Call me, maybe, from Thailand
By Chris White
For the past 10 years my wife has been concerned for a family member, one unseen and unheard but for some emails. The emails appeared annually or semi-annually, often confirming Thailand as his residence, but with no address or pictures. Personal information was minimal. Every year or two she offered to visit him. To the family’s surprise this year he took us up on the offer.
At the end of January we arrived in Bangkok and met at a hotel. We brought a gift he suggested – a case of Kraft Dinner – but he was hungrier for news about those he left behind. Who was still in the hometown? Who was living where? And most of all, who had passed on? The updates lasted for well over an hour. There was no discussion of why he chose to live as he did, nor was there a desire for that discussion. We accepted the move as part of his character, someone unstoppably helpful and chatty, ever an individualist. With some relief, we felt it was as if he had never left.
Skewers at the Kata Walking Market in Phuket: 20 baht is under CAN $1.
How to visit
A family leaving Bangkok the day before Lunar New Year.
Then he explained, not the why of his absence, but the how. His main activity had been teaching English on-line to international students, with lots of time spent streaming and surfing too.
His main tool was really his cellphone – to order cabs and food, to locate with GPS, and to decipher Thai signs with Google Translate and converse with locals in a pinch.
He spent the next hour modifying our cellphone for use in Thailand – inserting a new SIM card with unlimited data, an Uber-type app called Bolt, food app called Grab (Southeast Asia super App), WhatsApp for phone calls, and more.
These apps, as well as his constant texts, guided us through the trip. So he became our host, but ironically in absentia.
It’s not that we were complaining, or even the tiniest bit ungrateful to him. Unless we were tethered to him, what choice did we, he or any visitor to Thailand have? Could we turn off our cell phone if without it we can not speak to or understand others, deal with signage or even our location within our neighbourhood? In a place with little public information given diminished free press and different human rights?
It’s also helpful to everyone that virtually every Thai carries a cellphone, a service available for just US $6 per month, although the fees are now rising somewhat (along with other costs, including housing). So at least we were living like the Thais, sort of.
It’s not all high tech. The biggest pleasure was eating outside of North America’s factory food system.
After a few drinks in Pub Street in Siem Reap, Cambodia, you can feel like you are floating in space. The street is divided into pubs, clubs, and stalls filled with cheap Chinese goods that people weren’t buying much.
Diners at an MK Restaurant in Bangkok order on a touch screen, visible to the left of the server. Then a robot wheels the dish to a booth, and a server transfers it to a hot plate inset in the table. The food was fresh, inexpensive and amazing, but I don’t think all the tech did much for my appetite
A mini-mall in Kata, Phuket, mostly Russian and virtually empty 24/7. On our trip we discovered two fake businesses with no customers – one a bakery selling stale goods but without even a bread knife inside and the other a pizzeria with an oven smaller than our microwave at home – no doubt fronting for something else. However, we did see a vibrant Russian market outside Bangkok
Russia vs. the West?
I was stunned to learn from our host (and later witness for myself) that millions of Russians have used these same tools to visit and move to Thailand, a haven from international sanctions. Since the Ukraine war their numbers are up dramatically.
Our host assured us that we would find the Thais wonderful and that the Russians would keep to themselves. He was correct but for two exceptions. When encountering Russian toddlers on this neutral ground, we found their cuteness trumped political correctness. Only then our gazes might meet.
The other exception occurred at an upscale hotel in Phuket where Russian guests were the majority. I was waiting for my wife to return to the pool as she put on her suit. A Russian woman in her forties cast aside my wife’s sweater from one of our pool chairs and piled her own stuff on it, with about six chairs yet empty along our side of the pool. I protested, in English, that this was my wife’s chair. She ignored me as if I was not there. I protested to her two kids, a girl and boy of about 10. They met my gaze wide-eyed, but unresponsive. They listened to her mom’s instruction and followed her away. What just happened?? Had I crossed an ethnic line at the pool? Or was this woman grieving, perhaps having lost someone in the war?
Lesson Learned
While I enjoyed the many pleasures Thailand offered, I came firstly to avoid losing someone. After my encounter with the Russian mom, I came to believe I shared this motive with the Russians, who come from a country disrupted by war. Thailand really is a great place to be together.
The irony is that the cellphone seems an insurmountable barrier to “being together." The Russians remain a separate community only through it. Also, I think that but for the power of the cellphone, we would have spent more time with our host. And our host himself, while having left Canada and committed to stay in Thailand, seems not perfectly at home in either country.
If only there was a way for us to turn the cellphone off. I can report, though, we finished our trip happily with two days in the company of our host and returned home.
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