Arai Gor Dai is one of my favorite Thai phrases. It is a versatile phrase that means roughly, "Whatever works" or even just "Whatever…". The phrase captures a key component of Thai culture along with a few others that I think help round out the picture: fun, play, joke, relax, chill like iced tea, have you eaten yet, respect and good heart.
I once read that the French ideal of parenting is a strong and strict structure that allows children plenty of freedom within it. I think Thai culture is similar. Respect for leaders, mentors, teachers elders and family are absolutes. Social morays about touching (i.e. no touching someone else's head and generally giving a wai, not a handshake, no public displays of affection) remain strong. However, outside these traditional practices, Thailand is a place where not too much is a big deal.
Sexuality for example – Thais are both accepting of everything that isn't straight, but also recognize a third gender making room for the "lady boy" to not be about homosexuality, but a transgender status in its own right.
But it also applies in more mundane and practical ways. For example, as our children were playing at the beautiful Nong Buak Park, featuring Chiang Mai's nicest playground – in the large sandbox with Western-style play equipment, the top of a pillar or pipe stuck out of the ground about three inches. The sand covered it in a way that kept it from being a sore thumb, but also didn't obscure the fact that it was there. The children all seemed to steer clear of it – it wasn't in their path to use the play equipment and there was plenty of room to avoid it.
Emily and I both thought that in America, such a hazard would have parents writing their city councils, starting media campaigns, ranting on mommy-blogs and sending the word that the park was a death trap. However among the Thai families at Nong Buak Park, it's not that the people using the park was too poor to expect more or that they didn't care about the safety of their children. They just simply didn't think that the imperfection posed a real danger to their children – who they watched from the benches and grass around the playground (not while accompanying their children on the play equipment as you often see now in American middle-class neighborhoods).
I'm sure if asked, the Thai parents would prefer the pillar not be there – but Arai Gor Dai – it's a good playground and why not enjoy it?
This attitude extends to so many facets of life in Thailand from people driving ramshackle, rigged-up vehicles for which there are no words or definitions to allowing children to play freely in the back-sois to walking elephants through city streets to not caring about an American couple hauling a giant bag of bulky items through the fanciest mall in Chiang Mai.
Yes, today Emily and I took advantage of the Thai propensity for tolerance and grace as we sought an additional extra-large piece of luggage for the many wonderful gifts and acquisitions we have made here in Chiang Mai over the past week. Sadly, we didn't realize we needed it until we packed this morning and found that despite having bought one additional bag the other day, we were still too big for our britches and needed even more space. Moreover, we needed a solution before our night train departed Chiang Mai at 5pm.
Fortunately, I had packed a pair of shoes in an oversized Bed Bath and Beyond bag whose strength we prayed would hold us to haul our acquisitions around town. After depositing our luggage at the Left Baggage room of the Chiang Mai Train Station, we used a little Arai Gor Dai ourselves and instead of spending the day walking the old parts of town and taking a boat tour along the Mae Ping River, we went the lame but practical route of heading to the Central Festival Mall to find a new piece of luggage and keep our children air conditioned on a muggy day with no shower or bath waiting at the end of it.
Malls in Thailand are wonderful places because you can get and solve almost anything in one. Fix a shoe, grab some prescription medication, grab some cooked peanuts and steamed taro for the walk home, dry cleaning, grocery shopping, key duplication, get a traditional Thai massage, see a doctor, go ice skating, play video games, see a concert, ring in the new year, enjoy a beer garden – anything and everything is available at a mall.
And as I hauled a giant bag of oddly-shaped stuff around the very fancy mall – no one batted an eye whereas at home, I'm sure security would have at least inquired and I would have felt under the stare of curious people. And when we bought the 29' suitcase, the sales lady was kind enough to put our haul of items right into it and send us on our way. I suppose we weren't the first foreigners with an over-shopping problem to show up at her shop.
The mall also provided a playground for the kids; a multitude of quick, tasty and affordable lunch options; and the opportunity to kill the remainder of the afternoon with a movie. Ailyn saw her first movie – Ferdinand – at a movie theater in Thailand (and Thai movie theaters rock!).
So now I sit outside the theater, completing this post and getting ready to grab the crew to head off to the train station where we begin the big journey from Chiang Mai to Ko Chang – a gorgeous island in the eastern part of the Gulf of Thailand. We'll take a 13-hour overnight train in a first-class sleeper car to Bangkok where we'll be met by a shuttle-bus which will take us to the town of Trat – where we can grab the ferry out to Ko Chang. Once reaching the island, we'll have an approximately one-hour taxi ride down around the island and down the coast to our house. It's an adventure that allows the kids to experience train travel in a way they would never at home. We just hope everyone actually sleeps.
