Coup Thoughts

The Washington Post article: Thai Military Launches Coup


This is troubling. I've been following Thaksin and Thai politics for about a year now and can say that I did not see this coming so soon. The armed forces commanders had turned on Thaksin long ago, but to capture the government like this is drastic and reckless. Although their intentions to oust a greedy, often irresponsible prime minister are good, they are disregarding the fact that Thaksin was elected fairly and is still revered as a populist by Thailand outside of Bangkok. I'm not waving any flags for him, but because of Thaksin, Thai people have a better health-care system than we have in the US.

It is also unfair of the "Council of Administrative Reform" to claim to be acting in the name of the king, who is a proponent of democracy above all else. Last April, the King was asked to resolve the confusion over the elections that re-elected Thaksin amidst a boycott by the opposition parties: the King refused to cast a law-making decision and insisted that the judiciary do its job.

As recently as the ceremonies for the 60th anniversary of his ascension to the throne, the King spoke passionately about his worries that the country was being torn apart by political differences. He favors compromise and cooperation, whether he approves of Thaksin or not, he will certainly not approve of such a physical takeover and I believe we will see him denounce the coup in the next few days and demand a democratic solution. If this does not happen, then I'm wrong about everything.

Also, I can't help but be a little worried about the "Council of Administrative Reform" The title that the armed forces commanders are giving to their group. It sounds just enough like the "State Law and Order Restoration Council" the name of the junta in Burma when it took over the government in 1988. But this is just to explain the vibe that I get from this group, which has acted with the momentum of an energetic and positive movement to remove Thaksin, but has taken excessive, aggressive action. It is also strange that they wouldn't at least wait for the results of the elections this fall.

The next few days will be important.


I'd also like to point out the typical Thai civillian response as it was reported by the AP:

"Hundreds of people gathered at Government House, taking pictures of themselves with the tanks."

...I couldn't encapsulate Thai culture any better.

Winding Down

Something happened today. Perhaps it was tainted water; perhaps it was the heat. Perhaps something sinsister sprung from the dull molten boredom that can only be afforded on a screaming hot day in the Thailand tourist off-season. And it takes a lot to shock me these days. What I saw when I came around my guesthouse and 6-month residence this afternoon, was that everyone had gone completely insane and were throwing some kind of disco-party to celebrate the fact. It could have been the rainbow that spread itself over the mountains to the south -- effecting some kind of rueful lerprachaunal vibe on the crowd, all I know is shit was whack.

This was, by the way, 5 o'clock in the evening and it had been started, accidentally, when 3 big bottles of Sangsom Whiskey combined with 12 or so glasses of ice and coke and a few hundred decibels of Thai pop music.

A quick tour of the scene:

On a bench by the spirit house, which is provided bowls of water, incense and prayer every morning, also by the alley my 35 year old Thai neighbor from down the hall was sobbing over a fresh pile of vomit and gripping a soggy roll of toilet paper while my gun-crazed landlord videotaped her sorrow with a newly purchased camcorder chuckling in the poor grivers face.

A man who had previously borrowed my ear and my patience to tell me about all the problems his Thai wife had caused him by seeing other men and demanding money and every other cliche of a bad thai-western relationship borrowed my ear once again to tell me how great things were and how happy he was to once again be giving money to her -- that is, as soon as she returned from a mysterious bangkok vacation. He later revealed to me his LSD and ecstasy polluted past, and I circled and crossed a little note in my notebook.

The gay boys from room 101 were stroking and caressing a notoriously homophobic and xenophobic (a terrible combination at my guesthouse) Canadian man. There have been a lot of complaints about this fellow, namely that he is a complete maniac. My first encounter with him came the day while I was explaining to my friend Anh what the Fleetwood Mack lyrics "a player only loves you when he's playing" meant. The Canadian man overheard me and approached. He pointed a stubby finger at me and with a vicious and unsettling look in his eye said: "you're a smart man. A very smart man."

Today he was blasting Def Leopard from a stereo he had bought and decided to place in our communal lobby, sitting there among empty Chang beer cans, his own bottle of Sangsom, with a frantic nervous look as if the derranged rats of his mind were busy nibbling at their insane cheese -- perhaps a suffering meditation on the wisdom of Wilson Phillips.

Later on I proceeded to my favorite bar to watch a little soccer which I don't understand or like. But I do enjoy rooting for Ecuador over England -- who wouldn't. In fact, in every game I like to choose the biggest underdog, or, if possible, the colonized country over the colonizer. For me there is also a kind of magic to watching Mexico play Angola that is hard to define.

Unfortunately, I was unable to peacefully enjoy the game because one of the regulars -- the only guy not Thai at this bar tonight, insisted on yammering at me. He told me about all the atrocities the Scottish have suffered from the English, about weather patterns in the South Pacific, about early Russian literature and everything that's wrong with America while I'm just trying to show my Ecuador pride. I'm not sure what makes me such a good target -- probably complacency -- but everyone with a chip on his shoulder, a story to unload, some gripe or grievance finds my ear and unloads. He sips at his whiskeys and his beer, he pulls on his cigarettes, he slurs and he repeats, he talks through my eye rolls, he depresses the hell out of me and he simply wears me out with his chattering. And right as I think that the molecules of my brain are going to diasporate in protest he says:

"you know, you remind me a lot of myself when I was your age"

Every day I find another good reason to leave.

But I'll miss it, and I'll be back -- with more sunblock, business cards, a place in the mountains and more occasions for a tailor-made Thai silk gray pinstriped suit.

feels good to unload. sheesh.

It's Good to be the King

Hot Damn! It's celebration time again in Thailand. Seems you can't go a week and a half without some reason for fireworks, candles and a ban on alcohol sales. This time around it was for the 60th Anniversary of the King's ascension to the throne, which makes him the longest reigning monarch. The day was marked with some gigantic celebrations in bangkok, and a makeshift jerry-rigged event in Chiang Mai highlighted by an golden egg offering ceremony and a middle school marching band with an all-female tuba section playing 'eye of the tiger.'

I would try to describe the King but the English language is apparently unequipped to do him reverence. When I told someone I thought he was 'cool' I was told that I could be arrested. So I pretty much just stopped talking about him altogether.

This week they've been showing clips of his Majesty playing clarinet with Benny Goodman. Then Benny Goodman fined him for playing over his assigned 36 bars and upstaging him. I've still not seen any explanation of the royal audience with Elvis.



Right now they're showing footage of the royal convention -- some 25 of 28 royal families from around the world have turned up to boogie in Thailand and they are currently parading around in a greeting room in their various costumes of medals, swords, turbans and tiaras. It's good to see that trained and groomed royalty are no less awkward in their formal-wear than 13 year old children -- I swear the Duke of Norway checked his fly before entering the greeting line.

I'm trying to figure out just what the king of Luxembourg and the king of Lesotho could possibly have to talk about and the answer is probably the World Cup. I certainly haven't heard of any upcoming Free Trade Negotiations between the two.

OK, the pie-eating contest is about to start, Japan has to make up some ground after losing the sack race; though if I were to put money on it, I'd say that Swaziland is going to take the gold in the cool-whip Twister round.

Spots Macintosh

I woke up yesterday morning feeling that it was much like any other morning -- hot and boring. Lifting myself from the corpse shaped crater in my mattress, I pulled my shirt off and stumbled out onto my little balcony, which is my little crow's nest from which I can survey the mood of the city crawling up towards the mountain in the distance. It was a calm day -- until a mosquito flew directly into my ear, at which point it became a bad day.

I stumbled into the shower and caught a glimpse in the bathroom mirror to discover that my body was digitized -- and poorly. I was pixilated, completely (as in completely) covered in red spots. My first response was to blame the mosquito, whose fault, upon medical consultation, it proved not to be. So for a few minutes I gazed wonderingly at my being and wondered why I must be both star-crossed and studded at the same time. Under my left nipple is something like the constellation capricorn, while above my right hip sits something that looks like the Arc d'Triomphe. Across my back, an archipelago resembling the Marshall Islands. Which makes me think that maybe this is a treasure map embedded in my genes -- it does, incidentally, already point toward my booty.

So like an albino cheetah I went through the rest of the day using the skin condition to my best advantage. Someone wanted to drag me to his suit tailor shop but when I turned my forearm over and showed him Spotsylvania he quickly backed off -- his forefingers crucifix crossed. An ex-female acquaintance of mine with whom I'd like to distance myself was equally thwarted with my warning that it was indeed very very contagious.

Anyhow, I bought an antihistamine thinking that this had something to do with any number of things in my environment that could have set me off like this, but the Zyrtec (which you can buy over the counter here along with anti-biotics and amoxicillin) didn't work.

I waited a day and woke up this morning equally spotted after having a couple of dreams about pepperoni pizza and killer 7-Up logos. I went to a clinic. There I sat in the waiting room looking around at the other covertly sick people. There they were sitting with their little secrets bubbling under their skin and on their genitals, while I was exposed. I could play guess-why-THAT-guy-is-here all I wanted, but he already knew my problem. It was as plain as the rash on my neck. But then again, he could be reasonably sure that this miscoloration was all that I had -- whereas I could take consolation in the fact that he probably had gonorhea, you can tell by the sunglasses.

I will say this for Thailand: it didn't take very long before I saw a real doctor. He poked and rubbed me, asked how I was peeing, and took my blood. It's not dengue fever, which is good. In fact, it's probably just a virus -- he prescribed water and sleep. Fair enough.

Meanwhile: $12. I'm looking forward to sending that bill in to Blue Cross. 12 goddamn dollars is all that visit cost me. And if I were a Thai citizen, the visit would have only cost me 80 cents.

That is by far the most interesting thing that has happened to me in a while, which is why I have to leave this place. So, July 2nd my flight leaves.. though I might straggle somewhere out west before I come in to DC.

"I'm so ugly, I went to the proctologist and he stuck his finger in my mouth!"

Siam Soothsayer

My boss took me to see the palm reader who works in the same apartment complex that our English school is in. Now honestly, I've never thought that you could tell someone's future or know anything about them by the lines in their palms -- especially if they are as hairy as mine. Sure, I check my horoscope every day at about the same time I check up on Garfield but that's always a little personal and vague. But when a Thai fortune teller holds your hands and tells you that there are two dead baby ghosts following you around -- you listen.

When I first sat down with her she asked me to open up my spirtual channel -- direct my thoughts to my spiritual master. So I tried that; I was very polite to the purply cosmic fog that envisioned in my mind, but the woman couldn't get the right reading out of me. I tried again, pleading to the coursing stream of time, illuminated in a drifting fluorescent haze, rushing like a school of luminescent mackerel beaming flickering specks of light swimming towards the great dark pools of man's destiny... still nothing. Desperate for an answer I closed my mind and brought towards mine third eye the only spiritual being on whom I could truly focus... "Elvis?"

So with the king as my spiritual guide I went on a magical journey which concludedt that I should move to New York, wait for a 45 year old woman to show me the way to success, and not write anything that might reinforce a negative perception of Thai women. Seems you can get a socially aware version of the spiritual truth.

I ventured down to Pattaya beach after seeing the feminist fortune teller and realized what she was talking about. PB is perhaps the whoriest place on Earth. It's the cancun of the las vegas of the seventh circle of girly-bars. What could I say about this place that hasn't been observed by the generations of American soldiers that have docked in its harbor and stormed ashore for weeks of R&R&STD. What could I add about a place where bars have run out of names and call themselves Playboy Bar 3 or #1 Bar 2. Where the streets are clogged with pawing and prodding girls and ladyboys. It's been said. It's been said by me and by a thousand others before... so the story exhausted itself before I even got there.

But I will say that there was an egg-related strip show that caused me some trauma.

So yeah, there were bar girls, big deal. I still think there are too many good things happening in this country to keep lingering over the flesh trade.

In other news I have an English student who is a doctor and while I was interviewing him as if I were the admissions department at Harvard Medical, he took 20 minutes to explain to me how to use a Foley Chatheter ... at which point I explained what the word "Gross" meant.

See y'all July 1

No Class

Last Monday I was riding my motorbike through town; I was on a street called Huay Kaew, which is a fast road that goes up into the mountains. I was just past the Central shopping mall in town when I glanced over to my right and saw something that sent a quick gasp of surprise and realization through me. In the reflection of the Import Clothing store wall-sized windows was a guy on a motorbike, with suit pants pulled up at the ankles by the acute angle of the legs in the driving position, a striped patterned shirt rolled up to the elbows, and a red silk tie flapping over the left shoulder -- holy shit, I'm a teacher.

At Will's request I've taken up a couple of classes at a small English school near his apartment. My professional get-up is the uniform of the Chiang Mai teacher-class, a collective of liberal arts students, maladjusted adolescent-minded adults, and French-Canadians. It is a unique group in that they have adjusted to a style of living in Chiang Mai that does not include frequenting the sin-traps, sticking instead to Thai-nightclubs, and having carved out a niche of assumed sophistication. I appreciate the group for the opportunity for some kind of intellectual stimulation, but scorn it for its inability to provide for me a strip-club buddy -- for that I'm better off asking my mother.

*Just a thought on strip-clubs -- I love strip-clubs and although I like seeing women squirming around in their nothing-at-alls, there is something more to the atmosphere that I can really get into. Mostly it's the perfect place for people watching, and strip-clubs are basically a who's who of the sexually and socially frustrated -- the "wrong crowd" that I have a knack for falling in with. I hope to one day own my own club and conduct my business in an upstairs office; when my Chinese business partners come to town they can meet me down at the club and we could do our arms trading while drinking Chivas and watching 'Lexus' do the crabwalk to "Hungry Eyes." Of course, I'll have to use one of the girls as a numbers runner, which inevitably gets her kidnapped -- little do I know that she is Steven Seagal's estranged niece. When he shows up he's probably going to Akido all over my hired goons and then I'll be ruined.

So my first class is a trio of 15 year olds. I was pretty nervous my first day so I brought a bandana/handkerchief with me. I was sweating like the Guidance Counselor at my old elementary school -- Mr. Bundy. He used to stand in front of an auditorium full of students and alternate between furiously mopping his forehead with his handkerchief and drinking a Diet Coke while repeating : "you kids got to learn... some self control!" Despite my manic sweating I managed to control myself and speak very very slowly, which is not easy for me to do. I also try to enforce the American way, rather than the British system which the book proffers.

We go through the lesson book which has little stories about people doing whacky things: a woman who lives on an airplane, a guy with 13 jobs, etc. I've been trying to make things a little bit more interesting than just sticking to the book allows. In a picture of a guy offering a woman some champagne I tried to encourage the students' imagination a bit:

"Do you think there's something going on between Bob and Helen? -- maybe they're a little bit more than friends?"

"Maybe Bob is trying to help Helen relax -- get in the mood?"

"Is Bob a bad man or just lonely?"

"Is this illegal?"

But they don't seem to get it and just stare at me blankly, which I remember doing to my own language teachers quite a bit. Now I get it. It doesn't get me down, I keep going through my routine and imagine that I'm Rodney Dangerfield with a tough crowd.



I'm working on a version of Hollywood Squares to play with my second class -- made up of 6 university girls -- but I don't think the game will have the same appeal without Gilbert Godfrey or Bruce Vilanch.


**Oh boy, do I have problems: My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist -- the kid couldn't help me at all!** --Rodney

Songkran Chapters 4&5: Washout

Surprise surprise, the last two days of Songkran were a hell of a lot like the first three. It was wet, it was dangerous and intense in its exhaustive redundancy.

Yesterday’s low-point was definitely the ladyboy debacle. I was riding in the bed of a pickup truck driven by ‘the judge’ – the owner of my guesthouse. Our barrel of water was nearly empty and I had nothing to combat the drunk ladyboys a few trucks over. Neither car was moving due to the splash-traffic so we were being bombarded with cold water from the she-males. There were about ten of them in or around their pick-up truck. They also had remarkable tits. Thailand apparently does some good plastic surgery and seeing as there was nothing but a thin layer of white t-shirt covering these male-bags it was evident that someone had done a quality job. Anyhow, I snuck over to their truck so I could sneak attack them with their own water. But as soon as I got close to the truck they grabbed me and molested me with their enormous hands, in an iron Muay Thai grip that I couldn’t escape.

They touched me. Repeatedly.

Almost ruined my day, but hakuna mattata, I guess that’s life.
Today, was the stunning conclusion. I was still shell-shocked this morning and it took me a very long time to work up the will to go outside. Simply walking to breakfast is signing a commitment to being wet for the rest of the day. You can’t do things like buy a newspaper because it wouldn’t make it more than 3 seconds before becoming wet-pulp, which means there was nothing to know about the world except that it was a wet wild place.

So, with a friend of mine from the guesthouse, one of the travelers who came in for the week, I finally convinced myself to go out. We walked to the moat and found a beer stand in front of which we stood for a few hours King-of-the-Hilling it, Singha after Singha, spraying the truck loads of party-goers that drove by.

Eventually, towards the end of the day, we decided to go for a tuk-tuk ride and seven of us piled into a three person vehicle. The tuk-tuk, for clarification, is a three wheeled vehicle, basically a converted motorcycle with a bench on the back. Our driver had found a way to make the vehicle bounce like a low-rider on hydraulics, so as we pulled up in front of any bar with sound system, we bounced the fucker and showed off our go-go moves.

And so we said a misty-eyed goodnight to a fantastic week-long party.

Happy New Year Thailand, here’s to 2549 more.