Bkk 15 British Isles Redux

originally written Saturday, November 27, 1999

Let me tell you what happened last night.

I got a phone call by that wheeler-dealer Tim, who said he was going to the beer garden at the World Trade Center in Bangkok and that I should join him. Well, fair enough-- it's just down the road, and I had just finished writing a piece for your reading pleasure, and it would be fine to sit out in the hot night and enjoy a beer and conversation.

We met and at his table were some of his business associates. Brian, a very skinny bald Brit, and Phil, a greasy Northern Irelander who is reminiscent of Jon Lovitz of "Saturday Night" fame (sorry if the reference is meaningless), and Phil's squeeze, a heavy set yet cute, youngish ethnic-Chinese Indonesian, Vivian.

What I am fascinated with in the last few months is watching the mind of businessmen at work. It is truly a marvel. You can feel the gears turning with everything they say-- ideas are hatched and exploited for how to generate money from any observation. It's not enough to notice something; it's how to make it into a monetary profit. I was admiring the lighting on the trees at the shopping plaza. Truly wonderful. Wee white lights wrapped in the foliage gave the area a Christmasy-wintry feel. The entire block looks like a winter wonderland of green and white. And then Brian piped up. "I'd love to be the guy that made these lights. Think of how much money he must make". Then Phil: "No, I'd rather be the distributor, that way you have no overhead, all you do is sell them. That's where the money is". And so on. Always an angle on perception as to how it generates income.

There is nothing wrong with that. It just that there are many ways to observe reality but somehow this way of thinking generates knowing nods and respect. It's the same with certain kinds of sports too. For this genre of human (and how one is transformed into this genre is still a mystery to me), golf is a revered pastime. Mention golf and their faces transform into a relaxed big smile, a sigh of relief, and that knowing nod once again. Oddly, most of the time talking about golf is how dear it is to play it, the type of equipment used, and how exclusive the golf course is. "I bought a new set of Calloways and wow, what a difference in my game"... "I was once playing at the Royal and Ancient and I hit one off the 17th teebox directly into the sand. You know how much the green fees are to play there?"... "One time at Pebble Beach I had to take a drop because I sliced one into the Pacific. Shit man, it almost ended up at Cannery Row! Do you know how much it costs to be a member there!" And so on.

So, on this sultry night this was the kind of thing I was a witness to. Tim introduced me to Brian who turns out to be a web guru. They were going on and on about how many hits their web page generated, and how clever Brian was to write code to make their website number one in the search engines. For some reason I like computer coding too. I guess it's nerdy and exclusive enough to make one feel a sense of power if you can do it. Especially nowadays-- it's really such a buzz to talk about web sites and stuff like that. I'm never one to be out of the loop (well, except for what is passed off as music these days), and since this IT thing has taken off, I didn't want to be left behind. So, about three years ago I took some courses and since then I've labored many long hours for months and months to figure it out. The thing about technology is that it is constantly changing, and you gotta keep your ear to the track to keep up. So I was interested in finding out Brian's "secret" to having his website being listed at the top of a search engine's list. For me what's interesting is the algorithm; for a businessman, it is how to transform an algorithm into a money making venture. What it turns out to be in all this, really, is how to manipulate the technology to trick a computer and the human sitting in front of it into looking at what you have and convincing them they need it. For these guys they don't really care what the product is-- all they can see is how much money they can get from it (this is the part where you do the knowing nod and show respect).

Their cash cow is using the internet to sell time share resort apartments. The portal, or way to hook people, is a web site which has a Christmas theme. It's a gimmicky bit of technology where you click on an image of a Christmas tree and a light turns on, or some gift is exposed. But built into this is a webbot-- a piece of code that runs behind the scenes, monitoring where you click and what your interests are, and then this info is sent to a relational database working in the backend, and so they have a file on all your preferences.

Now, what the website owner can do is show other companies statistics that they've collected about how many hits their site gets, who their audience is, and what their preferences are, and so on so that the company will buy advertising. It's cross pollination, or, "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine". In practice, the next time you open your browser, you get a banner ad that looks like it would be of interest to you. I'm sure everyone is familiar with this stuff already. You really can't go on the web anymore without seeing a book title from amazon.com that sort of looks interesting to you. This is the sort of thing these guys do--cleverly figure out ways to write code that "trick" you into believing all this wonderful stuff you see is innocuous, random, and yet personalized for you. And if they can do that, chances are you'll buy it. With millions of people online as you read this, even if .00005% of the population of web users buy into it, well, there is money to be had. Clever, huh? And look, it's the scheming mind of a businessman manipulating psychology and technology to make money. That business mind. How fascinating.

Anyway, because I like algorithms, they wanted to talk to me about getting involved in some capacity. There may be a day then when I'll buy a Big Bertha and a membership at Augusta, and all this ranting will be about how much this costs, and how much that costs, and how much money I make, and how I can manipulate this and that into a profit, and so on and so forth. A sorry day indeed when that happens for you, my dear readers, who have come to understand from my rants there is a lot going on around us that has nothing to do with money, and has everything to do with observation and this strange and wonderful thing called life.

II
Well, the ugly expat rears its head here in Bangkok. What is it about people that makes us lash out at the "other" culture we are in, to find fault with it, and expect it to be in some way the same as it was "back home"? Several examples of humans expressing this angst to tell for your entertainment, and all of them, in this instance, are British Islanders. Yeuchh (in the words of Jerry Lee Lewis, "Britain can kiss my ass..")

Scotsman Bob, you may recall, is that retired endocrinologist who is a colleague at where I work. I should say before launching into the story that every day I walk through the hospital to get to work. This is a public hospital, and health services are, by and large, free--the hospital opens very early in the morning and the waiting areas are chock-a-block by 7 am. All forms of life in arrays of illness line the halls. I pass by. That hospital smells of carbolic acid mixed with human--clincial, but stinky. I pass by. There's the radiology department. There the Autopsy room. I pass by.

Scotsman Bob has high blood pressure as he readily admits. Over lunch (which is remarkable- a beautiful Thai curry and rice for 15 Baht) he whines on about how nervous he is driving in taxis in Bangkok. He laments in that particular Scot lilt, "Eeeh, why do the taxi drivers weave in and out of traffic? It makes me so darn mad. I tell them there is no hurry but they will cross lanes anyway. And then one day I was on the sidewalk and a motor scooter passes just behind me on the sidewalk. Ack! I got so angry I had to stop him and tell him he shouldn't do that. I mean, back in Scotland, we have laws about where to drive. Why can't they follow the laws here?"

In the evening, with Phil the Northern Irelander, he went on and on about how the Thais were untrustworthy to do business with, how to treat them, and so on and so on. Nothing but contempt. He said, "In Northern Ireland, if a guy cheated you the way the Thais cheat you, well, you would bring him out of the pub and throttle him. There will be no more of that again. Aye."

And the best had to be late at night last night at the Foodland counter. It's a 24 hour a day supermarket and greasy spoon, and I went in to buy some oats and thought to have a bite after I perused the denizens in the Thermae. I was way in the back of an aisle, and coming from the food counter was this bellowing loud voice of some Brit screaming at a Thai waitress about the service and how it was not "British". First of all, it is always impolite to raise you voice at another, and even more so in Asia, and especially at the Thais.

Yelling at someone here is just crass, and you are pretty well guaranteed anything you demand will not be honored. So, best not to yell, even if you have that proclivity built into your system. It's even annoyed me so much I had to see what this guy was on about.

There was a seat open beside him at the counter, so I sat down. There he was ranting at this women, and so I thought I would try to deflect it a bit and talk to him. I said, "You know, there is really not much to gain from yelling at her." This did diffuse it-- instead of yelling at her, he started yelling at me! Better me than her, I thought, because he was just drunk and not in control. You see, that is why you shouldn't take intoxicants. Makes you lose control, and in this case, for the worst. Since I really had no grudge or ax to grind with the guy, I was calm in the face of his rage. It can be irritating as hell when someone with so much angst tries to get a rise from you and he can't because you remain calm. I smiled and tried to change the topic. He wanted to establish my nationality, so I obliged. He was a young British man, late twenties I guess, who lived in Thailand for eight years working for a German internet firm. That much did gush out in his rant. But for some reason, he wanted to single out to me, a Canadian: he went on about how much we owed it to Britain for the defeat of the Germans in the Second World War. "Do you know about the bouncing bomb," he queried. "No," I said. "Well," he started, "my grandfather, Sir Shitty-Whittle (or some other name which is peculiarly British and ridiculous) invented this device that skipped over the Ruhr , knocking down the German garrisons on the banks, destroying the German army, and saving the world for the likes of you, you ingrate." Hmm. Sheesh. Sorry for not bowing or something dickie.

Hunter S. Thompson in his masterpiece Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had a line in there that went something like, "there is nothing more pathetic than seeing a man wired on pure human adrenaline writhing around out of his mind." Yes there is Hunter.

It's a xenophobic, disenfranchised expat drunken Brit who yearns for power by resorting to some past glorious days when Britain still retained some semblance of control over the world. It seems to me-- as a race-- the British are the Willy Loman's of the world--in reference to Arthur Miller's tired, burned out, righteously indignant shoe salesman in Death of a Salesman. But that is my hang-up I suppose. Alas, this gent did nothing to alter my view.

There is not more to say about it. I mean, what more needs to be said? How can you even entertain an argument with a line like that? Well, my food came, he stumbled off in disgust at my ingratitude, being an inhabitant of the colonies, paying no homage to the "vaderland", err, "the Queen", not realizing how important England was in my life, and so on and so on.

A Sri Lankan commercial pilot happened to witness all of this, and came up while I ate quietly amused, and said, "I got to hand it to you, I would have hit the bastard."

I just shrugged and kept eating. It's his suffering, not mine!

News From The Front

originally written Monday, February 15, 1999

I took the night train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, from where I would take a boat the next morning to Ko Pha Ngan in the Gulf of Siam. The train trip was uneventful but stylish? a second class ticket for $13US got me the upper bunk in an air-conditioned car.

The boat was packed with backpackers, mostly European, heading for a place to hang for the winter. I talked to two nice guys en route-- one a Brit from Devon who set type for mathematical academic articles, and another guy from Holland who was a UNIX freak. Watch out all you hippies-- your days are numbered on the isles known for full-moon parties and drugs 'til ya drop-- Bill Gates clones are slowly taking over. The first thing you see getting off the boat at Thong Sala are internet shops. The town has one main street that is about one block long, but there must be half a dozen internet servers amongst the restaurants and market.

I headed up the West cost to Hat Yao, a place I stayed before. I asked where "Pong" was, the fisherman who took us snorkeling around this island out in the middle of the gulf a few years before, but he was in town getting new glasses made. So, I went up the beach a bit further to some bungalows hanging on a cliff facing the setting sun. Well, the cost of living always goes up, and it's no exception here. Three years ago you could get a simple bungalow with no shower or toilette for 50 Baht a night ($1US). Not anymore. It's up to 80 Baht ($1.75)!

Well, there it is folks, all the trappings for a lovely stay in paradise, except for a few things, as follows:
1) It started to rain-- a lot. Torrential downpours you only ever hear about or see on TV, like the storm that crippled the "Minnow" in the TV show Gilligan's island.

2) The Euro-trash woman (German) on one side of my bungalow had two little kids that cried and cried and cried all the time. She was pretty down on her luck, and the kids kinda expressed it for her.

3) These two Irish lads on the other side would sleep all day and drink all night and became noisy. At times I thought they were Rastas, their accent was so thick and they talked so slow. It must have been the years of drink and ecstasy abuse. I had to laugh about one guy. He could hardly walk, both his feet were injured. He said he was pissed drunk one night and while walking home he turned his ankle and sprained it. As he was staggering around in pain from one foot, he stepped on a broken beer bottle (probably his own) and ripped a gash on the other foot. So, he was trapped for a few weeks until he could mend.

There was one nice guy I met-- an Austrian tattoo artist who left his wife in Austria a few weeks earlier after he found out she was seeing another guy. I met him while he was waiting for his tattoo needles to be sterilized. He showed me photos of his work, and along with the usual stuff-- naked buffed chicks on horses in the painted desert with Navaho or Hopi Indians hanging around in full war gear, Harley Davidson logos, and various ghoulish skulls, he did some neat abstract work that looked like shiny metal Celtic patterns. He even had a nice shadow and glass surface effect (well, whatever turns you on I guess). The best part was that he rigged up his motorcycle to power the tattoo needle machine. Imagine getting a tattoo from a guy that used his motorcycle to make it! Wow.

So, I had enough of that place and headed back to town by boat just before the rain really let loose. I decided I didn't want to get stuck on some outport given the bad weather, and saw on a map the one good road went straight up north, and so I went up there. Oh yeah, before I left I shaved my head, just to start again fresh.

This is a much brighter place, and although I had initial problems with ants, it's worked out just fine. It's as cheap as the last place, and the people are as nice as they are everywhere here. So my daily regimen is working on my Japanese (writing, reading, and listening), take a bit of exercise by walking, swimming, exploring around the bay, and working on the computer and playing guitar. I feel a lot more productive than I did in the last year or so, let me tell you!

It rained for two days straight, but it let up a bit and now it's mostly cloudy with sunny breaks. Pleasant as the breeze keeps it from being too unbearably humid or hot. The place I stay has a bridge to get across this small brook. Well, the rains washed away the bridge out to sea, and the brook is a river now. It looks like I'm stuck here for a while. Some days I take one of those swimming pool leisure chairs and float up the river. Just great. These blue swallows entertain with their aero-acrobatics--skimming across the surface of the water at 70km an hour, then suddenly flying upwards and then dive-bombing again close the water. They like flying right in front of me? perhaps aware that I am in awe of their grace and speed. Show-offs!

There are some nice tourists here too--mostly German/Austrian, a Canadian woman who works in Taiwan, and this old hippie guy from California I like the hippie guy as he's funny? a caricature of every San Francisco hippie you'd ever meet. He must be in his 60s, but still has the hippie outlook. It's somewhat of a relief to meet people like him, as society is so different now than in his time. Like he told me, he represents the other side of a lifestyle, just to keep the balance. I like that. Since the current society has become so hell bent on the weirdest things-- like the sex habits of presidents, survivalist brainwashing about the Y2K thing, using "Quicken" to organize your TAXES (yikes)-- a guy who hangs out and channels, talks about finding piece of mind, and who has not an angry bone in his body is a relief!! At least he's a heck of a lot nicer than the Germans, who can be abrupt, crude, and ugly. Imagine if Germany won World War II? Gosh. I hate to think of it.

About the Y2K thing: if anyone out there is so worried about cosmic meltdown in your city because of this computer bug, then I suggest instead of hoarding water and food, digging holes in the ground to live in, arming yourself with AK47 assault rifles, whatever-- plan to spend next Christmas here--on Ko Pha Ngan. The electricity is so erratic they supply their own electricity with gas-powered generators. Besides that, well, life here hasn't really changed much. Sure they have the creature comforts of a stereo, TV, and assorted crap like that, but the folks here also live in extended family units, fish, cook and get off doing simple services for one another. Hmmmm. Not bad huh? Besides, should the industrialized world melt down, you could sustain life rather well here.

Speaking of here, here's some history. The Hainan Chinese came to Ko Pha Ngan and Ko Samui to get the coconuts about 200 years ago, and eventually settled. This week it's been rather noisy with firecrackers as the Chinese celebrate the Lunar New Year (year of the rabbit, don't you know). Besides the incessant pounding of rave techno trash across the bay, the firecrackers are a nice way to scare the shit out of any bad spirits!

And so, that's it from my side of the beach. Happy New Year!

Fear of Flying

If lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, well, anything will fly.
-Sally Field as the Flying Nun

Airplanes are supposed to fly. Interestingly, mega big commercial jets like the 7X7 series by Boeing and the European Skybus, really cannot. They would fall like a stone if the jet thrusters were to conk out. Not so with the old DC-3s or the modern day STOL Dash-8; should their engines fail, it would be possible to glide them down in a wide spiraling pattern to land, albeit a rough one.

Now why start with this, you wonder. Well, my brother wrote to thank me for giving him my minidisc collection while I'm here. In particular, he described how great it was listening to the live version of Lynrd Skynrd's "Freebird". I would agree, but that whole album is great. I even named one of my rants after the song "Gimme Three Steps", which is as 'bout as redneck as you'd ever wanna have it. Then I got to thinking-- most of the members of that band died in a plane crash. And then I thought about all sorts of famous people that died in plane crashes, and it is quite a remarkable array, isn't it, for example Dean Martin's son, Frank Sinatra's mom, the Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Bill Graham, John Kennedy, Jr., and most recently Payne Stewart. Wow. Not only that, they died in planes that are more or less the kinds that can fly-- small, sleek, jets.

I fly a lot--but mostly in the type of planes that would drop like a stone. Hmmm. I've never really had any hair-raising incidents in a plane, not like some of you must have had. One time the landing gear broke after takeoff when I flew out of Harare, Zimbabwe, so we had to return immediately to change planes. No problem there. Another time a Dash-8 dropped about 100 metres in a second en route across the Gulf of Siam from Bangkok to Ko Samui. The Irish girl beside me excused herself, took off her hat, and puked into it. All so matter of fact. But that's about it.

Last night I met up with an old colleague from Tokyo (yet another Bob). He told me about a time he flew from Bangladesh to Bangkok on Bangladeshi airlines when suddenly the plane made a detour to Libya. The plane landed, someone got off, and then the plane resumed the trip. Seems because Libya funds Bangladesh, the only way they could get a diplomat to Libya was to unofficially make the detour. That sounded intriguing, huh?

About Bobs now. The night before I went out with Scotsman Bob, who proceeded to bore me to tears by talking at me with his peculiar way of not really looking at you directly, rather his eyes flutter and roll around, but he actually doesn't really look at you. Most disconcerting. When we were young, a kid in our neighborhood's mom was like that too. His name was James Bond at a time when the 007 thing was just in vogue. What a character. Mind you, a Jerry Lewis lived behind us, so I've grown up with celebrity all my life. Anyway, I'll try to keep my socializing with Scotsman Bob to a minimum from now on. And get this, I took him to a Toastmasters meeting. I'm pretty sure I won't join. Just a lot of windbags up there showing off.

Another Bob for you-- my new tailor is "Mr. Bobby" at Raja's. I think I mentioned this already-- he's a Sikh version of Adam Sandler. I went in today to pick up a fine array of 100% Sea Island cotton shirts, with a longer yoke than usual because I find them easier to iron that way. Total cost per shirt = $16 US. Great. He treated me to a beer, just like all the tailors do. In fact, if you stick around long enough, you can get a pretty nice buzz going before you go out on the town--for free. But tonight I kept it to one and got to talking with Mr. Bobby, my new tailor. He told me lots of the inside scoop on the textile and fashion trade. We looked at all sorts of fabrics and he told me every detail about them. There are some surprises that I thought I'd share. For one, all the Thai silk made is not 100% silk. The warp is invariably a viscose/polyester yarn, while the weft is where you find the 100% silk. So, while there is 100% silk fibres in the fabric, the entire fabric is not. He found out the hard way. He made a deal with a German guy 10 years earlier to make 1,000 shirts. Mr. Bobby even went to Jim Thompson's warehouse to buy the silk (Jim Thompson, an American with a taste for the finer things in life, single-handedly started the Thai silk textile industry just after World War II. He mysteriously disappeared on a trip to Malaysia). So, Mr. Bobby made up the shirts for 50% cost before and 50% on delivery, the standard way it's done. The German guy got the shipment and dissected and analyzed a shirt for its content, and lo, it was not 100% silk. The German refused to pay the 50% owing on the shirts, and Mr. Bobby tried to sue the guy. He asked the Thai government to step in to guarantee that the fabric was 100% silk like he was lead to believe. The Thai government refused to commit themselves to such a statement, and left our Mr. Bobby hung out to dry. So, he knows that Thai silk is not 100% the hard way. He said he will tell customers the truth about anything, because although he realizes he might lose business, those that do do business with him are long term relationships, and he counts on word of mouth for business. So I will vouch for Mr. Bobby at Raja's. Go to him. You won't be disappointed. (note—I can't endorse Mr. Bobby anymore because, well, he's not there anymore)

Some more facts about the fabrics on the market. You know this new "wrinkle-free" cotton? It is a poly/cotton mix. But it's pretty good actually. The Japanese have perfected a method of making polyester so fine and breathable it actually is of more quality and price than a lot of other fabrics. Hard to believe, but true. All you wearing Docker's and other schlub pants (I do too, so don't have a cow) have first-hand experience with this new Japanese fabric. There is another one called "Microfibre" too. That is sort of a viscose Rayon type feel (of course there is no need to fear Rayon-- it is made from wood; however, it really doesn't have much of a life once it has been washed a few times). What else? He said he does a lot of business selling "plastic" as he calls the cheap polyester, to Arabs who buy the cheapest suits they can, wear it once or twice, and throw it away. And if you are a stickler on pure fabric, they only come in cotton, linen, cashmere, and wool. He will show you anything you want, and tell you honestly about the stuff. But he knows not everyone is as picky about quality as me, so if they don't ask, he won't volunteer. He said when he first began (Raja's is a family business and Mr. Bobby is the son) his dad told him to be honest, but Mr. Bobby was a young "Turk" and was out to prove how good he was at making sales, so he would convince people to make suits out of the reverse side of a fabric if they didn't like the good side. This blew up in his face when after about a year people came back with the suits all messed up. What put salt in his wound was that they did so in front of his dad, so he was doubly embarrassed to admit his dad was right all along. So, I learned a lot from Mr. Bobby. He's a swell guy.

Now it's factoid time.

Did you know that there are more virgins in Thailand than all of southeast Asia, and that means more per capita than in North America, Britain, certainly Japan, and most probably Korea.

Seems anti-intuitive, only if you believe the popular media that Thailand is a seedy sexpot of a country where AIDS is at the verge of wiping out the population. Take a deep breath and relax, folks. Now why do you suppose the popular press wants to paint that ugly picture? To avoid having their readers looking in their own backyards. Period. Makes one feel a might superior and safe to think these far away countries (true quote: "where is Thailand-- is that Taiwan er Japan?") are disease-ridden dens of iniquity. And I needn't go into how righteously indignant the first world feels about prostitution, and so on and so on. Well, and I quote from John here (the apostle, not Lennon): "Take the planks out of your own eyes before taking the splinters out of another's".

Thailand's literacy rate is at 98%, far outstripping the United States, Canada, and many other first-world countries.

Fifty-four percent of the American public still love Bill Gates and think Microsoft should not be broken up. Well, I can't sanction stupidity as a national sport, but after the O.J. trial, I'm ripe for anything.

Some Advice

Dear J,
I trust you are enjoying all the sights, sounds, and smells of Thailand.

Currently I am in Nepal (just finished a trek to the Everest Base Camp) and will be here for a little longer. Hmm...I don't know how long you intend to stay in Thailand, but it sounds like you've got a pretty good itinerary planned...I won't be back to Bangkok for another two weeks.

I don't know what you've heard about or what you expect from the full moon party at Haad Rin, but times have changed, and like most things, the innocent fun days of a few hippies getting together over a pot of stew and lots of weed and mushrooms for a day or two of hedonistic practice, are part of history now. It's been commercialised beyond repair, with whiskey and beer companies sponsoring the event, meaning it's a piss fest, not really conducive for an epiphany--if that's what your looking for. It's a lot of people gathering and looking around to find out where the action's at--and of course the action is wherever you are, so why the pretense of finding it with British Rave DJ's crowded on what is/was a beautiful beach? Now people piss and puke in the water, throw their beer bottles into the ocean, and act like one does on alcohol... which is not very appealing at all. Hmm...a high school dance is what it reminded me of when I checked it out in December, 2002.

Besides, as you probably read about in the Bangkok Post, the police have been coming down very hard on drugs in Thailand...they shoot first and ask questions later (on top of this the drug lords are killing their clientele to keep them silent). So, please do be careful at the full moon party, should you go... or anything related to drugs.

A much better place on Ko Phang Nan is the north beaches. You can score some shwaggy pot (it used to be top rate, but now it's just shwag) at Hat Yao beach from the bungalow owners, and then head further north to Ko Ma--which is a small island where you can rent a pair of flippers and a snorkel and jump into the ocean and let the current take you around the island for a few hours.

Ko Tao is a nice place too, but the police have been hard on the drug culture there too; however, the diving is fantastic and it's well worth checking it out.

Chiang Mai is really laid back and nice. Be sure to check out the Jimi Hendrix clone across the Ping River at his club... ask around and people will tell you how to get there. He starts rather late (around 11 pm) put it's worth a night out to see this guy... he's been doing music for about 35 years and plays every single night. When I was there a few years ago, he actually waited by the door as you left to thank you for seeing his show at the end of the night. That's modesty...sort of a quality I admire about the Thai Buddhist culture.

In Bangkok, well, it's hard to tell what you are looking for. A lot of backpackers hang out on Khao San Road, but personally I find it kinda dirty. It's worth a trip there to see it, but I've never stayed there--I usually end up on Sukhumvit at Vietman War era hotels like the Federal Hotel on Soi 11. I feel like part of their family there, and the coffee shop and pool are great (the locals eat at the coffee shop, testimony to the quality of the food).

In Bangkok you can get a massage at Wat Po... go for an hour and really get into it. It is worth going on the river taxis to get a perspective of the city from the Chao Phraya. You can get a water taxi from Saphan Taksin (the last stop on the Sky Train) and take it up to Banglampu and see the Royal Palace, the Emerald Buddha, Wat Po, Wat Arun... it's cheap and worth it.

If you must, you can check out Pat Pong, the infamous Girlie Bar area. It's at Sala Daeng on the Sky Train. It used to be much more sleazy, but now it's a night market where hawkers sell watches, t-shirts, and other trinkets, and it's almost impossible to move around. Be careful about going to the girlie clubs, as they can overcharge. The usual places to taste what is offered in this form of entertainment is King's Corner, where you'll see all sorts of women--and men who look like women (called "Katoeys" in Thai), in various stages of undress. My favorite bar there is Safari, which is very laid back and the music suits my tastes (hey, I'm 46 and grew up on 60s music).

Another girlie bar area is Soi Cowboy (at Asoke Sky Train stop) which is much less expensive and pretentious. My favorite bar there is Five Star, where there is a live band that has played forever. Then again, everyone has their own preferences.

There are a lot of shopping places. One stop past Asoke you'll find the "Emporium", where there is a good bookshop (Kinokuniya) and all sorts of other shops. You've probably noticed Bangkok has quite a range of things to see and do, from street hawkers, beggars, lepers, and so on to top rate international shopping plazas. Quite a trip huh!

Anyway, should you have any specific things you'd like to know about, please do write again. Like I said earlier, I won't be back in BKK for another two weeks, but once I'm back I'm going up to Chiang Rai and taking the boat down the Mekhong to Luang Prabang in Laos--a place I've meant to see now for a few years.

Take care

Keep your pecker up

--Byline on the front page of the Daily Sketch (London Newspaper) Thursday, August 29, 1940

1
And so it seems the pecker is bolt upright these days, that is, if you follow the news. Of course I am referring to the latest jingo from CNN on this Iraq stuff, as passed on by Donnie Rumsfeld on the Larry King show. Imagine that! US national policy is made public through the same infotainment TV show that features Mariah Carey adamantly stating she is not wacko. Well, if Larry King says so, I guess it must be true. But like a good friend once said, since when is US national policy released on talk shows? Nixon on Johnny Carson talking about Vietnam? Kennedy on Jack Paar talking about the Bay of Pigs? It never happened that way. Well, we do live in strange corporate times.

2
Speaking of corporate times, Haad Rin is a sandy beach bay the texture of which is like fine white sugar. It is surrounded by rocky cliffs fringed with coconut palms on Ko Pang Nan, an island in the south of the emerald green waters in the Gulf of Siam. It's the spot you see so often on post cards, or at least is that image of paradise you imagine as you bundle up and head out to shovel the snow in the minus 12 degree winter months. In fact, it is so perfect a spot, people, particularly the backpacker set, made it "the" site of idyllic hedonism...in the form of libertarian do-whatever-you-will once Goa became too popular a place to converge.

Haad Rin is world famous now as the home of the Full Moon Party, an affair that once was a days on end ritual of dance and worship of the elemental qualities of the universe--or simply put, youngsters in the formative years of cosmological development (Why am I here? What is this life all about? Let's have fun!) letting loose. To help speed up the process, libations were readily available, a long list of psychotropic substances to get you to the moon without actually going anywhere--LSD, speed, mushrooms, herbal smokables, you name it.

Well, I happened to arrive on Ko Samui the day before this tribal ritual over on Haad Rin Beach, and nowadays you can catch a speed boat to the Full Moon Party, which gets you there in 20 minutes. A little nostalgia swept over me, and so I decided to check it out again.

I've been to this affair a few times over the past 10 years, but the most memorable was the time I went with my brother. Actually we arrived the day after the party and stayed in a very cheap bungalow near the lighthouse a good kilometer from the beach. We had to walk on a boardwalk on the edge of the phosphorescent sea, through a jungle copse that around dusk was filled with the sounds of a million screaming insects. It was quite a scene going through the dark palms past villagers lying casually on their salas, walking by up over the hill and into town, the din of insects deafening.

This beach is wonderful for frisbee because the warm air coming off the sea holds the disc in a static hovering pattern in the air that can last almost a minute. Lots of fun. We had long days of sun and sand and frisbee, made all the more pleasant with herbal infusions that made paisley patterns of green and purple on your skin, on the sky, on just about everything.

Well, what's it like now, this Full Moon Party?

It's gone the way of everything else...a homogenized corporate business. I would say corporate America, but most of the young yahoos are European, mostly English. I will say now, just in case you haven't got my feelings about this yet, that the English are not my favorite people in the world. In fact, as a culture I find them abhorable. There are individuals I do like and call friends, but generally speaking, I find the young ones rather loutish and unfriendly. And so we have the setting for this Full Moon Party--5,000 plus Europeans, mostly English.

What is really different now is the drug of choice--It's in keeping with the corporate backroom boys favorite libation too-- alcohol. Yep. Gone are the days herb, mushrooms, and various other psychotropic elements were readily available. The beer and whiskey moguls now sponsor this affair, and you see the mean, brutish Brits swilling down buckets of Mekhong whiskey and smoking tobacco products. Yep. Not one whiff of herb could be detected. So much for higher consciousness and libertarian moon gazing--you get some drunken Limey staggering into the pristine emerald green sea to drop trousers and take a piss. Adding insult to injury he flicks his Marlboro light cigarette butt into the water for the wee fishies to gag on. Christ. Is this higher consciousness?

I don't want to bolster a campaign for the indiscriminate use of so called banned narcotics (what is the ban for anyway, other than "they" haven't figured out a way to make it legal--the war on drugs will never be won, you know it, I know it-- because it is a gizzillion dollar corporate enterprise that became codified as sort of illegal profit as far back as the Boxer Rebellion, when China finally stopped the British from systematically drugging their populace with opium) but why are alcohol and tobacco legal and not the good stuff? Sheesh. I don't have to remind you of the terrible social consequences of alcoholism, how it destroys individuals, families, and friends, or how tobacco singlehandedly destroys everyone that comes in contact with it. In short, we are afraid of ourselves, and these substances only confirm our own weaknesses and fear. So much for the Yaqui way of life--of ritualized, sacred use of certain cacti and mushrooms for the purpose of reaching the higher ground, for social harmony, and for lack of a better phrase, to love ourselves and one another.

What can you expect to see and do at the Full Moon Party? Walk around looking for where "it" might be taking place. "It" is where it's at, that spot where the solar system converges, where peace, harmony and love meld all to one conscious mind. But what it ends up being is best described as like a high school between classes--you know--the bell sounds (how Pavlovian--how British!) and you shuffle out of the science class into the hall to get to the history class...and you've got only a few minutes in between...only enough time to punch Lewis Massad in the arm for kicks, ogle Pam's breasts and make lewd comments, and high five your homies before you get busted for being late. For all it's made out to be, the only thing I really remember about high school are these moments. Moments in between learning. And this is what the Full Moon Party is all about--a gigantic reenactment of walking between classes in high school, learning nothing.

So where's the beef? Where's the payoff--the money shot?

It's not here man, so don't even bother coming to find it.

So what am I doing here?

Well, for all that it's worth, I'm going to swim with the little fishies and admire their life, soak in the energy of the sun and the moon, revitalize myself, and pass along to you, my dear Gagaites, the power and warmth of the universe. May you be well, and may that boorish Englishman be damned.

Your Gaga

This one is dedicated to my brother Tim, for his birthday. Happy Birthday, Timmy!

BKK 19 Thai Language and Fun

Originally written Friday December, 10, 1999

I finally started taking Thai language lessons. I only had one so far so not much to say about it really. I decided the "Natural Approach" was not the best way to learn (recall I mentioned I sat in on a sample lesson where you literally just watch two women entertain you and you're not to take any notes or anything). At this other place (YWCA) it is more like the audio-lingual approach--you look at a word in a book, the teacher models how to pronounce it, and then you repeat. It's one on one. I take 2 classes a week, 2 hours per session.

The thing about Thai is whereas the grammar is pretty easy, the intonations are a bit tricky, and there are sounds not really part of English. You see the words written in English letters in a variety of ways and every book represents them differently, so it's confusing to know how the language is supposed to sound! And you never see the way the tones are said either, so it's pretty hard unless you have someone to model it. For example, there are 4 "P" sounds: a P that is definitely a B, as in Bow, a P that is a plosive, like p in "spin",then there is an aspirated one like in "pill", and then there is a word final P that is not pronounced! There are 5 degrees of intonation: falling, high, middle, low, and rising. One word then can be said 5 ways and can mean different things. Just for example, the word "suay" can mean either "beautiful" (rising), or "bad luck" (middle), so when you see a cutie and want to compliment her looks, you gotta have the sounds right or you can be quite insulting! Mind you, Japanese has a parallel to this: "kirei" means beautiful, "kirai" means I don't like [something], so you gotta watch what you say there too.

Scotsman Bob turned me onto this place, and after the lesson we headed out on the town as Friday is a national holiday. We grabbed the skytrain to Sukhumvit Soi 33 (near the Emporium) and had Indian food before going over to the more upscale hostess bars.

Bob was feeling good, so he treated me for the rest of the evening. A real swell guy and quite generous--but don't forget he gets a handsome pension from his retirement from the University of Edinburgh, and this is his retirement, so he likes to occasionally go out on the town--I so happened to be with him. We had one beer in every bar along the strip. Recall these bars have the girls who wear elegant evening gowns that are color coordinated so all the girls wear the same color. The first place, Napoleon, had the girls in orange, the next was Renoir and the girls were in white (it was like a room full of angels really!), then, to Degas and here the girls wore beige. Degas is Scotsman Bob's favorite, and since he fancied a few of the hostesses, he invited three of them out with us to go to "Hollywood", which is a Thai club that features a very glitzy "Thai Pops" live show Recall that you have to pay a bar fine to take the girls out, so Bob happily forked over 1,500 Baht for each girl. I tell you, when Bob has a few beers, he gets really generous. I really didn't care one way or another, but Bob insisted.

So, we pile into a cab and get to "Hollywood", where it's 1,000 Baht each to enter. Bob paid that too. We get in the place and it's filled with well-heeled young Thai guys and gals. There is this tradition in Asia of a "bottle keep"- they buy a bottle of booze and the place keeps it for you whenever you come around, and all the Thais had their bottle of Black Label and a bucket of ice going. The entry fee comes with one free beer, so we stuck to that.

The show was something you'd see on TV in Thailand or Japan-- rather pretty boys and girls singing and dancing in a choreographed manner to a live band. Actually this sort of "music" has made some inroads in the North American and British music scene too. The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears come to mind readily, and so that is what this is like. Actually the female singer was pretty cute, up there wearing a thong and bra covered with a flimsy see though dress. She was singing a Brittany Spears tune as well.

Well. the problem with places like this are the management. They have these guys in nice suits that hang around monitoring your consumption. It is really annoying to have some "chimpera" type guy standing right at your table checking how much is left in your glass. I hate that. Then you go to the can, and some guy starts massaging your neck and shoulders while you try to take a leak, then expects a tip! So, I had enough of that crap, and the rest of the party did too, so we piled out of there.

The girls took us to another place that was more remote, where they had less glitzy live music and food. A real gem this place! It was one of those places you would never stumble upon on your own. Bob and I were the only falang in the room, which was a huge wooden hall with picnic tables , filled with young college type Thai guys and gals. The music was more down to earth Thai pop songs. How can I best describe this place? It was like a university bar with a lot of high energy good feelings floating around the room. My mind drifts to college bars you all would be familiar with. I also had a flash of this place in Tabasco, Mexico called "La Choza", where the drinks are free as long as you eat. It was great, all these wonderful Yucatan specialties: Chile Rellenos covered in Chocolate Pibil sauce, and all dirt cheap with the Tecate and Superior Cerveza flowing to wash it down with!

So we spent some time there as it was more down to earth. After a few hours it was time to go. We all got into separate cabs and went on our way home- well, something like that anyway ;-).

I just hope to remember where this place is! I forgot to get the name of it, or in what part of the city it's in. It might be one of those places where in a certain frame of mind you just end up there. There was a place like that in Tokyo we fondly called the "Bongo" bar. I could never ever find the place until we had a few drinks and it was really late. We'd get into a cab and end up there somehow. That bar was fun...it was the size of a closet run by two nice women who would give you a pair of bongos to play and then proceed to dance around to the music. It was silly fun I must say.

BKK 14 Women

Originally written Friday, November 26, 1999


1
I'll start on the topic of women in Thailand. This is not at all insightful, but mere facts I pulled out of Joe Cummings' version of "The Lonely Planet" Guide. Joe Cummings, interestingly, went to Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina (also the home of a convicted felon and funny short story writer O. Henry). I taught there briefly in 1997, as well as at the University of North Carolina. Quaker country. I like and respect the Quaker faith. A quiet, reflective, meditative congregation. I guess that's why I had to leave at the time!

Ma Huan, a Chinese trader in 1433 observed that among the Thais, "All affairs are managed by their wives, all trading transactions large and small". In the countryside, land is passed down to the women in the family, and, like Japan, women manage all financial matters.

On the gender-related development index, (GDI), Thailand ranks 31 out of 130 countries, putting it into the progressive category. "In economics, academia, and health services, women hold the majority of the administrative positions which has given them a sense of self-confidence in dealing with the challenges that come up in their careers," says Dr. Chatsumarn, a Thai feminist and professor at the prestigious Thammasat University in Bangkok.

The Thai workforce is 44% female, 27th in the world, and well ahead of either China or the USA.

Culturally, however, women are still the "back legs of the elephant," while the men are the front (the elephant metaphor is not just a fancy of mine-- Thailand has an affinity to elephants. One reason is that the country itself is shaped like an elephant's head--check a map-- and elephants are used for hard labor, especially in the forest regions. Right now there is a shortage of work for them, so the owners bring them down to the Bangkok streets, and just like the lepers, kids, old ladies, and Cambodian refugees with their legs blown off, the elephants are obliged to beg on the streets for food and money. I see them regularly and you sometimes have to remind yourself that seeing a pachyderm of tremendous size lithely padding along beside you as you walk on the sidewalk, holding out its trunk looking for a handout, is not something you'd see in any other major city in the world).

One problem with the cultural status with women in Thai society is the Thai Buddhist belief that a women cannot reach Nirvana until she is reincarnated as a man. The Buddha never said anything like this, mind you. This is simply a Thai interpretation of Buddhism. But it is true that women have a lesser place in the Sangha, or Buddhist community. She can't be a monk, in the same way a woman cannot be a Roman Catholic priest. She can be a nun and can participate in the Sangha as much as the monks, although instead of taking the over 200 precepts for ordination a monk must vow to keep, a nun only follows 8 precepts.

I wrote last year about love and marriage. In brief, to register and become legally married costs 20 Baht-- a divorce costs 10. Men are entitled to divorce on the grounds of adultery, but the reverse is not true. If a man marries a foreigner, he can still own land, but if a women marries a foreigner, she forfeits her right to own land (watch out you out there thinking of the gravy train and hitching with a Thai women and living here happily ever after). Nonetheless, in the legal system, women and men hold equal rights, whereas in even well developed countries this is not written into their constitutions.

II
Saa- a case study

Saa is a name of a bar girl I just met yesterday. So this is not much of a case study, is it? But I though I would briefly describe what might be a typical scenario for a percentage of the women working in the bar industry (I like the Japanese expression for the bar industry the best, and excuse me if I get it wrong here- "Mizu-shobai", or the "water business").

Saa, a rather comely tall, buxom, yet slender where it counts woman of 27 years, comes from Surat Thani in the south of Thailand. She was eager to talk to me as I passed by one of the many bars that line Soi Cowboy, an area of town that had its origins from the Vietnam war days, when it was formed to cater to GIs here for a little R&R. I suppose a lot of these denizens outside the bars would have liked to talk to me, but not because they wanted my witty repartee, rather they wanted the bills in my pocket. But one way to fend off these women is to read their palms. It's a good way to get them off of you, or on you, depending on what kind of a reading you happen to give. It's not that I'm an expert at reading palms, but who hasn't glanced through such trash in the "psychology" section of the sadly generic bookstore chains at the local mega shopping mall? And it's not that difficult--a head line, a life line, a money line, a success line, and a heart line, not so hard to remember, huh? And of course if you turn the hand sideways and look at the padding just below the pinkie, that's where marriage and the kids are located. Women particularly like to hear about that.

So, I read a few and gave them the bad news (oh, you don't get married till your 50!) but when I started to read Saa's she actually said, "I know it's bad luck. I just got divorced and lost my shop in Chiang Mai". She proceeded to say she was working here to get back some form of her previous life as an owner of a shop. She went on to say she tried working in a British company but had some problems with the boss, and so she had to resort to this job, which is-- and excuse me for offending your virginal, innocent ears-- touting men to come in to drink alcohol and watch about 25-50 naked girls gyrate extremely poorly on a raised stage while they hold onto brass poles and faux-hump up and down to the sounds of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Yellow River", AC/DC's "Hells Bells", ZZ Top's "Legs", Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart" and an assortment of Thai pop songs that have, surprisingly, a real catchy beat. The next objective is for the girls to scatter about the room, sit on a guy's lap, ask him to buy her a cola, and finally go short time in the "backroom", or long time back at the hotel, for money. There. I said it. That, in a nutshell, is what happens in these places.

But these women are people like you and me, don't you know. Saa's story about her hard luck and why she was there is as plausible as any other. She's obviously got language skills and intelligence, having attended the agriculturally-based Kasetsart University in the Bangkok suburbs. Her dream is to get back on her feet once again. Hmm --that's a line from "Wharf Rat" for you Dead Heads out there. I'd go on to parallel what she said to some more of the lyrics, like:

"I'll get back on my feet one day,
the good Lord willin', if he says that I may
I know this life I'm livin's no good,
I'll get a new start, live the life I should
I'll get up and fly away, fly away"


Hmmm. Now how many out there ever had the very same thought?

There are women working in such places for as many reasons as you can think of, and not every single instance is a hard luck story, I might add. Many of these women make a pretty darn good living, and are able to support their entire family. What must be appalling in the western sense of a "morality" is a reality-- a struggle to make enough to live. I've talked at length about this stuff previously, and I really don't want to get into it. But suffice it to say, in some form or another, if you look deeply at what it means to work in the this modern world so aptly captured by Marx and Engels, every single person who works is a whore. I feel as much empathy with Saa and the other women as I do for the guy who runs the corner store, the guy working in the government pushing a pencil, and for every single accountant, stock broker, and lawyer on the planet. Every single one of these jobs is an unglamorous, tedious, blood sucking, dangerous to one's health gig, where the sole object is to live off the avails of someone gullible enough to be enticed to give their money away for a "service" (unfortunately, we are all the "johns" for those working in the government, because we are pimped into giving them money through taxes). It is a sad reality, but it's not because these women use their looks and bodies to make a living.

Saa would like to get out of it, I can tell. And, like Joe Schmoe, if she keeps to her dream, and saves her pennies, and studies real hard, and applies herself, she'll see her dream come true. And do you know why? Because in Thailand, for women, it's possible.

Kanchanaburi

1

In the mid 60s, my parents hung around with political folks, and they would come over to our house in the hot summers in Ottawa to swim in our swimming pool.

On one of those sultry summer nights, after us kids bathed and put on our pyjamas, we sat down in front of the TV to watch David Lean's adaptation of Pierre Boulle's novel "Bridge on the River Kwai." One of the political folks that stayed on to watch the movie with us was this guy Mel, who fancied he looked like Montgomery Clift, with his Ray Bans and lean physique and all, and knew quite a lot about world affairs. Before the film began he described to us the horrible conditions the prisoners of war had to bear under the Japanese, who decided to build a railway linking Burma with Thailand to allow supplies to get to the Burmese front and fend off the British (Thailand was allied with Japanese during WWII).

His stories, and then viewing the movie, really caught my imagination. I was about 10 years old at the time, and after a day out in the sun and in the water, I really could feel the movie. It became a dream to visit such a place. Here's an URL to look at about it.




Well, I did go to the Bridge on the River Kwai several years ago with a pal from Japan, but that was the tourist version. Mind you, we did see and visit all the important things, like the cemetary and the bridge and that, but it was all so boxed and packaged up one hardly could "feel" it. Besides, our Thai tour guide, Billy, liked to crack funny jokes and we spent most of the time drinking beer and talking to Billy who broke us up with his one man stand-up routine.

Well, this past Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m. I was picked up by my Thai friends in a convoy of two mini vans, and we headed off to Kanchanaburi once again.

My Thai friends, all 15 of them, are professionals who are studying for their MBAs, and I know most of them because they were my students this past summer. A swell group of people who gelled around one single guy affectionately we call "Uncle Joe", or "P-Joe". He arranged the trip, the accomodations, and the events. So, off we went.

2

We scooted right past the Bridge on the Kwai River(pronounced "Kway" actually) and headed up to "Hellfire Pass". This is a monument maintained by the Australian government, which commemorates the lost lives of all the people who died at the hands of the Japanese Army in building the Thai to Burma railway (British, Dutch, Australian, American, Malays, and Indonesians). Why the Australians? Well, as the Australian lady told us, it is because Australia has such a short history that it decided to remember those sites and battles it played a part in.

What was interesting to me, looking over the list of the dead by nationality, was that the local Asians lost more people than the combined Allied forces. Over 200,000 Asians were put to work on the railway, and about half of them perished. The British, Dutch, Aussies, and Americans, in that order, lost only about 20% (see http://asiatravel.com/thailand/resotel/hellfirepass.html). It was explained that the Allied doctors were quite clever and inventive in treating the sick and wounded. Some of the Dutch doctors were well versed with tropical disease and they really made a difference. For example, to treat dysentery, they would grind up charcoal and have the sick men eat it, which helped their condition.

Along with better medical provisions, the Allied POWs would share their rations equally. The Japanese were quite cruel, if not stupid, by working against their own deadlines (to build the "Speedo" railway) by not feeding ill men, beating them for no reason, and killing them by setting off dynamite charges in the hills unannounced while prisoners and locals toiled at the same rock face. But my point is that the Allied POWs shared their food equally; the Asian laborers did not, deciding to hoard food according to their own families. This reminded me of the same thing that was talked about during the Killing Fields episode in Cambodia. In his first-person account entitled "Stay Alive, My Son" Pin Yathay talks about how important the family was, and how food was hoarded by family unit . Hmm. Seems to me that it works better if a group is to survive it makes sense to take care of everyone, and not just one's own family. At least it did in this Hellfire example.

Why was it called Hellfire? Well, looking down the mountain slope, just 20 km from the Burmese border, at the men toiling in the middle of the night with bon fires burning to illuminate the work site gave the eerie appearance of the fires of hell glowing from holes in the mountains.

3
We went up to Three Pagoda pass, the Thai-Burma border crossing. I couldn't go because I didn't have my passport with me, so I hung out on the Thai side with the Thai mini-van driver. We had a beer and he told me all about the area, that it had quite long history. The original settlers came to this valley about 15,000 years ago from India. It is the traditional home of the Mon people, who are supported by Thailand to stay there as a buffer between the Thai and Burmese border. It is not an area without a controversy but just as we got into the stories and beers, the rest of the group came back. Seems the other side is just a place to buy up teak stuff for cheap. The Thais have a ban on all logging (since 1989) but stuff still comes through from Burma.

We got back in the van and went to Sangkhlaburi, a village on the edge of a lake formed by a hydro-electric dam. We visited the temple. It was a huge majestic affair- huge polished teak poles held it up, gold everywhere, designed in the same fashion as the original Indian Buddhist style. The Abbott is quite famous throughout Thailand as he is actually the king of the Mon people. We were lucky as he was in when we arrived, and we had an audience with this guy, a 92 year monk who sat resplendently on a seat and sprinkled holy water on us. A blessing for the trip as it were. From there, we walked across the longest woodedn bridge in Thailand to the guest house. Along the way local Mon kids smiled and waved and then jumped off the bridge into the inviting clear and clean water.

At the guesthouse I got on my shorts and went for a swim. What a beautiful place! The water was warm and clean and easy to swim in. I was reminded of the cottage we used to go to when I was a kid on White Lake.

Water and I have an interesting history--it started when I was under 4 -- whenever I saw water, it could be just a big puddle, I would jump into it clothes and all. It got me in trouble a lot, and kids would laugh at me, but, I could care less. How much they missed by not enjoying the experience!

After the swim we had a nice dinner and played card games at night. Don't forget I was the only "Farang" in the bunch, but it didn't matter. I tried to listen to what they said carefully, but even if I didn't get it, actions and gestures and laughter made up the rest of the story. In short I felt quite at home with these folks.

P-Joe asked me near bedtime what was my aim in life, and I explained to be in the moment, fully and completely. I also explained how much suffering I went through wanting to be here and there, or doing this and that, but then settling there is realy only one place one ought to be, and that is here and now. Where else can you be?!

4

The next morning we headed out on the water in a long tailed boat and traveled down the lake for about an hour till we came to the elephant trek place. We got off the boat and onto elephants for a trek through the jungle and across the fast flowing river to start a rafting tour. Traveling by elephant is fun. They are a nimble as a horse walking up and down difficult terrain. And being so high in the air, I mean, wow!


Comments? Email Gaga.

BKK 32 Dikembe Mutombo, And Other People I Have Been Compared With.
Thursday, March 16, 2000

I

So, I started playing basketball again. I try to get down to Chulalongkorn University twice a week to throw around the ball with all the young men and women in the wonderful teak and mahogany paneled and floored sports complex. Along with me there is James, the 58 year old sports writer, as the only two "falang" who dare play. James is an athlete and a musician to boot. James came of age in the early 60s, and being an aspiring bassist, he was part of that 60s music scene. It's all true, he showed me the publicity photos.

The photos are something. In the early days of Rock 'n' Roll, all the bands did this matching suit thing. You remember that, don't you?-- from Bo Diddley to the Beatles, and everyone in between, every band wore snappy suits. The band James was in had these wonderful Chanel houndstooth black and white suits and vests. James is long and lean, and boy, did he look swank hamming it up in full "twistin' the night away" abandon, his perfectly coifed pompadour front and duck-ass back hairdo set just so against a white no-seam photographer's studio paper backdrop. Of course there were the standard props for the band members to goof around on-- eight-foot high mini-Corinthian pillars, an Ottoman (for the drummer, of course), the pre-CBS Fender Stratocaster, a John Lennon-type Rickenbacker (later the axe-of-choice for the lead guitarist for the Byrds). I imagine all the girls swooned over these guys back in South Philly, where James and his crew would play at clubs owned by Sam "Momo" Giancana and other mobsters. And if you played in clubs like this, and you were a regular South Philly guy who made his living through the grace of the mob, there were certain obligations you had to fulfill. Makes sense, right? The mob gives you a livin', and well, as a token of appreciation, there are little favors to do, see? James never had to kill anyone, but had to be around, just in case-- or he handled dough, or drove guys around, or hooked people up with guys who new someone who knew someone who knew where to get this, that, and the other thing. All part of the deal. That's showbiz. That's just being good to your friends. Just ask Frank (Sinatra).

Later on, the 70s kicked in. A more sober scene. The result of the Berkeley Rebellion, the anti-establishment movement, civil rights, the Vietnam war, women and their shtick, and that "the kids" were slowly being weaned off leeching from their parents ... it all unfolded in the early 70s.

And there was James. The photo proof is him standing on the edge of a stream, full Woolworth's Indian regalia, love beads, fringed-buckskin jacket (turquoise and bone bead inlay), Davey Crocket 'coonskin cap, Grizzly Adams beard... standing there, with the soon-to-be-head of CBS records, who was just as "Indianly" attired, standing there... a piddle of a stream to the right ... in Woodstock, New York... back to nature...getting back to 'da land you see... back to the garden... right there on Bob Denver and his two wives' farm ! Bob Denver! Can you believe it! Dobey Gillis' foil, the "Ho Daddy" dude of countless surf films, and most recognizable to the boob-tubers as Gilligan.

Proof folks. I've seen it!

And yet more proof. In the cocaine nights of the late 70s, there is James with arm hung over Ringo Starr's shoulder at Ringo's pad in L.A. (Ringo is a lad after all... a piss drunk-artist that upholds his Liverpudlian roots... think about it... Liver + Pool...). There is James hamming it up with the lead singer of the Commodores, laying down some slap bad-ass bass tracks for the "man". Unh-huhhhhhhhnnngggg. It was a blaze of glorious times swingin' it with maybe not the center stage acts, but good acts nonetheless. Acts we all know at least, right? Davey Jones (Monkee) swimming in the backyard pool, best friend Mr. MTV (who James sez stole the idea from him)... this agent ... that agent...Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe...blah... blah ... blah....

James is an athlete, didn't I tell you? Played a 6' 3" guard for Temple. Played with some NBA guys-- Artis This, Wally That, Jerry Wow, Ernie Who, Bobby Where...

And yesterday on the court we fell flat. We're 21-3 versus these punk-ass NBA copying not-even-close-to wannabees. We pass. We dribble. We shoot. In that pecking order. That is the basics of the game: 1) pass 2) dribble 3) shoot.

A "lay-up" people...kids don't know what that means anymore. It's zig here, zag there, and behind the and through the and then jerk this way and then that... and ... does the ball go in?

Defence? Hold your spot. Don't let them in between you and the basket. Period. If you can, press 'em. They're bound to panic and make a mistake.

And here I am, 'da monsta on the "D" boards and the "O" boards, all 5' 9 and 3/4" of me.

For some reason, I am a power forward in Asia. Mainly because even though the kids are taller and faster (not quicker...there is a difference) than me, I get to the right spot and hold it for a rebound. Dennis "the Worm" ain't got nothin' on me in this game, man.

And so, after we finally walked off the court yesterday after 17 straight wins and this one loss, James takes me aside and sez, "man, since when are you Reggie Miller with all that 3-point stuff? You gotta get inside like you usually do, man. You've changed your game. Get back down and inside. You're Dikembe Mutombo. You're the rebound guy. We gotta take control of the game, you and I. We can work the give and go all day on these creeps. So get low."

Dikembe Mutombo. Wow!

A 58 year old power guard. Even wower. Just goes to show, as Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over till it's over".

II

Other people I have been compared to? Well, before I go on and on with this shameful hubris, I want to remind all of you whom I love out there...everyone now reading these words... you know the feeling. You can only read these words with that same sense of "I know what you mean". In other words, it is not to show off, just to report it as it is. And by doing so, we can all take solace on how silly it all is and ... imagine being compared to someone as if your own good self was not worthy of being what it already is!!! Incredulous!!! Silly!!! Unrealistic!!! But, hopefully entertaining. Enjoy yourself with your own thoughts of who you have been compared to and who you are in reality--and feel good about it.

So, I'll share with you who I have been thought to appear like:

Keanu Reeves (!!)
Steve Vai (?)
Sting (many times)
Tom Cruise (!?)
Ed Harris
Hunter Thompson
Jack Kerouac
A Cult Leader

But mostly Bobo, the clown (sorry Timmy).

Well, anyone that refers to himself as King is a clown of sorts, huh? Unless you're Yoda.

I better stop before I make reference to Garcia-Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and the Buendia family and all that wonderful stuff (if you've never read it, please-- do yourself a favour-- read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez-- a most wonderful book).

So, that then is this installment. Signing out from the polluted, sultry, ravishingly hot streets of Bangkok, which will, I promise, be a feature in the next rant. Unless, of course, San Francisco happens first!

Gaga (1,329 words in two hours [I'm slipping!])

Comments? Email Gaga.

(Originally written Wednesday, December 8, 1999)

The Skytrain.

Within a few hours of returning from Chiang Mai, after faithfully writing my report for you, I took a bus down the few blocks to Ploen Chit to catch the Skytrain (you simply cannot beat a bus for value: 3.5 Baht--a few pennies-- can get you anywhere in or around the city), with the only intention to travel the entire line to get the overall view of the city, and so I would know the full service of the new line.

First things first. The entire train design and manufacture is by Siemens of Germany, so you know it's a well made piece of machinery. The ticketing machines are very much the same as those found in Hong Kong-- so if you know that system, Bangkok's is very similar. You can buy a single trip ticket depending on how many zones you go through. One stop is 10 Baht, and it goes up to a maximum of 40 Baht. For you coming to Bangkok, here's the scoop: get a 300 Baht pass at any station. It will save you time and from hassles waiting in line for people to sort out how to use the machines. Remember, this is a brand new concept in Thailand, and people do not know how to use the automated ticketing machines (I will qualify that by saying in Thailand they have 24 hr ATM's--they are savvy about that technology, which is better than Japan even, but transportation is another can of worms). So, to avoid long-line hassles at ticket machines, go to the service window and buy a pass.

The train doesn't extend too far into the outer areas of town at all. There are two distinct lines that the skytrain travels through, and the transition point is the Siam Center. Since "Siam" is the hub, it is very crowded and busy, aggravated by the Chula (Chulalongkorn University) students who go to school right there (you're right Doug-- these Chula kids are downright uppity-- give me the public uni kids any day). One train line runs from the National Stadium just west of the Mah Boon Krong shopping center (which just went through a major facelift...they redid the outside and added a new level with state of the art movie theaters) down Rama IV, along Silom right to near the river, with a mandatory station near Patpong (of course). The other line extends north from Siam through Victory Monument to Chatuchak Market, and extends east from Siam to Sukhumvit Soi 77. So it covers very conveniently those places of interest that we all know and love Bangkok for.

One complaint though...the stations are not really near the intersections, so you still have to hoof about a block to get to your destination. For example, the "Nana" station is actually at the Landmark. Stuff like that. But, to think you can get from the river to the Emporium in a matter of minutes for about 40 Baht, well, ain't that sum'thun'!

The view is good too. Since you are above tree level, you get a very nice perspective of the streets and buildings. It took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to do the entire line.

The skytrain will not replace the regular traffic routes, and so it is dubious if it will affect traffic and the pollution situation. The skytrain is not at all convenient for me from where I live, and I can still just as easily catch a bus and get around that way (for 3.5 Baht). But let's say you get to Siam by taxi or bus and want to get out by taxi or bus at certain times of the day-- forget it right?(I remember the time my brother and I got stuck on Surawong for several hours-- he couldn't believe me when I said just to forget about even trying to get out). So, the train will be convenient to get out of those areas that are clogged up, like Silom and Sukhumvit.

The train cars are never jam-packed with people; there is none of the pushing and shoving like you get in Tokyo or Hong Kong. At this stage I think people are interested in checking it out, like a family outing. Once the novelty wears off, it will be mostly empty. The train runs from 6 am to 12 midnight, but using a taxi during the time it is closed is a bargain because there really is no traffic in the middle of the night.

Now I just wonder when the first big disaster will happen? Hmmm.

Comments? Email Gaga.

(Originally written on December 6, 1999)

Day 1

I got to Hua Lumpong Train station in Bangkok on a motorcycle taxi during rush hour. Weaving in and out of traffic, helmetless, is really an act of freedom-- nothing stands in your way. We arrived 30 minutes before the 700km, 13 hour trip to Chiang Mai, in Thailand's North-Western region.

I met up with my colleague from the University, S. She has been teaching for about 30 years in universities in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and has been a significant contributor to the development of the Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL) profession in Thailand. Now she is a member-at-large for the TESOL organization, and regularly attends conferences to present papers both locally and internationally. In 1997, she was a visiting scholar to the university in Kobe, Japan, and did some research on computer assisted language learning (CALL). Currently she teaches graduate classes on self-access education to the small group of graduate students in our department. In June next year, I begin teaching curriculum to the same group of students.

S came with her brother, R. R is the director of a giant Thai software company. Enroute from of the city, he pointed out the building where he works, a massive skyscraper near the airport where the company occupies the top 10 stories. R is a Ph. D. in computer science. Both he and S attended Chulalongkorn University, the country's best (an aside is that from what I can tell by meeting the "Chula" educated ones, they come from money, and can be quite snobby-- I suppose it would be the equivalent of attending Harvard, Stanford, or Yale). Both completed graduate studies at the University of Kansas, situated in Lawrence.

The reason I started out this trip with the description of my hosts was to give you an indication of another class of Thai than one would normally not be exposed to as a visitor. These are the upper crust of Thai society in many ways. On the journey R explained that his family can trace their lineage back 13 generations to the Persian Sultan who formed the southern city of Songkla. And one would also know by checking any book that the current king's family is from Songkla. That would mean there is a connection between the king and my hosts.

R is a wonderfully composed individual; well read, well travelled, and speaks English impeccably (interestingly, S is not as fluent as R, yet she is the language teacher). For example he could easily speak about the literary works of Daphne Du Maurier as well as he could speak about the political situation in Canada and the Quebec question. R also is a practicing Buddhist. This might seems odd to say, but the fact is a large majority of Thais are Buddhist in name and ceremony, but do not practice Buddhism. In fact, when R and I began talking about Buddhism, S tuned out completely. R explained that he was brought up learning all the Pali prayers and ideas, but it wasn't until he turned 40 did he actually begin his practice, which is daily meditation and the occasional reading of the Buddhist texts. He, like I, at one time tried to introduce the concepts of Buddhism to our families and friends, but were met with polite nods that eventually turned into contempt-- clearly S was in a mood of complete disinterest. But it was an education in itself to discuss some of the principles with R. (I should say that while I find the Buddhist practice most beneficial, I don't really consider myself a Buddhist. Maybe I'm a Buddhist tourist for the time being).

It was an all night train ride that was uneventful. We arrived at Chiang Mai in time for breakfast. We picked up a rental 4-wheel drive Suzuki at the station and ate at JJ's, an international restaurant just inside the city wall that services mostly falang tourists.

We didn't really spend any time at all in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai, for all the hype about how wonderful it is, is geographically a land-locked plateau circled by mountains. It's got plenty of cars and traffic and the pollution that goes with it. At one time it was a kingdom unto itself formed by the Burmese. Much of the architecture, food, and customs are Burmese which are distinct from the other regions of Thailand, which are also influenced by the neighboring countries (China, Laos, and Cambodia).

We headed north along the Ping River. The plan for the weekend was to stay at a friend's place along the river, go to a festival in the village, and do some mountain biking.

We arrived at the place by the river, simply named Farm 63 as it was 63 km from Chiang Mai. This place was a magnificent Thai-style house overlooking the headwaters of the Ping. It was pretty basic, but could sleep up to 40 persons. It was a two story affair with an open eating area below with picnic tables and a kitchen, and an open, roofed sleeping area upstairs. The whole structure was made of teak wood. There were three bathrooms and showers, all modern with "American Standard" fixtures. It had electricity-- it was far from a Susanna Moodie "Roughing it in the Bush" or a Willa Cather account of some rustic pioneer lifestyle. The Thais, like the Japanese, like the creature comforts, especially bathing. Thais have a high regard for personal hygiene, and in the hot season will bathe 3 times a day, and their clothes, even if and old and unfashion-conscious, will usually be freshly laundered.

Another important Thai habit is eating. You will not see a starving Thai; everyone has enough food. That is the wish of the King-- that every Thai can sustain himself, and what the King suggests, the people and politicians obey. So, we went to town to get some food to prepare. My hosts were extremely kind to cater to my vegetarian regime, so we bought a lot of local vegetables and fruit. Actually, the Thais do think there is something noble about the vegetarian practice, even if they don't do it themselves. Of course vegetarianism is not a condition for Buddhism-- the Buddha never said one had to be a vegetarian. The reason is simple-- the monks live off the generosity of the layperson, and so as the saying goes, "Beggars can't be choosers". Monks can eat meat if it is given, as long as the animal was not killed for the sake of consumption-- that means an animal that dies or is killed accidentally can be offered to the monks on their morning alms round. In any event, we bought mostly vegetarian food for the weekend.

Out front of the house is the river, and across was a magnificent green, lush jungle. Behind the house there are flower beds of all sorts of beautiful assorted flowers. In one area is a vegetable garden, and further down is a copse of bamboo, and further still are one year old teak trees. There is perhaps a hectare of land owned by the proprietor.

R and S had to go back to Chiang Mai to pick up R's wife and a friend, so I just chilled out. It was night by this time so I went upstairs and lay on some pillows and bedding and admired the evening stars. Since the northern part of Thailand is of a higher altitude, it got chilly in the evening; the temperature went to about 12c, cold enough to put on a warm jacket.

A car pulled up and it was the owner. She was an older woman with a flair for fashion. Her hair was tastefully dyed red and her clothes were just as tasteful. I glanced over at the car-- a 1971 Volvo 1800 S-- the same sports car Roger Moore drove in the TV series "The Saint". Hmm. Yet another Thai from the upper half of society. We got to talking about the "farm". The whole idea was to have a place away from the city, similar to Canadians and their summer cottages. This was a bit different in that there was an environmental consciousness to go along with it. It seems that because of years of avaricious abuse of the forests in Thailand, there is a real danger that the ecosystem could collapse. Naturally, the major cause is the logging industry and the world market for teakwood. After world war II Thailand was covered by teak and other hardwoods. By 1961, only 50% of the forests remained-- and in 1999, only 20% are still around. So, there is a real ecological danger that if the forests aren't protected, Thailand could end up losing it's water and therefore it's main cash crop- rice (Thailand is number one in the world for rice exports), amongst other dangers. Farm 63 was an example of eco-consciousness in that the wood was not harvested locally, but rather it was shipped in at great expense from another region some 30 years ago when teak harvesting was still allowed (there is a moratorium on teak harvesting in Thailand). The owner invites local school children and international biologists and ecologists to come and stay at the farm. There they hold conferences and workshops on forest conservation. So, it is more than a place to lay back and drink beer all day!!

As we talked R and S pulled up with the two other guests. R's wife is a very pleasant person. She is a senior professor at Thammasat University . The friend is a women who is a senior financial analyst for the telecommunications industry in Thailand. So, all present are the high breed of Thai culture. It was late and so we all went to bed. Mosquito nets were set up, but I preferred to sleep on the balcony under the stars, listening to the river and jungle below.

Day 2

We got up around 7:30 and had breakfast, which was yogurt, fresh fruit, sunflower seeds, whole wheat bread, and coffee. Just wonderful. Afterwards I washed up the dishes and we set out to look around. We went to Chiang Doi, where there are caves in the mountains (Chiang Doi means "Star city", Chiang Mai means "New City"). There were hardly any people around and so we had a private tour of the caves. Inside the cave was fantastic-- every shape and form you can imagine, all thrown together at once in what at times seemed to be the most Rococo cathedral interiors you could find in Europe. The guide had a kerosene lamp as the only source of light. Occasionally the passage was very small and you had to crawl through, but then it would open out into these large cathedral-like spaces. There are 14km of caves in the mountain, but we walked through about 3km of them. At one time, about 487 AD, a Burmese hermit-monk lived in the caves, and the story goes he manifested 7 magic events in the cave, like evoking an elephant to live with him, and so on, but these areas are off limits (and mostly folklore).

Like in most places in Thailand near any sort of natural point of interest is a temple. In this case there was a fish pond too. The water was pristine clear and the fish big happy carp. Chiang Doi is also known as the source of the Thai herbal remedy revival, and so there were many vendors selling herbs and medicines. What is nice about Thailand, as R told me, is paramedics in Thailand are well versed in all the modern first-aid techniques, but they are also trained in Thai traditional herbal medicine. In fact, the Thai medical association recognizes the value of these remedies so much that they are prescribed along with the usual allopathic medicine which we in the west have come to think as the only way to heal. There is a neat solution to the problem western countries face when pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession collude to over-prescribe powerful drugs because of economic pressures-- the Thai pharmaceutical industry is now getting involved with the processing and packaging of traditional herbal treatments. So, instead of writing off the much safer yet slower acting herbal medicine practice, the pharmaceutical industry embraces it and manufactures both types of medicine.

Naturally I bought some stuff. I asked the woman vendor to pick out one for me. And just as naturally the she handed over a bag of small black pellets which were useful for "men". I asked R to interpret the Thai writing , and he just said, "Put it this way, this is better than Viagra". I'll let you know.

After the cave, we went to a village celebration. The occasion was to raise local consciousness about the reforestation projects that the King has underwritten. The villagers were hill tribes. They reminded me very much of the indigenous people of Guatemala in that they wore black clothing with extremely colorful hand woven coats and hats. I wanted to see those folks with the longs neck--the ones with the brass rings to stretch them up, but they weren't in the region. Too bad.

It was near dinner time when we finished the events, so we headed back to Farm 63, had a nice dinner and relaxed. S had a copy of Andrew Gardner's "The Beach" which I decided to read. I don't know why anyone would find it interesting, let alone make a movie about it-- remember the hype earlier this year when Leonardo De Caprio and the crew went off to some remote Thai beach to film it? Any way, if I may indulge myself, here is what the novel goes like:


"Fuckin' A

Sal was angry. She took away the gameboy so the fishing detail got really angry. I lay at the end of the longhouse lying back on my cigarettes, trying to get a nicotine buzz through osmosis. I was down to my last 200 cigarettes, and I knew I needed to save them because I wouldn't be leaving for another 2 days.

Zeph and Sam came in, stoned as usual. They passed me a joint and exclaimed, "we didn't put any tobacco in it, like you Europeans like it. We just want the natural high, man." Zeph and Sam were American. Prats.

Etienne was yelling at Francoise. Seems he was jealous after she kissed me on the cheek two months ago. I thought about her on occasion, but I couldn't keep a clear head. Everything was woozy. I was the FNG in the DMZ. Vietnam came rushing back to me, and then I looked over and saw Mr. Duck. The blood had dried on his wrists in little black pools. He looked over at me laughing and said, "Fuckin' A."

Bad Shit

Bugs, Sal, and Jed were worried about Christo. His breathing was very labored. "Richard," Jed ordered,"better do something about it." So I clenched Cristo's nostrils together and held his mouth. It was that easy. I didn't think about it after.

Then they appeared with spears. "Back off," Jed said, "back off." There were limbs everywhere. I felt the knife go into my leg, but after that, I couldn't really tell. I looked down at my stomach and my intestine was hanging out. Blood was everywhere.

Back 'ome

The only reason you know what happened is because Jed pulled me with him through the underwater cave. He pulled me to the opening where the beach was lit by moonlight. I took one final look back at the grass growing in the field. Then the next thing I remember is being in Bangkok awaiting a flight home. Now I am in front of a word processor. I work at the bank. Strange, but Jed and Sal work in the same building across the way.

And to think that this 5 month trip all began on Kao San Road with Mr. Duck killing himself. It was my Vietnam.

The End"


Anyway, for those that have read it, you know what I am talking about. For those that haven't, it doesn't get much better than what I abridged. A useless novel. Don't even begin to compare it to "Lord of the Flies". It is fundamentally a story told by some Brit wanker who smokes too much tobacco, who went to Ko Samui like every Brit did in 1990 or thereabouts when the flights were cheap, and no doubt he hung out in the British style pubs on Chaweng Beach drinking Smithwick's and watching Arsenal vs. Manchester U every single day and night with the other Brits. And when he got bored of that, he got some weed and started into this lousy phantasmagoria about Vietnam and the British propensity to organize people into a hierarchical pecking order. Twat.


Day 3

On the other hand, on the last day of my "brilliant" story we went to have a meal with the head of the project to save the forests in the mountain villages where the headwaters of the Ping begin. He had a nice spread, several hectares in the middle of a rice field surrounded by hills. They prepared a vegetarian meal which was just fine. The rice was excellent, and of course was from the exact spot where we were eating it. After dinner some other men came by and told horror stories of the treatment of elephants. They had been elephant keepers in the villages. It seems that the elephants are rented out at an exorbitant fee to avaricious types to equally avaricious types in Bangkok. Elephants are extremely sensitive creatures, and the stories of cruelty include sleep deprivation, city shock, culture shock, and plain downright cruelty. For example, often there is a guy that rides the elephant when it is walking through the Bangkok streets. He controls the elephant by jabbing a 5 inch nail into the elephant's neck. Of course it's done in such a way the tourists can't see it. It might seem like the elephants are compliant and docile, but they are really under a lot of pain and stress being in the city in these conditions. The men said they couldn't stand it any longer and left their profession. This was a sobering discussion and afterwards we headed back to Farm 63.

At the farm, I asked R what his thoughts were about begging. He said there was no need for it. He said one should not feel any guilt to give "merit" to people that beg on the streets. There is a reason for his answer, which is not to prove R to be a callous, upper-class Thai. In Thai Buddhism, all Thais know about "making merit". In Christian terms this would be equivalent to "grace". You gain grace through good acts. The basest form of "making merit" is to give money. Most people do give money to a variety of causes, both in Thailand and western traditions as well. But, there are more ways to make merit than giving money. One is to follow the precepts the Buddha expressed, and they are, for all intents and purposes, the same as the Judeo-Christian ten commandments. If you follow these precepts, you will be good, and by that virtue that is a higher merit than charity alone. While giving charitably is a merit of sorts, it is not the highest contribution one can give.

Then R went on to tell me about the virtue of the Buddha extends beyond human life. One of the great things about the Buddha was that he was not only liberating humans form suffering, but he liberated all beings. As hard or crazy as this sounds, there are more planes of existence than just the human plane of existence. There are creatures lower and higher than us. There are creatures which live for a long, long time in another dimension. There are four levels of beings, and so on. When the Buddha taught about the way out of suffering and to enlightenment and nirvana, he was not addressing only humans--he was addressing all beings. His loving kindness prayer (Metta) states clearly, "may all beings be happy..." So, there is a consciousness that goes beyond our human dimension in all of this. With that consciousness, one is endowed with a propensity to make merit in ways we don't usually consider.

All Thais are familiar with this type of thinking. They are trained at a very young age about the Buddhist values. And so, when you see a beggar in the street, he or she knows well that is not a noble thing to do. It is a way for them to make a quick buck, no matter how scarred or twisted up they appear. The Thais deplore beggars, but in the Thai tradition, they don't do anything about it, because it is not up to a personal intervention to effect an individual's karma. The same is true for the mangy dogs wandering the streets. No matter how awful the dog appears, the Thais have no propensity to take it out of its misery. If the dog has life and is struggling, then that is its karma. No use affecting it. (note: There are some lines that get crossed on all this type of thinking. Euthanasia exists here. Abortion certainly. These are complex issues that Thai society, like all others, struggle over in terms of political and spiritual ideals). The sex trade in Thailand-- the echelon that R and S belong to, do not like it. But it exists. It's there for a reason-like all things.

Day 4

The last day of the trip we went back to Chiang Mai. We stopped in for lunch at a friend's who owned a resort. We got the Royal treatment. We entered a special glassed-in room that was like a tree house. The owner, a chubby pleasant Thai woman dressed in traditional northern Thai silk said that Princess Di and the British king-to-be ate there. Swank, huh?

The food was vegetarian. I was most thankful to my hosts for their consideration of my eating habit. The Thai diet isn't all that meat driven, mind you, mostly small bits in vegetable curries and the like. You rarely see a full-on steak served up! But the fact they abstained on my behalf was pretty special. The meal consisted of Pad Thai, some interesting edible banana flower dish, fried up corn (corn! now when did I have corn! Hmmm...) and some spicy chilies that were particular from the North. Dessert was a coconut filled with jacfruit, pineapple, papaya, watermelon, and a dollop of ice cream on top.

After lunch we stopped in at a friend of S's and R's family. We pulled into a garden situated right on the Ping River. The house was a Thai traditional mansion! Just gorgeous. We came to see a woman who was ill. R bought some herbal tonic at Chiang Doi for her. It seemed she had something wrong with her liver. The living area was spacious with huge cabinets filled with museum-quality chinaware and lacquer ware. The room could easily hold 50 people. Magnificent. A young woman came down to greet us and offered us tea. Then the woman came down the stairs. She was in her late 60s, in a neat blue and white Thai cotton housecoat. She was stunningly beautiful! She had wonderful carriage and grace. Her face was yellow with jaundice, but it didn't take away from her beauty. Her eyes were bright and clear, her gray hair swept back neatly, and she had the most beautiful mouth and smile that exposed perfectly white, perfectly shaped teeth. We all sat and chatted. I must say for most of the weekend everyone spoke Thai, so I was pretty well out of the conversation. But, it was an experience really just to see how Thais interact. Everything is done with grace and charm, from the Wai greeting to Wai at the end. It is very reminiscent of the "Te ne na ii kata" of the Japanese.

Our mission fulfilled, we headed back to the train station. On the way R told me the woman's husband was an advertising magnate in Thailand. He died some 7 years earlier, and she was in fact a direct relative to the original Burmese king that once ruled Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, they have no children, and it is unsure what will happen to their estate and their treasures.

At the train station we ran into a few busloads of French tourists. Ahh, the French! Sort of quaint in there own way, but at times noisy. I stopped to buy a paper before boarding. It was the King's birthday after all, his 6th cycle (72 years old). I read that he was in fact born in Cambridge Mass., and lived most of his young life in Switzerland. When his uncle died prematurely, he was forced to take the throne. But he turned out to be a great king. His desire for the country is to be self-sufficient, that every Thai can enjoy life though the spoils of their labor, and that the land must be preserved. He is a devout Buddhist, and not a bad saxophonist to boot!

Anyway, that then ended my trip out to the north country.

(4,306 words in 4 hours)

Comments? Email Gaga.

(Original written on Tuesday December 14, 1999, in Bangkok)

On the weekend an experimental film festival began here in Bangkok. I was pretty fond of experimental films, being a film major in the 70s, so I wanted to see what the latest offerings were like.

There was a free screening in a park to kick off the festival. That's right, in a park. It's not so uncommon here to have screenings outside at night. You just grab an old newspaper and plop down on the grass to watch a movie under the stars.

The program had a retrospective of the films by Bruce Baillie, a San Francisco film artist from the 60s. On this night they showed his classic "Castro Street", a sound and image lyrical collage about trains and that street in San Francisco.

At a break in the screenings (which were horrible--the sound went between deafening and silence-- I can't imagine the filmmakers were too happy about it) I talked to two of the film program coordinators. Both were from New York, one young woman and an older guy. I got their particulars (email addresses and stuff) and then the girl left to talk to some others. I chatted with the New York guy who is now a psychotherapist. He actually was curating the Baillie works as Baillie himself is kinda old (and from what I gathered through inference has AIDS). It turns out that the guy was Baillie's protégé in the 60s at an art college in Mendocino. We got to talking about other filmmakers and their works-- Stan Brakhage, Ernie Geers, Robert Breer, Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Kenneth Anger, and of course Michael Snow-- and then slipped into a gab about Bangkok. The guy told me he went down to check out the gay scene on Patpong and how great it was-- all these muscle-bound young men prancing around and stuff. I took it in for a while, but admittedly, I really could care less about the details. One man's food is another man's poison, as it were. So I thought I'd change the subject to other stuff about Bangkok.

With me at the screening was one of the internet shop girls, Sarah (Somchai is her Thai name) . A lovely, nice, well spoken girl. I introduced her to the guy, and we started talking about plans for after the screening. Sarah suggested we go to a temple. She told me about this the day before. As she went on, the guy got more or less uncomfortable, and declined. But we went anyway.

Wat Hua Lumpong is right near the train station. It is more Chinese than Thai in design, with dragons and that sort of stuff you normally associate with Chinese shops. It's not really one on the tourist map, although you may hear about it through word of mouth. What they do here is a service. People come to donate their time and money to collect dead people and put them in proper coffins. Sarah and I donated some money and they give you a piece of paper you can write your name on to stick on a wooden box for some person who might otherwise not get any dignity when they die.

As I was filling in the form I recalled a friend of ours who had died in a motorcycle accident in the 80s in Thailand. So, I also wrote his name down on the paper as a sort of remembrance. Afterwards, we glued the paper onto a coffin, said some prayers for all those who had passed away, and then walked around. She showed me this area of photographs of the recently collected dead people at the sites they were found. Grisly traffic accidents were the majority, but there were some very heart wrenching, sickening ones: rape victims, suicides, drug overdoses, babies, and so on. Stuff you just do not get exposed to, unless you are into those perverse exploitation videos like "the world's worst disasters" and so on. But this temple was providing a service--to collect these people and put them in a decent box until they were cremated or claimed. As the saying goes, "someone's got to do it."

And it is just so matter of fact you know. Sarah admitted she had bad dreams the first time she visited the temple. I was a little overwhelmed by it all, but amazed that people volunteer to do this type of thing. The Buddhist tradition trains one to see this part of life in an equanimous way, that it is natural to die (as unfortunate in the way that some people do, like those in the pictures), and so this type of work would be a good training to see the true cycle of life, the body, the impermanence, and so on. It's not to harden the heart, nor to scare one by it, but just to embrace this as part of the whole process.

Even at the moment of his own death, the Buddha's last words were:

handadani bhikkhave amantayami yo
vayadhamma sankhara
appamadena sampadetha

"Beware bikkhus! I warn you thus:
All concocted things disintegrate,
you ought always to be carefully alert."

I suppose by being alert, amongst other things, the Buddha meant that we should be awake to the moment—the now, that if we live each moment like it were our very last, there would be no need for regrets, guilty feelings, remorse, and so on. We would be truly living in the present and nothing can make that better or worse!

It was by coincidence too that I just found out that my uncle passed away last week. I guess I was at the right place for a quiet reflection on life and death this past weekend, passing along my wishes for all to be well: for those that are living, for those that have yet to be, and for those that have passed away.

May all beings be well. In all places. In all manifestations.

(947 words in 45 minutes)

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I'm currently reading the first European account of Thailand, published in English in 1688. It was written by five French Jesuits in 1684.

What I found most interesting so far is the life of Constantine Phaulkon (pronounced Falcon). I've included a bio blurb about him below, which gives a good summary of the goings on at the time. What it doesn't say is that he was married to a Japanese woman-- a Christian no less!

Who said history was "boring"?!

Gaga


 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA


Phaulkon, Constantine

b. 1647, Cephalonia, Ionian Islands, Greece
d. June 5, 1688, Ayutthaya [Thailand]

Greek adventurer who became one of the most audacious and prominent figures in the history of 17th-century European relations with Southeast Asia.

Phaulkon signed on an English merchant ship in Greece at 12 years of age and sailed to Thailand. He learned the Thai language quickly, and this ability--combined with hisknowledge of Portuguese, Malay, French, and English rendered him invaluable as an interpreter; in this capacity he served with the English East India Company in the years 1670-78. He cultivated a friendship with King Narai and offered his services to the Thai court. He rose quickly to become acting minister of finance and foreign affairs (phrakhlang), and by 1685, as virtual prime minister, he took the leading role in shaping Narai's foreign policy.

In collaboration with French Roman Catholic missionaries (especially the Jesuit Guy Tachard), Phaulkon schemed to establish French power in Thailand. He encouraged diplomatic exchanges between Narai and King Louis XIV, and a treaty was drafted in December 1685, granting France numerous trading privileges and allowing troops to be stationed in the town of Singora (Songkhla). Louis XIV presented additional demands, however, and in 1687 sent an armed French expedition to Thailand to secure acceptance of his terms, which included French garrisons at the strategic sites of Bangkok and Mergui. Narai became suspicious of French designs; and, to placate him, Phaulkon engaged the French garrison troops as mercenaries in the service of Thailand. The final treaty was then ratified by Narai, who hoped that closer relations with France would help to balance the strong Dutch economic influence in Ayutthaya.

In March 1688 King Narai became seriously ill. Phaulkon, isolated without the king's support, was overthrown and executed by an anti-French faction at the Thai court led by Narai's foster brother Phetracha (Bedraja). The French garrisons were expelled from the country.

The effect of the Phaulkon affair was to reverse a policy of openness to foreigners encouraged by previous Thai kings. When Phetracha succeeded Narai, he took steps to discourage European settlers and to limit foreign influence in Thailand.

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I should start labeling these correspondences because otherwise I'll lose track of them. The other thing is that should you wish to comment at all about them, you and I will know to which letter we're referring. I usually write on the fly at a terminal hooked up to the internet, but I will write them on my powerbook and cut and paste them from now on. It should make for a better read, although I can't account for the formatting…that is up to your mail software. Anyhoo…

Today was a long, long walking day. It started off waiting to use the internet. A very attractive Thai woman was in the lobby of the guest house I am at currently (tomorrow I move to the apartment). We got to chatting. Seems she works at the place as a cleaner. Lovely white skin, long legs, rack, and so on and so on…I better stop or any women reading this will roll their eyeballs, sigh, and on the outbreath say, "Tsk, men". But one should always apprehend beauty when it is before one, ladies…no offence. Women often complain that men don't express their feelings enough. Well, there, I just did, and I bet you didn't like it! Jack Kornfield, the Buddhist wiseguy who writes very inspired and inspiring books on the subject of the Dhamma, said that women who wish that men open up more and express themselves would regret such a notion in a week. One gender of whiners is plenty for the human race. But I digress.

So, after a nice chat I was off. I walked past Chulalongkorn University, considered one of the best 50 in Asia, and continued down to Surawong Road, looking at shops along the way. Lots of Thai Silk and Gem shops in this business district. I came upon a Hindu temple and went in. I just love the Hindu Pantheon! Such intricate details of all colors, but Robin's Egg blue and Cimmerian red and Chinese gold stand out. To us in the west such a garish depiction of the godhead is chaotic and unfocused, but the wise Indians realized over 5,000 yeas ago god is everywhere and everything. Take it one step further and you come upon what the Buddha found out— that is there is no need for god at all! The need for god occurs because a clinging to the idea that we have some indelible self that is our own. There is no self —there is nothing like a "me", or "I", or "mine" to hold. The story the Buddha told to start a meditative reflection of this truth is to observe a candle flame. Conditions form the fire. It lasts as long as the conditions that make the flame exist (wax, oxygen, sparks, etc.). Once the conditions have exhausted themselves, there is no more flame. One can continue the flame by lighting another candle with the flame of the first candle. Once the first candle dies out, the flame continues. Now, which candle owns the fire? Which candle can grasp the flame and say, "this is mine"? It is not possible, anymore than I can say my flame, my life, is mine. It's difficult to see this, but it happens to be the way it is, the "Dhamma". With a little adjustment through meditative states, it's possible to see this and assuage so much angst we have about this life. Believe me, the words I write are nice and truthful, but I personally don't feel this truth as there are lots of things I grasp onto yet still. But once again I digress.

By this time it was lunch and the Lonely Planet Guide recommended a South Indian restaurant which was close, so I went there. I had a nice vegetarian Thali, and an Indian gent came in to eat. Since we were the only two there, we chatted. He was an investor business guy who was trying to convince me to invest some money with him. He even invited me over to his house as a sign of friendship. Well, the friendship part is fine, and I hope there are no strings attached. Once again we in the west have a propensity to doubt and question the motives of people trying to befriend us. I ain't naïve, just to clear that up, but I'll just have to see what's up with this guy, and I'll get back to you about what happens. Mistrust is a terrible thing to begin with, don't you think? But I digress thrice already!
So, onwards toward the Chao Praya River after lunch. I turned north before hitting the Oriental and the river proper just to walk the streets to take in the daily affairs of people, buses, and tuk tuks that filled the air with noise, smells, and sights. Two noteworthy observations: this one guy caught my eye as I passed. He was lying down on the sidewalk— barefoot and sleeping, but he had this beautiful smile on his face. I noticed two unlit incense sticks just under his nose. In the throng (not the thong—that's butt floss) he found his refuge with smell (but imagine smelling a thong after it was worn). Lovely.

Next I passed by a bicycle shop, and as Doug had put a bug in my ear about Chinese bikes, I went in to see what they had. They were all vintage Raleighs, Humbers, and Phillips bikes circa 1959 in mint condition. The brakes were those metal rod affairs (not wire) with Brooks saddles and a few other Indian style knock off saddles too. Gorgeous things these. The price: 7,000 Baht, a bit steep ($187 US), but it might be neat to get one. I'll wait to get the lowdown on bike theft before making an investment.

So I walked and walked and walked through Chinatown. Hmmm…something about the Chinese and their habit of eating everything that is alive, and displaying it in your face on the street is too garish for me—that, and the garish, gaudy furniture is about enough I can handle. So, I just walked through it and came to the Golden Temple. Through the trees the gold glint from the architecture is wonder-ful. The roofs look like giant lizard skins. I got to thinking about the human propensity to adorn things with such incredible details and color. My mind went to Huxley's account of gems and shiny things from the "Doors of Perception", and of course P.D. Ouspensky's accounts of the metaphysical and occult knowledges in "A new Model of the Universe"—I'll assume you know what I am referring to then. If not, read these two books if your life is lacking in lustre, or if your path has become so narrow your only concern you have anymore is where the next paycheck comes from.

From there I tried to find the Kao San Road. For nine years I have been coming to Bangkok and I've heard all about this street, which by all accounts is the Mecca for budget travellers and hippie wannabees. I finally found it and sure enough, it is full of both. Well, we were all young once I suppose. No blame in that. I noticed a preponderance of Japanese hippies too. Hmm. I guess they're late in tuning in, turning on, and dropping out—but I must say they look either cute or silly, depending on your disposition. My thoughts now are more the latter. But there was a time when my fascination with the Japanese had me see them do nothing that wasn't cute. I would recommend reading Robinson's "Japan Revisited" (I think—correct me if I'm wrong) for an updated version that is way different from Reischauer's take on Japan and things Japanese. Robinson gives one the distinct impression the Japanese are really in an identity crisis phase right now. My spin after 6 years there is that indeed the old and new clash daily, old ways are dying out a slow and painful death, and the next generation or two have an international outlook which is worrisome to the powers that be. Well, after years of government policy of "internationalization", what did they expect to happen? It's a complex issue, and should you want to dialogue about it, feel free to write. I'll write back. But I digress once again!

So, out of the hippy dippy smelly-bodied area and back on the road to the Siam Center, which is where I am right now, my mind went to an image of this tribal drumming thing I witnessed in the parking lot of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where I just finished seeing the Grateful Dead. Mary (imagine!) scored some mind altering ingredients at the concert and we ate them as Jerry started into "Stella Blue" (I'll never forget the giant screen face of Jerry singing that rendition). By the end of the show, things were quite intensely in focus, and slightly brown, purple, and green. Watching these folks writhe around to the drums in the dark, half naked as it was a summer concert, I had a consciousness-raising insight into life. Worms. We are worms writhing around. Or moths— moths before a flame (a lyric from Lesh's Box of Rain--just checking). But, whereas at the time and for several years this saddened me immensely, the notion of insignificance in the face of eternity and infinity, I am quite calm and see this fact with equanimity. It is still not quite resolved, but I am working on it.

(1,612 words in 1 1/2 hours)

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