Thailand II: Third Toilet

MITHRIDATES
Thailand's a Third World country. By some definition of Third World. But who even knows what that means, anyway? India's a Third World country, too, but would you rather be reborn as an average Indian or an average Thai? This one's easy folks. Way easy. So since Third World doesn't really mean much these days, I've decided we desperately need a new way to classify countries.

To those foreign readers in the First World who are used to thinking of themselves at the top of the heap, be prepared to be offended. To those Americans whose idea of international travel is to stay in five-star resorts that could be anywhere, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. As in, "we stayed at the Ritz Bali for a week. I thought the Indonesians were very advanced . . ."

The following refers to what you can expect in public places, restaurants, and the median home. This scientific analysis involved one person traveling to geographically clustered destinations, non-randomly sampling the facilities, and reconstructing the data based on memories ranging from one hour to fifteen years old.
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First Toilet: A 99+% certainty that toilet paper can be flushed without damaging the system. Guaranteed porcelain seating. Seats even at truck stops and train stations.

The United States sits atop the world in a class by itself. There's a reason they say American Standard on them. That means something. The First Toilet has a few defining characteristics: You can really only be certain of such luxury in the US and fifty miles or less into Canada.

I know some of our American readers are going through their life experiences and recalling some horror at a gas station or bus stop at some point in their life. But venture down the list a bit and be thankful for what we have here.

First toilet countries: US, Near Canada

Second Toilet: You're pretty safe here. Risk of disease is very low and things are likely to be clean, but you're only 90% guaranteed flush-able paper and less than 100% guaranteed a seat.

You arrive on the overnight train to Paris at 7am and the toxins from your three days in Amsterdam have finally caught up to you. You head straight for the first decent-looking café, order a drink and head right to the toilette. The closet size enclosure is clean all right, but there's no actual toilet. Just two foot pads and a hole in the spotless floor.

This is Paris!! In France! This is decidedly First World, they were once an undeniable super-power, and some people even now consider them friendly rivals with the US for the title of Greatest Nation on Earth. Yet at a café in their capital city you might actually have to squat to use the toilet! You might actually be able to perform, but there is this nagging shred of doubt in your mind. What if this isn't the toilet, after all? I mean really, what happens then? So you realize the nearby Musée D'Orsay is about to open, buy your ticket and head for the porcelain bliss of a hermetically sealed one-shooter on the first floor. The Monets never looked so good.

Second Toilet countries: France, Holland, UK, Ireland, Italy, Israel

Third Toilet: There's nothing pleasant about your average experience, but you're 90% successful and safe. You might have to shell out a few baht for entry at the bus station in Thailand, but if that keeps traffic to a minimum and pays for cleaning, you're more than happy to pay. It doesn't smell great and you're not inspired to crack open the paper, but you always leave in better shape than you came in. So despite the low GDP per capita, Thailand, perhaps through reliance on a booming tourist industry, actually maintains decent rest rooms. Even on the train itself, with things shaking around, a post-mystery soup trip to the can is uneventful, clean, and safe. What a country!

Third Toilet countries: Thailand, Ecuador, Greece

Fourth Toilet: You won't die, but you're willing to take a 10% or more chance of catastrophe rather the use the toilet found in the train station of the capital city.

You were out the night before in Madrid and are catching the morning train to Toledo (why again?). You and your brother make a desperate run to the train station facilities before your train departs as last night's Sangria and sausage are on the move. You put your pesetas in the coin-operated door. You brother says "Mine's broken." You open the door to your stall to see a seatless bowl covered in grime and paper. You consider how it might be done and nothing seems remotely acceptable. "Mine's broken, too," you say. You have no choice but to battle it out and hope the commode on the train is marginally better (which it is, thankfully).

Here we have a full-fledged Fourth Toilet country right in Western Europe. Wonderful country, great food, nice people, delicious wine, but the European Union needs to stop worrying so much about deficits and GDP per capita and start refusing entry to countries that can't maintain decent commodes.

Fourth Toilet countries: Spain, China

Fifth Toilet: The lowest designation refers only to those benighted places where proper precautions are necessary to ensure that you don't actually catch hepatitis or worse from going to the bathroom.

You're on a twelve-hour train ride in a second-class coach in India. Things are rolling around and you have to bite the bullet. The tiny compartment in the rear consists of a small hole, a filthy tin cup on a chain, and a rusty faucet.

Now suppose you manage to get the job done despite all the shaking and having nothing to hold on to. You still wonder how exactly you're supposed to make yourself more clean by filling up that nasty tin cup and splashing plague water around your nether regions. There's just no way.

Or take the public restroom at the train station. Mostly out of respect for the next person who might shake your hand, I believe you should wash with soap and water after handling your penis in the process of urinating. But what if your penis is the cleanest thing in the entire bathroom? What if there's a legitimate chance that your hands get dirty and diseased from touching the faucet and paper towel dispenser (was there one? You might be making up the dispenser).

Look, with all due respect there are probably filthier countries on the planet — this reporter just hasn't been there yet.

Fifth Toilet countries: India

All categorizations are subject to review. Please share your stories if you think any country has been rated too high . . .

Some Thai Food

MITHRIDATES
Thailand is one of the truly great food countries in this world of ours. The 28 cent meat on a stick from a street vendor for breakfast; the $4 Chinese feast happily devoured by the only white guy in a hole-in-the-wall in the coolest Chinatown going; the Laotian smorgasbord for dinner last night. Thailand — and especially Bangkok — is food heaven.

So, why, on the afternoon of my last day in country, am I penning my travel memoirs over a $4 Big Mac Set at McDonald's? It's definitely not that I'm sick of Thai food. I was sick of Indian food after two weeks there, but with apologies to my Hindu friends, Thailand is simply a superior food destination, with more tasty culinary diversity in a much smaller country. So why am I here? You got it. It's the ambiance! Attached to the Westin Grand Sukhumvit on Soi 19, my delightfully bright red corner booth overlooks the chaos of swanky Sukhumvit Road. The air-conditioning slowly allows my shirt to dry after a day of touring through the capital on foot. The music is of the Thai elevator variety, but it's really quite soothing.

Bangkok isn't the only place where Mickey D's provides an oasis for a weary American. McDonald's is by far the cleanest, friendliest, and overall nicest place in all of Athens, Greece, for example. In addition to the creature comforts, the ubiquity of McDonald's is reassurance of the continued dominance of American culture around the world. Those golden arches in their legion in every corner of the globe remind the world that we're still here, we're still loud, and you still frickin' love us!

I mean, sure, sitting on the floor at Vientiane Kitchen was more authentic. But then again, with all due respect, authentic Lao would probably be sitting on the shit-covered floor of a mud hut eating a bowl of rice. This clean, comfortable booth all to myself is authentic American - and it's wonderful!

But here we are after two weeks in one of my favorite countries. Over the next several episodes we'll discuss food, of course, but also elephants and roosters; Buddha; the most dangerous activity in Thailand; language; friendliness and sleaze; Thai massage and Thai "massaaaaage"; boys, girls, and that 3rd kind unique to Thailand; martial arts; dung; sweat; and the remarkable transformation of Bangkok from grimy, sleaze capital of the world to kickass cosmopolitan destination. Stay tuned!

Oh, Grow Up, King

PHUTATORIUS
From time to time I'll mention in conversation that my son and daughter were born in the same hospital as the King of Thailand. Bhumibol Adulyadej is the only sovereign monarch ever born on American soil.

I don't see it as a point of pride, necessarily, that my children share their point of entry with a reigning royal. A woman in my RA group in college once announced, with a flush of adoration in her cheeks, that she'd been given her name by some sultan or other who had taken a shine to her on a long airplane flight. Well, her parents had named her first, but the sultan had renamed her, and this was a great honor, and so on and so forth. I can't say I get the same royal kick out of my kids' brush with "greatness" — I think because King Bhumibol (pictured below, before and after a wild night out on the town) seems like a bit of a jerk.
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You see, notwithstanding that Bhumibol was delivered in Cambridge, Massachusetts — in a town, a state, a nation historically unimpressed by royalty, and deeply skeptical of any averments about a sovereign's infallibility — he insists on enforcing an absurd lèse majesté law that sees his remotest critics imprisoned for what they say about him. Why, just today Thai authorities slapped an Australian author with a three-year prison term for a single paragraph of text that the King deemed offensive. The text appeared in a novel that had a print-count of fifty copies, only ten of which the defendant ever sold. Hey, CNN: what exactly did this guy say about our buddy Bhumibol?

CNN has chosen not to repeat the allegations made by Nicolaides because it could result in CNN staff being prosecuted in Thailand.

And there you have it. An octogenarian multibillionaire with a Yul Brynner complex commands, and the cowed international media fall in line. C'mon, Anderson Cooper: you're not afraid to chew out elites, plus your mama's a VANDERBILT. Take this guy on.

But you can hardly blame them: this is a country that arrested and imprisoned an air traveler to Bangkok because he refused to turn off his overhead light at the urging of the Thai princesses on board. (What's with all these royals hopping flights with the rabble, anyway? Shouldn't they have their own planes?) The Thai government recently pledged between 100 and 500 million bhat (between $2.8 and $14 million) to block domestic Web traffic to sites like YouTube that refuse to take down content that insults the King. There's money well spent in this economy.

All this is just silly. I might understand if you're a twenty-year-old King, newly coronated, and you want to take your dad's lèse majesté law out for a test drive, haul in some old prep school rivals and see them flogged and abased. It could be fun — a novelty. But this guy's 89, and he's still not secure enough in himself to avoid diverting the power and legitimacy of the state to petty preoccupations about his image? A sad case, because it sounds as though he's done some good works in his lifetime and is fairly well-liked (recent significant political schisms notwithstanding). But we'll remember Bhumibol the Uncriticizable for his love-hate relationship with YouTube.

And now I suppose I've gone and violated this crappy law myself. I figure that since Google owns both YouTube and Blogger, my criminal insults here will stay up. Sad, though, that I won't be able to go to Thailand now without risking the Turkish prison treatment. But I didn't want my tourist dollars going off to build firewalls against free speech, anyway. We can say what we like here at Feigned Outrage — at least until we set up our Bangkok bureau.