News from the Interzone: Thailand, May 2005
Greetings to one and all from the lovely tropical island of Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand!
The other night someone told me for perhaps the umpteen-bazillionth time that I am the first intelligent American they have ever met. While I am somewhat flattered by this I am also dismayed. There is no doubt in my mind that in talking to travelers from around the world, the reputation of the US has been seriously diminished in the last few years. This is not least because there are fewer and fewer Americans traveling. This is a sad state of affairs and, if we don't want to be totally misunderstood, we need to get out in the world. In the recent changes to requirements for travel to Canada and Mexico the factoid emerged (I don't know the exact numbers myself and reserve judgment but it is very sad if true.) that 70% of Americans have never owned a passport. Well, anyways, I don't wish to wax political so, let me pass on to some of my personal experiences.
Although it had been my intent to send you all a travelogue of my time in Thailand, I am in no way really convinced actually that I have been in Thailand. Touristy places have a deceptive way of convincing you that you are experiencing something that you are not. Despite the appeal of a gorgeous island it is so touristy and distorted a view of the culture that I am keen to get to the mainland to see the land and its people. (Which I have now done, but more on that in the next episode.)
In any case I can say after having spent three and a half weeks on Samui that it is still a stunningly beautiful place, indeed one of the nicest places I have ever been. one need only look for the quieter places to appreciate this.
First Impressions
Upon perusing my admittedly enormous personal lexicon the most immediate word that comes to mind in describing Thailand would be "hot." Any variety of adverbs can readily attached to said adjective, namely "very," "exceedingly," "way too farking," and so on. Fortunately with the onset of the monsoon season the afternoons generally bring some pleasant offshore breezes and sometimes very heavy winds accompanied by some rain. So the average temperature has gone down considerably in the last few weeks since I arrived.
Thailand has been in a drought for a number of years and they are desperate for more rain. Indeed the climactic title "The Rainy Season" seems to be something of a misnomer these days. The waterfall here pictured in the guidebooks is largely dried up. Perhaps it should come as no surprise but still it is amazing how much the Thai themselves seem to complain about the heat. They avoid the midday heat generally and don't even bother wearing hats because they are all in the shade. On the whole they don't talk about the weather much except to complain about the heat. like other very hot places, they tend to use air-conditioning to excess and taxis, buses, and shops can be exceedingly frigid. Seven-Elevens are particularly cold and, there are at least 15 of them on Samui.
Food!
What can I say about Thai food that is not generally known? It is just absolutely amazing and delicious! I have put scarcely nothing in my mouth in these few weeks that has not delighted me--except the one time that I ordered what I thought to be a banana and coconut smoothie which turned out to be a piping hot soup was a notably exception. Likewise I am not too keen on dried unsalted fish or bugs.
On the whole the various curries and noodle dishes are exquisite. The seafood here on the island is generally a specialty and comes in a huge variety. The amount of squid eaten here by the locals is staggering! (And I thought they ate a lot in the Med! No doubt when the dreaded squid people rise up from their spawning pools in the Oort clouds and the central axis of the Marnalladium toroid, these people will be among the first to suffer for their transgressions.)
One of the things that amuses me is the absolute bafflement on the faces of most Thai when foreigners eat anything but Thai food. they on the whole will touch nothing else, although apparently they will consume just about any living thing that crawls, swims, walks or flies around.
There are lots of things I could say as a traveler about my experiences but always one of the outstanding aspects of travel is the vast array of interesting people from around the world whom one meets along the way. I will share a few anecdotes about some of the people I have met as a way of illustrating this.
(Six degrees from Kevin Bacon, well actually, one degree for me but, that is another story.)
It should perhaps come as no surprise to me that after a couple of days relaxing on the beach, getting acclimated and rested from the long journey, when I finally decided to head into town and check things out that virtually the first person I spoke to knew someone in common with me. Really the world is a village. So after setting out quite ill-advisedly in the midday sun to Lamai I finally arrived (having unwittingly taken the long route) and was roasting. So after a brief sojourn in a lovely air-conditioned art and craft gallery I strolled along the main drag looking for a cool beverage. I took note of a Reggae Bar and was going to continue strolling but as I was being verbally harassed by some ladyboys in a Go-Go shack called the RatBar 6 (there are also RatBars 1-5 and 7) I decided a little roots and barley juice would serve me well. I spoke for a bit to the German owner (who doesn't even like reggae) about the Morgan Heritage Foundation (who were playing over the loudspeaker at the time) and soon thereafter the co-owner (Yildirim) arrived who is Turkish. It turned out that they had had a reggae bar for ten years in the Mediterranean port of Marmaris in Anatolian Caria just opposite Rhodos. We spoke for a few minutes about Reggae bars in Turkey and quickly discovered that we were mutual friends of a guy in Istanbul.
Attila's Story
Anyways on the following evening I came in and spoke for a bit with Yildirim. As we spoke another man sat down next to me and ordered a beer. After a few words it turned out that he was Hungarian. Yildirim and I both raised our glasses and offered him the traditional Hungarian cheer 'Egйszsйgedre'. He was absolutely shocked and said that in 5 visits to Thailand almost no one had ever heard of his country and certainly no one had said a single word of Hungarian to him--except for a few other random Magyars. So we ended up hanging out together for the evening and had long conversations in broken English, German and my poor fragments of Magyar. He is a chef on board a boat that cruises the Danube between Budapest and Vienna and points beyond. For those of you not familiar with it, Hungary has one of the most exquisite cuisines of Europe--if not the healthiest--consisting largely of soups, heavy stews and casseroles, roasted meats and pastries. Hungary can boast of rich agriculture lands. We has a lovely time hanging out together. Late in the evening, he told me the sad tale of the city that he comes from in eastern Hungary--whose name I have sadly forgotten--I will email him and find it out.
He declared it a cursed city. Apparently after centuries of woe, consisting of famines, plagues, constant raiding and destruction by rampaging armies of Slavs, Germans, Mongols and Turks, the city was decimated in the second world war as it had an enormous Jewish population who were trucked off to camps and destroyed almost to a man. But of more consequence to Attila is the fact that it lies only 80 Km or so from Chernobyl; he is the only surviving male member of his family. His Grandfather, Father, Uncles and 3 brothers all died of a variety of carcinoma. Many women in his family have died or been afflicted as well. He believes that his turn is next and so he works as hard as he can, and after sending what he can to his mother, comes to Thailand to party for a month every year. It was a very sobering and distressing conversation and though I would offer him what hope and prayers that I could it seemed best to mostly listen attentively in humble silence. In any case, afterwards we ended up singing songs together in Magyar into the wee hours--much to the chagrin of his lovely Thai companion. My favorite went something like 'Hora Maleko valonia.' meaning something like 'If I should die tonight, I would .' well anyways the details are a little blurry but altogether a lovely evening. He insisted on presenting me with a book in Magyar upon my departure--which I have no hope of reading without several years of intensive study in Hungarian--but in any case I received it warmly. I am pretty sure it is about a human rights worker in Cambodia but I have gleaned little else from it aside from a few words and phrases.
Anyways, blessing Attila! Egйszsйgedre
Papa's Story
Among the Turkish denizens of the Reggae bar in Lamai there is a sweet old Turkish man named Papa. He is a little disturbed at times but apparently he is much better now than a year ago. He described to me first how when he arrived he was very fat and unhealthy, smoking heavily and drinking huge quantities of whiskey as well as going with lots of bar girls all the time. His speech (even in his native Turkish) is somewhat confusing. He has never really learned any other language despite living for many years in a tourist center in Marmaris- so he speaks with most people in a bizarre personal patois consisting of a mishmash of Turkish, German, English and Thai, which gets more confused and distorted as the night continues. However once he was comfortable speaking with me in Turkish he explained to me why his life had been so unhealthy and why he was so miserable. He lost his entire family in the massive earthquake near Istanbul a few years back; his wife of 35 years, 3 sons and (?) some daughters, his mother, his uncles and aunts and all his in-laws. Only his elderly father remains alive somewhere near Istanbul. In any case now he is trim and fit, has a single lady he has been with for 7 months, eats well, only drinks beer and has a relatively cheery lackadaisical view of life. He literally has a new lease on life. I hope things work out for him- it seems it will be hard for him to stay here and even harder to go bak to Turkey.
Iyi Sanslar Papa Bey!
Allison's and Jude's Stories
Both Allison and Jude are ladies from the UK who came to SE Asia after finally getting out of long term bad marriages. Jude is a diver and a kindred spirit in that she likes cult movies, weird music and is generally a freak of the sort that I like to hang out with. Allie is a mother of two grown young men (she is young but had her first when she was only 16 or so). She has lots of good stories about having spent the better part of the last two years traveling around the Andaman sea (Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Sumatra, India). And as all of these places were bore the brunt of the tsunami it had a particular effect upon her. Quite a few of the contacts that she had made over that time no longer respond to their emails. Many of them are certainly dead. She described the Thai island of Ko Phi Phi as the most beautiful place she had ever been when she visited 7 or 8 months ago. Having gone recently to spend a few pounds and have a look she was horrified to see that virtually everything was gone. not just the houses and shops and roads, but all the trees and shrubs and animals and. well everything.of course they are rebuilding and things are being rebuilt but it will take literally decades to fully recover. the island is small enough and shaped in such a way that as people fled one side of the island they ran into the secondary waves on the other side of the island- the losses were tremendous.
She had another sobering story to tell of her visit to the genocide museum in Cambodia and the Killing Fields later the same day. She was overwhelmed with grief and broke down. A Cambodian man who had lost his entire family under the Khmer Rouge regime came over and embraced her and told her that she must move on as the entire nation of Cambodia is doing. She has finished traveling and has decided to settle permanently on Samui. She is planning to open a bar there soon.
Cheers and good luck Mate!
Michael's Story
Michael is a heavy set cheerful man from eastern Germany. He comes from a part of Germany where unemployment is as high as 40%. Yet he quit his high-paying job in communications to travel and see the world. Now he plans to stay in Samui and open a bar with Allie. He too had some great travel stories. The most alarming was one about being drugged and robbed in Bangkok. Now he never lets his beer or drink out of his sight and if he leaves it for even a few minutes he buys a new one. I told him about the guy I met in Istanbul a few years back who was invited to a guys house somewhere in the labyrinthine backstreets of Fatih. He ate dinner with the family (man, wife, and children) and woke up the next morning in an alley laid out on a clean piece of cardboard. His wallet and credit cards were still there but, of course, all the cash was gone. The striking thing was that upon looking himself over he noticed that his shirt had been ripped but then carefully sewn back up. Apparently when the knockout drops kicked in he collapsed and ripped his shirt. His robbers clearly thought it was ok to drug and rob him but not to rip his shirt so, they patched it. He was so amused by the whole thing that he wasn't even scared or angry.
Gut gluck Michael, auf wiedersehen!
Hajjar's Story
One of the nicest and most interesting people I met was a Lebanese American guy from Hawaii who had been out in a little bungalow on the beach for 8 months writing a book. He is writing a sequel to the well-known book known as The Prophet by Gibran Khalil. Gibran is Hajjar's ancestor. We had many lovely talks on the beach and he has amazing notions of the world and man's place in the universe.
For any of you who enjoyed The Prophet, keep your eye out for this in 2006-7; I have a feeling it will be a worthy successor.
best wishes bro'
Anyways it seems that there is always--
Trouble in Paradise
Sadly the most immediate aspects of Samui that strike the visitor are the impact of hordes of tourists, many of them package vacationers from Europe who are for the most part a pack of drunken, loud and sometimes violent whoremongers, backpackers, and fat stupid-looking families. The development is uncontrolled ugly and shameless. In the more northern of the two main touristy towns the hideous development is made even worse by the fact that the town has open sewers running under the sidewalk resulting in a stench that rivals the bowels of Calcutta. And this despite the fact that there are numerous high end hotels there. the more southerly town of Lamai is somewhat better and is on the whole more laid back though the nightlife is perhaps more tawdry. The beach at Lamai is very beautiful but about halfway down there is a filthy black river spewing out onto the beach from the interior of the island. So one must really avoid the two main beaches for anything like clean water at least in this season. apparently the high water is much farther up in the winter but even so it's best to go up past the point on either end. The Garbage on the island is a problem as well (And not just the human variety.) and it is clear that there is little consideration given to long term sustainable development here. I envy those of you who were able to visit this island 15-20 years ago. As I say it is still stunningly beautiful but--
More problematic for me in an immediate sense were a couple of extremely negative experiences that I had. Neither of them involved Thai people and indeed let me say in preface that as far as I can tell this is a gem of a country and a lovely people. They truly deserve their name 'Land of Smiles' and, even if they are often doing whatever they can to get tourist dollars, they cannot be blamed for that in so desperately poor a place. The smiles are, as far as I can tell, genuine and, you cant give a smile without receiving one in return.
I said there are a lot of truly disgusting tourists here, more than I have encountered perhaps anywhere. The vast majority of them seem to have no interest in the land or it's people, their culture, their language or anything else aside from getting drunk and getting laid.
On my third night out I very narrowly avoided getting in, what would have been, an exceedingly violent encounter with a belligerent Brit. I was thankfully spared that (I will share the details perhaps upon inquiry.) but far worse was a few nights later.
I was at the little reggae bar in Lamai, a refuge of Solace away from the Go-Go bars, sports bars and sleazy little saloons and I met an Afro-American guy named Steve from Atlanta. He was extremely nice and we were getting along very well. He had just spent a three year tour in Kuwait and then a year doing security services in Kabul. While in Afghanistan he had converted to Islam, although he was still drinking beer. Anyways Steve and I hung out for a couple of hours and then went along the road to visit a couple of nightclubs along the way. We were having a grand time and really enjoying ourselves. After going to a nightclub called the 'Superclub' we were sitting outside by the pool (it's the only nightclub I've ever been to that has a pool) and having a beer minding our own business.
A middle aged man, tall with a thin face and blue eyes came up to us and looking at Steve, he asked something with a kind of twinkle in his eye. At first I thought he was speaking German, then after a sentence or two I thought, "No, Dutch," but then to my horror I realized that he was speaking Afrikaner and that in the midst of his toodling lilting speech I could make out repeatedly the word "Kaffir." well anyways after a minute or so of this the guy walked away. Steve had no idea what had happened so I told him basically what I had understood. In any case we soon forgot about it as Steve was somewhere between surprise and fascination at a beautiful ladyboy who had come up and said to him, "I like black guys." (I had her sussed in about ten seconds, though I have to admit she looked pretty good!) He was reeling from this encounter when he looked up and said to me, "Oh shit, look who's coming." Sure enough, there is our Afrikaner friend coming up again with his lilting tones this time getting right in Steve's face and starting up again. At this point we both of course stood up. Now, of course, the guy spoke English though he totally ignored me (Much to his peril, as I stood about a meter from his left side with a clear view of his kidneys and the back of his head. I have to admit I almost forfeited all my hero points and simply cracked him with the bottle I was holding.) Steve in a friendly, polite and professional voice asked him no less than five times to step off, simply to walk away.
By this time of course the Thai security took notice and a few of them had come over. The filthy racist decided that was his moment to speak out and stepping behind the security he switched to English using a variety of expletives including the N-word. Apparently nobody told him that doesn't go over very well in Atlanta. Steve did a quick dance around the security, and cried out in a rousing voice, "I'M AN AMERICAN, MOTHERFUCKER!" cracking the piece of shit in the head and laying him low. Fortunately the Thai guys did nothing aside from proclaiming, "You leave now," to which we readily complied. It was a very unfortunate episode.
Afterwards an Arab from Paris stopped us in the street and asserted that we had behaved correctly, offering us in the process a discount at his jet-ski business (never a lost moment). I can't begin to comprehend what would possess anyone to come half way around the world top share their hatred and their filth with total strangers. I hope he liked watching F.W. DeClerk win the Nobel peace prize and having Nelson Mandela as his president. Too bad the Apartheid scum wasn't here for the tsunami.
It is contingent upon upstanding members of civil society to stand firm in the face of evil
It had been my intent to include in this episode some reflections on language but I had a little computer trouble and i seem to have lost about an hour's worth of writing so I think I will save it for the next installment.
In any case I am now in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia which is a horse of a different color and so I will refrain from continuing at this point.
I send best wishes to all of you out there in the world, friends and sundry readers
Peace Respect, Selamat tinggal,
TobyAnkh Udjet Seneb, Let your light shine