On SCUBA

I went with CSI Samui for two reasons- 1) Paul, the owner, was a gregarious upcountry British voice at the other end of the phone the day I sent the enquiry, and 2) he'd do the refresher dive in the ocean off the boat, instead of doing a refresher course and pool dive one day with an open water dive the next.
He was going to pick me up at the ferry port, drop me off at the hotel he recommended (very solid recommendation both from what I could tell online and in-person), and the next day we'd go diving: a nice shallow bay where we could do a slow descent down an anchor/buoy line and review some basics in the shallow.

The pickup went okay, if Thai-style: "I loaned my car to someone and I'm having troubles getting it back so I'll be a little late while I track down another vehicle."  Which turned out to be a friend's pickup that, when returned, came with a long story about putting his old and sick dog to sleep.  And then we went cruising on Paul's bike--a Honda of the same model I totaled, which has become one of my favorites for riding because the rear seat is especially large and cushioned.  But that's with a Thai driver.  With a big--BIG--Brit on the front, there's just enough room to torque your coccyx between the seat and rear handlebar and squeeze out either diamonds or hope for a smooth ride.
He showed me where the boat would depart and confirmed me as a size small wetsuit with size 43 booties.  "See you at half-past seven!"

At 8 that night, I got a phone call.  "The boat didn't have enough business to launch, so we'll be going with the boat leaving Grand Coral Divers instead.  It's just a bit closer to your hotel, right across from the 7-11."
Great.

It's about a 45 minute boat ride, and on the way over I concentrated on deep, slow, relaxed breathing.
"You're a pretty advanced diver, right?"
Sure.  (If I can be an old hand at driving a Honda motorbike, one week of diving in Hawaii most years between 1996 and 2000 damn near qualifies me as a competition dive expert.)
"I usually find that people get it back no problem.  Just remember to breathe and kick.  Kick and breathe.  Stop either one and I get worried."
"Kick and breathe together at the same time?  You sure?  It might be too much."

I'd explained the bike wrecks and precipitous drop in weight, and that was my real concern.  When I was last diving and worried about sucking up too much air as a tuba player, I was continuously surprised to be the last diver in the water.  No worries about breathing.  It's just the whole swimming, weight belt, tank/BCD setup that concerned me.

The speedboat trip went from exciting to torrential as we neared the dive site.
The refresher dive turned from the nice bay to a nice buoy line to a free dive.  "Nice and slow and easy, no rush, just to make sure you're okay."
I couldn't actually make the step up to the edge of the boat--one of the boat hands hauled me up by the tank.  And once I was in the water, I got the vest confused and inflated it until I couldn't breathe even though I was trying to suck dry air, not from the tank.
Brilliant.
Paul gave the "OKAY" sign and held up his release valve.
Evidently, "slow descent" means not upending and kicking down.
I got my regulator working, drained the vest, and looked down.  Paul was looking up asking if I was okay.  "Okay!" I signed back.
But I couldn't sink.
Weight belt was still on.
BC was drained.
And I had gulped as much air as I possibly could.  As I exhaled, I plummeted toward Paul, who let out more air and continued his descent.
We went straight down to 35 meters.
I've never been that deep before.

On the one hand, the world at that depth is a bizarre curtain of green and blue-gray, especially for one whose green-detection is not all that great.  On the other, the sky had really opened up and was nearly black even on the surface.  On a third hand, the water was full of floating muck--what gives most Thailand beachshores that distinctively polluted looking brown-tan water, and provides for such a diversity of large fish--so there wasn't much to see anyway.  And finally--this is a Buddhist/Hindu country, so multiple hands are routine--it was downright cold.  Granted, the wetsuit was too big and my insulation consists of a thin layer of skin on bone-hugging layers of depleted muscle cells, so I'd be cold at the thought of frost.  But to be in 68 or 70 degree water without solar radiation is another level entirely.

It was a cool dive: big schools of barracuda and trevaly.  But where I remembered many dozens of coral species and a cacophony of brightly colored reef life, everything was muted green, there were maybe a dozen varieties of coral, and the fish looked much more culinary than ornamental--cod and cuda and other open-water fish.
Still, floating upside down underneath the ball of barracuda and blowing bubbles that went spinning through the whirlpool was pretty damn cool.

The next site was supposed to be nice and shallow and easy.  It was in a bay not too churned up by the storm.  Visibility was just over a meter.  My fingers and toes were numb at the start.  I remember a yellow boxfish and a shrimp goby.
The latter is neat: a shrimp digs a hole that the goby protects.  If you drop a pebble in the hole, the shrimp pushes it out.  If a predator is coming, the goby clogs the mouth with his fantastically-well camouflaged head.

Back at the boat, I was utterly spent and curled up under my wet towel, putting on a brave smile for the "Same time tomorrow!"

After an hour-plus boat ride spent listening to Paul and one of his buddies reconstruct the previous evening, when Paul had blown nearly ten thousand baht, much of which came from me, the first dive, where I was supposed to go for the refresher, was another 35 metre free-fall in current we had to buck around a couple of submarine spires.  As Paul was pointing out some huge groupers--"put your head in their fuckin' mouths!"--I was stuck trying to buck the current over a reef.  It was covered with antler coral that I didn't want to grab to haul myself over, but my legs didn't have the oomph.  Getting pissed and growling at the whole situation got me over, but took out a lot of the little reserves I still had.

Before the second dive, I requested a more sedentary approach: find something cool and look at it for a while.
"Yeah, this is a great site for that.  There are some primo pinnacles just a couple hundred meters over there, and we'll never be more than 10 or 15 minutes from the boat."
No.
My fingers and toes are numb, my legs are wobbling with just the weight belt on, and I do not want to buck a current and shitty visibility for a hundred meters going or coming.  "I'm just worried because I'm already cold and tired--I really don't want to create a problem down below."
"No problem, just let me know when it's time to cut the dive short."

Maybe that was the dive with the yellow boxfish.  I know there were gobys and most of the open-water swimming was in a school of trevally.  Very, very cool.
Literally, though.
We hit 20+ meters and were kicking out into the murk and my legs gave out.  It was a nice, slow, easy crawl back, looking at coral and little fishies and anemones--feather coral or anemones that you tickle and the entire organism, which looks something like a zebra striped bonsai tree, sucks back in on itself.
The poor guy was just too excited about all that we'd be seeing.  And he's too big and strong to understand "I'm frigid and tapped out."  He helped me peel off my wetsuit, and he was shocked at the pasty white/gray of bloodless toes, feet, ankles, and knees.  He'd never seen anything like it before, at least not in tropical diving.
"Paul, I'm a skinny little shit, right?  See the bones?  There's no extra insulation, no extra muscle.  I wasn't joking when I told you about my first months here."

The good news is that, in retrospect, it was a good time.  It got me diving again, and now that I'm current I won't have to pay for an extra dive day/hotel night for a refresher if I choose to go diving again.  But I think snorkeling would be a much, much smarter option for a while.

And thank goodness for the 100TB massage parlor.

Koh Samui

On Perspective

I didn't say a darn thing, but it took considerable effort.

A teacher returned from a class and just about blew up upon discovering there to be too little Milo (cocoa) to complement the proceeds of the coffee bar.

I did not mention the dozen angels who love teacher as much as they fear authority, the airconditioned classroom with outlets that work, decorations, Thai assistant, access to copies and televisions and radios. I did not mention the airconditioned office with an individual desk and padded chair with an extra cushion and classroom teaching supplies and office supplies and classroom art supplies. I did not mention the computers and internet and printers. Nor did I mention the refrigerator, hot water pot, water cooler, mugs and glasses, bin of instant coffee with instant creamer and sugar or the real creamer in the fridge or the staff assigned to keep all the above full and refreshed.

On the one hand, this is Thailand, so nothing is quite right: the coffee is instant, the milk tastes like the box it came in, there's no Equal, the spoons are all dirty, the snacks are Thai-style fruit with salt, electricity and all devices dependent thereupon are consistently inconsistent. The students are kidlets with ups and downs and every class has its problem spots. The Thai teachers runneth over or run under or cut under or what have you. The TVs and DVD players are old.

On the other, it's a bear to become accustomed to something and have it removed.

I understand this.

I also understand the irony of the next teacher to walk in saying, "Now where'd I put my coffee cup? Damnit. I'll just grab another one. DAMNIT! WE'RE OUT OF COFFEE CUPS AGAIN! WHO KEEPS STEALING ALL OUR COFFEE CUPS?"

They goaded each other right to the brink of going up to the boss's office before one of the Thai teachers came in.

I left.

And I did not say a darn word.

(I realize I'm bordering arrogance or aloofness. I don't mean to be. I'm just damn proud of myself: as the sickly washout, I stepped into classroom conditions spawned by the unholy union of Dickens and Kipling, figured out a syllabus and survival tactics, and have survived thus far without blowing up or burning out worse than sitting down in disgust, and I have done it with zero classroom support. Better, I have been directly told by the head of the RP English department that I'm the best farang they've had, and--more critically--I've heard the same via two branches of the rumor mill.

And despite the myriad barriers and hangups, the reasons for--and expectations of--failing or slipping or copping out, I have said nothing negative, made no complaints, missed no classes, no morning sign-ins, and gone cheerfully about planning for more of the same next year.

And I am damn proud of it.)

Welcome to Thailand

Last week, my boss outlined how I'd have to give EV 3 this week to get
grades in by Friday (of the utmost importance that it MUST be Friday),
then give EV 4 the week after next, and then have two weeks to teach
the final.
This morning, I was told classes will not be meeting on Thursday or
Friday. And a few sections will be in BKK this week. So no testing.
Stateside, this would be aneurism territory-how the hell am I supposed
to get all the grades in by Friday if I won't be seeing half the
classes?
In Thailand, it's easy-everyone is going to pass anyway, so turn in
new grades reflective of previous work, and instead of having to crank
through a big pile of grading on Thu and Fri, slip out of town early
to spend a long weekend on the beach.
The only trick will be beating back a dripping bout of feverish
headcold.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On Copyright

"Warning:All rights reserved for home use only unauthorized public performance broadcasting of copying is a violation of aplicable laws" [sic... sick?]

Nothing unusual or surprising, save it's on a DVD of a movie that was still in theatres when I bought it on a street corner in Bangkok.

On media

Where was this when I was 13 and would've been at least fractionally as excited as the Thai Commentators?

And what does it say for America or the perception thereof when this is as accessible as the Asian Games but the Superbowl is PPV?

Welcome to Thailand

The Type A part of my left-brained self burnt out a while back. It's a
good thing it did, too because otherwise I'd be more tempted to think
about things and maybe look for explanations. This way, all I have to
do is observe and experience.

I'm burnt out on responding to all the hoots and hellos and ignore
them unless they give merit to respond-no hoots or grunts, no hey yous
or HELLOHELLOHELLO! but of course every hello teacher! And the
increasing number of hails by name-not just HARRY POTTER.
This generally serves me well, but then as I was walking along
ignoring a group of hooting and grunting guys, getting myself worked
up for the roughest Prattom class of the week (which would be Friday
afternoon), one of the guys came running up and pulled me aside by my
backpack straps. When I looked up, I saw that the guys had been tryin
to point out the dumptruck baring down on me.
Brilliant, teacher, brilliant.

And then one of the guys from the rough class came flying at me--
really flying with his arms out and sound effects--and crashed into a
hug that attracted half a dozen third graders who wanted to practice
English.

How fantastic is that? How lucky am I?

And why can't this place make up it's mind to be tropical paradise or
dank and moldy, parasite infected backwater hellbent on exploitation?

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

Through Prozac colored glasses

Hunger is a constant background, the gentle rumble of distant
waterfalls, hydroelectric production, heavy truck traffic on a
freeway. I do my best to keep on hand things that will beat it back
without bad reactions, especially when eating to satiation leads to a
distended belly cranking into high gear and launching through even
more quickly than usual.
The anti-anxiety aspects are supposed to help with the hyperactive
guts, an effect I hope to notice soon.

It appears that twice-weekly doses are what I can handle without
wigging too far out--it might make it easier to take some side effects
of teaching, but I'm not that interested in living and working through
a medicated high.

And after a week and change, I've noticed the smile I have to keep
plastered on my face comes more readily and naturally. This is a good
side effect.
But there's the "change in appetite" issue.
What was like the distant rumble of a major waterfall now feels like
standing in a rock at the edge of the precepice. And the threshold
between HUNGRY and 'okay, nevermind, I'll just go pass out now' has
been shortened accordingly. So my daily six pack of eggs now includes
a six pack of bananas and my 200 grammes of peanuts has a wallet-
squeezing couple handfulls of dried mango and durian (both fairly
cheap here) and if I get ambulatated in time I buy a few strips of
deep fried pork belly to get me to lunch, and on the walk home I get 4
skewers of chicken heart and liver, four tempura fingerling-size
mackerel, a few tempura shrimp, squid if they have it, and a bowl of
yam beanthred/seafood salad, which gets me to dinner along with an
apple and a jar of peanut butter.
That alone would put most Americans into Weight Watchers. But I have
my daily protein shake and three or for plates of both lunch and dinner.
Calorically, it's probably a hundred calories for every pound on me.
And still the hunger roars and grinds while the footing slips and
slides and my legs threaten collapse and my bones stick out at all
sorts of uncomfortable angles.

In September, I weighed 40 even wearing dress clothes and shoes. Last
week I was up to 46 with my school pack. And now I've breached 40 with
nothing but normal clothes and shoes.

At this point, it looks like my next visit stateside would he for
Christmas. If I can keep it up, by that time I might be pushing a
hundred. Maybe, if the drug cocktails kick in, I'll make to the
upside. What I would dearly love is a chance to spend a full day
teaching and not feel utterly defeated as I try to drag legs devoid of
all spring up the stairs.

What the hell, maybe by then I'll have gone local and decided there
are worse things than the (medically sanctioned) high life.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On cultural sensitivity, part two

I have the best students in the world. My coffeeshop ladies are gems
who stand out amid the riches of this bejeweled culture.
They decided to take me out for traditional Thai fare. Coconut/red ant
soup, deep fried catfish, raw shrimp and ferns in a screaming yam
dressing, a leafy green that grows in local ponds/swamps with egg and
garlic, shrimp with salty tree seeds in shrimp paste and young
mangosteens for dessert. All delicious and indigenous- the catfish is
a Thai staple but the rest were from southern Thailand or unique to
this province.
Next time, I'll be cooking an American dinner for them. They'd like
spaghetti and chop suey. Mmmm okey....

The problem was that conversation turned to my experience in Thailand,
and as much as I tried to sugarcoat it, they still latched onto the
rocky parts- bike wrecks, sickness, moving here after a broken heart,
not intending to go back. And that's the hard part for a Thai- how
could anyone exist outside of their family? How could I have gone
through so much without going home?
It was the first curse word I actually learned in Thai, aside from
those that I make a point of not hearing students shout-"you have
rotten luck. Bad bad luck. And we have a word for that in Thai. Is
very bad word.". Which sounds like the word for street. Love it.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On Cultural Sensitivity

It's like q form of Tourettes. I'll blame it on the diesel fumes and
DDT in the rice water with a hyperabundance of pesticides thrown in,
because it seems to be a national affliction that Thai people revel in-
they just can't stop themselves from blurting out whatever phrase
leaps into their minds. In my experience, this is HARRY POTTER!
It's like the guy who walks down the street making odd yelping sounds-
he doesn't mean to, nor do they mean anything, they're just sparks
thrown off by crossed wires.
It's just odd that it would afflict the entire damn culture.

My mom tells a story about eating a spicy huevos rancheros that gave
my infant backside quite a rash. (Dear god I'm telling baby stories
about myself. I really am the innocuous and bumbling teacher my
students see.). Maybe if I'd grown up on breast milk laced with
Birdseye chilis and rotten fish seepage, I too would blurt out
anything that popped into my head.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

Fascinating rhythm

I gave up again. Same class. They love pushing buttons and do so very
well. It was the drummer who got to me. Class had disentegrated and I
was trying to get them out bit he would not let his cronies go. Same,
steady beat. And that's what got to me. After 20 minutes, the groove
has to change.
So I sat at the desk he was pounding on while facing the other way.
When he looked at me, he stopped with a jolt and I picked up. But I
had fun and started modulating with three v four and other
syncopations. And then I started getting into compound rhythms and
the poor guy, with his cronies, just left.
It was glorious.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

From dreamland....

I have a couple weeks off in march, and I'm working on what to do with
them. What wierds me out is being so close to places so foreign and
otherworldly. Diving off the coast of Burma or the Philippines?
Mountains in Nepal or India?
I found myself browsing maps of places I'd barely heard of and
certainly couldn't have placed were I not looking at a map, places
with very real travel warnings against Westerners-maybe Kashmir isn't
the best place for me to go looking for some easy living, especially
with the other ten countries easily accessed from here.
Is the diving better in the Maldives or Malaysia? How's the exchange
in Indonesia vs Burma?
And then there are the package tours-5 days/4 nights in Taipei, Tokyo
Seoul Delhi Jakarta Singapore Hong Kong Beijing Hanoi Phnom Penh
Angkor Wat, anywhere Air Asia flies with a pretty killer rate on air
and accommodation.
"Well, I'm rying to decide between diving the Similans, visiting
Taipei, or going to the Himalaya"
Who says that?

And here's the surreal part: the sleeping part of my mind says PINCH
ME while the waking part says 'you've already been jump kicked in the
nads' and the purely rational part says 'three weeks with nothing to
do-why not?'

I just hope thar if I DO wake up, the food is just as good.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

Huh?

What's nice with the head drugs is that they lower the stupid smile
threshold so it's like being 2/3 tipsy and laughing at yourself as
your train of thought meanders off through some meadow you didn't know
was there. Which really scares the students. Laughing. Not the train
of thought-precious few had any idea there ever was a route or
destination, and they're all busy doing math homework anyway.
Still, something in the combination of the mind checking out, mid-
grade stomach upset, already gnawing hunger upping by three degrees
(have I mentioned the bananas here? There are all sorts of varieties,
all called gooay through some miracle of grace in this language with
one word having five tones and meanings, but bananas are bananas no
matter the caliber, so I've taken to identifying them by bite count-
one biters, two, up to about six, and they are delicious all out of
proportion to cost and familiarity) and I guess I'll give em a week
before turning to shipments from stateside.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

On Music

A couple weeks ago, I recharged my iPod and cleaned the mold off my noise-reducing headphones. Listening to Mahler symphonies and the Cello Suites blissed me out and drew weird looks from my coworkers.

I broke down and blew a bunch of Baht on speakers. I rationalize it at spending under $20 and getting an amplifier with the power that drove my high school concerts.

And when I turn on the Cello Suites, I feel YoYo's presence in the room.

When I listen to Bruckner, Tchaik, Mahler, or--rapture!--Bach, I feel the majesty.

Talk about a good investment.

And who would've thought listening to music--not analyzing, transcribing, criticizing, scrutinizing, evaluating, or any other aspect of academifying--could be so cool?

The pharmacy crawl

There were more encounters with the medical community, trans-ocean correspondence, more consultations, and it was decided I should be on an anti-anxiety drug to help with weight gain.
In general, I love drugs when I'm hurting. Head drugs are something else entirely. But if it'll help the climb back to triple digits, great. And in the years since I was last on head drugs, there have been some good side-effect reducing developments, so I noted a couple of drug names and went on a pharmacy crawl.
The first stop pulled out the MIMS--the guidebook of all medicines available in Thailand--and showed me that no such drugs are available in Thailand.
"Are there other drugs?" elicited the stiff-armed, "No, no, no have."
Same thing at stop two: "No, no have."
"Where?"
A wave down the street.
I wrote out the drug name and brand--negatory.

Finally, one pharmacist slid open a bank of shelving and waved me to a side door. "See doctor."
The room was about three meters square, dark green, and packed. It took two steps on a narrow walkway from the door to reach a stackable consulting chair in front of a wooden office desk piled forehead high around a view passageway. Beside the chair, behind the chair, along the wall next to the desk ran shelving piled with books, loose papers, and binders. Behind the desk a curtain walled off an examination chair--cracked vinyl more brown than green except where it'd been bleached white, stirrups, and a layer of brown accumulation on the iron frame, save for where the restraining straps had polished it bright chrome. In front of the chair, a tray covered with a threadbare and graying cotton cloth on which sat neat lines of medical implements. On the wall opposing the chair were other instruments, supplies, and a device--a sterilizer?--that looked like some sort of diving bell.
A bare bulb lit the examining portion, and a gooseneck lamp lit the view slot between stacks on the desk. Were it bright out, I would've been completely blind.

He didn't understand what I was asking, so I wrote the drug and brand on a slip of paper that passed through the slot. He scribbled something on the paper, reached behind him to flip a spring-loaded switch, and made one of the most welcome gestures I've ever seen: a disinterested wave out of his lair.
If I was a fan of horror movies, it would be easy to find the parallel, I'm sure. But I don't watch horror movies. As is, my imagination is good enough to give me terrifying sorts of cold-sweat nightmares. It does not need any help, encouragement, or suggestions from outside. So I can't draw a good analogy, really. I'm tempted to mention Hitchcock, and the implied terror of an ill-lit obstetrics room behind a hidden door, but the thing is, in Hitchcock's day, the equipment I saw would still have been pretty new, and how scary is a stirrup with a restraining band compared to one caked with grimy age except for where cracked leather restraining straps had polished to mirror-level gloss?
I'll confess: every time I pee off of something--a cliff, a rock, a wall, a tree limb, a building, a window, a stool, the lower in hight but greater in terror precipice of a pit toilet--or onto something--a rock, a wall, a tree, a building, a window, any sort of target, the long lost days of urinal cakes--I love being a guy. But that love comes nowhere near to the relief I felt that I will never have a necessity to walking into a place such as that and request whatever services happen therein.

My "prescription" was passed around until a large bottle of drugs was produced by the lady who first opened the hidden door. I didn't immediately recognize the name or the drig, so said, "twenty." Usually, this would mean 20 TB, but the lady poured the jug onto a tray and counted out twenty pills. The remainder went back into the pill jug, and the twenty were poured into a little plastic baggie. I waved for the big bottle and copied down the drug name, just in case. "80 Baht" she said. I was happy enough to be out that I paid without comment.

Gotta love the internet: the drug prescribed is an anti-spasmodic helpful when evacuating the digestive system.
Of course he had to prescribe something: he's a doctor, and if he doesn't have the prescription, he looks bad.

Okay, take two: let's go looking for Prozac, and hope fluoxetine or one of the other earlier SSRIs is available in the land of smiles.

A couple days passed and I went straight from school to the same pharmacy crawl: upstairs in the mall, downstairs in the mall, the one outside the mall, the one across the street, the three others on the same block as the one to which I will not return.
"Prozac?" I'd ask. "Prozac? Fluoxetine? Have paper?" And I'd write the same.
"No, no, no have."

"What you need for?"
"Anxiety."
"What? Anxiety?"
"Yes, to help with weight gain."
"Weight gain? Get fat?"
"Yes."
"You need eat eggs."
"Every morning and evening I have three eggs with Betagen [probiotic lactobacillus beverage]."
"Every day you have six eggs?"
"Yes."
"Is too much. Cholesterol. You know? You need drink milk with two eggs."
"Regular milk with just two eggs? Okay."
"You eat in the day?"
"I eat a lot."
"You need two thousand calories. Two thousand."
"I eat at least five."
"Excuse. You come back here." A wave to an electronic scale.
Without doffing my backpack, shoes, anything else, I stepped onto the scale. 46.7.
"You look good. You not need drugs. You need exercise. You go swimming. Swimming every day. Twenty minutes. Okay?"
Okay.

The last shot was a place built in the crack between two buildings. I've never stopped because if I walked in I wouldn't be able to turn around with my backpack on, and because the owner is an ancient Sino-Thai whose grasp of and interest in English is utterly absent.
"Prozac? Fluoxetine?" The writing mime. There's construction just down the road, so I have to shout.
A lightbulb goes on. She writes, "Floksitine"
"Yes!"
"Plo-sEC" she says.
"Yes, Prozac," I reply. But no.
My American pronunciation means nothing. It's "Plosek" with all the stress on "EK." Twenty tablets, ten Baht. And the package read, "Fluoksetine."
Anything else and you can go take a hike, farang.

Welcome to Thailand

On mototaxis

Being without my own wheels has given me great experience with mototaxis. I've found it fascinating all around, both in terms of watching myself and observing the drivers.

On the one hand, there's the matter of location. Mototaxi drivers wear vests of a specific color and are, by a huge majority, dudes hanging out on the sidewalk and BSing between sporadic trips around town. They hang out in designated locations easily identified by the color of their vests, so it's probably some bureaucratic process of dynastic social significance, but I get the impression they choose the location based upon personality type. Here's a rundown:

-Tesco guys are way out in the boonies in front of the province's biggest mega-box store. They're the ones who like showing off English skills with, "I give you cheap--one seventy" while holding up five fingers. "Fifty?" I'll ask in Thai. "HUNDRED fifty." "No, not 150. It was 40 to get here, but I'll give you 50." They laugh and chatter and come back with, "No, no, is two hundred but I give you special, one-fifty." And I can't avoid them because they're at the main songtau stop, so I've just stopped going to Tesco.

-Ocean, front entrance guys are parked at the main entrance of the most popular mall in the province. They don't need to yell and hoot for marks, and if anything prove unduly hard to flag down. But they know the entire town and as a rule do not overcharge. The one guy who did said, "Fippy Baht" and gave the embarrassed student smile as I handed him the farang-appropriate 30 with a shake of the head and, in Thai, "No, thirty."

But these guys also tend to be the young bucks whose driving is more likely to be... memorable.

-Ocean, back entrance guys, in solid red, still quote me double-farang rates, and insist when I counter with the appropriate fare. I get a jolt of guilty happiness every time I ride past them on someone else's bike.

-Thawang drivers, who park on the busy corner of the busy market street, bring an element of Bangkok to town. They hoot and wave and shout at any potential mark, and they get especially exuberant with, "WHERE YOU GO?" whether the farang is right in front of them or across three lanes of pedestrian and five of vehicular traffic. I've studiously avoided eye contact.

-Carrefour (third-tier shopping but fairly extensive grocery offerings) drivers wear red vests with blue squares on the back. They know me as Farang Ka-rash after the bike wreck that was on their metaphoric doorstep. Something about the daily intake of diesel exhaust and those who aren't quite cool enough to hang out at the cooler malls makes this tremendously funny every single time I pass by. But they know where I live, and I have never had an adventurous ride. Initially, I was charged 30 B, but after a little while one guy gave me 5B change, and it's stayed 25 since.

-AMC drivers, who park across from the school, have lime and blue vests. They can spot me from 800 meters, wave, and upon my reciprocation, be idling in front of me within 45 seconds. One's about 85, drives a first gen Honda, comes up to my chin as long as he's wearing a helmet, and his shoulders are about as wide as my hips. Once, he stopped to point at an oncoming downpour, put on his poncho, and drove on. I hid as best I could and got there looking like a drowned rat (as opposed to waterlogged roadkill). "40 B" (double price). I didn't argue.

-Wat drivers, who park between Wat Cha Mao and Wat Yai, never wave, never grunt or shout. Usually there are two guys poised on the concrete bench--semi lotus sort of folded up posture--but there is occasionally a woman with them (more on her later). It can be a long walk to get to these folks, but they know all the back roads, all the ways to sidestep traffic, and they are some of the smoothest drivers I've found--I've never slid off the back of the bike or into the back in front of me, never felt a surprise turn catch me with my balance out of center, and they all have padded seats.

-Bordello drivers are, to my knowledge, the only ones in Thailand who smell of smoke or sweat. Otherwise, no matter how ratty and battered the vest, you can count on it smelling like clean laundry. But the guys who park at the head of Soi Bordello smell like tobacco.

I should explain, probably.

Carrefour is at the southern end of the sexy massage district. I do a lot of shopping at Carrefour (as much as I love the markets and would greatly prefer shopping there, Carrefour has the advantage of being open when I have time to shop, identifiably pronounceable from my farang voice, and is within a 10 B via songtau or 25 via mototaxi distance. Markets tend to run when I'm in school or way out yonder where my farang vocabulary doesn't reach and my cheeks get sore from riding on the well-worn back of a mototaxi.

At the northern end of the Carrefour block is a night-food stand. They make Larb (lime-chili ground meat), Som tam, and Gang Het--mushroom soup. Mushroom soup is one of the best things I've ever eaten: chantrelles, straws, enoki, wood ears, in a dark broth based on fermented leaf juice. It's expensive--50B--but I use some of the broth to make a soup for dinner and eat the rest for breakfast. And the som tam is pretty fantastic.

So after I pick up ingredients at Carrefour, I walk a block to get somtam and gang het. It just happens that the cart is at the head of Soi Bordello. And what the hell, right? If it's good enough to take those girls through the night, it'll be enough to get me to dinner and campus tomorrow.

Well, the mototaxis park right next to the cart.

Maybe one day it'll be a bragging point to say that the Soi Bordello taxis knew how to get me home.

One of the things I like about this town is that I've never seen, in action or in evidence, that the mototaxis take a mid-shift break for a few beers. They also, by and large, aren't out to gouge. In Bangkok, it's a given that any given Thai will try to take any given Farang for as many hundreds of Baht as possible. Here, instead of "Suh hunnut Baht," someone will hold up six fingers--sixty Baht.

Still, there have been moments.

The AMC driver pointing at the black cloud and associated downpour hazing out the road ahead, mirroring the mafioso looking at a storm brewing over the Alpi and saying, "Es no bueno."

I never request a helmet from a mototaxi driver, but I always wear one if offered. I figure that if some guy who's been living the rhythm and flow of Thai traffic from the time he was a mass of cells and has spent most every day of his adult life watching and negotiating local traffic gets hit while I'm on his bike, I'm just meant to go down that way. Otherwise, I'll just hang on and ride.

In Ayutthaya, I started arguing with a songtau driver, and he told his little brother to take me where I wanted to go. Funny thing is, I feel safer riding on the back of a bike driven by a 12 year old than driving one myself.

Think about it: most babies are carried in the left hand while Ma/Pa drives with the right, until the kid's old enough to sit on a special seat extension between the parent's legs, which is usually used as a standing platform, hands braced on the steering yolk.

Oncoming traffic told this kid that there was a helmet check, so we drove through the historic park.

Picture this: ancient, crumbling wats in a world heritage site historic park lined with trails and tracks, the occasional songtau parked in the shade or tourist snapping pics, and here's this kid driving a farang through the middle of it all.

Ayutthaya was also home to one of the two women I've ridden with (the other parks in front of the wat. They had amazingly similar styles. Neither drove especially fast, but neither slowed down. In Ayutthaya, the woman was at an elephant riding area where a crooked songtau driver dropped me. It was on the very far side of the industrio-commercial town across the river, which translated to maybe 2 klicks of a four-lane bypass road and 8 K of city streets. She got up to about 40, and she never changed her speed. Weaving in and out through traffic jams, red lights, elephant holdups, wrong way traffic, whatever, she just kept going. And there were none of the screech sort of moments I've come to associate with close calls, none of the fart-squeezing encounters--it was a diamond-making process. You squeeze farts because you're braking and came that close to hitting the other bike. You make diamonds because you never brake and watch the miraculous creation of a trail through a solid wall of onrushing death.

Same thing here in town: she got up to speed, and while it wasn't fast, she never altered it. We were leaned all the way over going through corners, honking and waving at right-of-way-traffic passing through our red light, zooming all over the oncoming lane, and she never slowed down.

Also had a memorable ride with one of her compatriots at the wat queue.

Gender relationships are much different in Thailand. I've gotten used to the boys climbing all over each other, sharing chairs, that type of stuff, but it still trips me out to see guys holding hands, fingers intertwined, while saying, "May I go to toilet please?" And in that vein, I'm just not that into straddling some mototaxi dude, even if it is the norm here.

And then I found myself in a knot of holiday traffic, riding with a driver uninterested in waiting with the rest of the traffic. We were going down the middle of the road, and he looked like he was rowing as he dipped the yolk back and forth to keep the mirrors from nicking sideview mirrors on the cars parked on either side. And then we met someone with the same idea but opposite momentum. I closed my eyes and prepared to become one with whatever object I flew into. There was much beeping.

When I opened my eyes, we were still swerving through traffic, and I saw a flared fender just in time to jerk my knee in; otherwise, I realized that my knees were within a couple cm of the cars on either side. And something about keeping my knees from crunching oncoming traffic overrode any compunction about straddling a mototaxi driver.

It's like not asking for a helmet: there's precious little I can do either way, so why bother fighting it? If that's his thrill--the feeling of a guy's knees on either side of him--good on 'im, I'll happily oblige. And if it gets us both there intact, everyone wins.

In the context

My boss sat me down, very serious. This is the Thai equivalent of a formal hearing.

"Many student come to me because they concerned they not passing."

*Mental images of students staring with blank panic as I ask, "What is your name?" and the series of questions we've asked every class meeting this term*

Right, many students failed the midterm.

"You give them a retest?"

No, you told me to do that next week.

"Is up to you."

Well, you told me to teach this week and test next week.

And we circle around and around until she says, "Okay, but when you give me final grade, everyone have to pass. Okay? If they not passing, you stay and YOU give them summer tests. Okay?"

Visual: the really fat kid whose eyes are too close together who sits in back and stares at the top of his desk all period and shat himself--in a juicily noisy display--the one time I called on him, getting a passing grade.

A coworker assuaged me:

Think of it like the SAT: if you get drool on the paper, you get a 300. This is Thailand. If you can make it as far as drooling on the test paper, you pass.

On attempting to give up

I just gave up. It's the last class before swimming and home, after the after-lunch snoozy time, and the homeroom teacher does precious little for control or discipline in a class populated by kids whose fidgety screaming and obsessive jitters and yammering while hopping over the rows of desks would have them medicated out of an American classroom.

And here's me, the font of histrionic educational pyrotechnics.

The guys in the back left were not going to put down the guitar, and the guy keeping rhythm--using a desk, the wall, a ruler, his right fingers and elbow, left elbow with the ruler, and both his feet, simultaneously (where was this kid when I was in jazz band?)--would have an easier time stopping his heart than his noisemaking jitters. In the back right, they were playing with dice or coins. A large handful in the middle--the generally good kids who could go either way--were braiding each other's hair or coloring. The ones who get it were doing homework from other classes. But the biggest group was sitting in the breezeway outside the classroom.

Here's me, standing in front of a classroom while gyrating and making strange noises, trying to yell over the students and elicit any sign of awareness or participation, and of the 60 students, six are playing jam band, eight are gambling, a dozen are yammering over the background noise I'm creating, three are taking notes while doing homework, and the rest are in the breezeway.

I give up.

I wrote a model of what will be on the test, circulated the groups saying, "copy" to disinterested or blankly incomprehending faces and went to sit on the breezeway.

The class immediately filled up with the guys who wanted to be cool but are too afraid to mouth off directly in front of the teacher, the girls who get REALLY involved in doing each other's hair, and those who gravitate to such persons.

Within a minute, I was in the middle of a flock of the kids who really want to learn, going in circles with, "Teacher, what your name?" "Teacher, where you from?" "Teacher, how old?" "Teacher, teacher, my name is? My name is?" "Where come you, you, where? Where?"

It took about five minutes to get old, and when it did, they pulled me into the classroom.

"Teacher, copy?"

Yes.

The jam session had grown and I risked taking a lap to say, "Copy, copy, this will be on your test. Where's your notebook? Notebook. Notebook out. Copy."

It's a risk because there's not enough room to walk between desks, just to slide them aside and squeeze. While so engaged, one is quite vulnerable to pokes, jabs, and projectiles. Fortunately, I got only, "okey, okey, okey," and motions toward notebooks.

I tried to convene class, but the wild rumpus was in full swing.

"Teacher, swimming? Swimming?" a front-row girl asked with accompanying mimes.

"You want to go swimming?"

"Yes, swimming, swimming!"

"Okay. Go. Just go."

I sat at the desk while students filed out, until the drummers and dicers were the only ones left. I pulled out Speedy to shoot off a post about absolute failure, but I was interrupted by the lead singer/dancer.

He and his groupies had the desk surrounded. Flashbacks of middle school, but instead of being embarrassed in front of other students--are they going to throw me in the trash can or a locker? How long will it take to get out, and what will I bring with me or leave behind in the process?--it was the possibility of having to face the class again next week after stories circulated about how easy it was to get "it" so far over ajarn farang. What will they do to taunt me? How?

"Teacher. Englit. Teacher. Talk Englit."

"Know, know!"

"Teacher know Englit!"

"I know Englit, teacher!"

They were all pointing at the board, pointing at me, miming writing on their hands.

"Teacher, you teach!"

Huh?

I egged it for a minute.

So here I am in a classroom that feels empty with only a dozen kids--20% of the normal population, but about as densely populated as the average college class--and they're the kids who've drilled the specific intonation of the Thai pronunciation of "HARRY POTTER!" and the pitch of drummed-on desks into my nightmares, now asking me to teach them.

We had one of the best lessons I've had in Thailand.

In twenty minutes, we covered material that normally fills two weeks.

They took notes without being told.

This is Thailand. Were it not for the autonomous nervous system, Thai people would fall like monsoon rain without being told to keep blood pumping and air circulating.

Really, every time I fill the board with notes, I have to say, "Notebooks out. Copy!" In the English Programme, they were proud of the control: unless explicitly instructed otherwise, the students will sit and stare at the wall until they fall into chatter. But they will not take notes, not answer questions, not volunteer information, not move to retain information unless explicitly instructed.

And these kids all took notes.

Um.

Wait, where am I?

Welcome to Thailand

Welcome to Thailand

It was one of THOSE-woke up with a nauseating migraine and staggered
to campus to say "I can't hack it today" but none of the authorities
were anywhere I could find so I went into my longest teaching day all
akimbo.
There's nothing like a concrete room full of screaming 13 year olds to
help egg on a throbbing and multihued headache.
I almost lost it while walking across campus. A little guy was walking
along hehoms me shouting "HEILHITLERHEILHITLER" in a steadily piercing
torrent.
And then one of my M1 students with adorably round cheeks under doe
eyes walked up, said "I love you teacher!" and gave me a big, if
awkward, hug.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

on cultural authenticity

There's a saying that you're never more than three feet from a spider, something like that.

After a decade in Idaho, I had the same feeling for LDS missionaries: unless you're in Antarctica, there's at least one pair in your neighborhood.

And now the nearest Mormons are most of a thousand kliks north in BKK or an eight-hour van ride south across a foreign border I can only cross once without incurring a many-thousand Baht fee for a multiple entry visa.

Let me repeat that: the nearest Mormons, as far as I can gather, are in Bangkok.

Such was my shock that I called the church office. Welcome to Thailand: "Sawatdee babbledi Thai." Uh, [hesitant and unduly accented Thai] does anyone speak English? "BabblediThai NO" *click*

Here's the question: is it a traveller's beacon, the sign of a true, off-the-beaten, authentically local culture when not even Mormons have penetrated it, or is it a flashing warning: "stay the hell away, white boy"?

I just don't get it

Peewee, my Thai assistant, lost it. She's the one who's 4'7" at most and always wears short stiletto pumps that clack like capguns.

It was a good lesson, too: we're converting text language to proper sentences. Peewee isn't familiar and has been enjoying figuring out the symbols and representative abbreviations. But the kids would not shut up. Constant blabber, and none of the usual tricks were working.

With fifteen minutes to go, Pewee blew. She grabbed two metal rulers in her right hand and as she went storming through the classroom--she's actually small enough to fit between the desks--the rulers made explosive pops on proffered hands.

Here's what boggles me, one of the odd bits of the Thai psyche: she walked in the trough between waves of laughter and chatter. The kid under the rulers would shut up, as would the one on deck, but as soon as one of the heels popped a step away, the noise redoubled.

The small cluster of girls in the front, who spend most classes coloring in between answering all the questions and copying all the notes, rolled their eyes when I stopped everything for a game of stand-up, sit-down, simon says. Doing something physical brought the kids in for a while, but within three minutes of turning back to the lesson, Peewee came up from behind the cool guys sitting in the back and started knocking them upside the head with her teacher handbag--a zipper-top jobbie large enough to hold a handful of whiteboard markers, a few pens, pencils, sharpeners, and erasers.

As I do about every other week, I asked what I could do to get the students.

"They are very naughty. Talk talk talk, too many boys in the class. All they want to do is sit and talk. Very difficult even for Thai teachers. They like playing games and funny, but they don't think, they don't speak English, they have a hard time reading Thai so is very, very difficult."

My difficulty, in this class and others, is that even when I was that age, I was not that age. I doubt I was ever that age: welt my hands with metal rulers and I'll stop talking. But I guess when the nascent testosterone levels reach a point, the welts become battle scars and it's much, much cooler to gab away unaffected.

The question, then, is how to reach those who don't want to be using tools ill suited to do so.

On the moral side of money

It's interesting that we got all worked up about too big to fail and monitors stepping in, but Haliburton just got pinged for the Gulf oil spill. How is that group still in a position to do so much damage after it has so many times demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice safety and wellbeing?

Oh, right, that's exactly why.

Welcome to capitalism, right?

So why do we get so up in arms when we are forced to see the consequences of the ideologies underpinning our culture? Why is it appropriate to be angry about the spill while filling up at the cheapest gas station in town? To complain about outsourcing while surrounded by the comforts of a Wal-Mart appointed home?

Is it simply too nihilistic to say, "well, it sucks for those people but I still have [whatever cost less, at the expense of their jobs]"? But aren't we doing that anyway as we continue to cut costs and buy the cheapest alternatives?

Alternatively, is the problem the cultural assumption that everyone wants to make as much money as possible? The assumption that Halliburton [or Company X] would offer, that the investors expect a return?

It's been an instructive part of living in the muban here in town.

Imagine going to a mom-n-pop shop in a rural mountain town in California: Ma and Pa live upstairs and have a miraculous bit of everything represented on half a dozen racks and coolers. You want to support them because they represent a romanticized version of our history, but you will be very careful to purchase idiomatic goods unavailable elsewhere because a handbasket of standard groceries would cost as much as a trolley of supermarket goods. But if you're me and there's nothing like a cold Diet Coke, you suck up the $2 or $2.50 and tell yourself it's not much over double what you would pay at a big box store.

Consider the situation here: a Coke Zero at the big box store is 16 B, 17 at 7-11. Downstairs at the little shop, it costs 17 B. And it goes across the board--eggs are cheaper downstairs because the person at the end of the block has an egg distribution business. A cell phone recharge costs 4 B, and Nai negotiates through the SMS channels to magically restore my credit. Anywhere else, I would spend 3 B to get a do-it-yourself charge card, written entirely in Thai. Um....

And every single time I go downstairs, Nai or her husband speak with me to keep up English while teaching me a few phrases of Thai.

It's a true shop house. Downstairs is a shop with shelves that unfold (get drug out) onto the covered breezeway along the front of the building, and they--ma, pa, a gaggle of kids who may or may not be related--live in the upper three floors. Inside, the shop has a double-door reach-in and a Wall's ice cream freezer chest with sliding doors, the shelves with heavier or more expensive items (inside: school products, cleaning products [self and home], eggs, seasonings, all in travel-size tubes; outside: instanoodles, potato chips, shrimp chips, corn chips, fish chips, squid strips, fish biscuits, all in shiny vacu-packs). And a Zenith with rabbit ears on a shelf overlooking a couple of low, teak benches around a low, teak table that is perpetually preparing for or recovering from an elaborate mealtime spread.

For the most part, customers simply say what they want: two cigarettes and an M-150, Mama noodles and a bottle of water, a milk and packet of cookies. I like to kick my shoes into the dogpile of flipflops and step inside so I can try to be less in the way while chatting, listening, and trying to remember which product--lactobacillus milk, soy drink, fruit juice, juice suspension--was at least not unpleasant and which was an acculturated taste more shocking than rotten fish seepage.

And as I walk out with my baggie of water, eggs, milk shooters, vacupacked crunchies and expanded lexicon, I always end up with a couple of mini bananas or leftover fried yams or some other produce that will go bad before tomorrow, along with, "see you tomorrow, no? Happy sleeping!"

Hey, welcome to the friendly neighbor hood store of the pre-technicolor sitcom! Welcome to Thailand!

There are no investors to worry about, no profit margins to consider, and, most significantly, no pressure to move over yonder where the grass is greener. Not that such drives, such pressures, such cultural pockets do not exist or cannot be easily found--the Western world is everywhere, even if its language is not [as I read more and more, I am more and more surprised to see the Thai transcription of a recognizable product--Glade, Colgate, Knorr, Heinz, Windex]. It's easy to find people scrabbling up capitalistic pyramids: they usually move to big cities where they make big city wages they send their folks for raising their kids back home, or they spend their days saying, in English or Thai, "Hey! You! Where you go? Hello? HELLO! WHERE YOU GO?" (Whomever came up with the guidebook description of Thais being averse to yelling and confrontation had the good fortune to miss 98% of the taxi and tuk-tuk touts I've had the displeasure of encountering.)

But such people, such a culture, is not dominant here in the backwaters, where the limelight is a distant glow and instead of the next possible baht, there are the few hundred people living in the neighborhood, the people who pass by every morning and evening, week after week after month after year as the kids grow up and the folks don't, to my western eyes, seem to grow old before reaching positively ancient. Every morning, the same folks set up the same carts to sell the same gloriously fried goodness to the same people making the same commute. Why gouge, when there are the anomalies like me who won't be around long enough to be relied upon, who witness their baht miraculously stretching further as time passes?

I guess what keeps surprising me is my own surprise that you don't shop at a bigger store because you want a better deal--if you're buying any sort of regular, non-imported meat, produce, any clothing, or electronics, you'll be paying considerably more than you would in a shop house or market stall--but if you want cabbage and apples and sausage and crackers and blank CDs and processed cheezy byproducts all in one stop. It's taken me months and months to accept that the local store isn't home to the $3 lemon, the buck-a-can packs of soda, chips for six bucks and milk for eight; the local shop is home to the folks who realized that the neighborhood needed a place to buy toilet paper and cookies, pencil lead and push pops, and instead of setting themselves on the beeline to blow away to easy street, they set themselves to live in accord with neighbors trying to do the same.

Somewhere, I'd like to think a similar message is stewing around in the Gulf spill aftermath: there's no transient biosphere to sack, so maybe it's worth taking care of the one we all share.

What makes it hard

I'm not teaching strict English or grammar, rather trying to clean up
accents and increase familiarity with farangs. Praise be because we
haven't the language to communicate simple directions so "everyone
line up here" devolves to students timidly sitting back down and me
frustrated to screaming.
Thing is, to get participation up, I do the dog and pony clown show,
but instead of breaking the ice and letting otherwise embarrassed
students join in, it gives the too-cool thirteen year old boys in the
back an opening to mouth off and draw in the thirty or forty otherwise
ambivalent students, and in a blink the class is a carniverous mob.

Welcome to Thailand, right?

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

Enough already!

It used to be that when I would visit my dad in Alaska, we could count on the weather turning rotten, cold, and rainy so the fishing would be horrible.

Sometime back, I was told the rainy season would last until mid December, and by Christmas it would be time to go camping.

Heh.

This morning, I couldn't hear my alarm because the downpour was so loud on nearby metal awnings.

Perfect timing

My Thai teacher was out and I lost my voice in time for the class that first discovered I don't understand the obscenities they yell.  

On integrity

You have grades for me tomorrow, yes?  

Except for the classes that didn't meet while I was testing.

Oh.  I need all the grades tomorrow.  Maybe you see them?

*Them=6 classes that sandwich three days and 2 classes that mysteriously disappeared*

Uh, well, I'll see them, but I teach through the end of the day without a break.  

Maybe you can....

I'll do my best.

Here's the question.  No matter what, they will all be tested and retested and evaluated and reviewed until they pass with a 50%.  How much class is it worth missing?  

Sent from Speedy the iPod

Comprehension

Funny that the students who don't know Stand Sit Take out your
notebook Copy Say Write or any of the instructions I give in Thai know
enough to make a banner of notebook paper reading "FUCK YOU TEACHER"
it was enough for the kid serving embarrassment duty on the whiteboard
to turn around and walk back to his seat.
The fun part was the pleading and whining walk of shame past 14
classrooms.

Sent from Speedy the ipod.

More assumptions

Before last night, I would've said that Thais are some of the loudest people in the world in terms of ambient noisemaking. Then I would make the excuse that they have to be with so much background noise, whether in city or country. But then I witnessed an excuse to set off fireworks. Every temple, big hotel, Masonic Lodge, and sexy house had its own display. And most of the adolescents and pre-adolescents on motorbikes had their own drive-by shows, principally of rockets.

It was reminiscent of a shooter video game. And it wasn't even a Thai holiday.

Now I will unabashedly say Thais are the loudest people in the world just for the hell of it, and I will have no qualms about qualifying such a stereotype. It's just a noisy, noisy culture, and whether fireworks explosions or the inability to sit still without drumming on something, a Thai person will always, almost without exception, be actively engaged in making noise.

You would assume that the pictures on bathroom doors would leave zero doubt, especially if there is no writing on the doors. But this is Thailand. Pink is androgynous, and both kneeling cartoon kidlets were wearing pink. Both had their hair pulled back into a knot. Both had on traditional Buddhist getups. It was a matter of some pressing urgency, and I was not inclined to study the pictures in further detail.

You would assume that walking in on someone in the bathroom would leave zero doubt. But this is Thailand. I walked in on a ladyboy primping in the mirror. Which bathroom does a ladyboy use? Does it depend on being a pitcher or catcher? Is there a pitching role for a ladyboy?

These are questions I will have to ask, but that was not the time to be taking time to ask them.

Of course, meeting what appears to be a pretty lady with a baritone voice and saying, "which bathroom do you use?" sounds a lot like one of those times when a Thai suddenly forgets how to understand English.

No Money, No Honey

It's interesting how many men in Bangkok wear this shirt without an apparent sense of irony as they strut along with an arm around a Bangkok Babe. In these more touristed areas, a great many of the interracial couples just make me sad: they're the worst sort of greed stepping in on what could be the best part of humanity.

It does give me an appreciation for living where I do. Somehow, it's nice to see a couple arguing over cleaning products, or to look at someone and think, "wow, that is true love because no way in hell could it be about looks."

I don't fault the ladies, really, especially after seeing the options available to many people in this area/culture. The guys strike me as pretty disgusting, especially as they exhibit no concern for the long-term wellbeing of their honeys. Such a relationship makes a farce of relationships in general and with farangs in particular. And as someone with more than enough complexes and hangups over the complexities, it makes me sad to see someone living a mockery of something so significant when I have utterly failed at it despite earnest attempts, and witnessed the fallout from so many vantages.