Three weeks in Training Part III

On the days that we were out of AIT, and those included days other than weekends also, we could see many people on yellow tee-shirts. And the number of yellow tee-shirts seemed to grow day by day. It did not seem to be any short of fashion style – every body from every walk of life seemed to wear them, including some tourists. And yes, all those tee-shirts had same lettering, same words, obviously in Thai. In few days, I could tell why they were wearing the tee-shirts, but it was not until the return flight when I found out why they were wearing yellow. We knew a bit about the kingdom and little bit about the king. We did not know that it was 60 years’ celebration of the king’s accession to the throne. By wearing the shirt marked with “We love the King”, they were showing the support and loyalty to the king, and by wearing yellow, they showed their respect the king – yellow being the color of king because he was born on Monday. The actual day of celebrations was on the very last day of our training, and we could see sea of yellow wearing people in every part of the city, as if yellow tee-shirt was the official shirt for the day.

Being from Nepal, its very difficult to understand why they love and respect their king. And being from Thailand, they find it very difficult to understand why we give a damn to our king. I was told that the current king single-handedly transitioned the country. He’d visit villages, setup camps all over the country, much like what King Birendra did in Panchayat years. The difference was that Thailand got much better on the long run, while Nepal… well we know what it is. I’d say it is not just the King that matters, people around the King also plays big role. I’d say King Bhomibol has enjoyed much better company than King Birendra or King Gyanendra. King Bhomibol had always pushed forward the policy of one village-one product, I was told. And people have gradually moved away from traditional sex-industry to cottage and other industries. Of course sex-industry is still big there, but other industries are taking over very fast.

One of the observations that I had about that society is that it is primarily a female dominated society, with women working and earning money while men looking after the house. That may be the reason why young men there want to be women. Also it may be the reason for the flourishing sex-industry. And they in general do not cook in home, preferring to eat outside. There are lots of food stall around the city. And Thais are always eating – that’s the impression you get once you move around the cities. Any time of day, you’d see people eating something – be it fruits, noodles, fried-rice, anything. Indeed, my instructor did warn us – he said Thai’s on the road are doing one of two things: eating or talking on the cell phone. It was normal for them to have two or more cell phones. On one of our trips to Zeer, we took a bus and I happened to be seated next to this guy. He was sleeping, as usual with them in bus, and suddenly his cell phone started ringing. He looked frantically to at least three phones before he could find the ringing one and then he continued talking for the rest of my journey – about 15 minutes – I can’t tell how long he talked, because when I checked his window after climbing down from the bus, he was still talking. But sometimes I tend to think that this talking on the cell phone business is slowing coming over to our part of the world. The transportation system here is nothing compared to Thailand, so I don’t see people sleeping in the bus as soon as they get a seat, or sometimes even standing in the bus, anytime soon. And we are much too aware about our weight, and eat-at-home concept is too strong to allow us to eat anywhere on the streets – let alone any time of day.

Anyway transportation is not the only thing that we need to copy from Thailand. For starters, we could try cleaning the environment. Or may be we could try with industrialization, and manufacturing. That will take time, but will happen, if the country is to survive. I only wish I live to see it.

This third part concludes the story, the story of three weeks in Bangkok. Who was with me? Dibas Neupane is my colleague and was there with me. I could not include many of other friends who we met there and helped us. I have many memories there, with many people and lots of many stories. Eventually I might tell them, but it is neither time nor appropriate to tell them. But I am eternally grateful to Ramesh, Sandeep, Sanjeet and especially to Aadit, Deep, Nuraj and Ratna, whom I met in AIT, for all their help. Whatever Sahdev did to us when we were there I am very grateful for everything he did to improve the layout of these stories. Without his tireless efforts, these last three posts would have become much less attractive. And yes, thanks Pat, for those lovely pictures of you in that yellow tee-shirt.

This ending is somewhat lame, but I have never been able to wind down any stories. And I apologize for those large pictures.