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Sept. 14, 2012
A city of contrast and color
Bangkok teems with relentless activity, but also ways to unwind.
LAUREN KRAMER
For the five Jewish Israeli prisoners sitting in Bangkok prisons, Thailand is not a fun place, at all. If they’re feeling any gratefulness whatsoever, it may well be directed at Chabad of Thailand and Rabbi Nechamya Wilhelm, who visits the prisoners twice a month, bringing hope and kosher food with him whenever he can.
“One’s in for murder and the other four are locked up for drug charges,” he told me when I meet him at the Or Menachem Chabad House in Bangkok.
It’s no picnic in a Thai prison, where up to 40 prisoners are incarcerated in a single room without beds and almost no food.
“It’s basically like a zoo, but with humans behind the cages,” said Mushka Kantor, 19, adding she felt traumatized after visiting the prison once with her father, Rabbi Yosef Kantor, Thailand’s chief rabbi.
Two of the Jewish prisoners have been sentenced to death but are unlikely to be killed in a Thai jail because they are foreigners, Wilhelm said. Their feet are shackled with five-kilogram chains, and one has been in solitary confinement for 18 months straight. If there’s any hope on the horizon, it’s this: thanks to an agreement between Thailand and Israel, once their cases are closed, they will be released and sent home within four to eight years.
Though the rabbi’s stories of Jewish incarceration in Thai prisons send chills down my spine, this is not the Bangkok I see on my first visit to Thailand. The city teems with relentless activity, from traffic jams that make Toronto’s 401 look like a breeze, to street vendors chopping fresh coconuts, frying whole fish and preparing a variety of Thai dishes on busy thoroughfares with little more than a portable stove and a couple of pans. On every corner, Thai culture is palpable – you see it, inhale it and feel its frenetic pace all around.
One of my favorite respites from the constant stimulation quickly becomes the many massage parlors that dot the city. For less than $10, any number of blissful, hour-long treatments is possible, from back massages to foot and leg treatments. The Thai masseuses I encounter are experts at delivering therapeutic relaxation and, almost daily, I succumb to their hands for a series of treatments that rejuvenate, comfort and energize road-weary limbs.
The oddest of these treatments by far is the fish spa occupied by hundreds of hungry Garra Rufa and Honey fish. After much persuasion, I agree to tentatively dip my feet into the fish tank and allow them to be swarmed and nibbled by the schools of fish. I’m promised that, with some of my dead skin cells removed, the skin on my feet and legs will be smoother and healthier than when they were first immersed.
At first, the sensation is unbearably ticklish but, after a few minutes, the sensitivity wears off and I’m no longer as fazed by the prospect of being sacrificial fish food. For some of these fish, my feet will be their last meal, as the mortality rate in the tank is high. And, after all the fish I’ve eaten in my life, it’s somewhat comforting to know that, for once, the tables are turned: the fish are getting a good meal at my expense.
Later, when it’s my turn for lunch, I head to the Kosher Place in the Banglampoo neighborhood, an area known for its many backpackers. The restaurant is located on the ground floor of the Or Menachem Chabad House. One floor up, Jewish travelers are checking their e-mail and surfing the Web on complimentary computers. There are couches where the road weary can relax, and a synagogue and banquet room another floor up. Each Friday and Saturday, free Shabbat meals are provided to however many Jews turn up at Chabad’s door – no reservations required.
Rabbis Wilhelm and Kantor have created a superb Jewish infrastructure for travelers to Thailand. An Israeli shochet is flown in a few times a year to supply kosher meat and the rabbis supervise milking at a local farm to ensure the availability of chalav Yisrael milk. In Bangkok alone there are three synagogues: Even Chen (Sephardi), Beit Elisheva (Orthodox) and Or Menachem Chabad House.
Mushka Kantor, who has lived in Thailand since infancy and speaks fluent Yiddish, Hebrew, Thai and English, gives me a quick tour of Beit Elisheva, a synagogue established in 1966. There’s a mikvah outside its doors, and a Judaics class proceeding inside for two children. The Jewish summer camp starts up again in a couple of weeks, Kantor explained, and she’s one of the teachers at the day school, which is attended by 15 kids.
While English-speaking Jews tend to frequent Beit Elisheva, many of the Israelis in Thailand stop in at Chabad. In high season, more than 400 Jewish travelers – tourists and businessmen – arrive for a Friday-night meal. They gather around the banquet tables, their political and religious distinctions dissolved by the knowledge that, here in Thailand, their common Jewishness is what brings them together.
“We’re uniquely positioned to provide a place to hang out, whether you’re a Charedi or a kibbutznik,” said Wilhelm. “This is a meeting that doesn’t tend to happen in Israel and, from both sides of the table, it opens their minds. That’s the best part of my work here – seeing Jews united.”
Lauren Kramer is an award-winning writer in Richmond. Read her work at laurenblogshere.com.
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