Faces of Bangkok.
Now there is every sign that capitalist democracy is being processed here in the same way. Indeed, some of the most agile Thais are already preparing to move on. Many are paying for their children to learn Mandarin rather than English as a second language and modern Chinese culture is starting to spread as its commercial influence increases (there were three quarters of a million Chinese tourists in Thailand last year, out of six million foreign tourists in total).
If you reach deep down into the Thai psyche you will find a reference to the time when ancestors from the North, fleeing Han marauders, arrived at Siam’s stupendously fertile plains and found contentment: nye nam mi pla, nye na mi kow: fish in the river, rice in the field: it is a formula for plenty which every child learns. Many developments in Thai history can be seen as stratagems to maintain or retrieve that level of contentment. Railways from the British, high tech hospitals and sky trains from international consortiums, night clubs from New York, tattoos from Japan, truffles from Italy, a new kind of tourism from China: so what? The formula may vary from epoch to epoch, the sense of well-being itself is what counts. As they say in these parts: sabai sanuk: feel good, have fun.