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Published: August 25th 2010
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About three weeks ago, I flew back to the US after seven months in Luang Prabang, Laos. I did experience a bit of culture shock coming back from this poor SE Asian country, beginning with Laos’ neighbor, Thailand. Parts of Thailand are still as undeveloped as most of Laos, but other parts are fully modern. My fourteen hour layover in Bangkok enroute to home was exciting and exhausting.
Bangkok, after seven months in Laos, comes at a bit of a shock. If you think of Thailand as an undeveloped country, like Laos, you’re completely wrong. Bangkok is loud, crowded, dirty and beautiful. My flight from Laos arrived at 10 AM and my flight for the US didn’t depart until midnight so I had some time to spend. Luckily, it’s easy to check luggage at a security company in the airport and grab a cab about 40 minutes in to the city.
Bangkok does everything the US does, in terms of modernity, only they take what we did, and do it better. Skyscrapers as far as they eye can see, miles of flyover highway, massive shopping malls, congested traffic. But what they really do better are the malls; five-story, sprawling,
sparkling habitats, meant to be lived in for days on end, boasting everything; food galleries with big beautiful fish tanks, giant movie theatres intended to look like the glamorous theatres of the old days. And everything so clean inside these new sparkling mega-cities. The food for offer looks clean, the cooking counters are spotless, the attendants wear gloves; there are even bottles of anti-bacterial lotion in front of each food stand. The people speak English, they are ultra-stylish, snobby, pretending to be important and in a big hurry.
As compared to Laos, where the people are lovely; friendly and relaxed but the style is non-existent, it’s whatever China sends down from up north, that’s what people wear. It’s a style half 1980’s-half sweet little girl with bows and flowers. Barely anyone speaks English and hygiene has not yet been invented.
I entered one of these malls: five stories tall, shiny and new, glass windows, giant fountains, the best of everything: Lamborghini outlets, Mercedes outlets, posh movie theatre, aquarium, massive electronics stores, giant food court. I couldn’t believe how clean and new everything was. The food court contained stall after stall of food, each served by chefs dressed professionally,
with polished glass cases, orderly stacks of plates, clean counter cutting spaces. I ate my hygienic lunch watching giant fish swim in one of the half dozen massive aquariums set throughout the food court. I listened to new CDs at the music shop. I stared at people browsing normally through stores, the endless selection of merchandise, all the ridiculous items that nobody needs but everyone buys. I watched Inception on a giant 3-D screen with three-hundred others at a movie theatre designed to mimic the gorgeous theatres of the early twentieth century. I felt lonely and alienated as my smiles were never returned and nobody casually approached me to talk as happens all the time in Laos. It was a hard return to the modern world, but a good half-way stop, still in Asia, yet a modern version, on my way to the US.
I shopped in incredibly cheap stalls on the street, and ate delicious street food, reminiscent of life in Laos. Yet the people were so different, much more cosmopolitan and richer, and I felt I’d just traveled from 1987 to 2010 because of the clothes and the technology. I walked the streets with no idea where
I was, just marveling at the busy city life and all the people in it. I was totally the country bumpkin come in to the city for the first time, but it was weird, I hadn’t even noticed I’d been away.
Funny, anyone you ask in the cities in Laos knows Bangkok well, though they’ve probably never been. You tell a Thai person you come from Luang Prabang, and they’ve never heard of it. They may have never even heard of Laos, or at least pretend not to, despite it being a country literally wrapped around the east side of theirs. Laos is like the backward cousin of Thailand, according to the Thais. Someone they’re related to, but pretend not to know, because they’re too embarrassed to be seen with them. (There are actually more Lao living in Thailand than living in Laos.)
Stopping in Bangkok enroute to America from Laos is a good adjustment back to the US, because you still have all the Asian people and Asian culture, but you are also quickly introduced back to the heavy commercialism that’s such a big part of daily life. Advertisements yelling at you from everywhere, shops trying to
sell you something, everyone striving to buy something new, wear something more stylish than the next person. Plus, the sense of hurry and the feeling that everyone is so busy. After seven months in a place where that stuff exists at such a low level that it’s basically unnoticeable, it’s a stark contrast. It seems silly, these people hurrying so much, all dressed in fancy clothes paid for from their busy lives. But then again, development happens so slowly in Laos, in twenty years, its barely touched most of the rural population. So maybe a little more speed to life wouldn’t hurt Laos.
In Bangkok you feel the importance of money; everything is recently built, expensively built, beautifully constructed. Shiny, tall, glass structures abound. Just yesterday Luang Prabang felt normal, but once in Bangkok I see how poor Luang Prabang and Laos really are; even in the beautiful old capital, where I lived, everything is old, except for the new tourist hotels, all the basic infrastructure is decrepit, decaying, nothing is shiny, nothing is new, nothing operates with efficiency. But then again, you still have people doing jobs that make sense. In Bangkok, young people work in department stores,
keying in the bar code for a doll accessory. In Luang Prabang, young people might deliver water, fix motorbikes, sell books or serve drinks, but at least they haven’t yet had to change to the over-specific, mind-numbing tasks brought on by work in big companies.
The Lao are already obsessed with the cell phone as a status symbol though, the first big symbol of commercialism. People spend $100 to upgrade to a phone that plays music and takes photos, while living in a one room shack with no running water, wearing $1 sandals and eating nothing but sticky rice and vegetables, and maybe a little bit of meat, each day. (A year and a half living in Laos brought me no closer to understanding how they paid for these phones.)
In Bangkok people don’t smile at each other anymore. Is that what happens inevitably in every big city? People become dehumanized because there are too many of them? The first person I started a conversation with all day, whereas in Luang Prabang I’d have a conversation with every other person, was an older man in his fifties, at a traditional street stand, over a delicious plate of green
fish curry. After chatting for five minutes, he insisted on paying for my meal. So perhaps generosity still exists in Bangkok, it’s just hidden in the more modern areas of town. Is that a sad, but inevitable progression as every society modernizes? People become more and more private and less and less generous? Why does it seem like people with less are more ready to share? Shouldn’t it be the opposite?
Around nine PM, I grabbed a cab back to the ultra-modern, massive and gorgeous airport, picked up my luggage and got on a plane to Rome. Ten hours later I was in Rome, enjoying a delicious breakfast of marmalade croissant and cappuccino. The night before I’d eaten a great seafood pad see ew for dinner, and that morning, before leaving Luang Prabang, I’d had a great ban mi Vietnamese meat sandwich for breakfast en route to the airport. After a morning in the Rome airport, where I was impressed that they offered bottles of good olive oil on their condiment trays at the food court, I hopped a plane to Boston and ten hours later, I was home by early afternoon.
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fred appel
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WOW
Its like time travel,fast forwarding. That great food talk makes me hungry. Fred.