Sunrise on the horizon of an expansive sea | Contributed Photo by the author
This is my second year of spending winter in Thailand. Back home in New York, we have seen an erratic weather pattern with blistering summer days and frigid winter. In the west, wildfires raged in a large swath of California caused by spills of dry and windy days. Even here in Thailand, we are enjoying an unseasonably cool month, which in the past has been sizzlingly hot this time of the year. You don’t have to be a meteorologist to see the signs of climate change have already arrived. The bad things we do to Earth are catching up with us.
We live in the small beach town of Pak Nam Pran, a twenty-minute drive from the tourist beachfront city of Hua Hin and three and a half hours from Bangkok. Both places are in Prachuap Kiri Khan Province, one of the provinces along the coasts of the Gulf of Thailand. The Gulf is much like Manila Bay, with several provinces, including Manila, lining its coast, except it stretches beyond Thailand to the coast of Cambodia and Vietnam. My wife and I take a three-mile walk by sunrise on a paved walkway along the beach. Sunrise on the horizon of an expansive sea is something to behold, but nothing compares to the fabled Manila Bay sunset.
It doesn’t stop to amaze me how clean the beaches are and the clear water that laps upon the shore. The clean air and the smell of seawater refresh me. Sometimes, my knees begin to complain, but the joy of walking in such a pleasant place is enough to encourage me. Although there are expats living in these areas, the overwhelming number of people who live in these coastal provinces are ordinary folks.
The sea is a source of livelihood for many, and the clean beaches are a good draw for foreigners. These are good reasons to care enough about the health of the sea and the surrounding areas. But above and beyond these, they know they have to care for the place to continue reaping the fruits of the sea and leave a better place for the next generation.
It’s about attitude and perspective, not education, that counts in preserving the environment. These folks don’t treat the sea as a mere instrument to make a living or a dumpsite to dispose of one’s rubbish. They see it as an extension of their daily life, a food source, and a resource for recreation.
Thais have a good connection to their environment or nature. They believe in nature spirits that populate the land, the mountains, the sea, the river, etc. These spirits protect these places and renew them. Thus, Thais consider themselves the benefactors of these vast domains, not owners who can abuse or misuse them. There is no sense of entitlement, as if the universe is their dominion and nature to tame and control. Instead, they strive for harmony, understanding the flow of life, and communing with it.
Ancient Filipinos had the same connection with the spirit world or nature but lost it when the Spaniards came. They replaced our stewardship attitude towards the land and nature with entitlements and extractive colonial policies. A legacy perpetuated into the modern time of complete desecration of nature.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Fernando B. Perfas is an addiction specialist who has written several books and articles on the subject. He currently provides training and consulting services to various government and non-government drug treatment agencies regarding drug treatment and prevention approaches. He can be reached at fbperfas@gmail.com.
1 comment
Thank you, Dr. Ferdie Perfas, for a great article about Thailand, Climate Change and Mother Nature. I wrote an article before that Bicol cooking was heavily influenced by Siamese traders during the pre-Hispanic times of our homeland. And, hence, Bicol is the only region in the Philippines that uses lots of pepper and spices, aside from coconut milk, in cooking. I have also DNA from an ancestor from Siam, per my ancestry test in the U.S. Perhaps before this decade ends, I’ll finish my book about Thailand and Bicolandia. Perhaps you may authorize me to reprint this article and other writings you might have done, or will do, about Thailand. We can be co-authors of the coming book. I have been to Bangkok twice in the 1970s and two stop overs in the early 1980s at the old Don Muang International Airport.