We Have Changed: Returning to Thailand in 2019

By Barry Pomeroy

My latest trip to South East Asia differed from other trips in that I was older, my traveling companion was younger, and Thailand had changed. I didn’t plan to return to the country, but my friend had taken a teaching practicum in Bangkok, and we both thought we would enjoy exploring the north of the country before her term began. We laid our plans a few months in advance, but like most trips, it didn’t turn out exactly as we had planned. We learned to manage each other’s foibles and annoyances, negotiated how people viewed our relationship, and saw a Thailand transformed both by an explosion in Chinese tourism as well as our position in the country as we traveled.
We went from Bangkok to Lopburi, the monkey city, almost immediately upon arrival, and then, trying to escape the humidity of the near rainy season, we went to Phitsanulok, Old Sukothai, and Chiang Mai. We floundered around in the stifling heat, and I belatedly realized I had never visited Thailand in midsummer.
Finally, we caught the train back to Bangkok, where we embraced the rainy season. I lived downtown and my friend began to settle into teaching and although at first we had the impression we wouldn’t be meeting again, despite being in the same city, we met up quite often. We met to see what each other’s experience was like in the city which would be her home for eight months, and the city where I visited my professor friend, helped another friend whose daughter was fighting her mental illness, and in other ways waited on a flight to take me back to Canada.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Pomeroy
• Release date: Dec 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781987922806

Barry Pomeroy

Barry Pomeroy is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, academic, essayist, travel writer, and editor. He is primarily interested in science fiction, speculative science fiction, dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, although he has also written travelogues, poetry, book-length academic treatments, and more literary novels. His other interests range from astrophysics to materials science, from child-rearing to construction, from cognitive therapy to paleoanthropology.

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We Have Changed

Returning to Thailand in 2019

by

Barry Pomeroy

© 2019 by Barry Pomeroy

All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author, although people generally do what they please.

For more information about my books, go to barrypomeroy.com

ISBN 13: 978-1987922806

ISBN 10: 1987922808

My latest trip to South East Asia differed from other trips in that I was older, my traveling companion was younger, and Thailand had changed. I didn’t plan to return to the country, but my friend had taken a teaching practicum in Bangkok, and we both thought we would enjoy exploring the north of the country before her term began. We laid our plans a few months in advance, but like most trips, it didn’t turn out exactly as we had planned. We learned to manage each other’s foibles and annoyances, negotiated how people viewed our relationship, and saw a Thailand transformed both by an explosion in Chinese tourism as well as our position in the country as we traveled.

We went from Bangkok to Lopburi, the monkey city, almost immediately upon arrival, and then, trying to escape the humidity of the near rainy season, we went to Phitsanulok, Old Sukothai, and Chiang Mai. We floundered around in the stifling heat, and I belatedly realized I had never visited Thailand in midsummer.

Finally, we caught the train back to Bangkok, where we embraced the rainy season. I lived downtown and my friend began to settle into teaching and although at first we had the impression we wouldn’t be meeting again, despite being in the same city, we met up quite often. We met to see what each other’s experience was like in the city which would be her home for eight months, and the city where I visited my professor friend, helped another friend whose daughter was fighting her mental illness, and in other ways waited for a flight to take me back to Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Leaving Winnipeg ~ June 15

Landing in Taipei ~ June 17

Train to Lopburi ~ June 18

Prostitutes and Old Men ~ June 19

The Train to Phitsanulok ~ June 20

Too Much Time Together in Sukothai ~ June 21

A Hungry Arrival in Chiang Mai ~ June 22

The Night was Sultry ~ June 23

Movies and Markets ~ June 24

Bedbugs and The Talk ~ June 25

Preparing for Being Alone ~ June 26

Living Separately ~ June 27

Meeting Sak as a Family ~ June 28

Our First Day Apart ~ June 29

The Rain and Colleen’s Falung ~ June 30

Mall Conversations ~ July 1

Meeting Sak and Colleen’s Taxi Trouble ~ July 2

Mental Illness in Bangkok ~ July 3

Manitoban Practicum Teachers in Thailand ~ July 4

Eating Around Town ~ July 5

Mall Shopping with Colleen ~ July 6

Another Last Farewell ~ July 7

More Thai than the Thai ~ July 8

The Last Meeting with Sak ~ July 9

Saying Goodbye to Colleen ~ July 10

My Last Day in Thailand ~ July 11

Introduction

My latest trip to South East Asia promised to be different than those I had taken in the past. I expected that Thailand would have changed over the previous ten years, just as I had become more gray since I had last sweated in the tropical humidity. Perhaps the most significant change was one that I hadn’t spent much time thinking about. I was traveling with my friend Colleen who was not only quite a bit younger than me, but because of her Vietnamese heritage, she looked Thai to locals. We were quite cavalier about what that might mean before we left, but once we were travelling together we had to develop strategies in order to avoid the judgemental looks and sly comments.

Thailand had changed a lot. Most of the tourists were Chinese, who blended better than the westerners culturally, and the Thai tourism industry, ever flexible, had compensated. The sellers were picking up a few words in Mandarin and posting signs in both English and Chinese. The country might also have appeared different because I was ten years older than when I had gone with my girlfriend at the time. In those years I had sprouted more gray hair, and felt a corresponding dip in my energy level. Where I once appeared as a young hippy wandering the world, I now looked like an old man from the west, and in Thailand, that meant only one thing to both the tourists and the locals.

Another aspect of how I clashed with the other tourists, or at least their expectations, was likely my increased class consciousness. I carried my imprinted social class a little more than I did when I was younger, perhaps, and that meant the western tourists who were rich enough to travel overseas eyed me a little more than askance. They could tell, just as middle class Canadians could, that I didn’t belong in their social milieu; that was no longer hidden by my chance resemblance to the hippies they saw protesting on television. I tried speaking to a few tourists only to receive blank stares in return, or more commonly, no acknowledgement that I had even spoken. I began to feel as though I were invisible, although the sellers had no trouble distinguishing me from the locals, and their prices rose accordingly.

The most profound change came from the way Colleen and I were treated, as an older man and a young, Thai-looking woman traveling together. We were careful not to touch each other—it was too hot anyway—or to act in any fashion that might encourage the perception. I avoided the strange possessive and domineering behaviour of the old men who had come to Thailand for prostitution, and Colleen both gave up trying to speak Thai and spoke English louder in public.

We managed to negotiate the perception others had of us, but it took a toll on our relationship. I thought Colleen came away from that experience with firmer instructions on who she should pick as her friends, and slightly less patience with our relationship, and that struck a sour note in what otherwise was a good trip together. The full effect of our travels together was yet to be determined, for we knew her life would change again when she returned to Manitoba, but it remained to be seen if we could return to the carefree days of lounging around and watching got-talent videos on YouTube.

In that way, this book is an examination of our evolving relationship just as much as it is the story of a man in his fifties reporting on how much Thailand had changed in a decade.

Leaving Winnipeg ~ June 15

I went to the airport by bus much earlier than Colleen, since we were going to meet inside the security gate in order to avoid the family goodbye. Both her mother and father had been told we were travelling together, but not recently, and that meant Dad might become irate at the rumour turning into reality. Colleen’s mother had suggested that Colleen not reiterate that fact as the departure date approached, and therefore we decided to let them say their goodbyes without my presence to disconcert the moment. I’ve thought since that her mother was torn between happiness that I would be there to protect her youngest, and her misgivings about our relationship. Our friendship struck others as odd as well, although we had been friends for a few years and enjoyed each other’s company.

Because she wasn’t present, Colleen missed the sight of me being randomly selected for a pat down. The bell rang when I went through the metal detector, which must be triggered by an algorithm since I was carrying no metal on me at all. I’d put my keys in my bag, and was only carrying my wallet and passport. The security barely tried to rationalize why I’d been stopped.

I was reminded of the many times I’d been pulled over by police when I was driving my older Honda Civic. One RCMP officer told me that my front licence plate had fallen off—he’d come from behind me and it hadn’t—while another claimed my taillight had burned out—he’d come from the front. Still another said that she’d clocked me on her radar at one hundred and twenty, but as I told her, Look at it. This car can’t even go that fast. Only later did I learn the police were using that strategy to catch speeders. They would suggest they had a record that someone was travelling at a high speed, and when they protested they were not that far over the limit, they would give them a ticket for the admission.

In this case, once they were dismayed to realize that their excuse of my belt was undermined by the plastic buckle, they informed me that I’d been randomly selected. I was given the choice between full body X-ray scan or a pat-down. I chose to avoid the radiation, so before long I was standing to one side while a Filipino man felt me up. I was glad my belt was tight, for he tugged on my pants as he checked my legs and if they weren’t cinched so tightly they would have pooled around my ankles.

He also had me lift my feet to see the bottom of my shoes, but that was a parting shot over the bow, for I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. The important bust he was hoping for hadn’t materialized and he was already turning to a fresh victim. After he was satisfied, I went back to collecting my carry-on luggage. I was traveling light, as was increasingly my habit, so I only had a mid-size pack less than half full, and my laptop bag with camera and phone. I was informed that the luggage scans in Winnipeg employed new technology, and to leave my laptop in my bag. I stood to one side and watched as the guards shifted their electronic view on the computer. They could rotate the view and zoom, as well as reverse, so they managed a relatively complete view of what everyone was carrying, and because of how they positioned their monitor, anyone who was interested was treated to a view of the various contents of our fellow travellers’ bags. We looked out of the corner of our eyes, in case the overly assiduous guards took offense to anyone noticing the display, and I’m sure each of us contemplated what portions of our laptops and cameras looked like the bombs and drugs we were legally unable to discuss in an airport.

I walked in the general direction of our gate and picked a seat where I could see Colleen from the distance. I imagined taking a photo of her searching the airport for a friendly face when she arrived, especially if she didn’t see me first. This was her first trip overseas without her mother, so I felt it deserved to be commemorated in some fashion. We had spoken a few times the night before, and she told me the whole family was anxious about her departure. In many ways she was the wiring which allowed the family to communicate, and I was sure that they were missing her already. They normally expressed their feelings by a shortness of temper, and she would no doubt find hurtling across the globe in a metal tube relaxing by contrast.

When Colleen arrived, I tried to take a photo of her as she came down the corridor, but she saw me too quickly and I didn’t have my camera ready. As soon as she arrived she exclaimed about the family leave-taking, which was apparently both clumsy and oddly tender. They had had a pleasant drive to the airport, during which she had spent most of her time scolding her father about his diet. She told Dad to stop drinking protein shakes because he thinks they are healthy, and Brother to get a job. Her mother she merely said goodbye to, for Mom held the household together, and Colleen was her major support. Dad was excited enough about the event that he bought some pastries, for he pictured a picnic while they waited for her to board. Unfortunately, he didn’t think to inform anyone of his plan, and they didn’t really have time for lunch. If Colleen wanted to get through security in good time, she needed to check in early. Instead, she gave them awkward hugs and advice all around as they said goodbye.

We were still early for our flight, so we sat at a different gate to chat until our plane began to load and then we joined our peers. Colleen thought she recognized a few people from her cohort in Education who were also going early, but she didn’t approach them. Neither of us wanted to be saddled with someone on the whole journey. Her fellow students were a bit helpless, and she’d had enough of helping them with their paperwork for the umpteenth time because they couldn’t follow simple online instructions. They would have loved to let us guide them, but we suspected that would lead to both their eventual resentment and a subsequent claim that they had gone it alone.

Once we were loaded on the plane—me next to the window and Colleen in the middle where she could sleep on the fold-down tray or lean against me—we exchanged only the most cursory of greetings with the older man on the outside of the row. We chattered all the way to Vancouver, and looked through Colleen’s Vietnam pictures since she had suddenly decided she needed to make space for the photos she planned to take. Unlike me, the flight was her first chance to relax without a deadline hanging over her head. I had spent the previous month at my cabin in the woods, and I felt ready for the bustle of Asia.

Typically, seatmates on planes will become loquacious when the plane is descending, and ours was no exception. He told us how he was retired from the airline, and chortled about the cheapness of his tickets. He asked us how much we paid, and then he made sure we knew how we’d been scammed. He made much of his knowledge of the airline system, although when I asked him about Colleen checking her larger carry-on in Vancouver at the EVA counter, he didn’t really know anything about it. He asked us what we did, and when he found out Colleen was a student and me a prof, and we said that I had been her prof, he immediately assumed we were a couple. I would have thought that the age difference alone—more than thirty years—should have made the nature of our relationship clearer, but many people cannot imagine a man and a woman being friends without talk of a more intimate relationship. We quickly put him straight, but later in our trip we thought of him and wondered if he’d been a portent of things to come. His attitude foreshadowed the way we were treated by many people.

When we were leaving the plane and the man closed the overhead bins—as if to prove that he had a right to the plane—I looked for a reaction from the carefully stiff-faced staff. I couldn’t tell if they found him irritating, or whether they had run into that type of familiarity before. Our seatmate dogged us as we went through the airport, and both Colleen and I had the impression that he wanted to invite us to his Richmond home but couldn’t quite find the words. Even if he’d summoned up the will, we weren’t interested in spending any more time with him, for we’d begun to think of another way to spend our layover. On the flight we had talked about the six hours we’d be in Vancouver and made plans to send word to Sam and Leslie. They were friends from Winnipeg, and coincidentally, Sam, although he had just finished his PhD, had been my student nearly twenty years earlier.

When we asked at an information counter about Colleen’s bag, they told us that the EVA check-in wouldn’t be opening for a few hours, so we found a bench and I sent both Sam and Leslie messages on Facebook as well as email. Sam replied almost immediately, and before long we were discussing how we would meet up. They had moved farther from the airport, so transport was more difficult than when I had visited them before. The sky train looked like it would take an hour, but Sam wouldn’t take no for an answer. He eagerly rented a car from a cooperative and before a half hour had passed he was ready to pull into departures. While I pondered aloud about a way to alert him to our location, Colleen mentioned that I could send him a picture. I stepped to the window, shot a photo of the elevator stack near departures, and he had that to use as a guide.

I was more than impressed that Sam had gone so far out of his way, and it was a delight to see him and Leslie. As well, this was the only occasion when they would be able to meet Colleen, at least when I was present to watch them interact. We only had a short time with them, but I passed on the message from the suddenly shy Colleen that she was starving, and Leslie warmed up some really tasty dahl-style soup for her with naan. I was hungry as well, so when she was done I helped finish it while we traded stories. I had the impression that they wondered about