On Avoiding Being "The Ugly American"

The Three "Stoolges" on Walking Street, Pattaya

For the sake of argument, let's agree that we're not dealing with The Ugly American, the 1958 novel by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick and sticking with the common usage: a pejorative term for a "stereotypical offensive American: a loud, boorish, nationalistic American, especially one traveling abroad, who is regarded as conforming to a stereotype that gives Americans a bad reputation" (Encarta dictionary).

It's unfortunate the term seems to focus mostly on those of us in the USA, which in and of itself is exclusionary enough - after all, there are plenty of other countries in North and South America that contain unpleasant examples of humanity - but I suppose it's all part of it, isn't it?  We're the real Americans, damn it. Now, if the behavior were limited to only we from the US that'd be a different story, but the label of Ugly American fits people across the wide spectrum of races, countries and cultures. You may have an example or two that pop to your mind... I certainly do.

It's reasonably important to remember that we - like it or not - are all ambassadors of a sort, and should behave accordingly. If you read up on your planned destination(s) it's not difficult to learn enough about the local customs and traditions to be a gracious guest.

Two obvious examples most readers here should know about visiting Thailand: it's always wise to be respectful of the royal family, and climbing up onto a statue of the Buddha for a snapshot - or any similar disrespectful actions like it - are likely to get you into trouble, but opening your own personal Pandora's box of less-desirable facets of yourself can, too.

Regardless of how pointedly acerbic your own "humor" may seem be to you or those who understand your "style" at home, sarcasm rarely translates well into another language (or culture). At best, you'll merely confuse the person you're dealing with; at worst you'll come across as an asshole and lose face, which is probably the more likely of the two possibilities, since many who think their wit isn't understood just compound the social gaffe by pushing it further.

The three men sitting on stools at a beer bar (ladies as Rented Admirers optional) are enough of an illustration, I felt, so there's the image.  The one on the far left was being pleasant while interacting with the girls at the club, and the one in the middle appeared to be doing the same.

The Hulk on the right, however, appeared at the time to be a force I'd prefer not to deal with.  He'd been lurching up and down Walking Street a couple of times while I was there with a friend, and we (and others) gave him a wide and clear berth.  Swaying back and forth he actually growled as he moved along. At first I'd thought he might have just been burping, but that wasn't the case.

My Thai friend leaned in towards me and gave me his opinion on where this walking refrigerator may have been visiting from, and he may have been right - but I just said "Ugly American", without thinking. Then I had to explain it, and this time it didn't take much of an effort to get the meaning across to him.

He told a story about seeing one of millions of balding, pot-bellied later-middle-aged male farang haggling with a vendor at the JJ  weekend market a few months before. Haggling is expected by many vendors; a good-natured (if sometimes slightly aggressive) but respectful bantering back and forth in an attempt to reach a "win-win" agreement on the price of an item. This particular episode had begun to escalate beyond banter, and my friend stopped at a safe distance to watch them.

The short version is that the farang actually began to holler about "being an American" and not being willing to be "ripped off by some bandit". When the vendor tried to smile it off and turn away, the farang grabbed his arm to turn him back face-to-face and lunged at the Thai. Vendors and others nearby joined in and gave the Ugly American what he had coming to him, to my way of thinking.

The people who over-indulge in public to the point of losing control of their manners and/or civility can be the worst of it, but the man at JJ was merely a pig-headed fool of a bully, pure and simple.  I'd wager we all run into similar folks on a daily basis. There's rarely an explanation as to why they're such mean-spirited creatures (bad childhood, inferiority complex the size of a Buick, monthly cramps, small penis, inability to hold a civil relationship together... who knows?) but they're there, meaning here and there, anywhere around the globe; being miserable and freely willing to visit their misery on anyone within reach, figuratively or literally.

Readers by now are well aware I'm not one who studiously follows dogma of any stripe, but there are some basic rules of life that I subscribe to, and one of those is what many would call the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  That covers nearly all social situations, and if you don't allow it to tarnish while traveling it'll serve you well.

Street Snacks: Take-Away Iced/Hot Chai Tea

The first think you might want to know is that Thai "iced tea" isn't what you're used to back home... it's not merely brewed black tea over ice.

It's also not what those in some parts of the USA call Sweet Tea; normal iced tea with what seems to be a cup of sugar per glass, but unless you're looking to cultivate the adult onset of Type II diabetes that's probably a good thing. No offense to my Texas or other Southern readers intended.

There are many variations of the Thai drink, but the base ingredient is tea, and that often means black tea, but there are other spices in the mix - star anise, cardamom, cinnamon and/or others by locale - and milk; whole, coconut, evaporated or sweetened condensed.

The clip above, shot in Old Chantaburi Town is one of the simplest versions I've seen prepared, but the preparation is a show unto itself in some places, such as the Chatuchak/Jatujak/JJ weekend market in Bangkok, where they often whirl about as they pour it a distance to blend the concoction from one container to another, as in the clips below from a few years ago.



Here's another - shorter - clip from the same visit:


As mentioned before, local ice can sometimes harbor bacteria that the Thai have no problems digesting but Western systems can find a challenge, so be advised and take that into consideration before being charmed like a snake in a basket into imbibing the tasty beverage.  There's more about  protecting yourself from that chance here.

It's looking to be another fairly warm day where I am, though, and the thought of walking along sipping one seems worth the minor risk. After all, it's all part and parcel of the adventure!

Walking and Exploring Local Markets

Roses by the bundle on a rolling stand in Bangkok one morning

Yesterday's post made reference to stepping outside of our comfort zone(s), and one of the easiest ways to begin is to simply take a short walk around and explore the area near your hotel.

A good example is shown in the April 11 post from last year, where I posted about the morning market I walked through in Udonthani on a week-long road trip up that way to visit friends - part of the Isaan Oddysey series that ran in fits and starts from February into May of last year.

An office worker buys flowers on her way to work one morning

I call these places Local's Markets. Sometimes they're just a gathering of carts, but most times they're a grouping of stalls, covered by a roof of one form or another; tarps, galvanized metal or an actual structure, but they're all pretty casual. Somewhat like what we here would call a flea market or swap meet, or a boot sale to you in the UK.  Today's pictures are all floral, but they sell most everything at the markets.

A woman sells flowers from a rolling cart in a morning market

One of the more recent I've visited is the one near the Trinity Complex in Bangkok, within a five minute walk of the Chong Nonsi BTS station. I was staying at the Glow Hotel at the time, and the market began maybe 100 feet from the front door of the place. I've mentioned it before, but I'll post more about it soon.

Detail of the small bunches of carnations and roses filled the cart in the photo above

The point is there are similar places all over the place... you just have to look a bit. It's a great way to get a look at everyday life in a city, town or village. Make a minor mental note of where you walk to, or take a hotel card from the reception desk. That way, even if you do get lost you can grab a taxi, hand them the card, and be back "home" easily.

Comfort Zones: Don't Let Fear Choose Your Path

A somewhat less-than-perfect panorama of part of the skyline of Bangkok from the Asia Hotel, circa 2005

I was drawn into a conversation yesterday with a fairly well-to-do physician friend - I'll call him Tim - who will be off to Thailand tomorrow for five days.  Personally, if I wasn't going to be flying in the lap of luxury (so to speak) I don't think I'd even bother going that far for that short a stretch, but to each their own.

Tim was sharing the story of his first visit to Thailand, a somewhat spur of the moment stop on a "suit shopping" trip he'd taken to Hong Kong many years ago; a stop suggested by a Thai woman he'd sat next to on his outbound trip from here.

He was worried (OK, afraid) he wouldn't be safe, that his lack of knowledge of the language would leave him helpless and vulnerable in a strange land, that he would be lost and alone in what he'd always thought was a third world country. He spoke with his airline while in Hong Kong, re-routed his homeward flight and stopped for four days in the Land of Smiles.  He's been back many times since.

Stepping onto the Thai Air flight that would take him into Don Muang airport he was taken aback by the smiling woman who welcomed him aboard with a wai and said to himself "Wow... this might not be quite such a primitive place after all", and settled in for the short hop.  He arrived near midnight and was directed by another airline employee to what he felt was a reliable ride to the old Meridian (now part of the Holiday Inn chain) hotel, and off he went. The taxi driver spoke very little English, which didn't make him any more at ease, especially when he was asked why he was visiting and he said he wanted to go to the Night Market.

He wanted to look for the knock-off merchandise friends at home told him was so inexpensive, but the driver began wiggling his eyebrows up and down, beginning the sing-song routine most of us who have been there have heard. "You want girl?" he asked, and Tim, somewhat taken aback said "no". "Boy? You want boy? I know where you can find," but that wasn't the idea, either. My friend just said "No, no girl - no boy. I'm going shopping."  That brought the standard offers for tailors and jewelry shops, but Tim was peering out his window, ignoring further questions as they moved along quickly through the darkness.

Turning off of what Tim thought looked like the "right" way they went down a darker side street, and then onto another, darker still.  Tim worried where the hell he was being taken when they pulled up to a hotel that didn't look anything like the Meridian he'd expected.  Going inside, he found he was at the wrong hotel, and got an employee out front to let the driver know that.

Soon they were pulling up to the correct hotel, where again he was greeted by the pleasantly gracious staff. His room was waiting, and the bell boy, instead of merely dumping his bags in the room and holding his hand out for a tip, showed him all the features of the room and explained how they all worked.  Tim was impressed, and fumbled for what he hoped was an appropriate gratuity.

Still too spooked to go out anywhere that first night he holed up in his room, took a shower, and went to bed.  The next morning he had a fine breakfast at what he thought at the time might have been the best buffet in the city, stepped outside of his hotel, climbed into a cab the man out in front had hailed for him and was off to the Grand Palace.

He's been back at least a dozen times since, along with another few dozen countries around the globe.  The tales he has to tell are plentiful and colorful.

The point is this: don't let fear choose your path. I'm not advocating just landing blind in a completely new country or culture, but with a bit of legwork there's a wide, wide world of adventures out there. Stretch your comfort zone a little and try exploring some of it.

Thai Smiles, Part 50: More Folks At Work

Not a lot of time for a post today, but here are a few more photos today of Thai at work.

The guy above was at work on a scaffolding near the Surasak BTS station and "posed" for me while I was walking by, on my way to have lunch with some friends at a nearby spot.

 The woman below was smiling, but she had the knit head covering on to protect her from the sun. Seemed a little warm to me for such a cover, but she was by the side of the road selling crab as I was passing by her in Chantaburi province. The crab was delicious, by the way.

The other day you saw workers at Wat Khao Sukim, and this was actually a better picture of them. We were having a laugh, sharing what little we knew of the other's languages.

Finally, here's a man working his lottery ticket stand. He laughed when I held up the ticket I'd just bought from him and my friend informed him that I'd just bought the winning ticket, and I got the shot.

It didn't win, but who knows? Maybe next time.

Trip Report, Part 25: Night Shots From The Festival

Three of the festival entrance, taken from across the road

What I call "night photography" - photos taken without a flash - is problematic enough on its own, since I rarely lug around a tripod and finding a steady spot to rest the camera is often catch-as-catch-can. To add to that, they're often more than a five second exposures and I just don't have the steady hand I had 40 years ago, and the aperture of my simple camera won't give me any more of a break than that.  

Maybe I'll invest in a better camera before the next trip, but the instruments I'd like to purchase often cost half of my round trip airfare there. Perhaps the camera fairies will leave a new one under my pillow, but that might entail leaving the old one underneath it before going to bed, and my sleep cycles are screwy enough to begin with.

That aside, a short while back I posted about this festival that was to raise funds to build a new temple (part 1 here and part 2 here). Those evenings I took night photos, and tried something new: stitching shots together into panoramas. Here are the results.

The "bouncy house" where kids of a wide age range jumped around

The dart throw carnival game

Part of the new temple building boundaries. Offerings were made by most, including myself.

I like the somewhat eerie light and coloring the camera catches. It's often a surprise when I get back to where I can download and view the pictures.

Hope you enjoy them, and your weekend.

Trip Report, Pt. 24A: Wat Khao Sukim 2

Some of the beautiful views at ground level

You can see long rows of
display cases behind this
Buddha image

In part one of this post yesterday you saw an overview of the grounds and buildings at Wat Khao Sukim, several hour's drive South from Pattaya.

My friend was driving me to a long weekend getaway in a coastal area of the Chantaburi province - an area probably best classified here as Laem Sing.

Wat Khao Sukim is a work in progress; a wat without much of an actual wat, if you will. The new construction (there's a model rendering of the temple to come at the top of yesterday's post) will double the amount of buildings that exist there now.

Today we'll try to wrap the post up with some of the photos I didn't have ready yesterday, showing more of the museum interior and the surrounding area.  Since it was approaching closing time I didn't see a couple of the floors of displays, but that just gives me more of a reason to stop there again in a few years and (hopefully) see more of the main temple finished.

A grouping of larger Buddha statues, adorned with silk flowers

There'd been an attempt to organize the countless offerings made to the temple - countless for me, anyway... let me know if you come up with anything like a total if you visit there - but they were grouped together, after a fashion.  Below is a panorama of some of the furniture that had been donated.

Smaller items - and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say thousands of them - stood in glass-walled cabinets, neatly arranged in rows and somewhat grouped by vintage, it seemed. Bowls, pottery, brass work and wooden carvings, both simple and intricate: all had a place.

Even pottery with some serious age to it was set in one spot. We'd speculated that they may have been found while doing excavations during construction of the new main temple. Here they look somewhat haphazard, but my guess is they would eventually find their way into the grand scheme of the place.

It was silent in the halls while we were looking around on one of the huge open floors of displays, so we were (luckily) able to hear the clattering of a gate and the sound of keys as a lock was closed. My friend called out to the guard and we hustled our way over to him to get out. A lovely place, but not somewhere I'd choose to spend the night.

We took the tram back down and stopped at one of a few places still open in the touristy area surrounding the parking lot. I got us each a fresh young coconut from a young girl who cut them open for us. After sitting on ice all day, they were cold and refreshing. I wish I could find them here stateside. We sipped on them through our straws as we left the parking lot and made our way back to Highway 3, and on to the resort.

A young man doing detail upkeep on the naga stair railing smiled for me - or because his work day was nearly finished, one or the other.

Trip Report, Pt. 24: Wat Khao Sukim

You won't see this building, as it's still under construction. You can see cranes above the site in the panorama below.

Wat Khao Sukim is a fairly large complex, built on a hillside in Chantaburi Province in the mid-1960s. It's still a work in progress, with an enormous temple underway (but just barely). Nevertheless, it's a stop worth making, if for no other reason than the nearly auditorium-sized main hall "museum" and the views from up near the retreat, one of which is below, taken from the wide patio encircling the museum.  From there you can see more of the 1,000+ acres of land owned by the followers of Phra Ajarn Somchai Thitawiriyo, who had originally intended it to be a meditation center.

A panorama shows part of the lake, the parking and shops, and the new temple - under construction on the far right

On the weekend it's likely to be crowded, and I base that on the size of the parking area at the bottom of this hill; you could put dozens of buses and still have space left for a couple of hundred cars.

From what I was told, lay groups and individuals of the faith can attend meditation stays, but it was fairly quiet on the afternoon we visited. The main buildings were set to close an hour after our arrival, so we didn't invest the time (or energy) to climb the hundred and fifty or so steps up the naga-lined stairway to the main hall, which I called the museum in the first paragraph.

Some of the museum, quarters and other buildings on the higher level

It houses thousands of items, large and small; all donations from people who are making merit in their own way, but all of no small significance.  These were items which all seemed to have some historical value, although the signage in English was sadly lacking.

A small fraction of the offerings on display

As an alternative to the stairway there's a tram that ferries you up and down the steep hillside, although since there were so few visitors that afternoon it was being loaded to the weight limit with building materials - bags of cement and sand that day, for the most part. A group of about 10 young men would load the cars up at the bottom and send them up to the top, where another group waited to unload the stuff and lug it off to wherever it was going.

The last bit of tram track and stairs near the top as we were descending at the end of our visit

The guys at the bottom were glad to see us, I think, because that meant they could take breaks between loads a little longer than usual. When the man with the walkie-talkie up top saw us approach the tram he called down to his partner and he spoke to the others, who all smiled with relief and sat down on the chairs to rest.

Break time... light 'em if you've got 'em

Seems like as good a point as any to take a break in the story, too. I'll finish the rest of it tomorrow.

Flowers, Part 17: Assorted Photos For A Tuesday

An enormous stretch of blooming shrubbery, gone wild in an open area near my hotel one trip

Having just had a long Labor Day weekend (here are the 2011 and 2010 posts about it too, if you're interested in seeing more Thai folks laboring away) it might seem a tad lazy to fall back on a post of photos again, but so it goes.

Here are some blooms and blossoms I've seen while out around and about in Thailand. Some I can identify, some I can't... despite buying a relatively comprehensive guidebook to Thai flowers a trip or two ago. Any comments from those who can ID them are (as always) welcome!

My guess is that this is part of the Ixora family

Similar to a passion fruit (lilikoi) unidentified bloom on a tree near Sattahip

Deep violet orchids in a private garden in Bangkok

I can't identify the flower, but it was the lone bloom on a large shrub that caught my eye

Back tomorrow, hopefully with another installment of the Trip Report from this Spring.

Some Thai Workers On "Our" Labor Day

Iron workers putting 90-degree bends in pieces of  "rebar"

Friday's post about the bar boy's home generated some questions I'll reply to another day, but since today's Labor Day in the United States, and as such a holiday - of a sort - I'm going to play along as if I'm observing this day set aside to honor working people by avoiding as much work as possible. That means a day of photos; today of some folks at work in the Land of Smiles.

Thai soldiers at the train station in Hua Hin

The U.S. pinched Labor Day from the Canadians, but I'm glad they did. I'm not quite old enough to remember the first observance here (that was 130 years ago this year) but I've enjoyed many a long weekend since, so thanks, Peter McGuire, for attending the Toronto observance in 1882 and bringing the idea back home. We "Americans" (since we in the U.S. typically dismiss the fact that there are lots of other countries in the Americas) took the idea and ran with it.

Items in a street stall get a morning dusting by the stall-keeper as a new sales day begins

A flower salesman
peddles his petals

Naturally, we in the US found a way to capitalize on the holiday, and it's become what some claim to be the second biggest shopping day of the year, second only to the day after Thanksgiving (the third Friday in November here), known as Black Friday.

Ironically, with around a quarter of the US population involved in retail businesses, they work through this three day weekend, including Labor Day itself.  Longer hours, too... so go figure. Many of the rest of us take a short trip somewhere, attend a picnic or BBQ, and, of course, shop.

It's also another of our national alcohol abuse holidays, and that often contributes to the yearly 450+ fatalities over this long weekend. May I suggest if you drink, don't drive.

However you spend the day, I hope it's a good one for you. I plan to get a nap in, somehow.