Monks and McDonald’s : Bangkok--Intersection of 2 Worlds
On Silom Road, a thoroughfare of smart shops and big business, the skeleton of a high-rise is draped with a sign proclaiming the birth of 20 stories of new office space.
Construction cranes are a common sight here. In the last few years, a building boom has seized Bangkok, further changing its traditional character and giving the city a multicultural look.
Bangkok has been awaiting today’s scheduled opening of its first McDonald’s. The exact timing has depended in part on the determination of a properly auspicious moment by Buddhist monks.
Elsewhere in the city, stores were marking the holidays of two worlds. In the huge Central Department Store on Ploenchit Road, decorative strings of firecrackers and swooping dragons hung from the ceilings, heralding the onset of the Chinese New Year. Meanwhile, above the notions counter floated a pair of padded, red satin lips--a reminder of the Valentine’s holiday.
A Feast for Eyes, Nose
And Central’s grocery section, a feast for the eyes and nose, was still marketing Christmas candies along with freshly prepared products more familiar in the East--from dried pork to sticky rice in banana leaves.
Bangkok, a sprawling, now vaulting metropolitan area of more than 5 million people in a nation of 50 million, is taking on the look of most other world capitals: high-class hotels crowding the traditional guest houses, and the ubiquitous foreign banks--Chase Manhattan, Standard Chartered and Indosuez Banque--driving the skyline upward.
The city is clearly a player in the economic explosion taking place in the free-wheeling capitalist countries of Southeast Asia. It is a marketplace that draws growing numbers of poor Thai farmers from the countryside, who come in hopes of making a better living in the streets and offices of the capital.
The Real Thailand
Bangkok’s transformation has upset some people here. Go upcountry to see the real Thailand, they say.
One effect of the boom, particularly of Western-style department stores, has been a squeeze on the small shops that once carried the commerce of Bangkok and gave the city a colorful Asian countenance.
“There’s a glut of hotels and condominiums here,” a resident American businessman said. But the department stores are still proliferating and “they are gradually impacting the street vendors and small shops,” he added.
A Thai executive agreed, and said Thais have now accepted one-stop shopping.
“The small shops cannot compete in price,” said Sithikiati Chirathivat, executive vice president for marketing and planning of the Central Group, Thailand’s pioneering department store chain. “My only regret is that the city grew without planning, without zoning,” he said.
Merchants in smaller stores do what they can to stem the tide. A small dress shop offers life memberships for 500 baht (about $20), and gives a 10% discount to members.
Kwandao Ternwisej, 30, sells belts on the sidewalk outside the Big Bell Department Store. The competition has hurt, she said, but she still gets customers who like to bargain rather than pay the fixed prices at Big Bell.
Golden Mount
The more modern-style merchandising has left other aspects of Bangkok little changed. A good place to see both worlds is Wat Sakhet, a Buddhist temple known as the Golden Mount. Once prominent in the flood plain of the capital’s Chao Phraya River, the 250-foot-high temple still provides a vista that makes a visitor from Los Angeles feel at home, in several ways.
The city stretches out below in all directions and various dimensions--the taller structures being the new commercial monuments and the wats, towering spired temples built over the 200 years of Bangkok’s existence. But the picture is smudged by air pollution.
The sightseers include young monks, robed in saffron-colored cloth, who pull from the recesses of their garments the latest in mini-binoculars to scan the city. And climbing the winding stairs to the top of the temple are schoolgirls, hand in hand, wearing blue-skirt and white-blouse uniforms. At the shrine that crowns the mount, they will buy incense and garlands as offerings to the Lord Buddha--kneeling in devotion, their palms pressed together in the prayerful gesture known as the wai .
(A prayer at the Erawan shrine in a hotel district is said to be particularly propitious for players of the national lottery and for couples hoping for the birth of a child).
In the streets and buildings below Wat Sakhet, the impressions of mixing cultures abound.
In a bedside drawer at one of Bangkok’s finest hotels, along with the Bible distributed by Gideons International, is a copy of “The Teaching of Buddha,” published by the Buddhist Promoting Foundation of Tokyo.
Xenophobic Pop
At the Bangkok Velodrome, a concert by the local pop group Carabao is marred by a scuffle between fans and police when the tickets are oversold. Carabao’s latest hit, high on the Bangkok charts, is “Made in Thailand,” an up-tempo, satiric gibe at the government’s campaign to discourage imports.
A recent appearance by the wife of the crown prince drew a pressing crowd and flashing news cameras. But not a word was uttered as she passed with her retinue, an example of the reverence in which the Royal Family is held here. Buckingham Palace would be envious.
On the streets, the impression is one of impromptu democracy. Unlike many capitals of the developing world, Bangkok, though not without poverty, has no massive shantytown slums or exclusive Bel Air-like redoubts of wealth. Instead, the rich, the poor and those between often live side by side.
Along a main road--as the city’s notorious traffic provides plenty of time to note--a run of air-conditioned, first-class shops will be broken here and there by small stores, their fronts open to the sidewalk, selling everyday necessities.
And on the sidewalks themselves, the street vendors set up their carts and umbrellas to peddle snacks and other merchandise to office workers and other passers-by. They are freshly supplied with clothing, fruit and meat (for the adventurous, there are fried grasshoppers) bought at the morning markets. The vendors do a good business: Bangkok is a city of noshers.
A turn from a main street down one of the small lanes opens the residential world of Bangkok. Down these lanes and away from the noise and fumes of the cross-town arteries, quiet courtyards open to the apartments of the middle class and hideaway restaurants.
Along the streets that border the diminishing number of Bangkok’s canals, or klongs, shacks of corrugated metal and other material spring up with newcomers from the countryside. While Western clothing is prevalent elsewhere in the city, the people of the klongside favor the sarong, the men sometimes shirtless and the women in promotional shirts.
Crying in Their Beer
At any level, the action of the city is commerce. Rice, tapioca and silk fabrics are top exports, along with seafood. A market on Sukhumvit Road boasts, “If it swims, we have it.” And if it swims, Thais will eat it--usually laced with spices that bring tears to the eyes and beer to the throat of a newcomer.
Oldtimers say they remember Bangkok as a sleepy fishing port, but while some aspects of Bangkok are laid-back--Westerners most often mention the telephone system, which is improving--there is not much time for sleeping in the bustle of the marketplace.
All the activity, however, has not seemed to have altered the generally placid personality of the Thais. Apart from a bit of bargaining--taxi fares, for instance, must be negotiated--the non-confrontational precepts of Buddhist life have nurtured a somewhat different form of economic animal than might be found on Madison Avenue or Wilshire Boulevard.
Thais, historians and sociologists say, have mastered the art of bending with the wind, a skill they say assured the country’s independence during the colonial squeeze of the last century.
In personal or office relationships, particularly where there is a difference in the level of authority, a variation applies. Rather than directly discuss some unpleasant business, the complainant will tell a third party, who will pass along the report of unhappiness.
This approach to relationships, sociologists say, leads to the impression that Thais are generally serene and happy. They have been dubbed “the smiling people.” Only an expert knows for sure.
There are occasional outbursts. On a recent morning, two young boys were scuffling on a street corner, apparently over a bicycle collision. The confrontation had a Thai trademark. The boys were using both fists and feet, a street-corner example of the the art of kick-fighting.
Savagery of the Wheels
Aggression, or recklessness, can be seen at every stoplight. As cars and buses wait impatiently, squads of motorbikes, some riders barefoot, seep to the front rank. And if there is enough space between the cars--millimeters will do--the bikes are joined at the front by three-wheeled tuk-tuks, the motorized version of the pedicab.
At the hint of a green light, the charge begins. Growling, swerving bikes spread across the available lanes. You strain to hear the bugle call.
There are, however, more gentle visions that strike a newcomer to Bangkok:
A maid shoos a ubiquitous gecko lizard out of a house rather than take a brutal approach. (During a Buddhist religious season, it is said, reverent monks stay in their temples at night to lessen the chance of stepping on some small bug while walking about).
Even the King Serves
A vendor at Wat Po, the temple of the enormous reclining Buddha, sells caged birds. “Buy one and set it free. For good luck,” she said.
The Emerald Buddha, a small, revered figure made in fact of jasper, is seated atop an ornate altar in the spectacular gilded temple adjoining the Grand Palace, the one-time home of Thailand’s kings. Three times a year, at the beginning of the hot, rainy and cool seasons (the latter a relative term in the tropics), the little statue has his costume changed--by the king himself.
Spirit houses, small shrines enclosing both Buddhist and Hindu symbols, adorn most houses and many places of business. Offerings at the shrine--flowers, fruit, a glass of water--bring good luck to the place and its occupants, and a bit of Buddhist merit for some future life to the person making the offering.
Despite the exotic customs, Bangkok holds one big surprise for tourists who may have chased rice around their plates with chopsticks at Thai restaurants in the United States: The Thais use forks and spoons.
