One thing about Thailand that I love and America doesn't have is the village type of society. In here everyone lives individually but in the town that I grew up, almost everybody knows each other( or at least that was what happening when I was a kid. I'm not sure about now). In Seattle, I cannot wish to go out by foot to buy an ice cream or anything that I urgently need within 5 minutes( unless I live in some of the downtown areas but that is no village). But in the area where I was raised, I could walk randomly and find shops and stores and services such as barbers, hardware stores, internet cafes, magazine stands, 24-hour convenient stores, an ice cream stand, sidewalk restaurants, drugs stores, outdoor markets, butcher shops, a bakery shop, a bicycle repair shop, a video rental shop, a manga rental shop, etc. I can find all of these within 15 minutes walking. One thing I notice about Thai people is that when we don't know what to do as a career, we start selling stuff. It is amazingly easy to open a small business as long as you have a place( or a spot big enough to fit whatever you sell). As a kid in school, I needed to cut my hair short accordingly to the rules and,very often, like once a month. I hated it, by the way. So, the worst place that I had to visit frequently was the barber shop. There was the one in the front entrance of my Soi that I used to go all the time. I don't remember the name and I doubt they even came up with one. Sometimes I wondered if they really were trained to do what they were doing. Their skills were far off from professional's. Could it possible that they woke up one day and, all of a sudden, converted the 1st floor of their house into an empty space, filled it with chairs and mirrors, and decided to start cutting people's hair for living ? When I thought about it thoroughly, it could for real happen. You don't really need anything except tools to cut kid's hair. Ok, maybe they took some cutting lesson from a nearby private institution. But they also could be self-taught hairdos. I don't recall seeing a certificate on the wall when I went in. All they posted on the shop windows were posters of universally recognized superstars. Britney Spears, Justine Timberlake, David Beckham and so on. And I recalled David Beckham had on a skinhead hairstyle. Even to this day and age, I still don't know what the "glass tube thing" in front of every salon supposes to symbolize. You know, the one that looks like a Christmas candy cane.
Another example of how easy it was to start a small business of your own is the hawkers. In case you don't know, a hawker is a person who travels around selling food that they make or small stuff that they can carry along, usually advertising to people by shouting names or catchy slogans. As a kid, those people were my heroes. I'll tell you how and why the hawker business works well in Thailand. First of all, considering the weather. In Bangkok where the humidity is dry, the temperature is blazing high and the wind velocity is low, people don't really want to go out of their houses or travel too far away. Having those merchants come to sell things at your doors is not a bad idea at all and the prices are usually cheap. The second factor is that it's easy and budget friendly. It is amazingly fast to start up just about anything from scratch. No registration require, no license require( maybe a driver license if you drive a vehicle such as a motorcycle with sidecar ), no rented space, no hired employee( usually it's a solo or working with family members). You just need some necessary tools and skills related to what you're trying to sell. The third factor is that it gives people, especially kids, a pleasant surprise. You never know exactly when or what is gonna come by yelling at your front door. Be the ice cream man, the papaya salad queen, the home-brew drinks tricycle( Thai Ice Tea, Coffee, Chrysanthemum juice etc. ), the fresh fruits truck, the blooms and dustpans merchant etc. Those people don't have written business hours or official schedules. There are the ones that travel from place to place and there are the ones that live nearby. Even the ones that live nearby only have routines, not fixed schedules. Well, I might be wrong on this one because I might be the only kid who whenever he wanted to buy a papaya salad and grilled chicken, they never came. But when he didn't pay attention, they waltzed pass by cold faces and the poor boy had to run around the streets trying to catch them before they gone through the horizon. Or could this had something to do with my lack of attention and luck as a little kid ? I wouldn't know.
My town was the same as ever when I got a chance to go back a couple years ago. I got a chance to go to the grocery store 'R Mor' located in the corner about a block away from my house ( I should mention that the place used to be my grandma's greatest rival of the grocery selling business long before her shop went out of business). I went in and checked out some of the pastries and snacks that were sitting on the tray. And.. MAN ALIVE! I could not tell if they were the new batch or the same batch that I saw 10 years ago. I mean, could they be sitting here like this for 10 whole years and nobody really ever tried to pick them up. The color of the breads, the way all the snacks are arranged and positioned, the package logos, the types of all the pastries and snacks were exactly the same. I looked around the store and the interior design and the layout were also exactly the same. I tried to find the Granny ' R Mor' who owns the shop but I saw her son instead. And just as I thought, I could not recognize him at all. Next to the store stood what could be one of the most sophisticated Thailand's public transportation services. " Mosirubjang " or in plain English " Motorcycle Taxi ". Why would it be sophisticated, you ask? Well, before that let me explain further of how the service works. In my Soi in which the layout appears to be simple enough. Two upside-down L-shaped pathways adjacent to one another.
My House
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Entrance 1 Entrance 2
Motorcycle Taxi As you can see, the two spots where the motorcycle services are located on the entrance and the dead end. Their routines are usually based on the second entrance only since there are 8-10 mini lateral routes that connect both ways, left and right. As you can see my house located on the corner of the left dead end. In order for me to go there, I have to use the service from the entrance 2. The method of calling is simple enough. First, you walk over acting like you're tired and need help( otherwise you could be ignored) and look at the guys who wear numbered jackets in the eyes. The one who supposes to take turn will come up and talk to you. You simply tell him or her the destination of your dream. Along the way, you suppose to tell the guy where and when to turn. Since the route to my house only takes one right angle turn, I'll just have to tell him once a minute before hand. On the other hand, the trip out of my house takes a little extra work. I have to walk to the spot and call a service there or simply wave my hand in the air. Occasionally, there are stray dogs within the routes. I mean, a group of hungry fucking dogs. The driver will sidekick the dogs out of the way with his foot while maintaining the balance if they interfere with the service. And this is where things get tricky. A trip to somewhere outside of the Soi can also be arranged in advance. Now the fixed price will increase depending on the distance and the level of difficulty. But if you're a person who gets a thrill out of extreme sports, you will love the service. Otherwise, I don't recommend doing it. Bangkok's traffic wonderland can be too extreme. However, all this is not to make fun of the jobs and people of my hometown but I really find all those things both fun and funny. After all they were my neighbors and people who I grew up with. The memories of those people, even when sometimes can be unpleasant, never left me bad taste or harm. They shaped who I am today.
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