Oom Magazine
Very Thai: The Contemporary Thai Living Issue
I’m the subject of a 6-page interview and photo profile as the cover story of a ‘Very Thai’ themed issue of Oom, a leading Thai lifestyle magazine. The English text is pasted below the page images.
“I came to Bangkok when I was 28 on a two month tourist visa after I had been backpacking around Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. I’m 42 now, so I’ve been here for a third of my life,” [laughs] recalled Philip Cornwel-Smith, author of the book Very Thai, which is an eye-opening perspective into the contemporary tie pop culture. And when I asked to show us the place where he thinks is “Very Thai”, without the slightest hesitation, he brought us here to Tha Prachan and Tha TIen.
“These two areas are such perfect examples of Thai popular culture that still exist in the city. With many different layers of things occurred in one place. Here you’ve got very ancient layers at communities along The Chao Phraya River that I’ve been here since the start of Bangkok. And you’ve got the picture of how the city was built and shaped. “My last job in the UK was it time out, the first city listings publisher, but I learned a lot about precision and accuracy. So I came from that background of looking minutely at restaurants, museums, sites, all these different things, and finding ways they’re related to people that makes sense. And I apply that approach to Bangkok.”
“What I'm seeing Is a transitional culture. Basically it’s the modern world hitting the traditional world. A lot of things I put into Very thai are slowly disappearing and are not archived properly. But they’re actually crucial to this land and it’s people because they’re the way Thailand dealt with modernism and they say so much about the attitudes and beliefs of the people.”
Oom asked Philip whether it’s those beliefs and attitudes that keep him here for more than a decade.
“I love the positive ways that ties absorbed everything, but with different principles from where the original is. And that is always surprising. Whenever there is a new trend, like green tea, what ties did to green tea is not what the Japanese will do to green tea. [Laughts] But it’s delightful. And that’s how your food became so interesting. After 14 years here, I still tasted some thing and it was like “Ha… another new thing!“ [Smiles] Another thing is freedom. Although Thai people are very pressed and they put up with an awful lot, they are very patient to make do with what they have. They have the apparatus to be happy among themselves. And that’s a freedom in a way.”
We ended our conversations and started walking to the Riverside. Through the evening crowd in the Square, one can see the juxtaposition of the old and the new world. Layers and layers of modern activities pile up on the pavement and small streets branching off the shop houses along the river. In the warm evening sunlight, a westerner is looking across the reflection of the sky that’s dance is before his eyes in the chow prior to advertise society where are all living in.