not being Thai

It started raining long before sunrise this morning, and through those long hours of half-sleep that I suffer when I spend too much time in bed I could hear the constant pounding of rain (fon tok) and the rumble of thunder (faa rawng).  When I finally roused myself around eleven o’clock I found myself huddled under a blanket next to my naked not-so-crazy ex-girlfriend trying to stay warm, and looking out at grey overcast skies.

I slipped out of the bed and into the bathroom for a shower.  One of the features of some Thai rooms (and this is one of them) is that you have to walk outside onto the balcony in order to reach the toilet/shower room.  My not-so-crazy ex-girlfriend wraps up in a towel each time she makes a toilet run, since her balcony is cearly visible from the street and from several other buildings.

For me, I can’t be bothered.  I make the two step journey from bedroom to toilet in all my naked glory.  I figure if anyone actually wants to see my fat naked torso with it’s grey chest hair and bulging stomach then they are welcome to look.  Hell, I’ll sell tickets and stand waggling my dick at them if they’re really that interested.

I started my usual morning rituals — shaving and brushing my teeth, emptying my bowels, etc.  I turned on the shower and realized that, unlike yesterday when the sun was shining and it was hot outside, the water coming out of the shower was cold.  For me, uncomfortably cold.

Now, I have to admit that I have a very low tolerance for cold water.  Most Thais find cold showers “refreshing” and possibly most farang would scoff at what a pussy I am to be whining about bathing in unheated tap water.

But that is exactly where my limit is in being able to adapt to Thai culture.

Ten years ago, when I was living in a four bedroom house with a two car garage & swimming pool and staring out my kitchen window at a lovely fishing bay while I prepared dinner for me and my wife I could never have imagined being happy — much less happier –  living in  single room with an attached toilet.

But I am.

Back then the thought of eating street food on a busy sidewalk in the middle of Bangkok would have seemed … unsanitary.  And the idea of living somewhere without a kitchen for cooking my own food would have offended me.  I love to cook.  But now, I don’t just tolerate street food — I recommend it as not only tasty and cheap, but also healthy and more convenient and economical than cooking for yourself.

Ten years ago the thought of living without a car would have seemed unthinkable.  Today, though I’ve never embraced the Bangkok bus system enthusiastically, I rely on public transport and find it much more efficient and satisfying than driving myself around.  I may never own a car again.  (Incidentally, my father lived his entire life without ever learning how to drive.  I’ve met dozens of Thai people here in Bangkok over the age of 30 who have never driven  car).

But I draw the line at hot water.

I gotta have it.

Bathing in cold water is… unpleasant.

I don’t like it.

So I decided to think about a few other areas where I’m not Thai-like; where I am unlikely to embrace ideas or habits that I associate with my Thai friends.

First is probably my washing machine.  I have an automatic clothes washing machine that I use weekly to clean my clothes.  Almost without exception the Thais that I talk to tell me that using a machine “just isn’t as good as washing by hand”.  And this doesn’t seem to be an economic decision… people who have enough money simply hire a maid to wash their clothes by hand.  Washing machines, they say, don’t get your clothes “really clean”.

A Thai girl once told me that she would wash my clothes for me while I was at work.  I told her that it wasn’t necessary, but she insisted, saying that she would do them by hand so they would be really clean.  I struck what seemed to be the most reasonable compromise I could, saying that if she really wanted to help me by washing my clothes, to please use the washing machine. She reluctantly agreed.

When I got home, my clothes had all been washed, dried, ironed and put away.  I asked if she had used the machine.

Yes.

And were the clothes clean? I asked.

Of course, she said.

Well, see — I told her — the machine does a good job.

Oh no! she told me smiling at her superiority, the clothes are clean because I washed them by hand before putting them into the washing machine.

D’oh!

Another thing I can’t live without is my computer and internet connection.  I actually have two these days; I have a Dell desktop model with a large monitor and a tiny travel notebook computer.  I have to say that without a computer and internet connection I might find life in Thailand intolerable.

But personal computers in Thailand are still something of a luxury.  When I first arrived here five years ago the Thai bar girls I talked to were not interested in having a computer at home.  They saw them as unnecessary and expensive.

Nowadays, with each of them owning a high quality mobile phone, as well as an MP3 or MP4 they are starting to see the benefit of having internet and PC at home for email and chatting.  Nowadays you will probably find that your bar girl would love to have a computer in her home, if she has access to an internet connection.

But even “regular” Thai people — I’m talking accountants or mid-level managers — are likely not to have a computer at home.  They have access to a computer at work and that seems to be enough.

I think that things are changing with Thai people on the computer front — at least in Bangkok — but while many Thais see a computer at home as a luxury, for me it is an absolute necessity.

There is one appliance that is a marginal call for me.  While not an absolute necessity, I find a vacuum cleaner to be a “nice to have” item in my life.  I bought one when I came to Thailand, and I use it nearly every day to clean my room.

Thais, by contrast, are as suspicious of vacuum cleaners as they are of washing machines.  They don’t “really” get the floor clean.  Thais prefer brooms.

Thai house brooms are not the hard corn brooms of my youth, nor are they made with synthetic fibers.  Instead, they are short-handled affairs (the handle is usually made of bamboo) with very long, very soft bristles that spread out like a Chinese fan.

Me, I hate these booms.  They’re too short, forcing me to bend my 6′2″ frame over uncomfortably.

brooms & brushes are sold from mobil carts that are pushed or ridden through the streets

The bristles are too soft to move anything more substantial than dust, and you have to learn a strange flicking motion with your wrist to get anything into the dustpan.

So I’ll stick with my vacuum cleaner.   The only real point of contention it raises for me with Thai girls is when they want to clean my room and they ask me where I keep my broom (mai gwaat).  When I tell them I don’t have one, they are horrified.

Another marginal area is my mattress.

At the moment I have a Thai-style matress on my bed — a very hard mattress that is only marginally softer than sleeping on bricks.   I hate it, and threaten every day to go buy a “proper” matress that will alleviate the aching joints caused by the Asian torture method that is a Thai mattress.

Why haven’t I gotten a new mattress already?  Simple laziness.

But while we’re talking about sleeping, this is one lifestyle issue that separates me from Thai people.

Everyone knows that Thai bargirls love to sleep.  With their lifestyle it’s not hard to understand their propensity to sleep 12 or 14 hours at a stretch, and to supplement that with an early evening nap.

But sleepiness is actually a national trait if my experience has any validity.  I meet a lot of Thai people who are working professionals.  Ask them what they plan to do this weekend and probably the top two answers you will receive are “go shopping” and “sleep”.

I don’t sleep a lot.  I’d say that I average about 6 hours a night and find it hard to sleep longer — when I do it tends to be an uncomfortable half sleep filled with bad dreams and lots of tossing and turning.

My not-so-crazy ex-girlfriend just woke up in the bed beside me as I was typing this.  “Ooh!  One o’clock!” she said when she realized she’d just awakened from an eleven-hour nap.

“Have rain?” she asked me.

It was raining in the morning but now it stopped, I answered.

“You hungry?” she asked (which I took as a sign that she was hungry).

I could eat, I answered.

“My back hurt” she said.  “I not hungry”

When your back hurts you’re not hungry? I asked playfully.

“Have rain not go out eat” she answered, grinning because she understood my silly joke.

Okay, I said.

Apparently surprised that I wasn’t complaining, she offered without prompting, “I cook noodles for you”.

As it happened, I didn’t get my noodles.  Forty-two minutes passed from the time I typed the “cook noodles” sentence and this one.  In those intervening forty minutes two things happened.  My not-so-crazy ex-girlfriend and I had sex again, and the sun came out.

She’s heading off to the shower now, saying that since it’s no longer raining we can go get some lunch soon.

Maybe Pattaya’s not so bad after all.

The ironic thing is that, because the day is basically cool and overcast (as opposed to yesterday’s bright sunshine and heat) she’s likely to think it’s the perfect day to go to the beach (“not get skin black color”).

Well, I seem to have lost my train of thought.  Now I know why boxers don’t have sex when they’re training for a match — you lose concentration.

What was I talking about?