Everyone wants what everyone else has

It is always a shock to leave India and hit Bangkok.  You get used to India after being in it for awhile, but then you hit a place like Thailand, which is usually the place that we hit after India, and you realize just how surreal India is. 

 

I know I've mentioned this before, but just about everywhere is so much cleaner and more organized than India.  There are empty spaces in India, but there are still people in sight and at least one empty plastic water bottle on the ground.  You hit Bangkok and the streets and clean, the green areas around the highways are MANICURED, for god's sake, and there isn't a speck of garbage.  Anywhere.  There are legions of people, it seems, who are employed by the city to clean things up.  It's just a shock.  We were SURPRISED today to see a dog trotting along the skyway (the sidewalk ABOVE the street where pedestrians walk).  In India, there are about 1000 mangy mutts that don't belong to anyone roving around in packs, along with the goats and cows wandering through the alleys and highways and biways, but in Thailand, ONE nice looking dog is an occurance.  Funny.

 

We were talking to a guy in Mamallapuram who was telling us how westerners that he's met love India and wish that they could like there all the time, because animals and humans all live together, which is true, since as I mentioned, dogs and cats and rats and cows and goats and chickens and humans all kind of congregate in the same places.  This guy also said that Indians would like to try western life.  Although there are advantages to life in the west, I think that the difference in family life, the cold, the high cost of living would all make them see through different eyes...it's not all fun and games, though I admit, for many people, life is a whole lot easier than it is in India.

 

However I was also thinking about Thailand and how people want what other people have.  For instance, Thai people are very petite.  They have very small frames and although the western diet is creeping up on them, most of them are quite thin.  So what do they want?  They want to look BIGGER!  Some of the Thai women actually wear dresses then make their hips look BIGGER! I mean, all I can do is slap my forehead and look in amazement at these women wearing dresses that look like potato sacks and these other things that have elastic at the thighs so that the hip part poofs out...I wouldn't wear something like that in a million years!  I am constantly amazed at how we all think the grass is greener on the other side.  Though to be fair, lots of them also wear high heels and hip huggers, so there are all kinds here.

 

Ah, ain't life grand.  Must go eat pad thai now. 

ACDB