We went today to what, February 18th, what I can only describe as a riot!
It was supposed to be the ceremony, well it was, for the boy becoming a monk. There seems a certain laxness in how many days, or even hours, nowadays, you have to be a monk!
The guy was wandering around, looking dazed, in a nice white dress. Here the Thais of course can not explain it exactly, but has something to do with the big snake, or naga, wanting to be a monk.,,One day I will read all this.
Anyway the upshot was that a large crowd of people, about 200, mostly unmarried girls who I gather were so flighty no-one would marry them, and all of whom were seriously drunk, danced for about an hour in front of a pickup from which deafening dance music and live songs were played. Following this there came another pickup on which sat the prospective monk and his parents, on nice red plastic chairs, while everyone hung onto the pickup, soberly, for good luck.
This circus arrived at the Wat, eventually, where another crowd had been hanging around, mainly eating and drinking.
The monk to be is sat down. There is competing music from the dance loud speakers on the pickup and a rather dour gathering of traditional musicians playing drums, shawms, etc. Eventually the dance music packs up, but the dancing goes on. A Phu Yai, ie big cheese who I think was the Doctor then starts an endless ceremony of chanting etc. While this was going on the drunk ladies were so raucous that he had to give up on occasions. Mayhem! This will go on all night, with dancing, films, likay performances and then in the morning 9 monks will appear and I presume impose some order. Seems like a good excuse for a bash.
Elodie was, as usual, the centre of jaw dropping attention!
Monday, February 14, 2005
We went for a ‘tour’ of The North… Phrae, Nan, Chiang Kong, Chiang Saen, Mae Sai, Doi Mae Salong and Chiang Mai. We would have gone to Pai and Mae Hong Son, too, but got fed up with winding roads!
Nan we went to see ‘family’. At last got to see the murals in Wat Phumin, a thing I have been trying to do for 10 years. They are odd! I know they are not La Dance Macabre at La Chaise Dieu, but for Thailand they are 'unusual'!... mThey tell the story of the Sihanada Jataka…...mainly about Orphans..they were painted about 1893…so they are not that old, but they were created at an important moment in history when the French took control of Laos..hence the unusual pictures of Westerners!
We went to see the river near Ban Pasingh, which is where Elodie’s grandfather came from. The river Nan lovely as ever and we walked out into it on wooden platforms and fed tumultuous fish. E went splish-splosh which cheered her up.
We went up to the Thai Lao border but absolutely nothing going on there, though we did see a flock of Asian Fairy Bluebirds.. Irena puella .... which was at once astonishing and beautiful in the middle of nowhere!
And then went up to Chiang Kong and Chiang Saen. The Mekong full of threatening rocks and not much water. We stayed outside Chiang Saen by the river and watched Great Egrets- Casmerodius albus tiptoeing around in the shallows, while large parties of Chinese New Year revellers downed vast quantities of food and made away with bottles of Black Label. Everyone lit paper lanterns and floated them off over the river..better than the boat trips on offer at The Golden Triangle, which has become a funfair. It was freezing at night and not enough bed clothes!! We thought about going on a boat to Luang Prabang...but a trip for the future!
In the morning we went up to Mae Sai and bought some jewelery which no doubt further enriched the moguls of the mines of Mogok..a name which surely would have been invented by Tolkien if it had not already existed! I wanted to buy a Lapis Lazuli bracelet, but none to fit. Wanted to buy K a beautiful white and faintly green Jade bracelet at B6000-ie £85 probably £400 in London, but she having none of it! Bought a little one for E instead at £1 which is, I hope, plastic!
Tried to buy an exotic pair of cheap Chinese Binoculars but my little Olympus ones still better. Then we went right up to Doi Mae Salong..awash with Chinese travellers buying tea and no doubt visiting auntie. Hard to think that this little enclave of China was once the redoubt of what was left of Chiang Kai Shek’s forces preparing to re-take China from Mao!
Back to Chiang Mai and to the peculiar world within a world that is the Galare Guest House by the river. No Thais here!
5 days on the road enough so we pootled around CNX for a couple of days and bought clothes and yogurt, sweets and toys.
On the way home we stopped in Lamphun for E to ride on an elephant.
Much taken with this, but enjoyed feeding sugar cane and bananas to them much more. The camp here is much nicer than those up north..cannot think why anyone goes to those! E much enamoured of 9 month old elephant calf playing with a ball in a pond!
Messages from the Road
Elodie speaks a lot. Thais: Why does she speak so well? Ooh, she speaks two languages! Shock!
Most of Thailand looks the same, never mind the lowlands and uplands. The trees change…but every village is Ban Anywhere.
And all those huge tracts of land, relatively uninhabited with everyone struggling to live on the main road. In Doi Mae Salong the Chinese industrious and prosperous, The Hill people in straw huts and selling trinkets!
A profusion of signs to waterfalls and dams, forest parks and wats…getting there to find pretty well nothing. The roads empty of cars..no-one going about to have fun.
Chiang Mai like another planet with tourists and shops, hotels and restaurants. But 10 miles out of town..the dry wastes.
We went out of town to sit by the lake and eat SomTam. E went more splish-splosh, but then got grumpy..tired I should say!
It still has not rained again..so that is six hours rain in five months. If it was Provence or LA the whole place would have been on fire for ever, while here you pass blackened plantations but they will rise again when the rainy season comes. Of all the Thai rivers I think the Nan is the most beautiful. More so than the Ping and Yom and the Chao Phraya, though that holds pride of place. One day I will read Steve van Beek’s Slithering South..but not yet. I bought E some Japanese story books and In The Night Kitchen as well as Rainbow Fish..she likes the Octopus!
B writes to inquire about ‘The Behrends’..I think I have said all I want to about RS and his Anglophilia!
We are very much in two minds about whether to go back to the UK at all. I want to see R and I think, on balance, it would be better if K had her ‘RTR’ visa…. though quite what the point is if we are not going to live there, we are not sure. As time goes by, being here is pretty satisfying…yes broadband would be good…yes a good bookshop….and as to schools!!..that will still be the crunch…we think she will learn to read and write Thai pretty quickly..once that is done I think no reason for her to stay here for a while.
I have been reading Adam Phillips..more…that is...my favourite shrink!!...( I see he is being canonised in The Observer!) While I do not revise my opinion of RS and MEE, (as parents!) nonetheless I cannot deny I did get from their life a degree of ‘happiness’ that I do not see in many others. Phillips’ concept of ‘Restless Boredom’ seems to sum up my childhood and adolescent years and my three principles probably add up to ‘The Ability To Be’ … all things that we would wish for E and have taken me years to acquire.
We still need more ££ and never sure we have negotiated the pitfalls of relationships to a peaceful solution..though here the possible and the practical seem to have coalesced..but too far from R.
But we have a ‘Good Life’! Made possible by TPA money and books, by the existence of R and E, by K without whom life would be worse even when it is not good!.
And the ‘Restlessness’ seems capable of being channelled into ‘constructive restlessness’ when the ideas come, but without any great sense that it is necessary to launch empires or fortunes!
It is Valentine’s Day 2005!! I gather in Thailand it is traditionally the day to open virgins!!
Blush for Us!
Nan we went to see ‘family’. At last got to see the murals in Wat Phumin, a thing I have been trying to do for 10 years. They are odd! I know they are not La Dance Macabre at La Chaise Dieu, but for Thailand they are 'unusual'!... mThey tell the story of the Sihanada Jataka…...mainly about Orphans..they were painted about 1893…so they are not that old, but they were created at an important moment in history when the French took control of Laos..hence the unusual pictures of Westerners!
We went to see the river near Ban Pasingh, which is where Elodie’s grandfather came from. The river Nan lovely as ever and we walked out into it on wooden platforms and fed tumultuous fish. E went splish-splosh which cheered her up.
We went up to the Thai Lao border but absolutely nothing going on there, though we did see a flock of Asian Fairy Bluebirds.. Irena puella .... which was at once astonishing and beautiful in the middle of nowhere!
And then went up to Chiang Kong and Chiang Saen. The Mekong full of threatening rocks and not much water. We stayed outside Chiang Saen by the river and watched Great Egrets- Casmerodius albus tiptoeing around in the shallows, while large parties of Chinese New Year revellers downed vast quantities of food and made away with bottles of Black Label. Everyone lit paper lanterns and floated them off over the river..better than the boat trips on offer at The Golden Triangle, which has become a funfair. It was freezing at night and not enough bed clothes!! We thought about going on a boat to Luang Prabang...but a trip for the future!
In the morning we went up to Mae Sai and bought some jewelery which no doubt further enriched the moguls of the mines of Mogok..a name which surely would have been invented by Tolkien if it had not already existed! I wanted to buy a Lapis Lazuli bracelet, but none to fit. Wanted to buy K a beautiful white and faintly green Jade bracelet at B6000-ie £85 probably £400 in London, but she having none of it! Bought a little one for E instead at £1 which is, I hope, plastic!
Tried to buy an exotic pair of cheap Chinese Binoculars but my little Olympus ones still better. Then we went right up to Doi Mae Salong..awash with Chinese travellers buying tea and no doubt visiting auntie. Hard to think that this little enclave of China was once the redoubt of what was left of Chiang Kai Shek’s forces preparing to re-take China from Mao!
Back to Chiang Mai and to the peculiar world within a world that is the Galare Guest House by the river. No Thais here!
5 days on the road enough so we pootled around CNX for a couple of days and bought clothes and yogurt, sweets and toys.
On the way home we stopped in Lamphun for E to ride on an elephant.
Much taken with this, but enjoyed feeding sugar cane and bananas to them much more. The camp here is much nicer than those up north..cannot think why anyone goes to those! E much enamoured of 9 month old elephant calf playing with a ball in a pond!
Messages from the Road
Elodie speaks a lot. Thais: Why does she speak so well? Ooh, she speaks two languages! Shock!
Most of Thailand looks the same, never mind the lowlands and uplands. The trees change…but every village is Ban Anywhere.
And all those huge tracts of land, relatively uninhabited with everyone struggling to live on the main road. In Doi Mae Salong the Chinese industrious and prosperous, The Hill people in straw huts and selling trinkets!
A profusion of signs to waterfalls and dams, forest parks and wats…getting there to find pretty well nothing. The roads empty of cars..no-one going about to have fun.
Chiang Mai like another planet with tourists and shops, hotels and restaurants. But 10 miles out of town..the dry wastes.
We went out of town to sit by the lake and eat SomTam. E went more splish-splosh, but then got grumpy..tired I should say!
It still has not rained again..so that is six hours rain in five months. If it was Provence or LA the whole place would have been on fire for ever, while here you pass blackened plantations but they will rise again when the rainy season comes. Of all the Thai rivers I think the Nan is the most beautiful. More so than the Ping and Yom and the Chao Phraya, though that holds pride of place. One day I will read Steve van Beek’s Slithering South..but not yet. I bought E some Japanese story books and In The Night Kitchen as well as Rainbow Fish..she likes the Octopus!
B writes to inquire about ‘The Behrends’..I think I have said all I want to about RS and his Anglophilia!
We are very much in two minds about whether to go back to the UK at all. I want to see R and I think, on balance, it would be better if K had her ‘RTR’ visa…. though quite what the point is if we are not going to live there, we are not sure. As time goes by, being here is pretty satisfying…yes broadband would be good…yes a good bookshop….and as to schools!!..that will still be the crunch…we think she will learn to read and write Thai pretty quickly..once that is done I think no reason for her to stay here for a while.
I have been reading Adam Phillips..more…that is...my favourite shrink!!...( I see he is being canonised in The Observer!) While I do not revise my opinion of RS and MEE, (as parents!) nonetheless I cannot deny I did get from their life a degree of ‘happiness’ that I do not see in many others. Phillips’ concept of ‘Restless Boredom’ seems to sum up my childhood and adolescent years and my three principles probably add up to ‘The Ability To Be’ … all things that we would wish for E and have taken me years to acquire.
We still need more ££ and never sure we have negotiated the pitfalls of relationships to a peaceful solution..though here the possible and the practical seem to have coalesced..but too far from R.
But we have a ‘Good Life’! Made possible by TPA money and books, by the existence of R and E, by K without whom life would be worse even when it is not good!.
And the ‘Restlessness’ seems capable of being channelled into ‘constructive restlessness’ when the ideas come, but without any great sense that it is necessary to launch empires or fortunes!
It is Valentine’s Day 2005!! I gather in Thailand it is traditionally the day to open virgins!!
Blush for Us!
Monday, February 07, 2005
Thursday, February 03, 2005
Here is more good stuff from Asia Times. It is not whether I agree, it is just great to read this kind of writing in a Newspaper!
Failed States and Failed Markets
Failed States and Failed Markets
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
All kinds of odd snippets.
We have been talking about books written about life in Thailand by Westerners.
It is interesting to note that many of the ‘novels’ about Thailand or set in Thailand have not been published by established publishers. I cannot believe that is for lack of a decent agent or prejudiced publishers’ readers. It is just that most of the books are pretty unreadable unless you happen to want to read about yourself. It must be annoying to Christopher G. Moore, who presumably thinks of himself as a novelist, that his best book is Heart Talk!
But if I wanted to read fiction about the Far East ….
I would go for classic Japanese writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Junchiro Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima or The Philippine novelist Arlene J.Chai, Catherine Lim in Singapore, Fernando Toer in Indonesia. etc, even S.Tsow’s Jasmine Nights is better than Western fiction set in and/or about the East. There is now a wealth of great Chinese fiction in translation, too. There are better books too by US and UK Mbased Chinese and Korean writers. Kazuo Ishiguro, is I think, a great writer.
Apart from not being very well written, it is difficult to put a finger on what is wrong with ‘Thailand’ novels. I think partly it is because there is some attempt to ‘explain’ both Thailand and the Thais as well as the writer. Leather, Moore, Barrett, Needham all seem to be more interested in this explication than in telling a ‘good story’. The characters are all one-dimensional and the stories and settings banal, straining to capture the ‘essence of Bangkok’. It is not a recent phenomenon. There have been dreadful ‘Dusky Oriental Maiden’ books for decades. I collect them as they have wonderfully lurid dustjackets!
I suppose if I was Thai I would not want to read novels about the ‘adventures’ of Thais in Amsterdam or Paddington brothels. There seems, too, to be by comparison little about the bars of Angeles or Manila, though I should have thought there were as many westerners married to Filipina bar girls as Thais. So what prompts these books? Are there the same kind of books written in German and Swedish? Or is it a British/N.American genre?
I have a huge bibliography of ‘Oriental’ books. From the imaginative travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries, through to Post Modern academic stuff and sub-literary drivel. You cannot imagine the knots ‘theorists’ get themselves into when trying to ‘deconstruct’ ‘Gender in Modern Thailand’
Things I have liked over the years include these, but they are hardly beach reading
Turpin, M. Histoire Naturelle et Civile du Royaume de Siam 1771
Quaritch Wales.. Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function 1931
R. Le May An Asian Arcady 1938
Cohen, E Thai Girls and Farang Men: The Edge of Ambiguity 1982
Brun, V Traditional Herbal Medicine in Thailand 1987
Chitakasen Thai Construction of Knowledge 1991
Tongchai Winichakul Siam Mapped 1994
Askew, M Bangkok 2002
Seabrook, J In The Cities Of The South 1995
Terwiel , B Through Travellers Eyes (19C Thailand) 1989
Klausner, W. Reflections on Thai Culture 1987
Connelly Touch The Dragon ?1990
Thompson Thai Food 2003
Anderson Plants and People of The Golden Triangle 1993
Phongphaichit, P. et al.Guns, Girls, Gambling and Ganja 1998
B has been on at me, again, about Pandora's Attic-never mind Victoria's Secret..though there are pieces of 1830's underwear catalogued away up there
So I said
Ah yes
Great Men Oft Die By Foul Bezonians n'est ce pas?
Qui a besoin, ce jour ci?
July 5..Found in 'The Attic', a place where most of what we
know of Lost Civilisations had been wrapped in cotton
wool, boxed, tied up in string and labelled..usually
with the note Very Precious Stone/Ring/Lalique Glass
Mascot/Faberge Topknot etc 'Broken To Mend' Origins
and Provenance often attached. By Millie
There was at one time a lot more of the July 5
type/pseudo Ossian nonsense but it got lost burnt or whatever.
Why?...This is spelled out in words even a Shakespeare
Scholar can grasp....To explain, as a beginning, to
the boy, why we are all mad, and in particular his
mercenary unloving grandfather whose fame will outlive
us all--well maybe not you--I mean famille--and
therefore I had better writ it out, longhand like...
Hence ringless fingers which is de pome version and
chill lips wot is de prose one...I will probably
rewite that....and I had to explain to him that his
mother's supposed father was not his grandfather, but
that his grandfather was a Portuguese Dentist from
Lourenco Marques, which is why he looked like a Dago
or a Half Thai Child.......but you probably found all
that out in the PRO already?
Clearly the Bard of Bardsey came on strong to Elsi
Eldridge, and who is averse to a bit of plagiarism if
it leads to bed?
I have just stuffed a Taiwanese Pumpkin, looks like an ordinary Pumpkin to me, BUT with Rice,Garlic, Onions, Lemon Juice, Pork, Chilis, Green and Red Pepper, and a few odds and ends....steamed for 2 hours...
Thais in traditional disbelief mode...Pumpkins are green-this one is
Orange...you could not possibly EAT that....And I go
on about the Yanks living by Numbers
So here are some nice Pumpkins...bit late for All Souls I suppose...
Why are there Taiwanese Pumpkins in Uttaradit?
We have been talking about books written about life in Thailand by Westerners.
It is interesting to note that many of the ‘novels’ about Thailand or set in Thailand have not been published by established publishers. I cannot believe that is for lack of a decent agent or prejudiced publishers’ readers. It is just that most of the books are pretty unreadable unless you happen to want to read about yourself. It must be annoying to Christopher G. Moore, who presumably thinks of himself as a novelist, that his best book is Heart Talk!
But if I wanted to read fiction about the Far East ….
I would go for classic Japanese writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Junchiro Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima or The Philippine novelist Arlene J.Chai, Catherine Lim in Singapore, Fernando Toer in Indonesia. etc, even S.Tsow’s Jasmine Nights is better than Western fiction set in and/or about the East. There is now a wealth of great Chinese fiction in translation, too. There are better books too by US and UK Mbased Chinese and Korean writers. Kazuo Ishiguro, is I think, a great writer.
Apart from not being very well written, it is difficult to put a finger on what is wrong with ‘Thailand’ novels. I think partly it is because there is some attempt to ‘explain’ both Thailand and the Thais as well as the writer. Leather, Moore, Barrett, Needham all seem to be more interested in this explication than in telling a ‘good story’. The characters are all one-dimensional and the stories and settings banal, straining to capture the ‘essence of Bangkok’. It is not a recent phenomenon. There have been dreadful ‘Dusky Oriental Maiden’ books for decades. I collect them as they have wonderfully lurid dustjackets!
I suppose if I was Thai I would not want to read novels about the ‘adventures’ of Thais in Amsterdam or Paddington brothels. There seems, too, to be by comparison little about the bars of Angeles or Manila, though I should have thought there were as many westerners married to Filipina bar girls as Thais. So what prompts these books? Are there the same kind of books written in German and Swedish? Or is it a British/N.American genre?
I have a huge bibliography of ‘Oriental’ books. From the imaginative travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries, through to Post Modern academic stuff and sub-literary drivel. You cannot imagine the knots ‘theorists’ get themselves into when trying to ‘deconstruct’ ‘Gender in Modern Thailand’
Things I have liked over the years include these, but they are hardly beach reading
Turpin, M. Histoire Naturelle et Civile du Royaume de Siam 1771
Quaritch Wales.. Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function 1931
R. Le May An Asian Arcady 1938
Cohen, E Thai Girls and Farang Men: The Edge of Ambiguity 1982
Brun, V Traditional Herbal Medicine in Thailand 1987
Chitakasen Thai Construction of Knowledge 1991
Tongchai Winichakul Siam Mapped 1994
Askew, M Bangkok 2002
Seabrook, J In The Cities Of The South 1995
Terwiel , B Through Travellers Eyes (19C Thailand) 1989
Klausner, W. Reflections on Thai Culture 1987
Connelly Touch The Dragon ?1990
Thompson Thai Food 2003
Anderson Plants and People of The Golden Triangle 1993
Phongphaichit, P. et al.Guns, Girls, Gambling and Ganja 1998
B has been on at me, again, about Pandora's Attic-never mind Victoria's Secret..though there are pieces of 1830's underwear catalogued away up there
So I said
Ah yes
Great Men Oft Die By Foul Bezonians n'est ce pas?
Qui a besoin, ce jour ci?
July 5..Found in 'The Attic', a place where most of what we
know of Lost Civilisations had been wrapped in cotton
wool, boxed, tied up in string and labelled..usually
with the note Very Precious Stone/Ring/Lalique Glass
Mascot/Faberge Topknot etc 'Broken To Mend' Origins
and Provenance often attached. By Millie
There was at one time a lot more of the July 5
type/pseudo Ossian nonsense but it got lost burnt or whatever.
Why?...This is spelled out in words even a Shakespeare
Scholar can grasp....To explain, as a beginning, to
the boy, why we are all mad, and in particular his
mercenary unloving grandfather whose fame will outlive
us all--well maybe not you--I mean famille--and
therefore I had better writ it out, longhand like...
Hence ringless fingers which is de pome version and
chill lips wot is de prose one...I will probably
rewite that....and I had to explain to him that his
mother's supposed father was not his grandfather, but
that his grandfather was a Portuguese Dentist from
Lourenco Marques, which is why he looked like a Dago
or a Half Thai Child.......but you probably found all
that out in the PRO already?
Clearly the Bard of Bardsey came on strong to Elsi
Eldridge, and who is averse to a bit of plagiarism if
it leads to bed?
I have just stuffed a Taiwanese Pumpkin, looks like an ordinary Pumpkin to me, BUT with Rice,Garlic, Onions, Lemon Juice, Pork, Chilis, Green and Red Pepper, and a few odds and ends....steamed for 2 hours...
Thais in traditional disbelief mode...Pumpkins are green-this one is
Orange...you could not possibly EAT that....And I go
on about the Yanks living by Numbers
So here are some nice Pumpkins...bit late for All Souls I suppose...
Why are there Taiwanese Pumpkins in Uttaradit?