Thailand - The simple reflection

Unfortunately, I do not have the time and moreso the energy right now to go through a piece by piece dissection of my time in Thailand. I am still absorbing some of the realities of life there, and some of the experiences and scenes I witnessed.

I do have to say though, that between all the harrassment and events I was a part of due to mainly being a foreigner, both positive, negative, and sexually-charged, really made me shocked and unable to comprehend the full extent of how much a country like Thailand relies on tourists such as myself to fuel their economy, even if only for a short period of time, and for only once sometimes.

In only my first day in Bangkok, I was already annoyed with the amount of times I was being bothered by people on the street when just trying to walk somewhere. It was impossible to get from point A to point B without being confronted or poked for money somehow. I also was surprised at just how cautious, nervous, and untrusting I immediately became of native Thai, especially after having been around Japanese people for over a year and assuming a high level of trust, pride, and honesty. It is a shame to have to constantly walk around suspicious of everyone and everything.

The unyielding danger of a third world country such as Thailand was never more apparent than actually reading the newspapers the next day after New Year's Eve. There were 2 people abducted from the same beach where I was for New Year's, with another 1 abducted, raped, then drowned the 1st night of 2006. On New Year's Eve on the island where I stayed, there were 34 deaths. For a population of 10,000 natives and approximately 6,000 foreigners, 34 deaths is pretty high I think. I was also amazed at the lack of common sense displayed by many foreigners on the beach who overdrank and proceeded to pass out in various areas of the beach. It was a scene straight from a National Lampoon movie.

All in all, I am very happy to have walked away from 20 days with a full appreciation of a struggling country such as Thailand. I am also very happy to have done the entire trip with 6 other JETs of various backgrounds and nationalities and points of view, allowing for some interesting conversation and reality-checks. Hopefully over the course of the next couple of weeks I will be able to break it down day by day, or at least place by place, but for now, this brief synopsis will have to do.