Sunday, November 26, 2006

In which I explore another of Thailand's nifty qualities, though unfortunately through the dull eyes of an economist... (Sorry for the wonkery - you've been warned!)

One of the finer joys of living in this delightful corner of Southeast Asia is the sparkling range of options opened up by the rock-bottom cost of living. I'll talk about these in a sec, but first you'll have to either slog or scroll through some amateur financial analysis. Though comparable in wealth to Costa Rica, and a hefty notch up the GDP ladder from Botswana, I've found that Thailand is dramatically cheaper than either of them - especially dear extortionate Bots. It would take a better (and better-paid) economist than I to fully suss out the reasons for this, but my theory is something along these lines.

Botswana has such dramatic income inequality that the country is cleanly bisected into two parallel economies, predictably assigned to the haves and the have-nots (Costa Rica, much less so). The middle class is virtually non-existent: either you share a standpipe with a hundred other people, or you have a swimming pool all to yourself. Those on the bottom rungs don't starve or lack for education - a major improvement from many of Botswana's African neighbours - but they eat a diet of dirt-cheap maize meal and beef stew, and live in phenomenally modest housing. The other 15%, by contrast, live unsurprisingly comfortable lives, with precisely the price tag you'd expect. As a result, a slightly-paid intern like myself ended up paying five hundred dollars a month to share a single-level house with 4 other people, since the alternative was to pay $15 for an unlit room in an airless shack. There was no middle ground.

But here in Thailand I live at least as comfortably as I did in Botswana, for a fraction of the price. My apartment costs less than half of what it did in Bots, and I eat out constantly for a quarter of the price I paid in Africa - even at the roadside food stalls. I suppose that Thailand, vast income disparities notwithstanding, has enough of a middle class to sustain modestly priced accomodation, restaurants, and services. A proper full-spectrum economy exists, with survivable lifestyles available to everyone from the just-a-notch-above-rock-bottom poor to the unimaginably wealthy. The numberless hordes of Western budget backpackers further motivate Thailand's fiercely competitive entrepreneurs to provide modest-yet-appealing amenities.

But (and here's the thought that launched this heretofore dull post in the first place) the really interesting thing isn't living well enough for dirt cheap - it's discovering how far money can go when one is willing to splurge a little. Case in point: I could get a haircut for a dollar or two here, and probably go home no more miserable about the result than I usually am after a haircut (which, for the record, is moderately so). But at the franchised (and ludicrously overstaffed) hair joint at the corner of my street, I paid a locally exorbitant fee just to see how far my money can go - and received the most ludicrously luxurious haircut experience imaginable.

If I recall correctly (I may have blacked out somewhat) I received 3 absurdly meticulous rounds of shampooing, followed by a 20-minute scalp massage. The haircut itself took place in the world's most comfortable barber's chair, while an attendant constantly provided my choice of an immense variety of complimentary beverages and a broad selection of German-language magazines (well, hey, nothing's perfect). Afterwards, another round of shampooing and brain massage completed the hour-or-so long experience. The price tag for this little slice of haircut heaven? A sky-high seven dollars.

And this situation crops up nearly everywhere else in Thailand. Those willing to pay something closer to Western prices find unimaginable luxury. Example number two: the movie theatres here are modern and well-equipped, on a par with those at home. A standard evening ticket costs 90 baht - about $2.50 Canadian. Yet the lucky cinephile willing to pay a Canadian-style price - in this case, 14 dollars - enjoys the "Emperor Class" experience - a private viewing room with luxury recliners, an immaculate personal washroom, and hyper-attentive table service. Of course, I have yet to justify such an expense, but I'm sure as hell going to try it before I leave.

The bottom line - you can live comfortably in Thailand for peanuts, or you can live like a wayward Saudi Prince for a few dollars more. Either way, it's hard to go wrong here - and illuminates yet another reason why so many western visitors to Thailand find it hard to leave again.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

In which I muse droolingly about the foods I must eat when I land in Vancouver...

Thai food is delicious and healthy, and apparently there's a wealth of various European restaurants on offer in Chiang Mai that I have yet to sample. There's no lack of variety here if one is willing to pony up the cash, and restaurants are truly everywhere, on every street corner and hidden in every alleyway nook. I'll never starve here.

But the novelty of daily pad thai and moo ga-tiam is rapidly fading, and even the beloved khao soy curry noodle soup is wearing slightly thin. My first attempt to get an honest sit-down, non-McD's hamburger ended with me accidentally eating a live earwig (I think) and somewhat soured me on what I'm told is otherwise told is Chiang Mai's best burger joint. So I found myself idly drafting (as oft occurs when I travel) a list of foods I miss terribly, and upon which I will gorge myself within moments of my holiday return.

An honest-to-God gigantic barbecued hamburger. Even the famed burger restaurants here, high earwig content notwithstanding, are sunk by their insistence on frying burgers. Yuck.

Sushi! Of course. Chiang Mai's well inland, and I've thus dodged the seamy-looking sushi joint in the mall next door to me.

A gargantuan slab of steak. Surely available here, but not at any of the micro-budget restaurants I frequent...

Anything from Simba's. The less bloodthirsty East African spices seem like a mild daydream compared to the vicious Thai peppers.

Tacos. Definitely tacos. Apparently there's a great Mexican restaurant around here somewhere, but I have yet to find it.

A proper Reuben sandwich - smoked beef is an unheard-of concept in Northern Thailand. The simply astonishing number of New Yorkers I've met here all seem to share this hankering.

A Nanaimo bar and a Timmy's donut. Speaks for itself.

Beef shawerma from the Babylon Cafe on Robson.

Mango ice cream from Mondo Gelato - if there's a real ice cream shop here, I haven't found it.

A Caesar! Duh.

Uncle Fatih's 99 cent pizza, a Vancouver institution I only discovered days before my September departure, to my lasting shame.

My trademark panang curry. It seems odd be salivating over a Thai curry, but I haven't been able to find the stuff here, so I'll have to make it up at home. In fact, I think I'm mostly looking forward to making a meal of my own - a grievous sin forbidden in my current apartment. I've eaten out for every meal (aside from breakfast cereal) in the last three months, and a self-cooked feast is something I sincerely miss. Methinks I'll need a new apartment soon.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

In which I plead forgiveness...

Sorry, folks, school's been consuming my life since last Monday. You'll hear more, including a return to the fun and hilarity you've come to expect, at the end of the week.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

In which I offer the week's best YouTube!

Monday, November 13, 2006

In which I whine...

Ever have a day when having a good book to read is the only thing that keeps you sane?

Thursday, November 09, 2006

In which I recount at last the glory of Loi Krathong...

I don't think I've seen any stars in my time in Chiang Mai. The particular Thai predilection for neon and other luminous signage hides the heavens very effectively within the city, and I have yet to spend an evening outside Chiang Mai. I hadn't thought about this much since I arrived.

But I suspect this only amplified my joy and wonder on Saturday night, when I looked up from the center of the city to see the sky lit by hundreds of red and yellow stars, like newborn constellations rising slowly and shrinking into sharp points thousands of feet above my head. One of the greatest joys of Loi Krathong, the Thai Festival of light, is that countless thousands of people light crude but effective balloon lamps - huge paper bags with rings of paraffin anchored to the bottom - and set them adrift over the city. I stood at the edge of the Mae Nam Ping river, the calm eye to Loi Krathong's frenetic hurricane, and watched while pyrotechnics exploded from every corner of Chiang Mai. Individually, the lanterns are pretty - and great fun to set loose. But when viewed by the hundreds across the great sweep of the city, the effect is beyond magical. It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen.

It's also next to impossible to photograph, at least with the unimpressive alchemy of my reasonably-priced camera and my modest photographic skills. My attempts to capture the actual flying lanterns turned out underwhelming at best, so I'll keep them to myself. But by way of compensation, here's a photo of some locals cheerfully lighting their own lantern - it really is a group effort with several people holding the contraption inflated while the paraffin heats, so that it doesn't collapse on itself and immolate.

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A bit of background - cheerfully offered by the tiny, effervescent woman from whom I bought my krathong. Loi Krathong is takes place on the weekend nearest the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, usually in early November. People purchase wondrously decorated banana leaf rafts called krathongs - about eight inches across and festooned with flowers, candles, and incense - and float them down the river, ideally along with their sins and misfortune. The effect it to fill much of the massive, leisurely river with thousands drifting stars, mirroring the glorious canopy of lanterns above.

This is a ritual of apology to the river goddess Khongkha, and it has been incorporated into the near-universal Theraveda Buddhist rites observed in Thailand.
Naturally, though of indeterminate spirituality myself, I suppose everyone can do with a little expunging of sins from time to time. So here I hoist my krathong - which is truly much nicer than most of the other kratongs, particularly according to the lady who sold it to me.

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And, here's the same krathong (far left) enjoying its journey down the Mae Nam Ping...

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Loi Krathong has three nights, by the way, Saturday through Monday. Saturday was the glorious yet occasionally tranquil celebration of fire and good cheer I mention above. I sat with new friends (some NGO workers, and some people I met on the songthaew) in the delightful Riverside Restaurant for several hours, indulging in curious food and plentiful cocktails, enjoying the fine conversation and the omnipresent pyrotechnics. In fact, here's an unexceptionable but rather attractive (dont'cha think?) photo of me in that very milieu:

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Sunday, the festival's centrepiece was a city-wide epileptic fit of bad manners and worse judgment - particularly as regards appropriate places to fling military-grade firecrackers. But there's still much fun to be had. I lit a lantern of my own, for example, and after a long and worrisome pause it finally took hesitant flight (photo to come soon). I set free the above-described krathong, and I witnessed the fascinating and somewhat oddly-textured parade that wends through east Chiang Mai in the final nights. Witness, for example, a robotic elephant:

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Followed shortly by someone apparently associated with the Royal Family:

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Try as I did, I couldn't find a unifying theme to this parade - except of course, Thai-ness. In fact, that Thai-ness was the most fascinating thing about the festival. The Thais, their habit of applauding military coups notwithstanding, love their country and culture with a pride bordering on jingoism. It's not abrasive (not yet, anyway), just interesting to watch, and it seems to have bestowed a curious sort of cultural resilience to Thailand. Foreign tourists are everywhere, and Loi Krathong was particularly clogged with them (us?), but somehow the festival, for all its noise and pomp and commerce, still struck me as remarkably, authentically Thai. There was no denying that Loi Krathong was for the Thais, and we farang, for all the fun we had, were just welcome visitors - the festival wasn't held for our benefit at all. This may sound mundane, but if you've seen the gravitational effect that heavy tourist traffic tends to have on local rites around the world, it's remarkable. Usually, through no deliberate effort on anyone's part, the locus of major events shifts to tourists, simply because that's where the money is.

Yet while there was no shortage of merchants hawking unidentified goods in fractured English, I didn't sense even a hint of pandering in the entire event. Thailand is large enough, populous enough, wealthy enough and has a rich enough tradition to support its own complete culture without necessary resort to foreign influence - a luxury few developing countries are able (or willing) to afford. It's a refreshing thing, and I'm beginning to expect (cautiously) that this integrity across Thailand (with the likely exception of the backpacker oases of the far south). I look forward to finding out.

Loi Krathong, of course, made a stunning place to start. I've decided, my ongoing adventures with Photoshop notwithstanding, that it's perhaps not meant to be photographed. Like Victoria Falls, which I found similarly confounds photography, it can only really be understood in person. If you want to know what I mean, you know where to find out. I promise you, it'll be worth the trip.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

In which I'm in awe...

Bottle rockets are detonating outside my window, the smallest audible sign of the astonishing, heartbreakingly beautiful Loy Krathong Festival of Light underway in Chiang Mai. I've spent the last two nights there, and I've seen some of the most gorgeous sights imaginable.

Not sure what I'm talking about? Worry not, all will be discussed in detail tomorrow. By virtue of being a nighttime light festival, Luy Krathong is virtually unphotographeable, at least with my camera, but I'll see if I can learn how to use Photoshop to massage some underexposed frames into coherence.

Much more detail to come... but I've got to go to bed. My eyes are a touch bleary from staring skyward for the last two days... oh, but what fun it's been.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

In which I wish all a Happy Hallowe'en

The day came and went with little fanfare here, save for a modest but quite entertaining party for my students. Oh, how I do look forward to my next full-blown Hallowe'en... next year, perhaps.

Anybody get up to anything really exciting?