In the spring of 1886, Ernest Satow wrote to his friend W.G. Aston in Japan that his recent journey to the Lao states had been "on the whole a pleasant one, and proved to be very necessary from an official point of view. But it took a terribly long time."
The trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and back took 101 days and he traveled by boat, elephant, pony and on foot. Among these, travel by elephant was the most trying. "It (he or she) appears to move each leg separately, and the rocking motion thus communicated is extremely fatiguing." When he descended from his mount "my loins ached as if they had been well beaten."
Though the sound of their bells echoing among the Thai hills reminded Satow pleasantly of Switzerland, the elephant remained unwelcome transport. By the time the party had walked enough for one day, and climbed into their howdahs, they discovered that the merit of the pachyderms was that "they make you so uncomfortable that in a short time you feel going on foot to be less fatiguing."
The going was rough, and though Satow was not blazing any trails or venturing where ne'er white man had gone before, he nonetheless was later able to write to his great friend F.V. Dickins, "I visited some old ruined temples which as yet are quite unknown to Europeans." These he describes and speculates about in this travel diary. He also includes many a botanical, zoological and anthropological detail.
What else Satow was up to is not mentioned. Yet the whole expensive journey probably had a political purpose ("necessary from an official point of view") and the traveler was, after all, a diplomat.
This was something he had not been when he wrote the notes that later became his famous book, "A Diplomat in Japan." Then he had been a mere student interpreter and legation language secretary, though, as Nigel Brailey notes, he was "already politically active beyond his years."
Now he was Her Britannic Majesty's minister resident in Bangkok and his official duties meant pushing England's ambitions. How these could have been satisfied by Satow's wanderings I do not know. But the reader is the fortunate recipient of accurate descriptions of the Lao/Thai world over 100 years ago.
Further, as he amply indicated in his book on Japan, Satow retained a freedom and fairness of vision that is rare among diplomats. In speaking of the "fish sauce" common in Lao/Thai cuisine, for example, he remarks that "every nation eats something offensive to the nostrils or palate of its neighbors.
"The Japanese have pickled radish, the Chinese have salted eggs . . . Germans have sauerkraut, all Europe has cheese, especially Limburg, some of which I would not sit in the same room with for two minutes." Why then should he find fault with even "the offensive durian fruit"? Rather, we must not be hard on those who like "plara," the fish sauce.
Further, Satow has the inestimable gift (even less common in diplomatic circles) of being able to put himself in the place of others. He knows that "Lao is to Siamese as Lowland Scotch is to English." Remarking that some people in Siam seem to know little about the life of Buddha, he adds that this is no more rare than is knowledge of "the lives of Catholic saints in England amongst Protestants."
He defends Thais who complain of foreigners carrying off bits of their temples. Most Europeans, he says, "would object to an engraving of, say, the Sistine Madonna being hung up as an ornament in the house of a Siamese globe-trotter, or his using an old silver chalice as a tea-pot."
Further, he understands what forms us. In explaining the "lethargy which seems to weigh down the inhabitants of Indo-China," he observes that "nature is so all-powerful that contention against her is useless and even the inborn energy of the European at last succumbs under the influence of such obstacles as climate and vegetation opposed to his action."
Satow was shortly laid low by malaria caught on this journey, but his admirable energy and his rare discernment continued right up to the end of his long life. Though he did not live to see Thailand finally regain, in 1937, the full legal sovereignty he had envisaged and worked toward, he did leave behind this account of his observations.
The manuscript itself was not published until 1994, and this is the first revised and annotated edition. In it he offers a record as rational as it is rare. He wanted, he says, to give more than that "obtained after dinner from people who 'know all about the country.' " They are there, he says, "not to learn anything about the country, but to make their fortunes and go away." Indeed, "it is wisdom on their part not to lumber themselves with useless knowledge . . . what does not appear does not exist."
He, on the other hand, was interested in observation for its own sake and in following his inclination he has left us a rare document of life in rural Thailand more than a century ago. The volume may be obtained from Orchid Press, Box 19, Yuttitham PO, Bangkok 10907, fax 66 2 930 5646, e-mail: [email protected]
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