Aus dem Leben eines (gelegentlichen) Reiseführerautoren - Teil 2
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Tom Vater
Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from South Asia and beyond
In Heiligen Höhen - Zur Quelle des Ganges - Leseprobe
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Castle Made of Sand - The Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai
As Asian politicians, business elites and even the region’s poor are dreaming of turning their cities – from China to Cambodia - into futuristic Bladerunner-style neon ghettos, the United Arab Emirates appear to be well ahead in creating superlative anti-people environments.
On January 4th 2010, Dubai gave the world a fantastically absurd New Year’s present by opening the world’s tallest building, the 828 meter high Burj Khalifa Tower. Yes, the Guinness Book of Records will have to expand its next edition.
Once upon a time, the Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest building in the world, until England’s Lincoln Cathedral was built in 1311. More recently, several buildings in Asia held this record. Now, the Middle East once more leads the pack. The Dubai Burj Khalifa Tower is 300 metres higher than the next highest building, the Taipei 101 Tower in Taiwan. It’s as tall as the two World Trade Center towers stacked on top of each other. The steel, glas, chrome and concrete monstrosity cost some US $1.5 billion. It has the longest elevator and the highest open-air swimming pool in the world. On more than 160 floors, fivestar hotels, flash apartments and flasher offices wait for guests and buyers. More than 12,000 people are projected to live and work in this vertical city. But enough boring consumer statistics.
All’s not well in Babylon and the world’s highest building is already throwing the world’s longest shadows. Sheik Mohammed bin Raschid al-Maktum, the brainchild behind the tower (I use this term very loosely, as the architects and builders were all foreigners) famously said that ‘many people brag, but we get things done.’ A bit embarrassing when the leader of Dubai did not have the money to complete his dream in the sky and had to borrow cash from his neighbor in Abu Dhabi, after whom the mega-project is now named. It seems that the oil money has long separated the Emirates’ leaders and their people from reality and the 160-floor sky shed is but a facette of the Dubai in Wonderland lifestyle, the region has gotten used to.
Hardly anyone one works here – from training the military, installing the oil technology, providing sex services or construction projects - most jobs are done by foreigners. Ever been to one of the discos that the locals frequent, crammed with hundreds of virtual slave prostitutes or talked to the builders who surface roads in 50 degrees heat for a couple of hundred bucks a month? The thousands of workers from South Asia who constructed the Burj Khalifa Tower were paid between 5 and 10 US dollars a day, lived in inhuman conditions, had their passports confiscated by their employers and even had their peanut-pay withheld. Many employees died due to the substandard safety conditions on the site. Thousands rioted over the abysmal conditions they had to endure.
Still, the sheiks of this world know that enormous towers are distractions designed to prop up bloated egos, project wealth and hide totalitarian mindsets. It’s always been that way. From the Taj Mahal in India to the Olympic Games in China, the world just loves to be comforted or impressed by bright lights and huge structures. In the midst of global recession, mass unemployment, climate change, hunger and widespread war, not to mention the UAE’s own financial incompetence – property prices in Dubai have recently dropped by 50% - the financial ineptitude of men like Sheik Mohammed bin Raschid al-Maktum appears to be little more than a minor highlight (excuse the sad pun) of the rapacious global consumer frenzy we find ourselves in at the dawn of our most unsavory millennium yet.
International observers don’t think that the Dubai Burj Tower will make any money, though it might help to stop and think just for a second what could have been done with the cash. The air-con bills alone should be enough to lift several impoverished African nations out of misery. In Europe, experts are laughing and crying at the same time. The German Architects’ Association called the building ‘an economically senseless prestige model for the power of money’. Elsewhere, the media reports have been as damning as this one, though not as serious.
For now, the building is virtually empty and is likely to stay that way. Dubai has been planning to diversify its oil-based economy into service-orientated tourism. Yet virtually everything a holiday maker wants – except for golf courses - is illegal in the Emirates: alcohol, sex, drugs and good times hardly go with current local precepts. Why would anyone go on holiday in a country where the taxi drivers will take their passengers straight to the nearest police station if they appear to be inebriated?
Perhaps the sheiks should have gone to see a couple of catastrophe blockbusters like 2012, before embarking on the construction of the world’s latest symbol of human hubris. As for the rest of the world, and especially boom or bust Asia, we’ll have to wait and see whether the construction of the Dubai Burj Tower will have an impact on the lofty ambitions of developers in the region. One does not have to look far in order to spot related spurts of architectural boasting. The gigantic Olympic structures across China are already falling into disuse while the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh has recently been celebrating its first high rise, which houses a bank, with a second on the way. It seems unlikely that Asian real estate dreamers will take note of a Castle made of Sand, when contemplating future beautification of their urban landscapes.
This story was published in South East Globe.
New Author page at Amazon Author Central
I have opened an author page on Amazon (Author Central) which will give my books more online exposure.
Not all of my titles are currently featured there, but readers will find a page with info on publications and a new blog , as well as other news from my literary twilight zone.
My Amazon Online Store
You can now buy some of my book titles via a new Amazon feature on my website (www.tomvater.com).
There’s a new link to press, right at the top of the left sidebar, the so-called Amazon Store.
Unfortunately, not all my titles can be found there, but it’s a start.
Wai Khru Day - The Wat Bang Phra Tattoo Festival in Thailand
Every year in March, thousands of Buddhist devotees gather at a temple an hour west of Bangkok to worship and celebrate one of Thailand’s strangest cults: At Wat Bang Phra, Buddhist monks use long needles to tattoo magic images and prayers on the believers’ skin. The tattoos are believed to give the wearer protection, especially against bullets and knives, and bring financial luck.
The following story has been published in FHM, Maxim, Fortean Times, The South Eastern Globe and a couple of other publications, but I went along once more this year to take another look. As before, the atmosphere at Wat Bang Phra was electric, the festival is still very much a genuine grass roots event and there were many of familiar faces amongst the devotees.
Uaaahh! The bare-chested man is running straight towards me, his face bright red, distorted into a thousand pains I know nothing about. His bare, tattooed chest gleams with sweat. He screams at the sky, he vomits anger, but he’s stumbling straight ahead, towards me. He salutes unknown devils. His voice a hysterical siren, he turns on the spot and does wild body contortions, which render his face the color of blood. He is focusing in my direction again. He stares at me, through me, beyond me, nowhere. He’s moving.
Just as he’s about to reach me, the second I begin my retreat into the crowd around me, he falls to the floor. Still he screams. He rolls in a puddle. He’s bleeding from his left ear, his eyes are blood shot, his tongue flops from his mouth, he’s still screaming. His face grows ever darker.
A second later, the man rises from the puddle. The crowd cheers, some jeer. The man begins to run, run towards the small stage erected in front of a large bronze statue of the former abbot of the Buddhist temple Wat Bang Phra. A phalanx of young guys in white T-shirts patrols the front of the stage, backed up by a mob of lean and mean army privates. It looks like a 60’s rock festival, haphazard and out of control.
The man head-butts into the crowd, the guys in the white T-shirts hold him down, four men hanging on to a limb each. They scream at him. He shakes like mad and screams back, not at them, just at the world. He struggles like a condemned prisoner on his way to the guillotine.
Moments later he goes limp. The guys drop him on the ground. He gets up, his face perfectly calm, folds his hands towards the stage and disappears back into the crowd. I turn around. A man is running straight towards me…
Wat Bang Phra is an hour west of Bangkok. Once a year, thousands of young men of uncertain occupation gather here to get tattooed by several monks. The monks do this every day of the year, the tattoos afford protection and are popular, but the big tattoo gathering happens just once a year.
Some of the men and women who come here belong to the criminal fraternity. Yes, Wat Bang Phra Festival is a rare opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the worst and some of the most interesting people Thailand has amongst her citizens. Behind the Wat’s museum, long queues have formed in front of a couple of outhouses. Teenagers with pock marked faces, old fat thugs with eyes that burn holes into hell, emaciated taxi girls and chubby mamasans hang out, chatting and smoking with the monks. It’s weird to see these people in daylight.
Some revelers are drunk, others seem to be orbiting on yaba (meta-amphetamine). Most are already tattooed, either with cheap biker designs or with the Khmer Buddhist prayers and diagrams the monks specialize in here. Everybody wants to be photographed, show off their scars (plenty) and skin illustrations. The monks too, are heavily tattooed, crests around their shaved skulls, throats ands shoulders adorned with chedis and prayers. The ancient Khmer alphabet looks like ants’ squiggles on skin: it stretches from the definite to the illegible, from the poetic to the anarchic. On backs and chests it looks like text, the instructions appear coherent. But on hands, legs and throats it’s all abstract, musical and brutally crude. But there is more to this than the spoken word. It goes deeper. Wat Bang Phra’s tattoos come with promises of protection and prosperity. The hard men come in reverence and expectation and the monks etch images of fearsome animals onto their skins, along with prayers and chedis. The Indian monkey god Hanuman makes an appearance, as do tigers, dragons, birds, snakes, eels and a hermit. The punters live out their possessions in the yard. The attempt to storm the stage is a show of respect to the late head of the monastery, Luang Paw Phoem.
Indian mythology, Buddhism, ancient animism, straightforward superstition and adolescent outlaw culture make for a colorful spectacle which may challenge more genuine efforts to celebrate a spiritual life, but it’s such a bizarre clash of circumstances, of faith and history, of seekers and charlatans, of humility and machismo, that it has a life all of its own.
The monks have several working methods. Some use the same needle and the same pot of ink again and again, others seem to exchange needles after every operation and always start a new tiny tub of ink. The punters don’t care. Each one hands over a donation which promptly disappears under the monk’s robes – this is after all a business, as well as magic.
Some of the younger boys shake under the needle, their friends hold them down. The monk just taps on regardless, wipes off blood every now and then, mumbles incantations, smokes and drinks Red Bull. The men with the hard faces and bad scars queue, they pray, they bleed, they go beserk in the yard, it’s their day. It’s all done quickly - in the blink of an eye another chedi comes into existence on some guy’s flesh, another prayer for the great Buddha.
Post-tattoo, the punters traipse off to another hall where they will be told what rules they have to follow in life in order for the protective tattoos to work. Some swear that they can stop bullets.
Why is this happening? Does the Dalai Lama do tattoo gigs too?
The current generation of supposedly faithful pours into the cities, in pursuit of the dollar. American style ‘Mall culture’ has gripped the kingdom. Morality, social commentators say, is in distress, and nepotism, cronyism and graft have seeped into every transaction, every political decision. No wonder then that the intense free-wheeling capitalism the country has experienced in the last ten years has influenced Buddhism and the behavior of its adherents in Thailand.
Wats appear to have partially turned from community centres into businesses. Some Wats cater to the super rich, others suggest lottery numbers. The monks are out in the streets, taking part in daily life as never before. They pour over mobile phones in shopping centers or pick through gold bracelets at Chinese jewelers. The Thai tabloids regularly report on monks visiting Karaoke Bars and wooing women into sex. They populate Internet cafés and the cells of young monks are adorned with Metallica posters. That doesn’t sound like Nirvana. Bad pun, I know. Does Richard Gere know? Has Steven Seagul been informed?
Above all, tattooing brings in money and Wat Bang Phra is the best known temple to offer a second skin of protective spells in the country. Everybody pays. Every punter who gets tattooed will purchase some flowers and incense for the tattooist’s teacher. Amulets are on sale everywhere and are doing a roaring business. Even in the hall where the recently deceased abbot’s remains are stretched out in a gold-framed glass coffin, you can shop for temple memorabilia. The atmosphere is full both of reverence and market bustle.
By no means do all monks agree with this cult though. One of the most eminent monks in the country, Phra Payom Kalayano, has commented repeatedly on the marketing forces that dominate many monasteries’ agendas.
Luang Paw Phoem, the eminent late abbot of Wat Bang Phra died in 2002, aged 79. He had no tattoos himself. The venerated founder of this strange tattoo cult had picked up the tattoo tradition and the connection to animal magic from his own peers and teachers, notably Luang Paw Him, the former head of Wat Bang Phra. It’s difficult to determine how long people have been getting tattooed at the temple, but the last knowledge transfer seems to have occurred around World War II.
The current main monk tattooist, Luang Pee Pan, is tattooed. Almost everywhere. He sits on the edge of the madding crowd, on a low stool, welcoming a long queue of people under his needle. A pile of cigarette packets and Red Bull bottles is stashed behind him. Right now Luang Pee Pan is covering a white pad with ink absorbed from a cheap stationary ink pad. He presses the cloth onto a young man’s flat chest. It’s the image of a tiger. The needle contraption is about 30 cm long. Without further ado, Luang Pee Pan taps, the young skinny man in front of him shakes a bit, his skin bleeds. The tattoo is fifteen centimeters wide, but it’s all done at lightning speed. The monk smokes while tattooing and he’s quick, he just hammers the lines out, wipes the skin with a dirty towel. Three minutes of pain and another mark for the rest of your life. I hope the tiger will manage to stop all bullets.
Outside in the yard, thousands sit in the sun. Part of this huge forecourt has been fenced in by blessed white thread. Inside the square of thread, more and more men turn into animals and go beserk. The heat, the alcohol, the pills, it’s all too much. A monk warns that only genuine berserkers are authorised to go mad. Should anyone be found to be in possession of alcohol or yaba, they are to be kicked out. But who is checking?
The crowd carries on regardless. Several of the men are possessed again and again. They get up, they contort, they scream. Some turn into different animals each time. They run in a straight line towards the stage. They run into the boys in white T-shirts, they bash into the soldiers. The mad men struggle and go limp. The monotone voice of a priest drones from tannoy speakers. When he pauses, there is total silence but for the cries of the currently possessed. The fattest, meanest bad man in the crowd has joined the boys in front of the stage to help catch the incoming lunatic missiles. It’s a gig. It’s a great show. It’s the final attack. The tattoo monks and the current abbot of Wat Bang Phra have climbed onto the stage. Monks and laymen drop candle-wax into a huge silver vat to make holy water. The abbot grabs a hose-pipe and sprays the crowd, which surges to the front. Everybody is up, pushing and pulling. Some are possessed, others not. Towards the stage, the crowd gets very dense, people start getting squashed. Here and there, men suddenly go beserk, scream in rage and push those around them. The heat is intense. The holy water rains down on the crowd. The tigers, Hanumans, hermits, snakes and elephants turn into young outlaws with heavy skin problems.
Also published in Tom Vater’s non-fiction book Beyond the Pancake Trench.
Amerikas geheimer Krieg in Laos am 23. Februar auf arte
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CIA Geheimkrieg Reloaded - taz Rezension
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Heute um 20.15: Amerikas geheimer Krieg in Laos - Fernsehpremiere auf arte
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