Thai temptations

From the serenity of remote northern villages to the decadence of Patong Beach, visitors can experience the richness and contrasts of Thai culture.

By ELLEN PERLMAN

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 19, 2001

[Photos: Ellen Perlman] The village of the Black Lahu tribe sits by a river bank.

We are in a village in rural Thailand that has dirt roads and no electricity. We are drinking coffee from mugs fashioned crudely from bamboo. A few days later we are at Patong Beach on the island of Phuket. The neon of the honky tonks is flashing. We are drinking cold Singha beers out of tall glasses.

Thailand has many faces, from the bustle of Bangkok to the serenity of the wats (temples) to the evocative Golden Triangle area, where Thailand meets Laos and Myanmar (formerly Burma) and an opium museum hints at the illicit.

But nowhere did the contrast seem as extreme as between the quiet villages of the north and the hedonism of the south.

Starting in Bangkok, it took us several days to make our way north to the hill-tribes area. An overnight train ride to Chiang Mai, followed by several hours on a truck, brought us to the town of Tha Ton. From there we switched to mountain bikes to pedal deep into the countryside.

The scenery is lush. The rolling and winding roads go past lychee, banana, papaya and teak trees. Rice farmers smack armfuls of rice plants on the ground to free the grains. Water buffalo help in the fields. Workers squat in the dirt to plant.

The first day we do all the events promoted by our tour company: The hourlong ride on a bristly elephant whose ears flap against my legs as I try to balance on his neck. The bamboo-log raft trip down the Mae Kok River from Ching Dao with the cheerful man steering the raft with a bamboo pole. The excursion through some hill-tribe villages, where swarms of women try to sell us colorful woven purses and bags.

Even tattooed beer drinkers enjoy a manicure at Patong Beach.

It all feels like a rudimentary version of a bus tour for Westerners. We are being spoon fed the tribal culture, a culture that has seen the likes of us come through before.

But as we continue deeper into the hills, more off the beaten -- and often muddy and steep -- path, events transpire more in their own rhythm.

We end up in Jakheu, a village of the Black Lahu people, who are originally from Tibet. It is a village seemingly frozen in time: No one tries to sell us anything, because no one is around. We must wait awhile to get the key to our hut for the night. Black pigs root around under stilt huts with thatched roofs; chickens strut across our path. Sua, our Thai guide, explains that villagers consider it good luck to keep black pigs under their houses.

Hot and sweaty from biking, we change into bathing suits, wrap ourselves in sarongs and go to the river to cool off. A child of about 6 or 7 sees us and runs off shouting. Soon several more young children pour out of various huts and follow us to the river.

They call out "hello," stretching out the "oh" into a sing-song sound. It is, apparently, the one English word they know.

I answer "sawatdee kah," a Thai greeting. This both startles and pleases them, and they return the greeting politely, putting their hands in front of their faces in a respectful wai, a palms-together, prayerlike pose.

Mist drifts over the mountains during the hike to reach the hill tribes.

At the river, the children settle themselves on a small bluff over the gently flowing brown waters to watch us. Soon a mother with an infant strapped to her body with a cloth arrives. Then three teenage boys on one motorbike stop to peer at us.

I wade in and splash some water on my legs. For some reason this elicits gales of laughter from the peanut gallery. We asked Sua later whether we had engaged in some cultural taboo. He shrugs and says we are different, that's all. The villagers don't see many other people.

Back at our hut, several older children stand on the ladderlike steps leading to our bamboo log "porch" to look at us. We greet them and they us, and then we go about our business and they continue to watch us, not that we are doing anything particularly interesting, other than being Western.

Sua serves us dinner that he has cooked in a kitchen hut over a stick fire. Sitting on a red woven mat on the porch, we eat chicken with oyster sauce, scrambled egg with a Thai green for which Sua has no English translation, and chicken lemon grass soup with galanga. Delicious, particularly when a fiery chili sauce is added.

Village children were interested in the visitors, including the author.

After the sun goes down, we talk in the dark before stretching out on the floor of the hut to go to sleep. At 6:30 a.m., I awaken to commotion. I peek out through holes between the bamboo forming the hut walls. More than a dozen people -- women in sarongs and T-shirts, men in casual pants and shirts -- are using motorized weed whackers and hand tools to work the small field outside our hut.

I guess you've got to get up with the light in a non-electric world. In an hour they have disappeared and all is quiet again.

We pack and head out on a long trek over the mountain. Sua hires two men from the village to carry our food and some gear. They carry baskets on their backs, alternating between laying the strap on their foreheads or across their chests. The three visitors are in expensive, high-tech hiking boots, the bearers walk in rubber flip-flops. After crossing the Mae Kok river several times, the water has poured over the tops of our waterproof boots, soaking our socks and making the boots sloshy and heavy.

After a few hours we arrive at a village of the Red Lahu people, practically at the top of the mountain. We rest at an outdoor table under a thatched roof. Villagers of all ages come out of huts to investigate. I begin to play peekaboo with a toddler who is wearing a zippered sweater with a hood and nothing else. Lesson of the day: Peekaboo apparently works the world over. The boy is giggling loudly and the mother, squatting on the ground watching us, is pleased at his delight.

“Borrowing” a village hut, guide Sua cooks lunch using some of the food the visitors carried.

We move on to another village, where Sua ducks into a hut and asks to "borrow" the owners' fire so we can cook lunch. The hut is dark except for the fire and, though this is a Buddhist country, filled with crucifixes and paintings of Jesus, gifts from missionaries who have made this same trek.

Outside, corn is drying on a blue tarp, and two women are shooing children and animals away.

After three days in the hills, it is hard to leave. We do not want to re-enter a motorized, congested world. But we must head back to the city of Chiang Mai, where we are to board a Thai Airways flight to Phuket, an island in the south.

What a difference a flight makes. The streets of Patong Beach are electric with activity, most of it geared toward sex and tourism dollars. Visitors tend to be decadent by day and raucous by night. It is a time warp away from the hill tribes.

Our first afternoon, we wander the beach area and the town, to get the lay of the land. After soaking up some afternoon sun and wading into the green Andaman Sea to stop the sizzling of our skin, we change and head for the nightlife of Bangla Road in Patong Beach.

Marketing at Patong Beach; the “MAKE HAIR” refers to weaving beads into a customer’s hair.

Bright lights illuminate Thai women in Christmas hats. Go-go dancers pole dance on outside tables. Gawkers wander through.

We enter the Andaman Queen, a camp establishment that is home to the "lady boys" of Thailand. These are slender men in body-hugging dresses of fancy feathers and silks who dance for the crowds. We stay a short while.

A few doors down, we are drawn in by hawkers to a Thai boxing match taking place in a ring at a bar. The boxers perform to a cultural confusion of music. Cheesy American oldies such as Another One Bites the Dust play after each round of the three-round matches, but Thai tunes ring out while the boxers are brutally punching and kicking each other.

Admission is free, but drinks are expensive ($2.50 for a beer is way more than the 80 cents we've been paying). The boxers come around afterward, working the crowd for tips.

The next day we give in to decadence. On the beach we women pay for manicures and pedicures and lie back on our canvas chairs for these services. I buy a large, grapefruitlike pomelo that a vendor cuts open and sections for me. Vendors wander by selling ice cream, doughnuts, pineapples, mangos, bananas and coconuts.

As I lie in the warmth, the manicurist pushes cuticles back, clips skin, puts Vaseline on my fingertips to soften them. She then paints my toes and fingernails in a sparkly pink with white flowers.

The next service I commission, from a different artist, is a black henna tattoo that will last for two weeks. I choose a gecko for my hand, making sure the tattooer places the head toward my wrist to make it look as though it is skittering up my sleeve.

I will be returning home to winter weather, and this is the only skin colleagues will see of my bundled-up self.

While the tattoo artist carefully paints my hand with a brush dipped in black, two women lean over either side of my head, putting 10 braids in my hair and decorating them with beads.

The pleasure-seeking continues with an afternoon "Thai aromatic massage" at an establishment away from the beach. Thai massage is a yogalike, often communal, experience. Where we indulge, male and female customers lie on mats on the ground, and the masseuses use their elbows, hands and heels to push, pull and otherwise manipulate the bodies.

Soothing music is playing, but the nature sounds, specifically the cicadas, overwhelm it.

Too soon the trip nears an end. I must fly across 12 times zones to the East Coast. To console myself on the last morning, the painted, plaited and polished new me treats myself to a foot massage on the beach, a spicy Thai beef salad lunch and a sarong-buying spree.

Then I take time to sit in the sun and gaze at the sea, and I find myself thinking absolutely no one back home is going to understand the gecko.

- Ellen Perlman is a writer who lives in Washington, D.C.

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