The King and I...

We arrived at Mauritius airport for our flight to Bangkok. There was an interesting assortment of shops, including one with a person-sized stuffed dodo, a Happy Diwali sign, and a model ship. We were sorry to be leaving the heavily Indian-influenced island just before the festival of Diwali. What we didn’t realize was that in Thailand, our destination, the late king’s funeral was this month. 

Sure, I could have looked this up. I remembered that the king had died last year, but I wasn’t aware of how long the period of official mourning, as declared by the military government, would be.

I had some trepidation about traveling to Thailand on a one-way ticket. In South Africa, the airline official had insisted on seeing our onward plane tickets out of Mauritius, before letting us board our flight there. Officially, many countries’ immigration departments insist that you have a ticket out of the country before they will let you in, but in practice a one-way flight is usually okay (the immigration officers just need to be satisfied that you have the means to move on and aren’t planning to stay in their country illegally). The problem arises when the airline you fly out with wants proof that they won’t be liable for flying you back.

We don’t know when or how we’re leaving Thailand, so we had nothing to show the airline officer in Mauritius. Fortunately, all she did was ask us to promise that if the Thai authorities insisted we buy a ticket out of the country on the spot, we would do so, and her airline wouldn’t be liable! I thought that was pretty laid back of her. When we actually arrived in Bangkok, the Thai immigration officer who stamped us in asked us exactly zero questions, so entering on a one-way ticket was a total breeze.

On our ride in from the airport I was distracted by our taxi driver. The first one we got had never heard of our hotel (this has become a theme across the world) and couldn’t figure out where it was, so we didn’t leave the airport with him. The second one, it quickly became apparent, had a series of tics that caused him to cough, bang his head into the headrest (he had a special cushion for this purpose, I noticed), and various other things. Since none of them seemed to interfere with his driving—remarkably smooth for a taxi driver, in fact—I just relaxed and let him get on with it. It was like being driven by Rafael Nadal. Then I started seeing portrait after portrait of the late king, decked with marigolds.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej (the Great, Rama IX) was beloved of Thais. It is illegal to insult royalty in this country, but I don’t think that explains the reverence we are seeing. Until his death, King Bhumibol was the longest-reigning monarch in the world; most Thai people have no memory of any other king. Furthermore, although Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932, it has been a rough road in terms of democracy. Only one prime minister has fully served out his or her term. Under these circumstances, the occasional intervention of King Bhumibol behind the scenes (even though he had no formal government role) has probably given Thais some sense of stability.

This is my favorite picture of His Majesty, on a trip to the U.S.A.--the country in which he was born.

King Bhumibol of Thailand and Benny Goodman playing the clarinet, New York City, 1960

He played the saxophone too.

Ironically, there is no live music for the entire month of October. The funeral lasts for five days. We have noticed black-and-white bunting and marigolds, both real and artificial, everywhere, as well as portraits of the late king and Thai flags at half mast. What has been most striking, though, is the way individual Thais we have spoken to have referred to “my king.” When we acknowledge that we’ve heard the news and mention his death with respect, we get deep bows of thanks, on behalf of “my king.”

Royalty is very bound up with religion in Thailand and a lot of the sights we have seen are Buddhist temples/ruins. I have a very limited knowledge of Buddhism, but what becomes apparent if you travel outside Europe and North America is that most people on earth are religious. They may practice their religion in ways that are foreign to me, but in one respect, I have something in common with them. I was raised in a deeply religious tradition and still consider myself religious (although I haven’t been a regular churchgoer lately). In parts of the West, it is common for people to be completely secular; I sometimes feel I have less in common with those folks in whose lives religion plays no role.

Luckily, in the rest of the world it is normal to have a religion. Most people in these countries would not be surprised to find that I have a different religion from theirs, but it would be weird for me to say I had none at all! For me, part of visiting a house of worship is honoring the divine, but another part has to do with respecting other people and their spirituality. 

The expression namaste, which yoga practitioners will know, comes from Hinduism, and it means something like “What is sacred in me bows to what is sacred in you.” The idea that every human being has a sacred spark is not unique to one religion; the Bible speaks of humanity being created in the image of God. When we acknowledge that there is something sacred in another human being, we are taking responsibility for not treating other people like dirt. Or at the very least, not just killing them.

Okay, now that I’ve boiled down religion to its most simplistic form, it seems only right to do the same with politics. The military government of Thailand has twice extended the official period of mourning for King Bhumibol. And said that the new king cannot possibly be crowned until after the funeral, and that new elections cannot possibly be called until after the coronation. You see where this is going. Royal families and governments from the around the world are sending representatives to the funeral; the U.S.A. is represented by Defense Secretary James Matthis, who is already in the region. Sending a U.S. secretary of defense to Southeast Asia is about as tacky as I’d expect from this administration, but maybe the Thai generals will welcome one of their own.

This is the Democracy Monument, which commemorates the coup of 1932—thankfully a bloodless one. It was from this time that Thailand ceased to be an absolute monarchy. Forty-one years later, Thai students, workers, and farmers were demonstrating for constitutional democracy at the Democracy Monument, when the military government of the day killed 77 and injured more than 800. The October 14 memorial is in honor of those people.

This was an occasion when further bloodshed was averted by King Bhumibol’s refusal to support it.

Wat Rajabobitsathitmahasimaram, where the king will be laid to rest with his predecessors

Today being the actual cremation, I have lots of time to complete this post. Everything is closed for at least part of the day. I find it ironic that it was easier to buy alcohol in Dubai airport, which is located in the United Arab Emirates, than in some establishments in Thailand this week! We have seen bits of the procession on a television in the lobby, and recognize elements from the preparations we saw in Bangkok.

We saw these guys who resemble the household cavalry--they were in today's parade.

The first place we stayed in Bangkok, the one our taxi driver couldn’t find, was right by the central train station. I know, right? On the other side was Wat Traimit, the Temple of the Golden Buddha. It contains a 5.5-metric-ton Buddha statue, which was only discovered to be solid gold in the 1950s when it was accidentally dropped from a crane, cracking the plaster exterior. It is thought to have been encased in plaster to protect it from ransacking Burmese (whom we will meet as villains repeatedly in Thai history). We decided to pay our respects.

Wat Traimit

A prayer for peace is never a bad idea, no matter where in the world you are!

 Just past the temple is Chinatown (Yaowarat). Unlike many Chinatowns in the world, this neighborhood continues to function more or less as it has since Chinese workers arrived in Bangkok in the 18th century. Getting lost in the alleys was a humid pleasure, as long as we remembered that motorcycles (scooters) can appear anywhere and from any direction.

The best thing about being next door to Chinatown was the street food. Every night was a progressive dinner, going from stall to stall, spending 50 or 100 baht (a couple of dollars) on something delicious, and eating it at streetside tables, sitting on brightly colored stools that looked like they came from a kindergarten classroom. We had sweet golden corn on the cob, banana pancakes, and of course various types of noodles. T’s favorite, however, was the pork satay sold by a woman wearing camouflage shorts and Wellington boots. I’ll never eat satay without “salad” in pickle juice again!

The pork satay woman reminds me of a refreshing thing about Bangkok: its acceptance of LGBT people. The first handholding I saw in the city (public displays of affection are not common) was between a butch and femme woman, and people with nonconformist gender presentations go about their business, laughing and chatting with other people perfectly normally. Nice to see after Africa.

Advice about traveling Thailand with children could have been written for T. and me: Book a place with a pool, plan your days not to have overload, and get inside (shopping) when you need air conditioning. Because it is hot and muggy, especially in Bangkok. The rainy season is not yet over, and the crowds and streets and all the traffic just ratchet up the heat. I no longer regret those couple of extra T-shirts in my backpack.

We liked the neighborhood where we were initially staying, but hotels aren’t our normal fare. So we checked out the hostel located literally next door. Turns out to be a sister establishment where we could use all the facilities of the hotel (including a great breakfast buffet), but at half the price. Best of all, the hostel had a pool! When we come back to Bangkok—as we inevitably will in transit—we will definitely try this place again.

The other reason the monarchy is special to Thais is that it represents the continuous independence of their kingdom. While Britain ruled Burma and the Malay peninsula and France took over the rest of Indochina, the kings of Siam succeeded in balancing between the European powers. More on that next time, as we journey up the river, Mae Nam Chao Phraya.