Ten reasons we are happy to be back in Thailand

1. On the way into Bangkok from the airport at 6 Friday morning, the taxi driver answered a call on his cell phone. His "ring" was a small child's laughter.

2. Our friend Poe Suwatchie phoned us at the Pinnacle Hotel to welcome us "back to paradise." He always says this---and then laughs, because he knows it is both not true at all and entirely true.

3. At the hotel, we had trouble making outgoing calls from our room. We notified the front desk, which placed our calls for us. Also, within minutes a cheerful guy appeared at our door carrying two screw drivers.

4. Soon after we arrived, Joe walked around the corner to use the ATM. He reported back that among the food vendors set up on the sidewalk---selling exquisitely aromatic noodle soups, dumplings, meat on skewers, seafood salads---were two young women with an espresso machine. He bought a cup and it was excellent.

5. We slept for a few hours Friday morning---after having sat zombie-like on the plane from Bombay through the night---and then ordered tom yam and tom ka gai from room service. It was the best food we ever ate---until we went out from the hotel later and ate again.

6. The small shop down the street where we use the internet still has---along with eight or ten computers---its own seamstress.

7. On Saturday morning, we had an appointment at 9:30 to meet Henry Nyan Htun, the manager of Peace House Travel, the Burmese agency arranging our upcoming visit to Myanmar. It took us a while to get across Bangkok, and we arrived at 10, concerned that we had kept Henry waiting. He came in at 10:10 and said, "Ah, you're right on time."

8. The "letters" page in The Bangkok Post is as lively and free-wheeling as ever. On Thursday, deposed Prime Minister Thaksin returned to Thailand to face charges of corruption. A letter on Saturday said, "I wonder if upon his fanfared return Mr. Thaksin took some time out between kissing the ground and getting into his limo to take a look around at his great achievement, Suvarnabhumi Airport. I wonder if he noticed the poor acoustics, the meager and filthy restrooms, the stained and cracked floors, the flimsy baggage carts, the endless snaking lines waiting to clear customs...." The new airport, built by cronies of Thaksin, isn't quite that bad. And plainly the letter writer had never been to Bombay or Newark.

9. Today, Sunday, local elections are being held all over Thailand. No alcohol was served in the country yesterday and none will be served today. Also, coincidentally, a ban on smoking in most public places went into effect yesterday. We saw French and German tourists in the hotel lobby looking anxious.

10. After Africa, and especially India---a nation of Larry Craigs---it's nice to be back in a country where being gay is just fine. I'm setting a Strachey book partly in Bangkok. (We're dining with a gay police official, a friend of Poe's, on Tuesday.) The book begins:
"Mr. Strachey, do you believe in reincarnation?"
"I've never given it much thought."
"So you won't mind my telling you I think the whole idea is perfectly absurd."
"Go ahead."

test

This is Dick with a test posting on January 2. Will it work? Let's see.

Hmm

Inexplicably, English is back. So here we go.

Change of scene

Democracy is a sometime thing in much of Southeast Asia, and Thailand is no exception. It is one of the few things we're not so crazy about here, and neither are most Thais. A constitutional monarchy since 1932, the country has been run by military governments off and on for about half that time. Some of the regimes have been harsh, as in the mid-1970s and early '90s, and some have been fairly benign, as is the case now. Yesterday the Army-appointed prime minister, Surayud Chulanont, did not declare a state of emergency over anti-goverment demonstrations, so today Bangkok is relieved over that.

The educated Thai middle classes were not sorry to lose Thaksin Shinawatra, the elected leader dumped in a military coup last September. The evidence keeps mounting that Thaksin was a crook who evaded paying taxes and hid assets (his housemaid was discovered to be a multimillionaire) and who packed the courts and regulatory commissions with cronies. (Currently roaming the globe and allegedly plotting his return to power, Thaksin might instead fit in nicely over at the Bush administration.)

What really did Thaksin in, apparently, and gave the Army no choice but to oust him, was this: he publicly criticized the king. Lese majeste shocks the conscience in Thailand, and it is illegal. Most Thais think of their kings as bordering on the god-like, a belief buttressed by their having had quite a few good ones. The present king, 80-year-old Bhumibol Adulyadej, on the throne since 1946, is loved for his humility and tireless good works, especially among rural villagers. (These villagers are the same people who elected Thaksin, whose health-care and other rural initiatives may now be in jeopardy.)

The lese majeste charge against Thaksin is hard to pin down; at a rally in the North last year he complained about a "charasmatic figure" who was getting in his way. Not murky at all were the actions of one Oliver Rudolf Jufer, a Swiss 57-year-old living in Chiang Mai. He got drunk, spray-painted posters of the king, was caught doing this by security cameras, and on Thursday was sentenced to ten years in prison. The Swiss foreign ministry said that "our compatriot was arrested on the basis of clearly established legislation," and the Swiss have no plans to intervene.

Tomorrow we fly to the one country in Southeast Asia that doesn't even pretend to be democratic. Burma, renamed Myanmar by the military dictatorship, is where you go in the region to see unchanged ancient Asia. Internet access is available in some places, but discretion might be in order. So if the blog is studiously apolitical over the next two weeks---lots of pagodas in the mist, flying fishes playing, etc.---that's why.

Note to those admirers of Joe's wonderful photos who might have said to yourselves that it looks as if we have been wearing the same clothes for three months. Well, yes.

Cooking classes at The Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School

Water chestnuts in sweetened coconut milk with ice cubes.

Sounds gross but it's really good

Sompon Nabnian, chef and owner, with a student

Tasting the product

Another good dessert, banana and coconut cake steamed in a banana leaf

The sheltering sky....or close enough

The culprit

Twelve attendants for each patient

Pictures of Halong Bay

Junk trekking

We weren't the only boat in the bay

Upper deck

Yes, we had our own bathroom with hot water

Dinner on the boat

A boat like ours

It was so tempting

This elderly woman beckoned to me that she would row me around a bay. Though the thought was unimaginable to me, I succumbed. I figured she really needed the money. She rowed one way and, much to her amusement, I rowed back.

A coal barge

A fishing village

Waiter takes a break

Kids selling fruit to passing boats

Selling shells