The winds took a turn and the sea became uncharacteristically rough – for Koh Samet. The Gulf of Thailand's normally glassy complexion and aquamarine color changed to choppy with mild, dark green waves. It happens during rainy times and it apparently is happening right now, even though it's mostly sunny.
The waves brought visitors to the island – plastic bottles, plastic bags, wrappers, packing tape, styrofoam and other assorted trash. It's like someone's running an offshore Mailboxes Etc.
Emily and I have talked several times about how badly we feel about the number of plastic bottles we go through during our travels. The worst part is that the places we absolutely need them are the ones without recycling. In India and Nepal – what choice did we have unless we ate at the rare restaurant with reverse osmosis filtration which was really only in Mumbai and one cafe in Kathmandu. I shudder to think of the impact of our bottles. It was a no-win situation.
In Greece and Turkey, we could drink the water served to us at restaurants. In Thailand – particularly Bangkok – we can sometimes. In places like Koh Samet, we can't.
All I have to do is look out at the beach and I can see the impact of that. It's very sad.
Thailand is ever-changing and it has developed recycling programs in certain areas. There's an ecological awareness coming into the culture. As they can afford it, Thais are taking back their environment – which is a positive aspect of development. At the very least, I've noticed a distinct increase in the number of public trash cans – the precursor to recycling – and a major step ahead of India and Nepal.
Thailand has one very bad habit which we play into. No country I've ever visited uses plastic bags so much. Everything we buy at every food stand comes in a plastic bag. If you have three plastic bags in your hands, and buy another item, they'll still give you another. I've had people put a bottle of drinking water and a straw in a plastic bag. I always thank them politely and say that I don't need the bag. It never registers that one shouldn't need a plastic container to carry a plastic container.
Of course, many visitors to America from Europe and Japan find our plastic bag situation in grocery stores and retail shocking. America is no innocent when it comes to prolific use of unnecessary bags.
To our credit, the cloth bag movement is taking hold for grocery shopping and recycling has become standard in every community I've visited in the last ten years. We are moving in the right direction, at least so far as proliferation of plastic bags is concerned.
Here in Thailand – as in much of the third and developing world – garbage service isn't universal. In rural areas people burn their trash including plastic and paper containers and wrappers. In Bali where very little of the island has garbage service, I felt very aware that anything I bought in a package or bottle would end up polluting the beautiful scented air I loved. You don't want to think that buying butter means polluting more than your arteries – but it does.
Most of the time – for sanity's sake – Emily and I just pretend that our plastic bottles will be recycled. We hope the trash we ensure gets into garbage cans will be handled in accordance with all international standards of environmental care and protection.
Besides trying to minimize our waste, there's little else we can do being visitors in places where governments have more issues than resources. In many cases, governments are also extremely corrupt and don't work in their people's interest, making it so that already limited resources don't go where they're needed.
On Koh Samet, there's more than one kind of trash on the beach – and there's far less we can do about the other kind.
Because the island is only 3.5 hours by bus from Bangkok, it's a favorite weekend getaway from Bangkok Thais and foreigners alike. Along with it means "holiday getaways" for sex tourists and other foreigners who bring along the "Thai girlfriends" they contract for their vacations.
The 40-something year-old European guy at the next table from us last night was with two young girls. The table on the other side had a 70-something German man with a 20ish lady-boy and another, younger boy. Everyone was represented.
Yesterday afternoon, as part of our second-in-a-row, do-nothing, beach lounging day – I went for a massage. While there are ladies who come around and offer massage on the beach itself, I prefer the ladies who operate a sort of multi-table massage kiosk at the read of the beach, near the shops. Less sandy, more comfortable, higher quality massage.
While my masseuse was massaging the tension out of my legs, a Swedish man took the next mat over from mine. He started chatting with his masseuse whose English was among the more advanced of the group.
"I come here many times, but this time, I had sex with only one lady."
"You have sex with lady last night?"
"No, I almost did – but no. Did you have sex with lady last night?"
"Yes, yes," the masseuse said with a smirk, playing along.
"Oh, can I come watch? I am a lesbian too," the man said.
"You go away when?"
"Tuesday,"
"See you next year?"
"I come more than…" he realized he was getting too complex for her. "Yes, see you next year. You will be here next year?"
"Yes, I always here….unless maybe I go to Sweden." she said jokingly.
"If you want, pack your bags, I'd have you."
"So, you go – come back next year?"
"Yes, I think next year I will bring lady with me – this year I not have sex so many times."
That's when I tuned out as my masseuse had clearly done already.
There are some special people who come to Thailand.
The unfortunate social dilemma it raises – besides the obvious – is that both Thais and foreigners alike tend to look at foreigner-Thai relationships with questioning and skepticism. A Thai woman with a white guy is often assumed to be a prostitute or at the minimum a woman putting out to go on a luxury vacation.
Thai women with white guys get looks from other Thais. White guys get the questioning or disdainful look from white women and many men too.
Emily raised a question over dinner. Does the unfortunate reality of the Thai sex tourism industry start to create a strange racism?
It has a sexist component too. Occasionally, you see a Thai man with a foreign woman. No one bats an eye. One assumes that either the relationship is legitimate or she's having a fling with a cute, muscular island boy. No one looks at the Thai man with his caucasian wife and their beautiful little two year-old running around our hotel/bungalow place as anything but a wonderful, happy family.
Of course, stereotypes often have grains, if not basis in truth. There aren't a lot of white women coming to Thailand to hire male prostitutes and take them around Thailand. There are in fact, plenty of white guys who come to Thailand for precisely this reason. Of course, there are foreigners married to Thai women and white guys working in Bangkok who date legitimately.
When looking around the beach, legitimate couples and everyday people alike participate in the game of trying to sort out the trash. It's weird, sick game that only comes in a place where weird, sick things are allowed. When they wash up on your shore, what do you do? There's no clean-up and recycling program for this.
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