Letter from Thailand

I arrived back to Thailand after a trip to Cambodia to find the country’s capital in turmoil. Before I left I had come across government buildings occupied by thousands of PAD protesters attempting to oust then prime minister Somchai Wongsawat, who they considered a stooge of his disgraced predecessor and former Manchester City owner Thaksin Shiniwatra, but things had since stepped up a gear.

The majority of the population of Thailand lives in vast, poverty-stricken, rural province called Issarn in the country’s northeast. High population density in the rice growing region has meant the educated, often middle and upper class Bangkokonians have regularly found themselves on the loosing side of the Bangkok-Issarn divide come election day. PAD has argued that vote buying is rampant in rural areas and poor farmers regularly sell their vote to the ruling party for a kilo bag of rice or a bottle of fish sauce. With successive governments collapsing or being forced from power amid claims of corruption and incompetence, they now feel that western-style democracy simply does not fit in Thailand. Divisions have been exacerbated by disputed PAD claims that Thaksin and his supporters plan to de-throne the revered King of Thailand HRH Bhumibol Adulyadej – a figure who is literally worshiped by the Thai people.

PAD wants to scrap the current one-man-one-vote system and replace it with weighted democracy and an appointed parliament dominated by bureaucrats and the military. While I was off barbequing myself on Ocheatueal beach in Cambodia the PAD had announced that after months of protests, it was time for a ‘final battle’ with Wongsawat. Demonstrations were intensified, more government buildings were taken over and swathes of the city were shut down.

With the stakes rising the government responded by announcing a state of emergency which permitted police and soldiers to put civil liberties on hold and resort to military force in policing when deemed necessary. Road blocks were thrown up and scores of protesters were detained for mandatory 30-day stints without sentence. Riot police were called onto the streets as events turned violent, and a number of protesters were killed either by cops or by a sort of pro-Thaksin/Wongsawat militia that appeared to have bused in for the purpose. Several more were killed when militia members lobbed hand grenades into the middle of groups of protesting PAD members. A Thai friend of mine emailed me a link to a graphic YouTube clip of the aftermath of one such attack – it showed a Thai protester sitting on the ground looking at the two bloodied stumps where his legs used to be while a ring of people stood around staring at him.

By the time PAD protesters took over Bangkok’s two airports last month, the situation was becoming desperate. Massive damage was being done to the country’s reputation as a holiday destination and many of the millions of Thais reliant on the tourism industry already hit by the global financial slowdown were feeling the pinch. There was a general consensus that matters could not be permitted to continue as they were and when the army failed to respond with force when the PAD effectively cut the country off from the rest of the world it was clear that they had won the day. The Thai court banned Wongsawat from politics and dissolved his party. The government was forced from power and the opposition Democrat Party’s English-born and Oxford educated leader took over.

44-year-old Abhisit Vejjajiva is seen very much as coming from the upper echelons of what is a deeply stratified Thai society and is not particularly popular among either the rural poor or the city’s working class, although his plans to introduce free healthcare, a higher minimum wage and free education, textbooks and milk for nursery-school children should win many over. From the PAD point of view, his appointment will largely be welcomed in that he has built a reputation as being thoroughly against corruption and a figure unlikely to involve himself in anything untoward. However, his greatest asset to PAD supporters is that he has been in opposition to the various incarnations of Thaksin’s political parties from the outset. It is unlikely that he will implement PAD’s more radical reforms regarding the rolling back of democratic entitlements although with one drawn from their own now in power, many in PAD will be reassessing whether this is really still necessary.

Thailand and Cambodia have an unusual relationship. Cambodia’s years under the most destructive regime of modern times left it in the shadow of its more powerful, wealthier neighbour. But things were not always this way.

Cambodia is the successor state to the Angkorian Empire which controlled Southeast Asia for 600 years and during this period Angkorian art, architecture, music, dance and food became deeply engrained in the lives of the people now living in Thailand. The age of the Angkor Kingdom came to an end in the 15th Century when Thai invaders sacked the Khmer capital around Angkor Wat, causing its population to migrate south to present day Phnom Penh.

In the centuries since, the Thais have put down invading armies from everywhere from Burma to France and the culture of the Ankgorians – the clothing, the art, the food, fight forms and the music – were all allowed to thrive and develop with a Thai slant. The Khmers were not as fortunate. Their take on Angkorian culture was hammered for centuries by French colonialists until the outbreak of World War II and the arrival of the Imperial Japanese.

The independence at the end of the war promised the time and space the Khmers needed to rediscover their way of life but progress was slammed into reverse in less than a generation. The Khmer Rouge, which developed from a band of French educated Cambodians with an ideology copied from China’s Chairman Mao, harked back to the golden era of the Angkorian Empire for propaganda purposes, but at the same time sought to systematically wipe out all its forms of cultural expression.

When the Khmer Rouge were finally ousted by the Vietnamese, the liberators turned occupiers and far outstayed their welcome. This too had a corrosive effect on what remained of Khmer/Angkorian culture and today, it’s incredible that anything beyond old etchings in stone around Angkor Wat remains.

Over the past decade the Khmers have been making a concerted effort to rediscover the culture they almost lost but the fact that so much of modern day Thai culture stems directly from the empire from which the Cambodians are seeking to resurrect their way of life, means their modest efforts tend to be overshadowed. Cambodian food is like Thai food, although not as varied. Cambodian art is like Thai art, albeit not as developed. Pradal Serey is like Muay Thai, although not as famous.

Cambodians point to what they see as patronising views held by Thais towards their poorer neighbour and accuse them of being cultural kidnappers. By being condescending towards the Khmers today, it’s argued, the Thais are saying their neighbour doesn’t matter. By refusing to acknowledge the role played by the Khmers in developing their culture and country, they’re adding that they never did. The Thais meanwhile, often feel that the Khmers are obsessed with the past and too keen to cast their neighbour in the role of villain. The Thais set up refugee camps along their border and took in thousands of desperate Cambodian refugees during the Pol Pot years – a much needed helping hand, they argue, which is not often remembered.

In reality, there seems to be little of any real substance to fight over among the two sister nations. If anything, similarities should be reason to get along. Sadly, conflict seems to be periodically engineered as a means of whipping up nationalistic sentiment when hidden hands deem it necessary.

The family feud boiled over into violence five years ago when a Thai soap opera star said that the Cambodian’s beloved ruined capital of Angkor Wat should rightfully be given ‘back’ to Thailand. The statement should have been written off, but rumours began to spread among the political class in Phnom Penh that this was the beginning of a Thai campaign to take their most treasured possession. Thai businesses were burned out of the city in response, but the source of the rumours began to become clear when Vietnamese firms, allies and financial backers of the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, moved in to replace them.

More recently, the world was shocked to hear that Cambodian and Thai forces were firing at each other in a conflict over a disputed border temple that a UN court had declared to be within Cambodia’s borders. The trigger was supposedly the fact that the site had just been awarded the status of world heritage site. The real reason was that the government of Thailand was on the verge of collapse due to claims that it had bought votes in its most recent election and needed a sideshow to divert attention away from the thousands of PAD protesters occupying government buildings in Bangkok. So, troops were moved to the border temple and two Cambodian soldiers killed. The Thais were suitably convulsed in furious nationalism and their government earned some breathing room.

It’s a crying shame that two big-hearted, generous peoples such as the Thais and Cambodians don’t see eye-to-eye despite the shared culture for which they should be collectively proud. Unfortunately, as long as politicians in the two nations hold power and self-interest above the good of the people, the family feud will probably continue to simmer.

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I headed out of Phnom Penh towards Bangkok on a road backed up by a noisy convoy of cars, buses and flat-back trucks crammed with cheering, flag-waving Cambodians dressed in yellow. The country’s third ever democratic election was about to get underway. The flag-wavers were supporters of the in-power CPP – the party of former Khmer Rouge cadre and current prime minister Hun Sen – and they were feeling justifiably confident.

The Cambodian economy has been rapidly expanding over the past five years with GDP rates that have regularly clipped the 10 per cent mark. Rice production and the manufacture of clothing have been drawing dollars, but the impressive figures are driven mostly by a massive influx of foreign capital being ploughed into Cambodian real estate.

Cambodia’s laws on land ownership are somewhat unique in that when the Khmer Rouge came into power in 1975 they banned private ownership and destroyed all previous records of what belonged to whom. When the war ended and the dust began to settle, survivors returned home to find their land occupied by refugees from elsewhere in the country. No one had any way of staking a legal claim on land they either owned or occupied, so Hun Sen, who was then in power under a puppet regime largely run from Vietnam, declared that the country should ‘start from scratch’.

A law was introduced stating that if an individual lived on a piece of land for 10 years they were entitled to ownership of it. However, when peace caused tourism figures to spiral upwards and the value of the land being given to the poor became apparent, he had something of a change of heart.

Foreign investors moved in and bought up chunks of real estate from which the previous owner/inhabitants were burned out or evicted. By 2006, some 40,000 Khmers had been made homeless in Phnom Penh alone. Hun Sen hails the surge in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as a turning point for the country and claims Cambodia’s economy will soon catch up those of its wealthier neighbours. Unfortunately, precious little of the billions arriving into the hands of the CPP is doing the poor any favours; the frenzied land grab is very much a gold rush they could do without.

It’s not the first time Cambodians have been cheated out of what is theirs by their own government. A wave of international sympathy for the Khmer people led western governments to pump development aid into the country in the years after the civil war. Unfortunately most of that aid disappeared into private accounts. Beyond ranking the country as the 162nd most corrupt out of a list of 179 there wasn’t a lot else the international community did in response.

Take a stroll around the capital on any given day and you’ll see canary yellow Hummers and blacked out Range Rovers with police escorts driving like lunatics through scattering swarms of mopeds. Nightclubs in Phnom Penh come with an unusual health warning – the spoiled teenage children of wealthy senior army officers and CPP officials have a tendency to pick fights with foreigners, which their armed body guards help end.

Right now almost exactly half of Cambodia has been sold to foreigners by the country’s government. Virtually all of its prime coastal land, real estate in the capital Phnom Penh and a ring around the World Heritage site of Angkor Wat are now gone, and the government just popped the funds into its back pocket. What’s worse is that most of the buyers have no intention of building anything on the land they bought, which would at least create jobs for the Cambodian people – the plots will largely remain walled off and unused until the bubble created by artificial demand makes it profitable for owners to sell them on.

The election, although crooked as an s-hook by western standards, was on the level by what Cambodians were used to and the entrenched presence of the CPP meant they were easily able to shrug off the challenge of opposition parties. Hun Sen has another term for himself.

Cambodia’s development aid could have eased the hardships of its people and the land sale the Khmer Rouge presented the Hun Sen government with could have meant real progress in education, infrastructure and social welfare. In 2005, oil and natural gas deposits were found in Cambodia’s territorial waters and the revenues from commercial extraction, set to start flowing in 2011, could totally eradicate poverty. I very much doubt however, that the poor will be holding their breath.

I was busy sweating uncomfortably on a gritty beachside deckchair in 30-odd degree heat in the emerging Cambodian resort of Sihanoukville when all of a sudden an idea occurred to me.

The previous night had been spent wandering from one beach bar to another accompanied by interchangeable individuals who collectively constitute the general flotsam and jetsam which drifts around the country, and I was now dying of hangover which worryingly seemed to be getting progressively worse as the day went on. Earlier that morning I had, somewhat inadvisably, allowed myself to be talked into consuming barbequed lobster for breakfast by a Khmer woman who made her living by flogging the things on the beach. She told me, through a barely concealed giggle I only noticed on reflection, that they were a fabulous hangover cure. Failing to detect the ulterior motives at play, I took her at her word, paid $2 dollars and munched my way through half a kilo of the unfortunate crustaceans. The woman, it turned out, was a damn liar.

Anyway, between bouts of promising nobody in particular that I would never drink again and wondering if my throbbing head would go numb if I soaked it in the sea for an hour or so, I recalled a conversation I’d had in a small but popular beach bar the night before. The Kiwi owner of the establishment casually mentioned that he had picked up the place two years previously for the princely sum of $15,000. The premises featured a large kitchen, which meant it also acted as a restaurant, and had five one-room bungalows out back which he rented out to tourists. He also organised boat trips and other excursions for visitors as a means of supplementing the business’ income (Oh sweet mother of divine Jesus – why did you let me eat all those lobsters?). The average wage in Cambodia is around $40 per month; the guy paid three Khmers the comparatively generous wage of $70 per month each.

He ate food from his own restaurant and lived in one of his bungalows which meant all the profit from the business had to cover was his own entertainment expenses. Being a typical beach-bum type character meant these costs were minimal given that his favourite pastimes were fishing and surfing during the day and sitting at his bar drinking cost-price beer and shooting the breeze with the travellers who pulled up a stool in the evening (I mean, I knew they weren’t going to cure my hangover after I ate the first one, but I just couldn’t stop myself). The bloke had found himself a slice of heaven for about €12,000.

He wasn’t the only one. I didn’t meet them in person, but he told me the story of a group of Irish girls who had planned to spend a year in Australia but opted to stop off on the way for a quick look around Southeast Asia. They made it as far as Sihanoukville and like so many others, fell completely head over heals in love with the place. In order to secure an Australian working holiday visa the authorities require that you have €2,500 in your bank account so the girls had enough between them to buy a bar. The knocked the well-worn Oz trail on the head and went for it; and two years later they’re still bumming around living the dream.

This I decided, as I squirmed around under my parasol gripping my stomach and shouting abuse seaward at the still free lobsters who I was convinced must have been laughing their little barnacle-covered arses off at me, could be a good option. I could handle a few months as a bar owner in Cambodia (Can you die from eating too many lobsters? I think you can. I think that’s probably what’s happening). I had spent most of the last year writing articles about the real estate industry in Southeast Asia for the property magazine I worked for in Bangkok and was struck dumb by the returns overseas buyers were getting on investments in Cambodia. Even if I was to get bored after six months I could flip the property and walk away with a profit.

All I needed therefore, was a large sum of money which I had no way of getting. Ah well. It had been a nice idea and had helped sustain me through a torrid hangover I now feared I’d tipped over into a life-threatening bout of food poisoning.

Although lack of funds had put the kibosh on my embryonic idea of life as a Cambodian bar owner, I had at least got another three days in the country before I had to head back to Bangkok. After that, I had a few final days in Thailand before my travels would bring me home to Ireland where, thankfully, high prices protect the likes of myself from doing things as ridiculous has having lobster for breakfast.