Land of the free

If there's anything which makes me feel bad these days, it's the daily dose of depressing news from neighboring country, Thailand.  There might be other countries that I equally particularly like, but Thailand stands out in my memory because, outside of the Philippines, it is there where I spent a portion of my life the longest, 21 months to be exact.  It might not be that long to most people, but to me it's long enough to develop an affinity and a sort of assimilation of a culture foreign to that which I was born in.  I feel for the Thais.

I was 21 years old when I left the Philippines for the first time, arriving at the old Don Muang Airport in Bangkok late one August afternoon in 1984, and met by a group of Filipino graduate school students at the Asian Institute of Technology where I was to start my further studies.  Of course, Filipinos look after their own, so three of us, entering students for that term were whisked easily out of the airport bedlam and brought by a "sungtiaw" (Thai version of a jeepney) to AIT, around 20 km. Away, in the opposite direction of Bangkok city center.  Well what can I say, the AIT campus was…. a farm!

It was very rural then, that when I came avisiting last 2003, I could no longer find it, because the entire area has become a huge commercial complex.  But it was surrounded by rice paddies in the 1980's, with the huge campus spread in a laid-back landscape.  There was a golf course beside it, of course, but the whole spread was criss-crossed by "klongs" - water canals which appear everywhere in Bangkok, highlighting its very flat terrain and shallow water table.  Some people joked that Bangkok is actually floating on water.

When one is determined, one can study a country and its people while fighting it out with "solid mechanics," "shell construction" and "finite-element methods," hoping to get a degree.  Schooling in AIT is different from what I have seen and experienced in this country, then, and until now.  You're on scholarship, but you have to get a more than average grade every term end, or else, you get a one-way plane ticket back home, still courtesy of the grant.  I suspect a few actually took advantage of it, not being able to stand the loneliness.  I slept for only 4 -5 hours a day in the final months of finishing my thesis, but I did spend enough time knowing the country and developing a love for its people and culture.

The Thais are freedom-loving people and they take pride in the fact that they are the only country in Southeast Asia which has never been colonized.  Many equate "Thailand" as the "Land of the Free," although it's not exactly that.  Officially they call their country "Prathet Thai," or "Ratcha Anachak Thai" (Kingdom of Thailand), although I personally prefer the more colloquial "Muang Thai."  "Thai" actually comes from an ethnic group "Thai people" although the reference to freedom or independence is also widely accepted.  For this reason, I enjoin our readers never to use the term "Thailander" because that term doesn't exist there.

The country was a monarchy but formulated its first Constitution in 1932.  Since then, there were cycles of military dictatorship to electoral democracy, while readily acknowledging the present king as the head of state.  Around 16 or 17 coup d'état were already attempted since then, some of them successful, with the last one happening a few days ago.  In September 9, 1985, in the middle of my course, we woke up finding ourselves having no classes because our professors could not arrive from Bangkok - the highway was clogged up with tanks which later on we found out was late in mobilizing resulting in a failure of the coup.  All subsequent coups were later careful not to get entangled with early morning city traffic.

The Thais love their King and many will fight for him and the royal family.  But they are indeed a freedom loving people, whom I've learned to love as my own.  No offense meant but I always say I feel safer roaming in Bangkok than in Manila, maybe because I spent more time "living" there, and treasured their food.  Well, you don't get the moniker "the kitchen of the world" for nothing.  But now they're facing another socio-political-military crisis.  And it pains me to read each day the unfurling of events in this fun-loving country.

Thailand is one of the ASEAN countries.  I continue to believe that the ties that bind us in ASEAN is much stronger than many of us would want to believe.  We share a common heritage and face a common future.  Let's all hope the Thais would overcome their present predicament and rebound back stronger and more progressive than before.