Back to the future

Back to the future

Fire up your flux capacitor for a journey back to 1985, which looked remarkably similar to 2015

SOCIAL & LIFESTYLE
Back to the future

Nostalgia apparently is what it used to be. With new Star Wars and Mad Max films coming, AC/DC and Giorgio Moroder releasing albums, and K-pop hairstyles that look like A Flock of Seagulls, you could be forgiven for feeling like Marty McFly stepping out of the DeLorean in Back to the Future II. There is more than a bit of 1985 about 2015, even though there are no flying cars and only Tony Hawk has managed to get his feet on a hoverboard.

Top of the world: A policeman looks down at the Rama IV intersection from the top of the Dusit Thani hotel.

The time warp sensation is not confined to Western pop culture, but here it’s mainly the singers that are bringing the ’80s back. Sure, no doubt we’ll get another remake of another classic Thai film we’ve seen seven times — we always do. These days, however, Mai Davika is getting the sort of parts Mai Charoenpura used to play.

Not that 1985’s controversial Tukatatong Best Actress winner has disappeared: she and others from her era will be filling Impact Arena at the end of this month for three concerts. Thongchai “Bird” McIntyre is also on the bill, and he doesn’t really look too much, so much, very much older than he did 30 years ago. Those concerts follow reunion events by The Palace, which was the place for Thai singers in the day, which even more obviously traded on nostalgia.

Evergreen: Ad Carabao is still going strong after all these years.

But how much has really changed in the past 30 years? And how much is still the same? Brunch fired up the flux capacitor (OK, went digging through the archives with a helpful librarian) for a trip back to 1985. In between stopping to stare at the Tetris-like design of the news pages back in those days, reading columns by a younger Roger Crutchley and wondering how something called the Mr Big Boy Contest could be advertised in a family newspaper, this is what we found out.

BY THE NUMBERS

Leelavadi Vacharabol had a very demure look as Miss Thailand 1985, but big hair and big shoulders were all the rage. And from the swimsuit section, it seems apparent that the contestants may have had a little less work done than the current crop.

The more things change (the city skyline) the more they stay the same (the buses haven’t been updated in decades). Looking at pictures of the city streets, like the main image of the Rama IV-Silom Road intersection, can be disorientating. Silom and Sukhumvit look a lot more spacious without the BTS lines, which were only being talked about in 1985, although there was still a bit of traffic around.

On Patr OL: Thai police are relying on a new generation of dummies.

RENAISSANCE MAN

MR Kukrit Pramoj was one of the first four people bestowed the title of National Artist when it was established in 1985, honoured for his literary career. MR Kukrit was a noted actor who got to play a prime minister opposite Marlon Brando in 1963’s The Ugly American. It was a role he later reprised in real life, governing Thailand in 1974-75. But 1985 wasn’t all good for the journalist-playwright-polymath, as he stepped down as leader of the Social Action Party, which he founded.

New World in 1985. It was actually a mall once, not an aquarium.

It was the award she never should have won. Siriwimol “Mai” Charoenpura took home the Tukatatong Award for Best Actress: the judges gave her 21 points to her competitor’s 23. Her name was read out anyway, leading to a range of allegations, notably that the awards had damaged their own reputation. Mai, caught in the middle, wasn’t particularly hurt by the scandal, cementing her star power in the years that followed.

 POWER PLAYS

The Bangkok Post declared that 1985 was “not going to get very high marks in the history books. At home, it was a year in which tanks once again appeared on our streets, confounding and disappointing those who thought that coup attempts were a thing of the past. It was also a boom year for the prophets of economic doom and gloom”. Prem Tinsulanonda, a former army chief, was the unelected prime minister, which does have a familiar ring to it. Unlike the more modern prime minister-general, however, Gen Prem faced open rebellion: a coup attempt on Sept 9 turned deadly when rebel soldiers fired on government buildings, but it was quelled within 12 hours.

MONEY MATTERS

Entire townhouses were available for rent on Sukhumvit sois for 5,000 baht a month. These days, that won’t get you anything with much in the way of elbow room. The baht went further when it came to transport, too. One theatre reviewer wrote of a 15-minute tuk-tuk ride that cost just as many baht: now you’d be looking at a fare about 10 times that.

HIGH HOPES

At 32 storeys and 126 metres, the Bangkok Bank office in Silom was Bangkok’s tallest building in 1985. You will soon be able to look down on it and everything else from Sathon’s MahaNakhon building, which will stand 310 metres high.

The country’s first McDonald’s opened in Amarin Plaza in Ratchaprasong in 1985, five years after Pattaya got a Pizza Hut and a year after KFC started cooking in Central Ladprao. Burger King arrived down the road in Siam Square in 1990.

Phone booths were still a vital form of communication and worth lining up for: the first mobile phone arrived in 1986. Recently, Thailand passed the 90 million mobile subscription mark, which made up about 130% of the population. The few phone booths that are left now largely serve as obstacles to pedestrians and motorcycle taxis that use the footpath as an expressway.

HOWLING AT THE MOON

Koh Phangan’s first Full Moon Party was held 30 years ago, and it was quite a different affair. Somewhere between 20 and 30 revellers danced the night away at a wooden disco — a far cry from the almost 30,000 who turn up these days. n

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