Category: Asia

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Not India

Ayutthaya, Thailand

An important fact about Thailand is that it is not India.

My first travel abroad was to India, and it’s the only place (well, plus Nepal) where I’ve done extended backpacking. I now realize that the Indian experience is where a lot of my travel apprehension is coming from.

Here’s an example. I’ve spent two days riding a rented bike all over Ayutthaya, one of the most famous and popular tourist spots in the country. Not once has a beggar approached me, and the most aggressive selling I’ve encountered came from a woman who waved some postcards at me. When I tried to buy a hat in front of the temple, the woman selling it quoted the price as a reasonable B200, and I sort of weakly attempted to haggle before paying full price. The prices for entry to monuments are clearly marked, and that’s what you pay.

None of this is true in India, or at least it wasn’t when I was there. If Ayutthaya were in India, each monument would have an army of aggressive beggars out front — children, cripples, old women — and an army of tuk-tuk drivers chasing after you, and a bunch of guides who keep trying to follow you around and get you to pay for their services. The entry price would be marked as, say, 200 rupees, and the guy would insist that the sign is out of date and you need to pay 500. And buying a hat? It would have gone like this:

Merchant: How much you like?

Me: No, just tell me a price.

Merchant: Anything you want.

Me: OK, thirty rupees?

Merchant: What! How can you say that! No, no! What talking about, thirty rupees?

Me: So how much then?

Merchant: You say good price.

Eventually the guy would either name an absurd price, or I’d just give up and walk away, feeling like we’d just had some kind of uncomfortable argument. The walking away might or might not bring the price down to something reasonable. There would be little chance that I could just buy a hat at a fair price without a whole psychodrama and a high risk of failure.

Thailand just isn’t like India that way. It’s not assaultive or confrontational. In fact, Thais seem to shy away from confrontation. They are polite. They don’t honk their horns, an oddity in Asia. They let me merge with traffic pretty easily on a bicycle. They take no for an answer. When I asked about a bus to Lopburi at my hotel, the manager said I should just take the train — there wasn’t even a thought about making the extra dollar by booking me on something I didn’t need.

I mentioned to my UN friend that I hadn’t yet worked out, in my few days in Bangkok, what drives Thai people, what motivates them. She said what drives them is sanook, a Thai word meaning something like fun or the good life. There’s maybe a Southern European quality to Thais that contrasts with the Northern European qualities of the more driven Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese, those cultures that absorbed Confucianism as an ethos. I think in the long run that I prefer life among the Confucians — I like the energy and ambition — but it’s comfortable here, and easy. It might be less so in some of the other countries of the region, or in other parts of Thailand. We will see. But so far, Thais have been kind and friendly and easygoing, and it’s a welcome relief from what I was braced to expect.

Scattered observations

If we assume that my trip to Southeast Asia will last 200 days — a big if — then already I’m about 6% done. I have been to two places, Bangkok and Ayutthaya. At my current rate, I would see maybe 40 places in all of my travel. Is that a lot? Not enough? I’ll probably pick up the pace a bit at times, but also probably wash out and stay for a while in other spots.

In Thailand, there’s a belief that when you build a house, you disturb the spirits that were living on the land, so you have to build a spirit house and each day give flower garlands and food to the spirits who live there. The spirit house shouldn’t fall within the shadow of the main house. You see these spirit houses everywhere, including one with a cross and a Virgin Mary statue at the ruins of the old Portuguese cathedral in Ayutthaya.

The Thai word for five is “hah,” similar to the Korean “o”. When Thais want to show that they’re laughing in a chat or a Facebook comment, they write “555.”

Thais drink root beer, or at least they sell the stuff here. A&W. I hear they have it in Indonesia too. If you order a soda in a cafe, you order by color, not flavor: red, orange, green. No one seems to know what green is.

Thais eat with a fork and spoon: fork in the left hand, used roughly how we might use a butter knife, spoon in the right hand as the eating utensil. Chopsticks come with noodles.

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Convergences

Ayutthaya, Thailand

I’ve arrived at Tony’s Place Bed and Breakfast in Ayutthaya, charming guesthouse in a sprawling house full of teakwood touches and Thai decor. I suppose it might have been trickier to get here had not one of my new Thai friends messaged me this morning to ask if I needed a ride to Victory Monument, where the vans for Ayutthaya depart, and then decided as we were driving that we might as well go all the way to Ayutthaya together and have dinner. I’d originally booked just two nights here, but it took me all of an hour to decide to add two more. Already I feel worlds away from the jittery madness of Bangkok and Sukhumvit. This feels like a vacation.

UN connections

In other news, I had lunch today with Heike Alefsen, Senior Regional Human Rights Adviser, United Nations Development Group Asia-Pacific Secretariat, whom I met at the Halloween party at my hotel in Bangkok. It turns out Heike once worked under Kang Kyung-wha, an extraordinary woman who stood out as one of the most impressive and formidable of the many excellent diplomats I worked with at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations. I love these kinds of surprising convergences! Lunch was a delight, and I learned a great deal about Thailand and the region.

(We ate at a fancy buffet in Sukhumvit called Crave. There was dragonfruit.)

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A Week in Bangkok

Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok is overwhelming.

Bangkok is like every Asian megacity I’ve ever been to, thrown into a blender that goes to eleven: tuk-tuks, touts, heat, shopping malls, temples, food stalls, traffic, backpacker districts, vast outdoor markets, crumbling old buildings. Hedonism, chaos, hustle.

I’m not going to attempt to explain Bangkok to you. Not on my sixth day. If you’ve been here, you have your own impression of the place, and if you haven’t, you still probably know that it’s full of temples and sex. The Internet is full of very good descriptions of both.

Instead, I’ll update you on how I’m doing and where I’m headed.

A week in Bangkok

I’ve been in Asia for pretty much exactly six days now, which isn’t long enough for that first phase of jet lag and emotional fragility to have passed. In that very short time, I’ve gone on several dates, attended a Halloween party full of expats and a language-exchange Meetup full of travelers, visited an impossible number of temples, gotten sunburned and dehydrated, eaten street food in Chinatown, gotten a massage (the real kind), and occasionally slept a little. I’ve been fortunate to connect as well with some locals.

I have a mild cold.

I’ve seen enough of Bangkok to recognize that it is vast and complex, with different sides. Around Sukhumvit is a major tourist district, also popular with expats, with lots of slick restaurants, rooftop bars, posh new malls, hotels, and sprawling areas for Arabs, Koreans, Japanese. There are tuk-tuks and touts everywhere, and the whole thing is more or less a red light district, where if you’re a white male foreigner you will inevitably have clumps of women or ladyboys calling to you to have a massage.

I’ve also been to the old part of the city and toured the vast temple complexes, seen streets lined with shops selling giant gold Buddhas — where do they all go? — ridden the express boats on the river and the SANSAB boats along the canals. The canals, in particular, give Bangkok a unique flavor, both as a means of transport that gets you around the impossible traffic, and as the backdrop for fascinating alleyways that are essentially an extension of people’s homes, especially across the river in the Thonburi district.

Moving on up

So Bangkok has been alternately exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, lonely, social. I’ve been all over the place, basically — geographically and emotionally. I’m hoping things can settle into more of a flow as I move along.

Today I’m moving on to my next destination, Ayutthaya. I’ll go after I have lunch with a woman I met who works for the UN monitoring human rights in the region.

I’m nervous about the actual travel part of travel — more so than I need to be, I know. A Thai friend has offered to drive me to the Victory Monument, where you can pick up minivans to Ayutthaya, and I have a room booked on the other end, and all of my stuff is in my bag, so what’s the problem? I don’t know. I’m just nervous.

Part of it is the ongoing lack of sleep that will pass in a few more days. Part of it is the travel jitters I always get when I go into something unfamiliar. But I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation already. Bangkok is the kind of city where I push myself too hard to do everything, to keep going, to see what’s around the next corner. I’m hoping Ayutthaya will be a mellower place where I can spend a day or two doing nothing and not worrying about it. I need to remember, too, that I’m going to be at this for quite a while. I need to pace myself. Six months is a long time, and I’m only six days in.

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Helping Resettled North Koreans to Succeed

I am raising funds for Liberty in North Korea’s empowerment programs. These programs are a lifeline to North Koreans who have escaped their oppressive regime, but now need to make a new life on the outside. They don’t have the networks of family and friends that we take for granted — they left those things behind.

But we can help. I am hoping to raise $1000 by the time I leave for Asia on October 28. (You won’t see my donation because I already have a standing commitment to Liberty in North Korea’s general fund.)

Please donate. You can make a difference on one of the world’s toughest issues!

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Thesis

I have, at long last, posted my master’s thesis online. Called Swiss Gods Don’t Like Rice Cake, it tells the story of how Korean shamanism has begun to incorporate non-Koreans as shamans. You can find it here.

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End-of-term Speech

Today I delivered a short speech in Korean as part of the closing ceremony for my monthlong Korean language program at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, on what has turned out to be my speaking tour of Asia. The speech was a hit with the teachers and staff, as well as with my classmates, all of whom were amused by how much of our new grammar I managed to work in.

As for the lower-level students, they were just confused — as I was confused by the opening speech by, well, someone — not sure who — who spoke in rapid, low-toned Korean for several minutes. It’s true what Psy said: “뛰는 놈 그 위에 나는 놈” (“Wherever there’s a running man, there’s a flying man above,” a proverb that more or less means that no matter how good you are at something, there’s always someone better). But I suppose I could also make the claim now that “Baby baby 나는 뭘 좀 아는 놈” (“I’m a guy who knows a little something”).

Below you can find the text of the speech in full, errors and all. (I assume there are errors.) Have fun running it through Google Translate, which makes a hash of what I intended to say, but which might actually capture the muddled flavor of my Korean.

안녕하십니까 여러분. 나는 미국에서 온 조쉬입니다.

벌써 한 달 진났습니다. 레벨 테스트를 봤습니다. 친절한 선생님을 만났습니다. 문법을 많이 배웠습니다. 발표 했습니다. 한 달 동안 우리 다 열심히 공부했습니다.

자, 사실에 보통 열심히 공부하지만 가끔도 궁부하는 동 마는 동 하면서 열심히 공부 한 적 했습니다. 어차피 한국어를 조금 배울 수 밖에 없다고 생각합니다.

그렇게 공부 할 만 했습니다. 하지만 공부 한 김에 더 중요한 것 교실 밖에 했습니다. 외데에 오면 세상을 만나다더니 한 달 후에 사실이라고 압니다. 일본, 러시아, 대만, 미국, 프랑스, 스페인, 영국, 독일 등 친구를 만들었습니다. 함게 같이 전통 음악 치고 Kpop 춤 추고 빳빙수 너무 많이 먹었습니다. 정말 한국 문화를 많이 즐거웠습니다.

우리 새로운 친구들을 그리울 겁니다. 하지만 너무 슬플 리가 없습니다. 세상에 어딘가 외대 친구가 만나면 기분이 좋겠습니다. 그리고 또 다시 한국에서 만나기 바랍니다.

감사합니다.

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Hitting the News in Vietnam

With the help of education entrepreneur Catherine Yen Pham, I have now made the Vietnamese news. Two articles have come out so far — one in Young Style, another in Family Life — and I’ve been told more are on the way.

The articles are about the talk I gave in Ho Chi Minh City about Jewish traditions of education. Catherine and I spoke to an audience of about 120 people, plus press, for several hours, including an extended Q&A session. I was amazed at how interested people were, how hungry they were for new ideas about how they can best raise their children. They want to do better. Many of them were taking notes. A lot of Asians, Vietnamese included, are convinced that Jews are smart, good with money, rich, powerful, and maybe slightly magical. I wanted to share with them some good points from Jewish culture, while at the same time puncturing some of the myths.

It’s an irony for me that after years of focusing on Korea, and pretty much an adult lifetime of distancing myself from Judaism, or at least Orthodox Judaism, I am now on my way to becoming an expert on Judaism in Vietnam. Catherine and I have begun work on a book, and it would also be pretty ironic if my first book were to be in Vietnamese — and about Judaism. But life is funny that way.

Identity and geography

When I was a baby, my parents began to worry about my Jewish identity. They’d grown up in New York, where everyone they knew was Jewish, but how would I know what it meant to be Jewish as I grew up in Marin County, California? That’s what first drew them toward greater involvement with first Reform Judaism, and then the Orthodox Judaism that has become a core part of their lives.

I sort of reverse-solved the problem my parents had raised by moving right back to New York, where I could have almost no religious involvement with Judaism and still be Jewish without having to think about it. In New York, there are Jews all around me. We share a culture. No need for a whole lot of fancy stuff to get the point across.

But I have found that at the various points in my life when I’ve been away from New York, and especially in Asia, identifying as Jewish has become more important and more interesting. Before I left on my current trip to Vietnam and Korea, I got myself a Jewish star to wear around my neck, and I’ve had several occasions where the easiest way to explain who and what I am was to pull it out and show it. Jewish culture — and, yes, the Jewish religion I don’t really believe in — are a core part of who I am.

Jewish wisdom

In being asked to speak about Jewish values, I’ve had to take a close look at my own values. After all, I’m not about to begin espousing a set of ideas that I don’t agree with. I’ve looked to find where what I believe aligns with Jewish traditions, and to find ways of presenting these ideas to an audience that doesn’t know the first thing about Judaism.

It turns out — not a big surprise, really — that there’s a lot in Judaism that I agree with and am proud to be able to share: the Jewish concern with ethics and charity, the Jewish passion for questioning and curiosity, Jewish humor, the Jewish tendency to be able to hold multiple opinions at once. And despite my frustrations with it along the way, it looks like all those years of Jewish education actually taught me something useful.

Maybe this isn’t quite what my parents were after, but the son they raises is certainly aware of his Jewish identity.

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The Language School Bubble

When you go to a Korean-language immersion program, there are certain illusions to which you’re likely to fall prey, especially if you’re at something of an advanced level.

First, you might start to think that what you’re doing is normal. After all, everyone around you has also devoted years to learning your target language. You can lose sight of how uncommon it is — how downright weird it is — to spend hours upon hours trying to parse and retain this obscure and difficult language. And you can forget that not all people from Japan, England, Spain, France, Taiwan, and China have an interest in Korea, or even know where it is. You start to think that everyone everywhere cares who EXO is.

Second, you might come to believe that you’re actually pretty good at Korean. I’ve been hanging out with a group of Japanese women, communicating almost entirely in Korean, and we’ve been able to have a lot of fun and even some intelligent conversations about things like religion. But it’s an illusion created by the fact that we’re all at the same level: we know more or less the same grammar and vocabulary, so we don’t tend to use stuff that’s way beyond what our counterparts can understand.

But as soon as I get into a conversation with actual Koreans, I’m in trouble — especially if they’re talking to each other rather than just to me. I catch words, sentence endings here and there. I get general ideas, maybe, but miss important key points, like that the entire conversation was about someone’s boyfriend rather than about not having a boyfriend. In other words, I have no idea what’s going on most of the time, but now speak Korean well enough that I feel like I should be paying attention anyway.

Some of this is the midpoint letdown — I’m two weeks in, with two weeks left to go, and feeling frustrated by all the short trips I’ve had to Seoul these past few years, when what I really want is to live here, to settle in, to be able to commit myself to an extended period of learning. Two weeks is such a tiny span, but I feel like I’ve learned an enormous amount, met interesting people, started conversations that I want to continue. But I’ll be leaving again in two weeks. What I need here is time.

I’m excited for my upcoming travel in Southeast Asia, and I have no intention of giving that up. But this visit to Seoul has reaffirmed my desire to be here and stay here. And I know that when I come to stay, I will finally get an experience that right now feels tantalizingly just out of reach.