Thailand is a place of grace and beauty (hot, it is true, even in the “winter” season), and she is an astonishing center of cultures, values you have to experience to understand: perhaps the best phrase I can use to say it briefly is joyful integrated spirituality.
Every hotel, for example, every building and every facility (Western, air conditioned, equal to any facility in New York or London) has, in front of it, a Spirit House designed to provide a place of residence for any spirit which might otherwise inhabit the larger building and, as spirits can, make people unhappy. These exquisite little buildings are tended daily with flowers woven into wreaths and breathtaking offerings. They are built like little temples and contain at least one deity each. Sometimes the devotion is made apparent by more than one of these little buildings. Elevated on pedestals, they are obvious centers of belief and devotion.
This beautiful tradition is a part of the vital commercial blocks of international real estate as well as residential communities. There is deep and, as far as I have seen so far, utterly universal reverence for the leader of this country (which has never been defeated by anyone throughout its long and rather astonishing history).
Thailand is a country devoted to food. Food on the street is a way of life: vendors provide food for breakfast when people are on their way to work. When they are done, the breakfast vendors pack up and leave. Next come the lunch and dinner vendors. After that, there is a thriving open-air bar culture so that as people stroll the streets, they can have what they want at that moment, freshly prepared to their liking.
We have not yet gotten to the point of eating street food (despite the fact that we are continually assured that hot food is fresh and safe) but we look longingly at the delicious options and gratefully breathe in the fantastic smells they provide. Uh, with the exception of the huge cockroaches, delicate silk worms and other insects which are also part of the endless sidewalk cafe, that is.
And everywhere we go, when we talk about food freedom, when we talk about natural health and the right to select it, we have met a warm, resonant welcome. We are being urged to plant our knowledge and our vision in the ready and receptive intellectual soil here.
I could go on and on and on about the food. Suffice it to say that variety and spice are the spice of life. NEVER ask for your food hot here unless you really mean it. If you do, I suggest that you commend your taste buds and your soul to your maker before you chow down.
More to follow.
Because these conversations are preliminary, you will understand, I am sure, why we are not discussing them in detail. But they are profound and getting more profound as we go along.
