The Thai Taliban

Some may vividly remember the resurgence of the Thai Taliban in 2005. When Thailand’s cultural authorities banned the “too realistic” Bangkok travel guide “Bangkok Inside Out”.

The bone of contention was a photo of a bar girl sitting on the lap of a foreigner. As furthermore “too realistic” were considered the parts about gambling, faked goods, gay shows, fraudsters.

No good publicity, isn’t it. But now, especially with Khun Samak in the seat, the cultural hardliners are back in force. What a timing. Because the cultural authorities had just reissued a book telling foreigners how to do what when and where.

Déjà vu?

Thai media were captivated back then by an upheaval against the guide book’s authors Guy Sharett and Daniel Ziv. Kom Chad Luek had them on the front page. Sharett and Ziv hit the nails on the heads, but the foreigners had dared to write about the outrageous probability that it may be even possible to buy an underage girl at Patpong.

Many political dramas have passed since the public show trial against Sharret and Ziv. They basically had to flee the country, threatened by police action, to never come back – even though the book mocked those foreigners glorifying the flesh trade. Even the Tourism Authority of Thailand had praised the bible of the Bangkok pragmatists as a “marketing tool of the other kind.”

Many ups and downs of politicians later though the Thai Taliban remain as alive as ever.

Welcome to the return of the Thai Taliban.

A great new attempt to unwillingly being mistaken for cultural parodists, if not cultural saboteurs, is the Ministry of Culture’s recently reissued booklet entitled “Thai Social Etiquette.”

To speak with Chang Noi recently in The Nation, the booklet is written in English and offers visiting foreigners the usual tips about making a proper wai, not pointing with the feet and not patting the head.

But that’s not it.

The book tells foreigners how to sit, eat, lie down, walk, speak, dress, make a phone call, queue for the loo, drink, use a spoon, give a speech, pay a visit, perform a seminar, and and.

You may have thought you were able to feed yourself properly with a spoon. How wrong can one be.

The booklet, Chang Noi sums it up, in reality is not about what farangs should do and respect, but “rather a manual on how Thais should behave in their own country.”

“In Thai society, where seniority is given much importance and politeness to everyone is stressed, in order to be a person with good manners, one must be aware and careful of almost every gesture or movement, and also of almost every word or sentence one utters.”

Let’s live a little bit according to the book. Say, by going to a restaurant.

We are told to not reach across, to keep the legs politely together, to always using a serving spoon and making sure to wipe lipstick off the glass.

All other tables brake these very rules.

So let’s try at least to properly sit and talk. And “refrain from holding hands in public as it may have undesirable implication,” the book advises.

And men do not roll up your sleeves. As it may look like “getting ready for a fight.”

By now the polite foreigner, eagerly trying to adapt to the ways and traditions of the local folks, may have first doubts.

Foreigners, drastically intimidated by the fragility of Thais, feel like marveling at an endangered species in a zoo.

Nothing the foreigner reads in the booklet he finds in reality.

The booklet portrays a “complete fantasy on the level of Star Wars,” Chang Noi writes.

As the society described and idealized in the booklet does only exist in soap operas or the “rarefied segment of the society, occupied by senior bureaucrats of the sort that work in or with the Ministry of Culture.”

Let’s not forget. This is a country where a good surname alone can provide with authority, security and respect. Meritocracy remains a far away goal. What you inherit from the past secures your future. Once a beggar, always a beggar. Once wise, always wise.

This very hierarchy though means everything for these bureaucrats – who are trying to display their former glamor and importance.

They’re stuck in the “standard bureaucratic pittance,” says Chang Noi. “They belong to a profession which used to be very influential, but which is being rapidly marginalized as the society becomes richer, more commercial and more open – and they have nostalgia for an idealized past.”

But hey! We found a universal truth in the booklet: “Don’t eat with your mouth open.”

And: “Do not scratch here and scratch there.”

Flashes of realistic thought. Rise from a few who fight for their survival.

The booklet, therefore, portrays not only fantasy. Which gives hope to the many filmmakers and highly creative contemporary minds in the kingdom working in theaters or the plastic arts – who fear to incur the wrath of the Ministry of Culture.

We all know about the prohibition of publicly displayed nipple. Read about the struggle of Khun Natnalin against the acromastium-fearing, Victorian authorities.

Furthermore, risqué songs have been banned on the grounds that they are “against Thai culture.”

When these songs in fact belong to a great tradition of boisterous counterpoint singing which is the historical culture of far more Thais than the courtly arts, Chang Noi says.

Completely out of touch with its people, the in the early 2000s reincarnated Ministry of Culture though holds on to its duty to impose the values of a declining minority of the society as a whole.

Even if times are changing.

Is it just me, or may it be true that the former closure of whole highways for the quick, safe passage of a VIP has more and more become a thing of the past?

Remember how you were stuck if not for hours on highways – until the caravan of VIPs had passed by.

For a chosen few, life was definitively easier in the good old days of unquestioned hierarchy.

Now stop scratching – your head.