The little adventure to the beach is over. Cha-Am is my kind of place if I'm going to the beach. There's a village next to the beach so when I quickly reach my quota of time on the sand I can go explore the village. I even carefully timed my sun exposure so have no painful sunburn from which to recover. Cha-Am is on the Gulf of Thailand about a three hour bus ride south of Bkk. If you cross the Thai peninsula to the west you find the Andaman Sea. Cha-Am is combination fishing village and a weekend resort for Thai. Development looms on the horizon so it's charm will not last long.
Thai have a strong prejudice in favor of white skin and against dark skin. White skin symbolizes the rich and powerful and dark skin is equated with peasants. When a culture values white skin the behavior at the beach changes from those that value tanning. While, the westerners lie in the sun and tan, the Thai gather under beach umbrellas to avoid the exposure. The children frolic in the water and occasionally a parent will venture in with a child, always wearing street clothes, but 99% of the Thai spend 99% of their time in the shade. A practice we would do well to emulate.
1 comment:
I found out the hard way how "hot" the southern sun can be. My white skin turned to red pretty fast and even now is still peeling.
Post a Comment