Goofing Around With King Cobras

An
American in Asia:

His Quest for Cosmic Truth

(or at least a Decent Espresso)

Last week I had a visit to Khon Kaen, a city of 1.5 million in the centre of northeast Thailand's poor farming region of Isaan. It's Thailand's most traditional area and a lot of Thais visit in order to get in touch with their roots. Kind of like how Americans might visit Kansas City or Oklahoma City (both places that were so nowheresville that they just named them after the state) to see a bit of the real America. If you want to know why Hollywood movies are so crappy, just take a drive through the corn belt and meet the market segment Hollywood aims for. The same goes for Thai TV, which consists mainly of really really rich people in mansions yelling and slapping each other while really really poor people in teak houses on stilts yell and slap each other and a lot of chickens run around dodging BMWs.

Silk weavers behind a store on Silk Avenue in Chonabot.

That all said, Isaan folk are some of the sweetest people on the planet and most of them believe that if they are mean to anyone they'll be reborn as something insignificant, like a speck. Nobody wants to go through life as a speck. Few responsibilities, but very low on job satisfaction. People smile a lot more than they do in Bangkok, and nobody drives around in taxis hunting for foreign tourists to scam. Not only because they're too nice, but also due to the lack of taxis, foreign tourists, and anything that a tourist might want to buy.

I was put up in the city's only five-star hotel, which was economically weird. I'm pretty used to seeing a lot of poor people and, in a country where food grows everywhere and the weather will never kill you, poverty is not as distressing as it might be. The weird part was that I'm not by any stretch a rich American, as I'm making the same wages a Thai journalist might make if he had good English grammar and spelling skills, and as I ran errands around the province and returned to the hotel, I was constantly shifting between visiting people living without walls, and an executive suite that was larger than my apartment.

Khon Kaen is at the crossroads of the two major Southeast Asian highways leading from the city to Singapore, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and into China. It's the modern centre of Thailand's silk industry and also a good place to go if you want to see people playing with snakes.

This man poking at a king cobra brought to you by Pepsi, proud sponsor of the Snake Handlers Association of Thailand.

In a village about 60km into the countryside there is a Buddhist temple where folks goof around with giant cobras. A cobra doesn't have to be giant to kill you, so I was a tad horrified by the opening act of a snake show when a seven-year-old boy started playing round with young king cobras. He got his shirt snagged a couple of times by cobra fangs but came away with a big grin on his face. He then walked around getting money from the audience of Thai tourists who were there. I wasn't sure what was the PC thing to do but it didn't feel right to encourage the kid to risk his life by paying him for it, but I felt bad because he obviously performed becasue he expected a return. I probably shouldn't have watched and just walked away for that part of the show. One's PC sensibilities can become a little dulled in Asia. Later on I bought some herbal medicine for snake-bite from his mom.

Khmer Ruins. Those ancient Khmer were really neglectful, always leaving ruins lying around.

After the snake show I went to see some ruins left by the Khmer people who used to live in the region before the Thais moved in. The ruins were not large, but dated to the same period as Angkor Wat in Cambodia and there was definitely a good, Indiana Jones-feel to the place. It even had that cool feature where once a year the sun shines straight through it and pinpoints a spot on a nearby mound where something important used to be.

As with Kansas and Oklahoma, the opportunities for sight-seeing ran out quickly and I spent the rest of my time running around Khon Kaen city, interviewing hotel managers and convention centre directors. They're trying to market the city as a cheap place to have conventions. I think Kansas City tried the same thing once.

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.