There's no word for similar in Thai. There's same and different. So the closest thing to our concept of similar is literally, "Same but not same" which is most commonly translated to "Same same, but different" – a phrase familiar to anyone who has spent significant time in Southeast Asia, often to their annoyance due to the ambiguity and confusion that can accompany it.
In fact, "Same Same But Different" and foreigners' reactions to it are so well known that Thais and many of their neighboring cultures with the same phraseology have turned it around on tourists, making t-shirts of it and selling them with great success at tourist hotspots.
Having been the annoyed tourist wading through the ambiguities of Southeast Asian communication, I sympathize with the frustration. However, over time I have come to appreciate that travel itself is a giant game of Same Same, But Different. It's exactly why we go anywhere – to see things that are different. Sometimes those things are physical locations like monuments and natural wonders. But more often than not, it's the social and cultural differences – and similarities that we spend our time analyzing and piecing together for understanding. We take home lessons – sometimes about what we loved about a place and which traits or values we might want to emulate or incorporate in our everyday lives. Other times it's what shocked us or what we abhorred that sets our personal and moral compasses straight – helping us to make different choices and lead better lives.
Through this process of Same Same, But Different we find ourselves, chart courses and make adjustments to them.
In this respect, our children are no different than any adult tourist. Without much prompting, they began playing Same, Same But Different from the moment we boarded the first flight. Why is chicken rice one of the choices for breakfast? Why do they do announcements in Korean as well as English? Why do they do announcements in Thai, Chinese and English? Why do we do security at the gate at the Singapore Airport? Why are there no domestic flights in Singapore? Why do they drive on the opposite side of the road? Why do we take taxis here when we don't at home? Why did we rent our own car in Bali, but we take Uber and Tuk Tuk's in Thailand? Why are there so many pictures of the king? Why do they have a king in Thailand? Why do they love the king so much? Why are there so many pictures of the old king? Why do Thai temples have golden Buddha statues ? Why don't Thai people use swim diapers on their children? And these are just the appetizers.
However, once firmly in Chiang Mai with days of new sights, sounds, tastes and smells they have really gotten into the game. While their mundane observations are innumerable, there are some that begin to cut into what a society is made of and how values come into play. And through their questions, I sometimes find myself asking new ones of my own – in a country I know fairly well.
For example, why do we see no BMW, Mercedes or other luxury cars? (I actually spotted one BMW and two Volvos that Sennen missed) It certainly isn't because Chiang Mai has a dearth of wealth. In fact as the second largest city in Thailand, it appears to have more civic reinvestment and beauty with less apparent economic disparity than Bangkok. By all accounts, Chiang Mai is growing with new, fancy housing developments left and right. I have seen billboards for the very neighborhood we're staying in showing modern, American looking single-family homes – advertising the American-Thai dream with two cars in the driveway and an attractive family of five smiling on the front lawn.
The malls tell the same story – lots of shopping in the latest and prettiest of malls that make many of ours in Los Angeles look old and run-down. Thais buying high-end goods, seeing first-run movies, eating at nice restaurants and coffee shops. American and European fast food and fast-casual restaurants abound including Starbucks, Sizzler, TGI Fridays, Hooters, Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonalds, A&W, Dairy Queen, S&P, Oishi, Swensen's Ice Cream, Baskin Robbins, Haggen Daas, Cold Stone, Dunkin Donuts and numerous others I'm missing. In fact, today we went to the new and largest mall in Chiang Mai to do some Christmas Day ice skating at its giant, state-of-the-art skating rink.
One glance at Chiang Mai's old town area tells you that owners of hotels, restaurants, hostels, massage parlors, cooking schools and everything else are doing just fine.
All this to say – there's money in this town. But not BMWs rolling down the street like you see all over Los Angeles or even in nearby Singapore. In fact, I've seen more BMWs in Bali than Chiang Mai. From what I have heard and seen, the pinnacle vehicles appear to be extended-cab Toyota pickup trucks and certain SUVs – like Isuzu's largest model on the Thai market.
And I began thinking that despite billboards for new American-style developments, the Thai dream may not be at all the American one.
Driving around Chiang Mai, you can see many large houses – perhaps some even serving as family compounds. But rarely are they shiny and built to impress. Thailand isn't unique in diverging from the American value on showcasing ones house and real estate as a sign of success. In fact, few Asian cultures emphasize the family home and instead promote the outward trappings you carry around with you – clothes, accessories, jewelry and cars. When I lived in Taiwan it was common to meet very successful people driving a 7 series BMW, wearing designer clothes (sometimes down dirty, stinky alleys with no sidewalks), dripping with jewelry and living in a run down cement block, tile floor condo. I saw sometimes less extreme variations of this in Singapore, China, Hong Kong and of course Thailand.
Which is why Sennen's question about cars stuck out. In most Asian countries, the cars are part of the outward presentation of success. But seemingly not Thailand – or at least not Chiang Mai.
I can only conclude that despite the powerful influence of Western culture seeping into Thai life, that Thai families still sock their money away. Sending a child or grandchild abroad for education – particularly college and graduate school – is a top mark of success. Having money to secure the family in times of wont or political instability remains a hallmark of Thai life. The use of credit cards and debt remain taboo. The Thai dream – at least for now – doesn't appear to be centered around the conspicuous consumption that has taken hold of America. It remains more rooted in what Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore called "Confucian Values" – which while using a more Chinese title, he saw as a cross-cultural set of traditional Asian social morays.
And the beauty of it is that this Thai Dream or Confucian Values – or whatever you want to call it – is really no different than many of the core values of the great Western religions. In fact, this is exactly what so many American Christians are concerned with in the larger-than-life consumption-fest that has become the Christmas season. Material success and its visible trappings has become for so many Americans the big goal, the great achievement, our raison d'être.
In fact America is a country where we have charities to ensure disadvantaged children get toys to minimize their feelings of what sociologists call relative poverty – the experience of being poor when compared to others which is psychologically more damaging that actual poverty. In other words, a lower middle-class person may feel worse about themselves for not having what their neighbors have than someone living under the poverty line surrounded by people in the same economic circumstances. And of course, any child in America not getting an abundance of toys on Christmas can find themselves in that boat given how intertwined material giving has become with Christmas.
But this isn't meant to be a Jew's rant against Christmas via his Thai vacation. American Jews face the same issues with Hanukkah and in my opinion, even more so with Bar and Bat Mitzvahs where for so many families the receptions resemble mildly scaled-back weddings that outsize the child and his or her achievement. I have seen too many kids who are concerned with the party and gifts – and barely understand the religious, cultural and personal significance of a Bar or Bat Mitzvah.
Of course, living in an upper-middle-class suburb driving luxury cars and taking international vacations, we are not immune from the American lure and power of the material success phenomenon.
However, the game of Same Same, But Different skillfully performs its job of helping us examine and reexamine the tenets of our daily lives and throw off the blinders we so often wear. While there are many things about Thailand and Thai culture that affirm so many aspects of my life and remind me of the importance of gratitude – I appreciate that a Toyota extended-cab pickup is the vehicular pinnacle of Thai success. And I salute the families who choose to sock away their money in the mattress or the bank to ensure the education of their children and grandchildren instead of getting the latest product from Apple or planning the next kitchen renovation.
