Whatevah

Joe is over his bug, our hill trek is set to start tomorrow, and today we set out for the Chiang Mai zoo. It's about four km from the center of town, so we flagged down a red taxi and agreed on a fare of 40 baht. The driver picked up another three passengers along the way, some Thai schoolgirls, then pulled over about halfway to the zoo and announced to us, "No go zoo." We were instructed---with a smile---to climb out. The driver didn't charge us anything. Plainly he had gotten a better deal. Were we incensed? Nope. Mai pen rai.

Mai pen rai means don't bother or never mind. It's a kind of Thai manana (tilda over the first N), isshi negga (Ethiopianists will get this), what the hell, whatevah. It means, these things happen and let's move on as best we can. It's partly a way of adjusting to the daily realities in places where the machinery doesn't hum along as well as it does in Amsterdam. It probably also has elements of Buddhist non-confrontationalism and acceptance of life's vicissitudes.

Mai pen rai crops up a lot. I wrote a long blog post a few days ago that refused to go anywhere. At my request, the Thai kid running the Internet cafe came over to help me. And when he somehow managed to make the whole thing I had written disappear without being posted, he chuckled and suggested I try a different computer. Mai pen rai. Our hotel, the Top North, has an odd system of parceling out rooms. The owners seem to want to keep the place full, so if you show up and they've got an empty room they'll give it to you. And once you're in, you've got squatters' rights. They don't know when Joe and I are leaving and haven't asked. But some people do apparently make reservations and show up expecting a room. I have witnessed some poignant scenes at the front desk. Mai pen rai.

A corralary to mai pen rai is keeping a jai yen. That's a cool heart, meaning even temperament, instead of a jai rawn, a hot heart, meaning hot temperament. To lose your cool in Thailand won't get you anywhere. The Thais just find it embarrassing and start looking for an exit.

Joe and I have adjusted nicely to mai pen rai. He is naturally patient, and I had run into variations of it previously in Peace Corps days and know how to turn it on and off. Also, we're in Southeast Asia for three and half months, so we're in no hurry. Anyway, there's something soothing about being among people where the level of social tension is so low.

Do Thais repress a lot of anger? Probably. They've got their kick-boxing---one Thai a week dies from this sport---and their highway mayhem. The country has the highest road-accident fatality rate in the world. (We've seen entire nuclear families lined up on motor scooters. Joe says it looks like the children are the airbags.) The driving is skillful, but its aggressiveness is not so Buddhist. And a recurrent line in news stories about bus crashes is, "The driver fled the scene." Mai pen rai.

We made it to the zoo---just flagged down another paddy wagon. It should have been a good zoo but it wasn't. Although the animal enclosures were cageless---using moats and spaces to separate the viewees from the viewers---the territories seemed too constricted and the animals were listless. But it was hot and so were we.

In Zimbabwe, seven or eight years ago, Joe and I met a Peace Corps volunteer working in animal preservation. When I told her how thrilling it was to see "zoo" animals out in the wild, she argued that zoos have their uses, too. They educate and sensitize people about the importance of these animals, and then these people support programs like "Save the Elephants." True enough--- though in Chiang Mai we just wanted to save the zoo animals.

Here's more mai pen rai. Problems at the disastrous new Bangkok airport keep piling up. Now it's not just cracks in the taxiways but in the runways, too. I quote from today's Bangkok Post: "Admiral Theera said the cracking was increasing, including those found at the northern end of the eastern runway and the southern end of the western runway. The immediate solution was to advise pilots to avoid cracked areas.... He admitted that dodging the cracks would inconvenience the pilots and that partial closure of the runways to facilitate repairs might be necessary." Meanwhile....

Here's a more reassuring quote about Thailand. In 1923 Somerset Maugham visited Bangkok. He came overland from Rangoon and arrived feverish with malaria. The manager of the Oriental Hotel told Maugham's doctor to get him out of there, as his death in Bangkok's finest hotel was not what the hotel wanted. Maugham survived---for 42 more years---and wrote wonderfully about Bangkok's wats. He could have been writing about Chiang Mai's. This is what we see every day.

"They are unlike anything in the world, so that you are taken aback, and you cannot fit them into the scheme of things you know. It makes you laugh with delight to think that anything so fantastic could exist on this somber earth. They are gorgeous; they glitter with gold and whitewash, yet are not garish; against that vivid sky, in that dazzling sunlight, they hold their own, defying the brilliancy of nature and supplementing it with the ingenuity and the playful boldnesss of man. The artists who developed them step by step from the buildings of the ancient Khmer had the courage to pursue their fantasy to the limit; I fancy that art meant little to them, they desired to express a symbol; they knew no reticence, they cared nothing for good taste; and if they achieved art it is as men achieve happiness, not by pursuing it, but by doing with all their heart whatever in the day's work needs doing."