A Free Lunch, Thai Style

As the global recession drags itself from country to country like the grim reaper it is sometimes worth noting how bountiful nature itself can be. The Thai government has finally revised down its estimate of economic activity to a modest contraction. The brief English-language news on MCOT TV said that “exports were in the red”. Not sure how exports can be negative so assume they were referring to the current monthly trade balance. As exports drop the fear is of a disproportionately large increase in unemployment. As budgets tighten the agrarian heart of Thailand does what it has done for centuries – it just carries on and feeds its people.

It struck me yesterday that we had spent virtually nothing on a meal for six people that would easily have cost a month's wages in Bangkok. First on the chopping block was a turkey. They've produced some healthy chicks so time for a little cull of the older beasts. A full turkey made a huge coconut curry plus industrial quantities of Thai soup spiced with lemon grass, ginger, wild basil plus a host of other herbs and the obligatory chillies – all of them care of the land surrounding our house.

Just to add to the feast some friends had gone to help my wife take a look at the cassava and eucalyptus we grow as cash crops on land about 20 minutes from the village. As Thais work best whilst having some fun, they also decided to see if they could catch any fish from a small pond near the land. Indeed, rather than the usual assortment of babies they managed a fair-sized catch this time. Boiled in a rich herb sauce, I only saw it once it was curled up on the serving platter, but must have been well over a kilo.

Added to the animal fare and the herbs and spices, we also had fresh coconut and jackfruit. The only things we had to pay for were ingredients like salt and soy sauce as well as the rice. I guess the turkey did cost some money. They tend to just wander around eating seeds and food scraps we throw away, but we also have proper poultry feed for those times we are away for a few days. The time taken to catch the fish was worthwhile considering how much it would cost to buy. The rest of the turkey curry awaits tonight's dinner.

I'm not sure how long we could survive without shopping in town. I have noticed an increase in the enthusiasm of locals to go fishing – so long as stocks last it's an easy source of food. What we need next is a couple of goats to keep the weeds at bay and to feed all our relatives in a year.

I Want to Be White

One strange thing in Thailand is that everybody wants to be white. Thais are generally a proud people and wouldn't want to be anything other than Thai – except perhaps for being a white Thai!

Adverts are filled with whitening creams and lotions, whitening soaps, a variety of talcum powders, UV blockers and so on. It is often difficult to find facial or body products without some whitening agent. The Thais in the adverts are also chosen to have the fairest possible skin, with no doubt some digital enhancement to make them even paler. So where does this come from?

I've asked a number of Thais as to why they are so obsessed with being white: nobody really knows! They just know it looks cool, it looks sexy, it's what they all want to look like. Now, this is great for white expatriates as it dawns on them that Thais love fair skin, however ugly they might be in their own country. But it would be a grave mistake to then assume that Thais want to be white because they want to be white westerners! But as this trait seems to have been so thoroughly enculturated that nobody can give a conscious reason why they do it, one has to look a bit deeper.

One theory is that this is all about class. The situation was identical in England a century ago. Being pale was a sign of being wealthy. There was no need to go out in the sun when you could bark orders to your peasants or be busy making money in a bank or stock exchange, or even be running the Empire from a cosy desk. In contrast, anybody who worked outside, whether as an agricultural labourer or builder or market trader, was bound to become darker skinned as a consequence of being out in the sun. Sure, sunshine may be a rare sight in the UK but cloud cover doesn't stop all that UV coming through.

But suddenly, in the 1960s that whole class distinction flipped completely around. As agricultural work diminished the new drones were office workers, and they were more likely to be irradiated by fluorescent lighting than sunshine. A suntan became the new status symbol, showing one was wealthy enough to lie around in the sun of Monte Carlo or Bora Bora. This is still the case today. In the past I tried to buy presents to take back to Thailand during my visits to London only to be struck by the fact that one can't buy whitening creams in the UK. Yes, they do exist in specialist cosmetics shops for Asians but not in general stores. Looks like the same company will produce identical products for different parts of the world and in some of them add whitening agents and in others tanning agents!

So, back to Thailand! Most people here are slightly tanned in colour. It is pretty easy to tell the difference between the natural skin colour of, say, an office worker, compared to the much darker hue of a farmer. It is also easy to see how much whitening has been applied in a desperate attempt to become even whiter. So is it all a class thing like Victorian England? Possibly.

However, whilst casually reading some old Thai poetry – as one does – I came across a scene in which a Thai princess was applying whitening powder to make herself more beautiful. Being a princess she also had some ludicrously expensive powder mixed with real gold so that she would be both fair and glowing! Now, this goes back some 300 years and hence I suspect has nothing to do with trying to be a white westerner. But a quick look at a map of this region of the world would show that there just aren't any fair-skinned races nearby... apart from in China.

Historians have shown that the peoples in this part of Indo-China migrated here from deeper inside the Chinese mainland. Although Thailand does not share a border with China, it is only a very thin stretch of Myanmar that separates the two countries. Indeed, the northern city of Chiang Mai is closer to this Chinese border than it is to Bangkok! Trade between Thailand and China goes back many centuries and many wealthy families here have Chinese-Thai roots.

So, perhaps the Thai obsession with being white is just a class thing, or perhaps it is an unconscious desire to emulate the Chinese, or even both rolled into one. Whatever the true origins of this, Thais will continue to buy skin whitening products in the hope that they too will become the fairest of princesses.

Missing Breasts

I'm a breast man myself. Thighs are good too but hard to compete with a succulent breast. However, I've often experienced that breasts go missing!

We have chickens and turkeys and every so often this daily source of fresh eggs becomes the source of our main meal. They're pretty quick on their feet once they smell death and it takes some skill to catch, gut and fillet a whole chicken. Thais throw nothing away and consider offal to be a delicacy. Our dogs and cats can also sense death and loiter around expectantly, usually to be disappointed with just a few bones at the end of the meal.

Well, a whole chicken is usually enough for a coconut curry and a big pot of spicy aromatic soup. As the Thais gnaw the flesh off some bone or chew on a particularly tasty bit of liver I'm left wondering: what happened to the breasts?

I chanced upon the solution to this on one particular evening. I was feeling hungry and the children often eat before the adults – so I joined the kids. Thais take pride in being able to swallow blisteringly hot food and chuckle at the inferiority of foreigners who can't handle their chillies. However, this isn't due to some genetic mutation but is purely cultural. On the whole, children too don't like overly spicy food (and love the Italian food I make, but that's another story) and are slowly weaned onto it. So there I am, sitting around with the children, a big pot of steaming rice, some sweet chilli dipping sauce (it really is hard to get away from the chillies!) and a plate of soft white breasts. They give it to the kids!

How sweet, I thought. Except that, to the adults, breasts are just tasteless white flesh and they'd much rather tuck into the wilder flavours of internal organs. Perhaps I should eat with the kids more often!