Following our exertions of the day before we rest our salt encrusted, sun burned bodies at home today, taking advantage of a slight shift to cooler, wetter weather.
With a fairly restful, featureless day, I will take this opportunity to list what I have learned, thus far, about Thai culture and life on Koh Lanta.
The Sea
On our snorkelling trip yesterday, S mentions that it is best to visit the Emerald Cave (a rocky polo mint creating a round open 'cave' which you swim to under a low rock tunnel as long as you time it right for the tides) when no other tourist boats are there.
"Otherwise," she says, "you get about a hundred Thai people going in through the tunnels on a rope, screaming".
I am sure she is exaggerating until we encounter such a tour coming in as we swim out. The visitors, all Thai, are holding onto each other in a long crocodile, all in life jackets, presumably with a rope or something guiding them through. The guide is swimming alongside with the manner of an American baseball coach trying to rile his team up for a big game. He shouts something, they scream. Repeat ad nauseum. The scream sounds like the kind that you make on a roller coaster when you've just noticed that there's an important screw missing. In the narrow tunnels of rock, its deafening.
When we emerge, with great relief, swimming back to the boat to rest our beleaguered eardrums, S explains.
"Most Thai people," she says, "are terrified. Because, you know, they can't swim."
I am astounded. Thailand, especially in the south, is a land if sea and islands. Thai people know the tide patterns, can pick up infinitesimal changes in weather behaviour and can tiller a boat through stormy waters, dealing with the sudden changes of weight as they bring on thousands of fish (or some of the larger tourists) without blinking an eyelid and in some cases, whilst under the influence of some of the more common drugs (beer, 'tobacco', girls in bikinis). They grow up breathing and living the sea. They eat from it, earn from it and often live on it. But they can't swim?
"No" says S sadly. She has lost friends to the sea. I remain baffled and saddened. What needless losses might have been prevented. Adults might refuse to join a class - going 'back to school' might be to lose face. But why not teach it to children as part of primary education?
It's so easy to say that. So easy to suggest that everywhere might be better off if it could just run things a little bit more like home. I do remain, however, a little baffled. Perhaps it is that very respect for the sea that leads people to be tentative about swimming - perhaps it is the very inability to swim that ups the stakes and causes Thai people to be so in tune with tides and weather, to steer boats quite so skillfully? I don't know. But it's the most surprising of all I have discovered about Thailand. Thai people don't swim.
On rather a somber note, I also talk to S about the tsunami. She was here when it happened. I will probably relate this story more on another blog entry but the things which stood out were firstly, that the tide went out very rapidly and very much further than normal just before the wave came, and that people's response was to rush down onto the dry beds to pick up the fish. When the wave became evident in the distance, some people still dallied, peering at it to try to work out what it was. They had never experienced a tsunami before and had no idea of the signs of one.
The second, you will be glad to hear is that for all of this, Lanta Old Town sustained very few casualties relative to other places. High ground, here, is not so very far away, and those who realised what was happening stayed to urge those who were still more curious than frightened to run. The community is small and close knit. There are at least three distinct and very different religious groups but they all live in harmony and worked as a whole village to save the whole village.
Social Etiquette
Working towards not 'loosing face' is a key concept. Thais will do anything to avoid this and to avoid confrontational situations. Having said that, they are also very direct.
"It is not uncommon" says S, "to be asked why you have got so brown and ugly or to be told that you are looking fat."
"And it's not a compliment" adds B, who has been nodding fervently as S describes this, "it's not 'fat and healthy' or 'fat and beautiful' - it's just 'fat'.
"Yes," says S. "They like to bandy it about, that word."
Of course it's difficult to tell, given that in both B and S's home cultures (though S feels more Thai now than anything else), 'fat' is such a very insulting word, whether it's actually such a big deal in Thai interaction or whether B and S just notice it more. One culture is always, unavoidably viewed through the filter of another. But even so, when we go out on another boat trip with some guests who are larger than B or S, and the Thai guide from another tour who happens to pass us at the beach, gives them advice on diet and exercise I begin to see what they mean. Careful politeness is mixed with brutal honesty in bewildering quantities.
Add to that the overwhelmingly peaceful, relaxed and carefree nature of Thai people and you get a heady and, I rather think, a little addictive, culture.
Door codes
You can, and everybody does, leave the doors out onto the deck over the sea open in all weathers. The houses are designed for it, it makes them cooler in the heat and no weather is so severe as to render it implausible. The back deck is over the sea. It's possible someone might be able to draw a boat alongside it and just about manage to acrobatically clamber aboard in the night or whilst you were out, but both culture and pragmatics make thus virtually impossible. And when the tide is out the deck is too high to climb. For the first few days I diligently attempt to close the heavy, salt and humidity swollen folding doors when we sleep or go out. I cannot, coming from the culture I do, quite countenance a constantly open door. After a while I give up. It is cooler. And we realise how difficult and unlikely a theft or other issue would be, in Koh Lanta Old Town.
We also discover the door code. The front door, at the other end of the house and facing onto the street, should be left open if you want to signal 'it's OK to come in'. Close it, and it means 'leave me alone'. A Thai person, even if you have previously arranged it, will not knock on your door to deliver something if it is closed. An open front door shows you want to be friendly. Thai are still, like vampires, unlikely to cross your threshold without invitation, but it still sends a good signal. Again it takes us a while to do this, and there is some squirreling away and standing guard over valuables (not that we really have any) but our front door now stays open if we are in and it's daytime - unless of course we really do want to be left alone. I have noticed a subtle 'warming up' among our Thai neighbours since we have been doing this. We are using the code.
Business
Thais tend to support each other. If you don't go with one restaurant or tour operator but chose another, it's not a problem. This, says S proudly, is the Thai way.
I like the Thai way. The western way could learn from it.
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