Amazing Thailand
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re out of quarantine, hanging out in a hotel in Bangkok, waiting to get my cast off tomorrow. I. Can’t. Wait.
Amazing Thailand
It was just a little thing. Two 100 baht notes, on the console of the taxi. Six dollars and four cents. Inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things.
We’d gone to our favorite fancy-pants mall (the one with the high-tech Japanese toilets, because in this city, you have to have some criteria for deciding which mall) for lunch. It’s a bit of a production, what with the cast and the wheelchair and no-weight-bearing. Lunch is all the adventure I’m willing to attempt until the cast comes off.
The food court at this particular mall is particularly tourist-friendly, in this, the most-touristed city in the world. It’s clean and stylish; each booth represents a specialty from a different region of Thailand. My favorite is the vegetarian vendor; over the years, I’ve tried almost everything he sells, and have zeroed in on the khao soi. It’s an incendiary noodle soup topped with pickled vegetables and crunchy fried noodles. Utterly addictive. Last winter I ate there so many times the owner started recognizing me.
And now he’s gone. His stall has been totally cleared out. As a matter of fact, we wandered (well, rolled) through the food court, and concluded that at least fifty percent of the stalls are empty.
That food court was the first place Toby took me for lunch, the first time I visited Bangkok in 2015. I know that doesn’t seem like so long ago, but to me, it was an institution, one of my very best memories of this city. Yesterday I was sad not to get my favorite soup for lunch, but even more sad for the nice man who had made it for me so many times before. I wonder where he is, what happened, how is he coping, whether he has found a less-expensive space where he can eke out a living.
Our first hint of the dire economic situation in Bangkok was when we were released from quarantine last Saturday. The bellman who helped with our bags asked if someone was picking us up. We told him we had ordered a car, and he said it was best not to rely on taxis—so many have gone home to the country, he said. I didn’t really process what he was saying, because I was so focused on getting out of quarantine.
Leaving that sad empty food court after lunch the next day, we saw some taxis waiting for customers, so Lee waved one over. The ride back to our hotel was short but slow, fifteen minutes or so, on Bangkok’s notoriously traffic-clogged Sukhumvit Road. The fare was 65 baht ($1.98, at today’s rate). The driver was sitting patiently, waiting for the hotel doorman to bring my wheelchair over, when Lee handed over those two 100 baht notes—more than double the fare—and told him we didn’t need change.
Gratitude, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, is the default attitude here in Thailand, but this was different. It seemed more spontaneous or less formal than the usual wai. Lee and I were both a little stunned, and the dots began to connect in my head (sometimes things have to be really obvious to get my attention).
So now we’re just routinely doubling all taxi fares. It’s nothing to us, but hopefully it helps someone less fortunate.
I’m not sure how the reopening here is going; I’ve been completely self-absorbed, getting through the last few days of this infernal cast on my foot. But the few comments I’ve seen about it on Twitter have been, to put it mildly, mixed. Only time will tell whether it has the hoped-for effect on the economy.
In the last twenty months, Lee and I have managed to keep traveling (albeit differently), and we’ve seen the fallout of the pandemic on a wide range of economies, all over the world. Paris, for instance—another of the world’s most popular tourist destinations in 2019—seems, to my outside eyes, to be surviving in a way that Bangkok is not. France is a much wealthier country, with a much wider, sturdier social safety net. Here in Thailand, Toby tells me that things are even worse outside of the city.
Is this a moment of reckoning for global tourism? Thailand is living proof of the economic damage that happens when people stop traveling. A while back, I read an article about the New Zealand government starting a funding initiative to encourage some tourism-dependent communities to pivot toward other long-term revenue sources. That doesn’t bode well for countries that can’t afford a similar pivot.
But Thailand is also living proof of the environmental damage that accompanies mass tourism. In the last decade, the government has had to close certain beaches and islands to visitors, because the infrastructure can’t handle the demand, resulting in ecosystem damage.
What will happen to all of these tourist destinations when (if?) the people who used to travel don’t come back? I think back to that image, early in the pandemic, of dolphins swimming in Venice’s canals, and then I think about all the shuttered restaurants and souvenir shops we saw there in July—ordinarily the peak of the season in Italy. Obviously, climate change demands that we travel/vacation/explore in more thoughtful, sustainable ways.
I do fear, though, that the transition will be painful, at least for some people.
Take care,
Lisa
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