Final Dispatch From Bangkok

Gentle Reader,
Please Please Please don't start here if you wanna read the Thailand stuff from '07 and '08. Anywhere but here. The way, way bottom is best but it doesn't matter as long as you read this last. Is that dicky? agh do whatever you want and thank you, and thanks for reading.


I have a new neighbor friend in my building, a Thai dude named Jam. I ran into him in the foyer one night a month ago at 2AM as I was coming back with the last food and money I was gonna have for 3 weeks. I had literally spent my last 40 baht on some kao pat gai and was heading upstairs with it. Jam was going up to his apartment and said, "Come on, come have beers with me." This is what Thailand is like, you spend your last money and someone comes along with beers.

The thing with Jam, besides a true generosity, is that Thai people can't bear to be alone and his wife was not due back from her province up north for a few days. He'd been alone all month and when he saw me he was like "Holy shit, let's be friends!" Jam is a driver for some rich farang and he speaks almost fluent english, if with a strong accent. We made fast friends over Leo beers and a trip to the all-night restaurant for more. He told me about an American friend he had made 10 years ago and traveled Thailand with but that the friend had lost trust in him over a woman Jam had introduced him to and he had subsequently married. It's a common story actually. The guy, Chris, had asked Jam to find him a woman to marry. Jam chose a girl he thought would be suitable, Chris married her and then promptly moved back to the US alone and charged Jam with keeping tabs on her. Of course the first time Jam went up to Isan to check on her she had gone back to sleeping with her ex-husband, a Thai. Honestly what else was she gonna do? Jam was not able to tell Chris about it, out of the Thai "conflict-avoidance" thing. The details get fuzzy here but what ended up happening was Chris told Jam to go eff himself and either brought the girl over to the US, came here to live, or divorced her. Jam suspects she told Chris something to drive a wedge between them because he (Jam) knew she'd been unfaithful and had to be eliminated from the equation. 10 years later the dude is still haunted by the whole thing. He brought it up every time he'd had a couple drinks.

For the next 3 weeks Jam called me whenever he got home from work, whether it was 2AM or 7AM and asked me to come downstairs. I'd go down there, he'd open a bottle of Sato, a rice wine from the Northeast of Thailand, and we would trade shot glasses of it while his wife prepared these massive Laotian meals. Then we all (Jam, his wife Porn, her brother Charlie and me) would sit on the floor and eat it all. He started having me teach the brother english, which I tried my best to do.

One night Jam got off work early and he and Charlie came to my room with all kinds of beer and Sato and we all got plastered listening to Jam's choice of Eric Clapton and CCR. I said "I am getting paid any day now, and when I do we will all go out somewhere for dinner and to shoot pool and I will pay for everything" like 50 times. He'd say "Don't worry about that."

After they left that night I got an email telling me I had been paid. Beginning sometime last year my monthly reaction to the news that my bank account was now fat with cash has been a moment of jumping adulation followed by sudden, uncontrollable and totally dry wretching. Tonight, after I was done gagging over my sink, I didn't change my clothes, brush my teeth, turn off the lights or lock my door. I went straight to the outdoor street bars that border Soi Cowboy. There are 5. I rang the bell at each (this means I bought drinks for every girl at the bar). At the last one I rang the bell 3 times and barfined this girl named Biw after handing her my ATM card, telling her my PIN # and saying "Go get us 5000 baht." This is a thing I've been doing alot these last few months, with different girls, none of whom took the dare and ripped me off. The sun was coming up so I took Biw to Texas Lone Star and we proceeded to ring the bell there. I sent her for another 5000 baht. I went to the bathroom and when I came back she had lined up 3 tequila shots each for both of us.

The last thing I remember is us both downing the first one and Biw clapping her hands and saying "I ring the bell 3 times!" I said "Good girl."

I have no memory of this but Biw later told me that I did the shot, immediately fell backward off my stool and began projectile vomiting.

I woke up with my clothes on in my bed. Both my knees so sore I fell down a few times when I tried to move between the bed and the bathroom. My right foot felt like all my toes were broken. I checked my back pocket and my wallet was gone. There was a foul-smelling towel that was not mine and was covered in dirt in the bathroom. I went back to sleep.

This was Friday night and I had work due but instead of doing it I lay in bed and prayed for sleep which came in intervals, and death which did not come at all. The next afternoon I got out of bed and saw that I had trashed my room -- the TV had been knocked over, my fan was in two pieces and I had broken a chair. The wallet and ATM were gone but when I checked my balance online I saw no more than the money Biw and I had spent together had been withdrawn so I knew she hadn't stolen it. She had the PIN # after all and I don't have a phone or her number to track her down. It would have been easy. I didn't know how I had gotten home.

When I could walk I went and found Biw to ask her if maybe I had given her my wallet. I hadn't. She'd taken it out of my pants and placed it on my computer when she left but hadn't locked the door (since it wasn't locked when we came there in the first place, or the 2 other times she'd spent the night with me). I decided someone had come in my room and seen it on the computer and taken it. Whatever had happened I no longer had an ATM card or access to the money in my account (for like the fifth time in 3 years).

Monday morning I managed to get my hands on some of my money thru a friend and Western Union. I put all my laundry in to be washed and went to get a haircut. After the haircut I decided to have one beer. I had $500, enough to cover my rent, food and smokes for the next few weeks while I waited for the replacement card. I got my sneakers shined while I had a second beer. It was 1PM or so.

I shot some pool and ended up sitting outside a bar called Country Road smoking cigarettes with my friend On who works there. She tells me, "I have had three customers not pay me this week." I can't believe this. I ask her "You had sex with them and they didn't pay you after?" And she says "No, they didn't." This is a girl who, despite being perfectly cute, regularly pays her own barfine so she can go home early, and ex-pat Bangkok lifers who try to get free sex from girls who are working are a particularly low form of life. I ask her why she doesn't have some Thai male friends to call when this happens, to muscle dough from the dudes. She explains she doesn't want to get involved with mafia types. I say, "Okay. Well, bad luck comes in threes so maybe now you will have good luck." She says, "But the two customers before that -- one guy was ... this word ... sadist? And he tie me up. Then he is chok-wow." ("Chok-wow" is a Thai term for jerking off) "I say to him, Please, mister, can I go? and second customer -- he is small, more than me, we go together to his hotel room, we are crossing the street," she points to Asok, a major road 100 feet away, "In the middle he stops me and says he wants boom-boom in the street. In the middle. I say no thank you. I go away fast." Then she points to her waitress uniform (which I hadn't noticed before) and says, "I don't work the bar anymore, now I am waitress. I am scared of farang."

At the same bar around 5PM I ended up in a conversation with this fat dude with a handle bar moustache. He'd been living in Thailand for 8 years, was a pretty funny guy and a good talker. Talking about baseball is a luxury even bargirls can't compete with when you've been away from other Americans long enough and I was only too happy to talk about the Cleveland Indians with this guy as On stared off into the distance, refilled my beer and prolly thought about the short dude who wanted to fuck in the street, and how totally insane Western men are sometimes. The dude with the awesome moustache said, "Come on, let's hit a go go bar" so I went with him to Tilac where the girls dance at poles with mini skirts on and no panties. The idea is to look up their skirts as their knees are at eye level. I used to love places like this but at some point (actually the second time I was in one) they became impossible for me to handle. Either I was too into it or the whole idea was too fucked up -- I don't know why my reaction turned but it did. In the space of one 24-hour period in Pattaya last year these types of bars went from the best thing I ever saw to one of those Thai sex industry things that make me want to walk into the ocean with rocks in my pockets. Don't get me wrong, there really aren't a great many things about the Thai sex industry that make me feel this way, there are only a few to be entirely honest. Like anything involving ping pong balls for instance.

Anyway on top of all this, me and my new fake friend hadn't been sitting there 5 minutes before the guy was putting his hand way up girls' skirts and shoving his pointer finger in and out of a girl behind the bar's mouth. I couldn't deal with it. I mean the guy lives in Thailand for 8 years and he still treats the bargirls like this? Like he got off a plane an hour ago and has been reading sex tourist websites for 2 years? I hightailed it out of there, staggered across the way to Toy Bar and ate some fried chicken. Well, the truth is the chicken was fed to me by two girls who work there.

The next stop was a bar my third-to-last Thai girlfriend had worked at before getting married to some Australian dude with one hand. As I approached, the mama-san knew I was there to see Bong, told me she wasn't in Bangkok, showed me to a stool and motioned a girl over. The girl dialed Bong's #, talked a second and handed me the phone. I apologized to Bong for inadvertantly criticizing her English the last time I saw her (this may have been the only time I ever saw a Thai person actually get really pissed off, she had wanted to kill me). Bong said something I didn't understand and we hung up.

At 2AM, after a thousand more beers and back at the late night Cowboy street bars Biw gave a driver my address and put me in his cab. A couple minutes before I had heard myself asking strangers at the bar to please kill me and realized it was time to go. Miraculously I still had most of the $500, in my left hand pocket. Seconds after the taxi pulled away from the curb I convinced the driver to take me somewhere besides my house (an alley of bars I like close to where I had started the day). Somehow we ended up in a gas station parking lot where I paid him and got out of the cab and immediately fell directly on my face.

First I came to the realization that my two front teeth were now broken, then I realized they had gone through my lower lip and there was blood spurting from my face. I crawled to a sewer grate a few feet away and went to sleep. I was barely there 5 seconds before a Thai person saw me and came running over and put me in his truck, washed the blood from my face.

After my mind cleared a bit I said "Let's have beers! Do you want beer?" and fished some money from my breast pocket. Then we sat on the tailgate of his truck where I thanked him and said I’m sorry a hundred times. I unsuccessfully assessed the damage to my teeth and lip. This little street kid walked up and checked out my broken face. In perfect english he told me that besides the split lip, I had cuts above my mouth and on my chin. Then the guy tried to take me to his home because he could no longer understand what I was saying, but before leaving he left me alone for a minute and I wandered off figuring he'd done enough and didn't need to have me in his apartment too.

I ended up crashing onto a drunk ladyboy’s lap after falling down again and practically crawling to the embankment she was sitting on. A non-drunk friend of hers came up and was like “wtf, bro?” and I pointed to a street bar a few feet away and said "Beers?" They agreed and we had a beer. Checking my pockets I discovered the remainder of the $500 had been lifted from me (most likely from ladyboy#1 when I sat on her lap, or maybe the kid somehow through some Bangkok sleight of hand sorcery. Or maybe I just threw it in the air, who knows. I only knew I had still had the wad of thousand baht bills while sitting on the good samaritan's tailgate). After I discovered the money was gone I was genuinely relieved. My thought was "Ahh. This is over now." That money had been gone since the second I ordered the first beer of the day 14 hours before. Me and the two ladyboys hung out awhile and I explained I now only had enough money left in my breast pocket for the beers we were drinking and a cab. Every time one of the ladyboys asked me a question -- "Where you from?" "You live Thailand?" -- I asked them both to kill me. They just looked at me a second when I said this and after awhile hailed a taxi for us all.

Ladyboy #1 passed out in the taxi and rode on as non-drunk ladyboy wrestled me into my building's elevator and then my room. Then incredibly, tried to get me to have sex with her even though I had no money, wallet or atm card, and my lip was shredded and quickly turning like 6 colors. But I told her I'd only do it with no condom and I would put my dick in her ass and she better have AIDS. "She said "You want to die?" And I was like "What do think? Of course! I asked you 50 times already!" Also I kept trying to sleep on the floor. I guess she split. Last night I realized she took my PS2 with her.

This is how it ended for me here. I canceled my ATM card and called in the cavalry to get me out and back to Boston. Now I have to go back to the States and act like a normal person again. I've been crying for three days because I am breaking up with my girlfriend Thailand. It sucks but when I found my wallet and ATM card behind my bed yesterday while packing up I accepted that my departure had to happen and is a thing of fucking karma. Uuhh. Over and out.

Europe

This is from 2005, written in Barcelona before I left for Thailand

My boss gave me the brilliant idea a few months ago that because my job is done over the internet, I could live anywhere. I could continue to work and go live in some faraway place and kind of restart my life. Not that I had a bad life, it's just that after seven years in San Francisco I was ready for a change. I also wanted to learn Italian and I had a friend living in Florence. So I chose that as a destination. When he flaked on me a month before my departure date, I decided that God had given me lemons so I should make lemonade. No problem, I would find somewhere to live that was cheap and on the ocean instead of an expensive city like Florence. I would drink cappuccino, smoke cigarettes, write and have a deep tan.

As for learning the language I figured there were only a few things I really needed to know how to say:

1. Yes, those are big meatballs

2. Sorry I farted and called you Kate

3. Maybe if I calm down for a minute it'll work

4. I am addicted to inhalants, please help me find a hardware store

Below, I give a day-by-day account of my attempted move to Italy.

Day 1

It was easy after all. Everybody speaks English. I ended up buying a train ticket to Lecce because they didn't have my first choice, a beach town called Peschici, as a destination. So I am going to Lecce first. Looking at the map, Lecce is pretty far south. It's practically in Sicily.

Day 2

The train ride from Paris to Lecce stretched on for so long that I decided to get off in a town called Foggia, which is inland from the jut of land I want to check out first, where Peschici and Vieste are, but features access to it. That's all it features though as I seem to have found one of the only ugly towns in Italy. I got off the train and walked to a bar and had a cappuccino. Then took a cab to Hotel Venezia where I am staying, literally 100 feet away. The cabbie charged me 10 euro. Ow. After an exchange with the hotel clerk that really seemed like it was gonna end with him pulling out a gun and shooting me for not understanding a single word he said -- not one word -- and after many frustrated repeatings of the price and check-in time (3 hrs away) I had a room. I took a shower and then set out trying unsuccessfully to find food thanks to the labyrinth of opening and closing times they have here. A few more unbelievably humiliating exchanges and I was hiding in my room.

Day 3

When the hell do these people eat? In the morning all you get is a brioche or croissant or whatever and then at 1 everyone goes home to bed. At 5 it all closes again until 8. People literally walk around in circles all day. I tried to go to Peschici but the train guy said to take the bus and the bus guy said to take the train. Although who knows what they were really saying. I understood it to mean "go over there" but they could have been giving me football scores for all I know. I did manage to buy a ticket to Bologna though and even this happened after the guy answered my question with a "no"

"Un bigliette a Bologna ahh para domani, per favore?"

"No. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah".

"No? Really?"

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah?"

"Uhhh, si?"

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah treintesette."

"Oh I can buy it? Okay. Good. Yeah trainta y sette. Okay."

Not so much good communication today although I can finally understand it when someone says a number to me. I know this because this afternoon when a waiter ripped me off for the .50 change from a 2 euro coin I gave him I knew exactly what was going on. I'm going to Bologna. I need a city I think while I learn Italian. I feel too conspicuous here. I am acting like kind of a pussy right now, too. Today I slept for like 16 hrs but I did learn a couple things: Italians spend money every second of the day and facial hair is non-existent on anyone under 70 years of age. I realized part of the reason people seem to fear me is the beard. Another thing that came to me is that in the States, when you hear a foreign accent you immediately think the person is stupid. The fact is they ARE stupid, because they don't know the language. I have an accent here and I am very very stupid. There's your proof. Maybe a month from now I will be less stupid.

I have no idea how I am gonna pull off getting an apartment when I don't even know the word for "apartment." Apparently it is neither "apartamente" nor "apartamento" as I had been kind of banking on. I need to figure out the food thing, too. Before I starve to death. Today I ate a gelato. That's it. I kept being asleep during business hours.

Day 4.

Reached Bologna today. The first thing that happened was that I stepped in dog shit. My hotel is so far from the city center I think I may actually be back in France. I saw an apartment advertised for $245 a month. So they exist.

Day 5.

Late last night I became convinced that a kid in an internet point in Foggia had gotten my ATM card and gotten all the money in my account and spent it on sleeveless yellow shirts that say "Rich" and pink plaid shorts and hair product. Within minutes I was left with my only option being a plan to go out to the train tracks 10 feet from my window, lay my head on them and wait until a train came and killed me. I'm not exaggerating when I say trains are howling past my window every 6 minutes. It felt like a sign. So 4 days in and I am already on the brink of suicide. Things aren't going so good. I started out the day so happy to be in a city where I was less obviously out of place. I decided I could "dress cool" in Bologna, unlike the small town I had started out in where I looked like a terrorist to everyone. A big win there. I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. I think the baseball hat and Blue Oyster Cult shirt I was wearing really pissed the waiter off. He totally ignored me. It didn't help that during the painfully stilted ordering melee, anytime he asked me something I nodded my head like an idiot. "Do you want wine?" Nod. "Red or white?" Nod. "Red or white?" Nod. Then, "Oh yeah. Um..blanco?" Fucking Spanish. Agh. To be fair I was so hungry I couldn't see straight. To impress him I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. There was a point where I was waiting for him to bring me the stupid wine (which he intentionally didn't do 'til after my food came, I know it) and I began to think "I am in a struggle of wills here with this fucking waiter. Things aren't going so good. Things are going very wrong."

There was a French couple next to me, an ancient British couple toasting their zillion-year relationship next to them and some Germans in the middle. The old British dude got drunk and started forcing the French people to listen to his itinerary of the past two days, which was visiting all the Italian and Moroccan or whatever cities he was stationed in during the Second World War. He was in the Eighth Army which was impressive. The French guy politely listened and tried to get out of the conversation a couple times. The Germans quietly ate roasted Jew-meat.

PART II

Day 6.

Today I walked around muttering "Don't look at me, greaseball" under my breath and fantasizing about going back to America and living in Key West where I could listen to Jimmy Buffett all the time and drink myself to death. I have decided that I am glad I'm American. I mean if anything at least I don't dress like I'm colorblind and gay. These people are stupid. If I don't get an apartment tomorrow I am going back to America and living in Florida or New Orleans or something. This decision came to me today after a bus drove past my waving hand. Of course once I made the decision I started having fun interactions with people, one of which was a beautiful girl. I walked around and around in Bologna, like everyone else, but with a pissed off look on my face, muttering.

Things I need to write down:

The move to Italy may have been a disaster but at least I got to see a woman actually kick her child.

They make the sign of the cross even when they just pass a church. I saw a woman do it from inside her car as it made a left turn in front of one.

Today was the first time I didn't think, "Eee..yore ..oh, what the the fuck is eeyooreohh?" It's "euro!" They talk different!

Anytime I have an exchange with someone and I understand what they are saying I grin and make a stupid thumbs-up signal. I must stop this. Not only does it make me look like some kind of fool, who knows what a thumb means here. They have all these hand signals. They're like referees. I could very well be saying, "Yes I would like it up my ass, please" for all I know. I have to stop doing this.

There are a lot of Italians wearing American sports shirts. The Rams are popular and strangely enough, so are the Celtics. Today there was a guy wearing a shirt that said, "CUSB" in the Cubs font. See? Stupid. No, maybe it was some soccer thing, I don't know, or care.

Honestly I don't think I am gonna make it. I am thinking pretty hard about going to some nowhere beachtown in Florida or some shit and hiding out from everyone I know who keeps emailing and asking how my awesome life tanning on the Adriatic has turned out. The Adriatic turned out to be polluted and I don't think my money will hold out if I go down to Amalfi/Salerno and try the west coast.

September 6, 2005

I haven't been able to write for like a week or something. What ended up happening was that I got this apartment in Barcelona from the 9 th of September till the 5 th of October. I will use this time to regroup and make some money. I went to Barcelona on Aug 30 to get out of expensive fucking Italy. I had to borrow $600 from my ex-girlfriend to make up for the lost Miami ticket money. Ten days to kill before I can move into the apartment.

The second night in Barcelona I ended up at a Brazilian bar with two Australian girls from the hostel. Both times I went to the bathroom, Spaniards kept talking to me as if I could understand them so I felt good. They thought I was local. I told this to the girls and they said it was because of my tan. Very deep tan right now. Anyway I was feeling good. Later on I had to go to the bathroom again and was in line with all these women when I realized I had been using the ladies room all night. They weren't talking to me because I was tan. They were talking to me because they thought I was some kind of American fag-perv. This is how it is. I do everything wrong.

The other day I was looking for a library (for the third consecutive day) and found this university area where I could practically smell a room of computers that I could hook up to the network on no problemo. Even though I never understand the directions given me I decided to go in a bookstore and ask where the library was since it was very likely ten feet away. Part of the problem has been that the word "library" in Spanish is "biblioteca" and the word "bookstore" is "libreria" so I ask for a biblioteca and they immediately think I'm looking for a bookstore and say "libreria?" and I'm like, "No, library" and they say "Oh yeah no problem, it's right over there." Then I say "Really? Gracias!" and make the stupid thumbs up signal and go and every single fucking time it turns out to be a goddamn bookstore. Anyway I went into this bookstore figuring they would know I was not looking for a bookstore if I was actually inside one when asking for the library and the girl behind the counter was on the phone. I waited patiently and leaned on the counter feeling like in Barcelona, especially in a university area, an American looking for directions was not so exotic or upsetting as to elicit the open mouthed staring that seemed to follow me everywhere in Italy. In leaning, I put my hand on the counter and had a look around the silent bookstore. My hand came down on a clear plastic display holding pamphlets and books that was triangular shaped, with a lip. The lip came off the counter just enough so that when I rested on it, the weight of my hand turned it into like a catapult and the pamphlets and books went shooting straight up in the air and then all over the floor behind me. I made some kind of "aaagh" noise and cleaned them up and left. At the next bookstore I went in and didn't touch anything. The girl behind the counter said the library was a big white building right around the corner. I asked her to write it down but she was like "It's RIGHT around the corner." So I went and there were two huge white buildings, one of which was the museum of contemporary art and the other one looked like a prison and had no door.

One major success was finding a beach outside the city. I was given directions by an Australian girl who was like, "You just take the Metro to gagthla-pass-ay-eege-d-grashasgagala and catch the train to blah blah blah." And I was like, "ok whatever." But found it anyway. The town did turn out to be pretty much for gay men only, dashing my pathetic daydream on the train that involved one of those traveler-meets-also-traveling-girl-and-they-have-sex-in-a-bathroom stories you're always hearing, but I found it. I was ordering food at this place and these guys were snickering at my inability to speak Spanish to the waiter or understand that the menu really only consisted of either skinny hot dogs or fat hot dogs when, tired of being looked at all the time, I turned to them and growled "What is the fuckin problem?" which I guess scared them because they turned away fast. This was before I realized it was a gay hotspot town (like the biggest in Spain of course) and they were just trying to flirt with me probably. Now I feel guilty.

Day ?

I slept almost all day today, to avoid spending money. The best part of the day was the last hour when, over the stereo system that plays throughout the hostel -- in the common area and in the hallways -- they played an entire Doors collection that had lots of good live stuff and of course finished up with "The End." I could hear it from my bed, echoing through the halls. The natural reverb made the song sound even more ethereal and foreboding than usual.

I move into the apartment where I can start working and making money again in two days.

Two, three weeks later:

I moved into the sublet. Life has become easier and I was able to make some money. Maybe too easy. Last night I bought myself a plane ticket to Bangkok where there is a room in a mansion available for $200 US a month. I was gonna stay in Barcelona, or go down to Cadiz but decided that Europe is the same as the States, just with less fat people and no pool tables. I am going to Southeast Asia. I am going to have a silk suit made for myself and it will fit me perfectly. I will pay a dollar to have sex with teenagers and I will smoke heroin out of a human skull in a foxhole in Vietnam.

Things I Need To Write Down

I was on a bus on the freeway, going 60mph or so and we passed a garbage truck going at approximately the same speed in the lane next to us. Because I was elevated in the bus I could see the roof of the truck and there was a guy asleep on top of the cab. On top.

I was in the front seat of a taxi on the way to Patpong one night, with two girls in the back seat. We were in one of these huge Bangkok traffic jams and had been sitting behind a pickup truck for maybe 25 minutes when I finally noticed the back of the truck was piled high with this pink, jiggling quantity. I looked closer and realized it was pig carcasses, all gutted. There was a guy holding a pole standing on top of the pile, to make sure none fell out. The pile was actually higher than the cab of the truck and my first thought was "I can't wait to be eating those tomorrow."

Later in the same traffic jam I had to get out and find a place to pee. It was an emergency. Finding a spot to pee took forever and when I went back to the taxi, it had moved maybe 25 feet. I said "Come on, let's just walk" since we were only a half mile from our destination. The girls talked animatedly a second and eventually agreed. So they got out, I paid the cabbie and we walked. This was in my first year of living here and now that I think back on it, doing what we did was something Thai people would never, ever do. Pretty sure it's a Buddhist thing, or the shame of showing an emotion besides glee maybe. In any case it was one of those situations where the farang in the group wanted to do something unthinkable or impolite and they just had to go with it.

I live next to a very large Wat of some kind. I have been told it's a place were they hold funerals. Early evening one night I was walking past it and there were 5 or 6 monks near the car entrance repairing an iron fence with a blowtorch. They were all barefoot and wearing their bright orange robes. The guy clumsily working the blowtorch had a welder's mask on but besides that he had no protective gear on at all, just the silk robe. There were sparks flying everywhere. Two of the monks were hunched down next to him apparently giving advice while the rest of them milled around laughing nervously. They clearly had no idea what they were doing.

I was lurching through a darkened area one night and was descended upon by a gang of ladyboys looking to pick my pocket. I made it through the first group unscathed but the second wave, a single dude working alone, put her arms around me and got to my wallet before I could. In fact got it out of my pocket before I could even get my hand back there to block her. In Thai I said, "Please, I only have a thousand baht. Please. I am not lying" and wai'd her (which I never do because I don't really understand how and when to do it right). She looked at me for a second and then handed me the wallet and pointed at the ground, where my money was sitting. This all happened in a split second -- she had gotten my wallet and tossed my money on the ground so fast I couldn't have seen it without a slow-motion camera.

Another thing about wai'ing. I really have no idea how and when to do it but I know it is an important part of Thai culture and expression. Because I wanted to do something when people address me and because I had seen immaculately dressed security guards do it at malls here, I started saluting people. I don't know if this is seen as acceptable or weird or what but for years now when I leave my house, the gang of motorcycle guys at the end of my street all salute me, and as I walk down my sidewalk to the skytrain, the waitstaff at a restaurant I pass each time all stop, straighten up and give me a crisp, grinning salute, which I return. I love this.

I took this girl named O to see King Kong when it came out. She worked at a truly reprehensible go go bar called Red Lips. Ugh what a hole. One of the times I went there I was sitting at the bar outside it, having drinks with O who was eating dinner. She had put her food aside and was giving me a long description of her 2 hour daily commute (motorcycle to taxi to skytrain) when I noticed a pretty big rat on the rail nibbling her food. I pointed to it exclaiming, "Holy shit!" O said "He won't eat much." But she did throw the food away. When we went to the movie, we were sitting in our seats as the lights went down and O said "I have not been to the movies in 10 years. Farang only take me short time." I was like, "Yeah I know, sorry. Weirdo." When the movie was over she was crying. She hit me on the arm and said "Why you take me to sad movie?"

Mistakes Were Made

A few weeks ago I had a girlfriend of sorts. I met this girl named Bee who spoke excellent english, was patient with my awful Thai and was very sweet and was also way out of my league looks-wise. She liked me for a little while and we had a couple dates. On the best one of the dates we ate fancy Thai food at a restaurant called MK (one of the dishes was this plate piled high with indescribably roasted duck) and bought stuff at a big department store attached to it. Good date. In the store I handed Bee 5000 baht and said, "Make my room nice. Like yours." So she bought really nice sheets, fat pillows, a new fan, a rice cooker, Q-Tips, a new toothbrush, two small rugs, expensive soap and fluffy towels. I bought her a pair of shoes, a bathing suit and a blow dryer that she spent 25 minutes deciding on ("It must have power, but I want it is small"). Then we went back to my apartment and I assembled the fan while she put the sheets on the bed and took care of the pillow cases and made a small kitchen area on one of my tables for the ricer, set up the toiletry stuff. It was awesome! Awesome. Then she had to leave and go work as a prostitute. That was not as awesome.

She was 26, smart, beautiful -- everything. But I screwed it up, in a big, ugly way. The last time I saw her I was in her bar. She was sitting with a customer but kept coming over to talk to me. This is a bar right on the edge of a busy Nana Plaza corner and I like to sit there and smoke cigarettes and watch the other sick bastards walk by. I hadn't realized she had a customer while I was sitting there and when I did make the connection I was like, "Don't worry, you don't need to keep coming over here. I am not gonna get weird." Really I should have called first. I wasn't jealous and she wasn't hiding anything from me, it just would have been better if I had called and given her the option to say "Yes, come here" or "Not a good night to come here," or if I had not gone in at all. Either way, not the best decision. I didn't want to complicate her night and she didn't want me to feel shitty. It wasn't tense in any way and she wasn't upset and neither was I but when I got up to leave she came running over and said, "Gimme a hundred baht." This is where my chance at a nice sweet girlfriend went up in smoke.

I had only a single 1000 baht bill til I got paid (anywhere from two to five days) and had already worked out in my mind how much of it I was gonna drink (900 baht's worth of it). So there was that. Also I had just bought her three drinks (which puts 120 baht in her pocket from the bar). And lastly I felt weird handing her the 1000 baht bill and waiting for her to go make change. This seems crass doesn't it? I should either give her a hundred baht bill or the whole thousand, right? Right? Agh. And a hundred baht is such a tiny amount of money, I figured it could not be that big a deal. So horror of horrors, dick of dicks I said, "I don't got it. Get it from the customer." Bee smiled and said, "Sure, okay" but that was it. Game over.

****
I was shooting pool in a bar the other night and the first Terminator was on the TV and the girls working were astonished when I explained to them the guy in the movie was governor of California. Schwarzeneggar was firing a machine gun into a crowd of people in a disco, training the red light laser scope right onto the middle of Linda Hamilton's forehead and the girls were like, "Him?" I said, "Yes. Some day he will be president."

True Hardcore

Not a lot going on lately. It's the rain season so I am sleeping more than usual -- this makes for good sleep but it also makes for entire days shot to hell by the steady pound of rain on my patio. I blew my last paycheck in something like 5 days so now is the waiting period in which I eat less, smoke cigarettes to the goddamn filter and slow my heartbeat. I wake up, check email and ESPN.com then I listen to 4 hours of podcasts of the Adam Carolla Show, have a couple cigarettes, play Spider Solitaire. After this I force myself to take a shower and shave, go outside and buy something to eat -- usually either pat krapow moo which is spicy pork and greens over rice or kao pat gai which is fried rice with chicken, egg and vegetables. I buy two cans of coke and some potato chips and some oreos and a pack of smokes. Then I go back to my room and eat while watching Jimmy Kimmel Live which this guy posts in 10 minute clips on youtube everyday. Then it's nap time.

A couple weeks ago I realized I haven't had this much freedom to do what I want with my time, or had my life set up in such a way where so little was expected of me, since I was 5 years old. I have this distinct memory of the week before I started kindergarten, my last day before school started. I'd watched my brother and sister get yelled at to turn off Gilligan's Island and go catch the goddamn bus enough times to know what was in store for me. I was 5 and I would wake up every morning while it was still dark out, like 6AM and go across the street from my house and catch frogs in this tiny pond all day. This is all I did. This one day, the one I remember, was the last day before school started and I was walking through the wet grass to the frog pond with nothing to do for anybody else all day, just gonna go catch frogs for as long as I wanted. I was passing this huge oak tree and I had the thought: my life will never be this good again.

This is kinda funny: I was coming back from the market last week and there was this huge elephant tromping down the sidewalk with a guy riding it. As me and a small group of dental assistants (they were all wearing the pink dress uniforms, every one of them) were passing the elephant, it decided it wanted some water from a fountain that bordered the sidewalk. The rider made a move as if to steer the elephant away from the fountain but immediately saw it was no use and just shrugged his shoulders and stared ahead as the big guy sucked a bunch of water into his trunk and started slapping the trunk on his side and spraying the water. The women all screamed and we tried to avoid the spray but we all got wet. Hot, elephant-snot Bangkok water. I thought my skin was gonna come off.

Elephants are everywhere here and it's scary sometimes because you know they can do whatever they want and the only reason they aren't stomping the life out of everybody and tossing people around is that they just haven't thought of it yet.

Typical Idiocy

Yesterday I went out to eat at 12noon, with no plan but to eat and do the crossword in the International Herald Tribune. I got home after 2am, piteously drunk. As I approached my door the security guard jumped up to open it. In Thai, I said "It's okay, I am okay, I am okay." He said "You are not okay." It's been awhile since I had a night like this. At noon I ate panang gai at New Wave Pool Bar, a big place with six tables. I like to call it New Wave Hookers Pool Bar but no one ever gets it.** Panang gai is chicken in red curry over rice. Very spicy. After breakfast I shot a few games of pool. I was playing well but I kept having to play dudes so I went to another bar. Also they were playing this awful Michael Bolton cover album. His version of "Whiter Shade of Pale" was the last straw. So I went to Hillary II, which is a smaller bar and is usually empty in the afternoon. There I shot pool versus a cute waitress named Dia and a silent black dude from London. It was one of those leisurely Bangkok afternoons; too hot to be outside, a wide open agenda and an excellent vibe in the bar so I hung out. Around 4pm the girls started showing up. Then it started pouring rain, with tons of thunder ("faa-long" I learned). I was buzzed and shooting like a champ. Because it was raining no other customers came in. A girl watching me play got my attention and asked "Why are you so handsome?" I told her it was because it was raining and there were no other farang men in the bar. She laughed really hard at this and got embarrassed. Her name turned out to be "Meow" which is the Thai word for cat. Around 7pm I decided to go see this girl I met the other night when a visitor was here and I was waiting for him to finish bar fining (having sex with)** a girl. The girl I went to see works in Nana Entertainment Plaza, which is a cul de sac of pulsing Bangkok nightlife -- a hive of interconnected open air bars on the ground floor surrounded by three stories of neon blaring go go bars. There are probably 800 girls total in the various places. I was a little drunk but okay. I just wanted to get a read on this girl, to see if maybe she likes me or not. She's very, very cute and sweet so I am thinking of taking her to a movie or something. I have stopped nailing random girls and am actively looking for some kind of "girlfriend." May (her name) was really skittish when she saw me so I wasn't sure what to think. Plus all the other girls in the bar were laughing so I felt weird. I also realized she's a pretty young 21, like she might not even go with customers. So I split. She made me promise to take her out sometime before I left so I did figure that out at least. But she's really a kid so I don't know. From there I went to Voodoo, a go go bar, and had a coffee at the bar outside it and played video games for awhile. When I went inside to pee I saw this girl who was given to me as a birthday present two birthdays ago. I know, sick, sorry. It's different here. Anyway, this girl is stunning. Whenever dudes are here Voodoo is the first place I take them because not only are most of the girls beautiful, my girl really impresses the shit out of them. I want them to get a good impression of go go bars right away. Also I can never believe I actually had sex with this girl once and visitors are a good excuse to go in and buy her a drink and talk to her again. I bought her a drink and another girl made eyes at me as I was sitting down. Then there was this threesome possibility in the air. This doesn't happen so much anymore so I got kind of psyched. I was suddenly really happy to live in a place where just this idea could be hanging in the air regardless of the fact that I had pretty much no intention of going through with it. But maybe ....you know? Fa (birthday girl) recounted pretty much everything that happened with us two years ago, remembered my driver's license picture as being particularly good and asked why I never bar fined her again. I told her she was too beautiful and that whenever I come to her bar she already has a customer. She said "that's not true." Then she had to go dance for awhile. After she finished dancing this old guy -- bald, frowning, easily weighing three bills -- called her over and she never came back. I left as she was hoisting herself up onto his disgusting lap. Besides the overwhelming urge to kill myself on the spot I also felt relief as I now had an excuse to go somewhere else. I crossed over to this place where the girls are not so cute but I like them, I like the bar. They're all funny. I had a beer, ordered a drink for one of the girls and told them I just got dissed by birthday girl. This wasn't really true, but a good way to take the pressure off of them trying to get me to bar fine somebody. The head bartender is older, kinda tough and plain-beautiful. Is that a word? Whatever, I love her. They were all drinking tequila. Apparently the mama-san had found a bottle of tequila on the way into work so they were drinking some of it. They made me have a shot which I did not want or need but they were laughing and screaming and having fun so I acquiesced. The bartender marked the bottle, showing where they would stop drinking and start selling it. Then I was dragged into the adjoining go go bar by this girl I like who makes a beeline for me every time I have ever gone in this bar. She's like a short, chubby Mira Sorvino. No lie. But we've never gone together as I am always with a friend or something. Who knows, there are a million reasons I can't bar fine girls anymore. While talking to her I realized the tequila shot had kind of leveled me and this girl (I can never remember her name, it sucks) doesn't even drink so I was like "I am too drunk to be here," apologized and left. I went back outside and asked the not so cute girls why they had to give me that shot. They all laughed and showed me the tequila bottle which was now empty. The mama-san was wasted, head down on the bar and everything. The bar was chaos. Then I went up to the third floor, to Carnival where I, um, rode a mechanical bull. One side of this bar is girls dancing on a rotating stage and the other side is a padded ring with a mechanical bull and a girl I love in hot-pant shorts basically getting fucked by it. I always ride the bull. I talked to the girl once but she was all business at 19. Like a con. Kinda scared and depressed me. As far as the bull goes, my high score is 46 seconds. Make it a full minute and you get a drink or something I don't know. From there I crossed over to Hollywood bar, which has insanely white decor, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This short, fully-packed girl who looks like an asian Bjork and is named Yao (I always always say it "YOW!") and I rolled around in a booth making out for while but I decided to move on when she had to go dance. I gave her 500 baht. Things get hazy from here. I made plans with a girl to score and do ecstasy at one place. Then I went to meet the dealer but realized I was too drunk to do it so I bailed on it. What tipped me off to being too drunk was the fact that as I was leaving the bathroom at this bar called Big Dogs, I slipped and took out some tables. I didn't knock over any drinks though, luckily, but it did cause something of a scene. I got in a cab. It was 11pm. I went to this part of town called Soi Cowboy (me and the cabbie talked about the fact that, too drunk to fuck, I was going to Cowboy to find a girl to cuddle with. He thought this was hilarious). After coffee I depressedly visited the bar an old girlfriend I am still hung up on named Bong used to work before some Australian dude married her. Boring. The night ended in some place I found called Toy Bar where I bought like 50 tequila shots for the girls. I went outside, ate some watermelon and came home. I woke up this morning in a state of panic because of how much money I blew and the fall-down. Then the security guard came up to my room with a book someone sent me and I got an email from my boss that I thought was gonna say "you're fired" but was not that at all. He just wanted to talk baseball. Then writing this I realized I had a really fucking good time yesterday.

Christmas Part II

My first Christmas in Thailand was spent in Pattaya, a legendarily sleazy beach town 2 hours southeast of Bangkok. Pattaya is the kind of place where you become so giddily happy in the first few hours of getting there you never ever want to leave. You run around in a sea of seeming lawlessness and pervasive vice, stay up all night, sit on the beach, swim in your hotel pool and eat fresh fruit, while away the hours in the most pointless of pursuits. Drink, drink, drink. You think, “This is a fucking Disneyland, man! This is incredible!” Then you have one 2PM beer too many, you see one 58 year old shirtless British stevedore too many, you realize the girls calling you “handsome man” are also saying it to the guy stumbling around with a black eye (I know because I’ve been that guy there) and next thing you know you’re crouched in the corner of your hotel room with the lights off and a gun in your mouth. There is no place on earth like this town.

Naturally I wanted to spend Christmas there, and did. Christmas night at maybe 11 o’clock I was sitting on a curb, on the phone with someone back in the states, when I saw a fight involving 5 bar girls and a man carrying a life-size stuffed Santa. The curb was on Walking Street, a mile long stretch of go go bars stacked three stories high, and the double wide street was clogged with tourist families, sex tourists, working girls, ex-pats and food delivery motorcycles moving in both directions when this guy walked past with the giant Santa under one arm and two bar girls on either side of him and then all hell broke loose. Three other bar girls came running up behind them screaming. No posturing, no threats – an all out brawl involving six people and a 5 foot tall stuffed Santa Claus erupted instantaneously. Somehow the guy never lost hold of the Santa, he had a girl’s hair in one hand and the Santa in the other and was fighting off a second girl with hip checks. I couldn’t tell if the attackers were after the Santa or someone owed money or a boyfriend had been discovered cheating or what. They were all outrageously drunk. One of the girls running up actually dropkicked one of the other girls – genuine martial arts executed perfectly – it was incredible. They also continued moving past the whole time and within forty seconds or so were out of my line of sight. It was like they got swallowed up by the throng. The guy never let go of the Santa.

This most recent Christmas was marked by the near total collapse of my fragile life here (see very first post down below). After jazzing my way out of my friend’s apartment feeling electric and stupid I decided I wanted to sing “White Christmas” at a karaoke bar. The only karaoke bar I have found in Bangkok that caters to farang and actually has a selection of western songs (besides “Happy Birthday”) is this place called Cozy Club in Patpong. I knew for a fact that they had “White Christmas” as I had sung it sometime last spring.

I have been to Cozy Club probably six times in 2 years. The night I discovered it, the room was crammed with old gay Australian dudes singing "What A Wonderful World" and "You Were Always On My Mind." I checked the book, sang “Everything I Own” and split. Then the next four times I went I had the place to myself basically. So on Christmas 2007, I decided this would be my destination. I’d sing my songs and be depressed, miles from home, lost, alone – depressed as all hell but in that awesome Christmas way.

I don’t know what the deal was on this particular night but there was a party going on. A major party, all Thai people going hog wild (as in dancing on the bar, standing on tables, screaming), Before I could turn around and go I was immediately pulled in, pushed onto a stool, handed a cigarette and a beer.

Over the course of the next 30 minutes basically everyone in the bar eventually came up to me and shook my hand and if I didn't have one lit, offered me one of their cigarettes. I didn't see the bartender charge a single person for an endless stream of cocktail refills so I asked this lady if this was a work party and she said, "Nobody work here. We have party for Christmas." Then she stood up on the seat of her booth and started dancing. The DJ recognized me and gave me the microphone and I sang about two verses of "White Christmas" before a Thai pop ballad came on and this girl started singing about her broken heart. It was chaos.

At some point I left. I had to step over people laying on the ground in the doorway.

Thai Girlfriend

There is a girl here named Pin. She has decided she wants me to be her boyfriend. I have no idea why. She won’t take any money from me. She has one boyfriend in Australia paying for her apartment and one boyfriend in England paying for her school. She makes 100,000 baht a month off them, by doing nothing. I think they're both pretty old guys and that she talks dirty to them on the phone or something. I think this because once one of the guys called while we were sleeping and she spent like 20 minutes saying "You're so bad, I can't say that. Yes I'm alone I have a cold. I can't talk. I need sleep. Yes I love you and I miss you and yes ... uhhhh ... I'm wearing my pants and a shirt. Why? Huh? No, I am not naked. You're so baaaaaad" and all this stuff trying to deflect the guy it seemed like. Creepy. I felt bad for her and wanted to get on the phone and yell "Dude it's fucking 8AM. She's sleeping. Get a life!" But y'know, 50,000 baht a month you gotta take the call. Another thing is she's always calling me at like 6AM and trying to talk dirty even though I'm half asleep and she's wasted.

She still works in a bar (a beer bar, not a go go bar) but doesn't go with customers so much, according to her. She says she works the bar as a favor to her friend who is the manager and only goes with guys if they are so drunk it's likely they will pass out before anything happens, which might or might not be how we met.

When I go to her house we play fighting games on the Playstation. She has a fridge stocked with big bottles of Chang. When she wins the fighting game I have to drink an entire beer. When I win, she puts on her school uniform and ... ahh ... forget it. Anyway, these are her rules. When I wake up in the afternoon, she has bought spicy pork over rice with this like fried egg omelet on top of it for me to eat, new t-shirts for me to wear when we go out, potato chips and candy bars for when we get back. She says she likes me because she wants a "simple man" and since I don't dress flashy or have mousse in my hair and also am living in a utility closet with no AC then I am "simple and not like other farang." I tried to explain that maybe she was getting the terms "simple man" and "late stage alcoholic" confused but she didn't really get it.

I ran out of money last week but she's been feeding me so I am okay and not freaking out. She shows up at my house every night at midnight or 2 AM or 3 AM, after working the bar, with food and beer and we sit on my floor and wolf it down. The other night she came over with a big bottle of brandy. She says "Here take these pills, they're fun" and gives me 2 because she's drunkish and I am sober, to catch up. An hour later she's putting two more in my mouth as we are finishing the bottle of brandy on my roofdeck. She tells me about killing rats to feed her family when she was a kid and even describes the method which, not surprisingly, involves a pointy stick.

Then the next thing I know I'm in a restaurant with her, it's 5AM and I am sobbing. I can't stop crying. I haven't cried in 5 years. I sleep for like 19 hours and have a fucking David Cronenburg movie of a dream. When I wake up I ask her WTF dude? She's like, "My ladyboy friend gave me those pills. He puts them in men's drinks and takes their money when they pass out."

For a few weeks she'd been talking about this drug she wanted me to try, called "gao." I told her sure I wanna try it. Finally one night she shows up at my house with "gao," which turns out to be a can of rubber cement and some plastic bags. I had never sniffed glue and she had to show me the correct way to do it. It took me awhile to get the hang of it but eventually I did. It’s similar to whip-its, only slower. It’s like that part of the whip-it where your body relaxes to a jelly-like state and everything floats, but for a longer time, not 3 seconds like with nitrous.

We were on the roof of my building. At 4 AM the terrorists at the mosque a mile away start singing and, as the city is silent, the prayer is all you can hear, just this mournful chant-song. It's really beautiful. On this particular night, the sound was bouncing off the buildings around us as if there were people on either side of us singing. I was hearing this extremely far out and beautiful sound and the glue trip unexpectedly peaked and Pin turned to me and asked, "Is that sound real?" I giddily nodded yes and she started walking towards me smiling and she transformed into a glittering skeleton, not a skeleton really but a being entirely made up of sparks that were in fact tiny spinning bones, little white bones -- she was walking towards me smiling and there were showers of sparks all around her. But she was all bones, and the sparks themselves were bones, spinning and twinkling bones in perfectly symmetrical patterns. All I could think of was the Grateful Dead and how she had turned into a Dead album cover. I actually had this thought: "This is the most psychedelic moment of my life." It was religious. It really was, but we both woke up with unbelievable headaches.

***
I wrote the above about 2 years ago, when it all was happening, but at some point I was like "Well one of us is gonna die here" and broke it off. Since then I haven't seen much of Pin. Her boyfriends both stopped sending dough and she became very despondent, really dreading the possibility of working in a go go bar and she started spending most of her time back in her hometown Pisanulok. She called me once and asked if I could lend her money, which I did and was glad for the opportunity. Since I was not going to be able to give her the money for 2 days, I asked if she had at least food to eat while she waited, and if not I'd bring her some 5 baht noodles (I literally had 20 baht til I got paid). She said "Well, I have a mackerel." I don't know why I thought this was funny. I ended up giving her twice the amount she asked for, partly because I screwed up and partly because I'd happily give this girl 8000 baht any time she needed it for as long as I lived and still owe her. I mean she gave me that picture up top for one thing.

Throw a Kit

I visited the states and while I was there I bought gifts for a bunch of people here, some people that I like and some that make me feel paranoid -- I like my landlady, the security guard in my building is a major question mark, the gang of perpetually buzzed motorcycle taxi dudes at the end of my street who scream at me every time I walk by make me REALLY paranoid, and I bought stuff for various bar girls who asked me to bring them gifts, or just because I like them.

I did this to grease the wheels maybe, or assuage guilt, or to show I am not a "cheap charlie," who knows -- I definitely wanted to quell the almost constant paranoia I feel for being able to do whatever I want here, at all times. I really wanted to come back with gifts for everyone, and did somehow. But almost all of them went over really bad. I think they were too cheap or something. Also I inadvertently insulted the motorcycle taxi dudes.

I bought them a six pack of Bud tall boys. There is no Budweiser here to speak of, it's an import and expensive so you never see it. I brought the six pack out to them in a brown paper bag I had taken on the plane with me, for maximum effect when I presented it. Budweiser is the king of beers after all. The idea was for it to be like the beer came directly from a liquor store stateside. It was early evening and they were sitting in their customary row across the street from the 7-Eleven, on some steps. Standing before them I said "I brought you beer from America!" then I pulled out the six pack, like you would do in the states, letting the bag fall to the ground and pulling cans off the plastic thing and tossing one to each guy, the way you would do at a cookout after procuring the next case of beers. The first guy missed his, then the rest were terrified except one dude who looked like he wanted to put his machete through my face. I also gave some Latino "Homies" (I couldn't find any gangbanger ones) to the children running around, which had seemed like a good idea when I bought them, but then handing them out they were so small it felt like I was handing the kids lint from my pocket. Then with the dude glaring at me, this one woman driver who I never can tell if she hates me or not, asked me for a second beer after I had just handed her the last one. This really unnerved me so I put my beer down on the ground, said "this is for the guy not here" (one usual guy was not there) and saluted them and pretty much ran in the opposite direction. The whole thing took about a minute and a half to unfold. I don't know why it all went so wrong. I can't decide if it was the throwing beers at them, which is very likely seen as an aggressive act here, or not sitting down and drinking one with them. Or just leaving the brown paper bag on the ground (litter, tree-waste). It definitely wasn't my clothes. I was wearing my best white linen suit and cleanest pith helmet.

I gave this girl Thip a little tiny stuffed rooster I figured was cute and funny and she reacted like I had thrown a black cat covered in chicken blood at her. She kept saying, "I am not a chicken." Then she just split. It was awful. I later learned there is a very ugly term for bar girls in Thailand -- "chicken." Basically I gave this girl a worthless gift that said "you are a whore."

I gave this other girl, Nok, a white hat I had bought her my first week in the US because this was a big one I needed to get as she had specifically requested a white baseball cap. So I bought it right away thinking I'd already have it when I ran out of money. I'm no good with things that are white and it didn't stay so clean. By the time I gave it to her it had like entire fucking fingerprints on it, like a crime scene. She asked me what happened and I said "well I had to wear it on the plane" and she eyed my dirty hair for a split second.

Even my landlady said "what? chocolate covered macadamia nuts? Eh...maybe my son will like them." And I think the security guard is Muslim. He reacted to the Miller High Life 22 Oz. can I gave him with a sort of polite confusion. I later realized I've never even seen him smoke.

photo by na' chim

Things NOT to do in Thailand

I live in Bangkok, the emerald isle of the Far East, land of a gajillion smiles. The actual full Thai name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udom Ratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanu Kamprasit which translates as "The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukam." More commonly it is called Bangkok, which translated means "The Big Smelly."

A lot of people ask me what it's like to live in such a faraway, exotic place and I'll tell you, it's a real trip! It's totally different. First of all, everyone is Chinese. But they don't ride bikes like in all those pictures you see. They just walk everywhere, or take taxis or the subway. Secondly, it's impolite to blow your nose in public. But picking your nose? Fair game! Pick away! How's that for a paradigm? There's a million of these, and at first I had some difficulties adjusting to life here.

Apparently they're not as into doing your laundry as you might think, given the historical accounts of Chinese people and their behavior. I asked this one lady to do my laundry and she acted like she had no idea what I meant until I put the bag in her hands and said "washy washy" like 50 times. She didn't even do a very good job and on top of that they got mixed in with some angry punker's clothes or something because somehow the words "GO HOME FUCK YOU" bled onto all my shirts.

Halloween. What a disaster. It was like NOBODY had any idea what Halloween even is. Every house I went to reacted like I really was a rapist (I was wearing pantyhose over my head and carrying a bat). No candy. Lots of screaming and door slamming. One person gave me some dried fish that smelled like cat period. That sucked.

Thankfully I have slowly but surely started to adjust to the way of life here. It's a process. I no longer slap Thai people across the face when they address me without being spoken to first. Or don't smile. It just became too much of a chore, also my hand started hurting a lot. I have finally stopped falling for the old come-to-this-motel-room-with -me-and-my-scowling-brother -and-take-these-pills-for-fun -then-wake-up-five-hours-later -in-a-bathtub-full-of-ice -missing-some-organs routine. Mostly. And I can finally pronounce the word for "banana" correctly -- say it wrong and you are asking to see someone's cock so you wanna be real careful there, especially around monks. I used to get chased with a lot of machetes.

Koh Samui

This is pretty long. Sorry.

When I first moved here people kept telling me about how cheap and awesome the islands are. "You can rent a bungalow on the beach for 80 baht! That's $2.00!" "They give you psychedelic mushroom shakes and you just snorkel all day, TRIPPING!" I figured, wow I gotta try this. So I went to Koh Samui, an island on the Gulf of Thailand side, about halfway down the strip of land that connects Thailand's north to the southernmost tip of the country. I am not such a good traveller but who doesn't love tropical islands, y'know?

I got maybe 20 minutes sleep the night before my 6AM flight, a fact that perhaps made the airport a little more complicated than it needed to be. Like I said, bad traveller. At the counter getting my ticket, the paper must have sliced my finger but I didn’t notice it until I was walking toward the gate and felt something sticky and looked down to see that my right hand was gushing blood all over my passport and ticket. There was a shining trail of blood leading pretty much the entire way back to the counter. I went into the men’s room and ran water over my finger but it kept bleeding and bleeding, dark blood. I used some toilet paper to stop it up while I went to learn whether or not they sell band aids at the airport at five in the morning. They had them at a kiosk but I needed to paint an ATM machine with my blood before buying them. I finally got a band aid on the cut, with help from the very uncomfortable lady at the kiosk. All this time, in the bathroom with blood flowing into the sink and a cleaning lady looking at me strangely from the corner of the room, in line at the kiosk with a ragged piece of toilet paper on my hand, bleeding on the ATM machine, I wondered if I was making a scene. Like a suspicious character in the airport type of scene. I was vaguely drunk from the night before. Not drunk, just hazy. The ubiquitous AK-47 toting soldiers did not arrest me though, they didn't even seem to notice me. Relieved, I approached the gate and a woman at a desk who needed to see my bloodsoaked ticket. For a split second she drew back from me before accepting it but then had no choice but to take it. Awful. Then beyond the desk was a set of stairs, like 5 steps. I fell on the second one and went sprawling, my backpack swinging off my shoulder. I looked back at the lady at the desk to say wasn't that funny with my mind but she was in the process of intentionally looking away.

For some reason my walking was bad all the time on Koh Samui. I stumbled on uneven pavement everywhere, fell in holes in the dirt roads, knocked over tables at the restaurants, spilled my drinks. This contributed to a feeling of unease most of the time I was there. I felt sharply conspicuous and was trying really hard to get comfortable. I even bought one of those short sleeve, printed linen farang shirts, so I would fit in with the rest of the tourists. My first night there I went to an area called Soi Reggae, which is a little street clogged with pool bars and bar girl bars, with a giant reggae club at the end of the road. I was convinced by some girls to sit and have a drink at one of them, I forget the name of it. It was probably “Sexy Night” since there were approximately five bars called “Sexy Night” within 50 feet of each other. One of the girls sat with me. She said “You want lady tonight?” and I said “No, just here for a drink.” I was feeling tense. She said, “Do you like my friends?” and pointed to the group of girls at the bar’s entrance. I said “Your friends are very beautiful” and as I said this I looked directly into the face of a girl with one eye. I got very drunk that night but went home alone.

The next night I was lying in my hotel room sweating and decided fuck it and went out to the bars again. This time I was in an area called Chaweng. I approached an open air bar I picked at random. As I walked up to a stool, the girls yelled “Welcome!” and just then I stumbled on the uneven ground and had to grab the stool to keep from falling on my face. There was an extended moment of actual careening and regaining balance using the stool as leverage. Thai people often react to situations like this with a sort of grinning terror. I climbed up on the stool feeling like an idiot and ordered a Heineken. I was angry at myself for falling and thinking “Why can’t I just relax for 5 minutes?” As I took a sip of beer and turned, I noticed I was sitting next to a bald midget. I almost jumped out of my skin. The thought, “Holy lord, a midget! Now there’s a midget within speaking distance” flashed in my mind quickly, like, what could be next, you know? Are the dogs gonna start talking to me? I realized we were sitting close enough to each other for some kind of inevitable conversation to occur that I was not really prepared to engage in. I have never spoken one word to a little person in my life. It’s just never happened. And the thought that it was about to happen, with me totally unprepared, was terrifying. That thought was followed by “I think he just saw the disbelief register on my face.”

I don’t have a problem with midgets per se it’s just that I was in a mild paranoid state to begin with and then it seemed like everything that happened to me was only making it worse. It was comic. Not cosmic, comic.

One of the girls invited me to shoot pool with her. We had one of those painfully long games where no one sinks any balls. With the warped tables on those islands, it’s like shooting pool on the Poseidon sometimes. The bar girl’s name was Noi, she was a beautiful but decidedly plump girl. She was really funny though and had an easy laugh. I got semi-drunk. At one point I heard myself agreeing to her request to take her to the Full Moon Party on a nearby island. It's a major tourist attraction on Samui and she said she'd never been to it. The party started in approximately 3 hours.

First we went to the river and celebrated Loy Kratong, a Thai holiday where you light a candle that is stuck in a little boat made from banana leaves and set it off floating in the water after praying over it. There were Thai people all over the riverbanks setting their boats off. The river was filled with little floating candles. I bought her a huge stuffed monkey she wanted. I said to her, “You really want this? Are you sure you’re 23?” Then we went to the Full Moon Party. The plan fell through, as we were boarding the ferry and I decoded her suddenly terrified body language. She felt her outfit was not suitable for the party. Too bar girl-y. I took her home. She slept over but there was no boom-boom. We even slept in separate beds.

Islands are no fun alone. Everything is set up for couples. I swear people think there’s something wrong with you.

I woke up one morning, put my shirt on (later on I realized I had put it on inside out) and stumbled out to the street in search of a nice cup of coffee at an outdoor café. I found a place called Black Canyon and went inside. A girl immediately approached me with a menu in her hand. I said hello and realized I wanted to sit outside, so in mid hello I lurched back towards the door and we kind of bumped. This, along with my longish bed hair and unshaven face, a jumbling, failed attempt to hold the door for her -- where my body is pressed against the glass, trembling, losing the door with each passing second and the person you are supposedly helping has to squeeze by and hurry through before it shuts on their face -- and with my inside out shirt (which in Thailand is like walking around with your dick out, they would just never ever do it) all made the waitress visibly uncomfortable. I tried to explain with my hands that I wanted to sit outside but she just looked at me like I was crazy. Then I knocked the table over as I sat down, spilled my coffee two seconds after she brought it and dropped her tip on the ground. This basically made me a dead person to her and she scowled at me every time I passed this café the rest of the time I was on Samui.

My last night on the island I decided that I had to at least attempt to meet a girl who was not a prostitute. After four months in Bangkok I wasn’t even sure if I knew how to flirt with white girls anymore. So I found a bar on the beach (the bars inland are all bar girl bars) that had 3 white girls sitting together at it. Fellow travelers. Lonely maybe. Certainly three girls on an island are there to meet dudes. I picked a stool at the bar without incident and struck up a conversation with the girls. I made a couple jokes that went over well, they were students on vacation, were interested to know that I was a rock writer living in Thailand. I’m not the best looking guy but I have a good angle. The bartender, a rastafied Thai dude, came over several times and offered me drugs -- "We have everything," he said. I said no thanks each time. Things were pleasant enough, I wasn't totally unable to hold a conversation with non bar girls which was good. Who knew what would happen here. Then this 6 foot 4 shirtless guy with wet hair and an admittedly amazing chest (the dude had muscle tits and everything) sauntered up and said hello in this stupid New Zealand accent. I was pretty much erased by the guy. The girls all turned and started giggling. At this point the bartender again said to me “Do you want to buy some drugs? We have everything.” I was like “Yes. Heroin please.” He said “Oh no we don’t have that." "Okay, well you got opium?" He said, "Oh no no no." Before I could ask if he had a syringe of liquid acid I could shoot into my eyeball he said, "We have coke, weed and E.” He did say he had everything. Whatever. So I bought four pills of ecstasy figuring I’d take them back to Bangkok as my flight out was at 6AM. Ten minutes later, for no good reason, I had taken one.

I went straight to the hooker bars figuring I’d have a beer and I don’t know, see what happened. The way I saw it, there was a fifty-fifty chance I'd wake up missing my kidneys, but also maybe I'd end up with a really amazing massage. I'd taken ecstasy maybe 5 times in my life.

I went to the first place I came across. An open air bar on a ridiculously rutted dirt road. It started raining, which hastened my decision. A woman was playing cards and I somehow ended up teaching her how to play Blackjack. Pretty soon I was dealing hands to all the girls in the bar (not for any money) and we were all laughing. Not long after this, the drugs hit in and well...midway through announcing I was high on ecstasy to the now-crowded bar, one of the girls almost choked me, saying I should never ever ever under any circumstances tell a bar girl I was high on ecstasy, and then said “You have more?” So I gave her a pill which she took immediately.

Even though doing E with a Thai prostitute in a motel room on a tropical island is a story that kind of demands to be written down, not to mention shouted from the rooftops, I am gonna refrain from doing so. So no details. Except for this one thing: part of a bar girl’s job is to stand outside the bar and scream “Welcome!” at every farang that walks by, trying to get them to come in. Joy, who was 19 and not stupid, had a tattoo on her back that said “Not Welcome.” I skipped my flight. Also there was a real, honest to goodness typhoon.