All Hail The King- They Really Do

The first experience I hadin Thailand was in hte train station after having come straight from hte Airport. It was a large hall and we were with many people all sitting and waiting. Without warning 5 soldiers marched in, weapons and all, and stood at attention in front of a huge portrait of the Thai King which was at the front of the hall. The blast of a fanfare and everyone calmly standing up heralded the beginning of the National Anthem. We stood too and looked at everyone as they stared at their King with genuine looks of reverence and appreciation. The kind of look I've only really ever seen (or had myself) at the Football. Then the anthem stopped, the soldiers marched back through their little door and everybody snapped out of their reverent trance to go back to their routine. This came again at the start of a movie we saw with Tee Wee. Just as interesting as the film, which was 'Alexander' with Thai subtitles, was another bit of King honouring. In between the adds for popcorn and pepsi and the ads for the upcoming releases a message appeared which said "Please stand to pay respect to the King". A presentation followed with feel good music that seemed much more likely to be from one of those expensive car ads than the Thai national anthem. The screen showed pictures of kids, old people, sick people and hard working people all looking up to the king and smiling with absolute delight as if for the first time in their lives. It was technically very moving but reminded me of the old Mao Tze Tung propaganda posters with titles like "Mao assists our farmers bring in their large crop" or "Mao helps our scientists solve a tricky problem" or "Mao tells our economists the best way to manage China" or "Mao raises the dead while teaching quantum physics, juggling and just looking plain cool". The third and most remarkable experience I had with the King was at his birthday party on the night of December the 5th. We were told that there would be a bit of a celebration with fireworks and stuff going on down by one of his palaces. This little celebration, however, was fucking huge! Not only were there 4 stages with Thai boxing, traditional dancing, pop music and something else that I didn't get close enough to see, but there were what must have been a couple of hundred thousand people all struggling against each other in different directions but without a clue of where they were trying to get (someone should look up an official number for me because I could be way off). There was meant to be a parade and the road was cleared for it until the people, trying to get somewhere where they wern't, flooded through the barriers and hundreds of military looking guys and swallowed the road and the small groups of uniformed people gathered under banners who were evidently trying to be the parade. The whole thing was just like Yasser Arafat's funeral for those who saw shots of the crowds there desperately trying to touch his coffin and swamping the helicopters and police in the process. In the middle of all this and not knowing anything about what was going on was us, Nat, Penny, Erin having joined us the day before, and me. What was great for me about being in such a tremndous crowd of Thai people is that the average Thai person is not quite 6 foot 2 inches, like me. In fact, the entire crowd was about a foot below me. This meant that although in the hot weather I attracted quite a nice breeze that noone else got I also attracted a lot of attention. Almost every person I was pushed into by the currents of this sea of people would look up at me and with a mixture of humour and jealousy would say what must have been "I bet you're not having any trouble seeing" or just "what's the weather like up there". The thought of which made me laugh because the weather really was better. However, not only was I a beacon in this crowd but was also a bulldozer as one little old woman who must've been having trouble getting anywhere leant her shoulder against my lower back and pushed me through the crowd with the rest of her family following in my wake. We eventually drifted close enough to the stages to weigh anchor and stop for the others to see what was happening on them which Erin could only do after jumping on my back. After ten minutes there we turned around to see the only break in the entire crowd was in a V shape directly behind me. It took another hour or so to get out of the crowd and head back to Nat's place. It was a fair bit different to the Queen's Birthday celebrations in Australia as I've never heard of any Queen's Birthday celebrations at all of any kind. Thailand really seems to be unified and indentified by their King who, just like our Queen, has been on the throne for over fifty years but unlike our Queen is respected by everyone, and not just because you get thrown in gaol if you say anything bad about him. It doesn't matter how different Thai people are they generally see themselves as one under the King. I can only imagine how weird that would be in Australia with our Queen who doesn't come close to unifying our country or giving us an identity. The fact that she is a remnant of the time when we were nothing but a colony of the British empire and that she has nothing to do with Australia or Australians as they are now means that the creation of a strong Australian identity to be proud of is impossible until we become our own republic.