
problems of various sorts, some relatively minor such as skin
irritation or sneezing, but long term ingestion can lead to consequences the details of which are far too gruesome to go into here.
There
is a fairly loose and patchy application of the law in this land, an
attitude that permeates life from the highest social strata to the
lowest. An obvious example would be the law requiring
the wearing of crash helmets. This was passed in 1979 in
view of the high number of fatalities in motor cycle accidents
suffered by the people of Thailand. Standing on any street in a major
city in this country one will mostly notice crash helmets by their
absence. In a very short time hoards of motor cyclists will pass by
but only about one in four will actually be complying. You may even
notice a nearby police checkpoint but very little actual in the way of a response
from the policemen inside. I originally heard that the law only
applied to foreign nationals. An understandable misunderstanding as
they seem to be the only ones who are stopped; there normally follows
a stealthy financial transaction quite costly for the poor tourist
involved but more profitable for the representative of the local constabulary.
One
would think that travelling by bus would be a safer option in
Thailand, and one would be right but... it is merely a relative
safety; buses in Thailand cannot be considered safe per se. The drivers,
particularly of the mini-buses, have to work long hours to make a
living. Rumour has it that they often imbibe yaba, a substance that
enables them to keep going for extended periods but also produces a
certain psychological intensity that leads to feelings of being 'bullet-proof',
perhaps not the ideal state to be driving buses in...
My
own personal experiences of travelling by this mode of transport in
Thailand has lead me to revise much what I thought I knew about the
laws of physics. Certainly it would seem that buses can get around
sharp bends at far higher speeds than I had previously considered
possible. Also, my perception of space would seem to be somewhat awry
as often these self-same buses manage to squeeze through gaps that appeared to be almost
narrower than the bus itself (at speed, naturally). Such driving does
indeed take minutes off the journey but one feels it may be a pyrrhic
victory as it feels as if it may also take years off of one's life in
terms of the stress entailed.
Before
I was privy to much of this knowledge I rather naively hired a motor
bike from one of the numerous shops supplying this service in
Kanchanaburi. The day itself proved to be an excellent adventure
whilst I rode around the hills and mountains of West Central Thailand
near the border with Myanmar. Unfortunately, the return to the city
lead to a change in my relationship to surface of the planet from the vertical
to the horizontal when a white van (some things never change) pulled
out from the side across two lanes and into yours truly.
Nursing
eleven abrasions, three large bruises, two egg-shaped contusions and
a bump on my head (luckily I had insisted on having a crash helmet)
later that evening, I could not help but notice similar casualties
amongst my fellow travellers in Kanchanaburi. One chap was so swathed
in bandages that he looked almost mummified. Understandably, he was
moving with the slowness one associates with the role; one could
almost feel his pain just by looking at him.
Many
years ago a very famous Greek mathematician who went by the name of
Pythagoras, although at the time he was known as much for his
philosophy as for his mathematics, pointed out the shortcomings in
our approach to risk when he said: “Self chosen are the woes that
befall man.”
We are indeed all too
often the architects of our own downfall. A more modern quote, oft
cited by my brother in regards to his flying activities, seems apt:
“There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are not
many old, bold pilots!”
The avoidance of risk
is often decried in our modern world but, as one matures, one begins
to understand that brash risk taking is better left to the brash.
Again, Pythagoras had something to say on the subject, advising that
it would be better to avoid such misadventures and instead to “live
quietly in the constant light of truth.” Deeply unfashionable
maybe, but then again so many of the best things in life are.
Truth itself, of
course, is often hard to come by. When faced with the truly alarming
road traffic fatality rate in Thailand the politicians decided to do
something about it. The measure taken did indeed lead to a halving of
the fatality rate in just one year. I hear you ask 'what could they
have possibly done to lead to so successful an outcome?' The measure
they employed to reduce the appalling figures entailed changing the
way they collected the statistics. Now in Thailand if you leave the
scene with a semblance of a pulse you are not considered a fatality.
No matter if you die thirty seconds later in the ambulance you are no
longer deemed to be a road traffic fatality but are lumped into some
other, less controversial, statistical category instead. This solution, if one may call it
that, did indeed work but one cannot help but feel that it rather
misses the point...
Back at Sarah's Guest
House I seem to have been befriended a couple of wandering felines.
Such debates about the nature of risk taking are of no interest to
them it seems, but a soft scratch behind the ears or a full length
stroke to the tip of the tail is far more to their liking. Soft Thai
music is playing in the background and this place remains agreeably
cool and pleasant despite its proximity to the centre of Chiang Mai.
Shortly, I will have to head out into the frenetic chaos and
mechanised madness that typifies the roads around the old city.
Beyond that though, there are areas of surprising calm inside the
walls themselves. Within these precincts a local Wat (Buddhist
Temple) offers massages for the princely sum of 140 baht ($3) for an
hour. So far on this trip I have forsaken the temptations of such
therapeutic interventions due to some of the more compromising
aspects that are involved in some of the commercial establishments.
This injured body though would appreciate some tender loving care at
this point, so I think that a visit to the temple would indeed be in
order. So, without further ado, I think I will take my leave for
another week with a final, apposite thought... take care out there!
A short and rather sad addendum to this post. Following my massage I was strolling around the old town when I came across today's Bangkok Post. It told of yet another bus accident, this time leading to the loss of 15 passengers, mostly children, with 45 more injured. The driver of the bus was unlicensed and fled the scene. The unpleasant details can be seen here:
No comments:
Post a Comment