Thai Girl. Treasured or Trashed?

I’m pleased to report that my recent book, “MY THAI GIRL AND I” has sold out and been reprinted already and my novel, “THAI GIRL” has just been reprinted for the seventh time.

I also note in the press that Dan Brown’s plodding novel, “The Da Vinci Code” has sold 51 million copies which is more than the total sales of both my two books together.

It’s taken him six years to crank out a new novel whose name I forget and the first print run is said to be five million copies. Unfortunately, because of storage problems in Bangkok my print runs have to be smaller than that.

On 1st April 2009 I posted on my blog at www.thaigirl2004.blogspot.com a glowing review of my own new novel, “The Kandinsky Lode”, a work in the same god plod genre as all of Brown’s.

The review describes the story of how Desmond Jones, a suburban accountant in southern England is chosen as God’s intermediary on earth to reveal to mankind that Christ’s second coming has already happened. Desmond learns that God has sent his only son to confer upon us the advanced data processing capacity He uses for judgments at the Pearly Gates.

God’s son on earth at last is revealed as none other than Bill Gates, now in philanthropic mode, and the review of course is an April Fool.

On 17 October 2008 in a blog called, ‘Dear John, I’m Confused’ about how often reviews of commercial fiction are utterly ridiculous, I gave some examples from the ‘pseud’s corner’ of quotes on the inside covers of a couple of novels by John Irving and John Grisham.

Like most things where there’s big money sloshing around, the power relationships in publishing are fundamentally corrupt. Reviewers seek to flatter a major author or want to get themselves or their journal quoted and it’s their grovellings that I parody in my spoof review of “The Kandinsky Lode”.

Writing can be a solitary calling and all authors crave feedback. Before the internet it must have been lonely indeed and I’m lucky to have had loads of feedback on both my novel, “Thai Girl” and my new book, “My Thai Girl and I”. They had many reviews in the Bangkok press, mostly positive, but there was sometimes a sub-text I did not always understand.

One reviewer of “Thai Girl” met me for dinner with his photographer, praised the book to the skies and then wrote a review that rubbished it. Happily the magazine’s publisher distanced himself from the review in the next issue and the reviewer no longer had a job, but it alerted me to the strange world of book reviews.

I therefore value more highly the many personal messages I receive, which I always post on the Readers Forum on www.thaigirl2004.com, as these come without any such baggage. Sometimes there are some critical comments but I need these too and they’re all there on the Forum, as well as some positive quotes from the media in the website’s Introduction.

A place I’ve been less well treated has been the members’ forum on www.thaivisa.com. What happens is that somebody asks on the forum what books to read about Thailand, “Thai Girl” gets a mention and then someone else piles in, not with informed criticism but with simple abuse. Things like, “Thai Girl” is the worst novel I’ve ever read,” and “I bet Mr. Hicks has never even been to Koh Pha Ngan”. (Actually the book is set on Koh Samet.)

As their user names are anonymous, they can be as outrageous as they like, but I do wonder why they bother, especially as it’s often clear that they haven’t even read the book. Towards the end of “Thai Girl” there’s a passage where Ben’s backpacker friends slag off Anglo/American foreign policy in Iraq and ridicule the ‘War on Terror” and I wonder if this could have given offence, though even that seems unlikely.

Usually somebody on the forum comes to my rescue and one member, himself an editor and writer, said some very nice things indeed in his post which reassured me on one point.

When I was writing “Thai Girl” I was worried that the plot might be a bit thin. In the story young Englishman, Ben, comes to Thailand and falls for beach masseuse, Fon, has a frustrating time and then flies home again. Nobody gets eaten by sharks or is killed by snakes in a locked Mercedes and there’s not even a tuk tuk chase.

I was thus relieved when my saviour on the forum (after some negative comments about the dialogue) had this to say.

“I read THAI GIRL off the back of a Haruki Murakami book... However, I was quickly drawn into the story and this is where the author's talent really lies: he has a natural gift for narrative. No matter that there's no strong plot… Hicks' raw talent for storytelling keeps the reader turning the pages and this is the prime directive in any kind of writing.

The real heart and soul of this book lies in the character of Fon (the 'Thai girl'). Beautifully observed and drawn, a striking metaphor for Thai culture itself, it is through her that Hicks adeptly explores the central theme of most books of this genre: the difficulty, frustration, pain and, perhaps ultimately, the futility of the foreigner trying to come to terms with the mercurial nature of Thailand. It is to his credit - and I believe displays and reflects the respect he has for this country - that he chose not to use the hackneyed milieu of the Bangkok bar scene as a vehicle to achieve this.”

I was truly grateful to him for so strongly refuting the psychos.

My problem on a public forum like Thaivisa is that I cannot act as my own advocate. If I could, I’d have quoted a brief review posted on www.khaosanroad.com by someone called Anne Merrit. I do not know her from Eve but she’s done what no author can ever do for their own book and that is to sum it up in a few words.

This is what she said about “Thai Girl”, the story of Ben and Fon.

“What comes across as a couple wrapped up in mind games will get you thinking about power games in general, and how gender, age, ethnic and economic differences all factor together. The endlessly complex characters will leave you guessing until the very end. Feminists may find this relationship hard to handle, men who date Thai women may find it instantly relatable. Regardless of your opinions on the falang/Thai romance phenomenon, Hicks’ honest dialogues and relatable themes make this an absorbing read.”

I particularly value criticism of this sort as it’s specific and has no agenda, unlike a few media reviewers and forum critics of the abusive kind. She puts it so well and I couldn’t ask for anything nicer that this, so I’d love to know who she is.


“Thai Girl” was described in a glossy magazine as, “one of the top selling English language novels ever published in Thailand”. I can thus dismiss the psycho critics and my fear that the plot might be a bit thin has long disappeared.

I know he got there first, but it’s reassuring too that William Shakespeare got good reviews for his earlier version of the story.

For that’s pretty much what “Thai Girl” is… a tropical “Romeo and Juliet” without the coffins.


Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog April 2009

My Google Gurgled... Why??

Every blogger wants their stuff to be read and that means maximising visits to the site.

My blog has more than 200 articles posted on it and you folks out there do seem to enjoy it. But suddenly the river of hits referred by Google searches has dropped to a gurgle. Why could this be?

I used to get lots of hits from Yahoo too but these suddenly fell away to a trickle and then last week my Google hits as good as stopped. Previously I was getting a total of 200 hits a day but that has now halved.

Previously if I did an appropriate Google search, my Blogspot would appear very high up but now it only does if the search is vey specific.

Can anyone tell my why this might be and if there's anything I can do about it?

Other bloggers have lots of little icons all over their blogs, I guess to maximise traffic but I have no idea what I should do to this end. Again I need help!

I track the referrals on my magic 'sitemeter' and it could be that it is simply failing to record referrals that are actually being received... though I think that's unlikely.

To me it's a mysterious world so can anyone enlighten me, please?

Thanks,

Andrew.

Thai Girls' Forked Finger Photos

Why always the vee-sign for the photo? To do with the Bunny Club?

Now there's even someone else trying to get in on the act!

This time there's only one finger between them.

But the men get in on the act too with a whole handful,

And they start young... this is Nan and her friend at school.


Some things in Thailand I’ll never understand.

Like whenever you point a camera at a ‘Thai girl’ she’ll flash you a smile to live for, pose coquettishly and give you a diagonal vee-sign, palm out and fingers forked. I have no idea why and, I guess, neither do they.

Is it ‘V for victory’ or ‘Y’ for up-yours? Or even a saucy suggestion of the Bunny Club logo? I have no idea.

It’s just the fashion, says Cat, but sometimes if I ask them not to do it they just look offended, so I’ve given up trying to get a sensible photo.

All I know is that when Cat comes home from college with shots of her friends, local farmers’ daughters uniform in short black skirts and tight white blouses, displaying perfect teeth and the usual forked fingers in the photo, who am I to complain. And while I’m not admitting to the well known Thai obsession with school girls in uniforms, I certainly don’t object when they drop by to do their homework with Cat.

So yes, Cat’s been studying again.

When I first met her six years ago she was half way through a dismal external degree in Political Science at Ramkamhaeng University and it was I who disrupted her progress. She wasn’t enjoying the indigestible diet of rote learning but ever since has regretted not getting a handle to her name. Now the wrong side of thirty, poor thing, she recently looked around for a better opportunity and soon found a new two year course in Computer Graphics on offer at a local vocational college.

Unfortunately, having registered for the new term, the strict para-miltary regime came as a bit of a shock to her. Seven thirty in the morning you’re on parade for an assembly and roll call and if you’re late you have to run round the field or clean the toilets. Not fun!

You have to stay in school all day and take part in compulsory sports and sometimes Cat’s classes (when she’s lucky enough to get any) didn’t start until evening after a ten hour wait. What with a half hour ride on the Honda each way, our personal life has been suffering as she’s never at home. Then when she has to get up at four in the morning to do homework for one of her many subsidiary subjects, I’m not well pleased.

For accounting she has to grasp terms like ‘owner’s equity’ and for office management she has lists of office equipment to learn like ‘duplicator’ and ‘facsimile’ (but not ‘scanner’). At least she’s been a top scorer in her tests in English language which is encouraging.

I remember a Samui hotel advertising for a ‘beach boy’ which demanded only graduate applicants, so in contrast the idea of teaching vocational subjects rather than force feeding useless academic subjects at so called ‘degree’ level makes absolute sense. Cat’s college has an impressive range of vocational courses for jobs from electricians to banking and accounting and its garden campus is large and beautifully kept and the buildings are modern and impressive. With its students turning up on time, immaculately turned out in their smart uniforms, it all looks very good indeed. And of course in Thailand that’s what matters most.

Thai schools such as this one love to hold big public events like sports festivals which can last for days on end. They seem to define the corporate spirit of the school and also give a good excuse to get out of boring classes for a few days. Anyway, Cat told me her college was staging a big ‘English day’ and that all its thousands of students were to take part. I was invited and was sure to be dragged in somehow.

On the day we were politely asked to wait in a VIP board room and were eventually ushered into the vast assembly hall where the multitude were sitting on the floor, boys to the left and girls to the right. The Principal had been held up in Surin so, as hostage to fortune, I was called on to cut the ribbon and read an address in English. This I did, doing a quick edit as I read it.

Then came a programme of displays and events, segregated into male or female performers, including group songs in English and a learned oration on the subject of global warming. This I recognised as a brief homily that I’d knocked off on my laptop at Cat’s request just before she went off to school one morning on her motorbike.

It’s good to make oneself useful like this!

Then the third sex came on stage. It was the school’s ladyboys and they brought the house down. Cross-dressed in flouncy dresses and livid make-up, as they came prancing up the aisle they almost raised the roof. And of all the singing and dancing, theirs was by far the best.

Yes, it is good to be useful but, as I feared, much more was to be demanded of me. I’ve never sung in front of an audience of thousands before but I knew that karaoke can sometimes be compulsory. The Thais don’t have a clear word for ‘no’, so I had to fall back on singing ‘Get Back”, one of my favourite Beatles songs.

“Jojo was a man who thought he was a woman,
But she was another man.
Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged.
Get back Jojo!”

It’s a catchy and repetitive song that goes down well with Thais, even though they don’t know it. Never mind that it’s about a rent boy who goes off to the bright light to make a fast buck. Ladyboys are tolerated around here!

So all in all it was an impressive event and good fun, never mind if only a little English was learned. It added to the lustre of the college and it justified an article in their quarterly glossy PR magazine, replete with a prestigious picture of a farang cutting the ribbon to open the event that Cat brought home a few weeks later.

That was some time ago now, since when Cat has been struggling with the strict ethos of the regime and with the fact that they don’t seem to have the money to pay for enough teachers of computer graphics.

Given the pressures on our personal life, you may well guess the outcome of this, Cat’s latest attempt to earn herself a certificate. I didn’t want to influence her in her decision, saying that if she was still learning useful stuff about computing she should persist, but no, she said, she only wanted the certificate.

I’m now tempted to go off at a tangent about Thai education, my ignorance never inhibiting a good rant. But I’ll stick to saying that it doesn’t have a good reputation and that foreign teachers here seem to say that Thai schools generally fail to teach relevant transferable skills, problem solving, analysis or creative thinking, which is a serious failing in this changing world.

For me it’s all encapsulated by the popularity of multiple choice question in Thai university tests. I’ve seen examples in English and they were nonsensical, many having more than one possible answer. Any test based on such questions would be a lottery, but then the Thais love lotteries!

A farang friend who’s in the teaching business here recently put to me the following multiple choice question, allegedly taken from a test on English idiom. It reads as follows.

“Choose the answer that correctly completes the following sentence.
‘One swallow doesn’t make…
1. a decent meal.
2. a summer, or
3. a porn star.”

I really don’t understand it and am still unsure which is the correct answer, so please let me know what you think, giving reasons.


Andrew Hicks The Thai Girl Blog April 2009

A New Bestseller By Andrew Hicks

A Fulani axe, the murder weapon.


BOOK REVIEW

“THE KANDINSKY LODE” by Andrew Hicks

Review by Dustin Caldwell embargoed for publication, 1st April 2009.

Andrew Hicks’ new book, “THE KANDINSKY LODE” is notable for reaching far beyond the literary range of “Thai Girl”, his first bestselling novel and “My Thai Girl and I”, a romantic confection of life in rural Thailand.

In a virtuoso exhibition of versatility, “The Kandinsky Lode” weaves a compelling narrative at many multi-textured levels which both entertains and informs. Themes of early Christianity are explored throughout, including the key proposition that myth and religion are inseparable as a conservative continuum and that Emperor Constantine’s ‘acquisition’ of Christianity led to the dominance of a highly assertive religio-political hierarchy.

In Hicks’ story, Desmond Jones, an accountant, lives with his wife Molly in their suburban house in Surbiton in the south of England. One day Des is disturbed to find their lodger, Augustus Dernit, dead in his room, empaled on his computer table by an antique Fulani axe. Nothing has been stolen except an ordinary Toshiba laptop.

The discovery leads Des into a terrifying quest for the hidden secrets of the ancient church during which he comes to fear for his sanity and for his very life. Gussie, as Dernit was known, had managed in his dying breath to leave some vital clues. Des pursues these with an accountant’s zeal, following many blind trails, but revealing truths that no ordinary accountant could ever imagine.

He learns that Gussie had been receiving a series of pop-ups on his computer screen, apparently from an extra-terrestial source. One that popped up just before his murder which he wrote in blood across his desk reads, ‘Iti sapis potanda bigo ne!’

After much research among Gnostic archives, Des discovers this loosely to mean, ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!’ Could these words, he speculates, be attributed to the Virgin Mary herself?

Pursuing his search for the ‘Divine Toshiba’, the key to the mystery, Des is intrigued by repeated numerical references in Christian writings… the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins and the Thirty Nine Articles to name but a few. Could God himself be an accountant who has made Desmond in his own image with a special role to play on earth?

And how, he asks, could Saint Peter on Judgment Day have sufficient data processing capacity to call up spread sheets of sins and good works without causing unacceptable queues at the Pearly Gates?

Then Des himself starts getting celestial emails from above. Extraordinarily, he seems to have replaced Gussie as God’s chosen intermediary on earth. These divine messages tell him that Jesus had a twin brother, named Judas Thomas, who was brought to France by Joseph of Arithmetea (sic) accompanied by Maximinus, one of the seventy two disciples who later became the first bishop of Aix. Des again is fascinated by the numerical references… even the name Aix contains the Roman numeral nine.

The emails continue, leading him to an obscure symbologist, Joseph Kandinski who is obsessed with finding the modern equivalent of the lode stone and the art of alchemy. Could the answer be the silicon chip, the modern source of fabulous wealth? Then the messages start referring obliquely to the Second Coming of Christ, to the multiple filial phantasm and the sacred messianic emanation.

From their joint researches they soon discover that the second coming is not in the person of Christ himself but of his resurrected twin, Judas Thomas who remarkably is already present upon earth. He has come, it seems, not as an evangelistic Christ-man figure but in the guise of a wealthy computer entrepreneur and philanthropist. His role is to give to mankind the benefit of God’s enhanced IT expertise, thus throwing new light on the expression, ‘Jesus Saves’.

Des learns that God runs MSDOS (Messianic Saviour Divine Operating System) for decision-making on Judgment Day, uses the Pearly Gates database and for word processing, God’s Word and Good Works. Could these divine software prototypes have new applications for mankind, thus indicating the worldly identity of the second son of God, already here on earth.

“The Kandinsky Lode” is thus an assured piece of fiction which seamlessly knits together the past and present and is as much an ingenious and blazingly good yarn as it is an exceptional piece of scholarship. Profoundly erudite, it is an intricate and intensely pleasurable read in which the writer has far excelled his novel, “Thai Girl”, his strangely successful first offering.

Not yet available at Asia Books, Bookazine and other good bookshops.

Sleepless in Bangkok

Bangkok isn't all temples and glittering spires.

It's a bizarre mix of brutal concrete and glitzy commercialism...

...but it can be cheap and cheerful and surprisingly human at times.


I always thought that retirement was going to be easy. You just sit around and watch the telly and eat too much food.

Like hell it is! Sometimes it can be horrendous.

We’ve just done the nine hour bus journey from the village to Bangkok and arrived at our grubby room in Sukhumvit Soi 71 at four in the morning. One of the objectives was to arrange reprinting of THAI GIRL and MY THAI GIRL AND I as stocks are low, but the first job was to move flats, to pack up a horrific accumulation of six years of stuff and move to our new place in Sukhumvit Soi 97.

A very tolerant taxi driver stowed a mountain of bags and we went and paid the deposit, signed the agreement and got the keys to our new room on the eighth floor of the nicely named ‘Romance Mansion’. Built I think as a hotel, it’s all very decent with polished granite corridors and everything as neat and clean as the old place was disgusting.

While I was to go back to the hospital the next day, Cat faced the major job of hiring a pickup and transporting the rest of our furniture, boxes and a small stock of books to Soi 97. I won’t bore you with details but having several family members in attendance as always, there were now five of us living in a room full of boxes (this is Thailand and that’s normal!) but yes, it’s been challenging.

Then we went to Tesco which is close by and bought a new TV which supplied Cat with her principle necessity in life and slowly we began to sort things out.

We also bought a new blender/liquidizer which is still my main necessity in life. Sadly when I went to the hospital to have the wiring in my broken jaw removed, things didn’t work out. On releasing the rubber ties which keep my jaw firmly closed, my mouth opened for the first time in a month but my jaw sagged sideways and my teeth wouldn’t meet or bite properly. The jaw seemed to be displaced just as it was after the accident.

Unlike me, the surgeon didn’t seem to be too alarmed and told me the bindings would have to be on for at least another two weeks so we are now staying in Bangkok until I go back to see him again. This was quite a shock and a big set back as I thought it should now be healed, but I shall lower my expectations and be prepared for the long haul.

Having one’s jaw broken and being unable to eat or speak is nothing though to the ghastly trauma of applying for a British tourist visa.

I very much want to take Cat with me to see family in England this summer. Back in the village I’d spent the best part of a week scanning the three different websites that contain the necessary info on applying for visas, putting together and copying the papers and filling in the application form. Having done this four times before and as paperwork should be second nature for a lawyer it should have been easy, but it wasn’t.

For example, there was ambiguity about which application form should be used. I went to the original laws that underly the process and I three times emailed the Embassy help line but got no clear resolution of the problem. So I filled in both forms to cover ourselves. It is all so very, very complex.

While the visa form for the Schengen countries of Europe is just two sides, the British form is like a book and asks ninety three questions such as ‘how much money do you, (the applicant) give to your relatives?’ and ‘are you a terrorist?’.

Anyway, we spent a long and horrible morning submitting the application and maybe I’ll tell the full story later when we’ve waited the estimated fifteen days for our case to be processed.

Right now my point is that here am I, a sixty two year old law abiding, tax paying citizen married to my Thai wife of six years who is not a terrorist desperately wanting to be able to take her to see family and friends in England and I’m as anxious as hell. We've been there together three times before and she didn't overstay but nothing is ever open and shut. The Embassy can make us wait weeks for an interview if they have any queries and they have an absolute discretion to refuse the visa… and it’ll be all my fault for getting the papers wrong.

Our flights are booked, the timing arranged with the folks back home but it could all get totally screwed up. I can tell you that I have not slept well for the last couple of weeks because of this and what with trying not to die of starvation because I cannot open my mouth it has been a busy and difficult time.

Do I by law have a universal human right to family life?

In theory I do but I can tell you it ain’t easy to assert it. Retirement abroad can at times be challenging.

On the other hand, if I were alone and retired in England there wouldn’t be three noisy young females sleeping in my bedroom at night keeping me awake and I’d bored out of my mind.

At least living here with Cat there’s never a dull moment.

Copyright: Andrew Hicks The ‘Thai Girl’ Blog March 2009

Move Over Buddha!

The 'Pu Ta' animist shrine by the pond in the rice fields.

Making offerings for the village's most powerful spirit.

Pu yai baan, the village head, blesses the offerings with water.

The old ladies pour offerings of rice whisky.

Not a bad way to start the day really...

... with alcohol and chicken to follow.

And if his gizzard's straight it'll be a good year.

But her future's not on rails. The world is changing.


A Ceremony Older Than Buddhism

I have just watched a remarkable village ceremony, a propitiation of the spirits at a special shrine that owes no reference whatsoever to Buddhism.

I write in my recent book, “MY THAI GIRL AND I”, about the importance of Buddhism in our village and how it coexists happily with older animist belief in the spirits of the fields and the spirits of the dead. So many of the ceremonies that I see around here, despite the Buddhist trappings, are thus in fact ‘animistic’ in origin, ancient spirit worship much older than Buddhism.

While the Christian god is a jealous god, Buddhism has no god at all and so perhaps can coexist more easily with the spirits of much older beliefs.

I talk (at page 129 of the book) about the special village shrine, the pu-ta which uniquely has no relation whatever to Buddhist styles but looks remarkably like an African shrine to animist spirits. I’ve read that at these village shrines there are two major ceremonies every year but at the time of writing my book I’d never seen them.

Now at last I have and it was truly fascinating.

The other day Cat told me there was to be a big ‘Buddha party’ down by the pond that morning and told me to bring my camera. I was feeling almost too lazy to go but thank goodness I didn’t miss it. She went ahead with some chicken she’d killed and cooked while I followed on my bike.

The shrine by the pond is a square shed of concrete blocks with a corrugated roof, totally unadorned which could be a pump house or small storage hut. The front is open and inside is a raised area on which stand two roughly carved figures, male and female, she vaguely European, he with a droopy Mexican moustache. Scattered around them are several carved wooden rifles, a few chunks of laterite stone and some plastic bowls with the dried up remains of food offerings in them.

You see these shrines on the fringes of every village overlooking the rice fields and they’re always much the same, often newly built, plain and white, in stark contrast to the bright style of Buddhist temples.

Anyway, as I arrived on my bike that day, perhaps fifty people were hanging around the shrine, mainly women and children chatting happily in the easy way they do. Inside on the floor, wall to wall, were offerings of food, mainly cooked chicken and bottles of lao khao, Thai rice whisky.

The pu yai baan, our village head soon appeared and splashed water around the figures on the altar while two old women poured offerings of alcohol into a bowl, everyone casually looking on. Then those who’d made offerings retrieved them and started breaking the heads off the chickens, while an old woman threw buckets of water up onto the roof, laughing and joking. The main focus of the morning was then to examine the gizzards of the chickens.

I’d previously seen this done just after Cat and I had first come to the village… they’d consulted the spirits to see if our future together looked positive. If the gizzard from the neck of the chicken they’d killed was reasonably straight we’d be okay but if not it wouldn’t work out. Old uncle gave the thumbs up, saying we’d be fine… at least that is if Cat didn’t talk too much!

Now beside the pond, having made their offerings and done their duty to the spirits of the pu ta, everyone seemed happy with their gizzards and they all just wandered off home, looking forward to a special meal of rice and chicken.

As usual I asked Cat for her interpretation of the ceremony and it’s to ask for good fortune in the coming year, which of course means a plentiful rice harvest. I wondered too if the throwing of water was a symbolic request for good rains which is the key to a farmer’s prosperity.

As customs such as these are universal over a wide region, and having no holy books, I’m sure that the exact beliefs vary from place to place. I also suspect that they’re not very precise… the ritual simply carries on by habit from year to year and generation to generation because that’s just what you always have to do.

I’ve read that the pu-ta is the chief shrine of the village, the spirit itself deriving from an ancient ancestor who, if duly venerated, like a father figure will care for his ‘children’. However, if a village is racked with drought and illness and other misfortunes, then the influence of the pu-ta may wane because he has neglected this duty. The pu-ta is the central reference for social order, a refuge in times of trouble and a protection against danger. While he may punish the villagers for their misdeeds, they will look for other protectors if they suffer bad times despite having honoured his shrine.

The ceremony that I saw suggests that the old beliefs or practices remain strong in our village… everyone knew this was to be the day and had killed and cooked a chicken as an offering. Rituals such as this will continue though, even when the essential beliefs are slipping. The visit to the shrine was a pleasant social occasion to look forward to and a small investment to assure future security. As Thailand becomes more and more urbanised it will however become a sad affair for the old people left behind in the villages who still remember the old ways.

I now wonder how the little girl I photographed at the scene will remember ceremonies such as this one and what they’ll mean to her as she grows up and moves away from home. Her very traditional old grandmother was one of the crones offering alcohol to the spirit of the temple, while the tiny girl was in a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ tee shirt.

So where will this child’s life lead her now? Her family is poor and she’ll probably leave school early to go to Bangkok to earn pitiful wages. Despite her village upbringing, life for her will be very different to that of her grandparents. As rice farmers who first had to cut back the forest to make rice fields, facing tigers and elephants and drawing up the ladders at night to keep safe from bandits, for them it’s been hard.

It won’t be easy for their grandchild either and from the sweatshops of the city she may well remember her village childhood with nostalgia and regret.

Andrew Hicks The ‘ThaiGirl’ Blog March 2009

Thai School Girls Made Apsara!

"My Thai Girl and I"... the movie!

A day out of school at Sikoraphum.


School girls hard at work practicing their dance.

And next day transformed into apsaras.

Nearly a thousand years after these figures were carved in stone.






A final bow.


I’ve seen Niagara and a few of the world’s great water falls but none has the impact of the unexpected.

When in Sierra Leone exploring the jungle and pristine beaches to the west of Freetown, we stumbled across a small waterfall that was at least as memorable as Niagara. Following the sound of thundering waters, suddenly there it was, perfect, untouched, unvisited and with so much magic added by surprise.

Not far from our sleepy rice village in Isaan, we’ve recently had a similar experience, uplifting in its beauty and revelation, this time a display of traditional Thai dance at the ancient Khmer temple of Sikoraphum.

We had staying with us in our village home in Surin province some documentary makers, who were with us to shoot preliminary footage for a film version of MY THAI GIRL AND I, the book about my life in Thailand with Cat. As nothing much ever happens here, it was going to be hard to find things for them to shoot.

When you’ve seen one dry rice field you’ve seen the lot so I decided to take them to see the temple at Sikoraphum. Dating from the Angkor era and almost a thousand years old, the temple truly is a gem. It’s well preserved and maintained and has a very special atmosphere indeed.

Usually it’s deserted and there’s hardly a soul there but on arriving we found the lawns around the temple occupied by hundreds of school children from the nearby Sikoraphum Phisai School. A teacher explained to us that they were out of the class rooms for a few days for a special ‘integrated learning’ project, using trigonometry for example to measure the height of the temple stupas. And what’s more some of the school girls were practicing for a traditional Thai dance display to take place the very next day.

No movie maker would miss an opportunity like this so we came back the following day and the dance was even more special for being so unexpected. Previously while practicing the girls had been in sports clothes as they went through their dance routines, all giggling and worldly. Today in their elaborate costumes they were transported to another time, back to the Khmer empire, the era of Sukhotai or Ayuttaya. These were ordinary school girls made apsara, the lissom messengers of the gods, seen famously carved in stone at the temples of Angkor, and they danced like angels.

The setting was idyllic, the platform of the temple providing a perfect stage. The costumes complemented the warm browns of the temple’s brick work and the dancing itself was impeccable. I was utterly entranced.

The Thais love dance but so often their current obsession with coyote girls gyrating sexily to loud music obliterates all interest in more traditional forms. How sad this is as traditional dance is perhaps the finest of Thailand’s performing arts. Even in Bangkok it’s rarely seen today except in shows put on for tourists and then not always very well done. I was told a few years ago that traditional Thai dance is so much in decline that many of the forms and skills are being lost.

That a provincial school such as this one should thus excel itself in traditional dance and make so creative a use of its local temple is therefore a huge credit to them. I can only say that they gave us an unexpected and special moment which I for one shall certainly long remember.


WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Thailand, obsessed with sexy dancing from six year olds at school to almost every show on television, has abandoned it's love of traditional dance which is so very sad.

I'D LOVE TO HAVE YOUR COMMENTS.

Andrew Hicks The “Thai Girl” Blog March 2009