Last week your columnist reported from the safety of his luxurious room at the Avani Atrium Hotel on New Phetchaburi Road, Bangkok, where he lamented the decline of the area’s red-light district of a quarter of a century ago. Lamented? Hardly. But that is beside the point.
Your columnist continues to write from his luxurious room, interrupted only by a knock on the door just then by a maid inquiring as to whether I would require my bed to be “turned down”. Having had a lifetime of being turned down I sent her away. Besides I have something interesting to tell you.
This week I went from one extreme to another. One day I was swanning around the hotel, my only worry being what to choose from a formidable buffet, and the next, I was in an area considered the most dangerous and deadly in Thailand — the southernmost province of Narathiwat.
Narathiwat is one of the “big three”, namely Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, that constitute the area notorious for its bombings, shootings, lootings and killings on a daily basis. The killings are as merciless as they are cowardly; primary targets include teachers and Buddhist monks, as Muslim separatists continue their relentless goal to create, or from an historical point of view, reclaim, their land.
We stress over the Isis attacks around the world; just the other week we saw mass killings in Pakistan, Jakarta, Cameroon and Istanbul. This kind of terrorism goes on daily in the three southern provinces. Not that we’re allowed to call them “terrorists” because it sounds bad; the Thais would like us to refer to them as “insurgents”, reminding us of Shakespeare’s rose by any other name.
Thailand does not need an IS-style attack to become a victim of terrorism. We are already the country with the highest rate of terrorism in Southeast Asia according to the Global Terrorism Index, and No 8 in the world. In 10 years at least 6,000 people are dead and another 10,000 injured thanks to brutal terrorists who kill in the name of their bizarre interpretation of spirituality.
I have never been afraid to travel to the “big three” … within reason. One of my friends I have known for 25 years lives and works in Pattani. A devout Muslim, he is the epitome of goodness; a family man who eschews the violence but believes in his faith and culture and the right of his people to administer themselves.
“Would you come to visit my family if I invited you?” he asked me after he’d fallen off the map for a few years.
“I’m not afraid of what’s going on there,” I said. “The day we stop doing things because of terrorists is the day the terrorists win. It would be an honour and privilege for me to stay with you in Pattani city.”
“Not Pattani city. We live 40km away, in the red zone.”
“Fergeddaboudit,” I said.
The Pattani region (as it is called) is a huge tract of land — about 11,000 square kilometres — and the violence takes place in some of the most picturesque and, dare I say it, serene parts of Thailand you are going to visit. It’s deadly, but it’s intensely beautiful.
My journey to Narathiwat began in Hat Yai, Songkhla. The two-hour trip south is through towns familiar to anybody who follows the news, because of specific cases of carnage that have occurred there. It wasn’t the case, however, for the first town we passed by. That was Thepa, famous for its fried chicken, but we were on a tight schedule so we chose not to drop in.
Soon we were in Pattani, the first of the three provinces, and you know you’ve arrived thanks to the increased army checkpoints and barricades and sand bags, as soldiers, just out of their teens, clutch rifles almost as big as they are while inspecting your vehicle and driver’s licence.
What a beautiful highway; it does what so many other coastal roads in Thailand cannot do — it actually runs by the ocean.
Look out to the left and you see a vast expanse of beach with clear sand and deep-blue ocean. Single long-tail boats break up the blueness. There are no high rises, no makeshift beer bars, no weather-beaten masseuses wandering the sands. And to think Phuket or Pattaya was once like this.
Ten kilometres from Narathiwat airport and we pass through Ba-Jeu where a series of bombings attracted the country’s attention a year or so ago. I wrote about it in this column; a primary school teacher months away from retirement escaped death three times on her way to and from school during bomb blasts, only to refuse all offers of early retirement for fear the children would not have a teacher.
Narathiwat itself is a small, quaint town covered in palm trees with a stunning beach at Chulabhorn Naval Base just out of town.
(Serenity masks the underbelly; this naval base is where teachers come to learn target practice, since guns are as important as chalk and blackboards down here.)
What a place to have a beach holiday! Imagine tens of kilometres of virgin beach, thanks to it being owned by the military and no chance of a five-star resort ever turning a profit.
Incredibly, Narathiwat does attract an annual 1.3 million tourists, though about half are Thais, and the rest Malays. The number of Western tourists is minuscule.
Another glimpse into what lurks beneath the surface are the soldiers who stand, backs to the road, along the main roads of the town. In the afternoon as students stream out of schools, they cluster around school gates, because of the propensity of these pathetic terrorists to target teachers in their quest to disrupt society.
I spent a morning with the medical students of Princess of Narathiwat University. This is a relatively new establishment, 10 years old, with brand new buildings and even a hospital. Between 20 to 30 students study medicine here in a programme where they are obliged to, upon graduating, spend three years as rural doctors in the region. The university buildings are large and predominantly empty, owing to their newness, and most of the students are studying in the safer Songkhla province until next year.
These students, Muslim and Buddhist, are vibrant, inquisitive and enthusiastic, hardly traits you would expect from the inhabitants of a violent environment.
They gave me hope. I left Narathiwat in high spirits, not just because of the sugar rush from the roti and cha-chuck tea the area is famous for. The visit gave me hope that goodness could prevail, and that places like Narathiwat would one day open to tourists and commerce and peace.
Hope?
A mere six hours after I passed through Thepa, famous for its fried chicken, two bombs exploded at a restaurant there killing one and injuring another seven. In Yala a man was shot dead riding a motorcycle and a bomb went off injuring three.
The next day the following took place — in Narathiwat a bomb exploded at Tak Bai, injuring eight soldiers accompanying teachers home from school. A man was ambushed and shot dead in Mayo, Pattani. In Yala, a rubber tapper and his wife were gunned down in a Raman rubber plantation. And an army sergeant shot his own father dead in Bang Kro, Pattani.
All in the space of 24 hours.
Our hope, like the violence, remains relentless.
