Bangkok, Thailand

By Aloha Lavina

When people think of Bangkok, the things that first come to mind are shopping, sightseeing, and maybe the sex trade. True, my town has lots of bargains, Buddhist temples, and bar girls. Walk along downtown streets and stall upon stall of merchandise crowd the sidewalks. Buy a city tour and you get the standard temple run. And when the sun goes down and you’re so inclined, there are literally people wearing menus listing perversions you can purchase, walking the streets of Silom.

But that’s not my town. The lure of Krungthepmahanakorn, if you really get to know her, does not hinge upon the sensualities of a travel itinerary.

To truly understand a people, you need to study their language. A people’s rhetoric reveals their deepest hopes, their history, their sources of delight. The Thai language has numerous words with ‘jai’ in them. Jai means ‘heart’ in Thai; if you want to see what my town is really like, you need to see with its heart. The hotels and golf courses, for instance, emphasize hen-jai to their service staff; it means being able to see into the heart of the client or customer and anticipate their needs.

Suphaap [soo-phahp]

Everyone who lives in Bangkok learns to wai: bringing the hands together in front of the face, and bowing—this is what suphaap looks like. Suphaap means politeness, courtesy. Hierarchy is important in the Thai social structure. The way you wai reveals your status. Children bring their hands closer to the head and bow deeper. With peers, the hands are at the level of the mouth, and one need not bow.

But suphaap goes beyond the gesture. When Thai friends teach you words, they’ll distinguish between words that are mai suphaap (not polite) and suphaap, and many will frown if you use words considered impolite. And if you should later be invited to ceremonies and functions like weddings and funerals, most of which occur in open-air rooms at 34-42 degree Celsius, you will notice suphaap in the way people dress. Long sleeves and a suit and tie, long sleeved dresses, signify your level of respect for the host. Suphaap means showing great respect by the sacrifice of personal comfort.

Sabay [sâ-buy]

If respect demands discomfort at times, the Thai will also go out of their way to make you feel sabay: comfortable, easy. It means wearing shorts and flip-flops to dinner. It’s the reason why linen shirts and foot massages are so popular here. It means Thai Airways having more crew members on board than any other Asian airline because they will serve a hot meal on an hour-long flight so passengers will feel sabay.

On my very first weekend in Thailand, I rented a motorbike and explored the small town of Rayong on the Eastern seaboard, a sleepy coastal town of rubber trees and fish sauce factories. By the evening of that first day, I was lost in the rubber plantations, putt-putting along in ever-growing panic on a dirt road some ways away from town. Twilight found me at a small wooden house on stilts beside the road, intending perhaps to ask in nonexistent Thai how to get back to town. The thin farmer and his wife who lived there beckoned me to come in. They were poor; dinner was ripe bananas and boiled rice; they had no running water. After dinner, the man disappeared into the darkness while his wife and I sat on the wooden floor and smiled at each other for lack of a common language. An hour later, the man came up again and said something to his wife, and she took my hand and led me downstairs to a plastic oil drum in the back yard. That thin man had fetched clean water by the bucketful from a pump 800 meters away, so I could bathe. When the Thai take care of you, they will teach you sabay, and at times their generosity touches you like the silk of clean water on skin.

Saduak [saah-do-ahk]

Closely related to sabay is saduak, or convenience. You will notice in Bangkok that there is a 7-Eleven convenience store every three blocks or so. Sometimes there is one at every other block. There is even a 7-Eleven Club, which tells you how much they are appreciated, and the franchise here publishes a newsletter about new conveniences you can enjoy at your local 7-Eleven: you can pay your utility bills there, so those who can’t beat the legendary traffic and get to the bank before it closes at 3.30 pm can go to the 7-Eleven on their block (or very near it) to pay the phone bill.

When a Thai friend and I talked about choosing a neighborhood to live in, I said that I chose the suburbs for park-like surroundings. My friend chose a thronged street swarming with motorcycle taxis: there was a street a block away that had food stalls lining it every evening. Never mind the incidental noise; you had saduak because you could take a walk and buy dinner at your convenience, every evening.

Sanuk [saah-nook]

Saduak is important because it gives you time to feel sanuk. The noun sanuk contains in it a sense of the verb to enjoy. It is the reason why during the Songkran festival, we spend three days splashing each other with water. It means bringing along drums when we have to travel in the back of a pick-up truck cross country, and singing and drumming in the heat all the way to Chiang Mai.

For Thais, sanuk when traveling doesn’t only begin when we reach our destination, like it sometimes can in the goal-oriented West. For us, enjoyment is not a product but a process. Fun means that along the way, we stop for noodles, fruit and a good latte, even when it takes an extra two hours to get to our destination.

When you get to Bangkok, suphaap will welcome you, sabay and saduak will take care of you, and perhaps you will feel sanuk. And then perhaps you will understand why in my town, it is so easy to smile.