If you live in Thailand, you undoubtedly know about Santika. If you don’t live here and don’t know already, let me offer the barest of facts.
Santika was an upmarket and fashionable club here in Bangkok that was frequented primarily by young hi-so Thais and a fair number of foreigners. On New Year’s Eve the place was packed full — estimates of over a thousand people were reported in the newspaper — when it caught fire and burned. The last news report I read quoted 64 people dead and more than 200 hospitalized — many of them with critical injuries.
By any measure it was a tragic event. The fallout will probably be with us for a long time to come.
Over the past three days I have been struck by the almost unbelievable difference in the way that westerners have reacted to Santika and compared to the way the Thais that I know have dealt with it.
All of the farang I know, along with bloggers and commenters on the internet, have reacted in a way that is typical and perhaps predictable. They have lamented the tragedy, offered condolences and prayers, and spent a lot of words gently dissecting events. Most of what I have read and heard has been offered with very sincere concern and sensitivity.
This seems normal and sensible to me.
Like most people in Thailand I returned to work on Monday, and I have a full work schedule this week.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the way the Thais — at least all the Thais that I have been spending time with at work — choose to deal with Santika.
I got the predictable questions at work: “What did you do for New Year’s Eve?”
I told my Thai friends that I had a quiet five-day break, mostly spent reading and listening to music at home. At my first appointment on Monday morning one of the Thais in the group called out in a laughing voice, “You didn’t go to Santika for New Years?” which drew cackling laughter from the other half dozen Thais in the room.
I scowled and rebuked the person who had spoken, saying “That’s not funny!”
A silence descended over the room, but it lasted only moments, and after just a few minutes I heard a few more Santika jokes unleashed.
I was a bit stunned, but as I moved through my workday, traveling to three different locations in Bangkok, I heard the same kind of comments from the Thai people I was working with. As we exchanged New Year greetings, it was never more than a few minutes before a witty remark about Santika was unleashed to a burst of laughter.
I was astonished, but after the initial rebuke in the morning I kept me mouth shut. I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t scold anyone either. Clearly there was something going on here that I hadn’t seen before and didn’t really understand.
On Tuesday I traveled to yet another location that I hadn’t been to on Monday. The same thing happened.
This time I was among a group of people that I was fairly comfortable and after a couple of quick retorts about Santika and the accompanying guffaws, I put up my hand and asked if I could speak.
I explained briefly how surprised I was at what I’d been hearing for two days. I explained how very inappropriate such comments would seem to most westerners, and asked if they could explain things to me.
What I was told went something like this:
Life is often hard for Thai people, and things are often bad. We look for the silver lining. We’re happy that we are alive, and we joke and laugh because we don’t want to be unhappy. Of course we feel bad for the people who died and who were injured, but nothing we say will make a difference. So we choose to laugh about tragedy… it seems better than crying.
I didn’t drag the discussion out for a long time, but I asked a couple of followup questions. The explanation stood, much as I have summarized it in the paragraph above.
Today I happened to share a cab with a business associate. He told me a story that brought Santika up in the conversation between us. It seems that he had a date with a Thai girl for New Year’s Eve, but he broke it — saying that he was sick — in order to go to Soi Cowboy with some friends. Today he went to her workplace, and some other people greeted him, and of course teased him by asking if he’d been caught in the Santika fire. He didn’t want to say he’d been at Soi Cowboy, so he told them he’d gone to RCA.
Moments later the girl he broken the date with came in the room. Someone decided to catch her up on the conversation, telling her that my colleague had just been telling them about RCA on NYE. Apparently the eyes of a TG really can shoot daggers. He managed to recover, and has a date with the same girl this Friday, but I guess it was a difficult situation.
The story, though, got the two of us talking about the comic approach that Thais seem to have in dealing with tragedy.
My pal proffered another recent example. He said that about a week ago a Thai fellow he works with mentioned that he needed to take a day off to attend a funeral for his brother. My mate asked what had happened to the guy’s brother. He reports that another Thai guy sitting nearby jumped into the conversation by declaring that the brother had “blown his brains out” and illustrated by holding an imaginary gun to his head and pulling the trigger.
My pal says that all the Thais in the room — except for the brother — fell into a fit of laughter. He reports that he, himself was so stunned that he could think of nothing to say.
And so I thought I’d share this odd cultural difference with you. I probably wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself; or if I did believe it I might have thought that the person reporting it was misunderstanding or misreporting. I might have thought it was an isolated instance of poor judgment.
But I can say that it is none of the above. I’ve spent three days this week listening to quips about Santika, and the business colleague in my cab today says that he’s had the same experience.
I’m not sure I understand it. In fact it may represent one more thing that shows me that I’ll never really understand Thai people.
But it’s real enough.
Laughing at death. Tragedy and comedy played out together.
Amazing Thailand.
10 responses so far ↓
RonBaltimore // Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 8:34 am |
I was living in Thailand around 9-11 and every time it would come up that I was American someone would crack a joke about the World Trade Center and die laughing. I wanted to rip their heads off. Eventually I learned they really meant no animosity…..I think they think they are being witty by incorporating a recent event…..it is strange but I guess that’s just part of the whole culteral differences thing.
ChangFai // Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 8:37 am |
Khun Werewolf
My worst expierence of this type of thing was when Saving Private Ryan first came out .
I thought the opening scenes of the landngs was pretty horrific and harrowing , not to the Thais , where the full cinema all laughed their way through the whole piece , much to my amazement and disgust.
the DREW // Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 9:15 am |
I used to see a lot of motorbike wrecks in Phuket on that hill going into Patong. Thais would crowd around the scene and come away with big smiles on their face. Their way of dealing with tragedy I guess.
riodon // Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 10:02 am |
The Thai staff in my office reacted exactly the same way, asking and laughing “Khun RD, you escape from Santika ok, ha ha lucky man not too drunk” and other similar comments all said with a smile and followed by giggles from all around – weird!
Julian // Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 1:23 pm |
Actually, Thais aren’t the only ones reacting that way. I was born in Eastern Europe and over there people have a particular kind of black humor. While it is not as slap stick as Thai humor, it does deal with the same kind of circumstances and it would be difficult if not impossible for a Westerner to understand. I’m pretty sure there were plenty of 9/11 jokes just as there were jokes about some bad things that happened to us in the past. There is even a ‘funny cemetery’ somewhere in the country where people’s graves have a ‘funny’ (not so much in my opinion, but that is how they are perceived by most there) take on how that person died. I would say it’s the same reason as the one given by Thais, since Eastern Europe until recently had its share of bleakness, people had to find a way to cope without completely breaking down. Incidentally, most Americans I met (I grew up in the US) could not understand the sense of irony that I had acquired in Eastern Europe (which is a slightly more refined form of the ‘black humor’ I mentioned).
// Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 3:31 pm |
This is a great post about cultural differences between East and West. I had the same situation returning to work on Monday with all my Thai colleagues joking about Santika.
‘Black humor’ seems to be common in Thailand and is always reserved for 3rd party events, things that happen at a distance. If it happens to someone you know Thais have much more respect for your feelings.
When I was asked what did I think about it and I talked about the issue of an operating license, lack of safety precautions and the police taking bribes in order to keep the place open they thought that was hilarious – not because it was sad or untrue but because it was so obvious. That’s the way business works here – it’s just that people rarely talk about it.
nurseRon // Thursday, 8 January 2009 at 3:41 pm |
My work can be very sad and depressing! My normal day routinely deals with some of the most horrible and unfair situations imaginable. I’m a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit of a very busy LA children’s hospital. We have a very similar coping method that if an outsider were to witness we all would be jailed and our licenses revoked. So I kinda get it too?
fanta // Friday, 9 January 2009 at 12:14 pm |
In “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brian’s outrageously good book, he conveys precisely the same humor – used by soldiers in combat (Vietnam). Not the same thing but for sure there are intersections: The song “lemon tree, very pretty” sung and hummed to the intestines, guts and hanging limbs of what was left of friend and colleague Pvt. Lemon after his having foot-fall on a bbtrapped shell. Other examples abound.
Pants Elk // Friday, 9 January 2009 at 3:56 pm |
I really believe it’s a result of a fundamental awkwardness with expressing anything other than surface amusement and pleasure in their daily lives. The Thai smile covers everything, and sometimes, as in the Santika jokes, it looks grotesque. They’re a strangely reserved lot, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel tragedy just as “we” do. There’s a couple of other factors that might have a bearing, too. They’re very careful about not making other people sad, and showing sadness will do just this. A weird form of politeness, but it’s consistent with not “bringing people down”, especially in a friendly and sociable context. And then there’s the old “saving face” trope – to show grief is in a sense to show a crack in the facade, a weakness, a loss of face. Better to show you’re tough enough to laugh at death!
Incidentally, could I prevail upon the hospitality of this august forum in urging Young Penfold, at his earliest convenience, to go fuck himself with a barbed wire brush? Thank you!
Cat // Monday, 26 January 2009 at 5:43 pm |
Re: Julian: I was born in Eastern Europe and over there people have a particular kind of black humor. ………. There is even a ‘funny cemetery’ somewhere in the country ……..
Julian – I’m pretty surprised to meet a former countryman on this blog
I was born in a town not very far away from that “funny cemetery”. But I’m living in Australia now. It would be nice to catch up with you on email…