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In the age of George W. Bush, to travel the world is to be hyperconscious of being American. You keep expecting people to shake their fists or pity you. So it's refreshing to visit a part of the world, Southeast Asia, where few give a fig about America. You announce you're American and people just smile and say, "Saw-ba-dee." Hello, welcome.
It's partly their Buddhism — forgiving, nonconfrontational, fatalistic. It's also that Southeast Asians covet American tourist dollars and it pays to be nice. Tourism is Thailand's chief hard currency earner. And nominally communist Laos sees no harm in luring farangs of any ideology to this otherworldly green land of meandering rivers and golden temples and relieving them of some currency that's worth more than the local kip. Southeast Asians also enjoy the luxury of letting the rest of the world go by while their own go-go economies explode. I told Mo Tejani, an American writer who lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and speaks fluent Thai, that I was having trouble engaging Thais on issues beyond the mundane. He laughed and said I shouldn't waste my time. Mo had found that discussing policy matters that are beyond one's own control is deemed so irrational in Thailand that it is, in effect, taboo. Many Thais are frank — and loose and funny — discussing personal matters, including sex. In the famous land of smiles and guiltless hedonism, larger social questions are left to others. So that's all it is? Southeast Asians have no objections to denizens of the Land of Bush because what they really want is to be Americans? Not really. Consumerism yes, other American traits, no. As Buddhism spread eastward from India over 2,000 years ago, it carried with it Hindu and animist beliefs and practices that today are at least as influential in people's daily lives as are the teachings of the Buddha. Yes, good behavior can earn merit toward a better life in one's present existence or in a future one. But just as important in life are astrological ponderings, lucky and unlucky numbers, and dealing with the spirits believed to inhabit the land and its natural features. Most homes and businesses in Thailand have small "spirit houses" out front. These Hindu-style, dollhouse- size pavilions are meant to shelter the spirits displaced by human structures. Each day, offerings are placed there, including rice, sweets, and flowers. I saw a can of Pepsi with a straw at one. When construction problems arose at the new Bangkok International Airport, built on a cobra swamp, officials constructed a house to placate the swamp spirits. Disasters continued, though, and a team of Thai experts was brought in. Their suggestion was to build a larger spirit house. On a recent two-day boat journey down the Mekong river from Huai Sai, Laos, to Luang Prabang, I was unnerved for a time by a wild ride through rapids that had the crew yelling at the hundred or so passengers, "Must sit down! Must sit down!" Luck and the captain's skill, it seemed to us, got us past the boulders and violent whirlpools. Though it may have helped that the captain's wife was just behind him to beat the band and flinging flower petals at the boulder spirits as we hurtled by. The captain, by the way, was wearing a shiny blue jacket that read on the back "Body Body Body." These people are modern consumers, yes. And yet they remain exactly who they have long been and may always be. It's impressive. The Thais can afford to be provincial. They're a nation of happy-go- lucky villagers, many of whom now happen to live in cities. But Thailand is not a world power that remains smugly, stubbornly ignorant about the world. At the Chiang Mai Zoo, I saw an actual macaca. That's the monkey-like creature that helped the Democrats retake the Senate. I blew it a kiss. By Richard Lipez. This article appeared first in The Boston Globe.
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