Jonathan Raban: The greatest gulf reminds of the standard of journalism that ought to prevail but rarely does. I wonder what the widely held view of 'The Arab World' is in the US? As with many places I have some cultured, sophisticated and knowledgeable american friends; but I have, indeed in major universities, been asked questions by professors about Europe and the UK that revealed stunning ignorance...I dont think any of us will forget being asked in one unversity what language Rhodri and I were speaking together-was it Yugoslav-whatever that language might be!-not even Serbo-Croat! But of course that was before Bosnia.
I wonder too what the generally held view of 'democracy' actually is. The ideologies of capital accumulation are after all not coterminous with democracy.
Anyway lighten up Thomas. Life in the orient where there are no such razor edges to be walked and plutocratic nepotism reigns
The heat continues oppressive. Cannot think straight really!
However as I have said we seem on course for the great retour!
The Visa francais is still causing us some problems.
It is not so much that it is all such a complicated game that is annoying but that the rules and laws keep changing and no-one can actually keep up with it. I have recently read that actually all of this is unnecessary and that if you are married to an EU citizen all your residential status derives from them.
Indeed on the French government website is the delicious statement that as the wife of an EU citizen wishing to stay in France:
" You should apply for a Visa de Court Sejour, never mind how long you plan to stay!"
While of course there are then pages of stuff about whether you should apply for a visa de court sejour, long sejour, circulation or Schengen with or without multiple entries.............etc!
Elodie is heavily into Shoes.
She now has 2 squeaky pairs, one green and yellow, the other with eyes. £1.20 a pair. Should we import them? She wakes and imperiously summons shoes to be donned. Then totters around aided or not variously. She walked the whole way up to the main road with me this morning squealing with delight. However continuous aid is necessary!
And Teeth. the two she has she now tries to show off by baring her gums in a most simian manner!
I do not know what season of the year it is really. I suppose middle summer. In the Chinese year it is half way between Great Rain and Grain Full. Guyu and Xiaoman. But I suspect those must be Northern China seasons. Anyway no sign of the great rain which is supposed to follow Songkran!
The garden is dripping with mangoes and lychees. The mangoes are a virulent green like a frog and when opened a vivid and rather electric yellow. Not at all like those green and pink things from Brazil that you get in Tesco. I am planning mango chutneys to put Sharwoods and Mrs Balbi to shame!
The lychees are bright red and a bit prickly. Even E wont put them in her mouth, though she munches them when they are popped open. They are quite small-the size of large strawberry so I suppose the ones in tins must be super-lychees. But these are sharp and sweet. MM Anyway at least it means she eats something other than rice soup and pork satay!
The european contribution to this profusion is 2 tomatoes which are growing surely if a little slowly! The courgettes got some horrible blight, the oregano is nowhere to be seen; but the mint thrives!
I think as I gey older I am having difficulty 'seeing' Thailand or anywhere else. Coleridge writes somewhere about getting older and he says 'I see, not feel, how beautiful it is.' I am not sure I even see any more.
Or maybe I am turning Chinese
I have often wondered whether to try and do the almost impossible which is to describe the anarchic solipsism of Thai daily life. I do not think I can. It infuses every individual action. As it happens I usually sleep alone, which I do not like-it is just that K and E sleep on the floor! Again as does everyone else. Only the rich sleep on beds and mattresses. I wake alone, wait for E to squawk in my ear, play with her, shower alone, go to the market and buy food for myself. I do not any longer ask anyone else what they might like to eat. I eat my breakfast alone. Everyone else in this and every house appears to do the same. People are forever sidling off to be discovered feeding their faces alone.. Then, if there is work, we go and do it.. Almost no conversations or communications take place here. Which, of course leads to endless misunderstandings . They drive and walk in the same singleminded entirely self obsessed way ..which probably goes some way top explaining the traffic statistics below. I have wondered if this is something to do with me being european in the midst of this,, but I think not.
They think I am mad for talking all the time to E. I remonstrate quite frequently and say..'Talk to Elodie.' This is considered mad. Eventually someone said to me. What are you worried about? She will learn to talk. Yes, I said, but what kind of language? Blank stare. But then they also think I am mad for picking her up, cuddling her and even playing with her. Partly it is a guy thing...guys do not do it and partly well..I am bats! Actually most of the children I see live in a state of emotional, linguistic and sensory deprivation by the criteria of home.
K is considered to have been tainted by this foreign madness as she breastfeeds E. This is considered an outrageous intrusion on the mother's individuality. I have not seen ONE other breastfed child, ever! Everyone asks and a look of horror smudges faces when told she is not bottle fed! The proof, to everyone, of our stupidity is that at 12 months she is 7 kilos whereas the ideal weight for a Thai baby at that age is considered to be c.about 20K. The children, and not a few adults are as obese in the main as Americans ..less so here than in Bangkok
My nice author Mr Austin Coates , he of the Myself a Mandarin fame.. comments on this seeing and hearing problem.
He asserts that if, say after a short car journey, you asked a european what he saw he would probably come up with two or three memories, but if you asked a chinese he would say truly he had seen nothing. He explains it as total self absorption.. I am not sure. What is the explanation of this? I asked K about the not wearing of helmets... apropos of the extensive road deaths. She said; ' Oh you cannot tell Thai people what to do and anyway they cannot listen..'
Cannot? I queried. Oh yes not don't listen... cannot!
So they cannot listen and also they cannot ask questions or ask for information...result: a sort of hiatus in life!
The saga of the apartment cheque was a good example of this.
Me: Where is the money?
K. Dunno
Well why don't you go and ask the bank?
Cannot
Why
Oh just be patient
But the bank said it would be a week to clear the cheque. It is a week already
If I go and ask the bank they will think me rude.
Me:Um ..Well I think it is rude of them a. Not to transfer the money and b. Not to tell you where it is or when it will come.
K. Oh you are too impatient to live in Thailand
Me. Too true
So K goes to the bank. No sign of the money.
Against all her instincts, with large foreigner glowering she tremulously asks why the money has not been transferred.
One lady cashier, one brusque youth in startling floral shirt and one v. fat Chinese manager dripping gold confer about this. Much flurrying of papers and opening of ledgers.
" You have to wait one week"
Me. She has waited one week already
Silence
Repetition by boorish foreigner
Me. Why is no-one listening?
Eventually :One week more
Why?
One week.
Me. Yes you said that already. Why?
Me. Where is the cheque. Why don't you just give it back to her if there is a problem and we will take it to Bangkok?
K. Oh my head hurts. Stop asking questions
Me. Makes the outrageous 4 days to clear a cheque in the UK look like the three minute mile.
We wait.
30 minutes go by.
Me. What are we waiting for? Everyone is busy doing other things
K. Just wait. They are checking!!
(While all this is going on there are Chinese matrons in their late 50s and 60s depositing and withdrawing sums between £3000 and £10,000-the most I saw- in cash, pulling it out of and stuffing it into cheap plastic handbags and cruising out into the road. Muggers paradise bro!......there is a policeman on 'guard' in the bank but I have yet to see him awake and another outside who spends his time explaining the intricacies of the ATM to bemused peasants...who nonetheless still manage to get a grand out of it! One of them asked K the other day to put her own ie K's card into the ATM and get some money from the peasant's account. K explained that this was not possible. Why not? Um well this card is for my money and your card is for your money. Yes but I can't remember the PIN number ..so you do it for me!)
"Nong", calls the manager........ie 'Young Lady'
Your money is here
Oh really? Where was it?
Oh well you have a Bangkok bank account and the money is in the bank in Bangkok but you cant get it for another week if you are 'UP COUNTRY'..' what on the road to Mandalay eh!.......this a country that has an ATM Pool and as I have already observed allows you to transfer money between any bank account at any bank through the ATM in seconds! ....Welcome to the Thai Raj........
But we have specially transferred it. That will be £6 please! ie. several days wages!
I see K ready to say oh well if it is going to cost £6 I will wait a week.
She, of course, belongs to that admirably thrifty set of persons that will spend 100 Baht to save 5 Baht and believes that no garment costing more than £3.50 is worth purchasing. As a result she has two large wardrobes stuffed to the brim with shrunken, discolored, unravelled, mis-shapen and generally unwearable clothes!
No No No!!!!!
I was trying (a while ago before I was waylaid by the bank) to get onto the real effects of this anarchy on driving!
They walk and drive as though there was no one else on the road..there are of course, mostly, no pavements; and where there are they are covered in hawkers stalls, extensions of shops and various poles and pylons. These are also to be found strategically placed several feet into the carriageway and are thus another frequent source of accidents
But at the same time as they walk and drive they afford a wide berth to everyone and everything. Very rarely see people brush each other or barge into each other so a stroll is more pleasant than a trip to the Kings Road or Waitrose let alone a tube station.
No indicator lights are, of course, ever used, so people wait interminably not able to guess whether the oncoming traffic is oncoming or turning off and they flash lights to let you know they are bearing down on you and get out of the way..not to offer a passage! Like the good old days of priorite a droit bicycles and various machined contraptions surge out of alleyways into main roads without looking or slowing; old ladies are regularly to be seen trudging down Sawangkhalok main street somewhere near the centre white line with the traffic weaving around them. Anyone wishing to turn right will drive on the wrong side of the road for as much as 200 metres to avoid actually crossing the carriageway!...result,, more carnage!!
The basic attitude appears to be: I am living my life and doing what I want so f*** you. But of course people are far politer to each other than at home!
And now I just take all this for granted.
Of course all that just means I have as limited and blinkered a view of 'The Oriental' as apparently do Messieurs Wolfowitz, Bush and Rumsfeld of 'The Arab'. However I am not invading Thailand and thinking of turning it into a colonial experiment in Demawcrassy. That has already been done by tourists, a chinese population explosion and and western capital!
