Hat Yai

It's been several days since I wrote last, which is attributable to our jaunt to the southern end of this wasp-shaped country, to an industrial town called Hat Yai, the industrial heart of the Thai rubber industry and the focus of Moslem separatist bombings a couple of years ago that have scared off tourism. 

We had considered declining the invitation of one of Debbie's students, Nongnut Boonyong, for Debbie to speak at the local nursing school, but some wag who operates a Thai FAQ website advised us that we were likelier to be killed by a tuk-tuk, Thailand's ubiquitous scooter taxis in Bangkok than get killed by separatists, which reassured us somewhat about Hat Yai though not about tuk-tuks. 

The midwestern cityscape of Bangkok yielded to a deep green landscape of rubber tree and banana plantations, and we were met at the airport with great joy by Nong Nut, who was one of Debbie's most cherished students: an indomitable woman with a shy smile and a will of steel who proved to be one of the most gifted researchers Debbie ever mentored. Now she has risen into the exalted reaches of the university in Hat Yai.

This meant that in a couple of days she has to help oversee the preparations for a visit by one of the princesses who will be gracing the graduation ceremony this year. Her Highness is a chemist, and suffers from lupus, so certain flowers are forbidden, and no-one is to wear any perfume. The campus has been adorned with thousands of little pots of orange chrysanthemums: orange being her royal color. She will sit in a small anteroom, and since no one is to touch her, each diploma will be passed across her languidly stretched-out hand before being handed to each recipient, while the rest -- some six thousand students -- shuffle along outside in their silk graduation gowns. Nongnut is to see that each diploma takes no more than 28 seconds, and her colleague Noh, who also met us, was a nervous wreck in anticipation of observing all these protocols. 

In the meantime, everyone who works for the state is expected to wear yellow this year to celebrate the king's upcoming 80th birthday. Nongnut told us more about the Thai attitude toward the king. Apparently a lot of policies are couched in terms of saving him from any sort of distress. Thus when the government required or in any case advised all motorcyclists to wear helmets, it was so that the king would not read with sorrow about another rider being killed. Every evening at 8PM there's a half-hour report on the royal family's day, showing various  princesses engaged in impressive if, to our eyes, incomprehensible formalities. 

Nongnut took us to an overlook en route to the beach, and then to a lovely restaurant on stilts set over a lagoon. So far all the food has agreed with us, and one of the best things we've had so far was a rice dish tossed with crab meat, and a baked kingfish with a honey sauce. 

But that will have to be all for tonight. We are now back in Bangkok and tomorrow Nongnut's brother is taking us to see the old city of Ayuddhya tat was destroyed by the Burmese centuries ago and is a kind of Thai Angkor, though encroached upon by the modern town.