Thailand - Buddha and Massage Parlors

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-- The Wats (Pagodas ) in the City Palace area in the western part of Bangkok. The walls of the Palace have scenes from Ramayana. Also there is a big shrine for ' Emerald Buddha'







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I should say that I was pretty ignorant about Thailand before going there. The movie KING AND I was a musical I had seen in my college days. It had Yul Brynner as the king of Siam and Deborah Kerr (the I) as the English governess employed by the king for his children. The film gave an impression that the country was very primitive and it changed with the arrival of the western lady ! Yes, Siam was the name of the country at that time and another reason we knew about it was that it was quite well known for its twins . And we knew that it was a Buddhist country. And that was about it.

While we went there from Singapore , there are direct flights from major Indian cities to Bangkok. The discount fares from most Indian cities to Banglkok are 8000 – 12000 rupees. The currency in Thailand is Baht and 100 Bahts are roughly equivalent to 120 rupees. The lodging in a middle class hotel (like the one in which we stayed ) costs about 2000 rupees.

When we landed at Bangkok airport, we were really surprised by how huge it was. We remembered reading somewhere that it was called a Newly Industrialized nation. However, the delays for the immigration procedure reminded us that we were still in a developing country.

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The giant tableau at the airport - Devas an Asuras doing Amrit Manthan

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And when we came out of the airport (called SUVARNA BHOOMI – Golden land ?) the roads leading to the city were very good., as good as the ones we had seen in Singapore. Once we got off the high ways, we were in a very familiar territory – MUMBAI – only that the inner roads are slightly cleaner than those in Mumbai. It certainly looked like a 3^rd world country but with one foot in the first world

We had increased our knowledge of the country by reading an article on the aircraft. The word THAI has connotation of freedom. The country is of the size of France. Its major export is rice followed by textiles It seems that some point of time in the last century Thailand had the highest growth rate of all nations. Among the various ranking of nations, it is somewhere in the middle.

Thailand is a constitutional monarchy. The king is respected and really revered. He will be 80 next year. We reached on a Monday and saw many people wearing yellow shirts. When we asked about it we found out that it is a symbol of solidarity with the monarch. The military is often on the political scene since coups are quite common. The ex prime minister had just then stepped down on massive corruption charges. It can be very loosely termed as benevolent dictatorship.

.We were put in an inn in downtown Bangkok. The room was kind of small, but the people were nice. Of course, they did not speak English, or spoke very little. This is when man realizes that speech is not necessarily the sole mode of communication. As we will see Thais are omnivorous whereas some of us were strict vegetarians. Contrary to what it says in the bible, we did live by bread alone!

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Golden Brahma Idol . Yellow shirt indicates solidarity with the monarch

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Bangkok is an extremely safe city. Quite a few people are on the streets in the night. There seem to be many buses but we did not take any of them. We did travel by trains (overhead) and they are relatively cheap. But trains do not connect all pats of the city as in say Singapore. There are equivalents of autorickshaws – called TukTUKs. Either they did not understand us or something else, some of them did take us for rides ! However people are very friendly and try to help. They do NAMSTEs more often than us. But the problem is that most of them do not know English . As for shopping, there is plenty. It looked like clothes etc are only slightly costlier than in India. But since we had limited time and finances, shopping was not on the top of our list.

Our first afternoon was in search of a Brahma shrine. Yes, Brahma is a revered deity here and many pray to him for prosperity. In a place called IRAWN shrine one can see the Brahma idol and worshippers with incense sticks, flowers etc.

However, Buddha is the main deity here. One cannot just miss him in this country. While countries like Japan and China have other religions also (Shinto, Confucianism etc) , the major religion is Buddhism here. Many streets have temples for Buddha and the idols are quite big. They follow Hinayana system here , like is Sri Lanka and Burma.

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Golden Reclining Buddha in Wat Po - The idol is gigantic

Following is WAT ARUN : An Agkor Wat type of temple

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People are quite calm. And as I said earlier the place is safe, I guess these things come at least partially from the religion.

However, since Buddhism was an offshoot of Hinduism , there are lot of Hindu elements in the culture. As is well known they have their own version of Ramayana . The Kings are named after Rama. For eg one is told that RAMA V was responsible for many reforms in the country. I think the present one is called RAMA IX. The Hindu influence can be seen in many temples. They are called WATs here. Many Hindu figures like Garudas and Chinese figures like dragons etc coexist on the temple walls. The Bangkok airport has a huge tableau like thing where we can see Devas and Asuras are involved in AmritManthan (see airport pik)

One of the first things one notices is that there seem to be more women there than in many other countries. Most of the stores are run by women. Women handle tough jobs like driving the boats on clangs ( canals – Bankok was once called the Venice of the east) . They also stand on the edges of the boats and give tickets as can be seen in one of the pictures. . And last but not least they manage massage parlors (see pic, more on it later) .There are massage parlors everywhere. Even one's little toes can get massaged for not a whole lot of money !

As for the reasons for the position of women in the society, one can quote an article by Dr Devaraja , a Sinhalese sociologist. In an article ‘ The Position of Women in Buddhism ‘ she says that Buddhism has helped to better the position of women in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand. Apart from the fact that the Buddhist church was open to both men and women, Dr Devraja mentions another interesting aspect “ In all patriarchal societies the desire for male offspring is very strong and only a son could carry out the funeral rites of his father .. .The Buddhist funeral ceremony is a very simple one which could be performed by the widow, daughter or any one on the spot and the presence of a son is not compulsory”. Further, in Buddhism, marriage is purely a secular affair and the monks do not participate in it. However she hastens to add that masculine superiority exists in these societies also but tempered by Buddhist ideals.

While the position of women in these societies is certainly laudable, the sad aspect is that there is a large scale use of women as physical objects. Old western men accompanied by very young thai women is a very common sight in Bangkok. They act as companions for these men.. IAs a rather hard hitting article called Prostitution in Thailand and Southeast Asia ( I quote extensively from this article which is on the net ; from a course in Swarthmore univ: author not known) says that Thailand and the Philippines have recently stepped in to play the role of whorehouse to the world . While such practices were not unknown in the previous centuries, the sex boom in SE Asia started with the American presence in Vietnam. Thailand agreed to provide "rest and recreation" services to American servicemen during the Vietnam War, According to the article, the number of prostitutes which was 20,000 1957 increased to 400000 by 1964, after the United States established seven bases in the country, Is ironical that the official position on prostitution is that "prostitution does not exist because it is illegal” ,Ultimately, much of official complacency with prostitution is tied to the view of prostitutes as a national resource. Like in many developing countries, most of the girls are from rural areas and poor households and these jobs willingly since they pay very well. A couple of years of work by a girl would enable the family to build a big house in the countryside. As long as there are no other high-wage jobs available, women will continue to choose prostitution in Southeast Asia. And meanwhile, the official attitude of coercion and condonement is currently fixed because too many people make too much money off the prostitutes. Also Disease is a constant threat to these prostitutes. Hoewver, when one is making all these statements, there is also the feeling that we may be thrusting our sense of morals on another culture.

Finally as we were coming back to the SwarnaBhumi airport, we were happy that we had seen an ancient culture and land. But when one looked at the overall postion of women, the feelings were mixed.

(2nd part later - Ayudaya and more about the country )

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