Hey, drink, rerax

This is a long post. Take your time.

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There is a tendency among certain long-time travelers to educate you spiritually. Having cracked the sorcerer's formula of earning money in a rich country and spending it in a poor one, they conceive the notion that they've unlocked the mysteries of life, which they now "live better" than you do. They dispense philosophical advice - unasked, idiotically simple, and obnoxiously stated - to enlighten you. Having become experts in human nature who've freed themselves of ego, they want to make sure you know just how smarter they are than you.

This is repugnant enough without ulterior motives, such as those held by my guesthouse neighbor. He is an Italian man traveling with his funeral-faced Chilean-or-something girlfriend. Through either a mistake or a calculation by the owner of the guesthouse, an old Thai lady, I received a room that he thought they would, a third-floor sunny room. They, having prepaid for a month, received a rather dank one downstairs - one I once lived in with a girlfriend, about a decade ago. This greasy wop (hold it, I'll explain,) who "needs sunshine in the morning," disturbed my afternoon rest the other day with rude knocking.

I went out to speak to him, and learned in full of his room booking predicament, which was neither my fault nor my concern. Leaning over the parapet and listening to him, I also learned that I am living in the same guesthouse with a rather sleazy character. First, as soon as I got a good look at him, I was reminded of a film director I'd worked with. That man was a transparent asshole, and so was this one. The Italian probed me not-too-subtly about my plans, which of course had direct bearing on his - if I were to check out, he and his farbissina latina could move into this room, which they had been promised.

"Perhaps she just made a mistake," I noted of the guesthouse owner. "She's old."

"Oh no," he said. "She's..." he gave a snaking hand gesture. "She knows every baht, everything you do, when you go, when you come." He described her as an innocent-faced manipulator, which was exactly him, except I did not find him innocent-faced at all. His face is plainly dishonest. When he learned that my plans are indefinite, and that I might be staying for a month, he changed tack and became my spiritual buddy. He spoke in sage tones of Pai, the popular backpacker village resort several hours from Chiang Mai. I said I rather like Chiang Mai, a city with a village feel.

"Yeahhh, the city is okay..." he dismissed, "but first you need to go to Pai, to detox. Clean yourself from inside. No internet, no television, just you. This is the way to do it." He went on in this transparent vein of condescending self-interest, in a fucking Italian accent, and I wanted to throw him over the parapet and make him a paraplegic. The only thing I needed to detox of was him. Later he graciously gave me business cards to long-term rental places. (I checked them out and all were shit. I decided to keep paying daily rates and just enjoy myself here.)

I find it ironic that he alone of all guests padlocks his door when he leaves (if there's anyone I'm worried might steal something from my room, it's him,) and that he so readily sniffs out the duplicity in the guesthouse owner. Sometimes what you see is what you are. He's just one example of spiritual-advice-dispenser - but a rather repulsive and specific one.

In a potentially related episode, I had the pleasure of sitting with an Englishwoman who works as a psychiatrist in an mental institution. She told me at length of psychopaths, their manipulations and their compulsive giveaways. It goes roughly as follows, and forgive my layman's understanding: psychopaths are always manipulating, always playing for power over others; and while normal adults can simply keep a secret or withhold information, a psychopath practices a strange double game - he thinks he's smarter than you, so he will tell you the truth of what he did or plans, but in code. For example, a female psychopath told the psychiatrist that she would buy flowers on the weekend for her sister while her husband was away; this in fact meant that she planned to kill her sister's husband. See, psychopaths assume (sometimes correctly) that you're too dumb to understand the code, and therefore that they're toying with you. However, their weakness is that they're unable to just say nothing. They're compelled to say something. Thus everything they say is meaningful. No data is random. I felt this way with this Italian schmuck, who, as we leaned over the parapet, was certain that he was craftily pressing my buttons with his experienced travel advice. He doesn't know that I've traveled for years, or that I have a fucking mind of my own, but neither does he care.

*

There are Muslims in Thailand. I passed by a car with an English sticker of "In the Name of Allah" across the windshield. I don't know what gives props to Allah in this car - the glossy paintwork, perhaps? - but it did give me the feeling of "Oh, great. Here too." I mention this because of the recent war in Israel, which worried and saddened me as much as if I'd been there; and because of a brilliant quote I read in Good Omens:

"You think wars get started because some old duke gets shot, or someone cuts off someone's ear, or someone's sited their missiles in the wrong place. It's not like that. That's just, well, just reasons, which haven't got anything to do with it. What really causes wars is two sides that can't stand the sight of one another and the pressure builds up and up and then anything will cause it. Anything at all."

(emphasis mine)

I don't need to start a political debate here, so don't.

*

I've sung in karaoke several times. People here and this and are surprised, but it's right up my alley, and it's a lot of fun. I generally don't drink alcohol, and don't enjoy cigarette-choked discos (or their music,) so this is a great venue for me. Plus I get to show off.

But yesterday I got an interesting warning. I passed by the bar where, on my first night out in Chiang Mai, I saw a Thai man torture English songs. It's where I met the Michael Caine lookalike (see earlier post.) The Thai performer was a thirtysomething man with long hair and a floppy hat, who cut a buffoonish figure - mangling songs, injecting the word "fuck" into them as punctuation, making endless sexual innuendos to women, and giggling at his own brilliance throughout. Yet there was something about him that seemed not funny at all. Violent, in fact. You see this a lot in Thailand. These musicians, entertainers though they are, earn their living and their standing through music, and there's nothing funny about that. If you were dumb enough to upstage them and make them lose face - say, in a jam session - you might put yourself in harm's way. You'd also be cutting into their territory and livelihood. I had a complete sense of this, so when (out of a sheer need to touch a guitar) I borrowed the "clown's" guitar after the show, I played quietly and tried not to draw attention. I knew I was better than him. I played a few songs with Michael Caine, but felt at a certain point that enough was enough, and moved on.

I may have actually passed that point, because yesterday, as I passed that bar again, and said hello to the owner, he mentioned to me the dangers to a foreigner of randomly playing onstage. I am quite sure that although I'd seen him once, over a week ago, he remembered me and chose to tell me this information for a reason. He never said it, but I got a feeling that I'd ruffled some feathers - floppy-hatted asshole feathers - and should know it. Until three years ago, he said, it was okay. Foreigners would jam anywhere, go onstage with their instruments, etc. But three years ago "something" happened, he didn't quite say what. A group of foreigners had run afoul of local Thai musicians by engaging full-time in musical displays. This had earned them a visit from Thai immigration, who raised the suspicion of unlicensed work, and may have also earned them a few cuts from a razor. This he didn't say, but it was between the lines. 

I'll stick to karaoke, and to swaying gently to Bob Marley - who, for some reason, is still believed in southeast Asia to be white people's favorite sound. And now they have ambient covers of his hits, bossa nova covers, et al. You go anywhere round here, and I promise you will hear Nesta. The phenomenon as a whole is, as one hilariously drunk Brit girl put it, Thairible. (She also went around saying "Thai five!" - just thought I'd mention.)

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Things you see a lot of Chiang Mai:

- Tattoos. Far too many original thinkers walking around with their original ink tastefully half-concealed by hippie clothes.

- Western girls with foot injuries. Either due to trekking or due to the cracked pavements. See photos below.

- French people. It happens every time. I see swarthy, unshaven tourists and think they're Israeli, and then I pass them and hear that horrible language. I cannot make politically acceptable excuses for this, but my gut reaction each time is to mutter to myself, "fuckin' French."

*

There's a pattern to many of the western guy/Asian girl couples. Namely, the pattern of a business transaction. Even most of the "legitimate" ones, i.e., long term, similar ages, and not a girlfriend-for-hire situation, seem to contain a kernel of this. Oftentimes it will be a sheepish western guy, not necessarily but often less attractive than his girlfriend, performing obeisances to some deep-brown Asian hottie with a pouty, cranky disposition. I met such a guy some nights ago at the night noodle stalls outside a 7-11. 

He was standing at a distance from his Malaysian(?) girlfriend, as if on leave from her. He was a likeable, chubby young guy who earns good money as a ship navigator. He gets to all ports, and has seen many countries. At a certain point he met her, and now he's vacationing with her in Thailand. Asking about my own trip, he danced around the subject of meeting new girls. I could see the man was in a predicament.

"These Thai girls are amazing," he said.

"I'm not really interested," I told him. "Was once, but not anymore. They all seem to be working an angle."

"You know, if I was single..." he finally blurted.

"Oh, I know. I got that when you were asking all those questions."

He finally went back to his girlfriend's table. I could see instantly what the deal was. She was hot and demanding. He ingratiated her and she eyed him humorlessly, cowing him into submission as she no doubt has done since day one. What her end of the deal is, I can only surmise, but it probably isn't a shipload of personal attraction - although she might work just hard enough to make it appear so in his mind.

I presented myself, to some tepid recognition from her.

"Raj?"

"No. R - A - Z. I keep having to do the zorro thing when telling people my name," I told the guy.

"Do you wave your little sword around?" he asked.

"In a manner of speaking," I told him. It was a pleasure to make him laugh. I had the feeling he didn't do much of it, made though he supposedly was in the tropical shade.

*

Postscript: walking around today after posting this, I saw a French girl with an injured foot. Motorcycle accident. When will this end? Also, I've realized that the Italian guy's silent girlfriend, who neither talks nor smiles nor makes eye contact, might actually be a battered woman. I wouldn't put it past him.

*

Here is a crapload of pictures and videos. Click photos to enlarge.

Versailles

Dutch girl with a foot injury

Aussie girl with a foot injury

A GUARD GOOSE. No joke. Geese are mean bastards.

The guy made clear that this is NOT Pennywise from "It."

A canal float with jutting fluorescent tube lights. Very safe.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

A bit of wisdom from Buddha at Wat Chedi Luang.
Some stories attributed to Buddha are insightful and deep.
This isn't one of those stories.

Before entering a temple.

Warnings at a temple. Oh, the serenity and the holiness.

What indeed?

Fifi?

Guard goose!!!

Hannukah Haircare Miracles

My voice has gone deeper in Chiang Mai, I’ve noticed. It isn’t because I’m particularly relaxed; I’m still a neurotic, and have a ways to go before true calm. It’s because I’m alone. My conversations are mostly internal, and when I do get to speak to someone, it comes from within, down deep below the diaphragm, the words measured and unhurried. Of course, once I get on a roll, the motormouth version of me which you know and love takes over, and my voice assumes its accustomed comical pitch.

But by and large, throughout the day, it’s just me. Unlike people traveling in pairs and over, I have no one sitting across the café table, nothing to punctuate the meal. I gobble up my food and then, if I am in the mood, sit and muse. It makes for an odd display: a lone foreigner staring catatonically into the middle distance. But internal or shared, I need conversation. Yesterday I sat in a random café to try and finish Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens (thanks, Galiti!) and/or to think. Like most cute little joints in Chiang Mai, it had a gimmick, this one being Coca Cola memorabilia and other Americana. The manager was dressed in an American flag pajama-looking set. My table was a fish tank, and from the rafter above me Mickey Mice hanged executed convicts. (see picture.) I tried focusing as best I could, but the music in the place was boy band treacle. You try meditating to the heavy-breathing strains of “see you once agaaaain, my loooove.” So meditation wasn’t perfect. I took a few pictures, including of a poster I see plastered all around Chiang Mai: Self Hypnosis for Self Improvement. The moment I began breaking that down in my mind, I ran into the immediate need to have my friend next to me to talk about it. She is the exact person with whom I would have shared that specific discussion. I experienced her absence from that fish-tank table in the form of a physical pain.

That said, I am careful not to over-familiarize myself just because I’m lonely, but rather to choose prudently whom to open to. For one, I maintain a safe operating distance from the locals who serve my traveling needs. In the past I tended to ingratiate them, probably due to their own hardened businesslike aloofness. It was, as ever anywhere, a subtle battle of wills – and I waved the white flag. This would often grant them excessive liberty with my personal affairs, and I’d end up making concessions to their omnipresent gaze so as not to embarrass myself. In other words, I became known where I should have enjoyed anonymity. I’ve learned my lesson, and am more guarded now – for example, I have not told my guest house owner that I stayed in her place before, for a long time. Better that she think of me as a new customer, perhaps one that’s a bit hard to please, a man you can’t quite get a handle on. Let me be the enigma and they the guessers, not the other way around. Besides, I am the one shelling out cash, so fuck it. I do seek the company of other travelers. I’ve met Danes, Germans, Chinese, Americans, and of course my local buddy, the Italian Robert Redford lookalike, Romano. (I’ve also noticed that French and Spanish people make very convincing Israelis; could fool me; like us, they shave less, iron less, and dress more like they’re going the beach.)

Not that there aren’t lots of Thais I enjoy meeting. Here in Chiang Mai, that is. This place might as well be another Thailand. After a person who sold me a banana shake wished me a wonderful day, and a money exchange man did the same, and a hotel hostess took three minutes out of her time to explain to me which other hotels might have a swimming pool for me, and two Thai girls at a food market gave me a ride home on their scooter (and let me drive!) – see picture – after all this, I realized that Chiang Mai’s people are simply more cultured. They make the south and Bangkok seem like low-bred animals. It’s not that they don’t need to make money; no one will give you a room just because you have a nice smile; it’s that they have a more beautiful and humane sense of business. Theirs appears to be a win/win approach, whereas in Bangkok it’s the win/get-fucked school. That said, at that food market where I got a ride home, I still got the farang price for dessert. Can’t win ‘em all.

And of course, there’s the prostitutes. Of all the Thai elements, this is the one closest in vibe to Bangkok (although, as I’ve mentioned before, milder here. And not all over the place.) You do see young brown women with old white men. You do see young brown women reenact fake jollity each night at the designated bars and hangouts. You do see the same young brown women everywhere, a cautious unsmiling look behind the expert welcoming smile. One night walking home by the canal, I passed such a couple of women, sandwiching a young white guy. “Where you go?” one of them asked me in a voice not unlike one of the Chipmunks. “Noodles,” I said, and indeed crossed the canal to get some. A few moments later, so did they. The guy and I exchanged a few words, and he invited me to go with them.

I thought a beat. “Nah, not my scene.”

They hung around for a cab, then changed their minds and decided to eat. I invited them to sit at my picnic table. The guy was American, Jewish (oddly, every single American I’ve met so far has told me they’re Jewish.) The girls were the cartoon voice one, who had a lovely sense of humor, and an Indian/Nepali looking one who acted very quiet and mysterious. She played her cards close to her chest, or, I believed, might be new to the bar girl game and is still in shock, the other one being her mentor. As the guy was young and handsome, I wasn’t sure if they’re bar girls or not, but it sure seemed that way, especially with the overstated coyness of the quiet Indian-looking one. She had gorgeous raven hair, a healthy young figure, and deep, black, surreptitious eyes.

“Where did you say you’re from?” the American guy asked her, trying to get the Thai word right. “Sip—Sipti—Sippitt— ”

She looked at him calmly and said, “Kanchanaburi.”

Dude wasn’t even close. I laughed hard, and the Mickey Mouse one said I have a great laugh. She had a true pleasantness about her, a something real, without the hard edge usually found in Thai girls working the tourist beat. Over the next few days, I ran into one or both of those girls no less than five times (!) at different places. I found them to be genuinely friendly and polite, but kept my distance. I kept wondering if they indeed are of the bar persuasion. Two days later I passed a girlie bar and saw the Indian-looking one chatting up a tourist. It’s always a relief to establish facts.

I have an inflamed hip from too much walking, and I’m in a bit of pain. But in things are good. I’m saving more money here and having a better time. The tiny bottle of shampoo I filched from the overexpensive hotel in Bangkok has lasted me forever. It’s like a Hanukkah miracle, only with haircare. My private toilet has a little drip in the back, but it’s okay. There are a couple of ants in my bathroom, but it’s okay. Actually, it shouldn’t bother me at all. It’s something I’ve just realized: at home, you don’t mind insects that much. A couple of ants here, a mosquito there, a cockroach putting in a guest appearance. No big deal. But when traveling, especially in tropical countries, every bug is an infestation. Got bit by a mosquito? Start planning for malaria. Unidentified brown flying thing landed on your shin for one moment? Three days later you discover a scratch on the back of the other shin and think, that’s how starts. Paranoia.

Okay, my banana shake is long gone, and the people whose café’s WiFi I am using have not bothered me to buy another for too long. Chiang Mai is nice. Here are some photos and a video.

Waitress chillin'

Mickey getting his just deserts

The two girls I met at the food market, who gave me a ride home.
They're 21, university students 

With Romano and Jade

Self Hypnosis for Self Improvement

Michael Caine

A friend told me the Thai of Chiang Mai are considered arrogant and distant. I have not found this to be the case. Rather, they mind their own business, which is fine by me. To a tourist, Bangkok is a gauntlet of pestering scum. Here you walk, and although there are endless places who'd like your money, they let you walk, mostly without calling out to you or forcing you to say an apologetic "no" fifty times a day. And the mark of good business, which they all exhibit, is that they're nice even if you don't buy - in Bangkok nowadays they curse your eyes. (When I told one Bangkok street hawker I didn't have any money, she told me to get the fuck out of Thailand. I believe she meant it.) Except for the tuktuk drivers and cabbies, who are shit anywhere, there are only a few whore enclaves in Chiang Mai where you get solicited, but even those do it mildly and kindly. Chiang Mai, in short, is a thousand thousand times better than Bangkok. It's Bangkok without the bad parts.

Walking Chiang Mai brings back memories. I had a time here back in the day. Many buildings and street corners are little life markers to me. Mostly pleasant and gentle ones, as is the city. Walking also brings up a question: what does it mean to visit a place? You take Chiang Mai. It's got shopping opportunities to no end, set up for tourists. Restaurants and bars, for tourists. Cool activities - pet a tiger, ride an elephant, be a gibbon (a jungle zipline package) - all created for the tourists. But those are all addenda, tacked on to the place because it draws a crowd. If you strip them away, what is this "Chiang Mai" that you visited?

I think that in Chiang Mai's case, and in the case of most cities, the truth of the place is in walking it. Just walking, not necessarily around the tourist draws, and absorbing whatever you happen to see. The actual life and lineaments of the place. Chiang Mai is good for that. An old city surrounded by a perfectly square moat, tons of little alleyways, buildings that tend to be low and light. I've had several nice days here, spent walking a whole lot. My feet and back hurt a bit. I eat light and walk. I meet people.

At a live music bar, I jammed after the show with a harmonica playing Englishman who looks precisely like Michael Caine 20 years ago. Same smile, same teeth, same jollity. It was uncanny. And it turns out he dated Michael Caine's wife's cousin. He blew a mean harp, too. Late last night I stumbled onto a movie set at a public square lit brilliantly by a standing display of a pagoda made of fabric and lights. I asked one guy what sort of film it was - comedy? drama? I bet anything that he could not have a basic English conversation, as is true of most Thais, but he gave me as precise an answer as could be: "kahming off aytch." A coming of age film, that is. 

I see the dogs, too. They're strange. They're all over Chiang Mai, mangy street dogs that never bark. They're strangely quiet and un-aggressive, perhaps (no, definitely) having taken on the character of the city and society around them. Even they do not pester you at all, and mind their own business. Only once did I see one break out in excited wagging, as my own dog Stanley does every single moment of his life. The rest of the time, they just walk around - not run - and go about their quiet lives.

Here are pictures of a beef noodle restaurant. Click to enlarge.

Number one in Colupchuh

In 2003, in Bangkok, as a friend and I were returning late at night from the bars, we passed a homeless man on his regular corner. This man was naked but for very short pants, his hair matted with filth, and his body and face coated in thick, black soot. He looked like a deranged minstrel. Grinning at us toothlessly, he gave the old thumbs-up, and uttered the perennial slogan: “Thailand number one!”

(“Oh yeah?” I muttered to my friend once at a safe distance, “where else have you been?...”)

This is just one extreme, absurd example of the knee-jerk nationalism stoked so carefully and intensively here. When a man whose country has reduced him to absolute shit still thinks it’s number one, then the wedding of propaganda and gullibility is complete. As in many cases, you must believe it’s number one – otherwise you’d have to face some dire realities. In reality, there are many Thailands, and Thailand No. 1, that of the mega-rich, might as well be a parallel universe to where Sooty lives (lived?), which has to be somewhere in Thailand No. 8 or 9.

I’m writing this on the train to Chiang Mai, a 12-hour ride. It’s okay, I’m in an AC car. Leaving Bangkok feels like leaving an abuser, one of those insidious ones that promise the moon but just bleed you. Leaving this town costs money, it’s a physical effort, and strangely, I’ve found that it took resolve. But thirty minutes out and already the landscape seems gentler, cleaner, not just physically. I took a taxi to the train station. The driver was a Thai Chinese (they’re a large subset of society) who’d driven a minibus for 20 years and recently bought his own taxi. I asked him if he knew who the taxi kings of Bangkok were. Whoever owns those massive fleets of omnipresent red / yellow / pink taxis must be very rich, and very connected. My driver, however, was a freelancer.

“The taxi and tuktuk drivers around hotels and tourist enclaves are no good,” he as much as told me with his broken English.

I agreed enthusiastically, citing the fact that they all spout Thailand-number-one type slogans while peddling the bodies of thousands of Thai women for a song. Around the tourist enclaves, the taxi and tuktuk drivers are generally procurers and conmen – it’s the rule, not the exception.

If I go to the strip shows, my driver told me, I’ll pay 500 baht, while he’ll pay 20. I was beginning to like this guy. He was honest and real; he presented no illusions. (Even the approximate meter price he’d quoted me to the train station when I boarded the cab was accurate.)

“Fine, I get farang (foreigner) price. I understand. I’m not Thai, okay. But how can they say Thailand number one and still do all that?” I said.

“Thailand number one colupchuh,” my driver noted dryly. It took me a moment. Number one in corruption. Now I really liked him. No cabbie I’d ever met here had the honesty, sincerity, and balls to say this. I nodded in appreciation. He went on to tell me that the cops are also crooked here, from small fry to bigwigs, another tidbit absent from tourism copy.

“I have never been to any of those strip shows and don’t intend to,” I told him. “Because I know that money goes to the mafia, the same guys who force poor girls from the northeast into prostitution. I wouldn’t give those people a single Baht.” A philosophy I try to live by at home, too, where I avoid “legitimate” crime-owned businesses (that I know of.)

“All the tuktuks around Khao San and the tourist area are mafia,” he said. “And the whole area around the Grand Palace, Phra Athit, etc., that’s all operated by the mafia.” In short, anywhere tourists go. Bangkok is colupchuh. Big colupchuh.

Written later: the train ride

The 12-hour ride is nearing Chiang Mai. While the tourist greeters at the train station in Bangkok told us there would be little food onboard, and that we must bring our own, we have been fed continuously – three rather tasty meals, and as many coffee and cake rounds. It’s good that I took this daytime ride rather than the nighttime sleeper carriage where you go to sleep and wake up elsewhere. This way I got to see the transition in the landscape, to feel that I made this transition too. Going north, at one point the land started getting hillier, lusher, much greener. Just seeing all that green was worth the trip. Now we are passing through a clear, brilliantly starlit night in the mountain pass. I spent over an hour between carriages (o, the lax safety regulations of developing nations!) chatting to an Australian girl, enjoying the slowly darkening jungle, breathing the diesel fumes, smoke from agro fires, and wet, ever-cooling night air. And I was traveling. Oh, yes.

Assuming this post has not been intercepted by some form of mind police, here are some images from the ride. Click on photos to enlarge.

Between cars

The State Railway of Thailand thinks that "Lost" was remiss in adhering to plot rules.

AC car with fans, which came in handy, because the AC was spotty

Emblem of the State Railway of Thailand.
Every emblem here looks like a combination of Batman and the Freemasons

This girl slept almost through the entire ride. I was impressed.

Like Instagram, but not fake

Postscript:

I spoke in haste regarding the train ride. Turns out it was 3 hours late. We were on it for 15 hours (!) and it reached Chiang Mai near midnight. When I wrote we were “nearing Chiang Mai” I was wrong. We were nearing 3 more hours on a slow train. Then it reached a city I thought was Chiang Mai, but was actually Lampang. There was more and more slow crawling through the night. I spent more time between cars, and at one point saw treetops beneath me in the dark as we crossed an abyss. Once we finally set foot in Chiang Mai, I was happy. The fatigue left me. I checked into Little Home, a guesthouse I once, many years ago, stayed in with a Japanese girlfriend. I woke up an old lady, spent the first night in a musty storage room of some sort, but now have my own beautiful room for exactly half of what I paid in Bangkok. Chiang Mai awaits me, and I it. It’s just friendlier here – I have not been pestered too much by touts, and even the tourists take on the city’s easier, less paranoid (than Bangkok) air. I went out for beef noodles at a place she and I used to frequent, where the guy sits out front in a little rowboat that has all the cookware set up around him. Delicious.

The Great Polish Ripoff

Tomorrow I go to Chiang Mai, finally departing this mistake of a city, Bangkok, after 9 days of just trying to land. I spent most of yesterday at the rooftop pool of my pricey (yet still unfriendly, as most are here) hostel, the Rambuttri Inn. I was brooding, but slowly and carefully rediscovering my joyous side.

See, there are two opposite schools of thought regarding bad feelings. A close friend, whom I consider a genius of some sort, advised me before traveling, as my mind was whirling in doubt and trepidation (don't know why,) that I should not rationalize those negatives away. While I was trying to talk myself into discounting my fears, she said I should simply experience them, e.g. suffer through them and not pretend they don't exist. Tackling fearful experiences, she said, is a muscle you can grow. 

Another school is that of Lauren, real name omitted, a French-Canadian I met at the dormitory on Silom. She is traveling to become a spiritual healer, has spent time at a Thai Buddhist monastery somewhere down south, and is extremely forthcoming, as all newly enlightened people are, with pointers on how you're seeing reality incorrectly. She's also cute and friendly, but that's besides the academic point. In a philosophical debate that left a Kiwi listener delighted ("You never hear that sort of conversation in New Zealand",) I got an elephant's dose of New Age learning from Lauren, including but not limited to the ever-popular mention of quantum physics (puh-leeeease) in the context of human reality. Lauren says she is cultivating the ability to see everything positively all the time, and that once you meditate and reach a certain level, you understand that your perceptions are all made-up.

I'd warned her beforehand on the creepy Chinese-looking guy from the top bunk (see Dorm Fauna post.) At one point in our debate, he came in the room and then went out, granting Lauren a first glimpse at his pervasive creepiness. See? I nodded pregnantly. "I think he's a wonderful man," she said, true to her all-or-nothing fiction - which, let's face it, must be maintained at all costs if she wishes to become a professional spiritual. The New Zealander, however, had a different perspective, positioned as he was to see the man's face as he left. "He gave me a creepy look," he said.

To cut a long story short, Lauren seemed to mention sex a whole lot, which led me to believe that as capable as she is in 'deconstructing the fallacy' of negative emotions, she's still human, and can only take so much of her own myths. Also, if everything is positive and nothing is negative, then nothing is positive. But fuck all that. Back to the pool.

As I began swimming yesterday, two Polish guys entered the pool with beers. They were in their early thirties but looked older. I'd noticed that the pool rules forbid alcohol, but thought it some frivolous caution. How wrong I was. One of them was the sensible one, the other a fool. As the day wore on, he drank without cease. At first he was fun, and I could appreciate that, although he was buffoonish, he was bringing people together. But within a few hours, when he still wouldn't stop drinking - - now swigs from a bottle of Jim Beam - - he had become a nuisance. He spoke incessantly of dares, feats of sheer will, and the such. He dove in the pool (another thing on the big sign of no-nos,) kicked through several of the plastic pool gratings around the edge, and finally showed everyone how daring he was by climbing over the parapet and onto the fifth-floor roof. People were scared. He'd stopped being fun. He climbed back, assuring us that he could never have slipped. As I was not drinking, he kept trying to get me to join the 'hilarity,' going so far as to ruffle my hair aggressively. I could see things taking a turn. Then came the crunch. He told me something about a dare, jumping into the pool, and how a real man would do it, and demonstrated how a real man rips his shirt off, by ripping a hole in mine. I, who'd been watching a sunset over the bridge after a fine day and finally feeling that elusive peace I'd so craved, lost that peace. Rather than risk more hilarity, I left. I've got a little hole in my red sleeveless shirt now, but I'm keeping it. 

Today I was at the pool again, then went on a three-hour trip to buy a train ticket. I got to see some of the non-tourist parts, where the Thais seemed a bit nicer. (The rancor of those Thais serving tourists, by the way, has been explained to me by one Somali British girl as linked to the downturn in European economy, and thus in European spending here. Makes sense.) At a restaurant that does cater to tourists beside the railway station, I saw a waitress run after two European blondes with the change cup - she thought they'd forgotten their change, which was in fact a tip. It was refreshing to see such honesty. Around Khao San, where I am,  they'd pocket your fucking heart medication if they could. On the street here, every three feet is a man trying to sell me the vaginas of his impoverished countrywomen. Now they have a laminated card with a sort of poem on what a pussy does in those famous strip shows:

PUSSY SHOOT ARROW   SHOW

PUSSY PLAY PING PONG   SHOW

PUSSY PEEL BANANA   SHOW

and so on, an A5 page-full. Maybe pussy even wrote and laminated that card. I could really imagine myself reading the whole litany with a pair of bongos in a darkly lit jazz club, and ending with "PUSSY OUT, PEACE!"

There was a talkative bum on the bus back to my lodgings, who everyone seemed to avoid. Me too. But as I spoke to a girl from Costa Rica, he seemed to take an interest. He had a bit of English, and welcomed us a few times to "SmileLand," the mythical land of smiles that Thailand is in tourist brochures. There were in fact a few smiles on that bus, but most of all his. I guess you've got to be a derelict here to be nice for no reason. He got off at Sanam Luang park, where I do believe he sleeps.

Here's a tracking shot of a typical Bangkok street I took from the front seat of the bus:

Same river twice

One of my favorite quotes, which I just found is by Heraclitus, is "You cannot step into the same river twice." One of the translations of the full quote is even better: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."

I have found this over and over to be true. Nostalgia, while irresistible, is painfully useless. You can never go back, because neither 'you' nor the place you were in exist anymore. (The only exception I found to this is friendship.)

I've been blogging often because I'm not enjoying myself. I have yet to have a good night's sleep. I spent four pointless nights at that hostel listening to a symphony of snores, alternately sweating and freezing, and searching for a good position on a mattress made of rock. I saw the dawn every damn night. Add to this the two first nights I spent sleeping on a friend's couch, and the night flight from Tel Aviv, and I have stretched jet lag to nearly a week. Today I moved to the backpacker part of Bangkok and splurged on more expensive lodgings, at least for a couple of days until I level out. Sleep deprivation creates a baseline of misery.

Which may explain why I'm disliking Thailand so far - but it's not only that. I am not the same man I was in previous visits, and the river doesn't look the same to me. Negatives I once glossed over loom large; temptations once entertaining are now hollow. I am (you guessed it) older. 

It's not that Bangkok changed. There's no reason that it should: it's essentially a huge shopping mall + brothel with lodging, and it works. It's a successful money machine. And money is all I see in the Thai faces that see me. There is nothing but dollar signs in the eyes; no compassion, no human interest. Because I am not human to them. I am a walking wallet. They don't even hide their contempt (anymore? or am I just noticing it?) They will tolerate only two things from you: ordering and paying. If you're not planning to give them money, and with a minimum of questions, you are shit. I've seen few genuine smiles in this so-called Land of Smiles. Almost none, in fact. The Thais are sullen, short, and rude, almost hateful. Many seem angry, like they hate you for being their livelihood. All this I see now, and assuming it's nothing new, I wonder how I could have ever missed it before.

But I also see things from their side. With the exception of the rather thin middle class and the rich, which in Thailand are a small, rapacious elite lording it over the rest, most Thais are poor, struggling to make it from day to day. As dehumanizing as their attitude towards me is, I also realize why. The first thing a person in severe pain will want to know is whether or not you've got some painkillers on you. The finer distinctions of human interest and universal love are a stratum or two higher on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. 

It doesn't make me feel better to know this, and it doesn't even make me more compassionate towards the Thais. At least not yet. But it's something to think about as I ponder what the hell I'm doing. Thank you to all the friends who provide me with the positive perspective. Perhaps one solid night's sleep and I'll see things nicer. In the meanwhile, to show what Thai life is apart from foreigners, here's a video of cheerleader practice outside Lumpini Park:

Dorm Fauna: The People You Meet

I'm in a 10-bed dormitory part of a place called HQ Hostel, at the very tourist heart of Bangkok. It's a novel concept: a boutique dorm. The design is inspired, the lounge a godsend, the mattress painfully hard, the WiFi spotty, and the receptionists uselessly helpful - always happy to oblige you with vague general information you can get online.

The central location, the AC throughout, and the budget were considerations in favor of a dorm (rather than a shabbier private room out on some bus line,) but so was company. From previous trips, I recall meeting nice people in dorms, and my friend Michali's choice of one on a recent trip to Italy inspired me to do likewise.

It was off to a weak start, though, the sort that can be quite dispiriting at the beginning of a trip. The folks I see in the lounge, especially the women travelers, have been a rather sullen and standoffish lot so far, perhaps soaking up the defensiveness inherent to this big city. But I expected more of the dorm. On my first night there, I met a phlegmatic Malaysian guy in his twenties with a spiky hairdo and flat affect. If sociability can be measured by one's responsiveness to and initiation of conversation with strangers, this kid was smack dab in the middle of the spectrum: he will cooperate (well, just barely,) but not initiate. Most healthy people are to the right of him. I of course am on the far right.

Here's the rough graph:

ANTISOCIAL....(-initiate)(-cooperate)....(-initiate)(+cooperate)....(+initiate)(+cooperate)....AWESOME

The rake-thin, mop-haired, older Asian man in the top bunk nearby, however, is way, way on the left side of the spectrum. He will neither initiate nor cooperate. I'd only seen him coming and going, tense, shifty-eyed, and angrily silent. Being the friendly man I am, I asked him: "Where are you from?" as he climbed down. Not  looking at me, he muttered with annoyance, "I, uh..." then he groaned and huffed off.

"Oh-kay..." I said to the Malaysian kid.

"Why don't you just let him be?" the Malaysian employed an English idiom, as if I'd been pestering the creepy older guy for weeks now, and as if this wasn't a fucking dormitory. Like I'm the asshole. I decided that (A) I don't like this Malaysian kid, and (B) the creepy older guy is probably involved in something untoward. Maybe he's on the run from the law in his country (which is...?) Maybe he's in Bangkok to fuck children. Maybe both. Maybe he's just insane.

Insane happens, and definitely when you travel. You meet quite a few unhinged people. Last night was horribly sleepless. I got up in the middle of the night, hungry. As I passed the lounge on the way out, there was a chubby-ish English lady in a plaid skirt and straight red hair at the public computer, talking to someone in English. On Skype, I assumed. I returned from 7-11 with a microwaved thing of rice and chicken, and set to eat it in the lounge. Then I saw that the woman at the computer is in fact a man, short, squat, and ugly. He had on spiked heels, and an "I heart Bangkok" t-shirt several sizes too small. And a wig. And he was talking to himself. I tried eating in peace - I thought of meditating in the lounge - but it was too disturbing. He was hidden by a support beam, and it took me a minute to realize there were not several people there, because he employed several distinct voices, and breathed loudly through his nostrils in all the spaces between words. When I heard him mutter something about "...stab him through his fucking heart..." I decided to gobble the rice quick and get the hell out.

"Do you want to use the computer?" he asked me. I got a look at his face. Mannish, crazed, not old, with one wandering eye. A cross-dressing Marty Feldman without an audience. I doubted whether I'd fall asleep after that, and indeed I did not. I also thumbed the lock on the dorm door. He wasn't staying in that room anyway, but just in case he wanted to do some late-night through-fucking-heart-stabbing.

But I've met some nice people finally. One is a smart young Chinese girl with surprisingly realistic views of her country's politics, and the other is a smiley deaf Korean seafood cook with whom I communicated using pantomime and a notebook. Lucky bastard doesn't have to hear all the snoring that goes on. I can't say I've been enjoying myself very much so far. In fact, I've toyed with various radical reschedulings (including tossing the whole thing out and going home,) but I'll wait and see what the days bring.

Hua Hin to Bangkok

After landing in Thailand and farting in the general direction of Uzbekistan Airways, I spent the first couple of days in Hua Hin, some four hours by car south of Bangkok, at a friend's house. It was okay, but I was a house guest, and dependent. It wasn't until last night that I returned to Bangkok, checked into a hostel and begun my trip in earnest. Until that, it felt like more transit.

And transit it was: the train from Hua Hin to Bangkok was five hours. I met and spoke with a couple of nice folks on board, including a Thai guy who sells sweets on the trains with his brother, an English accountant from Dorking on a cycling trip with his wife, and the train conductor, a smiley man (see picture below, in brown uniform) who was nice to me from the start. At one stop, there were monkeys all around the train, and people threw them peels. I didn't because I think they should get jobs.

Shortly after we left Hua Hin, there was some commotion up front, and he told me that they'd just had to break up a fight in another cabin. Two drunk guys, about 25 and 30, came to blows because one of them looked at the other funny. That's what hooch at 2:30pm gets you. Later in the trip, he sat down and we talked. Turns out he's catholic, a rarity in Thailand. I gave him an Israeli 10 cent coin and an "I Love Israel" mint box I got at the airport, and told them they're souvenirs from the Holy Land.

Bangkok is as I remember it, an expensive consumerist Sodom, perfect for those wishing to party and shop, which I don't. The season now is hot, but not hell. I'm in a dormitory with AC, pricey but worth it. I plan on spending just a few days here, and then heading north to Chiang Mai.

Here are some photos from the trip up, and one short video to give you an idea of the landscape. See if you can spot the monkey.

Hua Hin station

To north to south, i.e., to north?

The train had open windows, smoky breeze, and some working fans

There's always one very fat one in every group of Thai friends

The monkey is in this picture

Conductor