be really careful with super glue

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

Lesson 1

Every day I learn a little something about Thailand and Thai people. Yesterday I learned a bunch of things. The first thing I learned was that you should be really careful with super glue. I was careful, but it wasn't enough.You have to be really careful.

I have this watch I really like. I think I shopped for 6 months before I decided on it. I needed to repair the band so I busted out the super glue. As an afterthought I put a piece of paper on my work area so that my watch wouldn't be stuck to a table. It wouldn't look so cool, dragging a table around by my wrist. To make a long and pointless story short, I now have bits of paper stuck on my fingers rather permanently, or at least until I shed my skin. The watch seems to have survived.

OK, that's not really about Thai people, but it just goes to show that even in a foreign country you can gain knowledge that has universal applications.

I met a Thai friend later and after she finished laughing at the paper stuck to my hands, we went to Lumpini park to relax and watch the giant lizards swim around an gobble fish. Lumpini is a great park, along the lines of Central Park in Manhattan. It's right in the middle of Bangkok, lush and green with a pond, full of strollers, lovers, exercise freaks, regular freaks and people who want to sell you things.

Lesson 2

The next thing I learned were the most insulting words in the Thai language. This was from one of the regular freaks, a young shirtless Thai man walking by us. I don't know exactly what he said but from the expression on my friend's face, it had to do with us and our families and where we all could go. By the time my friend could explain it to me, the man was beyond assault and battery range, so all I could do was fume about it. Then she diplomatically explained to me the possible source of the random abuse. Not a few foreign men come to Thailand in search of fun with girls. These guys have pocketbooks that no average Thai man could hope to compete with. Just because some lazy slob comes from a country with a good economy, he holds a huge advantage over a Thai man no matter how hard he works. So there are a good number of Thai girls walking around with foreign boyfriends and an equal number of frustrated Thai guys with broken hearts who quite naturally get annoyed when some giddy mixed couple reminds them of their cheating ex-girlfriend.

Lesson 3

The next thing I learned is that if you go to Lumpini park, find a place to sit that is not near the main path. It should be at least one step further than you feel like walking, because that's exactly how far the minions of wandering vendors will walk to pester you. At first we found an idyllic spot right by a bridge, overlooking a fountain out in the big pond. It was right off the path and in a period of five minutes, a man tried to rent us an expensive blanket to sit on, another man rented us a cheaper blanket to sit on, a girl tried to sell us a bag of fruit and a bag of juice, a large woman wanted to sing for us, a young boy just plopped down on the grass and talked incessantly and an old man interrupted him to ask us for spare change. I'm not exaggerating. It was five minutes. I timed it on my watch.

Lesson 4

We were about to take the blanket and move to a different location when the man who sold it to us minutes before came running back, and saying something I didn't catch, he shooed us off the blanket, folded it up and ran off. I started to yell at him about my money, albeit a measly 20 Baht, but my friend stopped me so that I could learn lesson 4. Vending is rampant in the park, but it is also illegal and occasionally the police sweep through. But apparently they don't really want to catch anyone at it because they announce their surprise sweep with big megaphones mounted on an ATV. They walked through glaring balefully, didn't see any vendors, and five minutes later the guy came back with our blanket. He was very polite and there were apologies on both sides.

We hied off to a shady spot and set up camp. We couldn't see the water, but nor could the vendors see us. It was unreasonably hot but a nice breeze would blow the sweat off every few minutes and a spread of tropical leaves provided some shade. My friend pointed across the small field before us at a little drama taking place there. A Thai couple was making out on a blanket by a big tree. At the next tree a single man was standing on his toes and craning his neck to ogle them. Then amazingly, he slowly crept up, avoiding the dried leaves, until he had silently arrived on the other side of the large tree from the kissers. He stood up from a low crouch and peered at them through a V in the limbs and quickly ducked down again. He did this for around fifteen minutes, then crept back to his original vantage spot.

He wandered off and I thought the scene was ended, but no. He actually came back with a friend and both of them crept right up to within 5 meters of the couple and stared at them. A third man joined them a little later and this went on for the entire hour or so that we sat on our blanket reading magazines. Suffice it to say that this was incredibly distracting for me, though the couple was either unaware, or more likely didn't care.

Of course I was all for calling the police or better yet walking over there and chasing the guy off when I first saw him. If this same scene had taken place in the States I would think the couple a bit vulgar, but the man I would view as actually dangerous. But again I was restrained from action by my friend's patient explanation.

Lesson 5

In Thailand, people just do not kiss in public. They touch their friends a lot more than Americans do and are quite demonstrative in their affection. Even heterosexual men hold hands sometimes. But if the affection takes a significantly romantic turn, it is considered very improper. So while I saw romantic lovers in potential danger, she saw a couple of innocent Thai men being corrupted by exhibitionistic perverts. Of course these guys were pretty weird, but not much weirder than someone who stops to view the scene of an accident. They were looking at something that the average Thai person rarely sees, unless they go to the tourist neighborhoods.

At this point we realized that it was not going to be a relaxing day in the park, so we went to the water and rented a canoe. I'm a pretty good canoeist thanks to my Dad, though I did once ditch myself and an unlucky friend in a river in Japan. Nobody should let me in a canoe on a river, but on the lake I paddled like a champ. Some Thai men in those little pedal-boats commented, "Look, we are Thai but the foreigner can canoe better than us!" I'm not sure why this was a surprise to them. I was unaware that Thais are famous for their canoeing ability. Maybe they are just used to seeing tourists paddling in circles like a water bug and think all foreigners are physically inept. Maybe they think we all fly around in the family hovercraft. The problem is that if you paddle on one side of a canoe, it will turn the other way. So you have to switch sides a lot, or better, do something called a J stroke, turning your paddle at the end of each stroke to compensate and redirect the canoe.

I'm not sure why, but three policemen actually laughed at us. Maybe because I spoke to them in Thai while paddling by in a canoe. I guess that might be kind of funny.

The canoe trip was a nice reward for all the lessons I'd had to learn and we had a lot of fun chasing a lizard and sitting under a tree watching turtles and fish. Afterwards we relaxed at a little cafe in the park with coconut ice cream while a big woman howled traditional Thai songs over a karaoke system.

Jeffrey Studebaker has been (in no particular order) a SE Asian correspondent for a Singaporean travel magazine, a teacher, consultant and translator in Japan, a guitarist with the band, Swoon 23 in every city of the US of A, a coffee roaster in Seattle, a bike messenger in Portland, a marine fire system repairman in Seattle, an osteoporosis clinic researcher in Providence, a mental ward counsellor on the night shift in Portland, a brief success in New York, and he has now returned to the US after nearly a decade in Asia to pursue a publishing career.