Under Chiang Mai's Skin
Tonight we are sleeping under a mosquito net in the new Sukhothai. And it’s hot. I just took a shower and I’m already dry. When I take a shower the water runs out through a hole onto the bare dusty earth. It rushes over the hard dirt until it’s absorbed into its cracks. Around us is a swamp that rises in the monsoon, remains low and murky in such heat, which is why tonight we will be sleeping under a mosquito net. If I move an inch I’ll be eaten alive.
Outside the mosquito net is the dusty new Sukhothai and further to the north, Chiang Mai. I didn’t realize how elevated we were until we came down, into the heat held by smoking fires to the bottom of this basin. There are many other things I didn’t realize about Chiang Mai, for instance, I entered not one wat; yet one evening I was entertained by pairs of ladyboy breasts, introduced to a great many bars and bartenders, rode whizzing on the back of a motorbike among other things.
Now, I want to ask you, what else is the traveller but a shifting observer? Someone who writes with a small hunk of spectrum. Or, that’s what I always feel I am, ever wanting to pry wider the vision. All this is a simple introduction to the thoughts of Thailand I’ve been having: Thai girls and ladyboys and sexpats and how Thais go swimming with all their clothes on, so that a man can be seen swimming in dress pants and a woman in jean shorts. Thais are said to be conservative people and the guide books advise against bottoms too short, yet walk into a beer bar wearing a long skirt and you may be the only one.
These are extremes and one extreme breeds its opposite so that the most regal conservatism will no doubt be paired with a fierce liberal. Thailand does not brag of its extremes, they sit succinctly in their places like the lumbering king whose image is everywhere: its proliferation is an immunity. Which brings me back to Thai girls. Something strange happened in this country to have built such a powerful monolith to sex tourism and I often wonder at it. The Western guys and their week-long girl or one-night girl or the one-to-bring-home-and-meet-mama, but they aren’t as creepy as the older men, the retired-to-Thailand men, the white haired, skin drooping kind of men whose walk is bent on one purpose.
I understand the relationship’s symbiosis; but that doesn’t help me to get my head around it. I want to know if the girl who dances near-nude around the pole of a go-go bar swims wearing shorts and a t-shirt? It’s as if Thailand wants to preserve an innocence—angelic smiles beam sweetly from advertisements—an innocence that has already been lost.
And I guess that’s my point: innocence? If you can read this, you’ve lost it and no use swimming in dress pants to cover it up. Anyway, tomorrow we’re heading south where I expect no such thing.
Commentary for Under Chiang Mai's Skin
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1 On Friday 05 March 2010 Frank wrote:
Did you ever think that you can’t get your “head around it” because you aren’t Thai? Does everyone have to have the same outlook as Westerners?