Taking it as a sign, apparently, the Spaniards set about their missionary business with diligence, and had a terrific run over the subsequent 300-odd years until William McKinley took the restive Philippines off their hands. Washington was planning to liberate the country until a bevy of Republican Senators intervened and, well, actually maybe we’d better hang on to those islands after all. Following further decades of colonial oppression and attendant rebellion, MacArthur fled before the Japanese, who got their wartime use out of the Philippines most notably as a death-march locale and a favored source for “comfort women.” Then the Americans came back and finally made good on their promise: Filipinos walked free in 1946.

∞  -  ∞  -  ∞  -  ∞  -  ∞

Hanging out the second story window of a professional development center in Cebu City a banner congratulates “our students who will be leaving to work in the UK and Canada!” It’s a commonly felt sentiment here. “Honestly, there’s nobody in this country who doesn’t look at that and feel some envy,” said my friend Steve (a Filipino). In the Philippines, it seems, there is no higher mark of achievement than to leave the Philippines. The government actively promotes it, urging people to move abroad if they can, and don’t forget to write– overseas Filipinos send home billions of dollars annually, making up a full 10% of the national GDP. Even the Pope has chimed in, discouraging birth control in the Philippines because human bodies are the country’s biggest export. (This in an increasingly overpopulated country: one of the only net rice importers in Asia.)

While many settle for back-breaking labor in the Middle East (posters all over town seek engineers, electricians, and myriad other professionals who would like to take their talents to Qatar), most Filipinos, it seems, would value nothing more than a one-way ticket to America. The Philippines is not alone in idealizing, even fetishizing the West– the industry for nose jobs (longer, narrower) and skin treatments (whiter, always whiter) does gangbuster business across much of Asia, catering to Hollywood notions of beauty. And to be sure, poor people in every country share dreams of a different, better life. But in the Philippines those hopes often extend even to the middle and upper classes, and seem go beyond aspirations of riches to a deeper desire to shed the culture, history, and country to which they were born.

∞  -  ∞  -  ∞  -  ∞  -  ∞

With people spread across many of the Philippines’ 7,107 islands (or 7,101 if you discount the six that disappear at high tide), it’s not surprising that there wasn’t much holding the archipelago together as a single nation in the centuries before the Spanish arrival. So it’s tricky to separate what in the culture is “Spanish” or “American” from what’s truly “Filipino;” after 400 years of colonialism, nothing is pure. The delicacies of Filipino cuisine– spit-roast pig, roast chicken, and so on– mostly have discernible Spanish roots. Tagalog, the national language, hardly holds together a country of over 150 spoken dialects, and education defaults to English after secondary school. Even the emblem of Cebu– the icon of the Santo Niño, whose image is in every shop and restaurant, every government building– is an artifact of the first Western landing.

Difficult as it is to point to elements of distinct Filipino culture, it’s also hard to say with much precision what Filipino “looks like.” The brown skin and flat nose of Southeast Asia pervade, but there is great variety in color, shape and size, owing in no small part to the ample Western and Japanese blood floating around the gene pool. Given this colonial rape-history, the diversity of the Filipino ancestry hardly holds the warm and fuzzy “melting pot” connotations we enjoy in the U.S. Rather, the racial variety, the amalgamated culture– these things are to Filipinos a source of shame, reminders of their country’s emasculating history.

I can’t help but compare the Philippines to Thailand, the only country in Southeast Asia to never have been colonized (at least since the Burmese were sent packing in the 18th century). Thai national pride– in their food, their king, their history, their ethnic diversity– is palpable and omnipresent, expounded by the government and shared by the people. China is perhaps a middle-ground example, where the country’s humiliation during the Opium Wars is worn as a chip on the national shoulder. But China’s brush with colonialism never came close to drowning out Chinese identity, and the denizens of Beijing will seize any opportunity to remind you that their country invented spaghetti, gunpowder, and soccer during 5,000 glorious years of uninterrupted self-rule, thankyouverymuch.

There are many Filipinos, of course, who don’t fit the typical mold. Many of my colleagues, though they hope to travel the world and to visit their family in the U.S., are happy in the Philippines and proud of their country. And rightfully so: the mindset that the Philippines lacks a national, cultural identity to be proud of is nothing more than a bogus attitude. This is a land of great natural beauty; the people, taken as a whole, are as warm, friendly, and good-humored as people can be; and the charm of the country’s quirks and peculiarities won’t be lost on any visitor. Manny Pacquiao, a Filipino born into poverty, is now the world’s highest salaried athlete and the most exciting boxer in years (and a member of the Philippine parliament). Hardly quiescent subjects, Filipinos waged formidable revolts against first the Spanish and then the Americans, yielding an array of revolutionary heroes and considerable innovation in guerrilla warfare tactics. And Filipinos accomplished the world’s first bloodless revolution in 1986, getting rid of the Marcos family, following it up with the world’s first “text message revolution” in 2001, tossing out Joseph Estrada. But the government remains corrupt and disappointing, and for those few Filipinos who would fly the flag, it’s hard to be a nationalist alone.

Filipinos do come together, however, in the Catholic Church (Muslim separatists in Mindanao notwithstanding). The Spaniards were undoubtedly successful in their mission and even the most secular, educated Filipinos find community in the pews each Sunday. At no time of year is this more apparent than Christmastime: Filipinos go absolutely bananas for Christmas. A colleague lamented to me recently that productivity across the country drops through the floor as soon as the “‘bers” arrive. And that’s not “‘ber” as in “brr, it’s cold,” rather, that’s “‘ber” as in months that end in B-E-R. On September 1, the clerks and cashiers of every department store don their Santa hats, slip Nat King Cole into the CD player, and the hysteria escalates steadily for four months. In October, planning begins for Christmas festitivies, and sometime in November, everybody starts wishing everybody else a “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!”

In the final weeks before Christmas, every business, every workplace shuts down for a day or two and hosts a party at which “presentations” of singing and/or dancing are more or less required of all attendees. At the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science: Virology Research Unit (my workplace), the IT guys will be singing a song while the admin staff does a line dance. The staff at the Mayflower Hotel abandon their posts at every opportunity to review their steps. Even the ground crew at the international shipping company shows up early to work to slip out behind the warehouse by the runway, kicking their feet and waving their hands to get ready for the party. Last night, my final evening in the Philippines, I went down to Fuente Osmeña circle, the center of uptown Cebu, where a stage had been set up so the city could host their own party each night of advent. The students and staff of the Asian College of Technology were the evening’s hosts, and in the glow of a 50-foot “tree” of lights, in front of at least a thousand laughing, applauding people packed into the circle, the faculty of the Phys Ed department performed their dance– part ballroom, part hip hop– to Mariah Carey, and brought down the house.

To my foreign eyes, the obsession with Christmas seems a little bizarre, a little excessive. But it’s a charming part of living in this country, and without a doubt, it’s a really, truly, wholly Filipino thing.

The move was made possible largely thanks to the generous political cover of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s foremost opposition leader and President Obama’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner. Ms. Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, which sat out last year’s elections in protest, has decided to contest an upcoming election. Ms. Suu Kyi will herself run in the election, and is all but certain to be filling a seat in parliament. Though she has spent the better part of the past two decades under house arrest and has as good reason as anyone to suspect the motives of President Thein Sein’s incipient reforms, Ms. Suu Kyi has been upfront in her readiness to meet the government’s reforms in good faith.

Secretary Clinton sat down with Ms. Suu Kyi– it was their first face-to-face meeting after much previous correspondence– and met with President Thein Sein, addressing a number of issues that have kept the U.S. and Burma apart. Atop the agenda was Burma’s collusion with North Korea on missile and (possibly) nuclear technology. Secretary Clinton also pushed Thein Sein to continue internal reforms by freeing political prisoners and resolving ongoing conflicts with ethnic minority groups.

Coming out of the visit, Secretary Clinton announced that the U.S. would relax some restrictions on economic development aid, allowing the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to work in Burma, and promising $1.2 million in health, education and humanitarian projects to be administered by the United Nations. She and Thein Sein also discussed the possibility of upgrading diplomatic relations and exchanging ambassadors– a move that Ms. Suu Kyi has also advocated.

In the week since the Secretary’s visit, some reciprocal progress has already been made in Burma: Public protest has been legalized, though protesters must register with the government five days in advance, and provide authorities with the substance of their protest. Additionally, the government signed a cease-fire with the Shan State Army, a rebel group in Eastern Burma, and has plans to open two border crossings to Thailand that have both been closed for over a year.

Of course, these are just the first stirrings of change, and it would be unwise to welcome Burma into the brotherhood of democracies just yet. Over 1,600 political prisoners, including many journalists, remain incarcerated, and the government has unresolved conflicts with Karen and Kachin minority groups. Given the way the government brutally suppressed an uprising of monks in 2007, it would be naive to think such violence lies safely in the past.

But President Thein Sein seems earnest in his desire to reform Burma. He has travelled around Southeast Asia more than most of his fellow Generals, and probably has a clear picture of just how far Burma lags behind its neighbors. While it’s surely fun to have absolute power, it’s probably less fun if you’re ruling a poor and backwards country. The opaque government is believed to be sharply divided, with hardliners eager to undermine any attempt at change. Garnering small prizes like a visit from Secretary Clinton is likely to solidify the position of reformers and encourage more genuine progress. U.S. economic sanctions remain in place, as they should, and Burma’s small steps toward democratic governance should be met equally with gestures such as those announced last week.

Of course, the U.S. has a strategic reason for promoting a more democratic Burma: seeking another ally to counterbalance growing Chinese power in the region. The major story of President Obama’s appearance at the ASEAN Summit was how explicitly he delineated what has long been tacitly understood as the goal of U.S. policy in the region: just as China desires a “string of pearls“– military bases and diplomatic alliances around the Indian Ocean– the U.S. seeks strong bilateral relationships with the states surrounding China. In a recent FT op-ed National Security Advisor Tom Donilon made clear the “return” of the U.S. to Asia, forecasting “an intensified American role in this vital region.”

At the Summit, President Obama waded into a long-standing dispute over the sea lanes and resources of the South China Sea, heading a group of ASEAN leaders in confronting Premier Wen Jiabao over China’s sweeping and aggressive claim to the entire sea. While President Obama didn’t take an explicit position in the dispute, Secretary Clinton, in a visit to Manila, recently referred to it as the “West Philippine Sea,” which has delighted the media and government here. Premier Wen seemed surprised and somewhat unnerved, and Xinhua, the Chinese state-controlled media has fired back with headlines like “South China Sea matters not a whit to Philippines, U.S.”

Since the arrival of the military junta in 1962, Burma has acted essentially as a Chinese vassal state, wholly dependent on its neighbor to the north for trade and investment. Among the more substantive changes of the recent months, however, President Thein Sein responded to a popular outcry against the construction of a dam, canceling the Chinese-led project and infuriating Beijing. While Burma and China are sure to remain closely allied, the recent tussle appears to signal Thein Sein’s discomfort at depending exclusively on this alliance. The U.S. has exploited this opening to gain some influence with Burma and balance against Chinese regional hegemony.

The events of the past months have been good progress in Burma, but swift regression is possible, and a Burma that recedes to total authoritarianism is a Burma that drops right back into China’s pocket. The U.S. is wise to meet their baby steps with baby steps, and continue to encourage reform, sluggish though it will surely be.

As painfully conscientious and accommodating hosts, the Thais are acutely aware that the Western palate can’t typically keep up; more than once I’ve been regretfully informed that there’s nothing on the menu weak enough for me. I of course insist, and sometimes have to do battle– all but sign a waiver– just to get my dishes normally spiced. Because, damn, it’s delicious.

Now, I’m not particularly passionate about spicy food.  Hot sauces give me more pain than pleasure, and I was never the kid munching on Hot Fries just to prove he could. Ordering wings? Great, I’ll have the mild, double blue cheese, double ranch. Call it cowardice, call it what you will, it just ain’t my jam.

Thai spice is different. It still hurts– it definitely still hurts, and makes your nose run and your eyes water– but it’s used so artfully, and the spice is so much more flavorful than vinegary Tabasco… it’s kind of worth it. Every bite of a cashew chicken stir fry scorched my face off recently, but I couldn’t stop eating it, and when I came out the other side, I emerged not just stronger but fat and happy, too. Over the past six months, I’ve adjusted to it somewhat, and it was with a degree of satisfaction that I recently watched a visiting American colleague cry into his papaya salad while I munched happily away.

Now and then, though, things get a little intense for even the Thais themselves. At lunch, I watched my friendly coworker Sai frantically wave her hands, trying to get a breeze going in her mouth after a too-aggressive bite of a five-alarm green bean and shrimp paste salad. Another time at dinner, a more stalwart friend swallowed a bite of spiced crab, shot a wide-eyed look of betrayal at the waiter, and then conversation fell silent for a few minutes as he gazed off somewhere in the middle distance, a look on his face as though recalling a cruel memory, tears streaming down his face.

Of course, it’s not all flame and fireworks. If, sometime after next week, you ask me, “So, Sam, gosh, I’m sure a million people have already asked you this, but, shoot, how was Thailand?” I will almost certainly blurt out something weirdly desperate-sounding about craving the 90 cent bowls of chicken soup, or the duck noodles, or the minced pork, fried pork, grilled pork, delicious pork. The Thais take their food seriously, and for that, I am thankful:

The glasses turn meat-brushing into an intellectual endeavor

Fried balls and tasty greens

Fried delicious

She'll burn your face off soon as look at you.

Would you like some moustache with your papaya salad?

Pad Thai!

Calm before the evening food market

Gai lived in Springdale, Arkansas, working as an ice cream truck driver. He’s in the desserts business here in Kamphaeng Phet, running the black grass jelly factory (Made from twigs! Tastes… like twigs!) he inherited from his father, so peddling Chaco Tacos could perhaps be construed as relevant work experience. He and four other drivers covered the whole tri-state area (that would be northwest Arkansas, southwest Missouri and eastern Oklahoma) and Gai learned two great truths about America during his time. The first, and more enduring, is that the jingle of the ice cream truck is effective at luring nubile teenage girls from poolside to sidewalk wearing naught but their bikinis and the glimmering sheen of perspiration. This was something of a revelation for Gai, and a while a great boost to his enthusiasm for the work, caused major interference with his focus on the bottom line, and led to declining sales as he cruised through certain particularly fruitful neighborhoods hour after hour, day after day, his ice cream truck jingle turned up to eleven.

The second revelation he put to me this way:

“Sam, have you ever peed in a bottle?”

“No, Gai, I don’t believe I have.”

“I think all Americans pee in bottles because stopping at the gas station is a waste of time.”

And now we all know something more about what goes on inside ice cream trucks.

He worked at this job for four months. Then he spent three days in New York, two days in Las Vegas, and then he came home to Kamphaeng Phet.

Returning the quizzical look I had given him, Gai asked: “What are YOU doing in Kamphaeng Phet?” Not selling SnoCones, no, but my six month interlude in the one of Thailand’s flyover states is perhaps no more absurd than Gai’s adventure. If you sat down to match up the Thai states with their U.S. analogues– Phuket is the Florida of Thailand, Mae Hong Son is surely the Alaska, maybe Ayutthaya is Massachusetts– Kamphaeng Phet would be lucky to be paired up with Arkansas. More likely, it would be left off the list, among the 26 leftover Thai provinces after the fifty slots were filled.

To the tourist, this town is notable only for its location alongside Highway 1, exactly halfway between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. A convenient stopover, says Lonely Planet, which halfheartedly describes Kamphaeng Phet as “one of the more pleasant provincial capitals,” makes brief mention of this city’s ancient ruins, and leaves it, more or less, at that. A hundred kilometers to the east is Sukhothai, also about halfway between Thailand’s two big tourist destinations, and home to the spectacular ruins of Thailand’s ancient capital. That, needless to say, is where the tourists stop over on their north-south journeys. Visit the ancient temples in the Kamphaeng Phet Historical Park any weekday, and you’re liable to have the entire park (“A UNESCO World Heritage Site!,” screams every government billboard in the province.) entirely to yourself.

If you’re Thai, though, those ruins actually mean something. Kamphaeng Phet, which means “Diamond Wall,” was installed on the banks of the River Ping sometime in the 15th century as the northeastern outpost of the Sukhothai Kingdom. This diamond wall was built to keep out the Burmese, and with only a few lapses (e.g. the 1767 sacking of Ayutthaya– oops), Kamphaeng Phet got the job done. So I feel stirrings of pride when I board the bus in Bangkok and tell my fellow travelers that, no, I’m not headed to Chiang Mai, I’ll be getting off in Kamphaeng Phet.  “Ah, Kamphaeng,” they say, with the same steely nostalgia of a Civil War buff recalling Pickett’s Charge. “The wall.”

The commotion halts and it’s as though someone pressed pause on the market’s activity. The customers stop their perusal and stand still, the cooks stop serving up dishes. The volume drops and the soaring chorus of the anthem fills the lull.  There’s nothing weird or oppressive about it: nobody sitting stands up, nobody bursts into song; the man at the grill keeps turning his squid, and conversations continue in quiet tones. And it helps that the song itself is merciful: a brief 45 seconds of stirring patriotic ardor, and then it’s over, and everything starts moving and making noise again.

The TV stations all take this 6pm pause, too, and before any movie is shown in a cinema, the audience stands to hear the anthem. When I’m in Bangkok on a Sunday afternoon, I’ll regularly make my way to a Thai army base, where the military is so generous as to let a group of foreigners play frisbee on their playing fields. At 6pm sharp, though, the game comes to an abrupt halt, the flag is lowered, the anthem is played, and only when it’s all over does everyone start running again while the officers fold the flag.

It’s a nice observance, I find. I’m not sure I’d want to listen to the endless, maudlin Star Spangled Banner every evening, but I appreciate the momentary pause Thais take each evening to reflect on the great good fortune to be born a Thai. Though I can’t help but wonder if, while they’re at it, they’re also delivering a coded threat to people like me, right there in the lyrics:

Every inch of Thailand belongs to the Thais.
It has long maintained its sovereignty,
Because the Thais have always been united.
The Thai people are peace-loving, But they are no cowards at war.
Nor shall they suffer tyranny.
All Thais are ready to give up every drop of blood
For the nation’s safety, freedom and progress.

If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda.

I’m not going to dwell on Brooks’ ridiculous geographic delineations– non-college graduates living in Manhattan aren’t living the high life compared to non-college graduates in Scranton.  Nor am I going to waste too many pixels on the sneering tone he adopts elsewhere in the article, implying that the wealth of the 99th percentile is getting publicity because the “liberal arts majors” in percentiles 93-98 are jealous. I’m just going to rewrite those two sentences another way:

If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to stop global warming, then you have a much bigger and different agenda.

Indeed I would.  Because they’re two different problems. Two totally different solutions. And what Brooks has done, in classic Brooksian style, is throw a big fat liberal red herring: You’re a piddling bourgeois if you’re focused on income inequality when there are more important issues out there, he says. As a matter of fact, I will gladly acknowledge that there are bigger, deeper issues than the spiraling incomes of top 1%– indeed, the very issue that Brooks raises is one of them. But that doesn’t mean income disparity isn’t an issue:

What that chart (cribbed from MoJo) is saying is that in the past 30 years, the top 1% have tripled their income, while everyone else has made, at best, a modest gain. In the past decade, incomes for the bottom 90 (nine-zero) percent of workers have actually dropped, while the super-rich have prospered.  And many of those same super-rich– I’m thinking of those in the employ of certain  large financial institutions– actually contributed to the very real economic pain suffered by everyone else.

This is an issue, and being furious seems like a pretty rational response.  Of course, being furious isn’t the solution– the solution is more tax brackets and higher rates at the top– but being furious, and, yes, taking your fury to Zucotti Park where you can put it on public display has proven a reasonably productive step in putting this issue on the table.

And Brooks casually acknowledges that it is an issue, but uses his platform on the Times Op-Ed page to undermine and obfuscate it by pointing to another issue altogether, one liable to pluck at the consciences of his bourgeois liberal arts readers. In the words of HAL 9000: Don’t do that, Dave. It’s disingenuous.

And that’s about when I left.  Happy Halloween!

Still, the highways to Bangkok are underwater; I only made it up the river on a marathon 13 hour bus journey, tiptoeing along narrow, rice paddy roads, trying to stay dry (with mixed results: at one point the driver was ankle-deep in sloshing brown floodwater). So I, like most people in town, consider myself more or less stuck: here I’ve been for two whole weeks, and here I’ll be for two more, uninterrupted.

Kamphaeng Phet is a pleasant town. A city, it should be properly called, as capital of its eponymous province. Think of Kamphaeng Phet as a cousin of Des Moines: the small provincial capital in the heartland, politically moderate, off the tourist circuit, where bulky women roast nuts in honey and dance to country music at the annual festival. A bit more history, here, perhaps: Kamphaeng Phet means “diamond wall” and the crumbling city walls faintly remind visitors that centuries ago, this was the northwestern-most outpost of the Sukhothai empire charged with the solemn task of fending off Burmese invaders. When I tell a fellow prisoner of the Bangkok-to-Chiang Mai bus where I’m headed, he responds with what I gladly interpret as a look of steely significance. “Ah, Kamphaeng.” The wall.

You might say I’m something of an anomaly here. Big round eyes, enormous nose, skin that is either buttery white or a tender pink, depending on the day of the week– and five awkward inches taller than anyone else around. And there’s my ingenuous, all-American smile that I employ in my own defense whenever I am addressed; did I mention that almost nobody here speaks any English, and that my Thai is hardly deserving of the title “my Thai”? I think of myself as White Man Zero. Or just “Farang,” in the lingua franca. (Actually, I’m told that the word Farang is derived from the word Frank. So think of me as Sam the Frank, if that suits you better.)

I leave the hospital for lunch with a bevy of young nurses and researchers. They’re all just out of college, they’re all giddy and giggly, and they all speak the same fifteen words of English (a nearly identical vocabulary to “my Thai”). Squatting on plastic stools around a dinged-up metal table, waiting for our lunch, Wit (“like ‘Sandwich’,” he tells me) is the one tasked with communicating to the Farang. This is partly because he doubles the average with a vocabulary of 30 solid English words, and because he’s the only BOY (that’s one of the fifteen). “Do you eat spicy?” Wit asks. “Sure,” I say. Giggles all around. “I eat spicy,” I attempt in Thai. More giggles.

Mostly they just carry on their lunchtime conversation without paying too much heed to their lumbering colleague– I get boring pretty quickly– but whenever something new happens, a hush briefly falls, and twelve eyes follow my moves. Someone will make a remark involving the vocab word “Saam.” I assume it’s something along the lines of “Oh, Saam is quite expert at removing the bones from his fish.” But it could just as easily be “Tomorrow let’s not bring Saam to lunch with us.” Regardless, giggles ensue.

I do regularly make more earnest attempts at conversation, though it tends to quickly devolve into me saying yes or no almost arbitrarily to what I blithely hope are yes/no questions. To the Thai speaker, a typical conversation probably feels like having a conversation with a nearly deaf person:

Me: “Hello.”

Thai Person Generous Enough to Attempt Conversation with Farang: “Oh, do you speak Thai?!”

Me: Embarrassed smile “A little bit.”

TPGEACF: “Are you staying in Kamphaeng Phet?”

Me: Irrationally emboldened “New York. America.”

TPGEACF: “No, no. I asked if you were staying here. In Kamphaeng Phet.”

Me: “Oh, Kamphaeng Phet! Very beautiful.”

TPGEACF: “Right. Ok. Well, nice to meet you.”

Me: “I eat spicy. Very delicious.”

TPGEACF: “Great. Well, I’m going to go now.”

Me: “Very sorry, Thai not good.”

TPGEACF: “You don’t say.”

Me: Ingenuous All-American Smile

I go out for a jog as the sun is setting beyond the River Ping, creating another spectacular light show of pink and orange clouds lit up on the pale blue sky (that’s the sun that’s creating the light show, not me). As I emerge onto the road, I get shouts– “Hello!”– from the motorbike that rolls by, weighed down with half the seventh grade and somebody’s older brother. Running down a side street, a mangy dog awakens from a stupor and flips its wig– even it knows something isn’t quite right here– and comes bounding, barking after me, snapping at my sneakers. I turn onto the river road, and a high school girl in her white polyester uniform sitting by the river throws an elbow into the ribs of her similarly attired friend; the friend follows her gaze, sees me panting, dripping by, and looks back at her friend, returning the jab. Giggles follow me up the river.