Still tourism boomed. Some of the growth could be attributed to the violence and political unrest in other Asian destinations (Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cambodia) or political incorrectness (Myanmar). When terrorist bombs destroyed Bali’s tourism in 2002, travelers came to Thailand’s southern islands instead. In 2004, a Lonely Planet survey named Thailand the number one destination in the world (ahead of Italy, Australia, India, and New Zealand); Condé Nast Traveler magazine ranked the Land of Smiles number two (behind Australia) for long-stay visitors and seven out of the top twenty hotels named were in Bangkok, Krabi, Chiang Mai and Phuket.
But there was a basic flaw in the figures. Ten million arrivals per year made Thailand one of the top twenty travel destinations in the world. But more than one of every ten were weekend shoppers and sex tourists from Malaysia who came for what they couldn’t get at home. Other repeat “visitors” were long-term foreign residents who left and re-entered to satisfy visa requirements. (I once took a five-hour bus ride to Cambodia eleven times in a single year for that reason, thus was counted eleven times.) Can the tens of thousands of resident business people and their families making frequent exits and re-entries honestly be called “tourists?”
(For the record, according to the Police Department’s Immigration Bureau, in 2003, of the ten or so million arrivals counted, 1.3 million came from Malaysia, one million more from Japan, 694,000 from Korea, 650,000 from Hong Kong, 629,000 from Singapore, 624,000 from China, 545,000 from the UK, 521,000 from Taiwan, 459,000 from the U.S., and 379,000 from Germany.)
In addition, there was concern about where the money went, once it was spent. Lisa Mastny, a researcher for Worldwatch Institute in Washington, DC, wrote in State of the World 2002 that “an estimated ninety percent of the world’s tourism enterprises are small businesses, from family-owned restaurants to one-person snorkeling operations. Yet governments are under increasing pressure to grant large-scale investors, including international airlines, hotel chains, and tour operators, easier access to tourism assets. Under a special economic relations treaty with the United States, for example, Thailand must grant companies owned and operated by U.S. investors the same legal treatment as those owned by Thai nationals.”
The result? Small, local businesses get crowded out and much of the revenue eventually generated by the big new development goes rushing back out of the country like the withdrawing waves on a beach.
No matter. Travel gurus nowadays advise against sustaining a low-end reputation, and Thailand seems to be going along. Not everyone agrees. Don Ross, a travel writer for the Bangkok Post, said in March, 2002, that “moving Thailand out of the cheap tour league might be counterproductive. Rather than raising the country’s profile, it might be interpreted as a reason to travel elsewhere.” Thailand needs to “keep its eyes on all market segments without belittling one at the expense of another.”
On the other hand, should the government manage to change its image and pull in more of the high rollers, the “Humph” people (including the Levys) might come back in force. I have an elephant on the street, standing by.
Country Music, Thai Style
Thirty or forty years ago, a fiery green papaya salad known as som tam was called “peasant food.” Because it originated in Thailand’s impoverished and densely populated, rural northeast, called Isan, it wasn’t regarded as fit for “proper” Thai mouths. With the migration of at least a million people from that region— to work in the factories and the tourism and construction industries that fueled much of the country’s economic boom—they brought the dish to Bangkok and began selling it from street stalls where others from Isan congregated, near the big hotels, building sites, and in poor residential neighborhoods. In just a few years, it started appearing on mom-and-pop menus and then on “proper” ones, and now it can be found in Thai restaurants around the world and may fairly be called a national dish.
Some people say the same thing could happen to Isan’s music. At least, it’s now sweeping Thailand, expanding from the niche market it once claimed and going “mainstream,” the way the papaya salad did, and the way country music did in the United States.
The comparison to what once was called “hillbilly” music in America is not inappropriate, because the various strains of music from Isan frequently describe the lives and social problems of Thailand’s poor the way country music sometimes still does in America, and they are performed emotionally, providing a refreshingly vibrant alternative to the formulaic and instantly forgettable Canto-Pop that fixes so much of the music across Asia, including Thailand. The music itself is characterized by the playing of traditional folk instruments and an insistent keyboard that almost sounds as if there might be a stoned snake-charmer nearby with a basket of sleepy snakes.
Generally, this Southeast Asian country music is called luuk thung (pronounced “look tung” and translated “child of the fields”), although there are several variations. Isan borders Cambodia and Laos and the traditions and instruments of the smaller countries have influenced their bigger, more modern neighbor. There are significant differences between Laotian mor lam and mor lam sing and Khmer kantruem, for example, but all generally are put under the luuk thung umbrella in the way blue-grass and western swing and other distinct sounds share space on a single Billboard country music chart.
Luuk thung first emerged from Thailand’s poor central plains and northeast in the 1960s and 1970s about the same time that the United States built air bases in Thailand (several of them in Isan) and Bangkok became a preferred R&R destination for GIs during America’s Indochina war. The cultural and political impact of a suddenly intensive foreign presence in Thailand made an impression on the local musicians, as they adopted jeans and tee-shirts, let their hair grow and embraced rock and roll.
The local musicians kept the sound of native instruments of wood and bamboo, however, and lyrics rarely strayed from the problems and causes of the Thais, even when some English phrases were added, as in Carabao’s hit, “Made in Thailand,” an eco-nationalistic song that told Thais to stop buying stuff made by foreigners. Others took up the cause of the farm girl pressed by poverty into prostitution.
As was true in American country music, the tone often ranged from poignant to angry—success coming from musical talent, but also lyrics that were relatable. Several bands, notably Caravan, strongly identified with Thailand’s growing democracy movement, along with leftist balladeers associated with the student uprising of 1972, calling their genre plaen phua chiwit, or “Songs for Life.”
Luuk thung went into semi-retirement in the 1980s as Thailand experienced a period of military coups, social uncertainty, and massive industrial development, beginning its comeback in the 1990s following a decade of dominance by western recording acts. (Even Michael Jackson appeared in concert in Bangkok during this period.) The revival was fueled in part by the success of Luuk Thung FM, which began broadcasting twenty-four hours a day in 1997. Two years later, the life of Phumphuang Duangchan, known as the Queen of Thai Country Song (think Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette), who died in 1992 at age thirty-one, was made into a television mini-series.