Entropy in Issan

January 9, 2015

Generational poverty

Nakhon Phanom to That Phanom 34 1-7

That Phanom to Mukdahan 32 1-8

Mukdahan to Chanuman 30 1-9

Dear little friends,

We are now well into the dry season, in a particularly dry area of Thailand, heading straight south into the sun, which is crisping us up as much as the landscape despite the off-the-charts SPF sunblock we wear and replenish all day. Yellow rice fields, grass, even trees that go dormant and drop dry crunchy leaves match the drying skin on heels and elbows and lips.

Ho hum, another blissfully beautiful back road.

Every tree should have its own wiring, right?

Our string of pearls Mekong towns have sort of morphed into a string of wooden beads, these towns are poor, workaday, old-school Thai towns, and I admit they are starting to run together in my mind. Walking around and glancing into what we think are stores we never know what we'll see, whether it's a bleak scene of dim fluorescent green light and four shelves of something, teddy bears, folded towels, bottles of something, and a man sitting in the middle watching a tiny television with Thai boxing or dancing girls with the sound on low, or maybe we see four people at a table, eating something that smells good, is it a restaurant? With one table? We glance only and quickly look away, not quite sure if it is a business or their living room or both. The king looks down from the wall, and his father too.

Uh, let's see, what are you selling here, again?

Retaining wall work continues sporadically, every town that fronts the river has a promenade but some are more vibrant and functional than others. Nakhon Phanom's had lively aerobics classes and people running or bicycling through, That Phanom's ('That' is pronounced 'tot') was a work in progress, in fact that entire town was a work in progress, with soldiers doing the construction work on new plazas, new temples, new promenade sections, with the net result being that That Phanom is presently a big fat mess.

Getting the heart rate up in Nakhon Phanom.

Skateboarders rule after dark in Nakhon Phanom. There were a lot of cyclists in this town, too, of all ages and types.

Soldiers hard at work painting temple decorations.

That Phanom had a few Colonial gems, however.

We are seeing a lot of "scheme work", an outrageously oversized and sad deserted "tourist attraction" park at a mediocre section of rapids in the Mekong, people painting things that don't need painting, listless brush marks after one coat and the brush left to dry in the hot sun. It's shovel leaning work at its finest and yet I see why it's happening, because the poverty in this area is blistering, I would recognize government subsidized housing anywhere, whether it's on an American Indian reservation or in poor, dispirited Issan.

Another tourist attraction, a brick walkway at some very underwhelming Mekong "rapids".

Maybe it was the flatness of the light after weeks of beautiful sunshine, a cooling trend that was welcome but overcast, making weeds more dry and weedy, cracks in the cement wider, rust on a tin roof rustier and on the brink of collapse, the flowers dusty and dulled.

Oddly, the similarities to poverty in America are haunting. This is not abject famine refugee poverty but chronic poverty, with all the meth, obesity, wealth disparity, and government dependence we see everywhere in the states. Issan has the music of Kentucky and Tennessee, the dry scrubbiness of west Texas. Yet the food is phenomenal, people are warm-hearted and quick to laugh or point out directions. Today was National Children's Day and we stopped to listen to an outstanding Morlam band playing for a dance troupe and we were immediately ushered into plastic chairs and People In Charge stopped by to have their phone-camera portraits taken with two grossly sweaty cyclists with helmet hair and chain tattoos on their legs.

Hip-hop dancing on National Children's Day.

We are now so far off the tourist track that babies cry at the sight of us and a walk through the evening food market means all eyes are on us and we have to smile longingly at each vendor's selections so nobody feels slighted even if they are selling deep fried grubs or entrails-on-a-stick. Our choices are discussed loudly, as if we are not there, but we keep smiling and everybody feels cheerful about it all.

Accommodations are all signed in Thai but we have learned a few of the words and of course the numbers "24" which mean this cute little set of candy-colored bungalows is a "love hotel", where people can rent by the hour. We end up at these occasionally because they are cheap, out in the middle of nowhere which is sometimes where we are too when the day is done, and they aren't as sleazy as you might think. Everybody here lives in houses that are too small and walls are too thin, it is not uncommon for husbands and wives to sneak off to a love hotel and have a little privacy, although of course there is also the stepping out crowd too. For us, they have been clean, safe, and have hot water, so no problem. If they come with extra-large oddly-placed mirrors or a neat pile of various condoms, well, oh well.

What happens in Na Prachai, stays in Na Prachai.

Our ride out of That Phanom was eye-opening. We took a dirt/gravel road along the river and it felt like we were riding in Alabama. Every house had a pile of trash, a wind-blown look, an unfinished dream of a wall, a cracked concrete foundation, dead shrubbery that had all the marks of despair. They ran out of money. She was being pimped by her brother. The well done gone dry. Some villages were empty, nobody out talking or chopping wood or holding a baby, it was a mystery where everybody was. Maybe out leaning on shovels somewhere.

And still the work goes on along the Mekong. There are literally miles of retaining wall, promenades to nowhere with yellow grass taking them back to nature, broken or shifted tiles.

Issan's two biggest exports: river sand and young women.

If you know a bit about Thailand politics, you maybe saw on the news for the past few years a lot of protesting in the streets for or against the ruling party. Last year the military ousted the prime minister who is now in impeachment trials, and had a "peaceful coup" to keep things on an even keel and end all the disruption. It would take me ten pages to cover all of this accurately but I'll condense it down to a few sentences. The rural poor (the "Red Shirts") are the ones who benefited from all the social programs instituted by the recent ruling party. The urban educated (the "Yellow Shirts") protested the profound graft and corruption of that party but kept losing elections because there are more poor people than middle-class people in Thailand. Neither side, in my eyes, seems to understand how democracy works. The king is elderly and frail and not able to counsel this nation, so the military stepped in, and it seems pretty obvious they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

The shovel and gravel and concrete work moves apace, somebody somewhere got the contract to build all this stuff and employ poor people or soldiers to do the work, money is being made, nobody wants to question any of it, and everywhere are subtle signs of an ominous dictatorship brewing in this murky glass. Every day or so every tv station gets hacked by the government, on every channel little children sing the national anthem, various scenes of Thai economic growth in tourism, agriculture, manufacturing, education are trotted out with swelling music. Somebody in nice clothes monologues about Thailand's bright future and serene present. Then they abruptly return to regular programming. The Thais seem to ignore this, they keep on cooking or talking or shopping. Thai news has this: the king, the king's family, who donated to what temple, how the jicama crop is doing this year, a new restaurant that caters to cats, and maybe a tiny PSA on wearing a motorcycle helmet. The Air Asia plane crash, Syria, ebola, Paris, the fall of the ruble, the price of gas? Crickets. The idea being, I guess, to keep Thais thinking about food, shopping, soccer, nationalism, a new motorbike, a new pickup truck, and making merit so that in your next life you can be born in California.

I know what this is and so do you. It's the dumbing down of a country in order for things to work the way they always have and not to question the People in Charge. They will give you a job, they will keep you safe from, from whom is unknown but there are soldiers all over the place, they will keep those annoying people off the streets so business in Bangkok can carry on.

They look like promenades, but 80% of them are as stupid as the Great Wall of China was, a huge ecological and economic wasteland that keep people working, hauling, going home to eat rice with the family, to wait until the day the king dies and the fragile fulcrum under the military crumbles.

Meanwhile, here in our little bungalow the neighboring karaoke parlor is sending some mellow morlam across the dry rice field between us. A few yards away the Mekong is rolling under a tired moon, with no walls, no gravel, no cement, just some tufts of grass and tree roots and natural rocks between us and it. Egrets hunker down in the tall reeds, the neighbors are gossiping in their back yard, and the crickets are starting up for the night. We rode 30 miles today, and I plan to sleep like a log.

Today's ride: 96 miles (154 km)
Total: 970 miles (1,561 km)

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