By Meng Yoe

Bangkok, in terms of appearance, feels almost the same as Kuala Lumpur, where buildings scrape the sky, trains bullet through the city, and traffic jams spread through every single road. The one aspect of Thailand that makes Bangkok a unique place is its people.

When I say “people”, I do not mean Thai people alone, but rather the complete social make-up of the city. The working class Thais, businessmen, monks, students, tourists, among others, makes Bangkok a city of diverse discourses, each performing their own sets of unique practices that ultimately form Bangkok as a people.

It is in the observation of how these diverse groups of people interact, or not interact, that, in the case of this article, create and solidify certain cultural identities as well as stereotypes.

As a case study, I will take one location, Khao San, and a group of “people”, the tourists, and specifically Caucasian ones since they’re easy to identify, to illustrate my point. Khao San is an extremely popular tourist hotspot, where thousands upon thousands of tourists check-in and out of the little guest houses, or shop along the street with hundreds of different stalls that sells almost everything.

Staying in Khao San myself, I had the opportunity to make observations during my meals and aimless walkabouts. The observation that stands out the most is the tourist make-up in the area. Almost every single tourist look good physically. The term “look good” is based on the standards set in magazines, movies, and other forms of mass media. In other words, the notion of the “perfect” body is very powerfully practiced here.

Foreigners fill the streets of tourist hotspots in Bangkok

I actually did ask myself while I was pondering over a midnight drink with my friends whether I’ve seen an “ugly” tourist so far. I really can’t remember.

This is disturbing for a two reasons. Firstly, what is it about this place that draws only “attractive” tourists to the area? Perhaps there is an unspoken rule that is enforced in the home country of these tourists, where media representations of attractive people in foreign countries drive the “attractive” people to the tourist spots and the “others” away from it. True or not, the fact is there are powers at work outside Thailand that enforces and maintains this phenomenon.

Secondly, what disturbs me is how this issue, can potentially hamper the process of the Asian community trying to bridge the social gap between East and West. There are two obvious discourses at work in Khao San road. The first is the Caucasian tourist, who is the consumer with a lot of money, ready to bargain to their advantage. Second are the Thais, who are sellers at the lower rungs of the economic ladder with little bargaining power.

Throw in a third active discourse, which is the media that causes Thai people to be so used to watching “perfect” white people on TV, then have the exact notions reinforced before their very eyes with each passing Caucasian customer. Then, because these Thais are completely unable to shake off the West superiority mentality, the tourists will continue to view these working class Thais as weak.

This is a scenario of discourse making discourse. Perhaps it is the discourse of Westerners that reinforces the discourse of the working class Thais, or vice versa, or most probably both discourses are working simultaneously to make local-foreign perspectives of each other an almost permanent and unchangeable thing.