Land of Smiles

See, just because a country is described as a "Land of Smiles" doesn't mean its denizens will smile and be kind indiscrimately to every passing stranger. It doesn't mean you can walk in in a terrible funk, seething and raging and all impatient, and expect to come out feeling completely at ease, calm and serene. It just means that if you go in and are nice to people, people will be nice to you in return. Or a little more specifically, it means that as long as you keep an open mind and try hard to be nice---and people can see that---people will generally be nice to you in return.
This thinking can be applied to bring new perspectives to many specific situations. For instance, the way delays are dealt with in the country is, if you are strict about it, really terribly inefficient. But who said you had to treat a delay purely as an avoidable inconvenience? If you can be philosophical about it (and if you've done enough planning to be able to afford to be philosophical about it), it's really no big deal. Or, for another instance, lots of travellers complain about the flabbergastingly long queues at airport immigration. But it's not news. You should know about it already. You could have prepared yourselves for it (by not turning up too tired, by minimising carry-on luggage, and just by being mentally prepared.) If you're prepared, it doesn't have to be that bad.
In short: there's nowhere in this world where you can expect kindness for nothing. Only places where you don't have to pay so much in kind before others start reciprocating. And sometimes, hospitality is best experienced by those who are not really expecting it, or at least have an open mind.

Everywhere and Nowhere

Nothing will ever deprive you of your home. Because your home is scattered far and wide, and you will find it reflected everywhere you look. Because it is not something so mutable and impermanent as a house or a city, much less a country, but an intricate tapestry of memories and relationships richer and more magnificent than anything history and geography, much less mere parochial nationalisms or politicians, can even conceive of.
So don't be sad. Because it really is only a formality. A pushing-around of a few inconsequential bits of paper. It can't affect the web that will hold you firm and rooted in the slightest, unless you choose to let it.

My point exactly.

You are required to.

Do you have any idea how painful that was? But never mind. Even I didn't before it hit.

Expect delays. Be happy.

The State Railways of Thailand are reminiscent of the state of the nation in a few ways. Both are a little decrepit and could do with a bit of an overhaul, but generally still work reasonably well. The Railways are one of the more obvious manifestations of heavy state involvement in the economy.

And the ubiquitious delays provide a glimpse of local attitudes to time and life. The trains here set off on time, but generally arrive late. The Express train from Bangkok to Nong Khai arrived an hour late. The train back arrived an hour-and-a-half late. The Rapid train due to arrive after that from Denchai was three hours late. But nobody ever really complains. Nobody, except noisy, short-tempered farangs (and Chinese.) Why bother getting worked up? It's only a train. It's not worth losing your temper for.

Applied in moderate doses, that makes a lot of sense. Don't you think?

Look! Land border!

Aren't land borders the most irritating things? They stretch a short journey out into a process of hours, days, months (if visa formalities are involved.)
Like how the 25km from Nong Khai to Vientiane took three hours. Between outbound immigration formalities, waiting for and taking the bus across the Friendship Bridge, inbound immigration formalities, and sweltering transport from the middle-of-nowhere to central Vientiane. Why are the two border cities so far away from each other anyway? (Actually I suppose they were not meant to be neighbouring cities, but modern transportation has brought them close enough to be thought of as such.) The journey back on the Thai-Lao International Bus was smoother, but it still took a while to clear all the immigration formalities. Partly because some of the immigration officers type English reaaally slooowly. You could see the queue at the booth getting longer as they slowly figured out where each letter was on the keyboard. I suppose touch-typing training isn't completely useless, really.
On the bright side, Laos was nice enough to waive visa requirements for ASEAN citizens. So do most other ASEAN members apparently, less super-paranoid, slightly eccentric Myanmar. You see, ASEAN isn't completely useless. We just work at a pace that all of members are comfortable with. We work at ... a Lao pace (actually, that would explain a lot.)
Which means anything remotely resembling Schengen would be aeons away from conception here. I suppose land borders are here to stay for a while in this part of the world. At least they add variety to the journey. Where else do you get to see self-intersecting roads and big bilingual signs saying "Stop! You're going the wrong way"?

 

Can you believe that it's a whole different country on the other side? I can't. Or actually, maybe they aren't that different.

Near near-miss

Police and military personnel were assigned to the Victory Monument skytrain station and nearby areas after intelligence reported that possible sabotage efforts in Bangkok this weekend.

Hey, wasn't I there on Friday evening? Oh well.

Stress-Induced Impulses

Some of the more idiosyncratic ones:

• To roll up into ball and hide in a locked room.
• To greet everyone with a wai 
• To prostrate in front of an empty wall.
• To write the most ridiculous and random things.

Probably some sort of siege mentality at work. Bah.

(Biased) Score Report

With the help of a mass civil engineering effort from a large team based (apparently) mostly in Western Europe, we now have

Onions 1 Ostriches 0.

Now if only there were some way to report in real-time when the other team scores ...

The Long Dawn of Happiness

Sukhothai was nowhere as impressive as Angkor or Baalbek. (Why the latter example came to mind in particular, I don't quite know.)

The Buddha images were elegant, the lotus-bud chedi tips graceful, the generous reservoirs of water surrounding the wats serene paragons of purity, but the whole place felt ... somewhat small. The standing Buddha at Wat Chetuphon may have towered high above the surrounding countryside, and Wat Mahathat did indeed occupy a suitably large compound for its importance, but still the ruins of Sukhothai, as a whole, seem less grand than befitting the proud capital of the first Siamese kingdom. The structures (or, at least, their restorations) were built out of normal-sized bricks, not the huge monumental blocks of stone that make up the temples of Angkor or Baalbek. The scale of the structures, while large, is human rather than monumental. And while the place has been designated a "Historical Park" and these are undoubtedly ruins, they somehow don't feel quite abandoned enough to be bona fide ruins. The place feels too close-to-earth to be impressive in the same way as Angkor or Baalbek.
But maybe that was the point. Sukhothai's achievements and strengths were human rather than monumental, and its legacy lives on not in the form of awe-inspiring but abandoned ruins, but rather as a transmuted but living influence.

Trundling

Like the noise an intercity bus makes going slowly down the highway. Trundle, trundle, trundle ...

Trepidation

Tremulous agitation. Hence "intrepid" should carry the sense of  泰然自若

Insomnia

The last time in Bangkok, my guesthouse room was noisy 24 hours a day due to traffic from Rama IV just a few metres away and an all-night noodle stall downstairs. This time, my guesthouse room was noisy throughout the night due to the nightlife off Sukhumvit, but rather quiet in the morning when everyone was having their hangovers. I'm not complaining because both times I could sleep anyway.
But it did bring to mind someone's comment that Singapore still had some way to go before becoming a sleepless city. So maybe Bangkok is doing much better in this area. But I still don't get why it's so great to be a sleepless city. Since when was insomnia a good thing? Sleep is necessary rest, and it's just foolish to try and push oneself to keep going with as little sleep as possible. Now if some of a city's denizens wish to sleep in the day and carry on with their lives at night, that's perfectly fine. But if the number is small, it is only natural that the services available in the city at night are correspondingly sparser. No need to deliberately try and push for more nocturnal services to encourage more people to become nocturnal. Right?

Most Random Decision Ever

One day I'll top this one. Maybe.

Random Coincidence #2718

S uvarnabhum i
S ukhotha i
S hangha i
(Blame inconsistent application of RTGS.)

(Belated) Happy 200th!

Credit Where Due

Soon Marina East is going to be the New Downtown, but at the moment it is still a giant construction site. There are the towers of the Marina Bay Sands casino IR rising from the ground, the tunnels for the Marina Coastal Expressway being bored underground, scaffolds for future skyscrapers being erected and filled in, and lots of dust flying around. There are also lots and lots of foreign construction workers around. It's almost scary.
But I'm not trying to bash the Gahmen's immigration policies here. Rather, I would like to raise this point: Shouldn't these people be recognised for building Singapore's future? When Gahmen ministers go around parading their achievements ("I was instrumental in turning Marina Bay into the New Downtown area" or "I conceived of the casinos IRs" or whatever), shouldn't they share the credit equally with all those humble busyworkers who actually created what would otherwise be mere plans on pieces of paper? Of course the ministers would argue that the vision counts for much more, but what good is a vision that is never realised? And why, then, should those who make the vision a concrete reality be given short shrift?
The prevailing National Indoctrination Education narrative celebrates the hard work of coolies and construction workers in the past, and tells us that Singapore was built up from their contributions. Acknowledging their contributions is the least we could do to show our gratitude for them, and indeed it is a shame that many of these people were not at all recognised for their contributions in their lifetime. There is no reason why similar recognition should not be forthcoming now. To deny it on the niggling grounds of nationality would be narrow-minded in the extreme.

Low Person Density Republic

The Serenissima has about 5 million souls squeezed onto about 600 square kilomteres. The Republic of Please Don't Rush has maybe 7 million spread out over an area almost 400 times as large.
Maybe that's why everything here is so small and laid-back. When the population is so thinly spread-out, you wouldn't expect very much suburban sprawl or dense concrete jungles. Probably that's why even Vientiane felt sleepy and more or less petered out after less than 15 minutes on the city bus. And when there aren't so many fellow human beings competing for resources, people can afford to relax. And take things nice and easy and maintain perfect equianimity. So they do.

It's quite striking how visibly slower the pace of life can be. Just watch the locals walking along the street. No. Dawdling along the street.

It's English, except it's Thai.

An American described sepak takraw as "the sport that's soccer, except it's volleyball." Something similar could be said of the language spoken by the guides at the Jim Thompson House. It's English, except it's Thai. The words and sentences were from English, but spoken to the rhythm and intonation of a tonal language with isolating tendencies. It certainly didn't sound like English. 
Notwithstanding, the guide's English was actually quite good. The place itself was a most elegantly-appointed house museum off an otherwise nondescriptly dusty soi. It was built by a farang, and most of the visitors today appear to be farang. Whatever was I doing there.

In a Nutshell

Progress is overrated. I choose serenity.