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My first few years in Thailand I lived next to a Thai restaurant where I
frequently ordered "Pak Pak Ruamit" or mixed vegetables fried in the skillet. To
me Thai culture itself seems very much "mixed vegetables" with a little beef,
pork, chicken, rice, pineapple and mango thrown in along. The ancient is mixed
with the modern, the western way is mixed with the traditional Thai, the poor
are mixed with the rich. You will see rice fields being plowed by water buffalo
while a brand new car is parked in the driveway or a child is playing on a
computer. You will see one person steeped in tradition that goes back hundreds
of years, while the person next door mimicks the culture and habits of the west.
You will see a beautiful mansion worth 12 million baht while just outside its
walls (and sometimes even within its walls) people live in thrown up one room shacks of
galvanized steel or strips of bamboo. You see it all in Thailand. And there is
no predicting what will be where or who will be what. All of these things are
both on continuums and in abrupt mixes as people try to reconcile the old water
buffalo with the latest technology, the traditional culture with the western
culture, and the poor with the rich. |
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