Post-trip Impressions....

I arrive at the Ayuttaya station with people eating Thai finger foods and snacks in an area just off from the platform. I can't get the song "Last train to Clarksville" by the Monkees out of my head. It seems so incongruous with the sea of brown faces and signs in Thai on the platform. A woman has a handbag that says in English,"Wildness is in my breath". A pre-teen boy walks by with a t-shirt with a large Playboy bunny on the front and "Playboy" embroidered on the back. I seem to be continually reminded of how little our cultures understand each other.
I sit and wait for the train which is supposed to be 40 minutes late. A woman behind me is reciting a mantra out loud from a book. Kids tease each other and take each other's picture with a point and shoot. When the train arrives I get on and sit across from an old woman who only has about five teeth in her mouth. Now I know what people mean when they say "long in the tooth". This woman's lower teeth extend about one inch beyond the gums and stick out of her mouth like fangs.
It's a two hour ride to Bangkok. As we get closer to the city the scrap wood and corrugated metal shanties increase in number. As we enter Bangkok the sun is setting and Prince Palace Hotel rises in the ethereal light behind the squalor of the shantytowns scattered along the tracks.
The latest news from Thailand if you haven't heard is that the Thai Supreme Court has seized the assets of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The funds were frozen by the court when a military coup took control of the government in 2006. They are only going to seize that portion of his assets which they believe were obtained illegally while in office. Shinawatra is currently living in exile in Dubai and tells his supporters (of whom there are many) that the ruling is a joke and that he has done nothing wrong. There is a warrant for his arrest if he comes back to Thailand. The so-colled "red shirts" are the faction that fanatically supports Shinawatra and protests have been happening on and off for the past few days in Bangkok.But things have cooled-off for the time being and I'm out of here around 1 am tomorrow morning.
When one observes different cultures the ironies - which all cultures have- seem to be among the most prominent of the memories. In Burma it was always strange how all our US Dollars that we used like travelers checks, had to be in pristine condition. If there was an ink mark or a fold in the bill many would not accept it. So you were always paranoid about dog-earring or folding your US bills. But the kyats (Myanmar currency) that was given to you in change often looked like it had been stuck in a blender. All the time I received kyat bills that had holes in it. Bills were often so mashed over that they seemed more like used cleanex than currency.
But the people of Myanmar were great. They were very helpful and always tried to please. They seemed to put up with social conditions - sporadic power outages, roads with very little asphalt and all kinds of bureaucratic abuse by the government. It's the people of Myanmar are number one and the government is definitely eight (shit in Burmese.) Many shied away from expressing opinions on the government for obvious reasons. But I had enough people who went out of their way to talk about government abuse and how the world needed to know what was going on there that I thought it was quite remarkable.
Thailand is a much different country than Myanmar. It's infrastructure and economy are so much better that it there is really no comparison as far as the ease and efficiency of traveling. But Thailand has it problems as I've alluded to: poverty, lack of social nets and government unpredictability. Actually you can almost predict that if you wait long enough in Thailand eventually there will be a relatively bloodless military coup. Seems like that's the way things are done here.
Both countries are rich in beauty, culture, history and friendly people.
And since the sun is setting on my time in Asia - and for some reason the common thread between most of these posts seemed to be sunsets- I'm posting a photo of a Bagan sunset.
That's all for now.