Three

I saw my first scratched/dented vehicle yesterday. I’ve been looking, ever since I arrived, for the typical scratches and dents that seem endemic to New York City vehicles. It’s been intriguing, especially because the driving in Bangkok puts New York City to shame in terms of its density, speed and closeness of corridors. It’s like New York City traffic, with the addition all sorts of small vehicles– motorcycles, tuk-tuks, etc– and about half the laws. Lanes are more like guidelines– if an oncoming lane is empty, it suddenly becomes anybody’s lane, regardless of where the yellow line is. Last night wasn’t the first time that a bus I was in nearly ran over an over-eager taxi that had made an extra turn-lane out of the bus’s lane. But the operative word here is nearly. Never once have I actually seen an accident, despite the countless times that vehicles have come within, literally, inches of each other.

Really, though, it kinda makes sense. Thailand is very much a Buddhist country (80%+, or so I’m told), and included in the Eight-fold path is right-mindfulness, which entails being aware of yourself and the things around you at all times. I have yet to meet a clumsy Thai. I can only imagine that this right-mindfulness extends into whatever a Buddhist is doing, including driving a car. As such, I think many Thais may have better spatial awareness, both inside their vehicle and without, simply due to their belief systems.

Speaking of traffic, though, I really must comment on the smog. In Bangkok, at the very least, the government at made attempts at emissions control by heavy taxation on cars with engines larger than 1.6L and motorcycles with engines larger than 150cc. As such, it’s exceedingly rare to see a vehicle with a large engine (honestly, I think 3.0L may be the largest engine I’ve seen!–). Although this is good (I can only imagine what things would be like without the existing laws) it’s far from sufficient. Buses, boats and tuk-tuks emit plums of black, lung-killing, environment-destroying exhaust. Many of the people who work in the street (tuk-tuk drivers especially) wear masks, and it’s easy to understand why. Sometimes, when riding in a tuk-tuk, I’ll open my mouth and be able to taste the millions of black particles in the air, and feel them coating my throat and teeth and my tuk-tuk driver carries us between passing busses and down on-coming lanes… Eventually, everything in Bangkok seems to get coated by a layer of black– fine at first, but eventually a suffusing, choking black. I sat down at an outside desk yesterday, and wiped off a section of the glass top with a napkin. The napkin turned black. Not a this-table-has-been-outside natural brown, but a charred-forest black.

Which brings me to academics. I have some concerns about the quality of education at Thammasat. Ultimately, it seems the classes are a blend between actual content and English-language instruction. I sat down and talked with my one of my professors yesterday (another outrageous Brit!), and I think he summed things up well. He said “I don’t know how to teach here. I can’t do a proper lecture, because the students in the class are of such varying ability– some speak English just fine, and some hardly understand a thing I say. Frankly, you’re probably going to be bored a lot, as the lectures are largely going to be spent making sure people understood the reading.” When expressing my concern that studying in Thailand would place me behind in my studies at home, Dr. Ball put it quite plainly, “if you study for a year here, you will be behind when you go home.”

Troubling. Of course, academic education is only part of the reason why I’m here. There’s also the cultural education– the personal education, the experience of being here with these wonderful but confusing people, a world apart from the home and customs that I’m used to. And perhaps that’s all the more valuable– more than anything I could gain from a book or the most learnèd of professors.

We’ll see how things go. I’m only a week into this venture. Eleven days, it’s hard to believe that it’s been that long, and it’s hard to believe that it’s only been eleven days.