Inter-National Anthems

Trip Start Aug 04, 2009

Trip End Feb 25, 2010

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Flag of Thailand Bangkok, Thailand
Saturday, October 3, 2009

I think that where a country decides to play its national anthem can teach you something about how the people of a country, or their government thinks its people, spend their time. Take America for example, the national anthem is (dare I say) almost exclusively played at sporting events. And why not, when they are packed with ten to fifty thousand people at a time. In India, where the the Bollywood craze just squeaks past Hollywood fanaticism, movie goers stand before their weekly flick to belt out their Indian pride.

Today (written in the present tense at the time) I thought I was learning something about the Thai people when I was sweating it out amongst the jambed packed stalls of the Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok. Sometime after the sun had sunk in the sky and the weather had cooled, I was paying 4 Bhat for a homemade CocaCola popsicle when I noticed the most eerie thing. Everyone around me had stopped moving and talking. It was as if I had blinked and my life had become a scene from some sci-fi/futuristic movie (or Saved By the Bell, for that matter) where I could walk among my fellow humans while they sat frozen oblivious to my presence. And then as I was suppressing the rising panic within my stomach, I realized there was music playing and when I looked more closely I understood: they were playing the Thailand national anthem. "Wow," I thought, "Shopping must bring in the big crowds in Thailand."

Turns out, as one would expect, that I was fostering a big misconception. Thanks to one of my new hobbies, reading Time Magazine on the bus ride to work, I learned (and now you can too) that the new prime minister of Thailand has started some new unity building efforts in his country. One effort being that all Thais would sing the national anthem every evening for a month and a half (starting on Sept 15). Turns out I was just experiencing a cultural/political event relevant to our times. Either way, it was a uniquely eerie and surprisingly enjoyable event.

To make up for the fact that this blog posting is very late I'm including some photos from Thailand!!