Fido wins big -- takes the bus

I woke up in Bangkok to this horrible wailing. It was the PA system outside my hotel room which plays Thai songs at 8 in the morning. The first time I stayed in Bangkok this struck me as weird. Why they would play a song, that sounds surprisingly like my Bar Mitvah passage, that loud at that time of day seemed bizarre. But then I turned off my faculties of reason and began to understand Bangkok with a more "wtf" mindset.
"Oh," it struck me, "of course! Why WOULDN'T they be playing the Mexican hat dance [and they were] at 8:10 in the morning! What a fool I am!"

My traveling companion is now a middle aged Iranian / Swedish man. I was a little concerned about him at first because when I met him he was refusing to pay a tuk-tuk driver a price that I had paid for a ride from the train station to the hotel we both ended up at in Aranyapathet, on the Thai - Cambodia border. He's turned out to actually be a fairly good companion, mainly because he doesn't drink, and he's Scrooge-careful with his money. He's better than my last companions who were drunks; it was hard to fight their boozy demands and put up with their redundancy. The new guy is still obnoxious, however, and I aint crying no tears when I finally get rid of him.

I've discovered that the name "Gabriel" is very difficult for people to say here, and Gabe often becomes "Gave" "Gab" or "Gay" which I don't much cotton to (not that there's anything wrong with that). So I've taken on some names that I thought would be easier to pronounce. The new names also have new identities, which I think they posses inherently. The one I'm currently using is Fido Peterson: He owns a sugar refinery and was recently voted one of the top 15 (well, 15th) most eligible local bachelors by The Baltimorian Magazine. Every year he hosts a charity gala in which he auctions off one of his Rolls Royce's for the benefit of a Shriner Children's Hospital. When some Willy Wonka comparisons evolved into unwarranted accusations of pedophilia, Fido left the country in search of the perfect sugar cane. Of course, traveling to Cambodia does not relieve the public's doubts about the dubious nature of his character.

Gregory Fink: Former child piano prodigy. Had to end his career after severe adolescent weight gain caused him to lose ability in his hands due to poorer circulation (he also developed diabetes); he had to end his piano playing career, and now he is exploring the world enjoying the new life that stomach stapling has brought him.

Charlie Orchid: manages a Finnish rock group called "Centerfuge"

Laramie Block: anthropologist

Jack Lingo: we all know what he does.

So Cambodia is great. I crossed the border yesterday, which was not such a big problem. Immediately upon crossing over you see two massive casinos. My first thought was, "gee, I thought Cambodia was supposed to be so undeveloped ... Well, I'm an idiot." But immediately behind these casinos, is the world of busted streets, ragged vendors and, the number one sign that you're in the third world, wheel barrows stacked 15 feet high with 100 pound burlap sacks full of God-knows, lumbering down the street on suffering tires with any number of people riding along.

It wasn't my plan or intention, but with some time to kill before my bus to Siem Reap, my Iranian and I went to one of the casinos. The casino was mostly for Thai people and money was exchanged in Baht. We went to a 200 baht ($5) minimum bet black-jack table. I had an amazing streak of luck and walked away with about 1400 ($40) in winnings. The next thing I know I'm sitting at a casino buffet, in Cambodia, with a pocketful of money, and I couldn't help but feel a little guilty. It didn't seem right to be at an all-you-can-eat, wasting food in this country. But my winnings did pay for my visa, or my ticket to angkor wat, or those sculptures I bought in Thailand so I can always spend it well.

The bus ride from Poipet (Cambodian border town) to Siem Reap was unbelievably rough. The roads were misshapen to say the least and I was bounced around like a damn pinball for 5 hours. The way it was moving was like riding on a cheap claymation bus, or the Philadelphia experiment. There are a lot of people living by the side of the road in little stilt houses, often near some lake or pool of water: I like to think that maybe they were once riding the same bus that I was on just decided to stop where they were rather than continue on that turbulent ride: "You know what? Screw it. I'll just live here, ok? "

We were all much relieved to arrive in this guest house in Siem Reap. This place is truly great. When we got off the bus we were greeted by a dozen young Cambodian guys who live at the guest house as workers and who you hire to drive you around Angkor Wat. They are also really a lot of fun. I have bonded with some of them over WWE wrestling, which is popular around here. I don't know THAT much about wrestling, but since all else they got on TV is them foreign shows, I'm happy to watch some monsters throw each other around a ring. (Ric Flaya: Natura boy!!)

Went out to a nightclub last night. Somehow ended up on some kind of platform, dancing with some girl. I told her that she danced like it was her job. Turned out it was her job so I stopped dancing with her. Apparently, any girl that you meet in a bar works there. I imagined myself asking the bartender "This girl I talk to --I must pay?" and decided that I should probably just lay low in this place. The poor girls, my friend explained to me, go out to make money, the rich girls are not allowed to go out at all. It's a sad sight and I was unfortunately, and unwittingly, taken to a place called "Hollywood Massage;" the women there are very beautiful, but its a turn-off when they are all sitting on a set of velvet bleachers with numbers pinned to their chests. I let my traveling companion do his thing and got the hell out of there.

Went to Angkor Wat today. For some reason we left at 5 in the morning -- I think so we could watch the sun rise over the main temple. NOT WORTH IT. But the temples are certainly worth it. What can I say about them though: they're ancient ruins, you can climb all over them -- no ropes or anything stopping you, and it's in a beautiful cool forest where I saw a monkey on the side of the road -- he looked like Clint Eastwood.

I should be here in the ol' Siem Reap for another couple of days, and then I'm off to Phnom Pehn -- the capital. Cambodia is special. I like it very much.

Purple Rain (to be continued...)

I've been in Ko Tao for a number of days now. The sea between Ko Samui and Ko Tao was especially turbulent the day that I left, which produced a scene of absolute horror inside the ferry. As the ship careened off of white-capped waves, the ship's crew walked down the aisles handing out plastic bags: which is not a good sign. The entire cabin was suddenly transformed into a high school girl's bathroom at lunch time the week before prom -- barf city. Of course, this bulemia en-masse could have been triggered by the movie Be Cool, which they were showing, just as easily as by the heaving seas -- sorry, bad word choice.

To escape the chunk bunk I went outside, on top of the mighty vessel, where I was joined by my French-Canadian friend Jean-Paul, who stood at the railing laughing like some deranged sea captain, howling into the froth and foam which exploded over the deck. The Gorton's fisherman after too many freeze-dried fishsticks. Soon, other French people showed up and we were all smiling through the salt and grime of the ocean, a far better option than braving the wretched (sorry again) passenger compartment below.

Arrived in Ko Tao and found an amazing place to stay. It has electricity and everything. You learn a bit more about yourself on a trip like this than perhaps you would like to know. First of all, I have become a lot more familiar with the functions and byproducts of my body. See, the toilets here don't flush like regular toilets, they require you to dump bucketfuls of water down into them. Every day, well, to be honest, every 2-3 days, I must battle my toilet with great torrents of water, force-feeding it that which I choose to offer.

Moving away from waste management for a moment, I have learned a lot about my musical tastes. Absolutely suffering without music, I went and bought a little CD player. CDs are cheap enough, about $2 for a copy, but I don't want to carry too many around with me, so I basically had to ask myself, "if you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring 5 cds, what would they be?" With my limited options I ended up with 5 greatest hits cds:

Prince
Pearl Jam
Peter Gabriel
Manu Chao
and John Denver

I don't know how John Denver snuck in there, but I only listen to it when I clean my gun and shave my legs.

Diving was just as fantastic and amazing as I thought it would be. I ended up signing up for lessons on a very motivated impulse -- something which is rare for me, someone who takes 20 minutes to decide which grocery line to enter before eventually deciding not to buy anything at all -- so I followed that rabbit down its little hole.

My instructor was a former Portuguese MD, or, current Portuguese, former MD. His accent sounded enough like Jacques Cousteau and he looked enough like my friend Angelo to make me trust him. The other two people in my class were a British couple, some of the nicest people I've met on this trip, though there was a bit of a miscommunication when I said that my wetsuit didn't provide much ball room: "ballroom dancing?" the girl said. "No. A different kind of ball room ... he he."

My underwater experience was spectacular. Go into the woods for 30 minutes and you're lucky to see chipmunk; you certainly won't see a mountain lion tackling a deer, two rams locking horns, or a teddy bear picnic. But the underwater world is teeming with the most fascinating and bizarre life forms I've ever seen. When I first swam through a school of zebra striped fish, I was certain that I had entered an imaginary puppet world, or that the Nitrogen Narcosis had kicked in early.

By far my favorite aquatic creatures were the little flower-like things that grow on large coral spheres. These little green red and blue handkerchiefs would wave at you as you floated and bubbled past, when you moved your hand over them, they immediately ducked into their little puppet holes.

Goddamn, I'd love to talk more about this but the internet connection here has wiped way a good 2/3 of this post so I'll have to continue it later. My apologies for not spell checking either, I'm lucky to get this thing up at all.

Pontiac GTO

Here I find myself in Koh Samui, an island in the gulf of Thailand, eating dinner with a Scotsman, a French Canadian and a Swede. Somebody mentions that they had met a guy in Phuket who owned a gorgeous GTO, someone else asked who had made it, I said: "Pontiac" the Scott said, "oh yeah, Puntiac" The French Canadian: "Ponne-iac?" Swede: "ya, Ponchiak." A strange little moment that, but one of the things I do enjoy about traveling this way.

I'm staying currently at a nice beach side resort which is costing me very little. The water is calm, the sun is hot, the view is amazing and I have my own bathroom, which is by far the greatest luxury I could ever hope for. There is a beachside deck where I eat my meals and watch middle-aged European men wrap speedos around their fat asses and wallow out into the the sea, bobbing about like big white otters. Others lounge like proud little Caesars, as gorgeous, dark skinned Thai girls massage and pedicure their feet. They parade up and down the beach, with their blotchy sunburns, their eyes squinting, their brows furrowed straight up and through their receding hairlines, sipping at straws dipped in cold coconuts, living the great pudgy life. Hours of entertainment.

Much better than the damn Full Moon Party which I warn all to stay away from.

This is a dark circus of a rave on a beach at Koh Phan Ngan, a neighboring island. Westerners come and paint themselves like dayglo clowns and dance under blacklights to a menagerie of DJs that come from all over the world to perform at the beach side clubs. Sounds like fun, BUT it is an orgy of debauchery and it destroys what is probably a gorgeous beach as the surf is polluted with bottles and other such refuse. By the time I left, around 2 am, there were bodies littering the beach, passed out, wrapped around bottles or around equally sedated lovers. There are stories of stabbings and of death that make the whole thing seem a savage nightmare. Though there were some firedancers, which was actually worth seeing.

No, I enjoy reading Crime and Punishment as the slow waves clap softly against the beach and as another great soft European gentleman splashes gently about in his swim cap and goggles, his missus, spread out like dough upon a reclining chair, as the scent of coconut oil wafts easily off of her.

I woke up extremely hungover. I wrote something down like "Australian = devil" Sin Laundry (a combination of remember the sin lantern from the night before and remember to pick up my laundry) and Elephant Camp! (underlined). Rohan, the Australian devil, had told us the day before about an Elephant camp about forty minutes outside of town. Hungover, sunburned, unable to shave or shower (because of some water problem at my guest house) and wearing the same clothes as the night before (on account the laundry issue) I found myself motorbiking north past Mae Rin to a friggin' Elephant Camp with Liz, Carson and Rohan.
The place really was amazing though. This was the type of thing that would never in the states: elephants simply walk around this giant reservation mostly unattended and you go up and feed them bananas and bamboo and touch their babies and rub their trunks and let them cover you in snot. It is fantastic.
Each elephant has one trainer, or caretaker, who owns it, cleans it, trains it, feeds it and gosh-darn loves it. At 1:30 they parade the elephants around in a little variety show. They play harmonicas, they dance around, they play soccer and they paint. It's amazing to watch them paint -- something I knew they did, but was still impressed to see. They don't all paint the same way, they have different personalities: one elephant paints in long straight lines, another paints interweaving bands of color, another paints blotchy trees and flowers (they really do paint trees) and one of them was just smacking big dots all over his canvas. Might have to buy myself some elephant art before I go.

After the elephant camp we hung around Will and Liz's guesthouse a bit with Anh and the gang. Here I met another ex-pat named Billy who was celebrating his 63rd birthday and poured us Sangsum and coke and talked our ears off for a few hours. He had been living in Chiang Mai about 7 months, trying to make the most of his $580 a month pension -- in LA, he would live like a mole, in Thailand like a bank president.
Billy on social security: "hell, you drop dead at 55, those motherfuckers [the govm't] think that they just won the big one"
Billy on women: "my father always told me, man, why eat raisins when the grapes are ripe on the vine."
Billy on doing business with banks: "they don't want to hear about how your hunchback brother straightened up, just give us your goddman money, motherfucker!"
Billy on horse racing: "people always ask me for inside tips and think that I must be rollin' but what they don't know is that for every 3 times I might win a buck I must have broke my ass at the window 8 or 9 times."

Yowza.

Chuck D

A few days ago, Will, Liz, and Carson -- a girl who works with Will and Liz at NES -- took the motorbikes about an hour and a half north of Chiang Mai to Srilanna national park. The ride took us through a few dirty highway towns, banana plantations, rolling misty hills, dusty farm towns and a shrine or two, leaving us at dusk by Eakachai (sp.) lake. We showed up just as the few inhabitants of the area were closing down their tiny market, though a few low voices carried on in a dark bar over a game of checkers in a half-submerged bar off the bank of the lake. We had time for a Sangsum and soda as we waited for a boat to our floating cabin.
Our captain showed up inexplicably out of breath and extremely apologetic, but also found that he had time for a quick drink before we shot off across the dark lake in a longboat -- a long, thin thing which is driven and steered by a tiny propeller extended into the water by a long rudder.
Our floating guesthouse, was at the end of a tiny floating village which had another bar, and even a karaoke machine which was turned off when we arrived, but found itself rocking in full disco-fury at about 7 in the morning. The only other guests in the village were a few old crocodiles, old ex-pats who take up with young thai women. The three or four of these guys were sitting around a table with a bottle of whiskey a jug of wine and a woman for each of them, who smiled and laughed. When I asked them what they were doing there, as in if there was any hiking, fishing etc., one of them, a grizzled, tooth deprived, Brit answered: "we're Thai, this is what we do." I excused myself and walked away as they chattered and guffawed like old pirates knocking the glass bottoms of jugs and bottles on their little wood table.
We sat outside our house on our floating deck and listened to the lake lap at the boards. The air was clean, the water was cold, it was refreshing to get away from the smog and grime of Chiang Mai, which is only a third that of Bangkok -- but good to know that you can escape it all pretty easily by motorbike and find something off the map. In the morning we ate our banana pancake breakfast, swam, paddled around, and got a great view of the lake and the misty green mountains surrounding. In the afternoon, we headed on back.

That evening, I met up with an Australian dude I had met on the train to Chiang Mai. We went out that night, with Will, Liz and Carson and set out to find a lantern to set on fire: there is a festival coming up in Chiang Mai and this is the time of year when you can see a ton of these lanterns flying up in the air, like hot air balloons, only to crash somewhere you can't see them and probably set somebody's house on fire. This city, in some ways, seems like it's run by children. There is a big pretend moat around, there are markets everywhere, and when the festivals come around, everybody tries to blow up as much stuff as they can. Every night there are firecrackers going off somewhere. As the festival goes on they start lighting bigger firecrackers, and then they start throwing what I think our bombs, then cannons: it's absurdly rauccus and awesome.
Anyhow, I got my lantern and wrote Chuck D. on it. The Thai word for 'cheers' sounds something like Chuck D., so everytime we drink we end up drinking to Chuck, and Flava Flav, and eventually Ol'Dirty Bastard and any other rapper we can think of. Strange. I lit my lantern and watched my sins float away. I watched as my lantern lit assunder as a burning ember detached from the bounds of earth to alight into the ether of the night sky to compete with the glow and heat of Mars and try the limits of heaven. Actually, it just sort of lit up and drifted over a roof top and I have no idea where it went or what it eventually destroyed.
That night, my Australian friend (Rohan), Carson and I walked around until we found a bar in a van. Clearly, someone had driven this bar into an alley, parked, opened the windows and put seats around it. Every once in a while as we sat there we had to stand up to let a car pass by us. We ended up drinking a few Maekong whiskeys and chatted for a while. We watched as a bar girl(van bar girl I guess) flirted with a pair of Finnish headbangers who would not respond when I screamed Iron Maiden lyrics at them -- so fuck 'em. The bar girl later confided in Carson, telling her that she hates her job, she's 22, and her boyfriend, an English or Italian guy or something, had just broken up with her when he went back home. This seems to be the story of the city: some western guy comes around throws some cash and gets himself a nice Thai girlfriend, goes back to his country and lets her run the limit of his attention span -- he ditches her and never sees the wreckage.
We carried on at the bar for a while, before stumbling over to Thae Pae Gate where we sat perched on the wall that surrounds the city, drinking Chang beer now. Literally straddling the boundary between the old and new city I waxed philosophical on the various paradoxes between traditional Chiang Mai culture and the invading west, even came up with a metaphor or two (lanterns as something or other): but I was pretty drunk so, meh -- fuck it.

Chiang Mai C'est Chuette Ca

Now, thanks to Ploi, a 25 year old Thai girl I met, who lives in France most of the year, I am speaking and thinking primarily in French. She speaks English too, but it is sometimes easier to parlez en francais. The problem is that now I associate speaking French with speaking to Thai people, so I find myself pointing to food and saying "et ca," "un petit peu." Essentially, in my tiny American brain it's one foreign language or another, I guess.
So I got my motorbike, which I immediately fell off of -- splayed out in front of some jerky British guy who kept asking me if the bike was alright. I'm better on it now, but if I can, I make Ploi drive me around. Yesterday, we went up into the mountains a bit to a waterfall where about a dozen tattooed Thai teenagers were jumping from a ledge into a pool of water beneath the falls. When we showed up, they immediately peer pressured us into jumping with them. We weren't going to but hey, peer pressure is a bitch -- and it doesn't end in middle school.

That night, Ploi accompanied me to a Muay Thai boxing match. The event always starts with the really low weight class, which also happens to be the youngest fighters -- 10-13 years old. They were the best fighters of the night. Very composed and intense, but something about Muay Thai makes it feel removed or above brutality, it is very professional, but viciously intense. For one: there are drums, cymbals and flutes playing during the fight. The boxers time their rhythm to the drums, which speed up as the rounds go on. I'm not going to say it's more like a dance than a fight, because it's not. It's a fight. An awesome bloody fight, which is fought mostly with knees and elbows, kicks to the side.

Later that night we went to a bar with Anh -- Will's landlord, who we've all become friend with and who has the filthiest mouth I've ever heard (If I have pussy I let you fuck me no problem. Will, your cock smell like pussy, I have banana for your ass .. .and so on, and so on.) Anyhow, we ended up at a club called Spicy which is whiteboy central. It is a rather upscale place (which means the drinks cost about a dollar) in a dark disco-gloom a thousand Thai girls flutter around every goofy white guy they can find. We happened to run in to one of the Thai boxers there, having a beer after his fight (which he won). His name is Apple, he is very very nice, so we did everything we could to find him a white girl for the night (as he expressed interest). But alas, we struck out. I'm considering doing an article on Muay Thai, and will try to find him again, to use him as a source. I may also be able to contact one of the major promoters.

Chiang Mai Nights

Last night I met up with Will and Liz, my friends out here in the CM. We had plans to meet Will's boss and director of NES, which is the language school where Will and Liz teach. All three of us piled on to Will's motorbike and hauled ass around the ancient moat which surrounds the perfectly square, temple filled Ancient City. Will -- who I once lost on a subway car in New York only to find that he had somehow found his way back to Ohio, and not the previous stop -- is actually one hell of a motorbiker. He knew his way around the city surprisingly well and we zipped in between cars in the lawless melee that is Thai driving. Now I want a bike, I' m getting one soon (take that, mom).
We met his boss and a couple of other workers from NES at an amazing restaurant. It was Thai chic -- the waitresses were all gorgeous, skinny, Thai girls who were incredible tall, or so I thought until I noticed they were all in 6 inch tall Go-Go boots. We drank and ate well, mostly unidentifiable meats, something tubular -- ie, intestinal, and something animal shaped that I was asked to carve. I announced that the meat still had marks from where the jockey was hitting it which went over surprisingly, or unsettlingly well with my hosts. They then dared me to eat some of the insects that street vendors were selling outside (cockroaches, crickets, maggots) -- I agreed but nothing (that I remember) came of it. Maybe tonight!
One of the teachers is a middle-aged black guy; apparently it is difficult for black men to get jobs teaching English, but since David, the director, is more interested in having a diverse, against the grain, overall: weird, staff than having a bunch of snotty English guys or PHDs. In fact David (from Texas) hates English guys and everyone teaching there is American... and weird. Anyhow, this teacher has a Thai wife and lives in a gated community that is mostly for westerners. He has taught his wife to cook western style food and he lives his life in as American a fashion as possible. It is strange that he would want to live and work out here, when he seems to have no interest in the existing culture. This is the weird thing about this place that I'm still trying to figure out.
Today for example, like yesterday, I had the best cappucino I've ever had. I love this little kitchen where they serve it. The furniture is all wood, there are a million plants, the Thai musac version of Hotel California plays gently and it is wide open to the street. On one hand, I'm drinking cappucino and listening to the Eagles -- my experience is that of a tourist . But all the while I'm drinking coffee, there is the sound and smell of frying egg rolls. The greasy sputtering and popping, tiny explosions of golden eggroll smell, interrupted by the steamy hiss of meat being spread across a hot pan. It all exists simultaneously.

Anyway, the chic bar had a live karaoke act; you can pick a song and have a live band accompany you. But these people singing were clearly professionals and all Thai. They were damn good. My favorite song was Smooth Opelator. Yep.
Inspired, we headed off to a different Karaoke bar. Walking in, we passed by a group of 15 bar girls, preening and giggling amongst themselves, smiling in a very special kind of way. One of them would later accompany us in the private Karaoke room, run the machine, and pour drinks for us. We became very drunk singing Billy Joel, Elton John, Led Zeppelin and of course some Elvis. The night was a blast and as we piled into David's car afterwards he offered me a job.

I told him I'd think about it.

12 Hours Off

There is alot to say, I really don't know where to begin -- so I guess I'll give the beginning a shot:

long plane ride -- everything that could go wrong did; no matter, made it to Bangkok eventually.

Being in Bangkok felt like I had never left the airplane. Instead of the whitewash din of 747 engines, the city has a constant, monotonous gray shriek about it: on account of the traffic. It is large and dirty, sweaty and chaotic. The only refuge is Lumphini park, which is something like Central Park in its size and purpose. Here I watched Kimono dragons(or what looked like them) slip in and out of green lagoons and watched the crowd of joggers traipsing through.
While reading in the much desired shade of a tree, by the banks of the lagoon, a Thai man sat down next to me and we proceeded to talk for about an hour. Here's the thing -- Alone in the park, unfamiliar and infamously seedy city, foreigner who doesn't know how to say "I need an adult -- all the signs set my paranoid neruosis into swing. But Thailand is 12 hours different from America in so many ways (titular sentence!) . It's just AM and PM -- the apperance is the same, the essence is way off. This guy was just friendly. He turned out to be a professor at the University in Bangkok: a professor of linguistics, of all things. We talked about symantics and language and whatnot and life and all that stuff: basically it was a welcome friend in a hostile place.

Off to Chiang Mai.

Boarded a train at 7:40pm arrived in CM at 11:30am. It was running a bit slow.

Made friends with Swiss girls who were sitting nearby. A few Singha beers and we were close as toast. We , coincedentally, ended up staying at the same guesthouse in Chiang Mai -- a place called Julie. It is some kind of bizarre hippie bohemian retreat run by a Swiss guy (there's a lot of 'em out here ... why not, I say). There is a large "chill out" area with a gigantic pool table that has tiny little pool balls and skinny little sticks -- it's like some kind of torture playing on that thing.
There's quite a bit of chilling out in CM. It is really pale-face town -- we're called Fawrangs around here -- so I've dubbed the place Fawrang Mai... beacuse I'm VERY FUNNY. It looks like the Volkswaggon Van broke down here twenty years ago and the hippies extended their prodding new agey fingers out and took the place over one yoga studio at a time. I even saw a restaurant advertising "Authentic Thai Food" -- I can't imagine anything more authentically Thai, then a restaurant in fucking Thailand for God's sake!
But this was all really just a first impression and it mostly had to do with the area i'm staying in. For every restaurant that advertises American breakfast, another offers a menu that is unreadable and unedible. There is a bizarre harmony here between Western influence and Thai fortitude. In a way it's like the Tucson of Thailand -- artificial culture is only a distraction from the genuine funkiness.