An American in Asia: His Quest for Cosmic Truth (or at least a Decent Espresso)

 

I'm Outta Here

Thailand is a lovely place to visit, and it's even been a lovely place to live for the past few years. But things are going "pear-shaped" as my British friends say, and Thailand is becoming less welcoming on all levels.

The visa shuffle

Near the end of last year they decided to re-interpret visa laws. Visitors who were here long-term, jumping across to Cambodia every month to renew their tourist visa, have been given the boot. Laws are now more stringent for other types of visa as well and my marriage visa now requires me to report a fixed income. I make a decent living as a freelance writer, but a fixed income it is not. Therefore, by the new rules, I cannot stay in Thailand to support my Thai wife. A zillionaire couldn't do it if he didn't have a job. The entire expat community has been upset by these changes and large numbers of rats are leaving the ship.

Investors routed

A scan of The Nation and the Bangkok Post over the past month reveals that the new government, installed by a bloodless military coup last year, is not shy about slamming doors in the face of foreign investment.

Most recently, the Finance Ministry made sudden changes to investment laws. Foreign investors are now required to leave aside 30% of any funds brought into the country for one year, during which the Thai government gets to play with it, then return it with no interest. If the investors decide to bail out in less than a year, they lose 10% of everything. Needless to say, foreign investors screamed out of the Stock Exchange of Thailand in a single afternoon pulling 800billion baht (US$22billion) with them, leaving lots of bargains for Thai investors in their wake.

In the same fell swoop, the ministry amended the foreign ownership law. The law says that foreigners can only own up to 49% of a Thai-based company. Foreign investors have until now gotten around that by assigning the other 51% of the company to a Thai nominee, a partner who would agree to keep his mouth shut and allow the foreign investor to run the show. Now that loophole has been closed without ceremony and thousands of foreign-owned ventures have suddenly lost their right to run the company they started. That's no fun.

This is also expected to have an effect on the legions of Europeans and Americans who bought a tropical holiday villa in Phuket, Krabi, Pattaya, Hua Hin or Chiang Mai. Thai property laws have always expressly forbid foreign ownership of Thai land. This has not stopped Thai lawyers and property brokers from arranging tens of thousands of foreign land sales. The traditional loop-hole was for the foreigner to create a small Thai company, and "sell" 51% of it to a Thai nominee for 1 baht.

The Thai-owned, foreign-controlled company would then buy a villa and the foreign investor, being company president, would naturally be free to live there, or sell for a profit to anyone he pleases. This has been going on for decades. But now, anyone who owns 49% of a Thai company which owns a villa is on very thin ice, since the nominees must now hold majority voting rights in the paper company, and are free to kick the ex-president out of his villa.

With this development, the property market has stalled out completely and it's not likely it will recover anytime soon. Thank god I managed to avoid buying a house in Phuket last year. The luckiest failure of my adult life.

On top of this, someone within the country is not very happy with the military junta and there have been bombings in the capital - very professional, coordinated bombings that suggest military or police training. It's getting ugly, folks and I fear this is just the beginning.

Turn that smile upside-down

Let's see, what else? Phuket has become the least friendly place in Thailand, according to some Thai friends from Chiang Mai.

That's no surprise though - it's bound to happen to any resort destination. A flood of tourists who are perhaps a tad ignorant of local ideas of polite behavior always inspires contempt.

The Thais aren't smiling much anymore in Phuket and it doesn't take a lot of goading for the thin veil of hospitality to drop. In several serious cases, tourists have been beaten and knifed by tuk-tuk drivers and even bar owners. The Thai smile has grown fangs.

Off to the Great White North

So we're outta here. In the second week of January, my wife and I pulled up stakes and made for friendlier (if colder) shores.

We hired a moving company to take on the ugly job of packing, and they sent half our stuff to the US, and half to our house in Chaiyaphum where my in-laws will take care of it. I wonder what the rice farmers in the village will make of the grinder and espresso machine? Just before we left the country, we got word that they finally figured out the washing machine.

On our last day in Phuket, we delivered our Honda Jazz to the guy who bought it from us. Before we handed the keys over, my wife removed the Buddha amulets from the rear-view mirror and hung them around my neck. The buyer then drove us with our suitcases to the airport. Along the way he hit a dog, and ten minutes later a long plastic strip chose that moment to spontaneously peel right off the roof. My respect for Buddha amulets went up a notch.

Despite the recent bombings, rumors of more bombings to come and perhaps even a counter-coup, we risked a few days in Bangkok. We hit some of our favorite restaurants for the last time. Barbecued pork ribs at the Huntsman Pub, spicy clams at an Emporium cafe, miso ramen at Akane, and super-spicy papaya salad from a street vendor near the Ambassador Hotel.

I got in a few swims at the hotel pool and my wife took a few Thai massages. We hit the Mahboonkhrong mall for cheap (I mean meaningful) gifts for my family, a load of sweaters and coats to protect my hot-weather girl from a Seattle winter, and a big green suitcase to throw it all in.

I made it out to one of my old watering holes - a bar where beautiful women play a killer game of 8-ball to the soothing strains of AC/DC. My wife was cool with that - she knows she has nothing to worry about.

Into the blue

Three days of Bangkok was enough. At four in the morning we threw our bags in a Merc limo and hit the airport. Suvarnabhumi was looking pretty good considering all the bad press it's gotten for everything from cracked runways and rampant corruption to dirty windows. The guy who designed the gleaming metal and glass terminal, a Spaniard I think, obviously never took a look at the other buildings in Bangkok. In four years I have never seen a Thai window washer.

We flew out on United Airways. Check-in was a blessing compared to the chaos of a Thai Airways check-in at Phuket Airport a few days earlier. I believe the Thai word for "queue" is synonymous with the word for "mob". It's an ugly, ugly sight that would scare a Hell's Angels' security guard at a Rolling Stones concert. By contrast, it was just so lovely and downright cute to see the way the Americans stood politely in file before the United Airways counters in Bangkok.

Being an American airline, they couldn't let us on without rifling through our bags. Each and every passenger had their carry-on luggage emptied out, then politely repacked. It was quite a long wait, and I lost a tube of rather expensive shaving cream to the airline gestapo. I offered to shave with it right there in the terminal (and I needed to), but they weren't impressed. "It's too big," they offered by way of explanation.

The first leg of our flight was a relatively painless five-hour flight that landed us in Tokyo's Narita Airport. We had a three- or four-hour layover there, of which we took full advantage. My wife is nuts over ramen and the authorities have seen fit to place a noodle stand in the terminal since I was last there. Two huge bowls of ramen was a great way to apologize to our stomachs for the weird little trailer-park cheese sandwiches we'd consumed on the UA flight.

We then hit "Little Akihabara", a duty-free shop for all sorts of wonderful Japanese electronics. My wife came away with two watches and I with one. Hers were a little pink flowered thing and a robot suspended from a key ring. Mine was one that I'd seen years ago in Tokyo and had been kicking myself for not buying ever since. On a heavy black leather band is a dial with Chinese numbers at the hours, and an orange crystal diode face that blinks the seconds, also in Chinese. It's so groovy I can barely stand it. I'm going to know exactly what time it is for at least two weeks continuously as I keep glancing at it's coolness.

Next was the flight over the Pacific. My wife hates to fly. Her first time in a plane was for our honeymoon in Chiang Rai. I remember I was so excited to show her what clouds look like from above. As the plane took off I pushed her at the window, "Honey, look how small the cars are!" When she turned back I saw she was so scared she was crying. Boy, did I feel like an ass.

She's been up a few times since, even made a trip to the US a couple years ago. That was a disaster too, which took her nearly two weeks to recover from.

This time, though, she was a champ. Her blood pressure was soaring on the Bangkok-Tokyo leg, but she toughed it out pretty well. Then, flying over the Pacific to Seattle, she fell asleep on an airplane for the first time. During the last hour of the flight, as the sun rose out of the clouds ahead of us, my wife was actually glued to the window, just marveling at the limitless field of white clouds on the blank Pacific. When the snowy Cascade mountains came into view she could barely contain herself. Thankfully the landing on the icy runway was gentle and her fingernails didn't leave any permanent marks on my arm.

Immigration with Officer Friendly

Next was the ordeal which I was most dreading: US immigration and homeland insecurity. We waited patiently in the visitors' line until we finally found ourselves before an immigration officer. He took one glance at the sealed manila envelope of papers, that the US consulate in Bangkok had burdened us with, and directed us to another desk at the end of the row.

A sign above this desk indicated it was reserved for, "Disabled visitors and visitors with time-consuming paperwork." Great. Just great. Here we waited for the family of a disabled Indian man to be passed through, then stood before a genial officer who took our paperwork and asked us to sit while he "did some computer stuff."

A few minutes later he called us back to the desk and asked my wife to give her parents' names, which she did successfully despite a looming case of jet-lag. He asked me a bit about what I did for work, then stamped her passport.

To my pleasant surprise, it was a 'green card' stamp, which meant that my wife could work and enjoy all the privileges of American citizens short of voting. Her green card is good for ten years, so we are ecstatically free of US immigration hassles for an entire decade. Joy!!

Customs asked us whether we were bringing any horrible diseases or renegade fruits into the country, then whether my wife had a sister who was single. In all, the immigration experience was polite, pleasant, open and even friendly. I was speechless with surprise.

When we made our way to baggage retrieval it was then my wife's turn to be surprised. Coming from a country where houses don't actually need walls, the mid-January cold hit her pretty hard. She was wearing a cotton turtleneck and a sweater over that, but it wasn't nearly enough. Luckily my parents showed up bearing warm jackets and we cranked the heater in the car for the ride home.

As we headed up Interstate 5, my wife gazed out the window. She was seemingly fascinated with the countryside but I know what she was really thinking: she wanted to taste the snow and see if it was really like ice cream.