“Okay, I’m done. Let’s go home,” Emily said as she finished her work on Koh Samet. She wanted to get her grading out of the way before we hit the road. By “home” she meant Bangkok.
Of all of our hotels (the studio in Patmos not included) the Royal View Resort in Bangkok has felt most like home. The rooms are large, light, cheery, and comfortable. From features of the building, its location and the layout of the rooms, I suspect it was built as an apartment building with mostly studio and one-bedroom apartments. The very human, livable quality combined with the good Internet makes it ideal for our needs.
After a few nights of uncomfortable, sweaty bungalow living, we were ready for a good shower and nice bed.
“That was a great vacation,” Emily said at bed time.
“Uhhh….our whole life is vacation….” I said as Emily burst into laughter.
“But it felt so much like a vacation….”
It was the beach. We haven’t had one since we left Samos at the end of September. Add in Koh Samet’s natural knack for vacation and do-nothingness and we had a vacation from our living vacation.
Heading “home” to Bangkok makes work a little easier and allows us to do a few things – like getting a cavity filled (I won’t say whose…) before heading off to Bali early Thursday morning.
In order to get back, we crossed the 7 kilometer straight between Koh Samet and Ban Phe. Back on the mainland, things were much the way I remembered them nine years ago.
The smell of fish, drying fish, fermenting fish paste and roasting squid fill the air. Pickup trucks with benches in the back called songthaews are the major form of public transportation in rural Thailand. They still trawl up and down the main road of town, willing to take anyone up or down the beach or even to the next town for five baht.
Crazy vehicles unlike anything I’ve ever seen in any other country run through the streets of rural Thailand. Carts made to haul cargo are connected to motorbikes. Men peddle bicycles outfitted with carts with seats. It is a completely different world from Bangkok.
Emily was intrigued and wants to return to Ban Phe or a town like it. There are many.
In today’s modern world of cheap domestic flights and multiple international airports, it’s so easy for Thailand’s many tourists to hit the hot spots and ignore the rest. Even if people go overland, so often the long-distance buses and trains run at night. As our bus took us back to the most developed part of Thailand, I looked out the window at the Thailand most tourists never see. I was once very familiar with it.
I didn’t see many of the ramshackle huts made of random planks and pieces of corrugated plastic and metal that surprised me so much on my first day in Thailand. There remain many wood structures with tin roofs, but nothing as slum-like as before.
Towns were clean, organized. Public schools are simple, worn-out, blocky cement structures. Every town has a gorgeous buddhist temple in traditional Thai style. Homes and shops always have motorcycles in front of them and often pickup trucks.
Everywhere – even in the smallest towns we passed people were eating from food carts and at markets. In the early evening, they sat and talked outside. They have community. They eat together.
Although the areas at the periphery of Bangkok have many factories and commercial enterprises, so much of the landscape was still rural. Coconut groves, rice paddies, wheat fields, vegetables, mango groves – Thailand is an agricultural powerhouse that still lives off the fruit of its very fertile land.
What impressed me most was what I didn’t see. The little piece of Thailand between Ban Phe and Bangkok no longer looked as third-world as I remember it. There were no squatters. No one on the streets. No one with makeshift shelters made of palm leaves and branches. That same road nine years ago was filled with people who though they were not starving, had no place of their own – just a spot where they camped.
Thailand hasn’t had an easy past ten years. Political turmoil has been brewing for more than six years. People are uncertain as to what will happen without the king. The current government had to resist civil unrest including riots in which people destroyed parts of their own city. From a political perspective, Thailand is on shaky ground.
Somehow, despite all this there has been progress. Thailand’s currency is worth more. Its capitol is more modern. The air is cleaner. People in Rayong province are not living in shacks by the side of the road.
I felt an optimism. When I lived here, I felt that things were too crazy and disjointed for Thailand to ever advance. Where does one begin? How does one go about improving a place with so many challenges?
Clearly, someone had some answers.
It’s difficult to imagine Thailand sitting at the top of the pyramid, among the great, powerful nations of the world. I can’t imagine Thailand part of the UN Security Council or an important voice in world financial affairs.
What’s wonderful about life is that someone can. There are Thais who believe wholeheartedly in their country’s potential. They believe they can be an economic force and bring their people a better standard of living. Despite the turbulence of the Thai political world, there are people interested in genuinely improving Thailand.
I don’t know all the how’s and why’s associated. I never paid close attention to all the many small changes that eventually added up to a noticeable difference. But from the window of the first-class air-conditioned government bus that runs between Ban Phe and Bangkok 12 times a day, the world looks a little brighter.
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