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| Sunday, 03 August 2003 |
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When the hurl and blast of homeward bound traffic dies down to a murmuring drone, a new form of life assumes shape and begins to breathe on the streets of the coastal town, Pattaya and Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. Walking in the red and gold blaze of neon spray, cast from the dazzlingly-lit shopping plazas and malls, we allowed ourselves be carried in the sundown tide that raided the city streets at night. Small-framed and lizard-like "Thai-Chai" young women, dashed up-town on Harley Davidsons, or scooters. Realising that Thailand is a fusion of Thai and Chinese cultures, with an extravagant dash of American, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and other East Asian flavours, makes you understand better what goes on, on its streets. On either side of us, on the pavement strips fronting the glittering shopping boulevards and eateries, night dining had already begun at neat rows of tables, laid out with a multitude of glass bowls, holding chopped onion, green leaves, chillies and other mystic ingredients which go to make a Thai meal. Local men and women, and an occasional white-skinned customer, sat at the tables, lazily indulging in the play of chop sticks. Obviously, night eating was a dragged-on pastime here, a cool contemplation of the frenetic and fast-paced nightscape passing by.
The more affluent tourist boarded a rice barge and glided on a dinner cruise on the star-lit river, fastening a fascinated eye on the famous Bangkok landmarks such as the Grand Palace and the Prom Palace. Groups of gorgeously dolled-up young women, in fashion-savvy tops and pants and sitting and chatting in front of the brightly-lit rows of bars, would dance or wave at a prospective customer, or condescend to read his palm or give him a quick Thai neck massage. From a garden lounge facing a shopping colonnade, a band shelled out salvos of the seventies-favourite "Hotel California". Though English is not so extensively spoken here, Western consumer culture is so ingrained in the Thais, that the scene could have been an import from an American town, with a generous dash of Thai seasoning, of course. In an upper class Chinese restaurant, the old-timers and the young who were acquiring social graces, gathered to share a samba, tango and a flamenco while divas sang to the chords of a jazz orchestra. Night marketing and leisure pursuits raged in the "Walking Street" of Pattaya, described in tourist manuals as a street "where thousand tourists walk and let their hair down". The most unexpected of the night was a stunning cabaret of song, dance and comic skits, performed by the cross-dressing cast of Alcazar Cabaret in Pattaya, in a scintillating palette of acting, choreography and stage settings. Their fabulous period costumes, well-researched to the last minute detail, and most of all, the brilliant techno and lighting effects were a telling reminder of what is lacking in our entertainment industry. So in Thailand, life at night is a stage and a carnival, on the surface at least. We are seeing the country's "strip" or the "night economy" to which each Thai individually lends his own inborn enterprising pantomime and ends up in achieving a very practical reality of profit, to increase the influx of Bhats. If one leaves aside the possible negativities of nightly activities, one could easily discern how the country came recently to be reported in the Bangkok Post newspaper as possessing the second fastest per capita growth in Asia. Enterprise and mastery of craft are obviously two key words in the Thai Kingdom in which the retiring, middle-aged Westerner is said to be arriving to swap his hard-earned fortune for a bride and a property, along with a relatively low cost life of luxury. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Jayanthi Liyanage takes a walk on the wild side and reports on how
Thailand's night life ignites at dusk.
The blare of Americanised Thai music threw resonating shadows on
Bangkok's glimmering River Chao Phraya, the banks of which were alive with
Chinese and Indian Restaurants, hotels, cafes, go-go bars, chill out bars,
cocktail lounges, bistros, pubs and the karoake dementia which seem to
have hit with a maddening intensity, the entertaining consciousness of the
Thai.
