Pug-Ugly 1: The Man from Nakhon Nowhere

He’s crawling towards me. Not so much crawling as slithering like a slovenly slug trying to make its way back into a Spanish onion patch. He’s moving so slowly it’s scarcely definable. It must take years to master the technique. But this guy has been at it for years and he’s turned it into fine art.

It’s a hot day so the pavement must be packing 32 degrees C. of heat. He has to be attracting ants, but not cockroaches or rats. Here in Bangkok, rats and cockroaches, ever present and the world’s fastest improving species, are so spoiled for choice they don’t even try to bite lumps out of unwashed human beings crawling along pavements.

With the rim of his plastic begging beaker clamped between his teeth he’s pug-ugly, not a pretty site even to an old admirer like me. Though he’s not as filthy as the matt-black man of Mumbai – see a previous blog – you wouldn’t invite him to tea. Well, not until you’d soaked him in a tub you didn’t intend to use again; scraped him with a sharp, wallpaper removing tool and had him disinfected with Agent Orange.

I recognise him instantly. “Nakhon Shakhon Straphon,” I cry (he was named after his fabled birthplace), “what in the name of an abandoned iconic image from Thailand’s North East are you doing begging on the streets of Bangkok?” The last time I saw him he was working a market in Ubon Rachathani while I was discovering the Emerald Triangle for posterity. He’s impressed that I remember him.

Without spilling a single baht from the beaker he gently rolls over and over until he’s close to the edge of the pavement. “Take the weight off your old legs,” he advises and extols me to sit with my feet in the gutter. As this is Ploenchit Road in downtown Bangkok and jammed to buggery with six lanes of traffic that the authorities shelter from the sun with a Skytrain, I decline. Plus 99% of Bangkok gutter space is occupied by tens of thousands of two-wheelers, and a good place to lose your toes. Is this his intent?

Bending down I pat him on his left arm, the one that doesn’t sport a malformed stump, and invite him to tell me where it started to go wrong. He knows exactly when he began suffering for his art.

“I was five years old when my dad decided that I was the one who would become afflicted with amputations. He was a retired agriculturalist and depression about the old country – we’re originally from Laos - turned him into a rum and amphetamine man. We always needed extra money. My uncle was forced to pawn our last buffalo to pay off debt collectors and we were desperate. He held me down while dad chopped off my lower arm. He did a damn fine job; clean as a whistle and I didn’t feel a thing until I regained consciousness. I remember it throbbing.

“I worked as a one-armed child beggar until I was eight. I was a good-looking kid with a very sad face. Mum used to sit with me in her arms just outside the bus station. For three years we did all right. Then, well, I suppose I lost my poor, innocent, deformed, suffering child-appeal and not enough baht dropped into her cup. We went home with it empty one night and dad lost his rag. This time he chopped off both my feet. Unfortunately he got carried away and I nearly lost my right leg up to my knee. But he'd put us back on track.” He pulled up his ragged trouser leg to show me. He had not exaggerated.

“So why Bangkok?” I asked. “It must have been nicer relaxing on the banks of, say, the Mun River in Ubon” (where we first met) “on your day off.”

“Er, yes it must have been. But as I got older things started to change in Thailand. I found out, for instance, that the government had created the Middle Class; that they were greedy, prone to achieve elite status, yet still had guilty consciences. Well, people like that only come along once in a begging lifetime.

“There was none of their ilk in Ubon so I travelled the Asian Highway looking for them. Eventually I hit the Burmese border at Mae Sot. It’s bad up there, by the way. Fleeing Karen tribesmen; battered and blood stained Burmese monks and poverty-stricken idealists trying to bring down the Burmese junta, all trying to keep as much distance as possible between themselves and the wrath of the Burmese army. Our politician-businessmen don’t help. They suspect that activists have information about illegal dealings with the Burmese authorities; about felling the few remaining hardwood trees and gem trading on behalf of the Thai army, for instance, plus the drugs.

“But there was no money about. Most people up there are worse off than me. So in my quest to find our elusive Middle Class I headed south. Bingo! They’re all here in Bangkok.”

“And here you are. How’s it going, Nakhon?”

“Really well. Take this Bangkok road. It’s not paved with gold but these pavements are a bonus. Pothole free and lovely to crawl along, they’re especially made for tourists visiting the shopping malls. When they see me they can’t believe their eyes. They think they’re back in India and usually cough up. But my theory was right and I get most of my money from the Thai Middle Class. Stuck in traffic jams for the weekend they hop out of their SUVs and throw their change into my beaker. It makes them feel much better about themselves. To my way of thinking I’m involved in a form of social work, which just happens to be very profitable.

“In order to make merit I expanded and now have a syndicate of crippled beggars. We’re a bit like your Protestants used to be. It’s all about the work ethic. We beg from dawn to about nine at night and our turnover runs into thousands of baht per day. Now that my folks have drunk themselves to death, 60% of all revenue is mine. I pay a tuk-tuk driver working the same shift to drop me off and pick we up and, if he has time, he brings me a bowl of fried rice with pork, garlic and Holy Basil. He’s religious and becoming Middle Class. He thinks this charity work-stuff helps him to make merit – you know about ‘merit’, the Buddhist thing?” I nodded, “By this time next year he’ll be doing it for free.

“Each morning I drop off an envelope at the local cop-shop and they never bother me or any other member of my syndicate. Got it sorted.” With that he gives me the famous Thai smile. If he had all his teeth it would look great set against his blackened and scabrous face. “Guess what? I’ve opened a bank account. Saving money at last. But I could use, I mean employ, more cripples.” As I edge further away from the gutter I say,

“Well done, Khun (Mr) Nakhon! What are you going to do with your new-found wealth? Buy some titanium prosthetic legs?”

“Not likely. I’m Middle Class now and can’t go back. I’ve got an iPhone, a flat-screen plasma telly in my hut and I’m saving for a Range Rover.” He sighs. “You may not understand this but solidarity with the syndicate is important. I can’t just walk away from them.”

“Will your Range Rover have tinted windows?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t be seen dead in a car without tinted windows. As soon as I take delivery I’ll drive straight to Nakhon Nowhere to prove to my old chums what a great country we Thais have created.”

Even though it’s against all my principles I drop a few baht in his cup before heading for the nearest bar.

Nothing could be finer...

“…than to be (on a beach) in Kata Yai-na in the mor-or-or-ning.” The words in the real song refer to the twin States of Carolina and rather like the way a Texan lady-friend used to massage shit into sh-i-i-et, it’s nice way of doubling the syllable content. And why not? It’s a free country.

But I’m not in America. I’m on the holiday island of Phuket in Thailand and Kata Yai is my nearest beach. Although it has a reputation for sustaining a freewheeling business culture Thailand isn’t quite such a free country. Take, for example the 5th of December 2009, the King of Thailand’s 82nd birthday, a time to celebrate. TV images focused on Bangkok, a sea of unpolluted patriotism. Love and support for His Majesty is genuine and far-reaching: as were restrictions on what everybody else should be, or not be, doing.

One thing we holidaying foreigners on Phuket weren’t doing was raising a glass to toast His Majesty’s long life and to wish him better health than he has enjoyed recently. Millions of thirsty tourists were left wondering how a royal birthday could thwart a Right Royal Thirst-day. The restrictions affected the sale of alcohol and many tourists were shocked to find that the convivial watering hole they’d just discovered was shuttered up, as much in the dark as they themselves. Some may have noted that the restrictions resembled western Puritanism in its nay-nay days of yester-yore.

I walked to an outside bar near where I’m staying, a bar where conviviality is plentiful. In the gloom sat three waitresses eating and chatting at the table nearest the road. Instead of the usual smiles and shouts of welcome one rose slowly. ‘Cannot serve beer. It is our King’s birthday,’ she said. ‘Very sorry.’ Seeing tears rolling down my cheeks she cocked her head to one side and asked, ‘You think Thais are crazy?’ ‘Not crazy,’ I blubbed, ‘but some of us foreigners think birthdays should be celebrated with a drink or two. Never mind. Let’s drink to the King tomorrow,’ and I walked home to begin a sleepless night.

I suspect this mark of respect for His Majesty has a negative effect on the micro-economy, the bit of that millions of Thais depend on. The reward for working at the sharp end of Thailand’s service sector ranges from small to abysmal and on the 5th of December many wouldn’t have earned the extra money they often send home to their families. Meanwhile, the tourists wandered around baffled. Thailand’s tourist industry has taken a few knocks recently (there may be more to come) and in my opinion, restricting the sale of alcohol on the King’s birthday didn’t help.

Sometime the following afternoon I (finally) awoke. Feeling unusually well I took a high tea of muesli, coconut flavoured yogurt and a sweet Thai banana. Then I went to the northern tip of Kata’s crescent-shaped beach, Kata Yai to paddle in the off-turquoise shallows - my very favourite leisure pastime – and that was when I reflected that in the twenty-odd years of visiting Thailand quite a few things have not yet changed for the better.

My apartment – in a new development – has regular power cuts and water-pressure glitches that turn the supply the colour of Mekong river mud. Decrepit diesel-powered delivery trucks make a constant racket and belch out fumes that rise up to my balcony. Tuk-tuk drivers encourage ambling tourists to jump aside for their own safety. Dogs that no one seems to own chase motorbikes randomly and howl through hot and lonely nights.

There’s no local bus service between beaches and places of interest and the public service from Kata to Phuket Town is unnecessarily exciting. These half-open sided cattle trucks – they are not buses - wouldn’t look out of place in Afghanistan. Driven by Kamikazi-type drivers with misplaced panache they struggle up steep hills and creak as they round twisty bends. Worse, the last truck is safely parked up before it gets dark. Apparently this situation won’t get any better until the ‘tuk-tuk Mafia’ give a proposed bus service their blessing. Don’t watch this space.

And so on, and that’s just the tip of the melting Thai iceberg. But it’s treated as minor stuff by most tourists here and I suppose it is as they sit on the beach, cold beer to hand, awaiting yet another magnificent sunset.

Something has changed: the tourists themselves. As Thailand’s developers follow the Spanish model by building dozens of up-market apartments and resort hotels without planning permission; ripping out and scarring delightfully wooded hills in the process without improving the infrastructure, they merely imitate western corporate venality that is wrapped in the bundle labelled ‘profitable progress’. So one can expect to encounter up-market tourists? No. They’re tucked-up – pun intended – in their up-market resorts paying whacky races prices to international corporations who profit from tax breaks and a plentiful supply of cheap labour.

Like Lehman Brothers, some will fail for the same greedy reasons, even as they encourage their (entrapped) guests to contribute absolutely zilch to the micro-economy. Give me a black flag…

Then there are the down-market tourists who, whenever they’re allowed to, support the micro-economy massively. Best exemplified by working-class heroes and heroines in shorts and singlets (as we used to call vests without sleeves) you encounter them on the ‘buses’. Or as they stumble along pulverised pavements or, when pavements suddenly disappear and they are forced onto scary, potholed roads in flip-flops. Sporting colourful tattoos I fear for them, for I am unsure that they know where they really tread.

(I also have a bad feeling about colourful tattoos. Before I’m passed on to the great massage parlour On High, they may be as commonplace as female genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa, and twice as distasteful.)

You see, Thai governments come and go but they don’t change one iota. The latest may or may not be as corrupt or useless as some of the others, but it has a reputation for being weak, and weak governments create vacuums for powerful institutions to step into. This government spends a lot of time looking over its shoulder in fear, fear of the return of the last but one Prime Minster, a convicted corporate-type criminal who seems to have modelled himself on Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi. (He’s the pouting Mussolini-clone and as distasteful a model as you can copy.) Having created a vacuum by leaving the country the Thai-clone was ejected from office during the latest military coup. They’ve had 20-odd coups since the end of the World War II.

But it’s not just the government who are afraid of him. Many Thais fear that with help from super influential friends who they regard as enemies of Thailand, he will reinstall himself as pocket dictator. So the poor health of the King is of great concern. The succession may not go smoothly and Thailand may find itself in the middle of some sort of revolution.

All the baffled tourists on whom Thailand depends heavily will dislike this as much as they dislike disrupted flights because of closed airports, dry royal birthdays, pulverised pavements, scary roads and being ripped off and threatened by ‘tuk-tuk Mafias’. But, as ever, the upmarket tourists know what’s going on and none of this is a problem - for them. They don’t ‘do’ hazardous short journeys on pot-holed roads and they don’t get stuck in foreign airports. If, when or even before the sh-i-i-et hits the fan, they’ll be gone in puffs of jet-smoke: along with the speculators – sorry, investors – and despoilers - sorry, developers.

But the down-market tourists may not know what’s going on and when they realise it’s time to flee the scene they might find themselves paying to be ferried to airports by rapacious transport operatives escorted by tanks. Tanks? Why not? ‘They’ say that the Thai army – and institutions in Thailand don’t come any more powerful than the Thai army – are sure to have business interests in the transport sector, as do the police.

Upon arrival at one of Bangkok’s two international airports – one is surplus to requirements - and assuming at least one of them is open, they’ll be left to sweat it out in hot and crowded lounges as at least one airport suffers a prolonged power cut. Er, an international airport surplus to requirements? Surely not! Oh yes. The Thais might not be able to lay and maintain a moderately inexpensive pavement, nor provide a decent bus service between resorts and towns on a major tourist destination like Phuket, but they have no problem building spare and ruinously expensive international airports.

But what a country for both up and down-market tourists! The food is still great and even if the beer is sometimes more expensive than mock-Irish pubs in Paris, the choice of copy-brand products is as plentiful as ever, together with boxes of (generic?) Viagra sold alongside them. (No. I did not.) The seas are still turquoise, warmed by weather that’s as hot as a four bar electric fire. Now why am I here?

So Carolina, the song, came into my head and I substituted Kata Yai. As I sang I cocked my head to one side and heard a lonely old seadog start to howl. Obviously I’d gone a syllable too far. And shit might be shi-i-i-et but I definitely prefer Thailand to Texas.