Bangkok – The big news in most Asian countries as it was here in Bangkok was the royal murders in Nepal. On the day I left Manila, only one newspaper had it on the front page. In Thailand, it was headline stuff for several days. It is indicative of our lack of an Asian perspective. As for me, the royal murders were a rite of passage to modernization of one of the more backward countries in the continent. But we should not be boastful. We, too, have had our own rites of passage to modernization not very long ago. For the first time in our history we arrested and imprisoned our head of state, spurring riots that hurt not a few. The multiple murders of the royal family, to my mind, may be a sign of an upheaval in Nepal’s mores.
The story goes that the Crown Prince pulled the trigger of an automatic rifle on members of his family because his mother did not favor the girl he wanted to marry. The Crown Prince’s girlfriend was no commoner, she was also royal, albeit coming from a rival royal family and her mother was of Indian origin. Such events, the arrest and incarceration of a President and multiple royal murders, are not recognizable as signals of a modernizing country. Rather they are points of departure when a people goes through painful episodes before moving on to change their way of seeing and doing things. Countries like individuals grow up and a predictable traumatic change is in their attitude towards their superiors.
Bangkok as final destination. Bangkok is a place I must have been to countless of times but only stopping at the airport. This is stop-over city on the way to Eruope. But last week, Bangkok was a final destination and in the company of friends for whom Bangkok is a familiar and well-loved city. As we drove through magnificent skyways and saw the city as it were from the top. I ached once again from envy and regret that Manila should have been so left behind. Thailand might have been the country where the Asian financial crisis began and dragged the rest of Asia down but that evening a group of Filipinos, I included, could only marvel at the modernity of the city. The nagging questions persist. Why could we not have such an exhilarating drive from NAIA to downtown Makati? Why do we keep showing the worst of our city to our visitors? The drive from NAIA to Makati passes through the worst slums, the dirtiest creeks, the intolerable traffic of Tramo, not to mention the heaps of garbage and stench that dot the streets. Why accept visitors at all if this is the first thing they see? Someone in the group retorted, "But should we be hypocritical or dishonest? This is Manila and it is poor and dirty.
A capital city which projects a balanced view of both poverty and wealth through modernization. Perhaps. But unlike Manila although Bangkok has its poor and dirt is that these are not the first thing one sees. I saw the poverty in Bangkok, too. Indeed, we could do without one eyesore in Manila – are the slums by the railroad tracks. Well, Bangkok has that, too. Crowded slums and the poor trying to earn a living helter skelter, selling food side by side heaps of garbage. The difference is that I saw this side of Bangkok only the morning after and we had to go out of the beaten track of tourists. By then I was able to balance the earlier view that this was a modern and prosperous city with the lingering poverty that any city in any other part of the world, even in the wealthiest countries, would have.
The best foot forward for visitors. It might be more helpful and easier to understand my point if we were to use the metaphor of how we would treat visitors to our own houses. When visitors come to visit our houses, we do not bring them straight to the dirty kitchen even if this is the more honest presentation of our everyday life. On the contrary, we spruce up and clean the best part of our house for the visitor and usually, this is the living room, the first stop of visitors when they enter through the front door. In the larger sense that front door and living room comprising the area around the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and the streets on the way to the urban sprawl of Manila and Makati.
Diverting traffic to and from NAIA should be a first step in our tourism drive. Some time ago, I read about a plan to divert traffic coming from NAIA to pass through Nichols, then through South Superhighway to Makati and Fort Bonifacio. Whatever happened to that plan? Is that still on the drawing board or has the good idea been junked while we continue showing the worst of the city at the same time that we pay lip service to tourism as one bright spots in a sinking economy. If there is any one who can see the merit of such a plan, it would be the imaginative and practical new secretary of tourism, Richard Gordon. I hope he will resurrect that plan. Until and unless we do something about the depressing ride from the airport to the city, we will not go very far in our tourism drive. With a minimum of expense, we should be able to create a better impression to our visitors. That is the important lesson I learned on my first day in Bangkok. Clean, well-paved streets and efficient transportation were irreplaceable signs of welcome to any visitor even those who have come without flinching from the sights of poverty and dispossession.
A new vision for leadership. This column was despatched from Bangkok last Saturday where I attended a conference organized by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace. The theme of the conference was
A New Vision for Leadership Through Public Service. I will be writing more about the conference in columns to come.
My e-mail:
cpedrosa@edsamail.com.ph or c.pedrosa@qinet.net