To Run Across the Sea (6 page)

With the discharge of their cargoes of office-workers, the serious business of the morning is at an end, and soon the dragon fleet comes roaring back to pick up a thousand or so foreigners waiting to be shipped away on the routine visit to the floating market.

It is an experience that illustrates R. L. Stevenson’s maxim: ‘to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’ The ear-splitting voyage takes the visitor behind the scenes of an oriental city in a way not likely to be repeated in the course of his stay. Here are the splendid old junks, the ghostly houses breathing out incense over the watery smells, the flooded gardens with Siamese cats swimming like otters through the flowers afloat in the yellow wavelets. A man disposes of a rat; another, net in hand, chases after a frog; a woman wrapped in a sheet washes her body with delicacy and grace; naked children hurl themselves like lemmings into the soupy water. Here, for the space of half an hour, the intricate inner life of Bangkok is exposed to the foreign eye. The true reason for the tourists’ admission to this intimacy is that they are
invisible
. Every morning for so many years, and at precisely this hour, this water-borne invasion has passed through. Now not a head is turned in their direction.

At the floating market anticlimax awaits. The market as it once was has long ceased to exist. Increasing affluence makes it unnecessary for the locals to shop by boat, and the once lively scene has given place to a banal charade. The hopeful travellers are lured ashore to run the gauntlet of souvenir stalls, then herded into a slatternly zoo to watch four men traipse round with a python of immense length, before shoving it back into a sack. This is also a crocodile farm, where a few half-submerged animals remain unresponsive to the keeper’s proddings with a pole. Visitors are urged to buy crocodile bags and belts produced on the spot, and a guide mentions in a jovial way that the flesh of the animals providing these is supplied to leading restaurants. ‘It tastes like frog,’ he says. ‘You’d never tell the difference.’

This is a high spot of the average tour, but there are further excursions in plenty on offer. Bangkok contains a staggering total of 400 temples. ‘But,’ says the guide, ‘we have to be realistic and know when to call it a day.’ Most visitors settle for the Temples of the Emerald, Golden and Reclining Buddhas, and that of the Dawn, and it is better after that to leave the glittering mish-mash of orientalia of the Grand Palace for another day. Having seen the film, some visitors opt for the longish pilgrimage to the River Kwai. Interest slackens a little on the Rose Garden trip, and of the ancient capital Ayutthaya, included in most tours, the guidebook notes without enthusiasm, ‘outside the ruins and temples it holds little interest,’ adding sombrely, ‘it is one of the three gangster-ruled cities of Thailand.’

Bangkok is the Babylon of our days, yet few programmes feature more than a cautious, sight-seeing incursion into the world’s most renowned nightlife. Trudging from temple to temple the subject of the famous massage parlours inevitably comes up, for despite rumoured orgies, nothing is spelled out in print. ‘What do you suppose they do?’ the innocents ask each other, but nobody answers with confidence.

A last-century Thai chart on view in the library of the British Museum identifies thirty-six bodily areas responding to massage with relief, if not cure, for many complaints, including tumours and cancer. The ancient and respected Thai healing art thus illustrated is still taught and practised in temples throughout the kingdom, and may be considered medically to rank in effectiveness with the acupuncture of the Chinese.

Its therapeutic benefits have been overshadowed, it is said, since the stationing of 46,000 American servicemen in Thailand at the time of the Vietnam war, when a profane side of the healing profession developed into an industry in which 750,000 women are now employed. In this the borderline between therapy and prostitution is hard to define. The final conclusion is that it is easily crossed.

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 tribal 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.’