The Geography of Bliss

Chapter 7: THAILAND

Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we fall face-first into a cliché. And so I find myself at 1:00 a.m. at a bar called Suzie Wong’s, watching naked Thai women painted in Day-Glo colors grinding and shimmying and doing things with Ping-Pong balls that, frankly, never occurred to me before.

I told myself I wouldn’t let this happen, but one thing led to another, and here I am. I’d like to think my friend Scott is to blame. He lives in Bangkok and should know better. But the truth is that even on the flight over I had an inkling of the trouble that lay ahead.

Sitting next to me was Nick, an entrepreneur who jets between New York and Bangkok, where he has his hand in all sorts of businesses. He’s wearing shorts and sandals and has a wild, unruly beard. Nick knows many things about Thailand, and he’s eager to share all of them with me during the seventeen-hour flight. I will spare you the unabridged version and cut to the highlights.

Nick on muay Thai, or kickboxing: “Don’t sit in the front rows. That’s for tourists. Besides, you’ll get blood splattered all over you. Sit in the back.”

Nick on proper Thai business attire: “This is what I wear to business meetings. Shorts. But no tank tops. I made that mistake once. The Thais don’t like hairy armpits in their face. It’s bad for business.”

Nick on Thai dating customs: “Not all Thai girls are easy. Most, but not all. A proper girl, from an upper-class family, you might have to take her out thirty times before you can bang her.”

The girls at Suzie Wong’s go on break. Scott takes advantage of the respite to share with me his theory about sex. In order for it to happen, three elements must align perfectly: method, motive, and opportunity. For a middle- aged, overweight male, the odds of such an alignment are about as great as the earth, moon, and sun aligning for a total solar eclipse. Ah, but not in Bangkok, where that elusive third element—opportunity—clicks into place, thanks to the alchemy of international exchange rates and Thai permissiveness.

I nod in agreement and scan the crowd. The customers at Suzie Wong’s consist almost entirely of out-of-shape, middle-aged men, hands clutching beers, faces frozen in permanent ogles. I am instantly reminded of those Canadian rats. As you recall, in the 1950s Canadian psychologists implanted electrodes deep within the brains of rats and connected the electrodes to levers that the rats could press to stimulate the pleasure center of their brains. Left to their own devices, the rats would repeatedly press the lever—up to two thousand times per hour. They ceased almost all other normal behavior, even eating.

That pretty much describes the life of a foreign man living in Bangkok. Except instead of pressing a lever, he’s digging into his wallet for a few more baht. The same principle is at work, though. The same mindless obedience to their pleasure centers. Yet if pleasure were the path to happiness then the farang, the foreigner, in Thailand would achieve bliss, and so would the Canadian rats. Yet neither has. Happiness is more than animal pleasure.

At first glance, Thai permissiveness looks a lot like Dutch permissiveness. But they are different. Dutch permissiveness is a system, one the Dutch are proud of and even promote in videos they show to prospective immigrants. Take a look, the Dutch say. This is what we are about. Can you handle it? The Thais do not say anything like that. They merely acknowledge human urges, erotic and monetary, and get on with it. Canadian author Mont Redmond put it best when he wrote that, in Thailand, “Anything too big to be swept under the carpet is automatically counted as furniture.” The Thais might not like the furniture, might constantly be bumping into it, but they don’t deny its existence.

In Bangkok, apocryphal stories abound. Cautionary tales. Like one I heard about a young reporter for an august British newspaper who fell so deeply into Bangkok’s world of vice that he could no longer perform his duties and had to be recalled to London. It was a sort of medical evacuation, though not in the usual sense; the evacuee was suffering from an excess of pleasure, not pain.

They’re called “sexpats,” Scott tells me. A conflation, of course, of “sex” and “expat.” The sexpat is easily identified by his sunburned face, huge beer belly, and generally unkempt appearance. The sexpat knows that as long as his wallet is in reasonably good shape, the rest of him can fall to pieces. “It’s really quite pathetic,” says Scott. What I don’t have the heart to tell Scott is that he’s starting to develop a paunch himself, and he has the slightest trace of a sunburn, and his shirts are always untucked.

Back at Scott’s apartment, we watch a pirated DVD, but the sound is so bad and the image so shaky, we give up after ten minutes. Scott hands me a chunky book titled The Teachings of the Buddha. It looks like one of the books you see in hotel rooms across Asia, the Buddhist version of the Gideon Bible. Scott explains that’s because he lifted it from a hotel room in Asia. He briefly ponders what this means for his karmic account, which is already seriously overdrawn, but decides not to pursue this line of thought, figuring it can’t lead anywhere good.

Scott is a devout atheist, but since he moved to Thailand three years ago he’s acquired some distinctly Buddhist tendencies, though of course he would deny this. For one thing, he’s mellowed, and Buddhists are nothing if not mellow. He’s stopped amassing material possessions, even his beloved books. After he’s read one, he passes it on. “Once I realized that books weren’t trophies, it was easy,” he says, and proves his point by giving me a worn copy of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence. Scott is a big Somerset Maugham fan. He lives his life the way Maugham advised: “Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.” Of course, in Thailand that policeman round the corner is most likely on the take or simply doesn’t care what you are up to. I choose not to point this out to Scott.

In Bangkok, the bizarre is as inevitable as the tropical heat, and Scott has done things here that he would never imagine doing back home. Like the time he ate a strawberry pizza. But some things are too bizarre, even for Scott. The “no-hands” restaurant, for instance. That’s where Thai waitresses feed their male customers dinner the way a mother feeds an infant. No hands. Freud would have had much to say about this place, I’m sure. Scott declares it “just too weird for me.”

Scott’s girlfriend is a bouncy young Thai woman named Noi. She used to be a “dancer.” (I don’t ask too many questions.) Now she does Scott’s laundry and cooks for him. Mostly, though, she sits in front of the TV, watching Thai soap operas. She can do this for fifteen hours continuously. It’s really quite amazing. She can also haggle like a demon with taxi drivers and whip up a pad thai that tastes better than anything I’ve had in the finest Thai restaurants. It has a real kick. Thais firmly believe that spice is the spice of life. Oh, and she eats insects. That might seem shocking, but really it’s no big deal. Most people from Noi’s part of Thailand eat insects—large black crickets and water bugs that are deep-fried in oil and served whole. I hear they make quite a crunching sound when you bite into them, but I feel no compunction to investigate further. My culinary bravado stops cold at rotten Icelandic shark.

Noi has a dazzling smile, even by Thai standards. It arrives fully formed, in a flash. Hers was voted “best smile” by colleagues at the beach resort where she once worked. In Thailand, the Land of Smiles, that is high praise indeed.

A number of years ago, Thai Airways ran a clever advertisement. The ad showed two photos of flight attendants smiling: one from Thai Airways, the other from the competition. The photos seemed identical. The copy read: “Can you spot the genuine smile?”

Indeed, there was a difference, one that any Thai person could spot instantly but not most foreigners. What the Thais know instinctively is that a smile, a real smile, is not located in the lips or any other part of the mouth. A real smile is in the eyes. To be precise, the orbicularis oculi muscles that surround each eye. We cannot fool these tiny muscles. They spring to life only for a genuine smile.

The Thai smiles means more—and less—than the western smile. It is a mask or, more accurately, many masks. The Thai smile can signify happiness but also anger, doubt, anxiety, and even grief. Thais will smile at a funeral, something that foreigners find disconcerting.

The Thais remind us that the smile is not private. Researchers have found that people, sane people at least, rarely smile when alone. The smile is a social gesture more than a reflection of our inner state, though it can be that, too. I doubt that there could ever be a Thai Harvey Ball, the inventor of the famous smiley face. Thais would find such a generic smile silly. Okay, the Thais would say, it’s a smile but what kind of smile?

Just as the Inuit are said to have many words for snow the Thais have many words for smile. There is yim cheun chom, the I-admire-you smile, and yim thak thaan, the I- disagree-with-you-but-go-ahead-propose-your-bad-idea smile. There is yim sao, the sad smile. And my favorite: yim mai awk, the I’m-trying-to-smile-but-can’t smile.

It’s all fascinating, but I also find the Thais’ variety pack of smiles disconcerting. It has undermined my belief that a smile, at its core, signifies happiness, contentment. I don’t trust the Thai smile anymore. I don’t trust any smile. I see deceit and misdirection everywhere and find myself staring at people’s orbicularis oculi for signs of activity. Maybe I’m right to be paranoid, but then again maybe not. Sometimes, as Freud would say, a smile is just a smile.

Noi, like most Thais, believes in merit making. She keeps a running tally in her head. She knows that giving money to monks, or some other worthwhile cause, earns her major karma points, redeemable in a future lifetime. She’s also crazy about Scott and often conveys her affection with a Thai expression: “I love you same as monkey loves banana.” I find it very endearing.

In those rare moments when she’s not watching TV, Noi is dispensing advice to Scott. She says things like “You’re too serious.” And “Don’t think too much!” These are common Thai expressions, and they say much about this country and how it defines the good life.

I’ve always considered myself a thoughtful person. There’s virtually nothing I won’t think about, from the intensely profound to the astonishingly trivial. The only thing I haven’t given much thought to is . . . thinking.

Like most westerners, I’ve never felt the need to question the value of thinking. To me, that would make about as much sense as questioning the value of breathing. Just listen to our language. I think therefore I am. Think before you act. Think it over. Give it some thought. Let me think about it and get back to you. Howthoughtful of you.

Some people think (there’s that word again) that our venal pop culture devalues thinking. That’s not true. Pop culture devalues a certain type of thinking—deep thinking— but it values another kind: the shallow variety. Shallow thinking is still thinking.

The examined life, we’re told, is the good life. Psychotherapy is built on this assumption—cognitive therapy, in particular. If we can only fix our faulty thought patterns, our corrupted software, then happiness, or at least less misery, will ensue.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to think my way to happiness, and my failure to achieve that goal only proves, in my mind, that I am not a good enough thinker. It never occurred to me that the source of my unhappiness is not flawed thinking but thinking itself.

Until I traveled to Thailand. Thais are deeply suspicious of thinking. For the Thais, thinking is like running. Just because your legs are moving doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere. You might be running into a headwind. You might be running on a treadmill. You might even be running backward.

Thais do not buy self-help books or go to therapists or talk endlessly about their problems. They do not watch Woody Allen movies. When I ask Noi and other Thais if they are happy, they smile, of course, and answer politely, but I get the distinct impression that they find my question odd. The Thais, I suspect, are too busy being happy to think about happiness.

Indeed, I find myself questioning where all these years of introspection have gotten me: a library of self-help books and an annoying tendency to say things like “I’m having issues” and “What do you think that means?” A Thai person would never say things like that.

Thai culture, while rare in its distrust of thinking, is not unique. The Inuit frown upon thinking. It indicates someone is either crazy or fiercely stubborn, neither of which is desirable. The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan describes one Inuit woman who was overheard to say in a righteous tone, “I never think.” Another woman complained to a friend about a third woman because she was trying to make her think and thus shorten her life. “Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living,” concludes Tuan.

On this score, the new science of happiness has been largely silent, and I suppose that’s not surprising. An academic, after all, would no more question the value of thinking than a chef would question the value of cooking. Yet a few courageous psychologists have studied the relationship between introspection and happiness.

In one study, psychologists Tim Wilson and Jonathan Schooler had participants listen to a piece of music, S travi nsky’ s Rite of Spring. Some were given no instructions before listening to the music. Others were told to monitor their happiness, and still others to “try to be happy” while listening. It was these latter two categories that derived the least amount of pleasure from the music. Those given no instructions at all found the music most enjoyable. The inevitable conclusion: Thinking about happiness makes us less happy.

The philosopher Alan Watts, were he alive today, would nod knowingly when told of that experiment. Watts once said, “Only bad music has any meaning.” Meaning necessarily entails words, symbols. They point to something other than themselves. Good music doesn’t point anywhere. It just is. Likewise, only unhappiness has meaning. That’s why we feel compelled to talk about it and have so many words to draw upon. Happiness doesn’t require words.

When you get down to it, there are basically three, and only three, ways to make yourself happier. You can increase the amount of positive affect (good feelings). You can decrease the amount of negative affect (bad feelings). Or you can change the subject. This third option is one we rarely consider or, if we do, dismiss it as a cop-out. Change the subject? That’s avoidance, we protest, that’s cowardly! No, we must wallow in our stuff, analyze it, taste it, swallow it, then spit it out, swallow it again, and talk about it, of course, always talk about it. I’ve always believed that the road to happiness is paved with words. Nouns, adjectives, verbs, if arranged in just the right constellation, would enable me to hopscotch to bliss. For Thais, this is an alien and quite silly approach to life. Thais don’t trust words. They view them as tools of deception, not truth.

The Thais have a different way, the way of mai pen lai. It means “never mind.” Not the “never mind” that we in the west often use angrily, as in “Oh, never mind, I’ll do it myself” but a real, just-drop-it-and-get-on-with-life “never mind.” Foreigners living in Thailand either adopt the mai pen lai attitude or go insane.

“The whole world is fucked,” declares Denis Gray, gesturing outside his office window at the concrete that stretches as far as the eye can see. Denis shows me a photo of the same perspective in 1962. It is virtually unrecognizable from the sea of skyscrapers that I see before me now. Just a few buildings and a car or two on the road. Denis would like to travel back to 1962, though, he concedes, most Thais probably would not. The Thais handle change very well, he says, but the old is not honored here.

Denis, an American journalist, has lived in Thailand for the past thirty-five years. He hates what the Thais have done to Bangkok, a city once known as the Venice of the east because of its elegant canals, long since paved over. But he loves Thai lightheartedness. Nearly every day, he says, he encounters a case of mai pen lai.

“The other day,” he says, “my business manager and I were hashing out some problem with the accounts. We couldn’t work it out, just couldn’t get it resolved. The numbers wouldn’t add up no matter how hard we worked the problem. And then she said, ‘Denis, let’s let this one go. We don’t need to find a solution.’ And so we did.”

Denis is no Pollyanna; he admits the mai pen lai attitude has its drawbacks. It’s sometimes used as cover for incompetence or plain laziness. But he believes it is, overall, a wiser approach to life’s problems. After all, how can you pick up something new—a new career, a new relationship, a new outlook on life—without first letting go of the old? It’s like trying to pick up a bag of groceries when your hands are already full. Most likely, everything comes crashing down, and you are left empty-handed.

I want to believe this, I really do, but part of me, the neurotic part, resists. I can’t just let a problem go unsolved. To me, that seems like quitting, and quitting makes my skin crawl. Maybe if I spent thirty-five years in Thailand I’d come around to mai pen lai, too. Or maybe I would go insane.

Another thing that Denis likes about Thailand is the concept of jai yen, cool heart. The worst thing one can do in Thailand is to lose one’s jai yen. This is why Thais have no patience for uppity foreigners, which is pretty much all foreigners.

“The Thais are great gossipers and schemers,” Denis tells me, “but in thirty years I can recall maybe a dozen times that someone has lost their cool in the office.” Wow. In an American office, people lose their cool twelve times a day. Denis has an unwritten law in his office: Don’t explode. If you’re upset with a colleague, observe a cooling-off period. Occasionally, he allows people to confront each other, to “be American about it.” But not very often.

Later, I ask Kunip, a Thai school principal, about this notion of cool heart. We’re sitting in the teachers’ lounge, which has blond wood floors and reminds me of an airport business-class lounge. Kunip’s skin is perfect and so is his white shirt and red tie. Personal appearance is very important to Thais. Not only do they dislike hairy armpits in their face, as Nick had pointed out, they don’t like wrinkles or dirt either. Kunip answers my question about jai yen, cool heart, with a story.

A neighbor had a banana tree that had grown so fulsomely that it extended onto Kunip’s property. Insects attached to the banana tree were infiltrating his house. This is where an American probably would have said to his neighbor, “Yo, do something about your frickin’ banana tree! I’ve got bugs in my house.” It’s what I would have said. But that’s not what Kunip did. He broke off a leaf of the banana tree, just one leaf, thus subtly signaling to his neighbor his displeasure. A few days later, the neighbor’s gardener showed up and pruned the banana tree. The conflict was resolved without a word being uttered.

“The relationship always comes first. It is more important than the problem,” explains Kunip.

I try to wrap my mind around that. We in the west usually put problem solving ahead of relationships. In our search for answers, for the truth, we will gladly jettison friends and even family overboard.

But why, I ask Kunip, couldn’t you just politely ask your neighbor to do something about his banana tree?

That would have been seen as unduly aggressive, he replies. Anger is “stupid, a crazy mood. That’s why you have to stop it. We have a proverb about this: ‘Keep the dirty water inside; show the clear water outside.’ “

It sounds nice, this notion of cool heart, but how to reconcile it with the relatively high murder rate in Thailand?

Or with the brutally violent national sport of muay Thai, kickboxing? Or with the unique skills mastered by the surgeons at Bangkok’s Yanhee Hospital? They are expert, world-class, at reattaching severed penises. In fact, should you and your penis become separated, these are the surgeons you’d want to see.

It’s not that they are more gifted than other surgeons. They just get more practice. Every couple of months, the Thai newspapers carry a story about a wife who, fed up with her husband’s wayward ways, takes matters, and a knife, into her own hands. Lately, word has spread of the surgeons’ remarkable skills, so the angry wives have upped the ante and adopted a new and even more effective threat: “And I’ll feed it to the ducks.” Those few words, spoken with quiet conviction, have caused many a Thai man to behave like a saint.

Yes, considering that they follow a religion that espouses the “middle way,” Thais, conspicuously, seem to be missing a dimmer switch. They are either keeping their hearts cool or they’re chopping off penises. Nothing in between.

People like to say that Bangkok isn’t the “real Thailand,” just as they say that New York is not the real America and Paris is not the real France. I think this is wrong. These cities did not materialize out of nothingness. They grew organically in the soil in which they were planted. They are not the exception to the rule but, rather, the rule on steroids. New York is America, only more so. The same is true of Bangkok.

I have arranged to meet a man who helped shape the Bangkok skyline. Sumet Jumsai, one of Thailand’s best- known architects, has designed many of the city’s most inventive buildings, such as the Robot Building, a structure that, yes, looks like a robot. He’s a direct descendant of the Thai king Rama III. He grew up in France and England, went to Cambridge, and, I’m told, speaks flawless English. He seems like an invaluable cultural interpreter. I’m eager to meet him.

My taxi, though, is stuck in traffic. My driver doesn’t seem to mind—he has many lives to live, but I have only one, and am going nuts in the backseat. I can’t take this anymore. I pay the driver, hop out, and flag down a motorcycle taxi. A motorcycle taxi looks a lot like an ordinary motorcycle, except the drivers wear orange vests and charge a small fare to zip you around town. I settle onto the back and . . . whoosh! . . . he accelerates like a banshee. We weave in and out of traffic, the cars close enough to touch. This is the way to get around Bangkok and the best way, really, to see the city. At street level.

Modern western cities have been deodorized. They smell like nothing. Not Bangkok. It smells like everything. Freshly cooked pad thai, freshly cut marigolds, freshly produced human excrement. A feast for the nostrils. In the course of a few frenzied decades, Bangkok has grown from a sleepy city to a megalopolis that spreads far and wide in every direction. A steaming, throbbing city that knows no bounds. Literally. No one knows the precise boundaries of Bangkok, nor its exact population. That’s how amorphous it is.

The age-old question of who is happier, city dwellers or country folk, remains unanswered. The research is inconclusive. I do remember, though, something that Ruut Veenhoven told me. In developing countries, such as Thailand, people living in cities are happier than those in rural areas. Why? Is it simply that cities provide economic opportunities lacking back in the village? That is part of the story, I think, but not the whole story. The truth is that when Thai villagers move to the big city, they are not really moving at all. They take the village with them and end up reaping the best of both worlds.

You see evidence of this everywhere in Bangkok, which is not so much a city as a collection of villages. In the sois, those narrow alleyways that crisscross Bangkok like hundreds of tiny capillaries, life is conducted, more or less, as it is in the village. The smell of noodles frying, the call of hawkers, the sense of fraternity. It’s all there.

I arrive at Sumet Jumsai’s office, shaken and exhilarated in equal measure from the motorcycle taxi. A security guard leads me through a garden to a small, pleasant office on the ground floor. It’s cluttered with drawings and blueprints, as you’d expect in an architect’s office. Sumet swivels in his chair to greet me. He’s in his sixties, I guess, a bit stocky, and wearing a khaki safari shirt. A handsome, dignified man.

“Welcome, welcome,” he says in unaccented English, guiding me to a chair. He promptly announces that he’s “going through a naughty phase” and invites me to join him. Fortunately, his naughty phase consists of nothing more than a stiff drink.

He pours me a generous glass of whiskey, which I am pleased to see is labeled “Made in Bhutan.” I take a swig, silently toasting the Bhutanese army. God bless them.

Sumet pours himself a glass of gin. I can tell it’s not his first. “We Buddhists have only five commandments compared with your ten. Do not indulge in intoxicants is one of them,” he says, sipping his gin.

I have lots of questions for Sumet, and I want to get to them before he slips from pleasantly drunk to incoherently drunk. I start with merit making. Is it really like a karmic bank account?

“Actually, yes. It’s very straightforward. You accumulate negative energy, which you offset by making positive merits.” A spiritual calculus any accountant would love.

And what about sanuk, fun? Thais consider it very important, yes?

With this, his eyes light up, and he bolts upright in a sudden burst of sobriety.

“Ahh, sanuk. If it’s not sanuk, it’s not worth doing. People will resign from a good-paying job because it’s not fun.”

“But everyone likes to have fun. We Americans practically invented fun.”

“Yes, but you Americans take your fun very seriously. We Thais do not. We don’t believe in this work-hard, play-hard mentality. Our fun is interspersed throughout the day.”

“What do you mean?”

“It could be a smile or a laugh during the workday. It’s not as uptight as in America. Also, our patterns of holidays are different. We don’t take the entire month of August off, like Europeans. We take a day off here, a week off there.

Everything is interspersed.”

Sumet reaches for a pen—a Ridiculously Expensive Pen, I notice. Clearly excited, he writes something down and shows it to me. I have no idea what it says. That’s because it’s Latin.

“It means ‘you will be as I am.’ Isn’t that fantastic?” he says with an expulsion of air and a burst of energy that briefly alarms me. Maybe it’s time for me to go. No, he’s calmed down again, and he’s telling me about his brother, who is a “good Buddhist.” He meditates every day.

“Do you meditate?” I ask.

“No. I have a western mind. When I paint, though, it is a kind of meditation.”

“Are you happy?”

“In a nutshell, yes. In Christian terms, I have sinned. But I have offset this with merit making, though not consciously. I have a weak spot for the oppressed.”

As I down more glasses of Bhutanese whiskey, our conversation begins to meander. I try to discipline myself, to stick to the questions I’ve written down, but then unexpectedly, I have a flash of mai pen lai and decide to let the conversation steer itself.

And so we talk about Bangkok. It’s like a mini-Shanghai, he tells me, in the sense that everything changes every few months, so even residents must constantly relearn the city.

“Bangkok is a global city, designed like spaghetti. It’s vibrant. Sure, Paris and London are vibrant, but you walk into a department store in Paris or London and people don’t smile. Here, they smile, and the temples, oh, the temples and the sois, where you can get a divine pad thai for just a few baht.”

Sumet asks me to stay for another drink, but I politely decline. As I stand to leave, I sense sadness in his eyes. Sumet, I think, has enjoyed our round of American-style introspection. He probably doesn’t get to do it very often. I get the impression he could have talked, and drank, for many, many hours.

Some think of cities as godless places. Yet one of the original intents of cities was to provide places to consort with the gods, and it is in cities, not rural areas, where Christianity first took root. In Bangkok, the sacred and the profane exist side by side, like a divorced couple who, for financial reasons, decide to continue living together. Not the perfect arrangement, but not as contentious as it sounds, either.

I’m riding the Skytrain, the monorail that glides across Bangkok like a Disney ride. I look outside and see a Buddhist temple complex, gold and gleaming, sandwiched between two shopping malls. I get off and walk a few blocks to the Erawan shrine. A modern legend surrounds the shrine. Years ago, workers building a new high-rise hotel encountered a series of problems. Machinery broke down. Nothing seemed to go right. Then, someone had an idea. Build a shrine to appease the gods. They did, and the project went smoothly.

Today, Thais stop by the shrine for a quick hit of the divine. At first, it does not strike me as a particularly divine location, encircled as it is by a pantheon of western gods: Burberry’s, Louis Vuitton, McDonald’s, Starbucks.

Yet no one seems to notice the incongruity. The air smells of incense, or is that car exhaust? A man places a basketful of brown eggs at the shrine, an offering. Others kneel, motionless and silent. A sign says, “For security reasons please don’t light large candles.” People do anyway, and a security guard walks by and extinguishes them by waving his big straw hat.

Yes, it’s a peaceful oasis in the middle of Bangkok, but a few years ago a crazy man used a hammer to destroy the shrine’s gold statue. Cool hearts did not prevail. A crowd immediately set upon the man, beating him to death. The Thai media condemned the killing of the man and bemoaned the loss of the statue.

I continue my meander through Bangkok. Asian cities are tough nuts to crack. So much remains invisible in plain sight. Somerset Maugham observed this when he traveled the region in the 1920s. “They are hard and glittering . . . and give you nothing. But when you leave them it is with a feeling that you have missed something, and you cannot help thinking that they have some secret that they have kept from you.”

I walk through the city’s Chinatown. This is not like the museum-piece Chinatowns found in some cities but, rather, a thriving, living part of the city. The Chinese influence in Thailand stretches back many centuries and continues to this day.

I pass many shops—mostly machine-tool shops, for some reason. They are all spotless, which I didn’t think was possible. There are mangy-looking dogs, people playing some sort of board game. The shops and many of the homes are open to public view, physical privacy being less important in this part of Asia than in the west. I feel like I possess X-ray vision and can see things normally hidden from view: a family cooking dinner, a man getting a haircut.

I see a man sitting quietly in a shop. He’s wearing jeans and is resting in a chair. His eyes are closed. I assume he is sleeping but then realize he’s just finding a moment of peace in the chaos. He opens his eyes, and I look away, embarrassed.

In front of each shop, each home, is a spirit house. These look like elaborate, beautiful birdhouses. The idea is that by giving evil spirits a place to inhabit, a room of their own, they will stay away from your actual home. It’s not unlike the in-law cottages that sit in the yards of many Miami homes. Same principle.

I pass signs for the Wrantoh Gem Center (“If it shines we have it”) and for something called “Happy Toilet, Happy Life.” Indeed, Thais may not think much about happiness, but they are nuts about the word. I see it everywhere. There’s the Happy Massage Parlor, the Happy Pub, a dish called Double Happiness (tofu stuffed with noodles).

My wanderings have taken me to the United Nations office. It’s big and officious looking, and, I notice, there is no spirit house outside. The United Nations brings to mind many things. Happiness is normally not one of them. But the good people at the UN, like the good people at the Peace Corps, are also in the happiness business, though of course the UN bureaucrats would never put it that way.

I’m here to meet a woman named Sureerat. A friend in the United States told me she might have some insights into Thai happiness.

She greets me, with a smile, and we walk to the canteen for a cup of coffee. Sureerat is in her mid-thirties, is single, and lives at home with her parents. That’s not unusual for single Thai women, or men for that matter.

I ask her why Thais seem so happy.

“Thai people are not serious about anything. We don’t take anything seriously. Whatever it is, we can accept it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll give you an example. In the U.S., when you trip over something and fall, no one interferes. It’s as if nothing happened. But Thai people? We laugh and laugh nonstop. We still run over and help, but we’re laughing at the same time.”

“So, you don’t have any stress in your life?”

“I have stress. Of course I have stress. But there are some situations we can’t control. You can’t change things outside yourself, so you change your attitude. I think that approach works for Thai people. Like when you’re pissed at someone, and you can’t do anything about it. You feel you want to hit them, but you can’t, so you take a deep breath and let it go. Otherwise, it will ruin your day.”

She makes it sound so easy, like exhaling.

“I think America is one of the most stressed countries in the world. You think you need money to buy happiness. You hire people to do everything, even to mow your lawn. Here, even wealthy people do that themselves. We think it’s fun.”

There’s that word again— “fun,” sanuk. Does fun really hold a special place in the Thai heart?

“Absolutely, we laugh and joke during meetings. It’s all very informal. That is when you get things done. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.”

Thais don’t just have fun, they poke fun.

“We make fun of fat people here. You can call your friend ‘hippo.’ She might smack you, but it’s all in good fun. You can’t do that in the U.S., can you?”

No, I tell her, you can’t.

Sureerat needs to get back to work—or to fun, I’m not sure which. We’re walking past a bank of elevators when she spots a friend and says something to her in Thai. Afterward, she turns to me and says, “See, that’s a good example. She’s short, like a shrimp.”

“So you call her ‘shrimp’?”

“No,” she says, as if I haven’t been paying attention, “I call her lobster. Get it?”

I don’t. The Thais, I conclude, are a fun-loving though not easily understood people.

Thais, even those who don’t actively practice Buddhism maintain a certain equilibrium that I find infuriating. They just don’t get flustered, even when life hurls awfulness their way. After the Asian tsunami in 2004, which killed thousands of people in Thailand alone, hardly anyone blamed the government. They could have. They could have easily pointed to the lack of a warning system or the slow and chaotic response to the disaster. Certainly, that’s what we would do, what we did do after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. We always need someone to blame, someone other than God, that is, since He’s currently not accepting complaints. His in-box is full.

Thais accept what has happened, which is not to say they like what happened or want it to happen again. Of course not. But they take the long view: eternity. If things don’t work out in this life, there is always the next one, and the next one, and so on. Periods of good fortune naturally alternate with periods of adversity, just as sunny days are interspersed with rainy ones. It’s the way things are. In a worldview like this, blame doesn’t feature prominently, but fortune—destiny—does, and I was curious about mine. Noi has arranged for me to visit a jao, or medium. She assures me that the jao is a good one from a good family. In Thailand, fortune-telling is a family business, a skill that is passed from generation to generation.

Scott is skeptical about all this but willing to come along. He’s used to having his rational, atheistic mind assaulted in Thailand. Like he did on the morning he woke up and found people making paper cranes. Everyone was doing it, from street vendors to stockbrokers. What the heck was going on? It turns out that the king had proclaimed that people needed to cool hearts in the southern part of Thailand, where a Muslim insurgency has been raging for decades. So the prime minister came up with the perfect solution: paper cranes! Yes, they would make thousands and thousands of paper cranes and drop them from airplanes as a peace gesture. “They basically bombed the south with these paper cranes,” says Scott, incredulously. “It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.”

The three of us walk a short distance from Scott’s apartment down a narrow soi, past the street vendors and the beauty salons and the stray dogs. We enter a nondescript house and go upstairs. It is nearly empty of furniture. Just a ceiling fan and bare white linoleum floors. We walk past a few women who are sitting on the floor, eating and talking rapid-fire Thai, which is pretty much the only way Thai is spoken.

We’re led upstairs to another room, also devoid of furniture, though not of deities. Along one wall is a small pantheon of Hindu gods. There’s Hanuman, the monkey god, and Krishna and, my favorite, Ganesh, the elephant- headed god. He is the god of wisdom and poetic inspiration, two attributes I often find myself in need of. In one corner is a small statue of the Buddha, which I notice is elevated higher than anything else in the room, including ourselves. The floor is painted blue and green, a raucous pattern that resembles an unfortunate oriental carpet. The room is not air-conditioned, and I begin to sweat immediately.

We kneel on the floor and wait for the jao to arrive. Scott is even more skeptical now, which he tells me outright after Noi has gone off to buy some offerings for the spirits.

When Noi returns, she reaches into a plastic bag and pulls out two small cartons of milk, two straws, and two cans of Pepsi. She places all of this, along with thirty-nine baht (about $1.25), on top of a gold-colored tray. Scott whispers to me: “What happens if you use Coke instead of Pepsi?” I shush him, elbowing his flabby gut for good measure.

T he jao arrives. She is a slim, middle-aged woman, unremarkable in appearance. She is wearing a red T-shirt and an orange scarf, which dangles over one arm. Her hair is tied in a tight bun. She sits lotus-style on a red blanket. There is a deck of cards next to her.

She lights candles at the Pepsi altar then asks me to recite something in Thai. Noi whispers it in my ear, slowly. My tongue wrestles with each strange syllable, but I manage to get through it.

The jao’s eyes are closed, palms pressed together at forehead level in the traditional Thai wai, a gesture that is part greeting, part prayer. She waves a stick of incense like a wand. Her lips move, but no sounds emerge. Noi whispers in my ear that she is “waiting for the good time, the auspicious time for the spirits to come.” I hope it comes soon. My legs have started to cramp, and beads of sweat are streaming off my forehead and into my eyes, stinging.

Then something happens. The jao’s body starts to convulse wildly. She is channeling the spirit, Noi explains.

Apparently, the spirit is a man, for the jao’s body language changes completely, from feminine to masculine. Once demure, her gestures are now gruff and bossy, and she repeatedly flings her hands forward in a vaguely aggressive manner. Before, Noi had referred to the jao as “she,” but now she says “he.” The transformation is complete.

She—sorry, he—reveals information about me, facts about my life—or more precisely, my lives. I learn that in a previous life I wrote a book about China, a book that was disrespectful and therefore not well received. Great, I think, I must be the first writer to get lousy reviews from a previous life.

“Be careful what you write about the Buddha,” she/he says. “People will protest.” With this last bit of advice, the jao spits up something red (betel nut, I hope) into the gold- colored bowl. She/he does this very aggressively, and I’m taken aback. “It’s all part of the act,” Scott whispers, and I elbow him again.

The pronouncements come rapid-fire. Noi struggles to keep up with the translation. The jao tells me some things that are simply wrong—that, for instance, I can speak Thai. (I can’t.) She tells me some things that are generically true —that I don’t believe in myself enough. She tells me embarrassing things—that I should please my wife, suggesting specific acts that I really don’t want to get into here. And she tells me things that, I swear, she couldn’t possibly have known. She says I have a daughter that is not my flesh and blood. It’s true. My wife and I adopted a baby girl from Kazakhstan. I am speechless.

When it comes time for me to ask questions, I have only two. When will I be happy? Where will I be happy?

“It’s best if you stay in your own country, but you don’t need to worry too much about things. Don’t be envious of what other people have.” Sound advice.

Now she/he has a question for me. “Do you believe in God?”

Oh, no. I’m not sure how to answer. Lying to a jao seems like bad karma, and besides I don’t know what I believe. At that moment, for some reason, Luba of Moldova pops into my mind, and I blurt out “feevty-feevty.” The jao seems satisfied with this response, and everyone in the room breathes a sigh of relief.

“You must believe in Ganesh,” she/he says. “You have one, right? A brown one.”

“Yes, I do. How did you—”

“It is in the sitting, not standing position, yes?” “Yes, but . . .”

She/he tells me I am neglecting my Ganesh. I need to give him flowers and bless him regularly. Then all of my problems will disappear. I promise to do so. Then the jao convulses again, and she/he becomes a she again. The session is over.

We step outside into the heat, and Scott and I buy a couple of beers from a small grocery store. We plop down on two small plastic chairs and review what just transpired.

“How could she possibly know those things?” I ask Scott.

Easy, says Scott. There’s a rational explanation. A few of the answers were generic and could apply to anyone. He dismisses those with a wave of his hand. The others are harder to explain but still possible. Adoption is common in Thailand, so the fact that I adopted a daughter was an educated guess.

“And the brown Ganesh statue in a sitting position?” “That’s easy, too. Many foreigners own Ganesh statues and most Ganesh statues are brown and in a sitting position.” But the conviction has drained from his voice. I can tell he’s just going through the motions.

This, I realize, is what life is like for most Thais. They are not in control of their fates. A terrifying thought, yes, but also a liberating one. For if nothing you do matters, then life suddenly feels a lot less heavy. It’s just one big game. And as any ten-year-old will tell you, the best games are the ones where everyone gets to play. And where you can play again and again, for free. Lots of cool special effects are nice, too.

It’s my last day in Thailand. I’m packing my bags while Scott fires off some e-mails and Noi, as usual, watches TV. They’re showing footage of the king. Nothing strange about that. But it is old footage, from his youth, and it’s on every channel. This is highly irregular, says Noi, and she should know, given the amount of TV she watches. My immediate fear is that the king has died. This would be bad for the Thais, who adore their monarch. It would also be bad for me. With the country hurled into a period of deep mourning, the airport might close, and I’m due to leave in a few hours. It’s a selfish impulse, I realize, and I silently take note that, karmically speaking, I still have a long way to go.

“It’s a coup,” shouts Scott from the other room. My first reaction is, oddly, thank God. Only a coup. The king is alive. My second reaction is: a coup? In a country with Starbucks and KFC? In a country where fun is the national ethos and cool hearts prevail (usually)? But, sure enough, there are tanks on the streets, and martial law has been declared. Even the go-go bars have closed.

My journalist’s instincts kick in, and I call NPR in Washington. I file a short news item, but honestly my heart’s not in it. Coups don’t really fit into my search for the world’s happiest places, and this is just the sort of unhappiness I’ve been trying so hard to avoid.

I am determined to catch my flight. I manage to find a taxi. The driver is oblivious to the unfolding drama and just seems pleased that, for once, the highway to the airport is wide open. En route, we pass a billboard for some resort. There’s a photo of perfectly white beaches and crystal-clear water and then, in bold letters, “Paradise Made Easy.” I’m struck by two things. First, the irony of such a billboard in the middle of a coup, and second, the questionable statement itself. Is that really what we want? Paradise made easy? Shouldn’t we have to work at paradise? Isn’t that the whole point?

The airport terminal is deserted. I’m not sure if this is because of the coup or because it is 3:00 a.m. Wait. I see some fellow passengers. Actually, I hear them before I see them. They are speaking loudly, and in heavy New York accents.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “do you know if the airport is open?” They seem perplexed by my question.

“I think so,” says one of the women. “Why wouldn’t it be?” “Haven’t you heard about the coup?”

They perk up. “No, a coup? A real coup?”

“Yes, the army has declared martial law. There are tanks on the streets.”

“Oh, my Gawd,” says another of the women. “This is sooo fascinatin’. Harriet, did ya hear? There’s been a coup.”

“Really?” says Harriet, glancing toward me in awe, as if I had given the orders myself. “Now why do you suppose they would do that?”

I’m not sure what to tell Harriet. Military men the world over have been imposing their will for many centuries now. “It’s complicated,” I say, and Harriet seems satisfied.

The airport, it turns out, is indeed open. The coup is only a coup lite—with half the tanks and one third the disruption of a regular coup. Soon the tanks would retreat, businesses would reopen, and the girls at Suzie Wong’s would be back onstage gyrating and performing unnatural acts with Ping- Pong balls.

A few weeks later, back in Miami, I spot a small news item.

Thailand’s newly installed prime minister, Surayud Chulanont, the civilian face of the junta, has announced that henceforth, official government policy will no longer focus on economic growth but, rather, the happiness of the people. It is largely a public-relations ploy—but, still, a military government with a happiness policy!

As the sublime absurdity of this news sinks in, I react in the only sensible way: I smile. A broad, authentic Thai smile. Really. If you were there, you’d know. You would have seen it in my eyes.