SAME, SAME . . . BUT DIFFERENT

The Night Market, Chiang Mai, Thailand (November 28, 2006). There’s an expression that’s big over here – in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

“Same, same.”

People tend to use it when speaking English and comparing things that are more or less alike.

It also shows up on shirts for sale in T-shirt stalls in places like the Night Market.  The fronts of these shirts say “Same, Same” and the backs say “But Different.”

To give you some idea of the degree to which the expression has seeped into the popular culture, in Cambodia the Red Piano restaurant in Siem Reap (made famous by Angelina Jolie’s entourage as a hang-out when filming Tomb Raider) sells T-shirts that say “Red, Red…But Piano.”

Yeah, I know, I don’t get it either, but someone obviously finds it the height of wit.

I have no idea where the term comes from, but the expression is a useful way to describe where I have ultimately wound up in my thinking about Thailand and North Carolina, a few days away from pulling up stakes here and heading off to Singapore.

Over the past few days, I have had a series of meetings and site visits that have offered me some useful perspective on the similarities I initially noticed between our respective situations.

One of the issues I have always been intellectually curious about is the degree to which governmental entities can effectively influence private sector decisions about where to locate investments and new jobs.

It’s popular for free market advocates and critics of governmental-business collaboration to pooh-pooh the idea that the government can influence location decisions by business. Businesses, they say, go where the costs and resources they need are the cheapest. Government officials attempting steer and plan for balanced economic growth are simply on a fool’s errand.

They’ll point to North Carolina’s Global Transpark or academic studies of the Bill Lee Act tax credits and say, “See how pointless it all is?”

But the reality is not so simple.

One of the things I wanted to explore on my fellowship was the how governments in Southeast Asia had used economic incentives and public investments to drive investment to rural or underdeveloped regions as a means of alleviating the pressures of increasing urbanization and creating more balanced growth.

What I learned was that the issue is a fairly tangled one. Governments can definitely influence these sorts of decisions by private companies, but a wide variety of factors can come into play when attempting to determine what makes such efforts succeed, fail or yield mixed results.

I have to thank Paul Wedel at the Kenan Institute for recommending that I visit the city of Rayong in Thailand’s eastern seaboard region.

The visit involved getting up around 5:00 in the morning and driving for hours to get there. It was complicated by the fact that my interpreter failed to connect with us and my driver couldn’t find some meeting sites in an unfamiliar city. But those were just minor distractions in an otherwise fascinating visit.

The two most important kernels of insight that I gleaned from the visit were:

1. A better appreciation for the role that strong (or weak) state and local governments can play in achieving the goal of regional economic growth in underserved regions, and

2. The advantages that a national government seeking to achieve economic growth has over states like North Carolina that seek to achieve similar results.

Rayong’s success – and the success of the cluster of industrial growth that has occurred along Thailand’s eastern seaboard over the past 30 years or so – is owed to a centrally planned effort, led by the national government, to disperse growth away from overcrowded Bangkok.

The plan was reportedly hatched during a period when the Thai military controlled the government and was apparently willing to give pretty much free rein to the economists, planners and visionaries housed at the National Economic and Social Development Board (the NESDB). The period when the Eastern Seaboard project was hatched was arguably the NESBD’s finest hour – a golden age for central economic development planning that has since passed. It was a time when big ideas – really big ideas – were the order of the day.

Before I left, Paul explained to me that I would be seeing the Map Ta Phut industrial estate while I was there. Map Ta Phut seems to have been the central government’s first “stake in the ground” in an effort to catalyze economic growth in this region.

I knew a little about the system of government-sponsored or sanctioned industrial estates in Thailand from my reading and from meeting with Tom Reese, a creator of the Amata Industrial Estate south of Bangkok. These, however, did little to prepare me for the reality of Map Ta Phut.

I was expecting an office or industrial park -- something like you see along Highway 70 between Clayton and Smithfield.

What I found was a sprawling industrial complex dominated by heavy industry and fed by vast quantities of petrochemicals piped in from offshore drilling operations in the gulf.

A network of huge pipes run along the roadsides, rising up at forty-five degree angles to form gates at road crossings. These carry the gas that fuels the heavy industries located here. Rails sidings and spurs branch out into park. Giant refineries and processing plants dominate landscape, which you can view from atop a tall viewing tower in the center of the estate.

There really isn’t anything even remotely comparable in North Carolina.

The estate, however, demonstrates what a central government can do when it has vast resources at its disposal and the ability to steer large quantities of natural gas into an otherwise undeveloped region.

There were, of course, additional factors that enabled the region succeed industrially. The government put a quality superhighway in place to speed transport to and from the region, which is in reasonably close proximity to the Bangkok airports and the country’s primary deepwater port. It sweetened the pot for industry by creating significant tax incentives for industries locating in the estate – typically providing many years of targeted income tax exemption and relief from restrictions to market entry that foreign companied would otherwise face.

All of this cost money. A lot of money. Billions of dollars worth of money.

And it could all be done because the central government ran the show right down to the local level.

Map Ta Phut appears to have succeeded. It is pretty much full. And there are around five or six other industrial estates (some sponsored by the government, some by private interests) that have sprung up and are now operating in the region.

This is central government-driven clustering on the grandest of scales.

Of course, it hasn’t come without a price. The people who live in Rayong aren’t exactly in love with the whole operation. Yes, it provides jobs and ensures a growing economy, but it is the “eight hundred pound gorilla” around these parts.

The people with the hardest job in Rayong, in my opinion, are the local and provincial government officials.

One of the very things that made Rayong possible – a strong central government and a very limited local government – is the thing that makes it a hard neighbor to live with.

Because the central government built it, the central government gets the lion’s share of the revenues derived from it. The taxes it spins off for the local governments do not fund the costs associated with living next to it.

The factory operations tend to attract low-wage labor from the eastern provinces and Cambodia. This creates vexing social problems.

The operations at the estate aren’t exactly the cleanest industries. While things have no doubt improved over the years from an environmental standpoint, there is a sense among the leaders there that the environmental costs and risks to the people are not being fairly addressed or funded by the central government.

To bring all this back into focus – this type of regional economic development is a very hard model from which to draw lessons for North Carolina. About the only thing it could shed light on would be the potential for transforming the economy in eastern North Carolina if we were to open up the continental shelf for drilling off the coast or succeed in establishing an east coast terminal for import and gasification of liquid natural gas.

I suspect we could do a better job of managing environmental impact and social costs than the Thais were able to do at Map Ta Phut, and the impact of such a project could be huge, but this type of publicly funded regional development is simply beyond the scope of a state government such as North Carolina to implement.

Another aspect of my “Same, same . . . but different” realization was a fascinating meeting I had with the Ministry of Industry division responsible for developing Thailand’s automotive parts cluster.

When we talk about developing North Carolina’s automotive cluster, we think about recruiting suppliers to major automotive manufacturing plants, building up the presence of our motorsports teams, forging research alliances between the auto industry and the university system, attracting new research and testing facilities, and turning out highly skilled machine operators and engineers that can keep the factories and testing labs all humming at top speed.

That’s what I thought I was going to learn about in my meeting on Thailand’s motorsports cluster.

What I learned instead was that Thailand’s history as the “Detroit of Southeast Asia” has been deeply complicated by the nature of the foreign investment involved, the lack of an indigenous Thai motor vehicle or parts industry, and the now intense competition that Thailand’s fledgling automotive suppliers face from established auto and parts-makers like the Japanese.

I won’t bore you with details, but at the end of the day, I learned that the government’s efforts to build a motor vehicle parts cluster have been aimed primarily at developing a manufacturing supply chain and distribution network for local Thai businesses that develop, manufacture and sell motorcycle parts to the Thai market.

It seemed to be all about developing a purely Thai network capable of competing with an already well-integrated and established foreign motorcyle and parts industry that is both producing and importing goods for the local market.

The effort uses all the economic development buzzwords and theories for “clustering,” but puts a uniquely Thai spin on them. It is also designed to solve what seems to be a uniquely Thai problem -- or at least a problem that does not exist for states like North Carolina.

Same, same. But different.

There is no question that Thailand and North Carolina face similar challenges in the face of an increasingly global economy. But as my time in Thailand grows to a close, experiences such as these have been useful counterweights to the tendency to search for and identify parallels and similarities.

We face many of the same challenges and employ many of the same broad strategies, but we are nonetheless very, very different.

THE VIEW FROM ATOP MOUNT WASSANA

Thai Elephant Conservation Center, Lampang Province, Thailand (November 27, 2006). The first step is to reach up and grab on to the gigantic, leathery ear lobe.

You tug on it and call out, “song soong!”

A giant right foreleg lifts and the lower leg curls under.

You step with your left foot onto the back side of the lower leg, which by now is parallel to the ground. You step up and place right foot on top of the upper leg, which is probably at about a 45 degree angle.

The elephant then lifts its entire curled leg up -- with you standing on top of it. The effect is kind of like being on an elevator (an "elephantvator," if you will). Standing on the top of upper leg, you find yourself lifted to a height from which you can then clamber up the elephant’s side.

The giant ear continues to play a role in this process, as it gives you something up high to grip as you heave yourself up and onto the back.

Once atop, you make yourself comfortable, just above the neck at the point where the elephant’s head crests to form a dome of sorts.

Your bare feet dangle behind the pachyderm’s ears, and with the command “bai,” and a few taps of your feet behind both ears, the elephant starts to move forward.

By tapping behind the ear opposite the direction you want to go -- and with an occasional cry of “benn” -- you can steer your elephant left or right.

Should you need him to pick up something with his trunk and pass it up to you (a tool or a shoe, for example), “geb bon” usually does the trick.

I have to give props to Kay for this. It was all her idea.

Sitting back in our family room in Raleigh, pondering activities for our two-month odyssey, the idea of visiting an elephant camp had sounded kind of corny to me. It conjured up images of elephants exploited for the sake of tourists and seemed (at the time, at least) like a tremendous distraction from my more erudite goal of exploring the economies of Southeast Asia.

“Well, if we’re going to Thailand, I want to go to elephant camp and learn how to be a mahout,” Kay had announced.

“Umm, okay,” I replied, not really paying much attention and hoping she would soon forget all about it.

If worse came to worst, I figured we'd spend a few hours, bored and watching elephants at some tourist trap, and that would be the end of it.

The elephant camp adventure, however, turned out to be far more complex, and far more interesting, than I could ever have expected.

Rather than a few hours of time, a few days were required.

And the camp was not at some mere tourist destination. It was at the “Thai Elephant Conservation Center,” home to “Royal Elephant Stables” (and if you know anything about Thailand, you know the word “royal” is never used lightly). This was also the home of the world-renowned elephant artists, who paint pictures (quite satisfactory ones, actually) with their trunks.

And we wouldn't be sitting in a bandstand watching elephants perform. We would be riding solo on them, guiding them through their shows.

On arrival at the camp in the mountains above Chiang Mai, we were each assigned our own elephant and issued our own “mahout suits” to wear while we learned to ride and handle these giants.

I don’t know about you, but I had never in my life stood side-by-side to a full grown elephant and contemplated the reality of what I was facing.

Believe me, it is a sobering experience.

Elephants are almost twice as tall as you are.

You may weigh somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred to two hundred pounds. But your exact weight really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even remotely approach the 3 to 5 tons these amazing mammals can weigh.

You quickly realize that any chance you have of controlling one of these behemoths depends completely on its indulgence and willingness to be controlled.

And if you spend some time with one, you come to learn a couple of other things pretty quickly too. For example:

Elephants are remarkably graceful.

You might think of them as lumbering galoots stomping around the jungle, crashing into trees, and causing a ruckus, but you would be amazed at how naturally graceful they are.

Their feet are marvels of engineering. They deliver tons of force with each step. But an elephant can walk nimbly, foot over foot, across a single log. Its broad feet disperse weight in a way that makes its footsteps almost gentle. It makes little or no sound as it walks.

Elephants' trunks are astonishingly agile. They can pluck tiny objects from your hand. An elephant can take a seemingly endless supply of sugarcane from visitors, sticking some in its mouth, lodging pieces between its tusks for a second helping, and reaching out with its serpentine trunk for yet a third.

An elephant's skin is very dry and rough, with occasional bristly hairs sticking up here and there.

Elephants sweat only around their toenails.

Elephants are quite intelligent. They are one of only a handful of animals able to recognize their reflections in a mirror. And their reactions can be almost human-like. Contrast that to puppies that search behind a mirror for the playmate they think they see. Elephants are regarded as more intelligent than dogs.

And yes, it's true -- elephants never forget. We were told, matter of factly, about one mahout on staff at the camp who once did something to deliberately startle his elephant. It was a one-time occurrence that didn’t hurt the elephant, but the elephant knew the act was intentional, resented it, and held a grudge from that day on. He never let that mahout ride him again.

Kay was assigned to a middle-aged female elephant named Jon Daeng, which means “red moon” in Thai. I was assigned to a wise older elephant named Wassana, whose name means “destiny.” Wassana is in his fifties, good-natured, and has acquired a few scrapes on his forehead -- the result of battering a few trees.

Elephants like Jon Daeng and Wassana may be donated to the Conservation Center when they can no longer be cared for by their owners (the care and feeding of an elephant is not cheap) or when they become injured. The staff at the camp then adopt them and care for them for life. If they need medical care, there is even an elephant hospital on site.

Over the next two days, Kay and I learned how to mount, dismount and steer Jon Daeng and Wassana.

And trust me, when you spend any significant amount of time on top of elephant using your knees and feet to grip and steer him, your legs – especially your inner thighs – get a workout more grueling than any personal trainer could ever inflict.

We spent the night at the camp in a thatched cottage, sharing beers and delicious Thai cooking with our cabin mates, Rene and Monique, travelers from the Netherlands. They were on holiday and, with their one previous day of mahout training, were seasoned hands compared to us.

The air in the mountains around Chiang Mai is crystal clear and the stars are exceptionally bright. Standing on the path before our cottage, I could easily count all seven stars of the Pleiades.

We retired to bed early that night, and, as I lay on my cot, it seemed as if my leg muscles had recorded the rolling motion of Wassana’s gait earlier in the day and were replaying the memory as I drifted off to sleep.

Supat, who runs the program we were participating in, met us at the crack of dawn on our second day to go fetch our elephants from the forest. We were each paired with a full-time mahout and, together, campers and mahouts trekked out into the forested hills to locate our elephants and bring them back to camp.

Elephants spend the night in the forest. They are tethered for the night and don’t roam free (unless they decide they really want to -- as Jojo, one of the camp’s most mischievous elephants has been known to do). But fear not, they have plenty of room to graze. It is not uncommon to leave an elephant in a thick leafy patch of forest, only to return the next morning to find he has eaten himself a sizeable clearing.

Yet, even in such circumstances, the elephant himself is not always that easy to see. Elephants can be very quiet and still. You would never think it, but with a few trees or bushes beside them, they can render themselves more or less invisible.

We continued to practice with our elephants that morning, but I had to leave the camp early to get back to my fellowship meetings in Chiang Mai. Kay, however, stayed on to complete the course and perform with her elephant in one of the shows held daily for visiting schoolkids and curious tourists.

To learn more about the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, check out the website Supat has created. It should be obvious from the site that he and the staff hold the greatest affection for the elephants they care for. Go to http://www.changthai.com/.

And if you’re ever in northern Thailand pay them a visit.

Spend a few days there.

You won’t be disappointed.

(Note to Rene and Monique: Send us your email address so we can track you down when we decide to come bother you in the Netherlands.)

HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA

Pavillon Indochine, Siem Reap, Cambodia (November 23, 2006). One of the first things you notice upon arriving in Cambodia is the pace of life.

To say it’s slower doesn’t really do justice to the difference.

Bangkok moves like a motorcycle, blaring down a street at noon.

Cambodia rolls by quietly, an old bicycle on a dusty road.

Time here doesn’t flow. It oozes.

It moves at the speed of kapok tree roots, creeping over the ruins of lost temples and fallen empires.

Today is Thanksgiving.

Kay and I dined on curried chicken and beef, prepared in a traditional Cambodian style, at an open air roadside restaurant in the countryside, forty miles outside of Siem Reap. Sharing dinner with us were Seum Sophal, our kind, wise guide, and a shy young driver from our hotel.

We were among the few guests at the diner, and the owner and his wife were happy to fuss over the stove preparing a variety of dishes for the feast. A group of children, five to seven years old, sat barefoot at a nearby table, eyes glued to a silly Thai soap opera on a small TV set in the corner.

Across the highway, young boys took turns leaping from a dock and splashing in the river that flowed between us and the ruins of Beng Melea, the last temple we would visit in the vicinity of Angkor.

I challenge anyone to visit this country and not be moved.

The monuments of the Khmer kingdom rise out of the jungle like giant stone gods.

Huge moats surround fortified walls that encompass the remains of parade grounds, promenades, causeways, guest houses, libraries, and, above all, temples.

Impossibly steep steps climb to level upon level of vaulted halls, inner courtyards, dizzying precipices, and porticos laced with delicate balustrades.

No description prepares you for what you find there.

Murals carved in exquisite detail. Stone sculptures of gods, warriors, mythological beings. Countless representations of the apsaras – celestial, ethereal beings that radiate a sense of beauty and peace.

The architectural elements are in such perfect proportion and balance they tempt you to believe nature itself must be as ordered and rational.

Kay and I wandered for hours in the ruins, guided gently by Seum and his friends at the many temples.

These are historical sites that should be sealed off, protected from the public and preserved by armies of archaeologists.

And yet they are not. They lie exposed in the jungle. Descendants of the temple-builders live and work within the walls of some of the compounds. Visitors clamber over giant blocks of stone. They stand atop city walls. They step through windows onto ledges that overlook vast plazas.

Kay and I, lawyers that we are, could not help but remark on the dangerous setting and the disregard that both care-takers and visitors seemed to have for safety.

In the U.S., we imagined, there would be ropes and rails, barricades and guards at every turn to protect the public from the ruins – and vice versa.

But Cambodians, no doubt, have a different perspective on life and its risks. There is no safety net for the people here. They rely on themselves, their neighbors and their own good judgment to survive in a country that is desperately poor.

The very absence of barriers and protection ultimately serves to draw you closer to the monuments, heightening their reality.

In temples like Angkor Wat or Ta Keo, you wander freely through dark halls and step into empty atriums. Incense hangs in the air. It feels as if, just moments before, nobles, monks or royal courtesans may have lingered there, and might soon return.

Other temples – like Ta Prohm and Beng Melea – have fallen into spectacular decay. Bridges, gatehouses, and halls have collapsed and been overtaken by the jungle. Giant kapok trees have grown up in the courtyards and on walls, forcing their roots into cracks and wrapping themselves like pythons around crumbling stone blocks.

Ta Prohm is a popular temple for tourists, and thousands visit it on any given day.

But Beng Melea lies far from town, and on this Thanksgiving Day we walk through it in solitude under a leafy canopy amid supreme and riotous ruin.
A wiry, white-haired man – a widower with no family – lives in the temple. He guides us over piles of stones, showing us how to scale the heights, and how to descend. Time seems frozen. Only birds and forest animals can be heard.

I challenge anyone to visit to Cambodia and not be moved.

But not just by the temples. By the people themselves.

Getting to the temple of Beng Melea requires a long drive from Siem Reap. Most tourists don’t bother with it. The distance may be only forty miles or so, but the journey is slow and takes hours.

It’s funny, really, because the roads are actually quite good. A Westerner might expect to make the trip in about forty-five minutes.

But that is not the way of Cambodia.

The roads that carry you to Beng Melea are not simply motorways. They are arteries that carry the flow of life through the countryside, and they move at their own pace.

You sit in the back of your hired car and stare out the windows at the living, breathing whole of Cambodian village life.

Along the roadside, women prepare food in beautiful patterned skirts. Men, shirtless, repair carts or tools in their sarongs. Children in spotless uniforms travel in packs, laughing to and from school. Small children, naked, chase each other under palm trees.

At points along the highways trees break away and reveal rice fields stretching off to the horizon, dotted with palms under clear blue skies. Houses rest on stilts – some of modern construction, some of thatched roofs and woven panels.

Oxcarts trundle by on wooden wheels, loaded with fertilizer. Motorcycles bearing everything from groceries to pigs to bamboo poles travel to and fro, their drivers occasionally clutching a child or two, along for the ride. Villagers peddle bicycles, dwarfed by woven baskets strung together and strapped in a heap to the back.

And, inevitably, your eyes are drawn to the people.

Unforgettable faces, skin burned brown in the tropical sun. They stand in the doorways of homes. They sit cross-legged on platforms under stilted houses, carrying on the daily business of their lives. Sewing. Cooking. Building. Cutting children’s hair.

Children are everywhere. A nation recovering from the killing fields, Cambodia’s young sons and daughters are its hope for the future. Laughing, playing, either bare-chested in the noonday sun or in their school uniforms – blue trousers, ankle length skirts and blindingly white shirts.

As you look out at the people, they will often stare back into your eyes, holding the gaze, open, and unafraid. Sometimes they smile. Sometimes they wave. Sometimes they just stare.

The Cambodians are a beautiful people – their faces mirror the grace of the apsaras and resolve of the warriors preserved in the stone sides of the jungle temples.

Their beauty, the simplicity of their daily lives, and the knowledge of the tragedies they have collectively witnessed all combine to sear their images into the back of your brain.

When you visit Angkor Wat, the temples appear as lightening bolts. Big and bold. Seemingly forged by the Khmer gods themselves.

But long after those flashes fade, the quiet beauty of the Cambodian people lingers with you, like a soft thunder rolling over distant rice fields.

POST SCRIPT ON ANGKOR WAT – A STAIRCASE TOO FAR

A word of caution to those traveling to Angkor Wat – the undisputed “big daddy” of all the Angkor temples.

You will want to climb. The pyramidal towers beg to be ascended. The views are well worth the effort.

But the steep monumental steps are far easier to mount than to descend.

That is my word of caution.

At the end of any given day, after several hundred tourists have crowded the top of the central spire, a collective recognition sets in among all those perched there.

Only one of the several staircases leading to the ground has a handrail – a spindly thing to which tourists must cling as they slowly maneuver themselves hundreds of feet down in the fading light.

The flow of descending tourists moves at a glacial pace. It would not surprise me if there weren’t a few souls still negotiating their way down at midnight.

It really is a funny scene.

For a brief time on our first day, however, the jolly humor in the situation quite eluded us.

That was because Kay and I, in an effort to avoid the interminable wait to descend via the handrail, opted instead to descend an equally steep and far less-traveled staircase that had no handrail.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that I may have been the more enthusiastic party to this venture.

Kay’s reluctant participation may have come only after some rather extensive persuading on my part – pleading that would have been complicated by fact that this was the same staircase below which the crowd in the courtyards would applaud and cheer any time an intrepid traveler managed to negotiate the precarious climb up or down.

About halfway down this unconventional alternative route, Kay’s nerves decided they had had enough.

Unfortunately, by this time Kay had reached a point in the climb where the trip down and the trip back up each appeared equally perilous and unappealing, and the prospect of clinging motionless and white-knuckled to the sheer stone blocks seemed the infinitely preferable course.

The sun was setting, and the situation we found ourselves in was something less than optimal.

I tried to relieve Kay’s fears by explaining, that if she could manage to climb down a few more of the tall, narrow steps, a fall from such a lesser height would probably result only in serious bodily injury, and not death.

Such assurances failed to achieve the desired result and seemed only to tighten Kay’s lichen-like hold on the sheer rock sides of the temple.

The crowd blow began murmur. I suspected wagers were being made.

The light grew dimmer. And when the situation seemed at its worst, we heard a cry from the plaza.

“Ms. Kay! Hold on! I’m coming!”

It was Seum Sophal at the base of the steps, starting the precarious climb to our level.

This was the same Seum Sophal who had looked so strangely at us when we said we wanted to go to the top and who had politely declined to accompany us, noting the near vertical nature of the climb.

His concern for his two charges, however, momentarily trumped his concerns over heights, after a friend below drew his attention to Kay’s predicament.

When he finally reached Kay’s side, she had two persons to assist her in the climb down. Seum stayed with her, holding her hand as she tentatively backed down each steep and narrow step.

I descended just below her on the steps, explaining that, if she were to fall, she would inevitably collide with me and I would then serve as a convenient cushion for her when we both reached the stone courtyard some distance below.

That assurance may not have helped the situation, but I do believe it strengthened Kay’s resolve, as I think I heard her mutter something to the effect that such a result would serve me right.

In the end, Seum’s friend, a fellow guide, was waiting to welcome all of us when we safely reached the bottom.

There was great relief on the part of all.

The one consolation of the whole ill-conceived affair was that, well after we had exited the temple and were proceeding down the long causeway leading to the gate, we could look back and see hundreds of tourists, still stuck at the top in a giant knot, as a stream of bodies slowly trickled down the side of the temple, hands gripping that single rail like a lifeline.

And there was also consolation (at least on my part) in the fact that Kay had generously elected not to kill me for being the proximate cause of the whole affair.

KNIGHTS ON THE CHESSBOARD OF BANGKOK TRAFFIC

Offices of the Kenan Institute Asia, Queen Sirikit Convention Center, Bangkok (November 21, 2006). I know I shouldn’t be doing it.

I know how dangerous they are.

Heck, my program coordinator Kim missed our reception at the U.S. ambassador’s residence because her cab collided with one of them.

But sometimes you’re running short of time. Or the traffic’s stalled. Or you’re soaking in the blazing heat and there isn’t a hint of a breeze to be found.

And you start going through the mental exercise.

“How far do I have to go? How hot is it? How late am I going to be? How bad is the traffic? What kind of roads are we going to be on? How much is it going to cost? How much do you trust the driver?”

And, of course, the ultimate question.

“Do you feel lucky?” Well? Do you?

Assuming you can afford to take other modes of transportation, whether you choose to ride the motorcycle taxis in Bangkok probably, at some level, says something about your personality – how you view risk, how you view life, and how you embrace the ephemeral Thai concept of sanuk.

“Sanuk” is a Thai word for “fun.”

I’m no expert on language, and my knowledge of Thai and my ability to speak Thai phrases registers a little less than a micron above “nonexistent.”

But from what I can tell, sanuk is a concept deeply imbedded in the Thai way of life.

And riding the motorcycle taxis is nothing, if not sanuk.

I know all the shop girls and office clerks riding on the backs of these quicksilver little menaces are probably perched there because they're the cheapest mode of transportation available.

But even if economic necessity has put them there, riding sidesaddle, no helmet, one hand on their skirts and the other clutching the back of the seat, I doubt they would deny for a minute the sanuk of it all.

Bangkok traffic is a mysterious and organic force – a test of will and patience that challenges all problem-solving skills.

Why you sit on an exit ramp leading down to a main drag like Sukhomvit for half an hour, only to reach the street itself to find traffic moving normally is beyond my powers of comprehension.

Why an entire soi turns into a parking lot for twenty-five minutes only to clear as suddenly as it stalled, is one of those things you just don’t think about – at least if you want to maintain some semblance of jai yen (“cool heart” in Thai -- Google it for details).

When the gods created Bangkok traffic, they had a wicked sense of humor. And the motorcycle taxis, and the Hobson’s choice they offer, are perhaps the best proof.

At the beginning and end of every soi, you will find them. A cluster of motorbikes and drivers in their orange vests. They linger under the BTS and MRT stations and in front of major offices, attractions and shopping centers.

For the equivalent in baht of between a quarter and a dollar or so, one of these chrome and steel steeds can take you where you need to go – fast.

As with knights on a chessboard, players facing them in the traffic game are powerless to block their progress. And when gridlock strikes, their true value in the traffic equation comes to light.

They race down major throughfares between the lines of stalled cars. They flirt with oncoming traffic every time a lane temporarily opens up allowing them to pass. They zip the wrong way down one-way streets, leaping onto sidewalks, snaking through back alleys.

On big streets like Sukhomvit or Ratchadapisek, they move through traffic jams like water between cracks, seeking equilibrium.

I think the fact that motorcycle taxis work at all (without killing everyone who gets on them) reveals a feature of Bangkok’s traffic often overlooked by those who gripe about its admittedly abominable nature.

For all the chaos, for all the gridlock, there really is a system at work. I’m not sure I know exactly what it is, but I think it may have something to do with the mutual tolerance the drivers of all the various forms of transportation that contribute to the problem seem to demonstrate for one another,

The taxis, the motorcycles, the tuk-tuks, the buses, the bicycles, the trucks.

For all the congestion going on, there seems to be, at least from what I have seen, an astonishing amount of yielding going on.

I can’t say it’s “yielding the right of way,” because it is practically impossible to figure out exactly what that is in any given traffic jam around here,

But the drivers seem to be remarkably tolerant of one another. In situations where Americans would start swearing, going for weapons (or at least wishing for them), and generating “road rage” stories for the six o-clock news, Thais allow drivers from other lanes to merge, to turn off of stalled side streets, to enter slowly moving sois. And they put up with the “creative problem-solving” the motorcycle taxis demonstrate every time the traffic flow jams up.

So yeah, I confess it. When time is short and life feels cheap, I have been known to climb onto the back of the motorcycle taxis.

Kay has even learned to ride side saddle in the demure fashion of Bangkok’s young ladies.

I know we shouldn’t do it.

I know it’s dangerous.

But so is life, if you put it in perspective.

And what should life be, if not sanuk?

SAILING THE ANDAMAN SEA

The Similan Islands, Somewhere Off the Coast of Phang Nga Province, Thailand (November 18, 2006). The economy of Phang Nga province on Thailand’s west coast has its challenges, and the 2004 tsunami helped bring them into focus for all concerned.

But one thing cannot be denied.

In terms of natural assets, it has been truly blessed.

Broad, unspoiled beaches. Rich and diverse national parks. Lush archipelagos that look like emeralds scattered on the bright sea.

Yeah…we took a field trip.

But how else can I learn about "place-based tourism" in the Thai hinterlands without getting out there and seeing what all the fuss is about? This is research, people -- real "fingers in the dirt" kind of stuff.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Kay and I arose at some unholy hour to meet a bus arranged for us bv Khun Nakorn and Khun Ann at the Kenan Institutes Offices in Khao Lak. Our destination was the Similans – a group of seamounts about 40 miles off the coast of Thailand popular with divers and snorkelers. This undeveloped island chain, its reefs, empty beaches and rich forests are a major draw for eco-tourists from resorts as far south Phuket and Krabi.

Tour boats collect passengers along the Andaman coast for outings that range from a single day to extended stays. Accommodations on the islands tend to be rustic – tents, for example – but there are a few cabins too. The appeal is not the neon, glitz and “wildlife” of Phuket, but sparkling clear water, dramatic underwater coral landscapes, and an abundance of sea life – schools of fishes and rays, sharks and quirky crustaceans that make their homes in the rocks.

We snorkeled for a day in the waters off Ko Bangu, Ko Payu, and Ko Miang, drifting in the currents, watching scores of brightly colored fish dart in unison through sunlight filtered through crystal waves. We wandered beneath swaying palms, scaling dramatic rocks and cliffs on the seaside.

Late in the day, we boarded our yacht for the long journey to the mainland. The Similans slipped below the horizon and raindrops fell as we plowed our way home across the Andaman Sea.

The Similans – and other natural attractions like them -- hold a promise for the struggling economy of Phang Nga. If the area can be developed with care – and the commercial sprawl of Phuket avoided – an industry of more eco-friendly resorts and residential communities could develop in the region to provide a third opportunity for economic growth – beyond the standard agriculture and industrial economy that has sustained it in the past.

The promise is not simply that investment and foreign tourists will come. That is likely to occur in one form or another. The real hope for the region lies in the opportunity to link its workforce and young people into an economy where English language skills are vital and necessary and where business opportunities exist for any small and medium-sized businessmen with the know-how and capital to exploit them.

That challenge is a tall order. It's really not that different from that facing regions like the “Inner Banks” of North Carolina.

Meeting it requires a commitment from the government to develop the skills and resources of the local population and help connect them with visitors to the region in ways that will ensure that the true benefits of tourism ripple into the local economy in meaningful ways -- not merely into the pockets of the handful of developers and financiers who build and operate the resorts.

Economic development officials in the province and in NGO’s like the Kenan Institute are working to make that happen, but it represents one of economic development’s most daunting tasks.

From my days meeting with local officials and exploring the reefs and coves of the Similans, I now have a real interest in returning a few years from now -- both to see how the development process is faring and to check (for purely acadmic reasons, of course) on whether the sunlight still filters as brightly through the aquamarine water.