To Run Across the Sea by Norman Lewis

Author:Norman Lewis [Lewis, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3336-6
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-22T19:58:00+00:00

SIAM AND THE MODERN WORLD

THAILAND, UNTIL 1953 GENERALLY called Siam, went modern just before my first visit there, later that year. The order went out that the nation was to cease looking to the past and to take the future in a firm embrace. Hat Yai, a provincial town in the south within a few miles of the Malaysian frontier, was chosen for an experiment in instant modernisation, and I went there to see what was happening. There was a tendency in Siam for the words ‘modern’ and ‘American’ to be used interchangeably, so, when the decree was published for Hat Yai to be brought up to date, most Thais accepted that it was to be Americanised. Little surprise was aroused when the model chosen for the new Hat Yai was Dodge City of the eighteen-sixties as revealed by the movies.

In due course the experts arrived with photographs of the capital of the wild frontier in its heyday, and within weeks the comfortable muddle of Hat Yai was no more. Its shacks reeling on their stilts were pulled down, the ducks and buffaloes chased out of the ditches, and the spirit-houses (after proper apologies to the spirits) shoved out of sight. It became illegal to fly kites within the limits of the town, or to stage contests between fighting-fish.

Where the bustling chaos of the East had once been, arose the replica of the main-street made famous by so many Westerns, complete with swing-door saloons, wall-eyed hotels and rickety verandahs on which law-abiding citizens were marshalled by the sheriff to go on a posse and men of evil intention planned their attack on the mail-train or the bank. Hat Yai possessed no horses and the hard men of those days rode into town in jeeps—nevertheless, hitching-posts were provided. For all the masquerade, Hat Yai in the fifties bore some slight accidental resemblance to what Dodge City had been a century before, and there were gun-fighters in plenty in the vicinity. It was at that time an unofficial rest-area for Malaysian Communist guerrillas from across the frontier, tolerated simply because the Thais lacked the strength to keep them out. The communist intruders were armed to the teeth, and Thai law-enforcement agents—part of whose uniform included Davy Crockett fur caps from which raccoon tails dangled—were few in number. Reaching for one’s gun was a matter of frequent occurrence in the main-street saloons. Although it was largely a histrionic gesture and few people were shot, newcomers like myself were proudly taken to see the holes in the ceilings.

The arrival of the movies played their part in the vision of the new Thailand. In a single year, 1950, hundreds, perhaps thousands of movie theatres opened up all over S.E. Asia, the first film on general release being Arsenic and Old Lace. With this the shadow-play that had entertained so many generations of Thais was wiped out overnight. A multitude of mothers throughout the land worked tirelessly at pressing back their daughters’ fingers from the age of five to enable them to take stylish part in the dance dramas such as the Ramayana.

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