Normally, I focus on things you can see and do around Southeast Asia, but for reasons which I can’t even explain – perhaps it’s just the time of year – I’ve been waxing nostalgic for the past few days. It all started, I think, when an acquaintance started telling me about her recent trip to Myanmar. It was her first trip, and she was recounting her first impressions of Bagan. The first time they comprehend the vast-ness of Bagan is something that leaves a lasting memory for most people. It all got me thinking back to some of the other memorable sights of my travels in Thailand over the last 22 years.

While most of the many memorable sights of Thailand are still around, there are still images in my mind – fortunately not many – that I’ve come to realize I most likely will never see again. The first came to mind as I was sitting on Dongtan Beach one afternoon, when a man came along selling some hill-tribe hats and other trinkets. My mind went back to my first visit to the Meo village on Doi Pui, near Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai province. This was back in 1987, I think, when the village was first being "promoted" as a tourist destination. At that time, you had to be pretty intrepid to go to the village, as it was only reachable on a long, rough unpaved road. It took an hour or so to travel the roughly 10 kilometers from Doi Suthep to Doi Pui. The village wasn’t as commercial as it is now, although there were still stalls selling trinkets from Nepal and elsewhere.

What sticks in my mind most about that first visit to the village is what I encountered once I got past the souvenir stalls. As I walked along the path through the village I passed a group teen-aged boys coming the other way. They were all strutting – and jingling – along in their traditional black felt jackets, each of which had rows and rows of coins sewed onto the front. The coat of the boy in front was completely covered in old coins. It must have been quite heavy.

These old coins were collected and sewn on the jackets over many years, and represented part of the wealth that a family passed down from father to son. You also saw women with coins sewn to their vests and hats as well. But you’re unlikely to see any of these distinctive items today. The coats were so unique that tourists offered the families large sums of money for the jackets, and I haven’t seen a single one in more than ten years. Nowadays they use mass-produced chrome plated bells instead of coins. It’s just not the same.

The second wave of nostalgia came over me when I was having dinner with a Thai friend, and we somehow got onto the subject of old Thai movies, which lead to accounts of seeing movies in our younger days, which for my friend, who grew up in Si Saket province, meant the old outdoor traveling theater. In Thailand, most provincial towns didn’t have movie theaters. Many still don’t, but they did get the occasional traveling cinema that would come to town and set up their gas-powered projectors and a screen in an open field just outside of town, or in a temple. If you’re an American, think of drive-ins and all their associations, especially for teenagers, and you’ll have an idea of what the old outdoor theaters meant for Thais.

Now, I suspect that if you looked real hard, you might still find an outdoor theater somewhere in Thailand, traveling from temple fair to temple fair, showing some old Thai scary movie classic, but I haven’t laid eyes on one in years. I used to even see them in Bangkok from time to time, but not any more. I suspect that between the prevalence of DVDs (real or pirated) and the plethora of big cineplexes featuring air conditioning and no mosquitoes, Bangkok has just become too sophisticated for such entertainment. It’s a bit sad. With the cool weather here, seeing a scary movie with a hot date and a warm blanket sounds like a really good idea.

Posted by michael under Life in Thailand

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