In my novel Don’t Try Any of This, second volume in the Little Rosie Trilogy, the main character arrives in Bangkok and expresses the differences she sees in the city from Paris, where she has been living.

“Bangkok is so different from Paris. I can see that right away, from the moment we arrive and step out of the plane. And I see more of the differences on our first day here, a day of R&R after that long flight across Europe and Asia. Today is Bastille Day back in France. It’s just another Wednesday here in Bangkok, but the differences between the cities strike me at every turn.”

She goes on . . .

“While Paris is muted, with soft colors and subdued light, sweet and tantalizing aromas and distant sounds, Bangkok is brash, its colors and smells overwhelming, its blinding light and unremitting noise harsh on your senses. While Paris is a lover who woes you with gentle caresses and tender kisses, with sweet, if insincere, words whispered in your ear, Bangkok assaults you with its urgency, taking you fiercely without a moment’s remorse or hesitation, casting you into the street like garbage when it’s done with you. While Paris licks you surreptitiously behind your ear, Bangkok is all up in your face.”

Ophelia and I arrived in Bangkok, after a 12-some-hour flight from Madrid, not Paris, but the contrast was nearly as striking. And initially we just moved on from the airport to our first stop, Pattaya, a couple-hour bus ride south to the coastal resort city. But even in that transition the differences were noticeable, and Pattaya was not just up in our face, but all over us.

Both Bangkok and Thailand have changed enormously since my first visit 60 years ago, and even from Rosie’s fictional visit more than two decades ago. But the general ambience, the contrasts, the sounds and sights and smells, remain. There is a stark cultural difference — broader and deeper than just linguistic differences, further accentuated in Thailand which uses its own very different characters for written communication — between what we think of as Western society and Asian society.

While Central and South America, and Europe, other regions I am considering for my relocation, are notably different culturally, societally, and linguistically from our North American experience, they are not that different compared with Asian culture, society, and language. South, Southeast, and East Asia are literally a world apart from the Western Hemisphere, in almost every respect. And this is a factor I am weighing in my relocation evaluation, whether I am ready for that much of a cultural shift. This is something I’ve thought about literally going back several decades, thoughts of where to live in the world not being a new development for me.

Want to see first-hand the stark contrast with the West? Click on the image below and get a glimpse into our first (and not only) open taxi ride in Pattaya, from the bus station to the sleek high-rise in the city center where we stayed. Don’t forget to back click when you’re done to come back here and read the rest of what I have to say.

Wide open Thailand

For anyone who has not been there, it’s hard to describe what one encounters walking down the street in the middle of a Thai tourist town like Pattaya. Close to a scene out of some alien planet in Star Wars, if there is some form of debauchery one seeks, almost regardless what it is, one will find it, not in small numbers but in establishment after establishment that line the streets. Massage parlors — some of the more traditional variety, some of the “happy ending” variety — girly bars, and now, a recent addition, legal weed shops and cafes, are cheek-to-jowl along the broken sidewalks. Girls hang out in numbers in front of the massage parlors and girly bars seeking to draw in customers. I wonder what the economics of these businesses are since it seems the supply is overwhelming while it’s hard to imagine the demand — while clearly there — is sufficient to provide a decent living both to the girls and the businesses.

This plethora of competition extends beyond the “sin” trades, too. The American chain 7-Eleven is well implanted in Thailand, but not the occasional store as in its home country. There can be two or even three 7-Elevens in a single block, and they exist in block after block in numbers I’ve never seen before. Speak of eating one’s own lunch. It became like a joke to us, seeing all those 7-Elevens (which also helped us stock up on what we needed on a daily basis), and Ophelia started photographing every one she could find. She even bought a 7-Eleven t-shirt she found in a night market. That’s Ophelia below, by the way, in our first open taxi ride upon arriving in Pattaya. The advertising on the front wall of the taxi gives you some idea of what Pattaya is about. Notice that these products are available at your local friendly 7-Eleven.

That’s Pattaya at night, below, from our AirBnB window. Life just seems to never stop on those streets, and there are people and activity going on seemingly for 24 hours, all week long, all year long. It’s almost exhausting to observe.

Technology gone wild

Along with sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, technology seems to have gone wild in Thailand. I’ve since found this generally to be true in Asia, but it was especially evident during our week in the Land of Smiles, a name by which the country is known. Sadly, too often those smiles were buried deep in a damn phone, and it seems people have largely given up on personal interaction, preferring instead to spend their lives on the tiny screen in their hands. I observed, while riding the excellent Bangkok Metro, that if there were six people around us, five were staring into their phones. It’s not much different on the street, with people walking about glued to their cell phones. This was very discouraging to see.

We received a key card at that high rise in Pattaya, and to do anything, enter or leave the building, select a floor to go to in the elevator, access the pool or gym, not to mention open the room door, one had to use that damned key card. It could be maddening, especially if one hit the wrong floor in the elevator, and the key card would just cancel the selection and one had to do it again, coordinating hands with key card and the very hard to read floor buttons.

Along with cell phones and key cards, I have developed a deep abiding hatred of QR codes. Surely these are the work of the Devil, if there ever was one. I wasn’t a big fan of QR codes before hitting Asia, but I’ve now truly come to despise them. To the point this might become a criterion I use for picking my future country. Any country that depends on QR codes or requires one to “scan” them (a different meaning to the word than I am familiar with) to do anything is not one I’d want to live in. This is one of my big reservations about the country in which I am now writing this, Indonesia, where even to enter the country requires “scanning” several QR codes. If one can even figure out how to do it. This is insanity.

Some 50 years ago when I first began my independent travels in the developing world I concluded that the problem was not technology per se, but not enough technology. Cars and trucks that spewed foul fumes, for instance, were examples of insufficient technology, and what was needed were vehicles that burned cleaner and caused less pollution. My conclusion now is that there is too much technology — the wrong kind of technology. Rather than making life better, it is causing people to withdraw into their phones, games, fantasy worlds, discouraging personal interaction and use of one’s brain (translation=thinking) for more than just interacting with a screen. Given what appears to be a societal trend in this part of the world, mass conformity, the dangers of technology being used by governments to control societies and marketers to stuff their products down peoples’ throats are all too evident. There seems to be a hive mind developing, based around phones and QR codes and other forms of the wrong kinds of technology.

I should note we ran into the problem of too much technology in other places we were to, as well. One should not need an engineering degree to turn on a stove top or operate a washing machine. In Pattaya, for instance, someone had to come to our apartment to show us that a finger touch was not enough to activate the induction stove top, something we thought we had mastered while on Gran Canaria. One had to hold one’s finger on the “button” for three seconds to turn it on. I wonder why the people or robots or whoever or whatever designs these things think complicated is better than simple. Don’t they even try their own products, or let ordinary humans who might be using them try them to see what works and what is a royal pain the ass? People just want their stupid appliances to do what they’re supposed to do and not make them crazy. That seems to be the last concern that goes into the design of some of these things.

The quieter and more devout side of Thailand

Okay, enough kvetching about the technology and QR codes. There are other aspects of Thailand besides those and need to be noted. Thailand is a Buddhist country and evidence of that is seen in the temples and shrines present in many places as one moves about. Also visible are the saffron-robed Buddhist monks who still garner their sustenance through begging.

Visiting the shrine of the enormous Reclining Buddha at a place called Towatpho, it is not enough to pay to enter, but then there is begging for more donations as one goes about the many buildings and shrines that the complex encompasses. This seems to be an accepted practice since many people do put donations into the containers placed at each point for this purpose.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and something of a holiday besides, when we visited the Reclining Buddha, and the place was jammed both with Thai and foreign tourists and visitors. And many of the Thai visitors expressed their quiet devotion before some of the Buddha statues, and also by making little sand piles with flags and other decorations out between the buildings.

That’s a row of Buddhas and the Reclining Buddha himself, feet first, in the photos below.

Other draws of Thailand

One of the great things about Thailand is the ready availability of great food for almost nothing. Street food is available everywhere and wonderful. Our first night in Thailand I went out in search of something to eat and stumbled across one street food vendor — a couple with their young daughter, who helped deliver the food — and it was one of the best finds of the entire trip. For 50 baht — a buck and a half in Gringo dollars — they served up the most amazing meals, complete with Styrofoam container and eating utensils, all tied-up neatly in a plastic bag to carry off to one’s lair and sweetly delivered to me by the girl, who collected the bhats with thanks and a smile. So delicious, two meals for me and Ophelia, who was sleeping off the trip twelve floors up in the AirBnB, for three dollars, and cause to become a repeat customer.

Is Thai food hot? Yes, it is. It’s reputed to be the hottest food in the world. And I cannot argue with that. But it is sooooo satisfying, if you can handle the spiciness of it. Sometimes they’ll even ask if one wants it “Thai hot” or just “hot.” That first night the man cooking up my spicy dish even took the trouble to show me the red stuff he was going to put into it, just to be sure I understood. I did. He did. And yes, it was Thai hot and so good. Nothing like a cold Singha beer with it to wash it all down and help quench the burn.

Both in Pattaya as well as in Bangkok, we found street food everywhere that was excellent and similarly priced. Everything from breakfast to dinner, and after-dinner coffee and dessert, it’s available from street vendors or small stands, such as we found a line of in the alley next to where we stayed in Bangkok. One can live on those meals and save one’s money for more illicit (or otherwise) pleasures. I even got to have the green curry for which I searched, something I knew I had to have since my previous visit to Thailand 23 years ago, on Phuket, an island in the Andaman Sea.

The other thing Thailand — and actually, much of Asia — is known for are the night markets, which seem to be almost everywhere. When one hears the word “market” one conjures up images of vegetable and meat vendors, stands of produce brought in from farms. But night markets in this part of the world are far different from that. They might have hundreds of vendors, actually permanent stores within the markets, selling clothing, shoes, phones and electronics, tourist gear, purses, fabric, and just about anything you can think of. There also will be food vendors, and in some night markets — like Tree Town Pattaya in the photo below — night spots with entertainment, girly bars, and other venues for separating bhat from peoples’ wallets.

It took some doing, figuring out how to get there on the Skytrain — one part of Bangkok’s Metro, the BTS, well named since it’s all high above ground — and the MTS, another part of the system, and no, they don’t always allow you to use one fare card to go from one to the other, but we also went to the huge Train Night Market Srinakarin in the eastern part of Bangkok. Thousands of people frequent these markets, and in one place at the latter night market we saw what was literally acres of parked motos and scooters, what had to be thousands of them, the means many people used to get to the market, along with cars, on foot, and the Metro, like us. We had no idea how someone would find their particular moto from the crowd of them in the dark, especially after a few too many Singhas.

More aspects to Bangkok

Bangkok struck me as very different from how it was when I was 15 on my first visit. It has grown into a huge metropolis, but in a seemingly very civilized way. I’m not sure I want to live in a big city again, but somewhat to my surprise I can actually see myself living in Bangkok, as we found it now. In some ways I can see it more than living in a raucous place like Pattaya. I also found that I could relate more to people in Bangkok than, especially, many of the foreigners we saw in Pattaya, most of whom seemed to be older men in their final search for pleasures of the flesh, and, to me at least, not the kind of guys I want to spend time with.

As coincidence would have it — this kind of coincidence seems to be following me through this trip — we were in Bangkok during some big water festival. There are parades and gatherings where people just shoot water at each other. Even riding the Metro, there were lots of people carrying big spray guns, coming from or going to water festival festivities. It was all in good spirit and people seemed to be having a great time. Click on the images below to see some videos of one water festival gathering I shot from a Skytrain station. Then back click to come back here.

On our final full day in Thailand, before I flew on to Malaysia and Ophelia flew back to Philadelphia, we decided it would be nice to spend a quiet afternoon in Lumpini Park, one of the biggest and oldest city parks in Bangkok. It provided a quiet natural respite right in the heart of the city, and along with lots of joggers and bikers we saw monitor lizards and all sorts of birds. You’d be excused if you thought that was Orlando in the image below, but no, that’s a look across the lake in Lumpini Park at some of the high rises that surround it.

Yes, Thailand has given me a lot to think about in my quest to determine where I might relocate to.

Featured image, the river that runs through Bangkok

Looking out the back of the open taxi in Pattaya

Ophelia in the open taxi in Pattaya and advertising signs

Pattaya City at night

Towers and temples are everywhere in Thailand

Row of Buddhas at Towatpho

Reclining Buddha

Tree Town night market in Pattaya

Train Night Market Srinakarin in Bangkok

Water Festival from a Skytrain station

More Water Festival from a Skytrain station

Lumpini Park

All images and videos by the author

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