Just Enough: A Journey into Thailand's Troubled South

by Mira Lee Manickam

Just Enough travels inside the conflict zone of Thailand's southernmost provinces and delves into traditional Malay Muslim culture. Mira Lee Manickam takes us into a small fishing village in troubled Pattani Province and gains privileged access to a side of Malay Muslim society rarely seen by outsiders. This is a personal journey of growth, loss, and friendship that reveals the colors of daily life beneath black and white newspaper headlines.

214 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2013

Reviews

[Imran Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully written book - powerful, emotional and deeply personal!

I picked it up given my interest in Thailand and particularly the country's 'deep south.' What I thought would be a book devoted to the security environment instead turned out to be a moving, almost coming of age story.

The author combines personal experiences with the broader context of Thailand's deep south. It's not a rigorous analysis but more a story of the author's immersion in the local Thai Malay Muslim culture of Dato village.

I enjoyed every page and will see Pattani through different eyes on my next visit!

[Derek Spafford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read showing a different side to the image we often hear about the situation in the 3 southernmost provinces of Thailand.

[Josiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The media has given a very bad name to Muslims and Islam. Showing only the extremist acts of a few insurgents, encouraging us to infer all Muslims are like their barbaric minority. Just Enough gives a controversial view of Muslims and their ways. The author, who lived in Thailand, first in Bangkok, and then moved down into a remote Muslim village in the far south Thai province of Pattani. She lives among the Muslims there, and shares with us the truth of what they are like: That these impoverished Thai Muslims are being mistreated because they are uneducated, and because they do not conform to the Buddhism that almost 95% of the Thai's adhere to. Mira Lee Manickam shares with us her experiences and love for these people. She is able to give us a new outlook on the extremist acts that have the entirety of the west fear stricken. She combines good humour with in-depth stories of what she did there, what events commonly took place, and her interactions with the people of Dato. Mira gives us the other side of the stories that were told in the newspapers with such an incredible bias, it is unbelievable that anyone would read them and actually believe what they were reading was a reliable source. She shows us that the non extremist Muslims have life far worse than we would expect, that they are persecuted by the army, devalued by the government and are hated for things they never did. She brings to light incidents when Muslim Malay-Thai men have been treated far worse than any animal should ever be treated. Stories of men being stuffed into small spaces to be transported, only to die of suffocation, being crushed by the many bodies of their tied friends on top of them helpless to save them. Mira does have a slight bias in favour of her Muslim friends, however she tell both sides of the controversial events, and thus lets us get a better view of what actually happened. At the end of this journey through Southern Malay-Thai Muslim culture, Mira is able to give us a far better understanding of the reality of Muslim life.

[Jo Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book--a compassionate well-written look at life in the predominantly Muslim southern provinces of Thailand. A few favorite quotes:
"But as I stared at the little boats baking in the noonday sun, with their carefully mended nets piled neatly nearby, I wondered how long this could last in a world where big boats were swallowing up all the fish in the ocean and Britney Spear was blasting through the radio. Dato seemed to be stuck in a strange purgatory between the past and the future. What did it mean to live off the fish and the crabs offered up humbly by a tired and polluted old bay, while the rest of the country hurled forward into the bright future I had seen painted in lights on the streets of Bangkok?" (p. 35)
"The people of Dato could live in very little because they had built a community where the wealth of the spirit still counted for more than the wealth of the purse...Dato's religious traditions, which at first to me had seemed so backwards, were the keys to the village's strength. I also believe they were what kept them out of violence. In Dato, one could live in poverty and still find dignity. The sea, and the life it provided, would never make the people of Dato wealthy or propel them into the world of modern opportunities offered by the rapidly developing Thai society. But in a country and era with little room for their traditions, it bestowed on them the freedom to practice their religion and culture in the manny they chose, in a community of their own making.
For now, that may be just enough." (p. 198)