Art

I’m not really working in an “art capacity” at the moment, but it’s been my profession for the past 15 years, so it informs everything I see and do.  No matter how doubtful I currently am as to the value and function of art in America, I’ll probably never go a day without spending some time ruminating about it.

When I was asked to speak at Mahasarakham University and I thought of what I should talk about, if asked to talk about the American art scene, I really thought I should concentrate on two areas, social practice and street art.  They seem like the most plastic of all current art movements in America.  Social practice, because it still seems so unformed, a wasteland of failed, meaningless projects with some real, not yet understood gold in there.  Street art, because it also seems to be on the edge of entering canon in some potentially dangerous capacity, beyond the early entries of Saints Basquiat and Haring.  In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t have to speak about either subject, as I cannot imagine the translation errors involved.

At Pongsak’s place, I found that essential piece of bathroom literature, a general art history catalog or text of some sort.  It’s got all the usual suspects in it: Rauschenberg, Richter, Koons, Wesselman, Picasso, Cornell, etc…  I wonder what exactly is being exported here. Why is it important that Asian artists be put in a sack and drowned in a sea of Western artists?  Is this of value, or is it poisonous.  I take some solace in the fact that the Robert Longo shown in the catalog was a good one, though.

I remain convinced that the Thai art community is a healthier ecosystem than the American one.  Unlike ours, it’s connected to the general public, not a gated shadow community that largely exists outside of the public consciousness.  And despite the fact that much of the artistic product here seems incredibly conservative, it’s a product that is sincerely responsive to a sense of cultural identity and the artistic needs of those outside of the professional class of artists.

It has been remarked to me that there are “no curators” in Thailand.  I presume that this means “no contemporary art curators” as I cannot imagine that the various historical museums here operate without someone in a curatorial capacity.  Despite the prominent place that art has in Thai society, the professional layer that I occupy doesn’t exist here.  Thai contemporary art seems to respond to three things, the marketplace, exhibitions organized by artists or groups of artists and art competitions and commissions generated by the state.  I wonder if Thailand needs curators at all, if the emergence of that element of the Western art field would simply be another cultural colonialism that supresses a completely healthy model.

On the other hand, I think of the various American Association of Museums ethics guidelines.  How so much of what happens here is outside of them.  The giving or a piece of art to the institution or an official at nearly every opening, for example.  In America, that kind of gift giving is seen as conflict of interest generating, but here it’s part of the social hierarchy and it builds connections and networks.  I had a conversation with Jessada about what official we should get to cut the ribbon and formally open his upcoming exhibition in Los Angeles, and we discussed the Thai consul as a possibility. He noted that the consul had changed, that he did not know the new one, but that his work was given to the Consul General’s office as a gift, and so he had that relationship.  So in a society where relationships and networks are of primary value, these gifts propogate the key values of the society.  In America, where obediance to a standard set of rules and the illusion of a level playing field are of importance, these gifts would be perceived as creating an unfair advantage for the artist, and an improper relationship.

The idea of plugging the AAM ethics into the system here shows the worst intellectual failing of colonial powers, the idea that you can simply switch out a society’s key values for “more civilized” ones, quickly and effectively.  It’s why even the most mercantile of colonial efforts was accomplished through coercion and the threat of overwhelming, deadly force, because you can only really replace a culture’s values with your own if you first destroy that culture’s values, or coerce the members of the culture to do your work for you, and destroy their own values themselves.

So I guess what I’m saying here is that the professional model that exists in my own culture can probably only be exported to Thailand at the expense of the existing professional culture here.

I do think there’s a third way, though.  What if American artists were to continue interacting with Thailand in terms that resonate in both cultures.  As someone who perfers the “artist organizer” model to the “curatorial” model when thinking of non-Museum exhibitions of contemporary art, I don’t see why there isn’t the opportunity for American artists and arts professionals to have a back-and-forth interaction with Thailand that’s based on a model that resonates in both cultures.  I don’t see why the Thai model, which seems rich, healthy and vibrant can’t be used to bolster efforts to bring health and relevance back into the American art world.

Thai Security Architecture

A long time ago I had a friend who had lived in Venice, CA off and on.  For those that don’t know Venice, it’s a community where multi-million dollar homes used to often on be the same block as crackhouses.  People used to have armed security guards for individual apartment buildings.  My friend would often remark about “Venice Security Architecture”, that is how all of the modern looking structures were really built with one feeling in mind, fear.  All those long, narrow windows were too narrow to fit through.  Glass brick?  you need to make a lot of noise to get through that.  Tall, concrete fences, steel doors, seemingly brutalist aesthetics?  All part of an architecture of security, motivated by fear and the tremendous disparity in wealth from block to block.

Thailand’s residentialarchitecture shares a a lot in common with Venice.  It’s “compound architecture”.  Your home is your castle.  Outside of the most simple farmers’ homes in Yot Kaeng, nearly every Thai house is surrounded by its own gated fence.  These walls might be topped with decorated ironwork spikes, or gleaming shards of shattered bottles embedded in concrete.  The gate will be steel, tall and locked.  There may be barbed wire involved.  In the case of Jessada’s home in Yot Kaeng, within the walls he essentially has a moat around his home, making the only easy access across a driveway bridge that has a 2nd, lockable gate across it.

Inside the Walls?  Dogs.  Lots of them, territorial, barkers and growlers.  Pongsak has his colossal pit bull,  Jessada has a pack of five very active, loud dogs.  There will also be wandering dogs in the street.  No stranger moves through a Thai neighborhood, at any hour of the day or night without alerting dozens of dogs.  They spend all day watching and listening, and are very professional in their ability to make it clear that they are telling you to move along, unless you want them to raise the stakes.

The home itself will be relatively open.  No locked doors, lots of windows left open, maybe the whole bottom floor basically open to the outside.  The security that an American home would find in its walked doors has been transferred to the exterior of the property.  Because Thais tend to have extended family at the home, maybe there are no cars in the driveway, but someone might be inside watching the kids.  You can’t really know, and because the house is surrounded by high walls, you can’t spy on it from the outside.  Or maybe like Jessada’s house, it’s on a large piece of property with clear sight lines in a rural area.  Not a place where people just hang around, looking at things.

I’d also like to mention at this time the proliferation of firearms here.  When you drive through major cities, you see a fair number of small, boutique gun shops.  Polished rifles sit on racks in the windows, saying, buy me, shoot things with me.  Thais like guns.  They like action movies (I’ve seen nothing else played on the TV’s in the buses I’ve been traveling on).  It’s a macho culture, where kids grow up doing Muay Thai like American kids do AYSO soccer.  The Thai-Lao people in the Northeast talk about hunting in the old days a lot, both in my readings and in my experience.  They often talk about hunting tigers.  With crossbows.

So there’s a Texas feel out here, that between the spiked walls, the dogs and the Vin Diesel fans with glocks and hunting rifles, if you’re gonna intrude upon someone’s private space, you better mean it.  You better stay on the right lawns.

On the Miracle of Plastic and the Environment

Since my arrival here, and on my two previous trips, every drink I’ve bough outside of a restaurant has been served with a straw, itself often wrapped in plastic, and my purchase, straw and all, usually placed in a plastic bag.  Plastic is a miracle, it is no doubt, along with the steam engine, electricity and the integrated circuit one of the wonders of our time.  It accomplishes things that were formerly unthinkable, unimaginable.

On all three of my visits, the staggering amount of garbage strewn about has disturbed me.  It remains the only part of Thai life that I find shocking.  People look at me strangely when I pocket a wrapper to avoid tossing it on the ground, or when I try to not get another straw or plastic bag at the 7-Eleven.  Much of this garbage is plastic.  It is often in piles on the side of the road, on fire.  I had a conversation once with someone who had spent several months here, mostly in meditation retreats and such.  He talked on and on about how Thais live with nature (implying that Americans don’t), which is so much “primitivist” BS.

Thai environmentalism also gets touted in some of my guidebooks.  The use of ethanol and LPG as automotive fuel here is touted as an environmental move, a diversification.  Jessada’s Honda is a LPG sedan, but he doesn’t talk about LPG in terms of the environment, but in terms of how much cheaper it is for him to drive to Bangkok than it was when he had to buy unleaded.  I’ve seen people get on a moped to drive 100 feet.  I think the Thai environmental movement is about the same two things as it is in America, about the comfort of social status minded middle class and about a whole new angle for marketing and branding.

The whole society is energy intensive.  Just think of the amount of energy involved in running the aircon for the whole country.  Somewhere, steam is blasting through turbines to make that power.  That steam came from boiling water, which was made by burning something.  Thailand does have a number of hydroelectric dams, but nothing on the scale to offset the amount of energy necessary to maintain the Thai middle class.  My general opinon is that resources that made the emergence of a large middle class in Europe and America and the exportation of that model are an accident resulting from the total transfer of raw material and labor following the “discovery of the New World” and the colonial era, and that surplus has largely been exhausted.

I wonder how much arable land is being used to produce that ethanol, how it’s affecting food prices, encouraging deforestation (although Thailand has basically banned logging, the deforestation here is essentially being exported to countries that haven’t reached that crisis point yet or who where it is being done illegally).  I think of the huge quantities of natural gas under the South China Sea and how that relates to the construction of China’s first aircraft carrier and the development of “carrier killer” ship-to-ship missiles on the part of the Chinese (FYI, America has six, full-sized aircraft carriers – with accompanying “battlegroups”, no one else has more than one, you connect the dots here).  I don’t think this diversification is motivated by environmental concerns, but by concerns of economic security and national stability.  I wonder what the long term costs and realities of Thailand’s demand for ethanol and LPG and everything else are.

I test out the bike and it doesn’t bother my knee at all.  So I make the best of it, and using the map from my hostel, explore the various wat in the town on bike.

The first wat I go to is interesting, mainly because I got to see monks doing construction, which I hadn’t really thought of as within their duties.  As I rolled into the wat, they were busy constructing a concrete foundation for something.  It’s interesting, how most monks here are young men with all kinds of non-monk skills to apply during their time as monks.

There is a huge, huge sala under construction here, but nothing was being worked on when I came.  It’s like a mountain unto itself, which makes me think of the whole symbology of mountains in pretty much every religious cosmology.  It’s kind of magnificent, at the same time, unassuming and massive.  I wonder if it will have the same look of scale when it’s finished and decorated.  Right now it looks kind of industrial and stark.

As I leave the wat, I spot the above, a disassembled funerary chedi.  These are for sale in nearly every home goods or building supply store in the country, but this is the first I’ve seen disassembled or in plain concrete.

2nd Wat and Parade Float

The 2nd wat I visit is amazing, though.  I’m mainly absorbed in noticing the way in which the date of the construction of the bot is advertised in the ceramic roof tiles, taking photos of random things, when a small, boyish, young girl comes up to me and takes me by the hand.  I’m not sure what she wants, and after being in Nong Khai, I’m kind of presuming that she wants to sell me something – people outside of Yot Kaeng seem to mainly only look at me as a source of cash, like a roving ATM machine, and I don’t like it.

But she starts leading me over to what at first I thought was a parking lot, when we run into the abbot of the wat, an older gentleman who talks with her, before asking me in clear English what I’m doing, and I say, “I’m just looking around, taking pictures”, and I point towards the sala and bot, and he asks a little angrily if I’ve been taking pictures inside, and I say, no, which seems to diffuse things.  The girl tugs on me and we move along, towards the parked cars and scooters.  But what I had thought was parking or more wat construction is really a huge, temporary workshop, and the cars belong to the workers.  They’re building a parade float for the candle parade in Ubon Rachathani that’s going to take place in a few days.  It’s massive.  The girl quickly introduces me to everyone, like I’m her best friend, and they’re all welcoming me in to take a look.  I’m blown away, the big candle parade is in little over a week and it’s one of those things I’d love to see, but know I won’t get to on this trip.

It’s amazing, a huge plaster and chicken wire sculpture the size of a truck trailer being worked on by about a dozen people.  Wax is being poured into inch-thick slabs that are then laid on top of the structure and carved.  Both monks and laymen are working away.  The smell of the wax, the almost glowing Cheeto orange colour of everything, the constant, experienced motion of everyone is captivating.

It’s massive, all wax, plaster and chicken wire.

The plan.  As far as I can tell, this single sheet of paper is the only diagram involved in the entire construction.  I imagine that the whole thing is constructed out of elements that the workers know very, very well.

Raw wax for the float.

Serious amounts of molten wax here.

Waxworking tools.

Detailed elements are sculpted separately and then attached to the sculpture.  This is the head of a Garuda.

Unfinished King Adulyadej on a throne.

A worker sculpting a plaster form.

A monk sculpting.

This guy is an expert carver.  Basically working with a worn pocketknife, he knocks out the most intricate details.

Carving action.

Oh, and this parade float is brought to you by M-150, the human rocket fuel that keeps Thailand moving.  That and a little rambutan, it’s all you really need.

Lunch

Egg and pigs foot soup in a cut off soda bottle with salty tamarind drink and grapfruit with chili salt

At the market, I’m approached by a German fellow, trying to get me to abandon my leavings for some “nature resort” he has over by Phanom Rung.  He says I “look like I like nature”.  It must be the hair.  Right now, I feel like someone who enjoys MRIs and desperately misses the carefully set up gearing of his racing bicycle.  It’s not as bad as when I had dreads, though, and everyone thought I was a Rastafarian or a could score pot.  I give him the brush off.

Before I go, I buy a mystery drink out of a huge glass tube from a really sweet old lady.  It’s a salted tamarind drink, all syrup and ice.  I think there’s a crazy amount of syrup until I realize that I’m supposed to let the ice melt and everything to blend together.  It’s crazy good in the heat.  Crazy good.  Why are there not more salted drinks in the US?

I return to the hostel. Realizing I don’t have a bowl, I MacGuyver a big water bottle into something suitable for my lunch.  The pigs foot is everything I need it to be.  It’s one of my favourite meals in Thailand, if hungry, one of the few things I will actively seek out or stop at the first joint I see selling one.

The Lord of Nang Rong

Searching for sustenance, I head out on the bicycle.  I brought a bike headlight with me, and so far, I’m the only person in Thailand using any kind of illumination on a bike.  It was a good move on my part, as I’m riding around in traffic that’s a might makes right environment, and a bike is very near the bottom of that equation.  Before I head over to the market, I check out this small plaza and structure that is located near the carnival I’ve been keeping an eye on.

The plaza is elevated, and inside, there’s a small shrine with the full-sized statue of a man, in simple clothing.  I think this is what’s referred to in my local guide as “The Lord of Nang Rong”.  He looks like a well dressed farmer, not a government official, soldier or king.  No uniform, no medals.I think it might be the modern version of the Ta Pu of Nang Rong, what happens to a Ta Pu when a city gets built up around it.  The whole thing is located in an elevated, gated plaza, so some kind of event or ritual must take place here.  It looks like it’s designed to hold a huge crowd.

Behind the statue is something that really turns my crank, the Lak Bahn of Nang Rong.  I don’t know if it’s the current one, or an old one, but I haven’t seen a Lak Banh or Lak Mueng on the main roads of the town, where it might normally be.  But this one is located right along the “Nang Rong Canal”, which might have been the center of the community at one time, or at least its central water source.  I think of the location of the Yot Kaeng Lak Bahn located directly adjacent to the village well and pump, the importance of clean drinking water to the center of a community.

The Lak Bahn is a single post, square, ancient, rotted out.  It must be decades old.  It’s wrapped with cloth, and there are small offerings in front of it.  It’s exactly like the old Lak Bahn that was described by Jessada and other people from Yot Kaeng, unadorned, simply wood.  I feel like this whole Lak Bahn thing has been a wild goose chase, that at least for Yot Kaeng, there is no real answer, or at least not one I can get.  It’s interesting that objects which seem so significant to me seem so uninteresting and ordinary to people who have been living next to it their entire lives.  It’s interesting how memory only contains truths, not facts.  The difference between truth and fact is on my mind a lot now.  I think you have to go beyond fact to do the kind of work that I’m doing, and you have to be comfortable with the unknown.

I make my way over to the local bus depot/night market, where I buy what’s essentially a seafood omelette with bean sprouts.  It’s full of oysters.  I wait a long time while a bunch of them are made on a huge, round griddle.  I just get hungrier while I wait.  The couple making the omelettes are fantastically nice, working fast, and chatting with a line of customers that is a good indication of the deliciousness to come.

The carnival I passed earlier today is set up, and I cruise it on the bike on my way back.  It’s blasting hardstyle and Lady Gaga remixes.  I really, really want to go on the ferris wheel.  The whole place is blasting hardstyle and Lady Gaga remixes.  A dude standing in front of the speaker stacks tries to shuffle akwardly in the dirt when I pass.  The carnival reminds me of LA.  I think next time I’m in LA for a bit, I’m gonna just cruise around on the Eastside until I come across a carnival and wander about.

Sitting at one of the tables back at the hostel, I eat my omelette, which is like a Thai okonomiyaki.  I feel like I’ve discovered the Fountain of Youth or the Spear of Longinus here.  How Could I have not known about this, how could this not be on every street corner in Thailand.  Maybe it’s a local thing, I don’t know.

I promptly Facebook about my discovery and James comes on and is like “you don’t know about hoy tod?”  Why didn’t someone tell me about this earlier.  Where was the memo on this?  The world is indeed smaller.

I’m feeling that the knew will make it through tomorrow.  I think of Mike Watt and that huge leg brace he was wearing for his knee, how he mentions the knee (Which he calls “the hiza”, since he’s gone keen on adding Japanese lingo to Wattspeak in the past three years) a lot more now in his tour diaries and Emails.  I feel for him, having to stand on stage for long periods of time, calling down thunder and looking all the part of the bass legend he is.  I wonder if he has moments where he thinks “is this knee just gonna collapse on me, right here, just fall apart in a mess of gristle and leave me on the floor?”

Despite my bitching, everything was awesome today.  I thought I wouldn’t get anything done, and I ended up getting, a private tour of the construction of a candle parade float.  The bike doesn’t bother my knee, I heard some hardstyle, saw what I think is the Lak Bahn of Nang Rong and maybe the modern version of its guardian spirit shrine and discovered Thai okonomiyaki.  I had worried that coming here would be a dead end, that I would end up feeling worse, but I feel great, and nothing is going to keep me away from Phanom Rung tomorrow. Nothing.

On July 4, I took a bus from Yot Kaeng to Khon Kaen, and then another bus up to Nong Khai.  My primary interest in Nong Khai was to visit the Sala Keaw Ku Sculpture Park, a famously eccentric exercise in 20th Century new religion in these parts.  A possible secondary objective would be to visit Laos.  I was successful in visiting Sala Kaew Ku, but made the decision not to pursue a trip to Laos, as my knee was seriously acting up and restricting my “on foot” mobility.

While in Nong Khai, I stayed at the Sawadee Guesthouse, primarily because of the availability of free Wi-Fi, which is it’s primary attractive characteristic, aside from proximity to the bus terminal and Thasadej market.  Actually, now that I think of it, it’s far better located than Nong Khai’s other guesthouses, as it’s far away from the sex tourist zone and located near several pop-up, Chinese night markets.

Road Notes

On my travels to and from Nong Khai, I observed a staggering variance in wat architecture and style.  The idea of cataloging this variety seems like an impossible task.  I can’t even imagine developing a working understanding of the nature of wat as it pertains to a single province in the Northeast.  What I take away from this is that the construction of wat can be an idiosyncratic practice with wide berth being given in the ultimate design and layout of structures.

I have observed a Buddhism here that is serious in its devotion, but organic in its implementation.  While the Buddhist sangha of Thailand has a defined hiearachy, it doesn’t feel like that hiearchy is single minded in any way, or that it governs from the top.

General Observations about Nong Khai

Nong Khai is a small, busy city on the banks of the Mekong, and is a primary point of trade between Laos and Thailand.  It’s also a famous backpacker hub.  After spending more than a week in Yot Kaeng, Nong Khai was a change of pace.  I have “no place” here, and no translator or guide.  So my observations are primarily visual.

Nong Khai is an international place, with large Chinese and Vietnamese populations, as well as a sizeable, transient population of foreign tourists.  There seemed to be defined Chinese and Vietnamese areas of town, including a vaguely defined Chinatown.  The toursists seemed to mainly be older white men engaged in various forms of sex tourism, and there is a whole economy of bars, restaurants and prostitutes to serve their needs.  I did see a few backpackers, but they were a distinct minority.

There’s a reasonably heavy police presence in Nong Khai.

Spirtuality/Religious Observations

Nong Khai has numerous wat and several prominent Chinese temples.  Thinking about this in the context of Yot Kaeng, which has two temples that serve the entire community, but in different capacities, my initial observation is that the transition from village life to urban life is accompanied by a balkanization of the unity of religious belief one might find in a smaller community.  I wonder how much overlap there is between the various communities that worship at the various temples?

The number, scale and extravagance of the various temples in and around Nong Khai demonstrates the tremendous priority that religion has in the area.  Northeast Thailand is home to the greatest density of wat and also the majority of wat in the country are located here.  It is also the poorest part of Thailand.  Given that people here have made the choice to invest their resources in the construction of so many extravagant temples rather than in basic infrastructural needs like sidewalk repair or the other secular “needs” says a great deal about the significance of spiritual matters relative to secular ones here.

Wat Across from Sawadee Guesthouse

Across from my guesthouse is a wat where some interesting activity was going on during my visit.  The entire sala had a structure of “string art” (for lack of a more accurate descriptor) built inside of it, and women were present, with large amounts of food, for long periods of time.  There were sermons of some kind being broadcast from a loudspeaker.  Very few people seemed present, but on the 5th, a chartered bus arrived and more women and some families joined those on site.  I only saw one monk during numerous walk-throughs of the facility.

The “string art” aspect was of staggering effort and complexity, and looked both temporary and new.  It was present the entire time I stayed in Nong Khai.  There seemed to be a series of box or tunnel like structures built inside the sala itself, extending from the entrance to the entrance to the altar, like a square tunnel of 1970′s string art.  I don’t know how to interpret this object or this ritual.

There was regular morning and evening chanting coming from the wat.  At 5:00 Am exactly everyday a large drum was beat, in a series of 10 beats, for several minutes.

I was unsucessful in learning more about this, and it remains a curiosity.  I was able to shoot some photos through the window and will try to engage someone in Yot Kaeng about it.

Phra That La Nong

I visited Phra That La Nong on my first night in Nong Khai, attracted by its glowing presence along the Nong Khai waterfront.  It’s a replica of Phra That Nong Khai, a chedi that is located in the middle of the Mekong and is undewater much of the year.  It is beautiful and lit up like nothing I’ve ever seen, it literally glows at night.  Many banners all over Nong Khai advertise it.  It is not located inside a wat, rather is simply a chedi with a small sala beneath it.

Wat Pho Chai

Located along the 212 highway, Wat Pho Chai is the largest temple I’ve visited thus far.  It’s colossal, the naga at the gates are massive, and all have seven heads and are gilded beyond belief.  Inside is Luang Pho Phra Sai, a huge jeweled buddha with a solid gold head.  It’s opulent beyond belief.  The parking plaza was full of limosuine vans and chartered buses when I arrived, and there’s basically a small market inside the walls of the wat.  It’s a major destination for Thai tourists, and at the time I visited was disgorging hundreds of monks from services that had just ended.

The complex is so large, that it dominates the roadside for hundreds of meters, and has billboard-sized banners advertising itself.  It is both a staggeringly beautiful, sacred place that serves the immediate spiritual needs of the community, and a colossal economic undertaking that’s a flagship for “Industrial Buddhism”.  Industrial Buddhism requires additional, non-traditional Buddhist infrastructure, parking lots, shaded picnic areas, clean and modern toilet facilities, huge charter buses…

Wat Noen Phra Now

A meditation wat and Chinese cemetary that I came across while walking to Sala Keaw Ku, Wat Noen Phra Now’s archtecture is some of the most spectaularly gaudy that I’ve seen at a wat, and seems at odds with what one would normally associate with a place devoted to either meditation or the dead.  The Chinese cemetary is the largest cemetary complex I’ve observed here, which corresponds to my understanding of the importance of both ancestors and death in Chinese culture.  At most of the wat I have seen, you might see five or twenty or maybe forty reliquary stupa for the dead, but here, there is a forest of hundreds.

The meditation center seems to consist of a series of elaborately decorated structures for worship, all of which, including the sala, were locked down during my visit, and a series of small houses for those staying at the facility.

The houses are numbered and simple, looking far more modern than any of the monks’ residences I have seen at other wat.

I kind of developed an obsession with naga here, because there are so many different styles.  I’m wondering how much the number of heads a naga has is simply aesthetics, or if there’s a more specific symbolism involved.

The sheer amount of reflective glass tile and iridescent paint used at this Wat is staggering.

Sala Keaw Ku

If any destination in the history of the world lived up to its description, Sala Kaew Ku is it.  A huge park, filled with colossal sculptures mixing and matching from Buddhist and Hindu icons, it’s beyond belief.  Both western and Thai tourists were wandering about, both equally mystified.  Sala Keaw Ku was the 2nd site established by, Luang Pu Boun Leua Sourirat, a Lao mystic (who looks suprisingly “North Korean Dictator” in many of his photographs), after getting the boot from Laos.

The sculptures here are beyond belief and will require me to put them all in a Flickr set or page of their own.  They range from pretty straight on takes of Hindu avatars and narratives, to a parade of “increasingly anthropomorphic dogs”, including an anthropomorphic dog riding a Vespa, at the entrance to the complex.  I will not pretend to have an explanation for the philosophy behind this place, only an admiration for the scale of it and the energy that must have gone into building it.

The scale of many of the sculptures is intimidating.  The largest sculpture in the park is a 25 meter sculpture of the Buddha sitting atop coiled snakes, with a group of cobras shading him. It’s a classic Hindu image, although in this interpretation, the cobras all have exceedingly long tongues and the sculpture is so dramatic it looks like it might be found at the entrance to a rollercoaster.  There are also numerous standing Buddhas that are easily 15-20 meters tall.

Things that are notable include:

1) No naga.  Sala Keaw Ku has no naga, but instead has cobras, many of them.  Cobras are everywhere here.

2) Cactus gardens.  There are two large cactus nurseries of undetermined purpose on site.  They are enclosed, roofed and locked up.

3) Luang Pu Boun Leua Sorirat’s body is kept inside a glass bubble on the third floor of the “headquarters” of the site, a large administrative building.  It is decorated with many plastic flowers, blinking lights and the room leading to it contains a large number of portraits of the man and much of the medical apparatus of the latter part of his life (wheelchairs, a bathtub, a hospital bed).

4) All of the animals and people are anatomically correct, but not gratuitously so.

5) The climax of the park is a radial sculpture that is entered by going through a huge, open mouth.  It contains the most bizarre sculptures, that is the ones most divergent either Hindu or Buddhist cosmology.  I believe it displays the cycle of an indivdual’s life.

6) Everything here has a donation box adjacent to it.

7) Tourists at the park were both Farang and Thai, and all seemed equally amused and puzzled.

Given that the park was completed in about 20 years, and the quality and condition of the various sculptures, a tremendous amount of skilled labor, money and care went into the construction of the park.  Although it lacks the gilt and finery of much of the fancier wat I’ve been to, Sala Keaw Ku has the same quality of only being possible through the coming together of a large, invested community.

9) Visitors are charged the same price, regardless of whether they are farang or Thai.

I’ll admit, that I’ve come to be sympathetic to the belief that there is more overlap between Hinduism and Buddhism than is really understood in the West (I think that people educated in Western systems often have trouble understanding ideas of religious non-exclusivity).  I’ve considered the idea that Buddhism may be at it’s core, relational and inseperable from Hinduism, although it represents a revolutionary departure from many of the core beliefs of Hinduism, and in some places is so far departed as to constitute a seperate belief system.  But here in the Thai-Lao region, I see so many symbols from both cultures interacting that I can’t quite believe that the separation is complete or that the idea of a separation is entirely relevant.

Conclusion

My visit to Nong Khai seemed to shed little light upon my project, but did expose me to more of the Northeast.  It was only on my bus ride fron Nong Khai to Khorat that I came to realize how valuable seeing other parts of the country are.  At this point, I’ve decided that my project needs to be intensely local to Yot Kaeng and its immediate surroundings, but I’m gaining some valuable insights into the larger culture, particularly the sheer variety of Buddhist aesthetic and practice.

I take the first bus to Khorat, I literally walk into the station, buy some food, and get on the bus.  It’s easy.  Walking to the station was no big deal.  I’m committed.  I’m going up that damn volcano, my knee is gonna make it, everything is going to be fine.

Khorat bus station is huge, a massive hub of buses and rushing people.  The cafeteria here looks inviting, and there’s some pad thai variation that’s popular locally, but I don’t have time to hunt it down.  I see a lone black guy with a backpack here, and I wonder what kind of reception he’s getting in Thailand.  From my conversations with my Asian peers, most of Asia looks at black people with extreme prejudice and suspicion.  I don’t envy him.

I use the toilet here, paying my 3 baht, and a Thai fellow moves over a couple of urinals to take an obvious peek at my mysterious American business.  It’s not a big deal, but part of the experience of being in a nearly homogeneous culture is being fascinating to people in a way that seems impossible in jaded, urban America.

From Khorat, I take an aircon bus to Nang Rong, which is a good city from which to stage my trip to Phanom Rung.  My guidebooks are particularly vague on details related to this, and they basically dismiss all of the surrounding areas as being of little to no interest.  I’m a little confused as how exactly to get out to the ruins, with the total cost of transit ranging from about 100 baht for bus hopping to 1000 baht for guide and a car.  It will all work out.

It’s a fairly short ride to Nang Rong, and I get off at the bus station in no small degree of knee pain, so I find a small 7-Eleven analogue and buy a tube of something called Counterpain and some Tylenol before hiring a motorcycle to take me to my hostel.  I have no map of this place, and have no idea where it is.  We take a short, 5 minute ride across town, where I’m amazed that he’s managing to balance me with my books and electronics and all that gear so well.  My mind thinks of “plans for being in a slow speed accident that involve the least amount of head and/or laptop and camera injury”.

I arrive at the P. California Inter Hostel in one piece.  I have no idea what the P. stands for.  Next door is some kind of NGO with the P. California name, some kind of small homestay operation, I think.  The hostel looks like a tidy apartment building, it’s very modern and cozy looking.  The rental cars of obvious Khmer ruins tourist are parked in the lot.  I realize here that I’m encountering the other side of tourism, well-equipped, educated tourists interested in history and museums and culture.  They’ve got road maps and are traveling in relative comfort. The owner of the hostel is almost absurdly friendly, he wants to know if I want dinner, which I decline, seeing a pair of Germans eating what looks like fried rice.  I’m still too used to Isan food to chance feeling disappointed at home cooking intended for a non-Thai palate.  The room is cheap (350 baht), has aircon, great wifi, a big shower.   I’m excited to rest.

There’s a totally awesome painting in the stairwell here, too.  Always a bonus in any traveler’s temporary home.

After settling in, I found my way out to the main drag of Nang Rong, a long street that goes right through town, the road from Khorat, to find a 7-Eleven, to buy some drinking water and break a 1000 baht bill, and get some dinner.  It’s only a few blocks away to the main street.  walking there, I realize that there’s a pit bull breeder just up the block from the hostel, which makes me a little nervous.  I hope they’re inside the gate…

But soup was found, noodles with fish ball, total comfort food, wherever I am.  This and a Chang tall boy and I’m all set to crawl back to the hostel, shower and crawl into bed.

8 AM

I wake up early today, and strangely refreshed, despite trading shots with Jessada’s father and uncle over rice and crispy fried beef last night.  I feel great.  The morning sounds of this place have become familiar.  I wake up with the sun, drowsily reading John Fowles’ The Magus, which is tortuously well written, constructed with a love of language that may be a dead art outside of the intestinal passions of Literature PHDs.  I am absolutely drawn into it and feel manipulated by it at every chapter.  The first sound I will become aware of in the morning is the hum of the aircon.  There are bird sounds, long, high notes that seem to wind though the scale with the same winding, meandering direction as anime rockets.  Some faint traffic sounds.  As I read, I hear the sliding gate of the driveway.  I know Jessada’s mother has arrived, and are crossing the moat into the house.  I start to hear house sounds.  I know I will soon hear the cock’s crow of this household, the stone on stone sound she makes with the mortar and pestle.  The days cooking tasks are beginning.  Soon I hear the sound of the mortar…

I emerge to find Jessada’s parents eating fruit, watching the television.  I join them, fascinated by the election.  Usually the only TV being watched in the house is cartoons for the children, usually Spongebob.  Children here must have dreams in which Tom Kenny’s voice is the voice of Buddha.

Breakfast today is a dream.  Last night I sampled the som woo-ah that I was shown yesterday, and I had been hoping it would make another appearance at breakfast.  It’s ground raw pork and beef with chili, lime juice, a little glutenous rice and mountains of raw garlic wrapped in banana leaf, left out at room temperature.  I’ve had it in the states, it’s one of my favourite foods on the planet.  It’s here, and delicious, and I made clear to everyone how much I love it, that I could eat it all day, so one was unwrapped at breakfast.

Som woo-ah is heaven.  I love and have always loved the texture of raw meat.  I love raw garlic.  It’s all I ever wanted, all I ever needed, there, in a banana leaf.   It has a satisfying mouth feel, firm, but needing a little more mastication.   All of the flavours are bare and slightly separated, a Mondrian palette of strong, solid elements, in perfect order.

Breakfast also included some seriously good pineapple, mango, Isan-style chicken, which is pressed flat and grilled between bamboo, some liver, fish cakes, fried beef and sticky rice.  I’ve been staring at various pineapples since I arrived like a pineapple-phile, and now that I’ve got my hands on some, I thoroughly agree that they taste richer, more subtle here.  The chicken is a staple here, a solid bet, anytime, not greasy, but not dry, so good.  I love that chicken liver keeps turning up on the menu, that’s something that I didn’t see last time, and has been a pleasant surprise.
Jessada will leave today for Bang Saen.  He has an opening at Burapha University on July 11 or 12, and I will join him there on the 9th or 10th.  Soon, I will be hopping buses to the North, to Nong Kwai, and then maybe down to Phanom Rung.  There are some ruins on top of an extinct volcano there that are supposed to be both well restored and beautiful.  Supposedly from the top of the volcano, you can see far into Cambodia, towards Angkor Wat.  I don’t really know.  I’m going to take the next week to see more of the region, before visiting friends in Bang Saen and then returing up here to finish out my research with interviews, a two day stay at Wat Asokaram and a number of trips to local sites I’ve identified from my research.  Jessada’s aunt is coming then.  She lives in Canada and is apparently being drafted into being my translator for long-form interviews.

I really need the next week to sort out the state of my research.  I’ve taken piles of notes and photos and video, and I have all kinds of ideas, but I’m awash in information.  It’s hard to take a day off when you know exactly what it will feel like to be sitting in Suvarnabhumi on July 22, knowing your next stop is “not-Thailand, not Yot Kaeng”, but I need some time to work without additional input.

Watching post-election coverage on TV.  Yingluck Shinawatra’s Red Shirts have taken 264 seats of 400, a clear and decisive majority.  Presumably, she will be the new Prime Minister.  People here seem excited and interested, as the Northeast is Shinawatra territory, red all over.  Last night, Jessada’s father was expressing his love for the democratic process in general, it’s something he’s genuinely thankful for.   People traveled hundreds of miles to take part in this election.

There’s a lot of coverage of the western coverage of the election on the TV, screenshots of editorials and blogs.  I hear the words “Wall Street Journal” within blasts of chatter from commentators.  There seemed to have been doubts in the west over the election and so many investors had withdrawn from the Thai sector in the past month.  The baht is up.

On the TV I see something described as a “No Ghadaffi Rally”  and hear the words “Kinshasa” and “Africa”.  A huge crowd, waving green streamers is panned across, a low resoultion video, maybe off a phone or something.  I realize I don’t know if Ghadaffi is still in power, or even alive.  What would make Americans gather in the streets in joy?

After the news finished, A Nicholas Cage movie came on.  The dubbing on his voice is deep, lacking all the “gentile Woody Allen” neurosis he normally radiates.  I have no idea what it is, but he’s playing a motorcycle cop, so I’m taking a guess at Ghost Rider.  No, despite the tease of the burning car rescue, it’s The Wicker Man.  They blur out cigarettes on TV here, so some of the actors’ faces look anonymized.

Advertising note:  Historically in the US toilet paper was used as proto-Kleenex prior to the marketing of Kleenex as a seperate, single-sheet product.  I just saw a commercial advocating that you stop using a roll of toilet paper as facial tissue, and use Kleened brand box tissue instead.  As I eat my breakfast, the missing link between toilet paper and facial tissue is brought out to me, a small plastic bag filled with folded rectangles of toilet paper, for table use.

Advertising note #2:  Just saw a commercial showing a montage of Thai military shots, which transitioned into a shot of the king in military garb (wearing an amazing, colossal beehive-shaped hat), ending with a crowd shot from what if I recall is the 60th anniversary of his reign, where lierally a million Thais gathered up in front of the palace to chant “long live the king”.  A million.

Jessada comes and gets me, my things are loaded into the car, and I’m off to the bus stop.  Before I leave, I’m given some som woo-ah for the road.

Somewhere Between Yot Kaeng and Nong Khai

Today was all buses.  My first bus is a standing room only sardine can to Khon Kaen from Non Pa Ohn, about a half kilometer from Jessada’s front door.  We drive fast, into oncoming traffic much of the time.  The bus passes the roadside shrine that has now become a familiar landmark, honks twice.  One of the soldiers standing next to me in the stair rail puts his hands together in silent prayer.

Pulling through Kalasin station, I see a woman wearing a freshly screenprinted shirt with Yingluck Shinawatra’s face on it.  She’s a superstar now, with political capital to spend.  All eyes are now upon her, expecting change, results.

We arrive in Khon Kaen, at the terminal.  I am bombarded by offers for tuk-tuks.  I’m confused.   There is no English here, no reference.  I find the window for Nong Khai.  I buy a ticket for 110 baht.  I am told to “sit down” and pointed over to some chairs.  Hours pass.  I fidget, move about, try to get an internet connection, other travelers try and help me read my ticket, but it contains no information, not even a destination.  Finally, a bus arrives, someone shouts Nong Khai, and I manage to find my way onto it.  It’s only pulling through, not even stopping at a berth.  I get a seat in the back, where it’s all soldiers and men, leaving the forward seats for the elderly, women, families.  When the bus runs out of seats, stools are pulled out, lined right up the aisle.  We depart.

Traveling though the region we pass a staggering array of large, roadside “things”.  Jagged concrete dire wolves, molded brontosaurii, wicker elephants, a giant, 50 foot high Ban Chiang pottery.  The “Roadside Thailand” feel of the highway makes me miss Googie coffee shops and muffler men.  pass a row of four workshops where tires are cut and remade into these ubiquitous, bomb-shaped trash bins.  One has a row of skinned tires easily four feet high and a hundred feet long.  I think the thinner tires are used for things like handles.  I think of Sarah Perry’s gorillas.

We pass through Udon Thani, which is like the beating heart of the region.  There are tower cranes here, a whole forest of them in one place.  Commerce is everywhere.  Endless markets.  Ads for cabarets.  Ads for hotels.  We pass a luxury car dealership with a yellow Lotus Elan in the window.  At the bus station, an elderly woman gets on and I buy some sticky rice from her.  It’s in a plastic sandwich bag, and it’s too hot to eat.  I wait for it to cool and eat it with my som woo-ah.  The teenager who acts as the bus’ conductor looks at me, shocked to see a farang eating raw meat and sticky rice with his hands on the bus.  He asks me if I like it in Lao, and I respond, in clear Lao that I like it very much.  He scurries off, perplexed.  My language skills may be the weakest part of this journey, but the first thing I learn anywhere is how to talk about food.  That som woo-ah was the last I’ll taste of Yot Kaeng for a week.

The crowd on the bus thins out as we approach Nong Khai.  I exit, get my bag from below, and fight off an swarm of tuk-tuk drivers.

I Am a Moth to the Flame

I arrive in Nong Khai, find my way to Sawadee Guesthouse, which I’ve chosen solely for its professed free wi-fi.  It delivers on the wi-fi, but I have to take a double room, which means I get a serious lecture from the Chinese owner about his no prostitutes in the room rule.  He mentions it numerous times.

When I emerge from my room, it’s barely 7pm and Nong Khai is mostly locked up.  I wander along the Mekong Promenade towards the center of town, hoping to find a 7-Eleven, as I have to break a large bill.  I pass many restaurants, all looking sad and empty.  Bars where Thai women wait in small groups, for the European men who will pay for their company.  There are a staggering amount of prostitutes and bar girls here, but maybe they just stick out more in the off season.  The Farangs here are older, white, looking less like burnt out ex-pats and more like lost, middle aged souls.

I find a 7-Eleven and a small night market.  It’s near a pair of lighted tennis courts that are seeing a lot of action.  Inside the 7-Eleven I buy some liquids, break my bill.  I’m developing an obsession with cheap, Thai, macho energy drinks.  I bout some .357 here, it tastes like slightly orange Red Bull.  There is a very young American inside.  He speaks no English and has bought a microwave meal of some sort that the employees are nuking for him.  They say two minutes, and he responds with an ear-splitting “awesome”.  I decide I hate him, that he needs a shave, too.  I wonder what he’s doing here.

Outside, I buy one of these mysterious banana pancakes I’ve been reading about.  Supposedly they’re prime backpacker chow.  They’re basically a thin dough with egg and banana inside, fried.  I walk back to the Mekong to eat it.  It’s good, a carb bomb, glazed with condensed milk and some yellow goo that’s all sugar.  While I eat it, I watch a young couple on vacation walk down to a floating restaurant to have what looks like a romantic dinner.  Behind me, an aging Dutch couple meanders about, having a conversation with some young Thai kids about “White Whisky”, which makes my mouth water, a little.

I walk back along the promenade and notice the sheer number of moths beating themselves against the lighting.  I try and take some photos.  I also notice, in the far distance, to the East, a brilliant lighted structure, obviously a wat or chedi or temple of some kind.  I start to walk towards it.  I walk past my guesthouse, into a long strip of restaurants where exclusively Thai groups eat what looks like amazing food.  The idea of eating alone here makes me sad.  The whole idea of a restaurant here is more than food, it’s a place to bring your friends.  Most of the crowd is young, lots of obvious Thai couples sipping whisky and soda or drinking Beer Chang or Leo.  I walk a long time, maybe a half hour, and the lighted tower seems no closer.  At times I can’t see it and I wonder if it’s been turned off or something.

I walk past barking, growling dogs, bars that are closing, a group of Thais where one of the guys wants to practice saying “hello” and shake my hand.  I’m clearly out of place here, on the other side of town, away from the bar girls and the menus with pictures of “BBQ burger” on them.   I’m getting closer to the lighted wat, though.

I finally arrive at the wat.  It’s awash in lights and a tornado of insects are wrapped around it,  I had realized about a mile back that there’s little real difference between my need to chase the light of this thing and the need of one of the huge butterflies that are thrashing about it.  We’re the same, I’m a dog chasing cars and all that.  I’m awash in feelings of acceptance of futility, without judgment, and I like it.  I like the butterflies.  I ascend to the golden Buddha, up washed, wet steps, to stand before it, marvelously colourful in the darkness.

I attempt to circumnavigate the structure when I realize that I’m walking on thousands of insects, except for the space in front of the Buddha, which is marvelously smooth.  I recoil, retreat back to the Buddha.  I’m alone here, at what seems like a circus.  I don’t really know where I am, and I don’t care to reach into my bag to find my maps and try to figure it out.  All I know is I followed the light and the light led me to this place of sublime beauty.  I realize that it’s part of my nature to chase left-hand trails and distant, unknown lights, that’s just what I do best.

I walk back to my guesthouse, filled with purpose, self-satisfied.  I pass closed restaurants, fewer people, familiar people in their 2nd passing.  I’m sure they think I’m lost, and they wouldn’t be half-wrong.  At the oversize Chinese temple that’s booming karaoke from somewhere in the depths, I hang a left, now chasing the boom.  If I don’t find out now, I’ll never know.  Worse, I’ll probably forget it ever was.

I find a street party, with only a few drunks left, belting it out to no one at the top of their lungs, bathing my whole neighborhood in resonance and reverb.  It’s a good sound.  Shops that stayed open late are shutting down.  Crunched into a bench in front of a closed shop is an Asian backpacker wearing women’s Thai pajama pants, passed out, cradling and clutching his DSLR in his sleep.  The cops are rousting drunks down the street with sticks and bright lights, either about to pass him by or give him a night to remember.

Me, I meander up the ally to Sawadee, flip on the internet, and I type.

About “Development” and “Developing”

Thailand is often described as a “developing country” (don’t even get me started on the general misuse of the terms 1st, 2nd and 3rd world in a post-Cold/Long War era…).

Developing into what?  Into a late-capitalist, late-stage democracy like America?  That kind of thinking reminds me of colonial-era, “evolutionary” models used in the study of religion, the idea being that societies move from “primitive” beliefs like animism and animatism through a series of defined stages that ultimately and conveniently leads to monotheism, in particular protestantism (no saints and miracles, please).  It’s a terminology that supports a structure where nation states have unequal voices in the international sphere, despite the equality one might presume based on their mutual sovereign status.  It creates an artificial ranking structure that perpetuates and reinforces the dominance of the nation states with the most power.

According to my reading, guided development efforts in Thailand began in the 1960′s.  Whether this was the result of foreign aid, Thai-generated efforts or a combination of the two is beyond my ability to reference.  It is worth noting that much development efforts have been directed at the Northeast region, which has serious water supply issues that directly relate to the relative poverty and living standards of the residents of this region.  It is also worth noting that US military bases were present in the Northeast during the 1950′s, so the stability of this region was in the perceived interests of the US prior to the Vietnam War.

In my observations, I’ve never visited or lived in a place where people seem to need less from the outside.  Although this place is literally humming along on diesel, LPG and unleaded and satellite dishes extend from the wooden frames of stilt houses, I feel if the power turned off and the pipelines and tankers that serve this region stopped coming, it would be well within the ability of the people of Yot Kaeng to deal with the situation.

It’s possible to argue that the lives of people in Yot Kaeng are better today than they were prior to development came to the region.  Life here is certainly more convenient when you can drive your Toyota Hi-Lux to the 7-Eleven to pick up some instant noodles and an energy drink.  Given the amount of modern medicine and chemistry (I’m building a shrine to DEET when I get back to Oly) that makes it possible for me to live comfortably here, I can only imagine how much tougher this environment was back in the day.  I’m also unusually adaptable to situations of external crisis and difficulty, so my perspective comes from an idiosyncratic place.  I wasn’t here to observe life in 1950′s, so I can’t really address that argument coherently.

I guess where I’m going with this is that when I think about “development” in this place, I think about “self-development”. The people I observe, both in Yot Kaeng and in the surrounding areas, seem passionately interested in their own betterment.  This is most manifest to me in the nearly obsessive desire for English in education here.  People here are in command and control of their own development, and are using their own economic and cultural means to do so.  They don’t have needs, so much as wants.

Neo-colonial arguments aside, Thais have made a national and personal decision to engage with the wider world, and English seems to be the tool of maximum utility for this engagement.  I’ve worked with nationals from Asian countries where some quantity of English language education is mandatory and only rarely do I encounter any kind of competency in English.  But here I routinely encounter people, often children, who speak reasonably good English as the result of their own efforts.  Internet cafes are full of students typing their English homework.

As someone who is struggling with the most basic elements of the Thai and Lao languages (filtered through a local accent), I’m gaining an appreciation for the sheer difference between a tonal language and my own non-tonal one.  And as I’ve come to learn from years of studying Japanese, Hebrew and Spanish, English has one of the world’s steepest grammatical learning curves.  No one would or should engage in the study of English without a serious intent to deploy it to one’s advantage in mind.

The Age of Missing Information

In high school, I read a book, which if I recall correctly had been passed on to me by a friend, called The Age of Missing Information by Bill McKibben.  It’s been a long time, so I’m musing from distant memory here.  A rather light and non-scientific argument about the lack of quality amongst the quantity of information in the “Information Age”.  The author performed a simple experiment on himself and wrote a book about his experiences during it.  I’ve been thinking of it a lot lately.

The author spent 24 hours hiking to and from the peak of on of his favourite mountains in the Appalachians.  He then spent some extended period of time watching all of the cable TV delivered to his home (the maximum that he could subscribe to, without buying a satellite dish or engaging in an abnormal effort).  His argument was essentially that despite the tremendous volume of information and sensation available through the TV, it didn’t really contain knowledge with utility, whereas his reflections of the kinds of knowledge required to survive in his native environment, at the foothills of the Appalachians would have represented a tremendous, specific volume of knowledge, whose utility was directly related to one’s ability to survive.  He also reflects that this knowledge would be held more generally than knowledge is today, that is, although not everyone in town would be the best butcher, everyone in a community would have a general understanding of the procedures involved in butchering an animal.

The author observes and argues many things, but in particular he argues that a tremendous amount of knowledge is being lost at the same time that a lot of “information” is being generated.  I’m in agreement with him. Do a quick mental exercise like seeing how many celebrities you can identify vs. how many local bird species you can identify.  In Oly, a community where farming is direct and relevant, I’m often impressed by my friends’ ability to name the various trees and plants that grow in the area.  In LA, I wouldn’t know what trees or plants even grew there before we transformed it.  Just thinking about this, all I can think about is non-native species that have been brought to LA – palm trees, citrus trees, Brazilian peppers, jacarandas, the black pine I planted in my back yard as a child, eucalyptus…

With the above comments on development in mind, it’s also possible to make a counter argument.  Since the publishing of the book, the internet has matured from a communication medium of narrow use into a series of parallel spaces that mirror nearly all the activities in this one, and are now critically linked to many of those activities.  Many of those spaces can be argued to have externalized much of the knowledge that the author of The Age of Missing Information argues are being or have been lost.  Theoretically, I can use the internet, and in a short time gain much of the knowledge on how to build anything, from a house to an atomic bomb.  So it’s possible to argue that we’re in the process of externalizing much of that knowledge.

I’m not entirely sympathetic to that argument, as I feel that although the volume of actual knowledge on the internet is staggering (one can possibly deploy Theodore Sturgeon’s “90% of everything is crap” argument here), the depth of that knowledge is limited.  I can use Google to find hundreds of cornbread recipes, and I can also use it to find out how to grind corn meal, raise chickens for eggs, build various types of ovens, manufacture fuel for said ovens, construct a proper baking vessel, etc…  I’m sure of that, but the entire scheme is dependent on the maintenance of a volume of labor,energy and material that now represents a staggering percentage of total human activity on this planet.  For me, what’s most questionable here is the resilience of this system over time.

In my observation of Yot Kaeng, it’s clear that despite the presence of nearly all of the elements of contemporary life, a tremendous amount of specific, deep, detailed knowledge is present.  The sheer volume of plant varieties being cultivated for food here, and the tremendous variety of foods being prepared with them is staggering.  In my notes, I’m overwhelmed with plant and food names.  On the other hand, I’ve spent a fair amount of time here in internet cafes, watching children playing Farmville.  I wonder if their personal scope of specific, knowledge will measure up to that of their parents.

Note: I’m not trying to make an anarcho-primitivist argument here, as those who know me best understand that I like my tribal society with saxophones, high powered rifles and methane powered dune buggies.  At this point, I’d probably expect the post-apocalypse to have Facebook, so contemporary life has its hooks in me.  I’m clearly getting soft in my old age.

A related point.  Patton Oswalt’s recent critique of the current state of “geek culture” is relevant to this, as it makes an excellent and accessible argument about the value of the “trivia” that currently masquerades as information or knowledge in our culture.  Oswalt’s critique is only possible in an era possessing either an adolescent or mature internet (ask me in 50 years which one we are in at the time of this writing).

Networking

Yot Kaeng is home to a series of networks.  Like in so many other places, it’s not what you know, but who you know.  It has been stressed to me multiple times how friendly people in Yot Kaeng are compared to people in urban Thailand, and the importance of one’s connections to others seems to be of paramount importance here. Networks that I’ve observed so far include:

The Buddhist network.  Thais both in Yot Kaeng and throughout Thailand can generally presume that when they meet another Thai, they are members of the same

The network(s) of women who walk food for the monks to the two village wats.

The networks of men of men and women.  Most activities outside of the home are gender segregated. As an adult male who is associated with Jessada, I have long enjoyed a welcome place at the late night farm parties of his own crew friends, many of whom he has known his whole life.

The educational network.  As students from Yot Kaeng mostly all attend the same large school, they all know one another.

There is the general network of interconnected, multi-generational families that is the historical core of Yot Kaeng.  This network is further connected to the networks of other villages in the area, though familial connections.

The Thailand network.  Many Yot Kaeng residents have migrated throughout Thailand for work.  My friend Danoi worked in Bangkok for a while and now lives back in Yot Kaeng, welding at a shop along the highway.  One of the women in town worked in Pattaya, where she met her Western husband.

Yot Kaeng’s international connections.  As there are a number of women in Yot Kaeng who are have Westerners as husbands or boyfriends, there is an international web that spreads out from the village.  Thus far, I’m aware of women married to men engaged with men from Belgium, Germany, Canada and Norway.  To my knowledge, the only Westerners who have residence or familial connection to Yot Kaeng are myself and a gay Dutch couple that have a house out in the “farm bubble”.

Thai-Lish

Last time I was here bought my “Freaky Marshall” shirt, a $2.50 aesthetic atomic bomb of seemingly non-sensical English that’s one of my prized posessions.  I’m wearing it right now.

One of the curious and entertaining aspects for the English-fluent traveler in Asia is seeing one’s native tongue used in ways that are alien and “nonfunctional”.  This is often documented on various humorous websites, under descriptors like “Engrish” and “Kong-lish”.  There is a general term called “Glob-ish” that refers to the idea of a post-Western, evolving English.  If I recall correctly, someone is actually out there pushing a simplified, redesigned version of English under this descriptor, for business and other international communications.

My thoughts on this are extremely rough, but my impression is that the English language here is being appropriated and remixed, rather than misused.  This place is a post-post-modern melting pot of culture.  I’ve often opined that cultures like those found in the Philippines and Malaysia are models for human life in the future, being overheated hives of hyper-herogeneous, post-colonial cultural activities.  I think Thailand may be one of those places, but it’s avoidance of actual colonization makes the take here on foreign symbols particularly “pick and choose-y”.  The symbols here aren’t the result of waves just of military or mercantile colonization, but the result of complex economic and cultural interchange with the whole world, much of that interchange taking place through the tourist trade.

The above image, of a decal seen on the gas tank of a Harley Davidson-style Yamaha owned by an art student at Mahasarakham University combines to completely unrelated concepts “yakuza” and “American eagle”.  To either a Japanese or and American person with an understanding of both symbols it makes no sense.  But what is taking place above is the use of the essence of both symbols as perceived by a young person in Thailand.  It doesn’t send a mixed message here, it sends a clear, but re-mixed, message “badass, independent, macho”.  Those are typical values for young Thai male to have, and he’s just using symbols from other cultures to amplify his personal feelings.

This engagement may represent a reverse colonization.  Thai graphic designers and artists are colonizing the cultural space of the English language.  At my friend Pongsak’s portrait photography studio in Si Racha, the two most popular rental outfits for wedding portraits are Tokugawa-era formal kimono and a wide selection of garish tuxedos.  The local consumers of these products are buying them not only because the cultural aesthetics of Japan and America are status symbols , but because they genuinely enjoy playing with and appropriating the aesthetics of other cultures for their own enjoyment with the intended audience for these aesthetics being other Thais, not native English speakers.

Over breakfast, and through much of the morning, Jessada and his mother clarified a number of things about the history of Yot Kaeng and the role of Ta Pu and the Cham.

Some Yot Kaeng History.  Yot Kaeng was mainly founded by settlers from Ban Kei, a nearby village, past Kalasin (Jessada’s mother’s family is from Ban Kei, and she was born there, but they had land and relations in Yot Kaeng prior to her birth).  Back in those days, there were no roads, only some small trails.  Kalasin City was a village then, and hunters from Ban Kei would walk there and rest, before going out into the forest to hunt.

The hunters would go onto the location of the roadside shrine between Kalasin and Som Det, where they would camp, and where there were many animals.  From that camp, they would go on to Yot Kaeng, which was also rich hunting grounds and ten on to Ban Bon.  All three of those camps had shrines constructed to their individual Ta Pu, and the hunters would conduct rituals there, to ensure good and safe hunting.  So there are three Ta Pu in the area.

Eventually villagees were built around the shrine at Yot Kaeng and Ban Bon, as the hunting was too rich to bring all the way back to Ban Kei.  People started moving to the sites of the hunting camps/shrines, and started villages.  There is a village near the roadside shrine, but it may be newer.  The road was not there at the time, and the paths through the forest didn’t follow the road.

When Jessada’s grandmother (his mother’s mother) claimed land in Yot Kaeng, she did it by marking off an area and homesteading, not by buying the land.  Only after the area became converted to farmland did that land become bought and sold.  It seems that prior to that, anything that was forest could be marked off and claimed if you were willing to put in the work.  So the land here was not bought or traded from another resident group, prior to the arrival of Thai-Lao people.   It is also worth noting that I continue to observe land being claimed and owned by women.

Jessada explained the meaning for some of the names of places in the area:

Ban Yot Kaeng = Top River (Yot Kaeng is at a higher elevation and had a lake and river that made it an attractive village site).

Ban Su-Wan Pa = Garden Forest (this is the village near the roadside shrine, it may have been built recently, after the banning of logging in Thailand, and the shrine itself is in protected forest)

Ban Bon = “Village of Many of some kind of Vegetable” (translation confusion)

There is no Cham for the roadside shrine, but both Yot Kaeng and Ban Bon have Cham to this day.  The Cham in Ban Bon is a “business Cham” who reads fortunes for money as part of his job, according to the Yot Kaeng Cham.  The Yot Kaeng Cham either doesn’t know how to do this, or doesn’t do it, it’s not clear.  It’s not clear if the Cham of Ban Bon manifests as Ta Pu or what the rituals there are like.

Jessada also explained some details about the Cham’s stick.  He does carve it himself, from the heartwood of a tamarind tree that was planted on a Tuesday.  Tuesday is the “best day” to be born on, a child born on Tuesday will grow up to be strong.  Thai mothers often schedule induced births or C-sections to ensure their child will be born on a Tuesday.  Both Jessada and his father were born on Tuesdays.

Jessada also remarks that Buddhist prayer beads will also often be made from tamarind wood.

Conversations with Jessada’s mother (Jessada translating and providing some input)

We talked a bit about Moo’s father, the Mo Lom Phi Fa, or “Mo Lam Dancing Healer”.  Apparently it’s debated whether he dances or plays the Khaen while a woman dances.  Or some combination of both.  There is no one in Yot Kaeng who does this, apparently there was someone who did this in Namon, a nearby city, but not anymore.  Apparently the gist is that often when a person is so sick that they can’t move or get up that the Mo Lam Phi Fa dances for them, and then the sick person is healed if they also rise and dance.  The dance is supposedly very, very slow.

I also was able to determing that the “stick” shown with the various Cham in Hayashi’s text is the same general kind of stick that Ta Pu uses.  It is not a club, but a stick.

I have confirmed that the Ho Ta Pu was not up in a tree, but that it was in front of a large tree, which died and is no longer there.  There were however, tiny houses up in the tree, which apparently used to be common for special trees, trees that were supposed to have strong spirits.

I have also confirmed that Yot Kaeng has palm leaf texts in Pali, which are kept at the village wat, Wat Asokaram.  Showing the photos to Jessada’s mother has been helpful.

I showed the images of the “village pillar” from Hayashi’s text to Jessada and his mother.  They confirmed that there is no such structure in Yot Kaeng that they know of.  The whole, shivalinga/lak bahn thing is confusing.

Also, Jessada says he may know the man who made the current Lak Mueng for Som Det, but is not sure.

Abortive Lunchtime visit to Wat Asokaram

Jessada’s mother had me drive her into Yot Kaeng so she could hang out with some of the ladies while I went over to Wat Asokaram, apparently to meet with the Abbot about the palm leaf texts.  I didn’t know why I had been sent there, and there seemed to be nothing unusual on, so I picked up Jessada’s mother and she came back over with me, where she engaged in a search for the Abbot.  As his aircon was blasting and he didn’t come to the door when we knocked, it’s safe to presume that he likes his midday nap.  While at the temple the monks seemed to just be hanging around, or watching TV.  I’m eager to spend some extended time here, as from what I can see, outside of the sukhwan and morning prayers, they seem to spend most of their time idling about.

Visit to the Cham’s house

As I mentioned, I was able to meet with the Cham of Yot Kaeng today.  Jessada, Ole and Danoi were all present for this meeting.

The Cham does live over by the Lak Baht, but there’s no reason why, it’s just in his neighborhood.  He is a farmer, apparently a sucessful one, as his home is large and was recently expanded.

The Cham seems like an ordinary looking person, was wearing a blue TOA Color World sweatshirt when we arrived.  He also has an “expensive looking” watch, but that could be deceptive, as there are lots of blingy, cheap watches in Thailand.  He speaks no English but is extremely gregarious.  He has three daughters, but no sons.  We met with him at night, as he was working in his fields during the day.

Before we are invited inside, he tells Jessada that he knows me.  He was one of the men present the day I visited the Village Guardian Spirit Shrine alone.  He was helping a young woman from Yot Kaeng, who has a Belgian boyfriend, get her visa, which she is having some problem with.  They were seeking the help of Ta Pu to accomplish this.

Jessada remarks that when he visits the shrine before a major undertaking, he will bring either a chicken or a pig’s head.  He gives the example of seeking Ta Pu’s assistance in selling work during an upcoming exhibition.  He says he makes a deal with Ta Pu, promising him that if he makes a sale, he “will bring two chicken”, “if not sell, not bring chicken”.  It is unclear if the chicken are cooked, but I think they are.  Hayashi makes numerous references to animal sacrifice at village shrines being replaced with offerings of steamed chicken.

We were all invited inside.  The main room of his home is a new extension, all brightly coloured tile, with no furniture.  There is a cabinet towards the back, containing many pillows.  What I think is one of his grandsons brings out mats for us to sit on and a pair of oscillating fans.

We sit on the mats.  Jessada and Ole and Danoi seem as interested in meeting the Cham as I am.

The Cham explains that he is the son of the old Cham, but that the position is not hereditary.  Six years ago, the old Cham died and he became the new Cham.

Some details of the annual ritual emerge.  First, the kitchen was built on site for convenience.  Secondly, a live pig will be brought as a ritual sacrifice, and killed on site.  The pig will be offered to Ta Pu first.  Then the people will eat from the pig.  The people know that Ta Pu has finished eating when the joss burning as part of the ritual goes out.

Much of our meeting consists of a lengthy breakdown of a single sheet of paper, a list of appropriate offerings to Ta Pu.  I am allowed to photograph this list, for later translation and breakdown.  Without going into almost minute detail of the list, it seems that offerings range from various kinds of herbs and vegetable products, to quantities of old currency, or objects representing currency, to various kinds of jewelery, in gold or silver colors.  Some of the money objects are symbolic because there was a time when the people of Yot Kaeng had no money, but used small pieces of wood instead, as currency.

Many of the objects are offered in specific numbers, often muliples of 16.  In the case of one offering, it consists of 16 skewers of 16 herbal packets, for a total of 256 small packets of herbs and chili, wrapped in leaves, impaled 16 to each stick.

At least one of the object isn’t on the list, the large cucumber shaped objects seen above, called “tier neu-ney”.  The cham brings out examples of many of these objects for me to see.

At the bottom of the sheet is a list of six names, elders of the village.  They helped compile the list as the people of Yot Kaeng were beginning to forget their traditions, the knowledge was becoming piecemeal.  Some of them are still alive.

After he showed me the various offerings,  he brought out two more objects, his stick, the stick he uses when he is Ta Pu, and a sword in a wooden scabbard.  The stick is about 30″ long and made of some kind of hardwood.  It looks a lot like the sticks shown in the photographs of Hayashi’s text.  He says that when Ta Pu first comes, he has the stick. Later, during the ritual, he dances, slowly with the sword.  He says that the dance is “like Thai Boxing dance”, but slow.  Jessada says he may cut himself (indicating across the shoulders), during the ritual.  Everyone seems a little fascinated with the sword.  The Cham describes what he wears when he is Ta Pu, and offers to dress as Ta Pu at our next meeting.

I ask if Ta Pu kills the pig, but it’s not clear who kills the pig, or if the sword is used to kill the pig.  This hopefully will clear itself up at our next meeting.

We have a conversation about the next ritual.  The Cham says that this year’s ritual took place on May 11, 2011 and that next year’s will also take place on May 11.

The talk turns to Yot Kaeng’s 100 year anniverary, which is next year.  Apparently the villlage is 130-150 years old, but someone arbitrarily decided to date the founding to 1912.  No one knows why.  There will be a big festival and a big mor lam, but I’m not sure if it will also take place in May or at another time of the year.

Following the conversation about the anniversary in 2012, Jessada, Ole and Danoi have an excited conversation about the end of the world being in 2012.  Apparently there is no end to the reach of American pop culture, faux-mysticism or bad movies.  They’ve all seen the movie.

We end our conversation with some more clarity about the Lak Bahn (formerly Shivalinga).

Apparently, a long time ago, Yot Kaeng did not have a Lak Bahn.  Many people whose names all started with the same letter died suddenly.  Monks built the Lak Bahn, encircled it, blessing it.  People stopped dying.  The spot for the Lak Bahn was chosen by the monks.  Jessada explains that many people used to be sick all the time in Yot Kaeng, that illness was a constant factor of life here.

As we leave, the Cham also informs us that there is another Cham in the area, on the way to Mukdahan.

8AM: Bun Bhuk Baan

I awoke early, as I knew that I would be attending this ritual with Jessada’s mother.  I didn’t know anything about it in advance, other than it was “Yot Kaeng Culture”, that there would be food involved and that it  was intended as a thank you for the monks for performing the sukhwan.

Prior to our departure,  noticed the above object in the house, obviously an offering of some kind.  It is a trianglar box made from a banana frond and containing fish and a cigarette.  We also brought a huge, still warm pot of fish with us to the wat.

Upon our arrival at the wat, Jessada’s mother placed the triangular box on a platform outside of the wat.  I carried the pot inside, where I was directed to place it on the altar.  The entire altar was covered, nearly end to end, with food in trays and baskets.

In front of the altar were long tables containing the monk’s food bowls.

The monks were all present, seated behind the food.  They were all wearing yellow belts, which they did not wear during the sukhwan.  The abbot was not present when I arrived.

The main floor of the wat was filled with women, mostly older women.  In the front right were a smaller group of around 20 men.  In the front left was a group of 5-6 women who were managing neatly organized plates of food.  I was seated in with Jessada’s mother, at the corner closest to the men.  Everyone seemed more formally dressed than at the sukwhan.  It seemed mostly to be the same people who participated in the sukwhan. Above is a video walkaround, pre ritual.

Before the ritual began, we placed offerings of paper money in a money tree.  All of the offerings were either 20, 50 or 100 baht notes.

In addition, I joined Jessada’s mother and I placed sticky rice into each of the monks bowls, from a basket we had brought from home.  I presume this is the same ritual that’s performed when women bring rice to the shrine in the morning.  There was also an additional bowl where we each placed a 10 baht coin and some jasmine buds.

Things came to order as the abbot entered and took his place at the left side of the altar, next to the image of the buddha and the offerings.  The water bowl from last night’s sukhwan was present at his side.

When the abbot entered, a lay worshipper lit candles on the altar, the same man who helped with this during the sukwhan.  He was wearing a pink shirt, while all the other men were wearing white.

The ritual began with the abbot reading from the green fan, and then some call and response took place between the abbot and the body of worshippers.

After the call and response ended, the monks took up the chant.

The monks stopped chanting and one woman, the lead lay chanter started up a loud and vigorous chant, that involved call and response with the monks.  This was followed by more chanting by the monks alone.

At the close of the chanting, the monks’ food bowls were brought forward to them by a row of men at the front.

Then, as the abbot speaks for a while, the money tree is brought forward and the men sit in small circles and sort it out.  They also dumped out the bowl with the jasmine buds and the coins in it and counted that money.  During this, some of the women continued to pray.

The paper money was then all put in a plastic bag and passed forward to the lay worshipper who helped with the candles.

After the abbot’s sermon and the money counting, the body of worshippers returned to a prayer position and the monks began to chant again.  Everyone in the building then poured water from a vessel into a cup of some kind.

After this, the lead woman chanter leads the body in a brief chant.

At the close of the chanting, the abbot rises, and a man picks up the water bowl, into which he dips a bundle of grasses.  He then begins to circle the room, clockwise, sprinkling water at the audience, starting with the men.  He makes a point of getting me square on, my intuition that he has a good understanding of the theatre involved in his position grows stronger.

As he passes me on his way back to the altar, he soundly hits me on the head twice with the wet grasses.  I am now convinced of his theatrical gifts.

He then returns to his seat and gives another, brief sermon.

As he speaks, red and white threads are passed around the room.  The red threads are braided and each have five beads in the center of the braid.  Some men put these behind their left ear to hold them.  Some people are taking them home, and some people are placing them on each other’s wrists.

Men begin to bring food to the monks, serving them.

During the next 15 minutes or so, I end up with five of them being tied around my right wrist.  Before one is tied on the giver rubs it back and forth.  One older woman tied a special knot in the middle of one of the two white threads I was given, while praying.

During all this exchanging of bracelets, we also all go outside, where we dump our water vessels in the planters outside the sala.  Some women gather up their banana triangle box offerings and leave, taking them with them.  Some leave the offerings there.

We leave, amidst much socializing.

It is explained to me upon our return to the house that the bracelets must be left on for a minimum of three days, during which time, they cannot be cut or removed.

Sukwhan Completion

When I returned home from the Bu Bhak Baan, Jessada and I completed the sukwhan by throwing stones and dirt around the house.  We circled the house in a clockwise manner, with me throwing stones and Jessada throwing dirt.  At the end of the throwing, Jessada made a point of throwing some stones on the roof.  Apparently the ritual does not need to be immediately completed.

Conversation Notes

During the day, I was able to question Jessada’s mother at length about various things related to Ta Pu.

Firstly, a narrative.  A long time ago, Ta Pu was considered omniscient (during is single, annual appearance), but not so much anymore.  He used to know all kinds of things, particularly about pregnancy and fertility.  He could tell a woman was pregnant before she herself knew, and he knew if anyone had violated his sacred forest.  Now he’s not so omniscient and he “smokes small chili” instead of the big cigar of chilies he used to smoke.

It is now clear to me that a person becomes Ta Pu, and that person is the village Cham.  This has been a tricky subject, as in Yot Kaeng the term “Mo Chan” is not used, simply Cham is used, and it’s pronounced with a regional accent, more like
“J/Cham” than “Cham”.  He is considered a completely ordinary person the other 364 days of the year when he is not Ta Pu.  It is not clear whether he plays the role of Ta Pu or becomes Ta Pu or is possessed by Ta Pu.

If the Cham dies, there will be no Cham until the next ritual.  At the ritual, Ta Pu wil possess (my term) someone and they will become Ta Pu and therefore the next Cham. Both Hayashi and Tambiah noted a number of local customs for choosing a Cham.  I asked/interrogated along these lines and both Jessada and his mother were quite clear that the people of Yot Kaeng have no role in choosing the Cham.  People go to the shrine on the day of the ritual, “sit, pray, wait, hope” until someone becomes Ta Pu.  The position of Cham is for life.

Jessada’s mother related this narrative about the history of the Cham in Yot Kaeng:

She came to Yot Kaeng as a chiled.  About 5-7 years later, the Cham died.  At next year’s ritual, Ta Pu chose a young boy (not a child, but an adolescent or teenager) to be the Cham, but he was not “strong” like Ta Pu, so the following year, Ta Pu chose another.  That man was Cham for about 10 years before he died.  At the following year’s ritual, Ta Pu chose the young boy, who was now a man, to be Cham.  Tha man is the Cham today.  He lives near the Shivalinga (not necessarily relevant).  Note that this contradicts what I said about about the position of Cham being for life.  Apparently it is, unless when it isn’t.

The Cham is completely ordinary, except when he is Ta Pu.

Mahasarakham University Talk

Most of this is unrelated to my research, except for two conversations that took place.

First, it turns out that the father of one of Jessada’s friends, Moo, is a religious specialist, a Mo Lam healer.  I believe he plays the Khaen while a woman dances as part of healing rituals.  There is no one in Yot Kaeng who does this.  He is paid for his work and makes “good money” doing it.  He lives very far out in the country, so it’s a maybe as far as visiting him goes.  It’s also possible that he only does this work at specific times or events, it’s not clear.  Jessada will be looking more into this for me.

Secondly, there is a faculty person at Mahasarakham who is a “Shivalinga expert”.  He explained that the Shivalinga in the village is called a Lak Bahn, not a shivalinga, although the style of the one in Yot Kaeng is “Shivalinga-like”.  So it’s not intended as a literal Shivalinga, but is in the style of one.  I’m still unclear as to why it’s there, and what it’s for.  Because it’s in a village it’s called a Lak Bahn, in a city it would be called Lak Mueng. Jessada explained that Som Det has a Lak Mueng.  Now I’m confused.