This stay in the land of smiles has been one of many discoveries. The most important to me is the man with the aluminum cylinder on four wheels sounding his bell wherever he goes. These days when I hear the bell I try to make out where the sound comes from and make haste to find this friendly man. You can find them everywhere in Bangkok, but mainly outside the tourist areas. Of course I am talking about the ice cream man. But not just ordinary ice cream. Homemade coconut ice cream. If you ever get a chance, don't waste it. Buy the heaven sent delight, it will only set you back 10 baht for a whole cup. That's right. No Häagen Dazs where you pay 50 baht for one scoop, but 10 baht for a whole cup of Thai craftsmanship.
Another thing you learn here is that respect takes you a long way. Not just respect for eachother, but for the world around you. Have you ever noticed there are almost no garbage bins in Bangkok? People just wait until they actually see one, or take it home and dump it there. I saw this a long time ago on a roadsign in Wales: Take your litter home. Here people actually do it and Bangkok stays clean. For the most part that is, because you will always see a wrapper or something on the street, but then there are the 24/7 street sweepers who keep things tidy around here.
Another form of respect I discovered here is the respect the people have for the king. He is not treated as a monarch, but as some kind of deity. His picture is everywhere. I cannot imagine getting on the bus in my home country and seeing a picture of the king above the drivers seat. Here he is omnipresent. When you go to the movies, you have the trailers and commercials followed by the national anthem. This is preceded by a screen stating to rise to pay respect to the king. To make sure everyone stands this is in Thai and English. It is very much frowned upon if a farang doesn't stand. Even though this might not be your king, you shall give him your respect for 2 minutes. Every day, 6 PM, on the national channel you can watch the national anthem being sung by people from a different city. If you are in a public place at 6 PM and you hear the anthem, you should look around you. It's like you are in a movie and someone pressend pause, you are the only one still in play mode. These are things you get used to eventually. Life actually stops for 1 minute at 6 PM.
I want to conclude with the craziest discussion I have ever had in my life.
Every day at 8.30 PM many television sets switch to Channel 7 to watch 'Drama'. This can best be described as the Thai version of 'Days of our Lives' and 'The Bold and the Beautiful'. It is the every day life stories of a family and the people surrounding it. So you can imagine what it looks like to an outsider with a grasp of reality. Unlike its American counterparts, each episode lasts two hours, that is correct, not 25 minutes, but the full two hours. Every day.
And then the discussion went something like this.
A: Ow, it's 8.30, all the women will be watching Channel 7 now.
B: Not only women, but everyone.
A: I really think it's only women who watch it.
B: No, everyone, because you can learn from it.
A: Learn from it?????
B: Yes, how to be good and how to avoid bad.
A: You cannot learn that from a soap. It's not real.
B: That's not true, it's like real.
At that point I just started laughing and ended the discussion because it was not going anywhere. Some people just have their own opinions.
