Pyramid

W wierd thing I learned abotu that's sort of an insight into the Thai financial mind is the following. A group of workers all pay into a central pot, and once a week one of them gets all the money by random drawing. The winner is then obliged to gradually pay back all of the lenders, with interest! What an insane debt generation scheme! All of them want to be the one who gets the moment of wealth which he can then use to make a big purchase or share with his huge family. Kinda wacky, righ? And they all insist on being paid monthly rather than weekly or biweekly since the checks are "too small!!"

This learned from a falang bar owner.

Charade

There's a funny thing everyone has to do sooner or later. It's the visa run. Your visa expires, and if you want to stay in Thailand, you have to cross a border for five minutes and then come back. One of the easiest places to do it is just across the river from Ranong, in Myanmar. There's a whole service set up for you. You get the night boat to Suratthani and as soon as you're off the boat, you avoid the Boat Nazi who's shouting "Ranong, Ranong!" and say, Mrs. Da? And Mrs. Da is right there and waves at you and gestures to one of her men, who escorts you to the minibus. The minibus takes you to her shop, wher you pay her and she serves you a cup of tea and a little sandwich, then you're off across the Isthsmus of Kra to Ranong. After he tucks a bottle of water and a candybar into your pocket, the driver takes you straight to Thai immigration where you get stamped out, back to the bus, straight to the port. Ushered into one of hundreds of longtails doing the same thing, you whisk across the river to a Burmese waystation, where your driver collects your passports and five dollar bribe(provided by your driver to you) and gets the whole boat of you stamped through in about three minutes, and then off to the Burmese town of Kotao. In Kotao, you have five minutes. Not that more time would get you much, since you're not allowed to leave the town limits with this particular border visa. In those five minutes, a number of Burmese gentlemen will attempt to sell you cheap Viagra, Valium, lawnmower-grade whiskey, and cardboard cigarettes. Whoosh, back across the border you go, straight back to Thai immigration where you receive a stamp worth another thirty days, and you're on your way back to Suratthani. While waiting for the ferry back to Pha Ngan, one of Mrs. Da's men gives you a little styrofoam container of freshly-made fried rice, and you're almost done. All of this orchestration and direction provided for the princely sum of 1200 baht. It includes everything, all exit fees, visa fees, boat tickets, food, everything. Time elapsed. twenty hours, start to finish. But STAY AWAY FROM THE BOAT NAZI. She provides a related service but will try to rip you off and lie to you and misdirect you to make you miss your boat and have to buy another ticket from her. Someone, some thai tourism businessmen, are going to put a bullet into her one of these days. She has pissed off everyone this side of Singapore, from what I hear. And she's hurting business in Suratthani, Pha Ngan, Samui, Tao, and who knows where else. So in anycase. That's done.

Children

My stitches are out, I'm declared fit to swim again. That's good. Eager to do at least a little snorkeling while I'm here.

Some English guy was telling me what a bunch of thieves the Thais are, but I felt obliged to point out to him that the mechanic who rented me my bike was perfectly willing to trust me quite a lot. I needed my passport back because my visa's up tomorrow and I have to do the border run to Ranong. Without a passport in hand there's very little point in doing a visa run. The bike is probably worth 30,000 baht (37b/dollar) and he just said, ok. You bring tomorrow. I thought that was quite swell of him.

Not much else going on other than talking about leaving the island. I love my friends here, but it's time to go. I can always come back. For many, Pha Ngan is kind of that second home, their refuge from more challanging bits of travel to other places. My friends aren't the ones who've become spoiled and decadent here, like the obnoxious frenchman who Tj decked or the english guy bitching about the pack of thieves. To be faiur, I don't particularly trust Thais who I don't know either. I understand that I really do represent a walking dollar sign, and it takes time to see around that.

Something I wonder about is some of the children. There's a few I have in mind. The other morning around dawn as the Black Moon party was winding down a bit, I saw a middle-aged asian man and his very young son sitting off to the side. Perhaps they were the cleanup crew, I don't know. That little boy is forming his opinion of falangs from the decadent hedonism of the Moon parties. What the hell is that? Or even better, when someone asks him what he wants to do when he grows up,(resuming that that question gets asked to Southeast Asian peasant children, please) will he say, "a Falang!" They sure seem to have it good. Another is the five year old son of an acquaintance of mine. The little lad runs pretty wild here. His dad's a bit self-centered, and the boy's a bit badly behaved, even if spectacularly precocious and confident. Going for attention, it seems. And lives almost entirely in the company of adults. That would be a strange bringing-up. And the last is a kid who I see out at every party and club. I call him Little Man, because that's what he is. His voice hasn't even changed, but he dresses l;ike a gangster and he appears to be friends with every whore in Haad Rin. Whoa. John looks out for him a bit because he knows his dad. But still. Sure, he'll come out somehow, but what must your impression of normalcy be if that's your life! That's the theme uniting all of them: that to them, Pha Ngan is normal.

Black

I went to my last of the Moon parties, the "Black Moon". We've all agreed it's time to chill out for a while, less drinking, dancing and debauchery. My friends have told me that they usually don't go out anywhere near as much as they have in the last three weeks while I've been here. Hmm. Do I have anything to do with that? Time to take it down a notch. And time to get off this island. It's hard to walk away though, now that I've developed a crew of friends. I have to keep moving very soon, but I can understand why some choose to stay when they find a useful thing to do. That's the kicker for me. Not enough to do.

Odd event at the Black Moon was when TJ was sitting with one of her Thai friends, some French guy said something rude about Thais. That got her back up a bit to start, and then when it turned out he's been on this Island for eight years and doesn't speak any Thai, and thinks Thais are stupid, she went completely ballistic. That really is so colonial of him. He got at least what he deserved, I think. She knocked him flat of his ass and sent him running and John and I had to hold her back. She's a tough cookie.

Things didn't go so well with the French girl. I was rather mistaken about her, it appears. Advice I've received from some experienced traveler friends is that out here is really not a safe place to let your guard down like I did. No one's looking for much, nor are they open to it much. Just looking for good times. John put it like this:"She's not a slag, Tom. She's just like a guy." I guess that makes me more like a girl. I was unprepared. Maybe Rumsfeld and Cheney were right: Don't trust the French.

Crises

There's been a lot of minor little incidents lately. I've found myself in the crisis manager/paramedic mode a bit. There was the time the nice french girl gave me quite a fright late one night. We were at somebody's place in Haad Rin, we'd been drinking and dancing and carrying on and really having a splendid romantic evening. Apparently the poor lass hadn't eaten much all day, because she stood up to visit the bathroom and I saw her take three steps and then slump backwards and crack her head off the tiled wall. I took care of it, checking for head and neck injuries, treating her for shock, getting her to come around and talk to me. Ididn't know what the hell had happened at first, but she looked really bad at first. Reminded me of an overdose I saw one time a long time ago. Her lips were almost completely white and her skin was green. It all worked out in the end, got her home, checked on her a few hours later just in case of concussion, but whew.
And then there was the young Indian/English girl who mistook a lily pad pond for solid ground with slightly awkward results. Her hand slapped down onto a rock and gashed the meaty part of her thumb. She doesn't have my long and checkered history of self-injury, so she started to flip out. The hardest part of it was getting her to calm down and relax and realize it's not such a big deal. And keeping all the other people from fussing and clucking and volunteering all kinds of irrelevant folk wisdom. LAcerations are very simple. There is one set of steps to take, and you take them. It's not a matter of opinion. Whisked her off on my bike to the hospital, got her stitched up, and then back to the jungle.
And the lovely French girl's ambivalent has caused me some heartburn since the day after her little crisis. Just can't help liking some people, it is rare, hadn't happened yet in Thailand, but sometimes you think it'd be much simpler if it never happened at all.

When I go to BKK next week I promise to upload lots of pictures.

Blessing

Sent to me and I was very moved so have chosen to quote it back here.

By Constantin Cavafy,

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure,
full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon — don't be afraid of them:
you''ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon — you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind —
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, y
ou will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Pix

Sorry abotu the lack of pix lately, I'm just wrestling with the inadequacies of antiquated computers. Even when it works, it takes so long.

Half

Went to the Half Moon party, which was nowhere near as big as the Full Moon. This island is like a barnacle filtering financial nutrients from the monthly ebb and flow of the Full Moon tide. Around Full Moon, the place is packed. Away from the Full Moon, it gets much quieter. Quiet is still a relative term when you're talking about Haad Rin though. There's always some people who want to play there, even if it only looks like a pale ghost of the seven thousand strong full moon crowd. So, the good part is the Half Moon was fun. And I also met some nice girls. The bad part is the day after I fell and gashed my shin a bit. Four stitches, nothing major, and the whole thing, anesthetic, antibiotics, sutures and painkillers all for 500 baht!! So I had to postpone my diving course until the skin is all knitted back together. The stitches come out after one week, so maybe then. I'll have to bop over the Ko Samui on the ferry to get my visa extended a little. No biggie. I still want to do th diving course here since it's supposed to be quite nice here, and the cheapest place to do it. The intstructor Phil is a nice English guy who comes recommended by my friends.

So the little Ko Pha Ngan jaunt is getting to be a bit longer than I'd thought. It's all right. I have time. Part of the purpose of this trip is to have to freedom to adjust my plans to the situation and not vice versa.

Storm

Not that the weather is that interesting a topic generally, but it's certainly been noteworthy. Thew seasons are all wrong right now. We generally have at least one intense storm a day. I got caught in one the other day when I was riding. A lightning bolt crackled right over my head with the immense thunderclap sounding a heartbeat later. THe other morning around five, some noise woke me up and I looked towards my window to see my green curtains chattering straight into the room like a superhero's cape. I got up to close my window and pull in my laundry, and I found a pack of dogs had taken shelter on my porch. It was pretty intense.

Annoying about htis is it's completely lousing up the visibility in the water because of all the silty runoff. Haven't been able to go snorkeling on the reefs yet. I've tried, but the island's tides don't make any sense either. There's only one high water and one low water a day, not the two that we're used to. At low tide, the water is so shallow you couldn't drown yourself in it if you tried, never mind swim. Ah well. I'm going to go scuba diving and I think they'll take me out in a boat to where it's a touch deeper.

Haven't put any pictures up in a bit because the computers are kind of shitty most of the places I go and they won't do it. Or the connection is so ungodly slow that I'd be waiting for a month. And paying for it by the minute.

If any of you needs to call me my cell number here is 062779093. I believe you dial 011 + 66+ my number.

pirates

From some of my local friends I've heard some unpleasant stories about farangs getting burned badly by Thais. A relatively common story is a farang moves here, sets up a bar or some other business and gets it off the ground, but eventually has to go home for a while. They get back after a few months and find their bar full of thais. Fine, they think, and just tell the Thais to hit the road. The Thais respond, fuck off and don't come back or we'll shoot you. Wow. That's happened with houses too. The only way to be safe is if you're part of the family, and the easiest way top do this is marry a Thai woman. In some ways, Ko pha Ngan is a bit like the Wild West, especially up in a place like Bottle Beach, not reachable except by boat, and there, the locals really make the laws. Not that it's that different elsewhere, since the cops are pretty corrupt, but it's not as bad. A guy named Jamie got put through the wringer by some Thai "friends" of his up in bottle beach. He bought a speedboat and started a business with it, kiteboarding or something, but all the legal forms that he had to sign were in Thai. So he asked some of his friends to help him out, and after all was said and done it turned out that the forms he signed were conferring ownership of the boat to the "friend". It took a lot of money and wrangling, but he got that crap voided out eventually.

Cooking

I can't wait to cook for all of you guys what i learned. I took detailed note and lot of pictures, because sadly, I don't know when that's going to be. Thai food is so easy! At least the 8 dishes that I learned today:
Gaeng Phet Daeng (Curry Spicy Red) Gai (chicken) : a soupier coconut curry with veggies.
Phat (stirfried) Phet (spicy) Muu (pork): a fiery rich curry
Gaeng Gai (curry chicken): a simple drier chicken (or whatever beast) curry
Phat Gaprow (stirfried basil) with other stuff. MAde with gaprow, one of the two thai basils. Ga Prow is the one that's sort of acrid or antiseptic, but very good when cooked. Also called holy basil. Maeng Lak is the other one that has a sort of anise-like flavor, sometimes called sweet basil. We made this dish with shicken. IT's a southern Thai classic, a spicy basil-and-chicken stirfry with a molasses-like flavor.
Pad Thai. The only noteworthy detail here is that everyone makes it differently and the orangish-red flavor comes from tomato.
Laap: This cold ground-meat salad is one of the things I learned in the class I took in Laos two years ago. It always varies though. Worth ordering if you ee it on a menu. Also spelled Lab, Lap, or Larb.
Spring rolls: Kay, Chris' wife, the kitchen brains of the operation and a fantastic cook, makes hers with wrapper made from Kale! I didn't think kale lent itself to being processed into spring-roll wrappers. But it does. They get a really nice crispy texture.
And fried sweet fruit thing. Rob and I could barely stand thinking about eating another bite, since we had eaten every dish we had cooked up to this point, but these were yummy so had eat four or five. My god. I can't recall the last time I ate so much good food. We cooked small portions, but nonetheless those are formidable odds. Two men, eight dishes, three and a half hours.

Moon

The primary reason that Ko Pha Ngan is on the tourist itinerary is because of the monthly Full Moon Party. Depending on the month, anywhere from six thousand to twenty thousand people converge on this little rock for this huge beach blowout. Friends of mine warned me not to get my hopes up too high, as it's become a huge festival of foolishness over these past twelve years. "Tom, it's stupid, full of drunken gap-year kids, obnoxious israelis, and pushy hookers. Don't expect much. Check it out, but don't expect much." John said, "Tom, Haad Rin (the party locale) is a cross between a comedy of errors and the Village of the Damned."

It was awesome. I met a group of Brits in my guesthouse who were older than your average gap-year tykes and we all went together. Not the healthiest of pursuits, but once in a while, it's really good to get trashed and dance your ass off with thousands of your closest friends until dawn. All the bars along the beach set up huge sound systems facing the sea and you wander along the beach until you find the music you like, and there you are. If you hate techno, you'd hate the Full Moon with a livid passion, but I've never been accused of disliking techno. The basic party fuel is the ubiquitous buckets filled with ice, Red Bull energy drink, and hard alcohol. I think the legion of extra cops and the shoot-to-kill policy keeps the volume of illicits down.

The afterparty was actually even better. It felt like old times, a bit. I led the way walking off the end of the beach with my hands cupped to my ears, following the beats with my friends in tow. We came over a small rise and found a covered shelter with ten thousand watts of vicious techno and a hundred dancing people. It was a better party than the beach party because it was so much smaller. You'd circulate, dance with sa few people, move on, talk to someone else, but gradually assemble a gallery in your head of everyone present and never be lost in the throng. It's a nice feeling for a party.

One odd detail at the afterparty was a woman I was chatting with and dancing with for a while. Even though I told her I had blown all my cash, we were till dancing and hanging out. Same plac, different channel. Her name was Boong-Lee, and while she was clearly having fun dancing and hanging out, what was on her mind was making some money before the night was over. Her seven-year old was starting school the next day and all kind of expenses loomed on the immediate horizon. Yet, there she was dancing at dawn with me. Conflict of worlds, I guess? If you're a hooker you have to go where the money is. Throngs of girls come from Bangkok for the weekend, as well as two hundred extra cops from Suratthani to supplement the local force of fifteen men.

Lordy I was tired after my friends and I had called it a night. The jungle trek followed by all that dancing takes a toll.

Expat

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Jungle

The day of the full mooin, two Finns and I paid a guide to take us on an all-day trek across the interior of the island. The Jungle was impressive, the guide was irritating. Part of my irritation stemmed from the language difficulties, but I think I partly just didn't like him very much. I'm the kind of person who wants detail about the local ecosystems, not just being pointed towards semi-obvious elements. He clearly knew his way around the woods, but his understanding of the systems at play in the jungle seemed pretty limited. He kept whacking at thing with his machete that weren't in the way and probably didn't apreciate being cut at, and he brought his dog along which probably reduced our already slim chances of sneaking up on any wildlife down to the vicinity of zero. This guy's generic answer to lots of questions was, "big waterfall!" Um... Ok. Perhaps I was too quick to jump on the first trek I found without sussing him out a little further. My fault. I did feel like he misled me a little as to what I was getting included in the price of the trek (800 Baht). I swear he told me, " free gas, free food at end, free beer at end." The Pad Thai his wife cooked was okay, but he charged us for everything, premium price. Whatever. IT was still a pretty cool experience. I think I'll go back alone and sit patiently so maybe I can esw a few birds or animals. We did hear a troop of monkeys barking off in the distance. For two hours of the five hour hike, we were caught in a world-saturating rainstorm. But hey. The big waterfall was nice. We swam in a pool at the bottom of the cascade to cool off. A few pools down when we were walking down to the road, we caught sight of a couple who I'm pretty sure didn't think they were visible fvrom the path. She looked like she was working pretty hard.

And then a nap and then the Full Moon.

Coconuts

I saw the craziest thing today, riding my moto up over the mountain back from a gorgeous beach. There was a man walking an ape on a long leash. As I sat and watched, they went to the base of a tall coconut palm, and then the man gave some commands, and then the ape scurried up the tree and started picking coconuts and chucking them down to the guy. Wow. So, how do they do it when they don't have a trained macaque handy? Those palms are really tall.

And I saw a group of women and children gathering around a mountain of coconuts busting their butts removing the outer casing from coconuts. It's the second time I've seen a Thai sweat. The first was a woman working in a blazing hot kitchen. Did I mention what furnace this country is? Even here on Ko Pha Ngan, it's always blazing. It's got to be 95 every day, and since it also rains a bit every day, it's so humid your sweat has a hard time going anywhere.

Wow. Brit gap year kids. Wow. If you all think I party a fair amount, try these kids. It makes the Scottsdale job look like a pilgrimage to a nunnery. Not really any drugs, but plenty of drinking. That's probably got something to do with the shoot-to-kill policy that their charming prime minister introduced a few years ago. The cops knew who was who, as police generally do, and they'd knock on the door, and as soon as it opened, shoot them in the face and walk away. Something like 2000 drug dealers were executed in a very short period of time. Don't tell this to George Bush. He might get some ideas. And apparently crime skyrocketed immediately afterwards. It's basic economics. When the supply gets extremely small, the price gets extremely high, and the existing addicts can no longer afford their fix. Ergo, many resorted to crime to supplement their income.

colonial

Feeling rather colonial these days. Npot so muc hfrom the obvious, that we're white people in a brown people's world and paying them to cook clean serve and amuse us, that's to be expected. More in the conversations I've found myself in. With smart people, too, but it's set off little alarms in my head sometimes. Such a common conversation when you've got such a mix of nationalities is discussing cultural characteristics of different peoples. "The thais don't work that way..." Yeah, don't you find that with the Dutch?" "So many brits do such and such" "And the LAo are especially like that!" And so on. IT just sounds like old English colonial masters disussing their subject nations. Even when we're talking about other colonial powers. Speaking in absolutes triggers my PC-trained alarms. But, to be fair, partly what is going on is gathering observations and collecting them into an impression of a people. I guess the trick about thinking like that is making sure that you and everyone else are still open to more data, and you're being fair and not bigoted.

Still in Ko Pha Ngan. It's gorgeous. I've been spending most of my time with island full-timers, like John, a Scot who's lived here full time.

Some brits taught me to play Cricket on the beach! It was fun. Fun to play games. Not just wander, ponder, then have beers with folks at night. I'm planmning to do some hiking in the jungle here. And eat some fish. And try to spend less money. Not thatit's a lot, but it's more than I meant to be spending. I think it's the beer.

One bangkok story I didn't tell was about riding a motorcycle taxi. Leaving Justus' place, I waved my hand to flag down a cab, and then a guy in a little orange vest pulled up on his motorbike. I figured, what the hell. Why not. Holy shit was that whiteknuckled experience. They shoot up between the lines of cars, the handlebars only inches from the car's side mirrors. I was doing everything I could to be as narrow as I could. Suck everything in tight. And I was grasping the metal bar behind my seat so tightly that for an hour and a half afterwards, my biceps were trembling. HE Sure as hell made good time though. That is, until he ran out of gas before we got to my destination. Apparently that's what people take when they're in a real hurry. At rush hour when their traffic slicing ability is at a premium, their prices skyrocket. You see women in Skirt suits riding on the back, sidesaddle, shading their face with their hand.

Every Thai skin product boasts that it is "whitening." They mean it. The Thai Chinese are the ruling class, and everyone wants to be pale like them. The Issan Thais are from near the Cambodian border, so they're correspondingly dark. And they suffer for it socially.

Ok gang. Off to find my evening's amusement.

um...

Trying to figure out what I'mdoing a little bit. It's kind of what I predicted. Traveling alone, nowhere to go but you. Not working with anyone else's needs, you actually have to figure out what you want to do.

Lush

Out of Bangkok! Whew. Rather hard-partying weekend with Justus and countless others. I'm out I'm out I'm out. I like Bangkok but I am relieved to be here in Ko Pha Ngan, this little rock of jungle poking out of the ocean. It's really lovely. Was standing with my friend John on the balcony of his house, admiring the soaring green valley beneath us. The wind was gentle, birds flitting around in the palms, and then a rainbow came out. It was a bit much. But really. This view. In the states you might get that kind of view from a fifteen million dollar house. He's moving to another place tomorrow, but he's been paying about 150$ a month for it. Um. Right. Ok. very farang-intensive place this is, so the food isn't as amazing as it is in Bangkok, which is truly amazing, but still. I'm not going to start complaining about fantasy island.

Over.

Inverted

After a couple of days with Justus in the Sukhumvit neighborhood of Bangkok, I'm officially bored to tears by girl bars. The whole concept is more interesting for me in concept than in practice. It's a significant element of Bangkok culture, and I've been trying to sort out what exactly is going on there. Don't mistake the term "girl bar" for the commonly-known term, "whorehouse". There's certainly a functional overlap, but it's not the same thing. These are bars and they hire attractive young women to be there, to come up and chat you up, get you to buy them a drink, of which they get a cut. And often that's it. You are guaranteed to be spoken to and smiled at by attractive women at any bar in Bangkok. We, the farang men, are the hot blondes with the big tits in Bangkok's bar scene. It's american bars turned on their heads, in that, if you see a woman that you'd like to chat with, you just step right up and say hello, and it's almost guaranteed that you'll be given the time of day at the very least. The lines are hazy and indistinct to me. Things seem to work muc hthe same even in bars that don't hire girls to hang around. Lots of girls also go to bars who don't work there, even bringing their male friends. And they're not necessarily prostitutes, but it is a status symbol to be a farang's girlfriend. Conversely, as I've been learning, there is less of the social stigma around prostitution here than in America, where there is an absolute sharp line in the sand that is not crossed. Good girls don't screw guys for money. But here, apparently, sometimes they do. Even if it's not what they do full-time, it's extremely common for a girl to have spent some time being swanned around by a farang with some disposable income, taken out, maybe had some presents bought for her, and presumably, screwed by him as well. In my book, that's a lot like being a hooker. Or is it? What do I do back home with a woman I like? I generally buy a fair number of drinks and dinners, last I checked.

I was chatting with a friend of Justus' last night, a Thai woman named Miao who owns a bar. She was explaining to me about Thai marriage customs. The routine goes like this:
1. The girl takes you to meet her parents
2. You buy stuff for the girl
3. If Mum thinks you're ok, you then proceed to buy stuff for Mom and Dad.
4.You pay for things like doctor's appointments and other necessities for Mom and Dad or other family members.
5.You buy lots more stuff for the girl. Suggested items are gold and jewelry.
6.If you've made it this far and have been around for a while, you pay an actual cash dowry, 500,000 baht to 1,000,000 baht was the number she mentioned. (about 37 baht to the dollar)
7.Go for it. Get married.
8.You may now have sex with the bride.
Miao said that these rules apply to Thai or farang men equally. She said that the notion is that if you really love someone, the money doesn't really matter so you won't mind dropping a lot of loot. But I asked her what the divorce rate was, and she said that it's quite high. Pushing half. Miao herself is divorced.

So the background concept of gender relations is that the man is expected to be the provider, and in return he gets to be the boss. Thus, maybe it's not such a leap to render the whole affair more casual and rapid, which is what we see in the girl bars.

I wonder how all these young stunningly handsome Thai men feel about the massive sexual currency that is brought by being white. They hang out in lots of the same places as the young women, so it's not a tourist-bar only thing we're talking about here. I've seen plenty of totally unattractive white guys with some stunners on their arms.

Part of me is completely repulsed by this whole materialist model of gender relations, it being so contrary to all of my liberal training, but people have been urging me to understand that it's a bit more nuanced than it might seem.

I think it's time for me to get out of Bangkok.

The woman pictured here is not at all what I am talking about. Her name's Bom and she's on of several actual bona-fide American-definition hookers whom I photographed.

West

I've been feeling my way around this ridiculous metropolis, learning to understand how it works. I've gotten some interesting insights from some westerners who've been living here a while. Actually, was chatting to one of them about doing a documentary here. If it works out, that could be great. It's been noted that work has many benefits. So I've heard.
Also interesting are some of the horrible stories about Western men people having Thai women as girlfriends. I mean, about the Thai women. The best one was probably told to me by a Canadian expat named Tyler, who told me a story of a girl whom he'd been dating. One evening he said to her, "You know, tonight, I think I'm just going home. I don't want to come over." Apparently that was unacceptable. A heated argument ensued which was terminated by Tyler jumping into a passing cab and telling him to step on it. The woman chased the cab and was pounding on it with her shoe, at which point the cabbie hopped out to stop her from damaging his car. The woman hops into the left rear door, shoe at the ready, so Tyler jumped out of the right rear door and ran the other way and jumped in a new cab, which had enough of a head start that he lost his pursuer.

Wow. Not taking no for an answer. To a whole new level.

Germany

I was quite taken aback yesterday while sitting with Germany and Scotland when all of a sudden Germany said to me: "Can I ask you a favor? Could you please stop talking?" I was totally taken aback, of course. She had a point, I do natter on. But part of me also wanted to tell her to go to hell. I finished my beer and left.

Tragic scene at my latenight sidewalk spot with Jak&Co. Koong sobbing because her boyfriend had yelled at her and hit her just before. Not surprisingly, Jak says the guys an asshole. And Jak telling me of his own domestic issues, going home to his wife who never smiles anymore, wondering if she has a boyfriend now. He his heart as broken and his home life as a mess, but protests that despite all that, he's happy running his shop, hanging out with his pals and his family. Lives almost entirely outdoors. Sweet guy. A forty-year old who looks twenty-five. The envy of rich foreign women everywhere. Seriously. My jaw dropped when he told me he was forty. "I play a lot sports, I eat healthy food, drink lots water maybe? I don't know."

Serendipitously, a guy sat down with us last night and when I introduced myself, we realized that he has been friends with Ari for fifteen years. Wow. Weird world. We're going to hang out later.

Bangkok is such a zoo of a city. So much is visible. It's a city with a vibrant pulsing street life. I think perhaps then, being able to isolate yourself from the din and the noise and just the sheer presence of everyone else must be a status marker. Maybe like America. The suburbs. The mark of middle class succes is that you can pretend that everyone else doesn't exist. Jane Jacobs is winning the fight here vs. Van der Rohe. The ebb and flow of all kinds of activity is happening on the sidewalks. And the traffic! Lordy! It's like a school of vaguely confused fish who've had too much coffee. I had the good fortune to spend some time in the front seat of a local's vehicle yesterday. My heart was in my mouth and my seatbelt was on If there's traffic in your lane, you just get in the opposing direction lane for a while. Makes Bushwick look like the parking lot of an old-folks home. And Toyota makes their car seats significantly smaller here. Lots of ways that I don't fit here.

I'm going to leave Bangkok for a bit soon to see what these fabled islands are about. When I get back, Jak said he'll find someone who can teach me Thai cooking informally.

I can't remember I saw rain fall this hard. Heavy rainfall makes for lengthy blogging.


What else? Some new pix of Bangkok's finest on my photo gallery site. Righto. Off to resume my day. Miss you all.

T

chow

So last night, Koong made me eat some of the more esoteric snack foods. A funny chick. She and her pals are street vendors. Despite five years of University? Haven't gotten to the bottom of that one. Koong, Jak, Kong, Toto, Mak, sometimes Jak's older brother.
So the fried little frog was probably the best. The grasshoppers weren't too bad; when you deep fry anything and hose it down with fish sauce, it starts to taste ok. The fried silkworm pupae didn't really make did actually make me jump and make a face. Too squishy on the inside. You can't pretend that you're eating anything else. You know that you're eating bugs.
So it's fun. Hang out on the street, playing guitars, drinking rotgut Thai whiskey out of a bucket, learning to speak Thai, helping thm improve their English. Nice thing about this city is it's so damned hot that ewveryone hangs out outside. It's nice like that. Except at 2:30 AM it's still so hot the sweat is dripping off of your temples. That's why you put so much ice and water and coca-cola in your whiskey bucket. Keeps you cool. Even ice in the beer. Don't know about that one. But it's not brilliant beer to start with, and you end up with something approximating Coors Light. Which Billy Carroll would claim is the finest beer in the world.

So I swear I'm not in a state of total dissipation. Just getting used to the turf here in Thailand. Figuring out what this place is about. Getting a couple of ideas for a few photo assignments to give myself.

The Khao San road is like a crazy street fair every night. Which gets a little stale and silly, but it's certainly got a lot of energy to it. Lively. Hey.

It kind of weirds me out to talk to Thai girls because I can't tell always who's a hooker and who's not. You can pretty much tell. but it makes you a little distrustful. Depends on what neighborhood you're in. In a heavily-touristed area, the ratio of hooker to non-hooker is rather high. When all of the bars close, they swarm. Walking around as a single white guy attracts a disproportionate number. And something I've been learning as I get to know more and more locals and western transplants, the line between hooker and non-hooker is generally nowhere near as clear as it is in the west. Plenty of girls around dressed to impress who aren't necessarily looking to turn a trick, but they're definitely looking for guys with money who can buy them drinks and take them out and probably sleep with them. I guess the term should more be "gold-digger" rather than "prostitute".
Anyway. Chat more later.

It's still totally hot here.

Oh all you skeptics who mock my belt buckles: everyone here LOVES the golden longhorn skull buckle. PEople have offered to buy it. Thais, I mean. Come on, I've got to be a proud American somehow. Show people that you can be a cowboy american without being a warmongering asshole.

Lordy it's hot

Like a black woolen sack being thrown over your head the second you step out of the airport. But no, it's nice. You are never ever that tiny bit chilly that you get in the springtime in New York or New England, that slight shrinking of your fingers and toes. That doesn't happen here.

Haven't found a computer where I can upload photos. So I can't show you my conundrum about the food. Everyone loves Thai food, right? Especially me, right? Ok, walking down the rows of street vendors, I don't even know what half of the stuff is, never mind how to eat it. Is this a salad? Is it meant to be eaten as an accompaniment to something else? Is it to be taken home, sliced and deep-fried? Is it a condiment? Is it a folk remedy? Is it bait? I overstate the case, of course. I've spent the entire day wandering around and snacking. I had breakfast a few times because it was pretty great, and a few lunches too. Still just kind of learning how to order. And ask what things are. Thai resembles Lao in many ways, which is definitely helping me just begin to get a notion of how I might get started thinking about learning how to speak this completely alien language.

Hey, I went to Chinatown for a while. You think those DVDs in the subway are cheap? Lemme show you something. Oh. Right. Intellectual property. Um. Yeah. Chinatown here is a riotous explosion of comerce. I wonder what it would be like if there was a Moroccotown in China. Not sure, but maybe the moroccans have the chinese. HArd to say. That would be a Celebrity Deathmatch ot be remembered.

Actually, since the last time I was here, things have obviously changed a bit. On Khao San Road, the backpacker ghetto, last time there was just one CD shop, since the police had just swept everyone out who wasn't paying hte proper bribes. Now, they're everywhere. Maybe it's time for a raid.

Gosh, I must say, I have never been pursued by a trannie hooker down the street at eight thirty in the morning before. Especially not after ditching a tourism hustler, trying to get me to go with this tuk-tuk to that or this tourist buddha or whatever. Wow. And It was hot as hell when I got out of bed at six AM. My body clock is completely fucked. I was all set to go to Rathcadamnoen Stadium tonight to watch tough athletes beat the ever-loving crap out of each other at Muay Thai, but then at 5:30 I all of a sudden crashed like a union grip at wrap time. Woke up at 11:#0 and went o nightclub packed with stylish young Thais. At least you know the girls there aren't hookers since there were no farangs present. IF there's no money. why would they be there?

Met a nice chap who hasn't really stopped traveling for decades. That last time he was in Bangkok was 1972. He cycles everywhere, generally. He's the older chap in the photo gallery.

To all the critics: yes, the massive supercamera is heavy, but it's still totally badass. Haven't taken that many, but I'm sitll glad I got it.

Started attacking the mountainopus challenge of trying to l;earn Thai. I think this is something I'm going to have to go through in every single country. It's extremely frustrating not being able to talk to people who speak english.

DAmn some of those whores are foxy. Don't worry. I have absolutely no interest in getting AIDS. And, as a good friend of mine said once, why go to the whorehouse when there's a youth hostel in town?

Would I write these lines if I hadn't been drinking?

MY guesthouse has a sign that says, "No israelis". Wow. Bummer. Don;'t know if that would fly in the states. The anti-defamation league of B'nai B'rith might take issue with that. But then again. I don't know if any of the guesthouse owners give a rat's ass about World War 2. All they know is that israeils have been a royal pain in the ass enough times that they want nothing to do with them. Reminds me of the global warming precautions taken by the insurance agencies versus the US government. The US govt says it's not happening. The insurance industry is raising flood premiums in coastal areas.

Anyway. Got to go now. Think I'll try to find a cooking class tomorrow. And maybe I'll be able to stay awake past 6PM and I'll make it to the Muay Thai matches.

The bit with the roofs is the view from my window. The goddamn roosters in the mnonastery woke me up at 5:30. Maybe I ought to get used to that. But I kind of like getting up at dawn. You get the whole day.

yours,
Tom

no one writes this way anymore

"I am in receipt of your latest confession of folly and most earnestly pray that you do not despair of this precipitous reply, the reason for it being that if I do not do it now, I shall never do it. Thus spake the prophet.

I am both undone and removed by your foolishness. I had thought better of you. To think that you, inventer of the seductive newt hunt, should stoop to badinage with the lady louts of Newton College of th eInjured kidney is a slash too much for a man to bear. Especially since you have that latter day saint with the legs and things in Jamaica, who is obviously wise enough not to go ruining the work of the resident Chamber ofCommerce with post cards, and is hence and thereby to be clung to in this time of mutability and the rise of the antiChrist. It was entirely deplorable enough that you should devote yourself in accents mild to the devotion of these female featherheads wwhile, so to speak, in your cups, but, as the Philosopher says, to do such a thing in full and alleged possession of your faculties is something which no rational, risible man, having both body and sould and being designed for the vision beatific would permit himself or view in another without the mingled feelings of pity and fear irreducible by any form of catharsis. So help me Hannah"...

George V. Higgins to Timothy E. Guiney, 25 October 1961.

from a recently discovered trove of old correspondence.

Don't you wish they did?



Ok now I'm really leaving. Got a plane to catch in three hours. See you in Thailand.

This is absurd. The string of adversites just before I go continues. My ipod just kicked the bucket eight hours before I get on the plane. It's not just the music; that's where I'm going to keep all my photos. That was my plan for dumping all my photos as I go, my lovely 60-gig ipod. Not to mention it's nice to hear music once in a while. Damn it.