Frozen Thai

May 14, 2007 |

I came across a news article today in the Asia Times about the community of about 70 Thais who has made it up to the Svalbard archipelago. Svalbard is located only a few hundred kilometers from the North Pole, between the Arctic Sea, The Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the Greenland Sea and it is the only place in western Europe where anyone can go, stay and work without the need for visa or a work permit.

The reason fro this is the Svalbard Treaty, that gives the citizens of any nation the right to settle there. That is if you can provide for yourself, and can survive temperatures down to -3o degrees Celsius in winter and up to 10-12 degrees Celsius in summer, and 3 months of total darkness in winter when the sun never rise above the horizon.

Ing-Ing is from Phitsanulok and Duanjai from Petchabun, two northern Thai provinces where green rice paddy fields billow in the warm breeze and coconut trees dot the landscape. They have been in chilly, snowy Longyearbyen for more than a year. “It’s cooold,” Ing-Ing lamented. “I want to go home, but the money is too good here.” She and Duanjai work as chambermaids at Hotel Spitsbergen, along with five other young Thai women.

More than half of Svalbard’s 61,000 square kilometers is permanently covered by ice and snow. The sun doesn’t rise at all for four months in winter and then it doesn’t set in summer, when the temperature hovers around 9-12 degrees Celsius. In winter, it drops to minus-20 Celsius, or lower. And across the territory there are more polar bears than people - at least 3,000 wild beasts compared with only 2,500 humans. People venturing outside Longyearbyen are requested to go armed, not to kill the bears but to scare them off if they attack, which they often do.

I grew up in Longyearbyen myself, so I perfectly understand Ing-Ing when she says it’s too cold. Why do you think I am heading in the opposite direction…well, except for Nan of course. But I remember it as a warm and welcoming community, where nobody was a stranger, where we never locked our doors and some day I will go back. All of us Svalbardians do. If you get bitten by the polar bug, that’s it. So who will win in the the end. The Thailand fever, or the Svalbard bug?

At least Nan should be able to get some Som Tam up there.

So Khun Ing-Ing and Khun Duanjai, good luck up there, and don’t let the polar bears bite