Thai Lite

By S. Tsow

Thai lite by S.Tsow - Not so much a comedy of errors as an error of comedy.

The selected scribblings of S. Tsow - linguist, theologian, philosopher and sage-in-residence of the City of Angels - writes authoritatively and eloquently on the burning issues of our time: the scourge of cellphones, the escalating price of noodles, the inanity of political correctness, and the bad gramer and speling ov the yooth ov tooday... not to mention beer drinking, bad medicine, backpacking in the old days and the boisterous bedlam of Bangkok.

Rave Reviews of the Work of S. Tsow

"Tsow is a great punctuator." Colin Piprell, author.

"An evil toad." James Eckardt, author.

"Who?" Simon J. Hand, journalist.

"Tsow is one of the most underrated writers in Bangkok today - and with good reason." Fardley Nerdwell, Literary critic.

"As his writing reveals, S. Tsow has managed to make the difficult transition from adolescence to senility without passing through an intervening stage of maturity." Turk Grogan, philosopher.

"He was a good boy, but I understand he's gone downhill since." Mrs. J. Tsow, mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Proglen
• Release date: Nov 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9786167817187

S. Tsow

S. Tsow is a figment of his own imagination. You can flame him at [e-mail]

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

A Quiz for Literary Trendies

1. A City for All Seasons

2. Thai Buzzwords

3. Intercultural Speed Bumps

4. A Guide to Upmarket Dining

5. A Discourse on Noodleology

6. The Tao of Health

7. In Praise of Fatness

8. Reminiscences of a Professional Killing Machine

9. Battling the Law of Escalating Demands

10. Chilling Out

11. Waiting for the Elephant Man

12. Memories of the Great Sand Pile

13. Requiem for a Cockroach

14. How to Get Along with Women

15. A Guide to Politically Correct Terminology

16. Heroes Under Siege

17. Pickup

18. The Making of a Politically Correct Jesus

19. Siamizing Genesis

20. A New Religion for the Consumer Age

21. The Numbers Game

22. A Most Opprobrious Profession

23. What’s in a Name?

24. Back to School

25. After School

26. Question Time for Tourists

27. Recommendations for Holiday Reading

28. The Tao of Traffic

29. Desert Idylls

30. The Rhetoric of Saddam Hussein

31. On the Road with Diamond Jim

32. Traveling the Dumb Way

33. Confessions of an Unrepentant Junket Junkie

34. House Rules, No Exceptions

35. Adventures in Chinese Medicine

36. The Wacky World of Huguo Lu

37. Roger’s Garage Comes to Koh Samet

38. Introducing Keeniao Bob

39. The Great Cats and Dogs Controversy

40. The New Word Order

41. A Glimpse Beneath the Glitter

42. Battling the Cellphone

43. Understanding Quantum Physics

44. Oh, God, Give Us a Break

45. The Rise and Fall of Management Gurus

46. Finessing the Job Interview

47. Barrification and the Coffee Enema Factor

48. The Write Stuff: Zen and the Art of Syntax Maintenance

49. Signs of India

50. Coping with Mid-Life Crisis

51. Coming of Age in the Age of Viagra

52. Getting Older, If Not Better

53. A Grab-Bag of Truths

54. Tsow’s Pearls of Wisdom, or The Out-Takes

Answer to Quiz

About the Author

Preface

Originally this was intended to be a collection of the best humor articles I’ve written about Thailand. But because that would make a very slim book indeed, I’ve sneaked in a whole bunch of other stuff, on the grounds that a fat man deserves a fat book.

Most of these pieces were published in the old Sunday Leisure Extra section of the Bangkok Post; many were published in The Nation Weekend; others were published in the Phuket Gazette, Fah Thai, Thailand Tatler, and Sawasdee.

Well, you may be wondering, if these are the best you’ve written, what are the worst like?

You don’t want to know.

Acknowledgements

I wish to pay fawning and copious tribute to the wise judgment and superb editorial skills of Roger Crutchley. As editor of the late lamented Sunday Leisure Extra section of the Bangkok Post, Roger first enabled me to break into print by publishing High Road to Adventure, an account of my first trip to Lhasa, way back in 1986. Subsequently he published a great number of my humor articles, many of which have been revised for this book.

Roger edited with a very light touch, a virtue that all writers appreciate. But he knew how to cut when conditions required it, he often supplied better titles than the ones I had dreamed up, and he saved my neck on several occasions by declining to publish submissions which were in bad taste. To Roger I extend my heartfelt thanks.

My thanks also go to my editors at The Nation, and for the same reasons: Khun Veena Thoopkrajae, Khun Pusadee Rithinondh, Owen Flint, Anil Menon, and Brad Chang. They have imposed needed discipline by forcing me to condense my ramblings into the 750-850-word format of Down But Not Out, a bi-weekly column that currently appears in The Nation Weekend on alternate Fridays.

Further thanks go to John Magee and the staff of the Phuket Gazette, who publish my monthly column Tsowndings and provide lavish hospitality whenever I visit Phuket.

Last but by no means least, my thanks to Richard Baker, my editor at Asia Books, who weeded out the weaker articles, determined the sequence, and hammered out the final shape of a vast mass of material.

Richard also added a number of sprightly editorial comments to liven up the whole, and unwittingly provided a convenient scapegoat for criticism. If anybody who reads this book ever comes up to me and says, I thought your chapter on such-and-such was offensive, disgusting, blasphemous, and obscene, I’ll just smile serenely and say, Oh, that’s one of the chapters I wanted to cut out. But my editor thought it was great, and insisted on keeping it.

To Richard Baker, my profoundest thanks.

I urge the bosses of all these talented and hard-working people to give them a hefty raise. They deserve it.

S. Tsow

Bangkok, Thailand

January 2000

A Quiz for Literary Trendies

Question: What does the S in S. Tsow’s name stand for?

Choose one of the following:

a - Samson

b - Solomon

c - Saintly

d - Seymour

e - Sergei

f - Somsak

g - Slobodan

h - Stanley

i - Salvador

j - Socrates

k - Satchidananda

l - Sesquipedalian

m - Spartacus

n - Savonarola

o - Smegma

p - Salopsalai

q - Scumsucker

r - Scabrous

s - Salacious

t - Slimy

u - Sewage

v - Sexy

w - Senile

x - Satan

y - (All of the above, written as one humongously long word)

z - (None of the above)

The answer is at the end of the book. But you must buy the book and read it before looking at the answer. No fair peeking. (And no fair reading the book in the bookstore and then putting it back on the shelf. This book is programmed to explode in your hands if you indulge in such low-class behavior.)

1 - A City for All Seasons

Warning to the reader: This introductory chapter will be a collage of random snippets intended to reflect the chaos and anarchy of the city it celebrates. But don’t fret, later chapters will be models of coherence. (He’s lying. Later chapters will be equally incoherent. Ed.)

The name alone is a killer.

Krungthepmahanakhonamornrattanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokpopnopparattanaratchathaniburiromudomratchaniwetmahasathanamornphimanawartansatitsakkatatiyavishnukamprasit.

It means The City of Angels, the Great City, the Immortal Magnificent Jeweled City of Great Indra, the Great Impregnable Capital of the World Endowed with Nine Precious Gems, the Royal City of Happiness Abounding in Royal Palaces, the Great Place, the Immortal Abode of the Gods, the Residence of the Incarnate Deity, the City Given by Indra and Built by Vishnu.

The Guinness Book of Records lists it as the longest place name in the world. For short we call it Bangkok, which has the slightly less grandiose meaning, Village of Hog-Plums.

Of course, it’s no longer a village, and good luck trying to find any hog-plums popping out of the concrete.

We also give it other names: the City of Angels, the Venice of the East, Fun City, the Big Mango.

But whatever you call it, no name is adequate to encapsulate the infinite glories of the premier city of the Orient, beloved and extolled by all who are fortunate enough to dwell in it. Confronted by the challenge of describing the kaleidoscopic variety of this seething microcosm of life’s rich pageant, my brain seizes up and my computer goes into convulsions.

Weighty Socio-Anthropological Observations

Bangkok at the beginning of the 21st century was more than midway through its passage from a sleepy village on a Chao Phraya mudflat, populated by smiling natives who passed their days crafting nielloware, and their evenings dancing beneath a copper moon . . . to a smog-choked urban nightmare packed with high-rises and condominiums, where the natives all have MBAs, all conversation is conducted by cellphone, and the traffic never moves.

Fortunately we have not yet reached the latter end of the continuum, but it’s getting close.

Bangkok is a dynamic fusion of traditional Thai charm with soulless urbanization imported from the West. Admittedly, the urbanization threatens to bulldoze the charm into oblivion; but it’s the mix that gives Bangkok its special character. If ever the charm were to be lost, buried beneath tons of concrete, Bangkok would no longer be Bangkok.

The city nurtures within its warm and capacious bosom a host of contradictions spun from the eternal interplay of yin and yang. And that’s good, because consistency is boring and contradictions keep you awake.

Indeed, if a single picture sums up Bangkok, it is this: in the heart of the business district, a massive skyscraper, all shining glass and steel and concrete, soaring to the heavens and blotting out the sun with its immensity—and at its base, a tiny spirit house.

In the eighties, the city was awash in a sea of greed, its people lusting for condominiums, Benzes, cellphones, and all the other trappings of yuppiedom—and yet they elected as their mayor an ascetic army general who ate one vegetarian meal a day, slept on a mat on the floor, and didn’t even have sex with his wife.

In the nineties, powerful politicians and wealthy tycoons would wend their way in cavalcades of limousines to the provincial town of Korat, there to prostrate themselves and beseech the favor of a wizened, cheroot-smoking old monk who would bless them by giving them a rap on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.

It took almost thirty years to build a skytrain to relieve Bangkok’s horrendous traffic congestion; and when it was finished, some Bangkokians looked at it, shook their heads sadly, and said, It’s not beautiful. We should tear it down.

Thai intellectuals bemoan the proliferation of materialism and the decay of Thai culture, and sometimes they blame it on the West. The one question they never ask is If materialism is such a bad thing, why is everybody rushing to embrace it?

Bangkok is a great place for men who never grew up, men who don’t want to grow up, and men who grew up but later regretted it. There are more happy old foreign men on Soi Cowboy and in the Nana Plaza than any other place in the world.

This isn’t to say they’ll stay happy for long—especially not after those gorgeous little honeys have systematically fleeced them of every cent they possess, and tossed away their shattered remains.

But she loved me! he’ll wail.

Correction: she loved your money, pal. And since she’s already seized possession of that highly regarded commodity, you’re of no more value to her than a cast-off banana peel.

But this phenomenon—the fleecing of the foolish foreigner—has one salutary effect. It makes a man grow up real fast.

The Great Teakwood Table Mystery

One anecdote will tell you a lot about Bangkok and its people. At the establishment where I work, the central administration building has a credit union on the first floor, where the employees all have bank accounts. Until recently, there were no tables where you could fill out deposit and withdrawal slips before going up to the counter to do your business. Everybody had to crowd up to the counter and fill out their slips right there; and it was a very narrow counter. Consequently, there was always a big crush of people battling for writing space.

Once, I complained about this to a Thai colleague, and she was quick with an explanation. You see, the first floor of the administration building is a showcase. We have beautiful teakwood walls and a marble floor. We also have a stairway with a red carpet leading up to the second floor, where, from outside the building, people can see a large portrait of our founder. If we were to put tables out, it would destroy the beautiful view people get from outside.

From this I drew a valuable lesson: beauty, image, a pleasing external appearance, is more important to Thais than efficiency.

End of story?

Not quite.

Every time you think you’ve got things figured out in this country, they throw a curve ball at you that puts you right back to square one.

One fine day, a magnificent teakwood table appeared on the first floor of the administration building. It was a Chinese-style table, sumptuously designed, with a black lacquer finish and intricate inlays of mother-of-pearl.

Ah, I thought, this is progress. Somebody realized the inefficiency of having all the people crowding around the counter, and installed this table to alleviate the crush. But, true to the Thai tradition of insisting that everything be beautiful, they got the glitziest table they could find.

End of story?

Not yet.

As I said, every time you think you’ve got things figured out. . . .

A friend told me the real story behind the table. They wanted to move it upstairs to put it in the room with the portrait of the founder, but it was too big to get up the stairs. So they left it on the first floor.

What is the point of all this?

There isn’t any point. And that’s just the point. It’s pointless to be looking for points in Thailand. And whenever you think you’ve found one, it’s usually wrong. Including this one.

Shortly after writing the above, I checked out the table and discovered that my friend had made a mistake. It wasn’t too big to get up the stairs after all. So they had put it downstairs to alleviate the crush around the counter, and my original conclusion about it had been correct.

Or was it?

A few weeks ago, the table disappeared.

I had no idea what had happened to it, or why it had been put there in the first place.

When I asked my Thai colleague about this, she gave me The Look. The Look conveys a message. It says, You are an idiot and an imbecile, and possibly also a moron. I get The Look all the time in Thailand, and especially from this particular colleague.

Who told you they planned to put the table upstairs? she asked.

A friend, I answered.

Thai or foreign?

Foreign.

You see, she said, "that’s the problem around here. Foreigners are always jumping to conclusions and spreading rumors. There was never any intention of putting the table in the room with the portrait of the founder. That room already has a table in it, if you’d just take the time to look.

Instead, they planned to put the table in the conference room right next to the credit union. But the conference room was being renovated, so they had to leave it in the credit union. When the renovations were finished, they moved the table. If you take a look in the conference room, you’ll see it sitting there right now.

Abashed, chagrined, and defeated, I retreated to my office.

Reflecting on the experience, I realized that every time I thought I had everything figured out, I turned out to be wrong. In the end, the only lesson I learned was how dumb I am.

And that may be the most valuable lesson of all.

But I still think they should have left the table in the credit union.

A Fistful of Aphorisms (most of them wrong)

Bangkok is a moral crucible.

In Thailand, things are seldom what they seem.

You never can be sure that something is going to happen in Thailand until it actually happens, and maybe not even then. It might happen and then they might decide to cancel it.

Mahamaya is alive and well in Bangkok. (Scholarly note: in Hinduism, Mahamaya is the cosmic illusionist.)

The nightlife will destroy you. (An expat who’s now dead.)

You might get frustrated by the traffic, you might go deaf from the noise, you might be asphyxiated by the pollution—but you’ll never be bored.

I love it and I hate it and I never could live anywhere else. (A resident expat.)

Home is where the heart is. This is home. (Bernard Trink.)

It may be home to you, but you still need a visa. Five hundred baht, please. (Immigration official.)

2 - Thai Buzzwords

Certain words pop up with unusual frequency when talking with Thais, and these give you important clues to their value system. A Thai friend of mine once summarized the three S’s which are most beloved by Thai people: saduak, sabai, and sanuk.

These translate as convenient, comfortable, and fun. The Thais are fun-loving people who value what is pleasant and easy.

A fourth S-word that newcomers quickly pick up on is suay, meaning beautiful or good-looking.

Beauty is highly valued in Thailand, and rightly so. Who likes ugliness? Even so, critical foreigners sometimes charge that the Thai people are obsessed with appearances, putting image before substance. More knowledgeable foreigners deny this. They maintain that the Thais are deeply concerned about substance—especially when it looks good.

There are also negative words, the most common being boring, serious, and impolite. These require more elaborate analysis.

Boring (beua)

This is the most lethal adjective in the Thai lexicon. In most cases it refers to any activity that goes on for more than five minutes. It also refers to anything that isn’t convenient, comfortable, or fun, and certainly includes everything that isn’t beautiful.

If a Thai thinks you’re boring, you’re in serious trouble. The most devastating indictment leveled against a former prime minister, shortly before he left office, was the complaint that he was boring. If he’d been merely corrupt, or arrogant, or power-mad, he could have been forgiven—but if he was boring, he was beyond redemption.

In his defense, it must be argued that the poor man had been in power for eight years, and had devoted himself to building a stable government and a booming economy. What was he supposed to do—perform a song-and-dance routine every five minutes? But the Thais perceived him as boring, so he had to go.

Serious (kriad)

To be serious is considerably better than to be boring, but there is always the hidden implication that what is serious could quickly become boring if drastic measures are not taken.

If a person is serious, it is understood that he is a dignified, no-nonsense sort of person to be respected, and he will be given lip service as such. But deep down, such a person is considered no fun. You might endure working for a serious person, but you certainly wouldn’t invite him out for an evening of seafood and Mekhong whisky and associated forms of revelry.

To be called serious is to be faintly (but never overtly) condemned. One wonders what the Thais make of people like Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, and Confucius—none of whom can be accused of cracking jokes and playing party games in their off-duty hours.

Oh, the Thais will say airily, but they are different. They are sages.

Sages have the right to be serious. But if you’re not a sage, watch out.

Impolite (mai supaab)

Impoliteness involves a whole constellation of taboos. Even the casual tourist usually finds out pretty quickly that there are certain don’ts in Thai society which are regarded as unpardonably impolite, like patting somebody on the head or pointing with your foot.

The feet are considered so impolite that a truly polite person will chop off his feet and go stubbing about on his anklebones—and this in a country whose national sport consists of two men trying to kick each other in the face.

Any expression of anger or exasperation is impolite, as is speaking loudly, using coarse language, or tossing something to somebody instead of handing it to him.

Then there’s the whole business of impolite clothes. Believe it or not, in a country where the climate makes sandals the most sensible form of footwear, and where three fourths of the population wear them, sandals are considered impolite.

A friend of mine was once denied entrance to the library of Chulalongkorn University on the grounds that he was wearing impolite shoes—sandals. Shoes are polite. Leather shoes that are laced up are more polite than cloth shoes without laces.

As near as I’ve been able to make out, the more the body is covered by clothes, the more polite the clothes are. A long-sleeved shirt is more polite than a short-sleeved one. A tie is very polite, and a suit is super-polite.

Some time ago, Britain’s Prince Charles made a favorable impression by appearing at the Grand Palace in an immaculate white suit and tie, even though he must have been perishing from the heat.

In general, the more your clothes make you suffer in Thailand’s horrendous heat, the more polite they are. And this leads to an apparent contradiction in the Thai value system. How can wearing a suit be polite if it isn’t convenient, comfortable, and fun?

The answer: because it’s beautiful.

3 - Intercultural Speed Bumps

Every now and then I notice little differences between the way the Thai people do things, and the way people do them in the West. Most of these are minor differences—certainly not significant enough to induce a case of that much-overworked term culture shock.

You could call them intercultural speed bumps.

As you’re careening through the lush magnificence of Thai culture, they make you slow down and think, Hello, this is something different. Here are a few I’ve noticed:

First Come, Last Served.

The Westerner—at least the pre-McLuhanite variety—has a linear mentality. So Western business establishments follow the principle, First come, first served.

A clerk in any Western shop will wait on the first customer who requires his attention. Other customers must wait their turn. Only when the clerk has finished processing the first customer’s transaction will he turn his attention to the next customer, who will presumably be waiting at the head of an orderly queue. This practice follows another Western maxim: One thing at a time.

Not in Thailand.

At my local grocery store, which is run by an overworked Chinese-Thai lady,