Kanchanaburi:Thoughts from a tranquil river idyll or On a motorcycle, looking somewhat badass

Kanchanaburi in the monsoon season is one of those places where you are always a bit sticky, from sweat or a light drizzle. It doesn’t really bother me because it reminds me of places where I was sticky and quite happy, from the humid forests just north of Quito, Ecuador to the over-cultivated lowlands of Basse Guinea.

My room at the Jolly Frog in Kanchanaburi—2 hours Northwest of Bangkok--is floating on the river like a houseboat, a few feet below the rest of the two story wooden hotel. It is either very cool or somewhat awful, a tranquil river idyll or the perfect place to stash an unloved bastard child. For the lights and fan to work, I must stick the pink plastic key --with my room number, G2 (Ghetto two?) written on it—into the power outlet. A slight step or a shove of the door from my neighbors “on board” the floating hostel annex reverberates through the room, like a slap from my estranged father (just kidding, dad).

I rented an automatic motorcycle, figuring it was the cheapest and most efficient way to hit all the sites, but mostly because a girl I know did it, it’s a very badass thing to do, and I fancy myself quite badass.

Standing in front of the motorcycle-rental-cum-massage-parlor, I have never seen a small businesswoman come closer to rejecting a sale.

“You ride before?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Where you go?” She asked.
“Hellfire pass.” I said.
“That is far.” She said.
“I am looking forward to driving very slowly and carefully,” I said.
She paused. “You keep your hand on the break,” She said.

Despite a few wobbling, zooming starts, and a neck aching from the strain of staring down every skid mark on the road like it might turn into an erect nail or an oily banana, I did okay. Still, it always amazes me how quickly you can transition from sheer terror to an unsafe sense of invincibility when learning to operate a speedy new toy.

The tourism here in Kanchanaburi is not what you’d expect from Southeast Asia—not hiking, not temples, not rafting, though you have those too—but World War Two History. Here is where Japanese army engineers forced hundreds of thousands of Allied POWs and conscripted Southeast Asians to build a 415 km-long railroad from Thailand to Burma in 1942-43. British colonial authorities had rejected the project, estimating it would take 5 years, but the Japanese completed it in less than 2 years by brutally mistreating the workers. Malnutrition, disease, and arduous work schedules of 12-18 hours per day killed more than 100,000 in the construction process, memorialized in the movie Bridge over the River Kwae.

I can’t decide if it’s fascinating and long overdue to shed light on a recent place and time where a non-white ethnic group, in this case, the Japanese, subjugated white people. It certainly departs quite a lot from the appropriately common narrative of European colonizers screwing over various non-white peoples in various ways since the late 1400s.

However, almost by the same token, it seems inappropriate to focus unduly on the Westerners who died here. While all deaths, particularly such cruel ones, are awful, and the toll was quite high, fixating on it feels a bit like reveling in our own victimhood, when over the last few centuries, white people have perpetrated so many awful acts against other groups. The three museums, two cemeteries and 1 shrine dedicated to the railroad’s construction mostly focus on the 12,000 Western POWs who died, even though 90,000 Southeast Asian conscripts perished. Admittedly, the Japanese kept better records of their Western captives, but the Museum makers were also probably thinking about their likely audience—Western tourists--when they designed the memorials.

Regardless of how it should be viewed, it was interesting to visit cemeteries filled with neatly cropped grass and white crosses bearing names like A.L. Wiggs, in a nation of Buddhists who cremate their dead...

...While riding a motor cycle...and aiming to appear somewhat badass.

Food for Thought and Love Handles

“Oh you’re in Thailand,” a slender, globetrotting friend wrote me the other day. “You must be enjoying all the excellent fruit.”

“Fruit?” I thought, “What fruit?” While the carts of lychee, pineapples and watermelon don’t look bad, nothing has been further from my mind since I came in contact with the delicacies of Thailand’s street carts over a month ago.

There is fried chicken skin. Yes, I’m not kidding. That thing most health-conscious Americans detach before digging in—is not only eaten here, but fried and sold separately, in little baggies sure to bring happiness Pringles addicts could only dream of.

Thai Iced Teas are sold on most street corners in the morning, along with coffee, green tea, and chocolate drink. If the first gloppy dollop of sweetened and condensed milk were not enough, after pouring it over ice, the vendors add a triumphant layer of unsweetened condensed milk to the top, occasionally throwing in some real milk. Why choose one when you can have both? Trash bags filled only with empty condensed milk cans line streets in popular eating areas. And if you have a hankering for that synthetic, American feel, duck into any Seven Eleven—literally, three to a block in Bangkok--and get a slurpy version for one baht (3 cents) less than the street cart supreme. Clever, clever Americans.

And if your love handles are not already spilling over your jeans just reading about this, there is perfection—a dollop of sweet purple sticky rice topped with flan-like custard, wrapped in a bright green banana leaf and served with coconut milk. When people speak to you while you are eating one of these, you just don’t hear them. It’s their own fault.

Pork, noodle soups, sausages, chicken, curries, fried eggs, myriad sauces with rice are staples too, with the surprisingly infrequent Pad Thai.

And the punch line, as always: Thais are not fat. In Thailand, as elsewhere outside America, portion is king— and babeliciousness is maintained through small portion sizes, not health food consumption. Let that be a lesson to those of you emailing me about fruit.

Central World Torched

Thick, sweet, smoke encircles the Erawan Shrine, where Thais have placed incense and strands of white, yellow and red flowers to ask the Indian god Pratprom for good fortune. A Burberry’s advertisement picturing two models gleams from the sleek white edifice of Erawan Mall, one of Bangkok’s elite shopping malls, just behind the shrine.


Above the center of the road, a twinkling blue sign reads “Amazing Thailand Grand Sale 2010.” It is affixed to the walkway towards Skytrain—an above-ground metro built to relieve traffic congestion in downtown Bangkok in 2003.


Across the street a blackened building smells of a different kind of smoke—like burnt rubber. The cavernous shell of Central World, Thailand’s largest shopping mall, has a gauged out center that exposes blackened concrete floors and fallen metal pipes. Busted triangular windows run along its intact southern face.


Anti-government protesters torched it along with 30 other buildings on May 19th, when government forces evicted them from their downtown encampment.

I arrived in Bangkok almost two weeks after that final clash, which put an end to ten weeks of street fighting that left almost 90 dead and more than 1000 wounded.

I had postponed my flight for about two weeks, also, on urgent advice from my boss here. Walking around, I feel almost silly for it. Business people walk to work, buy lunch, go shopping. Working class people drive motto-taxis, sell street food, build buildings. Police and guards blow their whistles in a losing battle to impose some order on the traffic. No trace of the supposed class war, haves v. have-nots, the rural urban divide, the implacable conflict that the international media had assured us of.

But the evidence is there, it is just subtle.

At first it came up in practical ways, unemotional to the point of cynical. “The worst thing about the protests” my coworker said, “is that now there are no more trash cans so you never have anywhere to throw stuff away.” Soldiers and police worried that trash cans might conceal bombs, she said, so they removed them. Another coworker said he was overjoyed when flames from Central World leapt up to the nearby Skytrain station and torched the huge outdoor screen there that blasts advertisements. Now he can wait for the train in peace.

But it’s far more momentous than that. In the morning rush hour trip to work aboard skytrain, most passengers stair fixedly at the still-intact advertisement screens. But when we pass Central World, those at the window seem to stair at it thoughtfully.

It’s more momentous for my coworkers too. Heading out in a taxi to cover some event, one says, “see that fort? This is where the protesters first set up their camp.” Or walking back from lunch, someone remarks: “you know, during the protests, you couldn’t even get through here.” They’re bearing witness, in a sense, to something that must be as surreal to them as it is mysterious to me.

Surreal, because, as another says, “The real heroes of this story are the waste management department.” Just after the final crackdown, they moved in, removing the garbage and urine smells that apparently pervaded the area. So heroic were they, in fact, that they only stopped collecting trash in the first place when the protesters commandeered a garbage truck.

But the big question remains—what next, will it happen again? I don’t know much, except that bloodshed has a way of polarizing things—launching neutral people who see things in a nuanced fashion towards the extremes. And if Prime Minister Abhisit Veijjajiva’s seven-point reconciliation plan does not allay grievances, while the government continues cracking down on red-shirt leaders, the protests could easily reignite.

Bangkok--First Impressions

First Impressions

Bangkok is a bustling, quirky modern city of skyscrapers, Buddhist shrines, thigh-enlarging street food, shiny malls. The occasional torched buildings is the only reminder of 10 weeks of protests that left 89 dead and ended when government troops evicted protesters on May 14th. Amazing.

My neighborhood, Sala Daeng, is a upscale expat area, but towering white apartment buildings are interspersed with two-story clapboard wood houses, street carts and familiar chain stores—Seven Eleven, Shell, Toyota, and the slightly less ubiquitous Starbucks. Dipping into a side street from a gritty urban underpass, on a run, I ended up on a narrow road where the yards burst with unkempt greenery—banana trees, mango trees, etc, in the middle of a city of more than 8 million. Each home is equipped with a miniature pagoda, home to spirits that protect the house, according to a pre-buddhist tradition sure to reignite a childhood delight at dollhouses in certain female westerners.

Despite these discoveries, runs are rather unpleasant. While the sauna metaphor gets used a lot, its pretty apt—all parts of you glisten even at 6 am when you’ve barely broken a walk, and inhaling brings no relief—like blasting the fan instead of the AC in the car on a hot day. I've turned off the waterheater, but the shower is still quite toasty.

OUT-Americaning the Americans.

Our advertisers have a few things to learn from the Thai. At Sky Train stations---new bulky concrete metro lines that run two stories above the roads to ease the city’s notorious traffic—TV screens cheerily advertise new mascaras, juices and whitening cream. Once you had ascended the escalator, passed several upscale food kiosks on the white tile floor, you arrive at the station, where, seemingly, the same beautiful Thai girl with flawless white skin and silky dark hair praises a product. Jingles and bright Thai letters flash across the screen as you wait in line with docile, well-dressed Thais on the way to work. Screens in the air-conditioned cars continue this infectious barrage until you are certain you want the mascara, or at least to speak the language.

Language and Journalism

Naively, I assumed that to be hired at as a journalist with no Thai skills, EVERYONE would speak English. Everyone does not. On reporting outings, I wait patiently while Thanyarat—my coworker--negotiates with the police chief over how far our cameras can be from the courtroom or questions the defense attorney who has switched from English to Thai because she cannot adequately express herself. The complex 5-tonal language with its own beautiful script is apparently too hard to learn in two months. I have been told to pitch stories that focus on English speakers- business and government folks, when I really want to ask the non-elite about the recent violence. I miss Peace Corps’ focus in integration. Pantomiming what I want at each meal to a street cart vendor is exhausting and embarrassing.

Ugly American

I spot a white girl examining products in the back of a Seven Eleven. Clad in a tank top and workout shorts, with messy dyed blond hair, she exuded “American college girl” as nothing does here.

“Do you speak English?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied with a wonderfully familiar American accent.

“Do you know if this is bleach or detergent,” I said, continuing to scrutinize the Thai lettering on the packaging as though it might betray something with enough effort.

“No, but we can find out." She took the package from my hand and marched up to the cashier.

Unlike myself, I figured, most foreigners in this neighborhood were here long-term, and their careful study of the local language served them as a key asset for integrating and getting around.

“IS THIS BLEACH or DETERGENT” she yelled into the face of the cashier in brutally loud english.

The cashier looked panicked and whispered to her colleague who didn’t understand either. She shook her head apologetically.

I cringed and thanked the American. I could have said that, and I would have been nicer too.

Jim Webb and My First Day

I wonder how much of history was executed by people emulating what they saw on TV. Most of my first day of work was spent catching up on AP Asian news, scanning the two Thai English language papers and witnessing RRIT—the Rapid Redevelopment of intern tendencies---including frequent unnecessary bathroom trips, email checks, and calculating the number of hours until 6 pm. Suddenly, at four pm, I was sent to Senator Jim Webb’s press conference with the two AP T.V. staffers. After visiting South Korea and Thailand, Webb had announced he was canceling his final stop in Myanmar because of recent evidence suggesting the country had a nuclear weapons program tied to Pyong Yang. We hopped onto three motto-taxis and my adrenaline booted up enough to overwhelm the jetlag. Arrived at the fancy hotel conference room, I started frantically reading a copy of the latest coverage my boss had handed me, scribbling questions, and trying to remember how journalists behaved on CSPAN and The West Wing.

“I would like each reporter to state their name and news service before asking a question,” Webb said, after his comments.
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I sat in the front row and watched the Senator congenially evade questions, while repeating my name slowly in my head.

After three questions, I raised my hand. “Alex Alper, Associated Press. Under what circumstances do you think the United States should search ships bound for Burma from North Korea?”

He congenially evaded my question, but I didn’t care. No one laughed and the reporter sitting next me took frantic notes about his response.