Back To The Gypsy That I Was…

Driving along Highway 4 from Khao Lak to Phuket International Airport, once past the tourist heart of Khao Lak, you get a nice view of rural Southern Thailand. Farming, simple structures, people selling fruit, Thai iced tea, noodle soup…. over and over again. The houses are made of cement – the nicer ones having tile roofing, but more often corrugated metal. The soil itself is a deep red – common to Southern Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore (Lee Kwan Yew, the founding Prime Minister of Singapore used to say it was nothing but a red sandbar to start). But the mountains and surroundings are a lush green. 

Along Highway 4, Thailand looked not so different from late 2001.

But more than not, Thailand has changed – and is changing ever further. For people like Emily and me, everything gets compared to our first stays in Thailand when we were in our early 20's and Thailand too seemed less developed and in a way simpler and more removed from the world from which we came. For lack of better terms, Thailand was more "third world" and in a sense, more Thai. At least to us and likely any other foreign travelers around at that time.

Having 23 year-old Matheus with us, experiencing Thailand for the first time has been a real treat for Emily and me. Watching Matheus absorb a place so different to him – indeed someplace he had never really read about or considered traveling before – we were able to touch our pasts through him. The shock of chaotic, culturally dissonant Bangkok; the awe of the gorgeous Southern Thai countryside; the surprise at the variety and flavors of food; the thrill of passing through the limestone scale islands reaching out of the Andaman Sea – we were each 23 when these things happened to us for the first time.

Only we were backpackers (as much as well-educated Jewish kids from the San Fernando and Conejo valleys are). We stayed in fan-cooled thatched bungalows with pour flush toilets and lizards on the walls for $7 a night. We ate street food for 50 cents and when that wasn't an option, meals at Thai beach restaurants for $2.25. We rode public sangthaews for $1 and split "expensive" $2.50 taxi rides three or four ways with friends. Evenings on Thai islands consisted of hanging out or partying (more Emily) on the beach with friends, drinking, dancing and watching young Thai guys twirl fire.

While Thailand certainly has its higher-end options in places like Phuket, Khao Lak, Ko Samui, Bangkok and these days, even Chiang Mai, the heart of Thai tourism is in the incredible and rich backpacker culture that has existed here since the 1960's. This makes sense as a combination of economics and cultural predilection make it so that Thais seem to favor investing the minimum amount possible to make a viable business. Thus, while a luxury hotel might bring in more revenue over time, the capital outlay is very hard to come by – and was even harder to get in the past when banks were less likely to lend to a small business. Putting up some cheap bungalows drew tourists – and those tourists though perhaps poorer than others – were happy to pay four times what it cost to buy and make them noodles and curries. So budget backpacker tourism was an easy business to get into and whether it was because Thai entrepreneurs were not motivated to grow and build, or larger amounts of capital still remained elusive – a Thai bungalow operator could still make a pretty great living off budget travelers.

Moreover, Thai culture makes it so this is one of the few places in the world where a single foreigner can come alone, travel safely (young women included) and make friends in a day – and then part ways with those friends to go to another destination with some other cool people she met last night. In Thailand, every Western traveler knows some cool Dutch or Aussies they met on the beach and passed out with – or then went on to see the next cool island – or both.

And because Thais are an accepting culture, certain nationalities especially flock here – such as Israelis getting out of the military or young Emiratis or Kuwaitis who want a place to get a little bohemian. For better and worse, Thailand welcomes all – including some middle-age to old loser pervs who take advantage of the seedy underbelly of places like Bangkok, Pattaya and Hua Hin.

But Thailand dark and light is part of the appeal. It's a place of heavenly aspirations and hedonism; godliness and depravity; and most importantly, risk-taking with a safety net – which aside from the low cost, is the real draw for the young. 

Thus anyone who spent time maturing, spreading his or her wings, letting go, growing, making mistakes, broadening and any other similar terms always remembers the beautiful simplicity that they saw in Thailand – which is always in part a projection of their own simpler days. We look back and remember how it was – and that memory is "the real Thailand" before it was spoiled with too many resorts, hotels, bungalows, cheap bars, condos, luxury villas, massage parlors, large boats, speed boats and tourists themselves  - who are cluttering and crapping up what was once a better, more perfect paradise. The paradise where there was enough lodging, food and massage to be comfortable, but not so much that it "ruined" anything.

Alex Garland hit on one version of this phenomenon in his book, later turned Leonardo DiCaprio movie, "The Beach" – where the characters look for and find a secret "perfect, unspoiled beach" (which in the movie was portrayed by the far-from-secret island of Ko Phi Phi Leh). The search for the still undeveloped paradise was a version of preserving the "perfect Thailand" that has probably met its death as so few places remain off the tourist trail and/or undeveloped unless they are a protected national park. But the search for the less developed, "more like then, less like now" seems to remain viable. The islands that are far from airports or have infrequent ferry schedules. The less developed stretch of beach up the way from the more developed one. The smaller town or village like Pai in the northeast of Thailand or Pakse in Southern Laos) that was sleepy and unfettered – but is just becoming cool. These are the places someone like me might want you to go, or more specifically someone young like Matheus. Go find the real Thailand that's being worn away. See the simpler life, the less "spoiled" situation, the more "third world" country we knew Thailand to be. The place it remains in our hearts and by which it is and shall always be measured.

But right there is the mistake that I can begin to see at age 41.

First, it ignores a fundamental moral issue: how can someone from a "first world", developed country tell anyone from a less developed one not to change and develop?  No one came along and told American settlers of the West to stay in their log cabins with oil paper windows while they were dying young of dysentery, lyme disease, rheumatic fever and childbirth complications. "Guys, I know you have dirt floors, disease and are toiling with hand or animal-driven tools to farm your land, but don't change a thing. You guys are beautiful – keep it real. Trust me. When I go back to my air conditioned and heated home where my family has running water, electricity and antibiotics and pain relievers when we're sick – I just cry and wish I had what you have."

So the paternalistic, narcissistic, culturally unaware and biased stuff is one really bad thing.

The other is that the nostalgic view of the better time and place takes some form to everyone, everywhere. My father remember when he could zip across Los Angeles and get anywhere in practically 20 minutes – it was a much nicer city then. My grandfather lamented the loss of the Red Car trains and how Los Angeles was better off in his day. Some felt Paris was better off without the Eiffel Tower which was only supposed to be a temporary exhibit. The 1960's were San Francisco and Berkeley's heyday. Woody Allen does a great job of illustrating this phenomenon in "Paris, Je T'aime" where one character wants to go back in time to the Paris of the 1920's only to meet someone dying to go back to the Paris of the Belle Epoch (1880's-1900). The world is always rosier in the rearview mirror.

Who am I to say that more high-end resorts aren't a better Thailand? How can I say that the days when there was little to no bread and even less cheese to be found in Thailand kept it closer to its roots (I used to believe eating anything but authentic Thai food when you came to Thailand meant you were unadaptable and ethnocentric)? Are large ferry or speed boats going to Thai islands instead of the old, blue wooden Thai fishing boats acting as ferries less "authentic"?

A younger me might think I'm compromising my principles, selling out or that I no longer care. But I'm starting to see that the better and harder part of maturity is learning to let go. With kids ages three and five, I suspect that I'm only at the beginning of learning this lesson. The perfect Thailand never existed. And what was awesome about it before doesn't negate its new awesomeness. I may prefer to look at thatched bungalows on the beach and feel that the world is a little more right – but then is my privileged, American youthful ideal any more worthy than the beach resort experience of a newly minted upper-middle class Chinese family who is the first generation in many to be able to even leave their country, let alone enjoy luxuries like a Thai beach vacation?

What about the family of two American former-backpackers who now want to take their two young kids to Thailand and no longer fit into the hut-on-the-beach model? Do they not belong? Is it uncool of them to support development of fancy Airbnb houses in previously undeveloped areas? Or is it super cool that they want to come back and share Thailand with their kids? How am I to judge them?

My younger self suspects my current one is learning to let-go for the convenience of it.

But then, this is the battle between young and old – the idealism vs the practicality; the grabbing life with two hands vs coming to terms with how little we actually control. I believe both are right and that are tasked to walk through life finding that balance for ourselves and those we love – those to whom we are responsible.

Thus, on the way to the airport for our journey back to Bangkok with Matheus two rows back in the van asking questions around his thoughts about his future return to Thailand and the journeys a young man wants to take here – I realized that my travels here are a continuing journey not just of places, but of times. My growth as a person is somewhere on the road between Bangkok and Surat Thani. Or perhaps on Ko Samet or Ko Phangan. Or on a Thai fishing boat from Trat to Ko Chang. Or in Thai Airways Business Class from Phuket to Bangkok. To get Buddhist, the past and present may just be illusions. My Thailand journey is one experience and my story is simply unfolding.