Potemkin Unthaidiness
Forgive my rant. I may have a bad mood, call me arrogant, but these double standards and the hokeyness around here, sometimes I’ve really had it. Most of us live in privileged islands. Once you leave them you enter a dump.
The other day I took a walk near Hua Hin towards the surrounding hills. I know the place like my own pockets. I thought. But have been rushing through the area mostly by car. Once you take your time it hits you like a sledgehammer. A metaphor for so much.
The countryside around Hua Hin is mostly a garbage dump. Thousands upon thousands of plastic bags and rubbish everywhere. We all know that affluence is not a privilege of most Thais. But why the fatalism of living like cattle in the midst of pollution and dirt. A walk in the green becomes a walk in a dump.
What a contrast to Hua Hin’s main road Petchkasem with its beautifully manicured garden in the middle reaching all the way up to Cha Am. I call it the longest garden on earth. Some twenty kilometers of lovely cared for flowers and plants. But that’s what meets the eye.
The whole area off the main road is a scattering of garbage. The trash is mostly concentrated around the people’s living areas – more than the occasional plastic bags, water bottles, styrofoam and 7/11 type food wrappers everywhere.
It’s hard for me to understand why and how such a pristine living environment can be so arbitrarily polluted. But visit any Thai island or beach. Same same, not even different at the most pristine of environments.
Once you take turn in Thailand you enter a shabby, run-down countryside with nobody wasting an inch of energy to collect the rubbish. Why should anyone. There are thousands of tons of garbage out there. You’d have to change the mentality of a population to clean up the place.
Thailand’s so perfect, so tidy, so krieng jai in the areas that meet the eye. The more real Thailand though is the world behind it. On the basis of this most profane irreverence it’s not that difficult to explain the moral and political double standards holding the country down.
Thailand has become a Potemkin village. Too many beautiful words and assurances and clichés – and people keep on falling for it. Or simply don’t give a hoot for anything outside their narrow little world, fed up themselves with all the treachery and betrayal.
Most certainly you’ll find aesthetically and morally tidy communities. The majority though is a disproportionate lash-up of contradictions. How I wish Thais would start tidying up themselves. It wouldn’t only clean up the environment.
Thanks for pointing out this important global issue.
- Join Greenpeace Thailand and help us to make a change.
- Pressure and/or help the government to do more.
- Spread the word among your friends and complain at your local police or major.
Etc. etc.
We all can make this wonderful country cleaner! Let’s try!
Dan, as a measure of this here’s a test everyone can do:
Next time you’re on a public highway (rather than one of those well-manicured routes for tourists and the hi-so) try to count how many seconds go by without being able to spot some piece of refuse. I’ve tried this on innumerable trips and am rarely able to count past three or four before the next discarded slipper, plastic bag or food wrapper comes into view.
Thais just don’t care about cleanliness much beyond their own home and their personal appearance. Even the latter shouldn’t be confused with actual hygiene in many cases as most Thais are ignorant of germ theory or even the importance of washing their hands regularly.
Part of it is laziness, part is lack of education, and a big part of it is the religious culture’s teachings about the nature of the physical world. And part of it is face: better to be seen as someone who can toss garbage and not be upbraided for it than as the sort of person who has calculated dealings with waste.
Too many “words and assurances and clichés – and people keep on falling for it” indeed. The Tourist Authority of Thailand was just given a yearly budget of 1 billion baht. That will buy a nice chunk of airtime for slick ads and plenty of posters and glossy brochures of well-lit skylines, waiing women and sunny beaches.
Against those sorts of financial resources how does the truth even hope to get started?
All Thailand needs is a Royal Tidiness Campaign in honor of HM.
The country would be cleaned up within hours.
Yes. This is the real Thailand. The rubbish dumps are symptomatic of the Thai attitude towards each other and their environment. I always think that “real” culture as opposed to “perceived” culture can always be found by looking at cultural markers. For example, the endless violence and slapstick comedy on TV, the high incidence of rape, murder and drug use in Thai society, the obsession with brands, hi-society and the monarchy and the widespread acceptance of corruption.
Even Thai language is full of cues: excessive formality and the use of different language depending on age, position and power. My favorite is the word “glen-jai” – roughly translated means respect, but in real terms is used as an excuse to lie, withhold information or as an excuse to give a different reason from what someone actually thinks.
Why are you surprised that only areas visible to the King are kept clean?
“Neanderthals ‘distinct from us’” is such a geat headline when we are celebrating Darwins 200th and Valentine’s Day all at once. Apologies for polluting your newly cauterized blog with politics. It is hard to write about anything meaningfully without it becoming political in some way, and restricting oneself to a nations cultural traits can become dangerous if stripped of their political buffer zone. IE: it becomes pure hatred!
I do agree with M. Lamerton’s usage of “kreng jai” and without going off topic too much, I would give that un-translatable turn of phrase a new life in suggesting that that is exactly what the UDD are applying by deciding to hold all their government house demonstrations on a saturday, when all the MP’s and poo yai’s are safely ensconced at home or in their mia noi’s arms. And I thought they were the opposition!
Want to be a martyr and go down in history for self-immolation number&number? Build your own online platform.
Nothing’s restricted over here. We just avoid the one topic, as even praise can be twisted by the mean spirits out here.
While the real art remains to say it without saying it.
Regarding “newly cauterized blog” – as you’ve seen your comment was even published instantly without moderation. No censorship over here, that is, if you keep your hands off the topic we all have to keep our hands off.
BangkokDan
Boy, touchy Dan! wondering who is getting the message twisted here? As far as building my own platform, I do realize it would be meaningless without outsiders contribution. And when the tongue in cheek gets read at face value then it appears we have lost our most precious asset, our sense of humour. Lighten up, that’s all that my scribbles were intended for.
Argh sorry for those shots from the hip n&n, touchy indeed, sensed a classic case of shooting the messenger.
It’s something Thais have to deal with and they will deal with it. So, as I sing along with Monty Python and always look at the bright side of life, a burden less to carry.
BangkokDan
Dan, you’ve inspired me to do better. My new personal 7-Eleven policy.
Grossly inadequate, but it’s a start. It’s the whole starfish analogy in reverse.
The other day a relative living in Had Yai watched as the rubbish collection truck and crew came to collect trash in the morning.. As they were about to leave, the truck driver threw the empty bottle of his energy drink out of the window into a grassy area a few meters away …
This is the standard Goo First (????????) practice …
You should see pre-Asean. They’re cleaning up the place like maniacs. Even Petchkasem gets redone with a fresh layer to show a beautiful road from the airport to the hotel. And don’t try to buy any DVDs at the night market – if not for tourists, they’re cleaning up the place for the VVVIPs.
That is sooo Thai.
What’s “sooo Thai” is also so Asean. Can anyone really be surprised if they try and give the place a bit of a facelift before the arrival of people from countries with a lot less freedom of speech or freedom to publicly litter? Conditions in Hua Hin cannot be allowed to distract the media from the elaborately staged event that is going to establish that the current government really is in control. Hua Hin will gain great face from a successful Asean conference. And as Hua Hin is the second home of the democrat party, its corrupt cronies and the so called Thai elite, a certain amount of temporary attention will be given to the minor problems of the several thousand resident farang who actually believe that the litter, weekend traffic from Bangkok, poor water supply, presence of raw effluent in the sea and on the beach, and minor criminality are things that they should be allowed the complain about …
Just get those complaints in quick because the attention span of these people is very short and things will return to normal very very soon.
Just drove down to Hua Hin. Brigades of workers cleaning the side of the road between Petchaburi and Cha Am, food boxes and plastic bags disappearing while thousands of flowers/plants are hurriedly planted …
Potemkinism, pure.
BangkokDan
Rikker’s point drives me crazy as well. The excessive overuse of plastic bags. The most frustrating part about it is the dumb blank look you get when you try to explain you don’t want a bag and even worse if you explain why. But sir everyone uses a bag. Must use bag. Boss says Farang like bag! USE BAG FARANG! A bunch of brain dead littering zombies!