Good! The multi-part stories are all wrapped up. At least until the Scotch tape fails in the Bangkok heat and humidity and I find out that the carefully crafted tale was merely the prologue. But until that day I can concentrate on relaying my experiences in the new place I call home.
Thailand.
There are those of you who, like I, are of a certain age and remember How Things Were Way Back When. Others of you who are too young to remember how things worked in the not-so-distant past would not believe that it was even possible to live under such primitive conditions. Both groups, however, share one thing in common: if they were dropped back into those simpler times neither would be able to survive.
This is a new thing. A break in the continuum. For every previous set of generations this was not true. Hapless time torquers from the 1920s could be shoved back a few hundred, or thousand, years, and, after adjusting for the funny clothes, would get by just fine. Things have changed more, and more, rapidly in the past forty years than in any previous multi-hundred-year period. But it’s been more than just how we do things that have undergone this tectonic shift, the actual things that we do have changed. And we didn’t even see it happen.
Even here, in Bangkok, Thailand’s biggest city and one of the World’s mega-cities, things moved on. Modernity will not be denied. But being an Asian society and inherently different from those in the west, additional questions were asked. Questions that completely failed to make the cut in the outside world. Questions like: “Why?”
If the answer were anything more complicated than “Because”, then some additional consideration was merited.
Which brings us back to the title. This post is not about a new production of Eugene O’Neill’s famous play set in the jungles of Southeast Asia, nor is it a revisiting of my post on Ötzi’s fashion sense. Instead, this is a look at what happens when, confronted with a new and arguably better way to do something, the answer comes back: “Thanks, but we’re good.”
Every day of the week before dawn has even announced its intentions, a haze spreads through the streets and alleys in cities, towns, and villages across the country. Countless charcoal fires are lit, chicken and pork in any number of form factors are tossed onto the grills over those coals and the sweet scent of cooking meat fills the air. It is not a thing that early rising vegetarians should spend any time thinking about. As daylight approaches a new smell harshes the mellow aroma of barbecue as literal thousands of white or silver diesel pickups rattle to life to make sure every corner in the country is served, and served well, the old way.
With ice.
About 120 years ago the enterprising, and surprisingly young, gentleman Lert Sreshthaputra (known henceforward as “Lert” so you won’t have to waste time trying to pronounce his last name in your head) started a little venture called the Nai Lert Store. The “Nai” is one of the (2n+1) ways to say “Mr.” in Thai. Sort of like if Macy’s had been named “Mr. Rowland’s”. In Thai “Sreshthaputra” rolls off the tongue about as well as “Abercrombie and Fitch” does in English so be thankful he stuck with his first name.
A brief aside: In Thailand most people have their first and last names as we do in the west. But then it gets complicated. When a baby is born the parents gaze upon it in abject wonderment and exclaim things like “How cute!”, “How tiny!”, “How dark!”, or “I need a beer!” and those names stick. Forever. The former almost-chief-of-the-Thai-National-Police-Department-before-his-downfall is known as “Big Joke”. A nickname which, in addition to being mentioned by the media every single time he was, also implies that there is a “Little Joke” somewhere in the family. The baby’s actual first and, sometimes last, name is determined later, sometimes in consultation with a monk to choose something auspicious. But there is a premium on uniqueness, a goal which becomes exponentially more difficult as shorter names get gobbled up. The result is that you might end up with a tongue-twister like “Phahonphonphayuhasena” and be stuck with it because, monks. Hence, the preference for the original, typically easy to remember and pronounce, nicknames.
In the days before radio, TV, and Social Media, if you wanted to do something you had to actually do something. Lert, known as a snappy dresser with a dubious choice of pets, had decided that his store was going to be the lynchpin in his eventual business empire. To be sure of success, one of the products that Mr. Lert’s Store offered, unique to Thailand at the time and almost unknown to the general public, was ice. His store had the first ice machine at a time when ice machines used ammonia as the refrigerant resulting in frequent, and dramatic, explosions. This potential for disaster combined with the novelty of “hard water”, as it was so cleverly named in Thai, brought throngs to Mr. Lert’s Store just to watch the ice he set out on a platter, melt. This combination, minus the personal risk, of catastrophe coupled with boredom is still a foundation of televised motorsports today.
Thai people being Thai people immediately jumped on the ice bandwagon and the solid state of water spread across the country like, ironically, wildfire. Ice plants popped up like rice seeds scattered in the delta mud. It was everywhere – even to this day most Thai desserts are based on one ingredient: ice. There is even an ice-based dinner – Khao Chae – for the hot summer months. Ice is in fruit juice. It’s the prime ingredient of smoothies. And, horror of horrors for some of you, Thai people put it in beer. One bottle of beer to one bucket of ice is the correct ratio.
Thailand is a pretty large country and full of enterprising people so the sub-industry of ice delivery pretty much immediately followed and, as with cannabis shops a few years ago, extended the reach of ice into every nook and cranny of the country. From dawn into the late-night hours the ice men (typically) could be found plying their routes with ruthless, if drippy, efficiency.
But, the march of time and progress and everything happened and ammonia-based refrigeration was replaced using much safer, and less fun, chemicals. Efficiency improved to the point where a home ice box could be replaced with a mechanical refrigerator that could make its own ice for pennies (or the equivalent local currency metaphor) a day. This is the bandwagon most of the world hopped onto.
Thailand said, “No, thanks.” Choosing instead, in a very Thai way, to maintain a tradition that works for them rather than succumbing to the relentless pull of technology, that slippery slope upon which the rest of the world slides.
Beginning every morning with the sun, the ice man comes. They fill the ubiquitous blue coolers behind every food cart and tucked into corners of restaurants from shabby noodle shops with worn tile floors to Michelin-starred venues serving pretension with every bite. Their trucks’ suspensions groaning under a mountain of white bags covered in plastic tarps, they deliver. Because that’s what works best here.
That’s not to say that, ice-wise, time is standing still. There is still a pressure to seek a competitive advantage in the ice biz. More and more, I see trucks with insulated storage compartments to keep the profits from dribbling onto the road. More and more, I see ice deliveries sealed in new clear plastic bags instead of the reused white woven bags of yore. And, more and more, I see perfectly clear ice sold in forms like spheres, cylinders, tumbler-sized cubes, and faceted diamonds.
Go onto YouTube and search for “clear ice”. It is an obsession unto itself. Thousands of videos showing the best way to make clear ice, from the redneck to the absurd. In Thailand, however, there is no need for those processes and procedures to get your perfect ice. Just make a call and they’ll bring it right to your door.
