Back to Beijing and Business as Usual

I stumbled out of the plane, dazed and confused. My flight back to Beijing had left Bangkok two hours late, after 3am, and landed at 8:30am Beijing time. (More on my flight experience later.) With just two hours of sleep, I scarcely knew where I was — at least for a few minutes.

I was the very first off the plane and made my way briskly to the passport control agents, who sit at their little booths with an LCD panel overhead saying Foreigners or Chinese Nationals. All but two of the many booths were for Chinese Nationals. One of the two Foreigners booths had a line of about 5 travelers, the other had 2, so that’s the one I chose. How exhilarting, to rush off my plane and be almost first in line, guaranteeing me a fast and painless departure from the Beijing Airport. Would that it were so.

Within seconds there was quite a line behind me, and suddenly I heard a collective moan from the accumulated masses — the Foreigners sign above me had suddenly changed to Chinese Nationals! We all scurried frantically to the other line, which by now was also quite long, and instead of being “the very next one,” I had about 20 others ahead of me. This was annoying enough, though certainly not the end of the world. What rubbed the salt into everyone’s wounds was that about 70 seconds later the sign for the line we had just abandoned changed again, back to Foreigners! Everyone groaned as a new line quickly formed, with those coming off my flight last stepping right to the front. I had to wait nearly half an hour.

“We’re back in China,” the young lady in front of me said to her husband. If I wasn’t sure where I was when I got off the plane, I knew for sure where I was now. I just found it amusing/alarming that the point was driven home so quickly after landing in the PRC. It seems one moves from one breakdown to the next here, with so many occurring so rapidly and so continuously that one starts to scarcely notice them. I honestly believe that is the trick to a healthy life in China — to develop a callous that protects you from the perpetual browbeating inherent in the system here, dulling the pain and shielding you from insanity.

I just woke up after four hours of sleep in my ice cold apartment. I will be back soon with one of the strangest experiences I have ever endured in China, even more bizarre than going to the bank for a routine transaction. I won’t give it away, but here’s a tantalizing hint — there is no airline on the planet that can compare, in any way, with Air China. Later.

Time, ignoring my pleas, is marching on and I have only a few hours left in Bangkok. I suspect that as soon as I step off the plane tonight in Beijing, Time will suddenly pay attention and go into slooooow moooootion. Why does it always seem to work like that?

All of my initial observations on the Thais and their approach to life stand intact. I will deeply miss the smiles, the courtesy, the irrepressible ability to display a love of life even under the most difficult of circumstances. I will also deeply miss the weather, which has been absolutely perfect from the instant I arrived. And I’ll miss the massages, outlandishly cheap and remarkably good. It’s a really sad time for me, and it raises many questions.

I’ll get back into my regular blogging mode once I’m settled back “home” in Beijing. For now, I just want to savor the last moments of one of the happiest trips I’ve ever taken.

Money girls, money boys

Sex sells, everywhere. But Bangkok’s sex trade is certainly unique in its audacity, its boldness. It seems you can’t walk more than a few minutes in any direction before hawkers peddling their wares accost you. “Young girl, very young girl, only 500 baht.” “Many young boys, they do whatever you want, one thousand baht.”

Many of these young people stand at street corners where they flag down the tourists. Others work in the go-go clubs where they stand on the stage, a numbered badge affixed to their scant clothing; club managers walk from customer to customer asking if they’d like to take one of the dancers “upstairs.” (These places no longer offer live sex shows, which the current prudish prime minister halted a few years ago. And yes, I have visited a couple of these places myself, but not on this trip.) Wherever you go, there seem to be young people for sale. There are numerous books for sale about Bangkok’s sex trafficking and the cruelties some of these prostitutes are subject to.

A friend of mine here tells me that the sex trade is ultimately a good thing. Many of these sex workers come from impoverished families in remote villages, and their families depend on the money they earn for their survival. This is a difficult argument, and I get a headache thinking about it. The humiliation these young people must endure, the threat of disease, the basic wrongness of using teenagers (which many of them are) for sex…. It’s hard to justify that.

My friend tells me, “They have a choice. They can work in my factory for 200 baht a day, or they can work for a few years as whores and earn 2000 baht a day. So can you blame them for doing this?” (For reference, 200 baht is less than five US dollars.)

Just one more of the world’s many moral/ethical dilemmas. It’s not going away any time soon, especially since it’s a major draw for the country’s all-important tourism business. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Right now I really don’t have an answer.

My final point on Iraq, 12 hours later: One glaring point jumped out at me during Powell’s speech and I am surprised I haven’t heard more about it. According to Powell himself, Saddam’s most evil deeds by far — the wholesale slaughter of the Kurds and other massacres — took place around 1988. If these deeds were so despicable and if we cite them in our litany of reasons for declaring war in 2003, does the question not arise, Why did we not take appropriate action when we had the soldiers there in 1991? Why did we not take advantage of that opportunity to eradicate the source of the evil then? How much money is going to waste by having to do the whole thing twice?

For Powell to point to a massacre of 1988 as a factor justifying Saddam’s overthrow rings somewhat hollow, considering Bush Sr. knew all about it more than a decade ago, when our troops were there and poised to attack, and then decided that toppling Saddam wasn’t important enough to risk regional instability. Why is it worth the risk now? And wasn’t Powell himself key to the decision to let Saddam be?

Again, I’m no expert, but these are the types of questions I am hearing in Asia, and I have to admit I can understand why many view the current state of affairs with skepticism and cynicism.

The View from Bangkok….

Last night I stopped at an outdoor bar in the steamy Phat Pong market area, ordered a coke and watched studiously as Colin Powell did all he could to convince the world that everyone except the US and the UK have it all wrong when it comes to Iraq in general and Saddam in particular. My heart really went out to him, first because it’s obvious what he’s up against in terms of world opinion, and second because it was so clear that, earnest though he was, he didn’t have what is needed to shift world opinion on such a massive scale. No smoking gun, no “I’ll wait for your answer until hell freezes over” moment of truth. It seemed as though the speakers who followed hadn’t heard a word he said.

I am neither pundit, intellectual, academic nor foreign policy expert, so there is little I can offer of any great depth in regard to Iraq. What I can do is comment on how this is being perceived outside of the US. I can also talk about it from a public relations perspective.

It hurts to have to say the entire operation is looked upon with such contempt, such scorn, derision and suspicion by everyone with whom I discuss it, be it in China, Singapore, Hong Kong or Thailand, that I have to conclude the US is in deep trouble when it comes to its public relations, its “packaging,” if you will. That sounds trivial, but it isn’t. It makes all the difference.

No one I talk to believes we need to go to war, and I am leaning that way myself. It’s a hoax, in their eyes. They all see our president as a fool and a jackass and a liar, and I am absolutely amazed at how many times I’ve heard the words, in one form or another, “If only Bill Clinton were still president.”

In China, where I don’t have cable TV, everything I hear from the media is (obviously) state-manufactured, and it’s no surprise to hear the same line about how we need to give the UN inspectors more time, blah blah blah. Okay, that’s state-controlled CCTV. But here in Bangkok the one English-language news source in my hotel is the BBC, and I swear, it is not really that different from CCTV! I don’t like Bush myself, but I still blush when I hear how slanted virtually all of the stories are against him and the Iraq situation. How many times in one day can they tell us that Tony Blair is endangering his political reputation and trust by supporting Bush? How many times can they tell us, often in deviously subliminal ways, that war against Iraq is unjustified? A lot of times, trust me.

No matter how equivocal I feel about the inevitable war, I need to stress again that from a PR perspective, Bush has failed miserably and I can’t imagine the US persona ever having been more gruesome than it is today. From the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to the apparent disrespect for individual rights (and I repeat, apparent — it’s a question of perception, which may not be the same as reality but is always a more powerful factor) to the drum-beating for a war that has not been clearly justified to the apparent double standard when it comes to North Korea’s WMD vs. Iraq’s — all of these things combined make the government of George W. Bush singularly unappealing and untrustworthy to the outside world.

So is it any surprise that we are now finding it difficult to impossible to sway world opinion to our side as we prepare for the big invasion? Bush’s pre-September 11 go-it-alone insistence on giving the finger to the Kyoto Treaty, the nuclear arms limitations accords and (again apparently) the environment all amounted to bridge-burning on an unprecedented scale. We have simply never, ever exuded such in-your-face arrogance before, and now we expect those who were on the receiving end to forget all about it and dance to Bush’s tune. (And whether Bush was right or wrong about the treaties isn’t the issue; it’s how he appeared to the world when he rejected them.)

There are some final points about this I want to make, but am too tired to write cogently. I’m going to sleep on it and return in the morning.

Only 2.5 more days in Bangkok, and I am attempting to hold on to every instant. I have percolating in my febrile mind material for many posts, and I’ll probably get around to writing them after I get back “home” to Beijing.

I felt a true surge of joy as the sensual tropical air surrounded me, melting away all the recent anxieties of my life in Beijing. I had just arrived in Bangkok, that most magical of cities where, despite the pollution and the traffic and a fair amount of poverty, people still manage to smile and display a gentleness unique to Thai culture. No, it’s not paradise, but pretty close. For me, just being in Bangkok, just sitting in my hotel’s coffee shop and looking out at the plush green vegetation and the people passing by, I feel lifted up, overjoyed — I feel alive in a way that I have not felt for the past four months. I don’t know how I will get back on the plane to Beijing on Saturday.

In my three-star hotel, the Thais all give me the warmest smile when I ask a question, they greet me as I walk past, they are all nice. This morning at breakfast I got into a conversation with a group of travellers (Danish, Italian, Thai and Hong Kong), and we remarked on the phenomenon of “the Thai smile.” The Thai fellow explained to us how at a very early age his parents taught him that you smile when addressing others. It is an aspect of Thai culture that is irresistible.

I came here for only one reason: to relax and exult in the warmth of this joyous place. I am not going to the bars or the go-go shows around Pat Pong or the steamy places that have made Bangkok the tourist destination of choice for so many Westerners. I’ve seen them already, and it gets to be a bore after the initial astonishment. Thailand seems to cater to every conceivable taste, offering choices for whatever you might be looking for. This time I am looking for some spa treatments and rest, and there is no better place than here. This morning after breakfast I just sat outside by a little waterfall reading One Hundred Years of Solitude (talk about magic) and feeling at peace in a way I haven’t felt for so many months.

I apologize if I sound like a gushing fountain, but I can’t help it — I had forgotten what it meant to feel happy, and believe it or not, tears just came to my eyes as that fact dawned on me. Let’s face it: I really don’t belong in Beijing. The city doesn’t match my temperament, my romanticism, my need for self expression. My need for warmth and comfort. Beijing is many, many things. It is not warm or comfortable. Intriguing, mysterious, home to many marvelous people….but not warm, not comfortable.

I will be blogging very little here, but had to get these feelings down while they were fresh. To those of you who have never been to Bangkok, all I can do is ask what you are waiting for. I have felt as if I were floating for the past two days.