Thailand raised some interesting cultural differences to the surface. A big one being the perspective on skin tone. I guess we knew them and I'm sure others will have opinions on my commenting on it period but we are doing the MWT to see the world and learn about culture, history, economies and geographies. Its interesting to spend enough time in a place to really see them not just as tourists on a singular vacation, but as travelers moving from place to place to place. The below tells one of those cultural awareness moments that we had with S. If you'd like to skip it, pictures of the sites of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai are at the bottom.
In the states, for many, putting skin cancer risk aside, it is often viewed as less attractive to be super pale than having a little color in your face. You'll hear things like 'You look so pale, do you feel ok?' Or 'You just lost all the color in your face,' Or 'She looked like a ghost.' In India we were constantly photographed for our light hair, skin and eyes. In Thailand and surely elsewhere in this part of the world, a summer 'glow' or a 'tan' is highly unwelcome. Women are heavily covered with all sorts of layers particularly on their faces. But what's more, a few trips to the pharmacy (for bug spray and sunscreen) let us know how deep the desire is to be not just pale, but extremely so, for reasons much deeper than sun protection. The shops all sell face whitening serums and lotions, scrubs and masks. One night, out for the nicest dinner of our stay in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai (because you can eat like royalty all in with tip for a family of 3 for about 12 bucks), S and I saw Astrid. Astrid, as many of you might know, is a character in Crazy Rich Asians, a movie we love to watch. Astrid has the most beautiful, milky white complexion. Variations in what different cultures consider beautiful is varied, we all know that. It was just interesting to see such an aggressive push for treatments to literally whiten your face. And all advertisements had extremely white faced women. Surely a sign of wealth and status to have the luxury of staying out of the sun.
For pictures, this post will show the sites of the Chiang area, including waterfalls and rice fields, poolsides and tuk tuks. It was fun to visit. Chiang Mai we'd rank much higher, unless you find the White Temple and Blue Temple must sees from the photos. A day trip from Chiang Mai, while long, would have worked as well. The water logged fields were tough to capture in drive by photos, but they represent sticky rice fields. Yum. Tastes and scents we loved: butterfly pea flower, jasmine, and ones we have at home but tasted extra good and much sweeter here--mango, watermelon, small plantains, papaya, dragonfruit, sticky rice, pad thai, mint smoothies, avocado smoothies and thai milk tea.
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