I have disabled comments on this post. It’s not that I don’t welcome them, its because I have written this blog in two parts, and I’d like people to see the second part before commenting.
Part One, which started out to be a couple of background paragraphs to the piece I wanted to write, turned into an essay on it’s own.
What I wanted to write about isn’t in part 1 — it’s in part 2. But having pounded out 2,800 words of background, I don’t think I can launch into the main part of my blog without completely burying the message. So please bear with me. Hold your comments until the end, then you can fire away with abandon.
Introduction
Let me say upfront that I feel completely unqualified to write the blog I’m writing. I lack a lot of the solid factual knowledge that comes from researching a subject you want to write about.
I’m not a journalist and I don’t pretend to be. I won’t be giving you historical perspectives or clear social explanations that you’d expect from a coherent, well-researched and well thought-out article in a magazine or newspaper.
Rather, I’m offering some observations, opinions, guesses and thoughts about a subject that I find interesting but about which I have only the groping understanding of the blind man who encounters and elephant for the first time.
You probably know the story: several blind men walking togher encounter an elephant. Each feels a different part of the elephant and they fall into an argument about what they’ve encountered. The fellow feeling the leg says it’s a tree. The guy touching the tusk argues that its a spear. The man who holds the trunk says it’s a large snake. The guy touching the ear says that its a banana tree or whatever. You get the idea.
In the absense of clear sight of the whole, perceptions are apt to be skewed.
I encounter Thailand like the blind men. I don’t really see it for what it is. I encounter it in a million small ways, and I understand it imperfectly. As I touch it more and more, moving — say — from the leg to the tusk to the trunk, I may have a clearer understanding of what I’m seeing or I may simply become more confused about the nature of the beast.
Today I want to offer some ideas about an aspect of Thailand that I don’t completely understand, and present it with the caveat that I am only describing my own blind gropings on the matter — describing my own imperfect understanding of a beast that is so large and unknown that, for the moment at least, it’s beyond my comprehension.
No doubt, if I read some scholarly work on the subject my eyes would be “opened” and I would suddenly see and understand. To date, I haven’t read such work, and I remain blind.
Pride and Predjudice
Earlier this week, on a different blog site, I read this item in the comments section:
seems like the vast majority of western men in thailand have women from low end of thai society. am told by thai men they do not find most of these these women attractive from either physical or intellectual(LOL) perspective.
If you don’t live in Thailand you may not really know what this guy is talking about, or you may make some probably incorrect assumptions about what he is referring to, so I’d like to take a moment to be very specific.
The “wome from [the] low end of [T]hai society” that he is talking about are women from Isaan.
He isn’t referring specifically to bar girls, hookers, poor women or any other classification of women. Rather he is referring to women from a specific region of Thailand known as Isaan, located in the Northeastern section of the country.
For a lot of reasons that are beyond the scope of my discussion, western men in Thailand who end up in relationships with Thai women tend to wind up with a disproportionately large number of women from Isaan. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that among relationships between a foreign man and a Thai woman, the instances where the woman ISN’T from Isaan are very much the minority. In other words, it’s true; most of the mixed couples here involve a woman from Isaan.
What I want to focus on though isn’t an exploration of western men and Isaan women, except as it might be incidental to my main discussion. Rather, I’d like to discuss the other ideas presented by this commenter.
To wit:
- that Isaan women are the “low end” of Thai society
- that Thai men don’t find these women attractive either physically or intellectually
- the implication that Isaan people are inferior to Thais
- and by extension, the idea that people from Isaan are not really “Thai” people at all
I’d like to start with the last point.
Are the people from Isaan Thai or not?
In one sense it sounds a silly question. Isaan is probably the largest region of Thailand. It’s like asking if all the southerners from Viginia to Texas are Americans or not. Or perhaps whether the people of the Northern Territory are ‘real’ Australians.
When I first arrived here I never imagined that this question of “Thai-ness” could be seriously put forward, but after three years of living here I think it’s a legitimate question.
And, here are some of my ideas on that question gleaned from talking to lots and lots of Thai people.
I think that people from Bangkok — by which I mean people born and raised in Bangkok — see Isaan people as different. Second-cousins who dine at the house on Thanksgiving but are not particularly welcome or acknowledged as part of the family.
Isaan seems to be a region of Thailand that is only reluctantly seen as being part of the country. In some ways, in their heart of hearts, I think Bangkokians wouldn’t much mind if Isaan could somehow be partitioned off and separated from the “real” Thailand without an economic loss to the Thailand that remains.
In fact there is a real feeling among Thais that there are distinct regions of the country. Should it be cut into 4 or 6 or 10 parts? I’m not sure, but let me try just four, which you can identify by looking at the map at the top of the post.
Four Regions of Thailand
There is the north; the land of natural beauty and beautiful women. The mountains of Chaing Mai and Chiang Rai and their tall fair-skinned beauties. Of course, it’s also home to the hill tribes, including the long necked people like the Karen. Without wanting to complicate this blog-discussion unnecessarily, the hill tribe people get much the same treatment from Bangkokians as the people of Isaan; in other words, they aren’t seen as ‘real’ Thai people, but as other-world intruders who are tolerated.
There is the south; the land torn by religous strife. Thais are proud of the beauty of the tropical islands of the south, but Bangkok residents are dismayed by the ongoing violence there. There is an actual seperatist movement in the three southernmost provinces driven by Muslims who prefer not to be governed by the Bhuddist-linked government of Thailand. It’s a vexing problem in which Bangkok residents apportion blame for the problem between the Muslim activists/terrorists and the government, but they continue to embrace the region as part of the ‘true’ Thailand.
Of course, central Thailand is focused on Bangkok. In terms of population, wealth, political power and sheer mass it is like the sun in the solar system. It is the center around which everything revolves, but is also completely different in nature from all that surrounds it. At times my view is that it is Bangkok itself that is not the ‘true’ Thailand anymore.
And finally there is Isaan. The red-haired child of Thailand. Filled with farmers who are the poorest in the land, the darkest skinned, the least educated. What is Isaan to the Thais of Bangkok except an embarrassment and a drain of resources?
The view of Isaan
Bangkok Thais, when they speak of their Isaan brothers (or is it cousins?) do so with contempt. Drunks. No self respect. Poor, uneducated farmers who sell their daughters willingly into prostitution. Lazy scoundrels who live off the hard work and sweat of true Thais.
To hear Bangkokians discuss Isaan people in unguarded moments is to be reminded of a wife berating her husband for continuing to support and defend his drunken, wife beating and nearly homeless brother. The black-sheep. The in-law who should never have been.
But what of the Isaan people themselves?
Are they simply victims of some sort of racial predjudice and bigotry that seeks to separate them because they are poor?
Isaan people themselves believe that they are different — unique. They have their own dialect, their own food, music and clothing. They have a way of life that they see as different.
But do they see themselves as a sub-set of Thailand, or as something altogether different and apart?
After three years here, I think the answer is the latter. I believe that Isaan people live in an uneasy alliance with the rest of Thaialnd, often identifying much more, both ethnically and culturally, with the country of Laos to the east, than with the other provinces of Thailand to the west, north and south.
Growing up in the southern US, I had a strong sense of regional identity. But after the Confederacy had won the War Between the States in the mid-1800’s and rid the world of the scourge of federalism and the traitor Lincoln — after peace was achieved and the coutry restored to a single nation through the bravery of the Southern soldiers and people — we in The South perceived ourselves as real Americans.
As Southerners we could be proud of the multitude of things we had achieved and produced: Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Gumbo, Jack Daniels Whiskey and Harper Lee just to name a few.
Our heritage runs deep, and we are proud of who we are as Southerners, may Bobby Lee rest in peace.
But we never, in my lifetime, have seen ourselves as anything but Americans. I don’t imagine for a moment that any American-born Texan stands by the shores of the Rio Grande and looks longingly across the river wishing in his heart of hearts that his land could be reunited with Mexico.
But in a sense that’s what you get in Isaan.
Many people — in fact most Thais — don’t realize that just over 100 years ago the entire country of Laos was ruled by Bangkok. It was part of the Kingdom of Siam. It was ripped away by French colonial aspirations, when, in the 1890s King Rama 5 ceded all the territory of the Kingdom east of the Khong River to the French and Laos was born as a country.
The river was an easy natural barrier to identify the new country border. Every European colonial power in history made the same sorts of decisions in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere when national borders were re-drawn based on geography rather than social considerations. This has resulted in many countries dividing along religious or cultural lines in the decades or centuries that followed, often resulting in bloody civil wars, genocide and repressive government.
Probably the reason why this hasn’t happened in Thailand is that the country — aside from the three southernmost provinces — is glued together by Theravada Buddhism, which is a stronger glue holding it together than the cultural differences that divide it. In the one place where religion is not the binding force, we actually do suffer daily acts of violence and almost civil war-like conditions.
To get a handle on why the country feels so ‘fractured’ it’s important to have a passing understanding of the history of the region.
A very very very short History of Thailand
In the most general of terms, South East Asia, until about 250 or 300 years ago, lived through almost constant warfare. The entire region was ruled by strong rulers. Whether you called them kings or warlords, the effect was the same. A series of uneasy truces and shifting alliances saw first one kingdom or another rise to power and domnate it’s neighbors for a time, before eventually seeing its power wane and a new city or kingdom rise to dominance.
The countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam, and Burma (Myanmar) did not exist as entities.
Strong Kings extended their power as far as they could, and received tribute from weaker kings and kingdoms. The ground shifted regularly, and at different times across a period of several hundred years the military power (along with the power of civil rule that went with it) shifted to areas which today are known by differenet country names (Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos). Angkor in Cambodia, Luang Prabang in Laos, Ayudhaya in Thailand and many other cities at one time or another were the most powerful in the region.
But none of these was a unified country.
For the Thai people of today, the mid 1600s seems to be a time when a sense of being “Siamese” began to emerge, and there is no doubt that by the mid to late 18th century Siam was an identifiable nation.
But it was a nation cobbled together from Kingdoms which had historically been in conflict. There might have been some sense of nationhood, but there was also a strong devotion to the history of your own little patch of dirt, which called itself a Kingdom, and which at one time or another probably dominated its neighbors, or indeed, even the entire region.
If you want to find someone that Thai people hate — and it’s difficult to stir that kind of passion in Thais — you look to the north to Burma. It’s was back-and-forth for centuries, but the greatest and most recent defeats of Siam were inflicted by the Burmese, and the proudest moments of triumph for most Thais are the battles in which they kicked some ass on the Burmese.
Being Thai clearly means being not-Burmese.
And look to Cambodia (Kampucha to Thai people) and you will find more ancient wound. The Kingdom of Angkor. Thais don’t feel anger towards their eastern neighbor that they do with Burma to the north. In fact, many Thais will talk wistfully of the fact that in the distant past, Angkor and Siam were one peaceful and united Kingdom. They are happy to claim Angkor as their own.
But history makes Cambodia a separate place, and I doubt that there are many Thais who would have it differently.
But Laos. Laos is different.
When the dust settled and the fighting was done. When the Burmese were finally banished and the former power of Ayudhaya was regained and invested on the banks of the Chao Praya river — initially at Thonburi and later Bangkok — Laos was part of the Siamese Kingdom.
In the 1890s, when the French forced Siam to give up Laos in return for the balance of the Kingdom, they cut a culturally homogenous region in half. Laos and Isaan were a large region with a shared culture that was identifiably different to the rest of Siam.
The people looked different. They were darker-skinned, somewhat shorter, with a different language. They ate foods that weren’t eaten elsewhere. They had their own style of dress, and so on.
At the turn of the last century, the people of Isaan and Laos looked longingly over the river at each other, wondering how they had been separated. They saw themselves as being a single unit, with a single culture, and like people everywhere, they believed their culture was superior to their neighbors.
How, exactly, had it come to pass that they were now in different countries just because they were on opposite sides of the river?
What had been the largest region of Siam had now been cut in half. The people of Isaan were now Siamese, while their brothers on the other side of the river were Laotian.
And so…
Like the people of Bangkok, the people of Isaan see themselves as different. They aren’t really “Thai”.
But what they regret isn’t tha they aren’t Bangkokians, they regret the loss of their brothers and sisters, along with the power of their culture and heritage due to the arrogance of the French a century ago.
Isaan people believe in their heads that they have a culture, a language and a way of life that is something to be proud of. But they fear in their hearts that the people of Bangkok are right… that somehow they are less than other people. They live in fear that the culture they hold so dear may be inferior.
They fear it because they hear it all the time.
Isaan is under seige by the “real” Thailand.
