Another voice
Lessons of South-East Asia
Auberon Waugh
Bangkok Readers of the Spectator have been known to suggest rather rudely that they hear all too much about Thailand. It is not, after all, the most important country in the world, Its 45 million inhabitants may be delightful to meet, but they don't actually do very much. Its currency, the baht, does not feature on the international monetary scene. No Thai writer has yet been awarded a Nobel Prize, nor has any Thai physicist, nor medical man, nor chemist, nor en- thusiast for peace, although a new Thai history book faithfully records that in the 1950s a certain Miss Thailand won a Miss Universe competition. Even that brief mo- ment of glory was a long time ago now. Why do so many Spectator stories carry Bangkok datelines, and why do so many Spectator writers seem to spend most of their time in this unimportant corner of the world?
These objections may be treated with the contempt they deserve. Spectator readers are so few and far between that they cannot seriously expect their opinions to carry much weight. Nor do their pitiful pennies contribute anything towards the expense of these jaunts. In 15 years of writing for the Spectator the furthest it has ever sent me was by second-class return rail ticket to Blackpool. But there are signs that the Editor of the Spectator is beginning to grow restive under the constant stream of fresh material, insight commentary and back- ground briefing from God's own kingdom. So in the week of an official visit by General Preen Tinasulandonda, Thailand's hand- some, well-dressed Prime Minister, it might be a good time to explain why so many peo- ple who have once visited the kingdom re- main obsessed by it, and why it might be worthwhile to watch developments there more closely even than those in such ex- citing places as Toronto, Zurich and the Falkland Islands.
In the first place it is the pleasantest country on earth, with the possible excep- tion of Burma, which I have yet to visit. I never had the opportunity to visit South- East Asia in the decade before the collapse of Vietnam, and have only the beery recollections of other people for the delightful Buddhist societies which existed in Laos, Cambodia and even in Vietnam before the French and American defeats. Burma itself has by all accounts been miraculously preserved by an incompetent but benign socialist despotism whose writ scarcely extends over the trading activities of the capital, let alone over the countryside which is controlled by rival bands of opium traders, gangsters and insurgents of various political and ethnic hues. To the extent that it is not open to inspection, Burma may be seen as a slice of Heaven existing in vacuo, with not much relevance to anything else.
Thailand, on the other hand, has opened its hospitable doors to the corrupting in- fluence of Western investment, Western tourism, Western popular journalism and even, most recently, Western democracy, although it remains to be seen whether the elections proposed for next March actually take place, or whether they are forestalled by another coup. So far, it has managed to absorb all these corrupting influences without serious damage to its values as a serene pious Buddhist state. It is true that there are more murders and far more pro- stitution than would be acceptable in the West. Health and education services are patchy — in places quite impressive, elsewhere somewhat backward. But it is a free country and above all a happy country, whose people have all the innocence and some of the wickedness of highly intelligent schoolchildren. It is in this comparison bet- ween the happiness of the Thais and the misery which has fallen on their Cambodian and Laotian neighbours, not to mention their Vietnamese enemies, that the real lessons of South-East Asia can be learned.
This openness and fairmindedness of Thai society — apart from Hong Kong and Japan it is the only country in Asia with a free press — make it particularly vulnerable to the hard, mean focus of the Left. Many Thais who had not followed John Pilger's previous campaign of support for the Viet- namese rather welcomed his exposure of the Thai trade in children to which I drew at- tention recently. This trade is something which is so traditional in the Far East that few Thai newspapers bother to draw atten- tion to it. Whenever there is a poor harvest in the north, farmers have tended to sell off their children. It is illegal, of course, but nonetheless prevalent and a scandal. An aspect of this trade may be seen in a corner of one of Bangkok's many meat markets, where children as young as eight or even six are employed — illegally — to chew raw ducks' feet all night in order to prepare them for sale to the Chinese community next morning.
Similarly, a few days ago most Thai newspapers carried details of another public scandal: police, having been persuaded by pressure from a feminist group to raid a large brothel on the outskirts of Bangkok and take its inmates into protective custody, had arranged with the owners of the brothel to release most of the girls for work in another establishment in the same ownership.
Such scandals are freely discussed in Thailand. The police are urged to take action, and from time to time they do so. But these are fairly small blemishes on a beautiful and happy society, which pro- bably finds its best expression at Songram, or the Buddhist New Year, when Thais throng into the streets to throw water over each other and anyone else who happens to be passing. Anybody who shows resent- ment at this is thought to have made a tremendous fool of himself. In England, of course, such behaviour would be in- tolerable — self-conscious, dangerous and shot through with false heartiness, malice and class hatred, but the Thais are essential- ly a nation of water throwers. Whatever we stand to lose in England from the triumph of Tony Benn, Len Scart and his fellow Pol Pottists, or from the malign brooding presence of Warsaw pact forces on Europe's eastern borders, is onlY a pale shadow of what has already haPPerl- ed in Cambodia — first from its indigenous Khmer Rouge, now from the armies of Vietnam who have formally announced to the ASEAN countries that their occupation of Cambodia and Laos is permanent and ir- reversible. The real battle for Middle Earth' between the hobbits of the Shire and the en- croaching shadows of the Dark Land or Mordor, is being fought and lost in South: East Asia, not in the Freelance Branch of the National Union of Journalists nor in the National Executive Committee of EcluitY' the actors' union. Our own struggles are dingy little studies in grey and khaki beside the brilliant and appalling clarity of the struggle in South-East Asia. I think the hobbits are bound to lose because it is in their nature to recognise thek own imperfections, while the hard' mean concentration of the Left will always take, never give. Mr John Pilger managed to amaze even the Thais by a series of OM! about Cambodia which never mentioned that the country was under foreign occupa- tion. Every Potemkin village of Vietnamese `assistance' to the battered people was, shown in detail, but one does not, 01 course, look to Mr John Pilger for the ap- palling truth that the Vietnamese are not ac- tually stripping the remaining forces of Laos and Cambodia and sending the food back to Vietnam.
It is possible to meet Khmer Rouge leaders — men responsible for the murder of some two million of their fellow citizens' apparently for reasons of social reorganise" tion — at dinner parties in Bangkok and find them the most charming people. TheY talk of bouillabaisses they have eaten in Marseilles, of concerts in Paris and other civilised delights. The gigantic truth would appear to be that Marxism has taken over that second force perceived by the Gnostics, the imperfect subordinate or evil demiurge in human affairs which Marxism seeks ex' pressly to deny: the present is evil, the future is good. Alienation from apParent truth leads to the adoption of an alter" native, esoteric truth, which in conven- tional terms may be seen as mere perversity or nonsense. Thailand is where it is all happening.
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