I was a soldier stationed in Bangkok, Thailand back in the early 1970\u2019s. Not always having a bunch of money, I used to eat food from the local street vendors. Most of my meals were served wrapped in either a banana leaf or yesterday\u2019s newspaper. Some meals were even served off of unclassified military paperwork that was recovered from the rubbish.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, everywhere in Thailand the vast majority of street vendors serve food and drink in plastic bags. McDonalds has nothing on this fast food experience.<\/p>\n
Whatever you order, be it a rice or noodle dish, is scooped up into a plastic bag and then sealed with a rubber band. This also includes soups and drinks.<\/p>\n
Smaller bags of sauces and spices are also provided. You can even get fresh sliced fruit to go in a small bag with a skewer to stab each sweet morsel.<\/p>\n
Shopping on the streets, markets, and malls will also expose you to bags and bags of plastic. It doesn\u2019t matter what the size of the item, it will go in a plastic bag.<\/p>\n
I have had numerous occasions where I acquired a large plastic bag to hold a variety of articles and each successive purchase resulted in a small plastic bag being put into the larger. Despite my objections that the smaller plastic bag was not required, I was turned away with a confused look and a smile.<\/p>\n
Needles to say, after a day or two in Thailand, you tend to acquire a pile of plastic bags. I do manage to use a couple of them for dirty laundry or to keep items separated, but most of the plastic goes straight into the trash.<\/p>\n
I really don\u2019t know what the Thai people would do today without plastic bags. If the tree-hugging environmentalists ever came to Thailand, they wouldn\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n
Where would they put their sticky rice and beef jerky?<\/p>\n
How would vendors sell coke to go?<\/p>\n
How would the bootleg software and DVDs be distributed?<\/p>\n
How would I get my bowl of Thai soup home?<\/p>\n
Would they be able to revert back to banana leaves and yesterday\u2019s newspapers?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that the Thai people could live without plastic bags. And any attempt o stop the usage would result in disastrous results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was a soldier stationed in Bangkok, Thailand back in the early 1970\u2019s. Not always having a bunch of money, I used to eat..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16,18],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travelling","tag-thailand","tag-travel"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":5}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffreyhess.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}