The Art of Death In Thailand

Death in the West has been so sanitized that we rarely get to see it in all its glory. We use euphemisms to disguise the reality of death. Even when a body is displayed in an open casket, undertakers use makeup to hide any disfigurations. And we rarely see pictures of the gruesome reality in the newspapers.

When you first come to Thailand and pick up a local newspaper, death stares at you almost unadorned. They show pictures of bodies strewn across the page in lurid color. Editors barely cover the blood and gore with coy black screens. But when you look at these pictures, you can easily see that something awful has happened.

These are the sensational pictures telling people that one day, you too will meet your end. Perhaps it has something to do with Buddhism, reminding people how small and insignificant our lives are.

The following vignettes are about people whose deaths never made it to the front page of the newspapers. They were just ordinary people who met death when they least expected it. If I don’t tell their stories, who will?

Lek

The sun was searing out of a hard blue cloudless sky. The rice fields were burned to a brown crisp. The old stalks almost ready to burst into spontaneous combustion. But this didn’t bother the group of young boys jumping into the small pond of water. The pond was usually immersed by the local river, but that had dried up during the long, hot dry season leaving a series of small muddy ponds like this.

Young Lek was almost seven years old. He and his friends were on school vacation. Living in the local village, there wasn’t much to do except play in the fields or cool off in the ponds. The rice had already been harvested. The adults in the village were relaxing as they sweated through the long hot days, waiting for the rains that would signal the start of the new planting season.

Today, about twenty of the village boys were playing tag, and Lek was ‘it’. He was smaller than the other boys. So even as he was chasing them here and there, he wasn’t having much luck. He’d been ‘it’ for about five minutes already. Every time he got near one of his targets they would jump into the pond and wade to the other side out of reach.

The pond was surrounded by low bushes and a few trees. Lek realized that they only way to win was to use subterfuge. So, as he chased his next potential victim he slowed down, and when he spotted the opportunity he slipped into the bushes and hid. He crouched down, hoping to tag one of the boys as they went past unaware.

The boys were laughing and screaming, making a lot of noise, as young boys do the world over whenever they go swimming at the local pond. At first, the boys didn’t notice that he had disappeared. Then one of them shouted out, “Where’s Lek?”

The others all looked around, but they couldn’t see him. At first they called his name. No response. Then they started searching the bushes.

Finally, they found Lek stretched out under a particularly heavy bush. A huge cobra snake still writhed in Lek’s small hands. It must have been at least six feet long. He had grabbed it in a tight grip. They had fought, and the snake had won. It had sunk its fangs into Lek’s chest. The venom had gone straight to his heart and killed him almost immediately.

They cremated Lek a few days later at the local temple. The rest of the vacation was a somber time for the boys in the village. They mostly stayed around each other’s homes. They didn’t feel like going out into the fields again.

Somchai, The Speed King

You’ve seen them plenty of times. Young teens, their helmets perched on top of their head as they zoom, zig, and zag through the traffic. They sit astride their noisy little motorbikes, showing off for anybody who will notice.

Somchai had just bought his bike. He was very proud of it. The 125cc motor screamed as he revved it up, overtaking cars, loving the feel of the wind in his face and the power between his legs. This particular stretch of road was Somchai’s favorite. It runs parallel to Vibhavadi Highway, out near Zeer Shopping Center.

Sure, there were always cars on it, some driven by people who dawdled along. Somchai loved to zip past them as he showed off his riding prowess.

“Come on, old man,” he would think to himself, “get out of the way and I’ll show you what real speed is.”

His favorite trick was overtaking on the inside lane at high speed, just inches away from the kerb. Today, a long line of traffic was inching up the highway. As he sped past them all he closed his eyes in sheer joy. He didn’t see the large gray truck turn left with its load of muddy dirt.

Somchai opened his eyes just before he hit, his hands clenching frantically on the brake. But it was too late. As his bike skidded it fell over, shooting him directly under the huge double wheels. His helmet had already fallen off, so when the wheels hit his head they squashed it flat. The king was dead.

Noi, The Gorsang

A ‘gorsang’ is a construction worker. Noi had been a gorsang for almost one year. She and her boyfriend Vinai had come down from Surin to work with a team from their village. Only the foreman had any construction skills, and he had only gained them from working on sites for more than fifteen years. The rest of the team were young people like Noi and Vinai.

They were typical Esarn people. Short, brown, tough bodies honed by hard work and not too much to eat. Noi and Vinai had been together ever since they had met in high school back home. They had fallen in love. They wanted to get married, but they had no money. As both came from poor families they came to Bangkok to work with their friends. The money was good. Between them they took home almost seven thousand Baht a month. They lived on the site, so their only expenses were for food, which they shared with their team. They put some of the money into the bank, and sent one thousand Baht home to their parents each month. They were saving up for their baby that was due to arrive in two more months.

Like many young Esarn men, Vinai liked to drink. He and his friends would gather around a small fire at night and drink Lao Khao, a potent whisky, the Thai version of our ‘White Lightning’.

After a few drinks, the boys would start to feel their oats and sometimes Vinai would accompany them to a small restaurant where they would dance with girls after paying a few Baht to buy a lei of plastic flowers. The lei would entitle them to one dance with a girl.

One night, Vinai took one of the girls out the back to a small shack. He returned ten minutes later with a happy smile on his face. His friends all laughed and joked with him about his flower girl. He had gained a lot of face in front of his friends and this made him happy.

When he arrived home that night he was singing and laughing as he said goodnight to his friends. One of them called out, “Oey! You are a super stud, Vinai. My hero!”

Noi must have heard them.

As he crawled towards the shack, Noi met him at the door. She started screaming and shouting at him to go away. “Get out of here you dirty little man! You go with another woman and then you come home here? Get out! Get out, and don’t come back.” and words to that effect.

Stunned, Vinai staggered off into the darkness and didn’t return.

The next morning, Noi turned up for work as usual, but there was no sign of Vinai. The team got into the lift cage and ascended to the 13th floor, where they were starting to lay bricks for the walls. The floor was not roped off, and as Noi walked near the edge she suddenly grew dizzy, slipped and fell, taking her almost-born infant with her to the ground.

Gone Fishing

Each year during the rainy season, Bangkok floods. Sometimes the floods are so bad that it takes several days for the water to recede in some areas. Thanapat, or Tun as everybody called him, lived over at Bang Sue in one of those old wooden houses you often see on the outskirts of the city. It had been painted a bilious green once, but much of the paint had peeled off. That didn’t bother Tun. He was living there free with his sister and her farung husband.

This year, the area had been flooded for about seven days. Fish from the local khlong had swum out and Tun could see them swimming around in the garden. The water was about two feet deep, and Tun loved fishing.

Unfortunately, he had no fishing pole, but he was an electrician. He rigged up a long pole with a length of electrical wire. He bifurcated the end and stripped about two inches of plastic away from the copper wire. Next, he attached a plug. He was ready to go fishing.

He sat on the downstairs windowsill and waited for the fish to swim by. His first attempts were very successful. He managed to bring in two decent sized catfish and a small Pla Sawai. But he spotted a much larger Sawai swimming just out of reach of his pole. Each time it swam past, Tun would lean out trying to jab it with the wires. He missed it three times. But he was determined to get it on the next pass.

Holding on to the window frame, he leaned out even further this time. The prongs were within inches of contact when the rotten wood on the frame broke loose, dropping Tun into the water.

Water is a great electricity conductor, as Tun quickly found out. And now, Tun has gone….fishing.

Ta Gong

He was tall, so skinny he looked like a walking skeleton, and he chain smoked. Despite this, he was over eighty years old. He didn’t know exactly how old, as no one kept records back when he was born.

He lived in a simple wooden house with a downstairs built of breeze blocks, much like many houses in Esarn. His large family included ten children, his wife, and numerous relatives all living in the same village. He was their leader, and the village medicine man. He was my wife’s father.

His grandfather had come down from China sometime just before the end of the 19th Century. Of course, Ta Gong didn’t know when exactly. His life was governed by the seasons, and the rice harvest.

His grandfather had brought with him his knowledge of herbal medicine, and he had passed it on to his eldest son. He, in turn, had taught Ta Gong from an early age. They would go out into the nearby strip of jungle where they would gather the roots, bark, wood, and herbs growing there. They would bring these home, sort them, and then process them to make their medicines.

There were no doctors nearby until just recently. In fact, the village was so far out of the way they didn’t have electricity, phones, or even a road. The government had built one about twenty years ago,  connecting the village at last to Ubon Ratchathani, about 50 kilometers away. By the time Ta Gong reached his eighties, the village had been transformed. The highway had brought prosperity to the area. A small town had grown up nearby. They had all the modern conveniences; concrete roads through the village, electricity, phones, a small hospital and staff, and even piped running water. Ta Gong’s herbal medicine was no longer in much demand. He had never trained anyone to take his place, so when he went his knowledge and skills would die with him.

But in the old days, whenever the villagers got sick, they would go to Ta Gong. He knew just the right herb or concoction to give them to ease their ills. He was successful most of the time, and the villagers loved and respected him. Even though he was dirt poor, he would never take money.

Each day, Ta Gong and his wife Har would go out into the rice fields to tend their crops. The extended family owned large swathes of land, all neatly divided by the dikes that separated each holding. When the rains came they would stand in the flooded fields and work together to plant the rice. They would tend it as it grew, keeping away the predators. The fields also supplied much of their food, including frogs, small fish, and the tiny black crabs they put into their Som Tum Pla Rah (papaya salad with fermented fish).

Ta Gong continued to smoke his cigarettes every day, even though the doctor had warned him to stop. He had always been skinny, but as he approached his eightieth birthday the weight sloughed off him and he looked like a walking mummy without the bandages.

Each morning, he would wake up and start coughing for about five minutes. There was no need for an alarm clock in the house. Ta Gong woke everyone up.

Then one day, there was silence. Har went to wake him up, but he was gone. He had just slipped away in the night, silent and unheard.

Ta Gong was a good man, who left a legacy of much love and a large family who will always remember him. They carried him to the local temple where he lay in state for only one day as the monks and villagers all came to pray for him. It was too hot to keep him around for long.

That evening, they built a funeral pyre in the temple grounds and cremated him. As the smoke and ashes rose from the fire, they were strewn across the village. The final ashes were gathered up and placed in an urn, which was interred in the temple wall. Now, Ta Gong will never leave the village he loved so much.

2007 © Marc Holt. All rights reserved by the author.