The Thai Smile

Ah, yes, the Thai Smile. I'd read about it, heard about it, but what should I expect? What was all this damned cheerfulness about? And what were they smiling about, hmmm? Within minutes of stepping off the plane at Bangkok airport I'd encountered my first Thai Smiles, and they continued, day after day, hour after hour.

Thai people smile constantly. When they greet (with a little 'wai' and a little bow) when they make a sale at a stall, when they say goodbye and on every occasion in between. Naturally, our western sensibilities make us suspicious. They call it the Land of Smiles, but hey, what have they got to smile about? Is the friendliness genuine? Or is it forced, the smile hiding gritted teeth?

You only have to be here a short while to realise that the smiles are, in fact, quite genuine. But unlike in the West where we smile "about" something, Thai smiles have no underlying reason. They simply smile. And yes, as a rule, they appear to be very happy and contented people.

Theirs is a lush country with an abundance of food, rain and shopping malls. They are natural hosts and love having us to stay in their beautiful country. I quickly learnt that the smiles were warm and genuine and found myself smiling back. It's infectious.

Cabbages and Condoms

We decided to pay a visit to Cabbages and Condoms, a Bangkok institution, and a restaurant I'd recommend to any visitor. The name of the restaurant tells you a little about its origins.

It is the brainchild of a certain Merchai Viravaidya, who for some years has led a campaign to make condoms fun. Originally his target was the expanding population, but now his foundation is primarily involved in AIDS education and and the prevention of STIs. That his campaigning has been both popular and successful is evident in the fact that the colloquial Thai word for condom is "merchai". The profits from the restaurant and the attached gift shop are ploughed straight back into the campaign. It would be worth going there for this reason alone, but C&C is an outstanding establishment, serving fantastic Thai cuisine in a happy and rather beautiful restaurant. It also has the most unique lampshades in the world. They're all made out of condoms!

I urge everyone who visits Bangkok to go there. It's along Sukhumvit on Soi 12. The food is tasty, not wildly expensive, the service is friendly, and when your bill arrives you'll find not mints on the saucer, but a couple of condoms! Enjoy your evening.

Bangkok contradictions

I look out of our fifteenth floor hotel window at the city sprawling below. Elegant tower blocks jostle for space with shanties. Spectacular wats gleam in the midst of shacks and a million street vendors line up alongside expensive malls. And there, stretching away to the horizon, an eight-lane car park. What on earth has happened? It turns out that nothing has happened. This is Bangkok's permanent traffic jam. There is no rush hour in the city. It's always rush hour. It's always slow. The city never sleeps.

Down at ground level the volume of traffic is overwhelming. Pink and orange taxis switch lanes constantly, tiny tuk-tuks find gaps wherever they can, and everything keeps moving. Slowly. And then it hits me. The noise. Or lack of it. I haven't heard a single car hooter. We start to listen out for hooters, making a conscious decision to listen out for hooters and sirens. We don't hear any. Nobody hoots, nobody loses their cool, nobody swears or gesticulates. To do so would be bad manners and decidedly "un-Thai". So Thais have the quietest, calmest, most chilled traffic jams in the world.

The Bangkok contradictions come thick and fast. Latter-day temples to finance and banking boast spirit houses at the front doors. Well-tended spirit houses, with daily offerings of fruit and flowers. This is a modern, vibrant city with a decidedly western-style economy. But it is also a Buddhist nation, with some 90% of Thais professing to be active Buddhists.

And I don't need to wait long before this fact is confirmed in the presence of two saffron-robed monks who dart across the road in front of me. The sight of them on this busy street is at first surprising, but we quickly become accustomed to it. What never fails to surprise is that the monks are walking past "Annie's Soapy Massage Parlour" and no-one bats an eyelid. Neither the monks nor the ladyboys and their pimps, touting for business among the food vendors. Everywhere there is food and fornication, piety and prostitution, and everyone seems rather chilled and laid-back about it.

For a city of about ten million people, living in a perpetual traffic-jam, eating constantly from street vendors, there is surprisingly little litter and absolutely no graffiti or apparent vandalism. The little spirit houses are left looking lovely, their offerings of pineapples, bananas, incense and flowers untouched, at least by mortals. Perhaps it is a sad reflection of life today in the UK that this should strike me so.

The biggest contradiction is in me. I came prepared to be a little nervous of this scary big city with its completely alien culture and renowned for its apparent decadence, and I fell in love with it almost immediately. It's big and brash and at the same time reflective and calm. How on earth does it do that? I've no idea, but I want to go back for another taste.

Inferno

When the boys were little I quite liked theme parks. There were those memorable day trips, first to Lego Land, then, as the years passed, to increasingly challenging parks. Paulton's Park gave us our first taste of roller coasters and log flumes, and eventually we graduated to Chessington and finally Thorpe Park, with its rides designed to scare the living daylights out of you. Or rather, out of me. I'm wimpy when it comes to these so-called fun activities, and proudly so. I never minded waiting at the bottom with the coats and backpacks and sunscreen and water bottles. Actually, I quite enjoyed the gentle rides I went on with my little chaps, particularly the water rides, where we were soaked to the skin, and laughed until we ached.

But I've moved on, and so have they. So when I volunteered to accompany a school trip, organised by the Media Studies department, I had no idea that the three-day extravaganza included a day at Thorpe Park. With 150 or so 13-year-olds.

Day one was fun. A coach took us to London and we enjoyed a guided tour of the BBC television centre. Day three was fun, too. The coach took us back to London and we enjoyed a ride on the London Eye, followed by a guided tour of the fabulous Moivieum. The problem was

day two, the filling in the fun sandwich. That was spent at Thorpe Park.

If Dante were writing his Divine Comedy today, there is no doubt in my mind that he'd have come up with an eighth circle of Hell, and its setting would have been this particular theme park. On a "School's Only" day. In the middle of summer.

Imagine tens of thousands of excitable teenagers let loose in a vast garden of delights. Extortionate food and drink prices, outrageous queues for rides (

two hours to wait if you want to ride on Nemesis. Why would you want to ride on Nemesis?) Inadequate, insufficient toilets. And rampant, outrageous consumerism at every turn. "Win" a cuddly toy, just 50p a throw. But you will spend considerably more than the cost of the

toy in order to win one. A colleague secured a fluffy meerkat and was delighted. "How many go's did you have before you got the ball in the cup?" I asked. She looked embarrassed. "Far too many," came the reply. "This meerkat cost me about 25 quid."

It was a hot day, headache-inducingly humid. The whole park thumps and reverberates to the sound of over-bearing, overly amplified music. I can think of far more pleasant ways to pass my

time. Cleaning the kitchen floor, ironing, attempting to re-unite

pairs of socks...all these suddenly seem like a great way to spend a day.

Full nest empty fridge

Talented Younger Son is home! Yay, yay and thrice yay. I cried at the airport, he cried too and we hugged and hugged. His feet are a covered in nasty looking mosquito bites, but he is tanned and looks healthy and happy. Happy to be home too, I suspect. He loved travelling but had had enough and was longing for a shower, his duvet and my cheesecake. Happily he was able to get all of them within an hour or two of touching down at Heathrow.

And not only is TYS home, but Talented Elder Son is back from university along with all the contents of his student house. And once he's back, the friends are back too. Gradually they've been trickling back from university, and gradually the sitting room floor has been disappearing under the Nintedo controllers and the Pokemon cards. Boys just don't grow up they just get bigger and taller and eat and drink a lot more.

I love the mess, the detritus of student life, the sounds and smells of gorgeous young men in the house. I love them all so much.

Pets and Vets

Life at Casa Noce has been relatively calm over the past few weeks. My days consist of going to work, cleaning out the hen house, cooking and missing my sons. On Mondays it's Italian class, on Thursdays it's Choir, on Fridays Italian caffe and Dante Alighieri society once a month. I've been feeling decidedly middle class for some weeks now. There was a brief bit of excitement when the election provided us with a hung parliament, and now we have all settled into the new politics, with Dave and Nick at the helm.

It all seemed so cut and dried, it couldn't last. On an international level, panic has been induced by the on-going violence in Thailand. Advice from the Foreign Office to keep out of Bangkok unless absolutely essential is not welcomed when I know the Talented Younger Son is due to fly there in the next week; my oldest, oldest friend is there at present, and spouse and I have booked two weeks in Thailand this coming August. The shocking protests have been quelled by the army and there is again a sense of calm, apparently. Oldest, oldest friend says all is well, especially out of Bangkok where a heavy military presence is much in evidence. TYS will be heading for Singapore and then we'll just have to wait and see which bit of Asia he travels to next.

On a local level, things are just as dramatic, at least as far as I am concerned. Gabbana, my adorable senior hen, has been looking a little off colour for a few days now. She appears to be listless and lethargic. We decided to give her a soothing warm bath last night, something which is very relaxing for chickens, and which would help to clean her grubby looking bum. It was whilst bathing her that we discovered a nasty growth, of infection, or parasite, we know not what, in and around her vent area. Poor little thing must be in such discomfort.

And so this morning it was off to the vet. The first visit I've paid to a vet since Pernod, my gorgeous doggy, had her ear bitten by another dog at our obedience classes. That was in South Africa, a long time ago. The local vet was very kind and patient, and Gabbana behaved beautifully as he examined her. He discovered lice under her feathers, which apparently can cause the listlessness we've noticed. He was less concerned about the growths, which we will continue to try to remove in warm baths.

The next job was to get the medication required for Gabbana, all the chicks and their house. We have to treat everything. This afternoon, spouse and I, wearing old clothes and dust masks, carried out the first dusting. I held the chickens firmly while he lifted their feathers and dusted them liberally. It must have looked quite a sight. The girls are docile and don't mind being handled, but Cockie is skittish. We had to wait until he took himself off to bed. I reached into the hen house and took the sleepy cockerel from his perch, and then in the fading light, wearing our elegant masks we dusted the trembling little bird. I do hope this treatment works, and quickly too. It's a horrible job.

Respect

Last week group of students came into the school Library, with permission, to work on their Science project. They were quiet and sensible and I was able to get on with my own work, undisturbed. Unbeknown to me, another student had turned up with the other seven. Unannounced, uninvited and without the necessary permission from a teacher, to be out of his lesson. I had no idea that there was a truant in there among the others, and would have remained ignorant of the fact had he not proceeded to do something incredibly stupid.

I became aware of the sound of what seemed to be someone talking on a phone. Not possible, I thought. They're good kids, they know the rules, mobile phones are permitted in school but must be in a pocket, out of sight and silent. It must be one of them using his computer with the speakers switched on. But the low chat continued, the sotto voce becoming a little louder as the speaker became more confident, convinced he would not be heard by me.

And then I heard him say, "Is that you Derek? Hello mate. Is that your Lambretta you're selling? I've got it up on my screen now..."

I left my desk and made my way quietly to the other side of the Library hoping to catch him red handed. At this point his inner teenage yob took over,

"It's a well sexy bike. I'd like to have sex with it, phnaaar."

I strode up behind him, seeing the motorbikes clearly displayed on his computer screen. He heard me and clicked out of that screen with a speed and deftness to be wondered at. In the same moment his mobile phone left his ear and appeared on the desk, beside the keyboard.

"I have reason to believe that you were using your phone, " I said, with as much calm authority as I could muster.

"What?"

"You were making a phone call, and looking at something on the school computer when you were sent down here to work on your Science."

With impressive sleight of hand the phone disappeared into his pocket.

He denied all knowledge of the phone, the motorbike, everything, and looked at me with that scornful expression so beloved of the teenage male.

It turned out that he was not with the others, he was not working on Science, he had no permission slip and on and on it went. I suggested he accompany me back to the teacher whose lesson he ought to be in. He stood up and towered above me. Not much intimidates me, but very tall year 11s can be a bit of a challenge.

I marched him back to his teacher. He of course denied everything, more or less accusing me of making up the entire incident. He yelled and shouted and swore at us, then barged out of the classroom, knocking over desks as he went, and was gone.

And that was that. I referred the incident to his head of year, and left it to him.

But that evening I happened to be surfing about on Facebook and fell into conversation with some old students of mine, young people I'd taught years ago in South Africa, whom I now count among my Facebook friends. They're adults now, and I suggested that they can stop being so formal, addressing me always as Mrs M, and call me by my first name. "Oh no!" said one of the young women, "in our culture we have respect for our teachers and our elders, I could never do that!"

I told them I appreciated the ideas of culture and respect, but to go easy on the 'elders'.

I can't pretend it didn't give me a nice warm glow, though. It certainly put things into perspective for me, and in that one brief comment I realised just what it is that's missing from our schools.