Ubon Ratchatani - City of sin

Another night’s sleep and Pancho felt as good as new, with exception of a slight cough. Today however he would make the great trek to the city of sin, Ubon Ratchatani. In these forsaken parts, Pancho thought to himself, any larger city could be well considered a cesspool of the filthy and criminal. He would not be hoodwinked by any human scum on this journey though. His itinerary was quite simple as a matter of fact. Doctor’s visit and then a short bout of shopping.
At quite on the spot 9 o’clock of this bright and hot Saturday morning his advisor appeared in the living area (open living areas don’t have any doors to knock on). She quickly bade him to join her and her brother in the car.
Her brother, Uncle Paan, was quite the character. His humour spoke of great ease of living and contentness with his lot in life. He had no issues taking the mickey out of himself repeatedly. His laugh was infectious and his face one of kind benevolence. Additionally he was not an uninteresting character. This fellow had been the eminent director of a school before he had decided that the simple life of a farmer was more to his liking. Pancho respected such a choice and thought it mightily admirable to have such a streak of sincerity. He secretly hoped that he had it as well and would not end up as some ruthless banker that preyed on the weak and unsuspecting. But alas, life takes turn in strange directions when one least expects it.
Accordingly, the hour long ride to the city went by in a flash. When the car finally drove down the outskirts Pancho could already smell the beat of life in this place. Although Ubon was probably not immense, compared to Phunee it felt like being in one of the great cities of the world.
Soon all three were sitting in the crowded waiting room of an eminent doctor’s private clinic. Pancho had been told much about this man, how great he was and all. Such talk could only bring a sarcastic smile to his usually life loving face. He did not trust a doctor, a lawyer or a banker before having fully gotten to know them, and even then they tended to surprise.
Well the three sat there for at least two hours which gave Pancho ample time to dissect his impression of the waiting room. Soon with his most accurate sense of perception he noticed that everybody who came out of the treatment room received a significant amount of medicine which they had to pay for in cash. The amounts, both of pills and money were not immense; however they would certainly build up. Pancho wondered whether these people actually required all that medicine and how many pills and types he would receive himself.
If one watched him at this point in time a perceptive fellow might have noticed that the great and unstoppable gears of a genius brain were cranking up in Pancho’s skull. And they did not disappoint. Within instants the multitude of information had been processed, analysed and filed.
He saw straight through the scheme. The doctor was the one who earned by selling the medicine. Thus everybody who came to see him naturally had to be sick; otherwise the doctor would not make any money. Intelligence and perception were naturally not the only hallmarks of the great Pancho Wodehouse however. His wisdom was renowned around the world not less than many a hundred year olds. One could not only blame the doctor. It was evidently the system. Firstly the doctor should never be allowed to sell the drugs himself, secondly he should earn enough to never have to get into that situation in the first place. The third and much larger issue was probably the matter of pharmaceutical producers. They naturally would love this system of spreading their products through the populace. It was virtually a guaranteed amount of sales, no matter if people were sick or not. Quite clever actually Pancho thought. And it was evil as well. But not the type of evil that Pancho could admire. This was the kind of evil that was driven by the greed for money. There were no principles behind this evilness, it was pure greed driving weak people.
The evil that Pancho could respect and admire was that with principles. The evil, that was evil for the sake of being evil. It did have a charm after all, being the evil sorcerer high up in the tower, terrorising the most definitely poor and obviously innocent farmers. One had to admire such dedication in not feeling any compassion. Luckily Pancho was quite content with his position in society as the absolute pinnacle of civilisation. He was higher than evil or good. He simply WAS and it was difficult to negate this fact.
Pancho’s flow of thoughts was eventually interrupted by being called into the treatment room. His first impression of the doctor was nice enough. This man even spoke enough English to make himself understood. A very educated and worldly man for Thai standards Pancho could tell, despite this man’s hairdo lacking understanding of fashion or style. A twinge of pity entered Pancho’s smile. He always had to remind himself that not every body had the innate and intuitive understanding of style.
What actually fascinated Pancho however was this doctor’s realization that Pancho had the normal seasonal influenza instead of the deadly swine flu (H1N1). Simply by using a stethoscope to check Pancho’s breathing and a torch to check his throat the doctor made the distinction that under normal circumstances required a laboratory. Could this doctor actually be in any way similarly adept at everything as Pancho was? Very doubtful.
Pancho naturally did not mention any of these fascinating facts to his advisor. Firstly he wondered whether his Thai and her English were developed enough to start talking about genetic makeup and surface protein structure. Secondly he doubted that it was a good idea to break these people’s belief in the doctor. Outsiders trying to improve things very often lead to matters taking a turn for the worse. This is especially the case when they are not familiar with what they are dealing with. Despite Pancho having analysed this situation fully and seeing what was wrong, his understanding of the strange Thai culture was still somewhat bellow perfection. Hence he would have to wait at least till the end of his stay in order to have a go and reshaping the country’s medical system.
So Pancho very agreeably decided to concentrate on shopping. This was not so much a question of what to buy but more of what not to buy. He did in the end manage to find the clothing that he thought necessary, primarily sports clothing for ridiculous prices.
During this shopping spree the three trundled into the big Tesco Lotus supermarket. After Carrefour in Bangkok and Coca cola advertisement everywhere Pancho was becoming suspicious how much western “culture” had seeped into this far away country. The products in the supermarkets themselves were at times identical to those found in the west, merely with Thai writing on them. And here you were supposed to be in a country and culture that had completely different food. Well, Pancho concluded, the cities may be the playing grounds for the multinational corporations from the west, but the countryside was most definitely still in the hands of the Thai people.
Returning after this interesting and long day Pancho was ready to relax his great mind. As so often his day had been planned out for him However. He was to make use of his superior physique and play a set of badminton with his Father.
After having only broken a sweat litely and gracefully let his father win, Pancho was driven around the country side and shown some of the land owned by the family.
He approved very much of what he saw and could gather that these were great minds at work here. Pancho was happy to be in the company of like minded people, despite their utterly different cultural background. Brilliance always pervaded.