I have never noticed anywhere in this part of the world that has a noise ordinance. In Nang Rong many wats have big outdoor speakers and play music, sometimes western music, in the evening. This normally does not last very late, but may if there is a special festival. The Red Cross of Thailand and others hold the equivalent of a county fair at the field in front of the Nang Rong School. In fact there is one still going on right now, connected with the festival I just described in a previous post. Here again there are plenty of booths with sound systems. It can get pretty difficult to use your cell phone outside.
Weddings (seen above), ordinations (nearly every boy in Thailand is ordained as a monk for at least a week or two), and other occasions have a speaker system or two somewhere, with the Thais out in the streets dancing to it. I attended the celebration for the new Nang Rong nigh amphoe (equivalent of our county commissioner) and did he use the P.A. system for a speech? Not that I remember, but he did sing. He was good, but I’ve heard that the previous holder of that office was really great. The previous governor has a good singing voice as well.
Right now several people, including our contractor for our foundation land fill, are running for mayor. For this you see billboard trucks with big speakers all around town. For other things there are cars with speakers tucked in the trunk (as seen in the day before yesterday’s parade), motorcycle speaker platforms, you name it.
I asked various local people what they think about all this sound and the consensus is: They like it. Thai people like to have fun, and music and other sounds are part of that.
From my American point of view, I don’t think it is carried too far. It is fun, and the atmosphere is perhaps an upgrade from a typical, somewhat dull, American small town. More like our movies (the happy ones) show American small towns forty to sixty years ago.
There is still a lot of quiet time, unlike Bangkok, where, except for your hotel room, it is continually noisy with traffic outside and music/advertisements inside. I started trying to learn Thai in Bangkok and found it impossible, since it was always too noisy for me to hear anyone well enough to distinguish unfamiliar language sounds.
Where do all these speakers and sound systems come from? Less that a two minute walk from my house is the largest speaker store I have seen just about anywhere. I couldn’t get the whole store front into the picture, it’s too long. He sells just about everything related to P.A. systems and professional sound. What I did not find there were home theater/hi fi type systems. There are a few, considerably smaller stores that sell smaller home systems here, but they don’t amount to much. I thought this had to be the largest store if its type in the area, but no, the owner said there is a larger one sixty kilometers away in Buriram city.
How are Thais different from Americans? Well, if we follow the money, Thais appear to spend much more for public sound than for anything they put in their homes. I think we Americans are the other way with our big home theater surround sound systems. Who enjoys it more? Thais dance in the streets. Can we match that?
