Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 27, 1994 TAG: 9403290130
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEAN CRAMER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Some powerful spirit bonds these racially and ethnically dissimilar inhabitants. Their origins are debatable. "We believe Thai people are coming from somewhere, maybe China or the south," is the local guide's explanation, which is as good as any. Add Persia, India, Vietnam and the bordering countries of Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia, whose warriors and migrants populated this fertile land.
Known for centuries as Siam, Thailand, unlike its neighbors, was never colonized by Europeans. Western visitors are not just tolerated here, they are embraced. Now the optimistic nation, which is about the size of France (or twice the size of Colorado), faces changes brought by tourism and commercial development that the Thai are only beginning to question.
Many out-of-towners are Thai themselves. Bangkok's growing middle class can afford get-aways in once remote places, and they celebrate any holiday whether its Christmas, Hanukkah, King Bhumibol's birthday or a string of local festivals.
South of the traffic-clogged metropolis stretches a long, mountainous isthmus edged with powder-sand beaches and scores of offshore tropical islands, the largest of which is Phuket. In the early 1800s, the first wave of Chinese miners came to seek their fortune in tin. Muslims from Malaysia settled in as fishermen or field workers in rice paddies and rubber, pineapple and coconut plantations.
Now the best paying jobs are in tourist hot spots like Pattaya on the Gulf of Thailand or Phuket, a glamorous yachting center on the Andaman Sea.
Boutique hotels cater to people who own their own jets and scuba diving equipment. Japanese businessmen practice golf swings in the lobby, and Germans lie topless on the beach. Modest family hotels and backpackers' huts still provide unpretentious shelter, but the vast, new resort-package complexes with their own health centers, child-care services and multi-ethnic restaurants are exotics planted in an exotic land.
If such contrasts bother the Thai, they don't show it. From bricklayers to gardeners to resort management staff, they cater to the whims of every guest. Show your camera, and they stop working to smile into it.
North of Bangkok, past the irrigated plains, fruit orchards, orchid farms and tea plantations, the travelers' road climbs into misty mountains once covered with teak forests.
The 1959 outlawing of opium growing and 1989 ban on logging - as well as improved highways -- changed the lives of the northern Thai, who now capitalize on their colorful traditions and their surrounding wilderness.
Chiang Mai, (a one-hour flight or 432-mile drive from Bangkok), is the cultural and craft center of the north and a base for visits to elephant training camps and seven different hill tribes. This 13th century capital with its aged temples has modernized rapidly in recent years. Teenagers watch MTV and wear rap caps. The Santa Fe Shop sells bluejeans and cowboy boots. Pedicabs sport Rambo stickers.
In addition to spicy northern Thai food, you can find KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Baskin Robbins and a restaurant serving mixed jungle steak, and the "only snake shake in the world."
The overcrowded night market has lost its rustic charm, but bargain-offering vendors have not yet learned to hustle like their counterparts in the West.
In nearby Lamphun, villagers trade at a pungent, open-air produce market for roasted frogs, crickets, cockroaches, three-days-ripe raw fish, sparrows, betel nuts, saffron dyes and the Orient's freshest fruits, vegetables and spices. Sellers look up from portable TV sets to smile at every sightseer.
Chiang Mai's tour operators promote a "firsthand experience of tribal life." They walk you through the most accessible villages, each clinging precariously to its ancient customs.
In a Hmong village, barely subsisting refugees from North Vietnam honor their ancestors by producing large families. They welcome visitors, hoping to sell their hand-made stitchery along with plastic jewelry brought to this primitive camp from workshops somewhere else. A Karen tribe lives in a government sponsored showplace of neat, wooden stilt-houses with a weavers' craft center and a school. These villagers attend a Catholic church but remain, at heart, animists believing in a spirit world.
High on the mountain pass, private bungalows and swanky villas hide out in the cool forest. Urban landowners are encroaching on the "upcountry" for relief from Bangkok's heat.
In Chiang Mai, licensed guides arrange treks to isolated hill tribes, closer to the Burmese border. Starting from Mae Hong Son in the northwest or Chiang Rai near the Golden Triangle (where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet), one may go exploring by elephant, bamboo raft, even mountain bike. But costumed hill-tribe traders turn up at elephant camps, raft launches, night markets and temples to sell handcrafts, souvenir opium pipes and trinkets.
Nowhere is the heartbeat of Thailand as visible as at the open border at Mae Sai, where hordes of Thai and Burmese nationals cross the bridge over the knee-deep Mae Sai River. The main street here is one continuous shoppers orgy. Yet a gentle politeness prevails.
About 93 percent of Thai profess to be Buddhists. Their national identity centers on devotion to their king and to Theravada Buddhism, a religion of tolerance.
Meditating monks seem unperturbed by enlightenment-resisting sightseers, as long as respect is shown. Gargantuan golden figures of Buddha, towering above believers and nonbelievers alike, command attention. These stylized images of the great teacher are as diverse, beautiful and enigmatic as the Thai people themselves.
Our tour guide, who studied to be a monk, answers his cellular phone and smiles patiently into it. He's a well-adjusted Thai.
Jean Cramer is a travel writer and photographer living in Denver, Colo.
by CNB