Peculiarities of the Thai variety…

Every country has its signature trend- something that is synonymous with that country and immediately you set sight on it you can pinpoint where that person is from.  Sometimes even down to a town or city.  Think baseball caps; sandals with white socks; towels on sunbed; endlessly photographing the most mundane of sights; vests and board shorts in the dead of winter.  I could go on but I think I have made my point with the afore-mentioned list.  I also think I may have just invented an amusing new quiz of sorts (obviously to be played in small town England so as not to offend any of the targeted demographics!)

Anyway, I digress!  The point I am trying to make is that of trends and one in particular which we have discovered on our travels through Thailand which is befitting of any semi-decent horror film of Japanese descent.  The trend I speak of is oversized contact lenses.  Now, this may not seem quite the horrific picture that I am painting and I will admit that initially my naivety led me to incorrectly assume that this enlarging of the eye was genetically endowed upon the Thai people.  A rarity maybe, like ginger hair or people with six toes.  This naivety was short-lived after a trip to the local night market one night where low and behold stood a whole stand dedicated to the oversizing of one’s eyes into swirly pools of tar with no visible pupil.  One word- bizarre! No, two words, bizarre and disturbing.  On the plus side this little insight has brought out the entrepreneur in me.  I see quite a lucrative money making scheme in the pipeline using something called ‘multi-level marketing’ which we have already been exposed to during our time in Thailand.  This one time involved coffee and mushrooms and is a whole other story to tell!  In the meantime, watch this space- ‘wide-eye contacts’ coming to a 7/11 near you.