1984

For the past week, I've been immersing myself in Thai culture, learning the lay of the land now that I'm all settled. Last week, I took a crash course in King Veneration 101. My education began last weekend when I was walking through Chatuchak Park on a Sunday afternoon, and all of a sudden, at 6 PM, a song started playing over the loudspeaker. I continued on my merry way but my friend reached out and grabbed me to stop me from moving. Then I realized that the entire park was completely still--no one was moving. After the song was over, my friend explained to me that that was the king's song, which gets played at 8AM and 6PM everyday, and everyone stops and listens until the song is over. The song also gets played before movies and everyone in the theater must stand out of respect.

Then, on Monday, as I took the skytrain to work, I noticed that the vast majority of people were wearing yellow shirts. Thinking this was a weird coincidence, I didn't say anything. Then, on Tuesday, everyone was wearing a pink shirt. At this point, I realized there was probably something that I was missing so I asked my friend, the same friend who stopped me in the park, thinking that she would know. It turns out, as she informed me, that there is a set clothing schedule that people follow to honor the King: Monday is yellow, the king's color; Tuesday is pink because when the King was in the hospital a while ago, he came out wearing a pink shirt and pink shirts flew off the shelves and now it has its own day. I'm not sure what the rest of the days are, they're a bit more ambiguous, Monday and Tuesday are the most important ones . People also apparently talk about the Royal Family frequently, though usually in hushed conversations--seeing as my Thai still consists of only a few words (I don't eat meat, hello, thank you), I can't really verify this.

In addition to this cultural rendevouz, I had another interesting experience at Bumrungrad Hospital, the premier Thai hospital where all the oil magnates from the Middle East go for treatment and surgery--the surgery is cheap and then they fly to the beaches like Phuket for recovery. Anyway, this meant that at the hospital, there were a ton of women in burqas--I know I've mentioned women in burqas before, but this was on a scale I've never seen. I'd also never seen the burqa that has a little piece of fabric between the eyes too, just in case you get a glimmer of their nose; some of the womens' glasses were larger than the slits for their eyes so that the glasses actually went over some portions of the burqa. This was just an anecdote that made my hospital trip memorable, no real comments on it, just don't think I'll ever forget being in that waiting room.

That's all for now. Stay tuned