I took my wife Mem and our son Andy to a temple fair at Wat Chalong last week. When I first came to Phuket, the fairs at the island’s biggest temple were simple country things; a dozen booths selling cheap clothing and house wares arranged around a small oval track on which ran an ancient miniature locomotive pulling five cars full of screaming, happy kids. On the edges of the fair would be shadow puppet shows and likay theatre, and way in the back would be one guy selling local whiskey off a card table.
In those days, families would wander up and down the midway, nodding and smiling to each other and buying their kids cotton candy. Young couples would express their affection by bumping shoulders and whispering as they walked, and a few knots of father-providers would stand under the trees talking politics and maybe passing a bottle around.
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The fair we attended last week was a very different sort of event. There were at least one hundred booths selling the same cheap clothing and house wares, but now each on has a massive stereo system and a yammering Mister Microphone. The people at the fair were almost exclusively Burmese day laborers and teenaged punks trying to see if they could ride their motorcycles through the crowd at the same speeds they achieve on the open highway.
Among the booths full of polyester Levi’s and Day-Glo plastic kitchenware I found many selling brass knuckles, switch-blade knives, sew-on patches bearing swastikas, and a truly frightening array of “toy” weapons. Every little boy running through the legs of the crowd was shooting something. The selection of alcohol has expanded dramatically and moved into the very center of the midway, and so has the number of drinkers, who now wander through the crowd in little mean-looking groups staring hard at the foreigners. In front of a giant revolving barrel where daredevils ride motorcycles around the walls there was a stage set up, and on the stage were two girls, no more than sixteen years old, dancing the “hootchie-kootchie” in mini-skirts. Dozens of men were packed in front of the stage shouting lurid suggestions in Burmese.
I don’t know why the temple fair has changed, but I do know that it cannot be because the old fair wasn’t making enough money for the temple. Wat Chalong is by far the richest temple on the island, maybe the richest in the Southern provinces, visited by hundreds of tourists each day. Nobody on the island would ever open a new business, get married, or win even the smallest lottery without making merit at Wat Chalong. In the last three years every building on the grounds has been completely refurbished, many new buildings have been built, and the monk’s kutis all have widescreen color TVs and private bathrooms. The images of Phuket’s three patron saints are so covered in gold leaf that you can no longer tell Po Chem from Po Chung from Po Gluam. They don’t need to allow sex and violence within the sacred precincts in order to afford new shingles for the viharn roof.
As soon as we entered the temple grounds Mem bought Andy a red helium balloon, because at 15 months Andy is just fascinated by balloons. He clutched its string in one fist and with a very serious expression methodically banged his new toy against his father’s head while we wandered through the crowds. In an hour of walking Mem couldn’t find anything to buy, which must be her idea of Hell, and which put her into a bad mood. I was in a bad mood because I was afraid to smoke with that balloon next to my face. I’ve heard that sometimes they put hydrogen in them instead of helium, and the element that fuels the sun is not something you want igniting next to your cheekbone.
The old choo-choo train was still at the fair last week, though it was woefully unkempt and totally unoccupied. Most of the kids who had any money were lined up outside the bumper cars arena, probably waiting to take the Department of Motor Vehicles driving test. Mem took Andy up in a miniature Ferris Wheel, from the top of which, she shouted down to me, she could see our house. While my wife and child were going round and round twixt heaven and earth I was left in charge of the precious red balloon, and I held it at arm’s length while I sucked down a quick cigarette.
And then, when they came off the ride and I tried to pass the red balloon to my son, the string slipped between my nicotine-stained fingers and off it went like a rocket. Andy stared after it, pointing into the sky and saying “Boon! Boon! Boon!” A very poetic image, considering that in pali, the liturgical language of Buddhism, “boon” means “religious merit”, but an image of no consolation to a baby who’s just lost his balloon. All the way back to the parking lot Andy was pointing off into space and reciting his “boon” mantra, and when he saw the car he burst into tears and began to struggle in my arms.
I got into the car with Andy, turned on the air-con and held him while Mem ran to get a new balloon. She returned with an orange one; they were out of the red ones, and Andy didn’t want anything to do with the impostor. He beat at it with his fists and wailed all the way home. “He doesn’t trust it,” said Mem, and I think she’s right. But the fact that he also wouldn’t look at me on the ride home tells me that his new-found sense of distrust is not limited to orange balloons. I would go even further to say that his distrust is born from a sense of loss, and after going to the fair last week, I feel that same sense that something simple yet beautiful has been lost. And I am beginning to feel a deep distrust of those responsible.
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