Purchasing Power

I mentioned in my last post that American purchasing power in Thailand is astounding. You'll recall that Leah and I each rented bikes in Kanchanaburi for 25 Thai baht/day: one US dollar is about 30 baht. Some other pricing examples:

-A made-to-order dinner of green curry and rice at a restaurant = 60 baht ($2). The same meal from a street cart is even less.

$2 worth of food in Thailand.

-An air conditioned guest house room with private bathroom, for two people = 500 baht/night (<$20).

-Laundry service for a week's worth of clothes from two people = 140 baht (<$5), including  cleaning of sneakers caked with mud (requested) and the nylon bag I dropped the clothes off in (a happy surprise).

-A 250 mL bottle of sunscreen at 7-11 (the cheapest and largest we could find) = over 300 baht ($10). Yeah, we can't figure that one out either.

Sunscreen notwithstanding, the enormous difference between the prices of goods and services in Thailand as compared to the United States or Western Europe emphasizes the income disparity between developing and developed countries to a degree that is impossible to overlook. The average per capita income in Thailand is around $8,200/year, or just over $22/day, meaning that even students like me and Leah can easily afford purchases that most Thais cannot.

But purchasing power and the privilege it bestows is a double-edged sword.* It is, obviously, wonderful to live in a place where a taxi ride pretty much from anywhere to anywhere sets you back only a couple of bucks. Leah and I have run into a bunch of Australian, European, and American expats who have moved to Thailand for that very reason. Yet I'm always beset by a sense of guilt when I hand the cabbie his hundred baht--a feeling that even though I'm almost certainly being charged way more than standard fares for locals, I'm the one ripping the driver off by not paying him nearly as much as he deserves.

One can make many points to fend off the guilt. Tourism bolsters the local economy. Even a small amount of my money goes a lot farther in Thailand than I realize. Standards of living are much lower here than they are at home. Money doesn't buy happiness, and essentially all of the Thais we've met seem perfectly happy. People don't want charity, and even if they did, I can't even come close to helping everyone. I tip more generously than a lot of people do, anyway.

At the end of the day, though, these are all rationalizations, and they're uncomfortably similar to the ones that I make on a regular basis in the U.S. whenever I encounter a janitor, taxi driver, or gas station cashier. Indeed, one of the blessing/curses of travel is that it forces me to acknowledge the ubiquity and degree of such rationalizations in my everyday life.

I'm reading a book right now called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles about the intricacies of Chinese food in the U.S. and the rest of the world,** which spends a chapter discussing the economics of Chinese restaurant labor. Over the past several decades, thousands and thousands of Chinese immigrants have paid up to $70,000 each (a large sum to the average American, and astronomical to the average Chinese) to be illegally smuggled into the U.S. Many, speaking little or no English and therefore facing limited job opportunities, end up working twelve-hour shifts seven days a week for decades at Chinese restaurants scattered in nowhere towns across the U.S.

I'm sure that the situation is similar for restaurant workers from other developing countries as well. And this is something that I overlook with a 20% tip.

This post is clearly of a much different flavor*** than prior and forthcoming posts. Leah and I have been talking a lot about these issues, and as you can see, we haven't really resolved any of them--nor do we expect to. But we welcome thoughts or comments that any of you might have!

While we've been talking, we've also been traveling. In lieu of a full recap of the past several s\days, we'll be posting a kind of photo essay later today. And I'll pick up next time with details of how I used my Thai purchasing power to receive minor surgery for a hundred bucks.

*Of course, travel to any country (even one in which you don't benefit from a favorable exchange rate) is a privilege in and of itself. Business Insider reported that in 2012, about 1 billion tourists traveled internationally--less than 1/7 of the global population. Assuming that many of these are repeat travelers, the percentage of people in the world who have ever left their home country is considerably lower: less than 5%, by some estimates.

We're some of the lucky few who get to see places like this.

**From which I'm learning some fascinating things, by the way. There are more Chinese restaurants in the U.S. than the number of McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC establishments combined. There is an enormous black market of smuggled shipments of chicken feet and pork trotters thrown out by Chinese restaurants in the U.S. (which are patronized by Americans, who don't like them) to supply Chinese restaurants in China (which are patronized by Chinese, who do). General Tso's chicken is named after an actual general. Soy sauce from La Choy Food Products, Inc., the company that produces over 40% of the shelf-stable Asian products sold in the U.S., doesn't actually contain any soy.

***And length, because I'm now in Chiang Mai at a hotel with computers in the lobby that are much easier to type on than Leah's iPad.