Shanghai Bob

On my flight home to Tokyo from my last trip to Bangkok, Thai Airways invited monks to board first before making the usual announcement about “guests traveling with small children and people needing extra time.”

When I got to the counter I asked why and they told me that monks are not allowed to touch women, and letting them board first helps keep them from getting accidentally jostled. Apparently it works the same on the metro:

I wonder if monks are allowed to touch ladyboys.

While walking down Sukhumvit Road, I’ve been approached on two occasions by a man wearing saffron monk robes. He was very aggressive in asking for money, and singled me out of a host of Thai people walking down the same street. I didn’t give him any money for several small reasons: He was wearing street shoes, not sandals; he singled me (the foreigner) out, which I didn’t want to encourage; he was out begging in the early evening and I had read that monks were meant to live on alms they collected each day before noon.

I understand that all Thai men are monks at some stage in their lives, even if it’s only for one day. It seems to me that the point of living from alms is to learn humility and self-denial, and to understand your interdependence with other members of your community. You can’t learn these things by begging from tourists (presumably because they have more money) rather than your co-religionists.

On the other hand, I read this excerpt from the Diamond Sutra quoted in Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train To The Eastern Star yesterday:

Buddha teaches that the mind of a Bodhisattva should not accept the appearances of things as a basis when exercising charity.

What is this an ad for?

It looks like it could be an ad for British cuisine, which reminded me of that Goodness Gracious Me skit where they go for “an English” and daringly order “the blandest thing on the menu.”

It’s an ad for English lessons.

I think you can learn a lot about what people actually do in a country by looking at what is prohibited in its public spaces. Here’s the list of prohibitions from Bangkok’s relatively new metro:

I broke one of the rules by taking this photo (second from right on the bottom). The prohibition next to that (on the left) is specific to Thailand. The next along on the left was hard to interpret, but I found another prohibition list with English glosses — it means “No sitting on the floor while holding oversized balloons.”

The ones from China show that spitting and explosives on the train are problems, and the ones from India discourage public urination. In the US you see a lot of No shirt, no shoes, no service; We reserve the right to refuse service; and No firearms. This last is probably because they are afraid of what you’ll do if they don’t serve you.

My taxi driver yesterday was wearing an amulet that looked like a Matrix-style jack at the base of his neck, and his dashboard held a miniature shrine. Buddhism in Thailand extends to T-shirt philosophy like “Don’t fight your destiny” (which I actually saw on a T-shirt.)

The pre-Socratic philosophers used a cart metaphor to describe our relationship to fate or destiny: We are a puppy tied to a cart — wherever the cart goes, we will go too, but we have enough freedom to decide whether to be dragged by our chain or to trot happily beside the wheels.

It’s not all genial fatalism here, though. There are Lamborghinis for sale at the mall:

Is this your destiny?

In the Pudong arrival and departure terminals you are given the opportunity to rate your border guard while a flute instrumental version of George Michael’s “Last Christmas” plays in the background. You can choose among two degrees of smiley faces, two degrees of grumpy faces, and one neutral face. The instructions ask you to rate the guard according to the amount of time you had to wait in line.

I flew to Bangkok today for a three-week stay.