It was 42 degrees when we left Chicago almost two days ago; it’s over 90 here in Bangkok, and that’s only one of the many contrasts between being at 12 degrees latitude and being at 40 some in Chicago. We’ve had an eventful day—beginning with our arrival at the hotel around 1:15 a.m. We had an early wake up (6:30) because I had arranged a site visit to a pineapple plantation nearly 2 hours from here. The whole day, in fact, was planned as a business day because we will be in Penang, Malaysia on Monday. Through our admissions officer, Paul Schley, I contacted families of students from Bangkok, who scheduled a full day for us.
The trip to the plantation reinforced what I’ve always felt about the city of 10 million—apart from the Palace area, I am totally bewildered. It simply sprawls, and I’m always glad someone else is driving. The ride went through a rich agricultural area—rice paddies, rubber plantations, mangos, tapioca, banana trees, etc. And pineapples. CP, the company we visited, is the largest agribusiness in the world, having surpassed Cargill (which is a 110 billion dollar operation!) by virtue of its operations in China. At our dinner that evening, the daughter of the founder of CP briefed me on the history; she pointed out that the company went to the Chinese government said, “We are overseas Chinese; we want to help rebuild China.” Today, CP has a feedmill in every province, which has catapulted its volume ahead of Cargill.
Imported originally from Brazil, the pineapple has taken root in Thailand. We learned that it has a 36-month growing cycle, with each plant potentially producing a successor (called a sucker). The 4,800-acre plantation we visited uses 300-plus workers for a 6-day week, which nets them around 200 baht a day (about $7) to harvest, plant, water, nuke with nutrients or herbicides or insecticides. We watched a harvest (they spread the crop out so there’s either harvesting or planting almost every day). I was a little surprised by the labor-intensive work involved. We saw a harvester; essentially, it was a conveyer belt, with workers behind it throwing hand-picked pineapples on to it; other workers sorted the good from the bad.
From the plantation, we went downstream in the value chain to the factory, which processes the pineapple for stores around the world. We saw Kroger, Safeway, and Sysco cans. Just as the plantation was possibly the first visit to a farm for some of our students, the cannery might well have been their first to a manufacturing facility. There, about 1,500 employees process the pineapples, only 15% of which come from CP farms—the remainder from other growers. They get about $6 an hour, with free residence in the company dormitories, and we saw the world’s most popular motor vehicle, an F-150 come in to disgorge its cargo. One highlight was eating pineapple from a freshly pulled plant (our guide assured us that different provinces have different-tasting pineapples, but fresh may trump pedigree). I used to make sweet and sour pork with whole pineapples partly because it was the only known use I had for a machete. We had lunch in the factory, in the VIP lunchroom—and you can guess what we had for dessert!!
On the way back in, we stopped at a project, a new apartment building that our Admission person told me we should see. It gave us an idea of the conglomerate nature of CP (it does more than agribusiness). It is 150 apartments for rent close to the main Skytrain line. The architect told us about the award-winning design, which is meant to evoke Spain—with arches and a multicolor façade. The common facilities on the 3rd floor include an outdoor pool that begged for a swim (I resisted). I was not surprised by his answer to my question (prompted by what I had seen in Singapore) about urban planning that there was zoning (but nothing like the 20-year-plan has). You can see it in the hodge-podge architecture around the city, where rich-rich rubs elbows with the slums.
Our students’ family hosted dinner at the Grand Hyatt, a five-star hotel not far from where we are. The dinner was a buffet, with a dessert table any chocoholic could spend a lot of time enjoying; a meat assortment—lambchops, a pork pate, a full range of sea creatures, mango salad—well you can see why I’m in the land of Smiles. And ready for bed.