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Sawasdee Krub - A Quiet Holiday in Thailand

After dismissing a close to completed itinerary to Borneo, we decided to return to the Thai Huahin area. Logistics to get there are simply easier for a family. No need to interchange in KL. Just a straight 5 hours flight from Shanghai to Bangkok and then a 3 hours van ride in Southern direction to our B&B in Pran Buri. The THB 5900 investment proofed worthwhile – arriving late that night in BKK made our children fall fast asleep, so they and us enjoyed the space of a 9 seater van with a head count of 4 ¾ only.


I had promised to my daughter a jungle trek for Christmas and I am able to keep this promise in Thailand. Thai elephants will have to do instead of Borneo Orang-Utans. But after only a few days away from the concrete jungles of Shanghai, I realize that for our children the most profound and lasting bliss comes from the sand pit floor in our Pran Buri restaurant and even more sand at the nearby beach.

Fatherly duties observed and most likely fulfilled, I am vexed by the mellow climate, which is so different from what I am used to in my daily Shanghai routine.  No surprise thus, that Thai people are mellow in character as well. Strolling along the beach, I get lost in my thoughts already at the first day, water coloring how it would be, could I stay for good in such a place. But ... it's only the contrasts that make things enjoyable.

Our host tells us that she is from BKK working in the advertising industry during weekdays, but driving South every weekend to Pran Buri to run her small Italian restaurant Pranberry with two attached condos which she rents out. Her deep voice and puerile outfit irritates my brother to assume she is a man, and meeting her girlfriend gives us the impression that they are a lesbian couple.

Our daughter asks her if she is Chinese, because of her slanted eyes, and she explains to us that she is by ancestry a full blood Chinese, but culturally Thai only. Her father was born in China, but had left when he was very young, her mother is a third generation ethnically Chinese Thai. She can’t speak nor read Mandarin, but understands Tae Jew, which is spoken at home. We wonder what kind of Chinese dialect Tae Jew could be, and my wife suggests it’s the localized version of a Eastern Cantonese region called Chaozhou 潮州.  


This short conversation reminds me of an early interest to research the Chinese diaspora. Nowadays, with China being so present in all our lives, it becomes even more interesting to understand, where the Chinese immigrants in your own neighborhood come from, which native dialect they speak and how much they still adhere to their originating culture. Central European Chinese e.g. have largely immigrated during the last 30 years and come almost  exclusively from a Zhejiang region called Qingtian. Thai Chinese have immigrated mostly from Chaozhou during the 19th century. Filipino Chinese mostly stem from Fujian Province have probably started to immigrate back in the 16th century.


We are taught our first lesson Thai. Kobkhun – Thank you. Sawasdee – Hello. The postfix krub indicates a male speaker, the postfix ka indicates a female speaker. In a country, which by public perception is more flexible in regard to gender stereotypes like Western conservative societies, where lady boys and transgender individuals are a broadly accepted, non disguised reality, it strikes me quite sexist having to indicate one’s sex with almost every uttered phrase.  But maybe that indication is indeed understood as one’s free choice.


A Honduras born American, Jeff, who works as architect in Pran Buri and develops together with his Thai wife Tana real estate projects for mostly Western clients, tells us that in his opinion Thai people are simply the result of Indian and Chinese culture merged. He reckons that about half of the Thai population has some Chinese ancestry, and this explains why most Thai view China's rise as an opportunity. Much agricultural produce is being exported to China and an increasing number of Chinese tourist bring their money to the shores of the Thai Gulf.

Henry Kissinger writes in my holiday read "World Order" about Thailand: ... eyed as a strategic target by expanding Western empires in the nineteenth century, avoided colonization altogether through an even more elaborate strategy of affirming cordial ties with all foreign powers at once - welcoming foreign advisors from multiple competing Western states into its court even while sending tribute missions to China and retaining Hindu priests of Indian decent for the royal household. The intellectual suppleness and emotional forebearance demanded by this balancing strategy were all the more remarkable given that the Thai King was himself regarded a divine figure. Any concept of a regional order was considered too inhibiting of the flexibility demanded from diplomacy.
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