I had booked a tour of the Floating Market and Rose Garden.After a rushed rice and pork vegetable breakfast, the tour van picks me up at 7am. The bus ride is 1.5 hours and then there is a ferry to the Market.
I am in the shotgun seat of the rickety van. The driver drives really fast and doesn't use his seatbelt. I have images of going head-first out the window and so I put my loose seatbelt on. He looks over at me and laughs. After a rest stop we all get back into the van and the driver buys some garlands to put on his mirror. He put his hands together in a prayer. I ask him what the garlands are for and says it's for the Buddha to bring us good luck for the van so that there would be no car accident. I then feel like it would be an insult to put on my seatbelt after that, so I just nervously go on without it and hope that the garlands work. The lovely fragrance of the jasmine blooms fill the entire bus and brings me some peace.
On the van ride there I notice two things.
One, that the streets and highways taking us out of Bangkok look much the same as the ones I saw in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Cuba. Concrete, straight lines, traffic signs on a backdrop of banana plants, coconut trees and palms. In fact, the motorways don't look much different than the ones in Toronto except for the vegetation. There is just something about motor vehicle infrastructure that tends to homogenize the spaces around it. Before the car, cultures looked much more distinct from one another. I guess on a broader scale, this is Westernization at work causing an overall homogenization of landforms, ideals, norms and expectations. I am jarred when I see large billboards advertizing the next great teeth or skin whitening product. Many of the models in the ads here are of mixed raced tending towards a more white complexion and feature set. The large chain fast food places are also a bit weird. Somehow the same as ours, but slightly different enough to be disconcerting. My closest reference point is Chinatown meets McDonalds.
The second thing I notice is that the general culture of risk taking in Thailand is much higher than in Canada. I see many motorbike riders without helmets - one couple has the woman on the back holding onto a sleeping newborn. I see an overcrowded bus with its door open and a child hanging from the side of it holding onto a rail. I see lots of people packed into the back of pickups. Again, this reminds me of my trips to Central America and Cuba where personal risk taking is much higher, and many situations are much sketchier. I know that we are coddled in Canada. There are institutions and organizations that regulate safety and acceptable behaviour to keep us safe, and to prevent us from being too litigious. In some ways I am happy for this protection, but I also fear it breeds a quick-trigger overreaction to innocuous things and a lack of resourcefulness and adaptiveness in our population. Our children are overprotected and not very self-sufficient. Drop them in a Banana Republic and see how they fare.
After the van, a motorboat ferry takes us to the Floating Market. On the way I see monkeys and the waterway life for some Thai people. I am jealous of their plants! Though they have greenary all around them, they still prize growing ornamental plants outside their decks and yards. At home I try so hard just to keep them alive! Here, where ever there is sunlight, a plant will be placed there to take advantage of it and thrive. I see lush overly green trees and tropical plants everywhere. They are so healthy and abundant, and again, I am awed by the tropics and the amount of vegetation this ecozone can support. The sheer biomass, the amount of chlorophyll production every second of every minute of everyday is astounding! In comparison, our Canadian seasons have a lull and a sleep where the plants stop producing. I love that too, the cyclical change of our seasons, the little death and rebirth every year that makes spring and summer all the more sweet for its brief stay. I love you Canada!
The second thing I notice is that the general culture of risk taking in Thailand is much higher than in Canada. I see many motorbike riders without helmets - one couple has the woman on the back holding onto a sleeping newborn. I see an overcrowded bus with its door open and a child hanging from the side of it holding onto a rail. I see lots of people packed into the back of pickups. Again, this reminds me of my trips to Central America and Cuba where personal risk taking is much higher, and many situations are much sketchier. I know that we are coddled in Canada. There are institutions and organizations that regulate safety and acceptable behaviour to keep us safe, and to prevent us from being too litigious. In some ways I am happy for this protection, but I also fear it breeds a quick-trigger overreaction to innocuous things and a lack of resourcefulness and adaptiveness in our population. Our children are overprotected and not very self-sufficient. Drop them in a Banana Republic and see how they fare.
After the van, a motorboat ferry takes us to the Floating Market. On the way I see monkeys and the waterway life for some Thai people. I am jealous of their plants! Though they have greenary all around them, they still prize growing ornamental plants outside their decks and yards. At home I try so hard just to keep them alive! Here, where ever there is sunlight, a plant will be placed there to take advantage of it and thrive. I see lush overly green trees and tropical plants everywhere. They are so healthy and abundant, and again, I am awed by the tropics and the amount of vegetation this ecozone can support. The sheer biomass, the amount of chlorophyll production every second of every minute of everyday is astounding! In comparison, our Canadian seasons have a lull and a sleep where the plants stop producing. I love that too, the cyclical change of our seasons, the little death and rebirth every year that makes spring and summer all the more sweet for its brief stay. I love you Canada!
We reach the floating market and three Korean girls and I share a boat ride within the market. Everywhere we are paddled there are boat venders selling all manner of goods and food. Boats grind up against other boats as we all jockey for position. I can understand now why our only instruction for the ride was to "keep your hands in the boat, never on the outside". 
Of course only the food interests me. It becomes a surprisingly fun game to try to yell down food from boats that are passing opposite you, often two or three boats away. Everyone in the intervening boats has to help you pass along your food, pass on your payment, and pass back your change. 
It all works remarkably well. I end up buying more than any other person on the boat. Coconut, mango, lichee, grilled chicken and some marshmellow pastry. 
No comments:
Post a Comment