Ananda Eve’s father, John, who’s lived in Southeast Asia for more than thirty-five years, gets more specific. And he says it’s about racial stereotypes.
“It starts with biology,” he explains. “In Thailand, and elsewhere, the flat nose and dark skin are considered low class and the straighter nose and lighter skin are more acceptable because they’re associated with a higher class. My son was ‘discovered’ when he was working in a restaurant entirely because of the way he looks. He has his mom’s eyes and coloring. He has my nose. He also has a serenity from his mom’s Lao side, but it was the look that made him a movie star.”
How influential is this new look? Very. For many young people of both sexes all over Asia today western clothing, makeup and other adornment are not enough, so they dye and streak their hair blonde and red, while many young women have their eyes and noses surgically “westernized,” and their breasts enhanced. Thailand has some of the best beaches in Asia, but you won’t find many Thais there because they don’t want a dark skin; many carry umbrellas on sunny days and whitening creams are among the most popular cosmetic products sold, even when health authorities issue grave warnings about how damaging some of them may be for the skin.
Because many of the new stars—in Thailand and elsewhere— have lived and been educated in the West, or attended international schools in Asia, they’ve been westernized in other ways, too. Thus, some have strong foreign accents and sloppy articulation when they speak or sing in what is supposed to be their native language.
“These people are not Asian any more,” says John Everingham.
Thailand—Superlative!
I was heartened when I heard that the powers that be in Bangkok decided to erect billboards boasting that the city has the Longest Place Name in the world, as recognized by the Guinness Book of Records. Soon, visitors and residents were to be informed that the city’s formal name is (take a deep breath) Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahinthar-ayutthaya Mahadilokphop Nopphosin Ratchathaniburirom Udom-rathaniwetmahasa Amonphiman Awatansathit Sakkathatiya Witsanukamprasit.
That’s a total of 162 letters and according to the Royal Institute, it means, “City of Angels, Great City of Immortals, Magnificent City of the Nine Gems, Seat of the King, City of Royal Palaces, Home of the Gods Incarnate, Erected by Visvakarman at Indra’s Behest.” A total of 146 letters, in English, but the Thai words are what count. On maps, this blessedly has been shortened to Krungthep (City of Angels). The modern name Bangkok means City of Wild Plums.
I’m not sure why this is to be announced on billboards. Do the officials behind the campaign think this will make residents take pride in their capital, or add to the city’s exotic reputation and thus increase tourism interest? Or is it—as I hope—a demonstration of some newfound sense of official humor?
Thailand has many superlatives, make no mistake about it. In the Largest Restaurant category, Mang Gorn Luang (The Royal Dragon), a congregation of eating areas spread over four acres of land, with a capacity of five thousand diners who are served by more than one hundred cooks and five hundred servers in national costumes, is the current record holder. So vast is the area, some of the servers wheel about on roller skates, delivering up to three thousand dishes every hour. Surely this is another sign of Thailand’s sense of fun, or sanuk.
So, too, the world’s Largest and Tallest Hotels are in Thailand, the former being the Ambassador City Jomtien, with more than five thousand rooms, the latter being the Baiyoke Sky Hotel, with an observation deck and restaurants on the 77th to 79th floors. From which guests are told they can see the Gulf of Thailand on a clear day. (Another little Thai joke.)
Bangkok also claims the Largest Open Air Market Place, the Chatuchak Weekend Market, an overwhelming shopper’s paradise comprising approximately eight thousand stalls spread over thirty acres, where the best advice is if you see something you like, buy it immediately, as you’ll never find your way back. And be sure you do your shopping in the morning, before it becomes the World’s Hottest and Most Crowded Shopping Complex. This is not a joke.
More serious is the unchallenged record of having the Longest Reigning Royalty. His Majesty Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), succeeded his older brother on June 9, 1946, putting him at the sixty year mark in 2006 and ahead of the runner-up, England’s Queen Elizabeth, who has reigned since 1952.
Bangkok is also home of the Biggest Golden Teak-Wood Building, the 81-room Vimanmet Palace, built in 1901 by King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) as a royal residence. Construction began on an island in the Gulf of Siam, but before completion was moved to Bangkok’s Dusit Park near the palace of the present king. There, it served as home for the monarch, his ninety-two wives, and seventy-seven children. Today it’s a museum.
And let’s not forget the Biggest Gold Buddha Image, located in an otherwise unremarkable temple, Wat Traimitr, just east of the intersection of Yaowaraj and Charoen Krung Roads in Bangkok, near the city’s main railway station. The ten-foot-high statue for many years was covered with stucco and considered unimportant. In 1957, when it was moved to its present location, a transporting sling snapped and the image fell, cracking the stucco covering. Underneath was a solid gold figure, weighing five-and-a-half tons. Historians think it dates from Thailand’s Ayutthaya period (1378-1767), when monks likely disguised the image to protect it from Burmese invaders.
All this is well and good and I think such tales would make good billboard copy. However, I also hope that a sense of humor will prevail and Thailand’s lesser-known superlatives also get the attention they deserve.
Did you know, for instance, that the Kingdom boasts the Largest Freshwater Fish, the pla buk or pa beuk, a kind of catfish found in the Mekong River and its tributaries—the biggest documented catch measuring 9 feet, 10.25 inches long and weighing 533.3 pounds? Or the Tallest Stalagmite, rising two hundred feet from the floor of a cave called Tyham Nam Klong Ngu in Kanchanaburi? And let’s not overlook the Largest Grasshopper, a species ten inches long and found along the border between Thailand and Malaysia, a boundary it may be seen crossing in fifteen-foot leaps. A couple of them, deep-fried, and you’ve got yourself a meal. Also not a joke, not in Thailand.
Parents who are unimpressed by their children’s hair styles might find comfort in knowing that two brothers in a Hmong village north of Chiang Mai, Yee Sae Tow, age ninety, and Hoo Sae Tow, eighty-eight, have the Longest Hair, measuring 4.84 meters and 5.2 meters, respectively. It’s worn deadlock style and carried about like a length of coiled rope.
Probably we shouldn’t even talk about Thailand’s having the Fastest Economic Expansion and Decline, rising to 9.8 percent in 1995, making it the world’s fastest growing economy, then falling to -0.4 percent three years later. And do we really want to talk about the traffic, the humidity and the air?
Decidedly not. That’s not funny.
Tourism
Bob Levy—not his real name, I’ll spare him that—sent me an e-mail to remind me that we’d been university classmates in the United States. He said he and his wife were coming to Thailand and would like to meet me for a drink and whatever. They would be staying at the Oriental Hotel, he said, and because I didn’t remember him—it’d been more than forty years since graduation, after all—I asked them to meet me at another nice hotel closer to where I lived, for cocktails in the lobby bar, dinner to follow in an nearby cozy Thai restaurant that specialized in northeastern dishes.