Slung up in Singapore
OK all, this is it. The story, the gossip, the emotional trauma and the depraved ravings of a half-wit loon in the slimiest hole of the Far East.
Wait, wait, you'll all have to wait for it. In fact it is a tale of greed, murder, lust, gluttony, theft, and every other sin (venial or otherwise) in the book.
Unfortunately it is all under heavy censorship right now. I am, at this moment sitting in Singapore's Changi Airport waiting for my flight back to sleepy old Bangkok. Perhaps sanity will return in that lazy old city.
Besides, it is going to be a masterpiece of fevered dementia. Tales of how I was flopping and gibbering on run down dance floors like a spastic on speed. The heat, you realize. Debauched lunchtime port bars singing with an admiral in the green-light district. Horrible slobbering verbal assaults on innocent young things etc.
You don't really expect me to get it all onto the computer just yet do you? I've got to get back and tuck into a good brick of Danish Blue. CHEESE! Finally! I'm smuggling in a hundred-weight of the stuff. Wash it down with a poorboy of cheap rice whiskey and get to work.
I promise that for all you armchair adventurers this will be the ultimate rush. Your adrenal glands will be dribbling in flaccid exhaustion after it is all over.
Maybe I'll write it in a day or two. I'm exhausted and mentally o the edge of yet another paranoiacal schizoid attack. I want to take to my room for a week without any interruption.
Credits:
Big kisses to Andrea for providing the stage and the framework for the worst of the mental horrors. Anyone coming to this part of the world must go and stay in her stately pleasuredome (fit for a Khan).
Big kisses to all
Neil
Lazy days in Singapore
Well, you know, first I must begin on a sombre note. Hats off gentlemen; cover your heads ladies. Indeed. Harumpf. Cough. Intense sorrow as I must report the demise of my wonderfully crappy camera. A faithful friend for more than a third of my life it died an ignoble death. As I went to open the battery compartment little bits of metal and plastic scattered to the four corners of the Earth as the plastic soul of the poor bugger leapt through the open window and sounded a note of pure joy. Finest swan song I ever heard. Given to me as a Christmas present before my Mexican insanity; held together by cellotape and spit; with a very irritiating sort of pubic-style hair caught somewhere in the lens (some clandestine tryst at the Taiwan RICOH factory at least 10 years ago); grimy with the dirt of three continents and one very incontinent bus ride from Taxco to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo; scorned by respectable thieves; lauded by one tightfisted old me.
Stop rolling your eyes.
Now I have to go buy another one. Do you have any idea how expensive those things are? My God. Oh well, I might just upgrade it for an ever-so-slightly phallic zoom camera. Hmmm. I liked the unambiguous simplicity of little YF-20.
Enough. Although time is not money (it would be just as silly to say that space is developing paper) I will in
Oh my God, somebody just murdered a dog or something outside my window. Yep, it was a dog. Nasty bastards in my neighbourhood. Oh and during that pause between 'window ... Yep' I managed to fix my camera so in fact it isn't broken and I am happy.
Amazing, isn't it?
Poor bloody Pariah Dogs. Didn't see any of them in Singapore but that's probably because they are ever-so-slightly-illegal in that particular time warp.
Oh Singapore! Jewel of the Straits Settlements. One-time harbour for thieves, cutthroats, smugglers, and Englishmen. Hot, damp, and green. Only 150 kilometers or so from the equator (thankfully on the proper side) and made of plywood and nails.
Burnt down a number of times over the centuries. The cow kicked over the lamp etc. Chicago, San Francisco, Bangkok, London even, and Singapore. They all have this propensity to burst into flames for no apparent reason. Strange collective desires for self-immolation or some such nonsense.
But anyway it was once a place to be judged by. Now it is a place to be judged in, and that makes all the difference in the world.
My airplane came winging down out of the clouds and my first view of the area was of beautiful blue ocean and gorgeous green jungle. A veritable paradise opening up under me. I craned my neck and drank it all in. Ah ... the Orient. Then the jungle came and flopped onto its back like a dumb tail-wagging dog and became golf courses. Endless golf courses. A hell of little hills and sandy cuts. An infinite plain of water hazards and tiny poles sticking out of small holes.
Very ... interesting.
But that wasn't so bad. After all, what can we expect? Seedy backstreet watering holes? Sailors on shore leave messing with the locals? Taste? Well not really, because modern Singapore is only marginally better than modern Thailand when it comes to fashion and art. And since Thailand is only marginally better than me you know that there is a certain horror show going on in the dark aisles of the cinema. Efficient though. I'll give it that. They practically lift you out of the aircraft, stack your bags on top of you, stamp your passport and sling you into the boot of a waiting taxi. Ten minutes and you're out of there and cruising down the smooth asphalt admiring the trees on either side and centre of the expressway.
So this is Singapore. It takes a good twenty minutes to come to grips with the place. The cliches hold true. Clean, efficient, well-maintained, not a grass out of place. No children in the streets, no homeless in the streets, no disabled in the streets, no visibly decrepit elderly in the streets, no embarassing facial features in the streets etc.
I saw a man with a potentially criminal goiter get himself hauled off an escalator an dragged through a door in the wall that was hidden by a poster advertising the socially lethal consequences of heroin. The bleach causes your ass to hurt. Big time. Well i wasn't going to debate the issue. After all I was clean. No messing with the law in Singapore. Good God I felt scared even talking in public. Then I got a little bit paranoid.
Nothing new. A little operational paranoia has always kept me on my toes but this time you know jesus I couldn't see the sky. The so-called rain that was falling seemed to come out of nowhere and the uniform grey of the upper reaches of my vision seemed to be an enormous dirty plexiglass canopy. Pygmies in 'ACME Maintenance' clothing were coming out of the drains to sweep the streets IN BETWEEN the legs of the passers-by. And this is the kicker. This is the Singaporean sling on the matter -- NOBODY seemed to notice them.
And why should they? Life goes on. Don't step out of place or you will be seen. Hell a good portion of the news is dedicated to reinforcing the knowledge that ten million cameras are watching you. Masquerading as traffic camera reports they show you that every-square-fucking-inch of the place is montitored and managed by ACME Surveillance systems and my God there I am watching myself through my window on national television. The traffic patterns on my street were fine I must say. Sweet Jesus the swine have even got lasers in the toilets to ensure a proper bowl-scouring flush after each use.
Ahh but don't get me wrong. The place was lovely. Fear aside. Horror aside. Automatic sensors in the street to ensure that your tire pressure is adequate aside. To be able to walk down the street with your wallet in your hip pocket knowing that the poor slob unlucky enough to burn you would end up with rope-burn around his neck -- ooh safety.
Like living in the West Edmonton Mall if Mussolini had decided on a land invasion of Canada via Gibraltar. He would have won too. All the fighting troops were over in the Old Country winning the war for strangers. Plexiglass canopy, regulated weather (very little seasonal variation), clean streets, a million storefronts all done up in mock-Tudor, mock-Chinese, mock-Indian, mock-pre-war-brothel, and mock-mock. Staffed with glittering sales staff brimful of attitude. Nothing can survive the ruthless efficiency of a society completely dominated by 'rational' economists.
Great place. I got some sun, swam in the pool, was able to speak English!, buy familiar products, and eat cheese.
After Bangkok ... well I never wanted to leave Singapore. The bars were fun (although not TOO loud, nor TOO dirty, nor TOO populated by undesirables) and the clubs were the same. A bad piece of cheese and the migration of the government-implanted microchip from my hand to my heart caused a few problems, not least of which was one collapsed lung, partial blindness, and an aversion to gin. Unfortunately I was drinking gin at the time and a certain seizure took hold at some point in the evening -- I am told that it was when I was on the dance floor -- and would you know it I took a nosedive into arthritic calisthenics.
Ah but you have to do these things. I was fine after five days of complete anti-social seclusion and prolonged fasting. Thomas Aquinas recommended it for the soul, I recommend it for the stomach. Torture the bugger until he shuts up and then slowly derive exquisite pleasure from dropping small amounts of food down your throat.
Oh Singapore. I saw the largest cockroach in my life on your crackless pavement. I had a number of mosquito bites even though your mosquitos are under government attack (truth: according to the RIGHT people -- anybody with a bit of stagnant water on their front step is liable for fine and/or imprisonment). I suffered sunburn under your monsoon skies. I was an unwitting participant in the breaking of all your social laws and I survived with no more than a slight backache at the end of it.
Foam blowing onto the streets to simulate snow. Little Australian brats shouting Christmas carols over department store tannoys. In my fevered state I kept saluting emaciated Chinese Santa Clauses as I passed them on the street corners. Oh the Christmas spirit is alive and kicking on Orchard Road. It is the New Year Spirit that is lacking. Everyone is waiting for the official announcement that there will in fact be a new year.
I don't want to go back to Bangkok.
And then back to Bangkok. That horrible cancerous lump on the plains of Thailand. A chaotic random growth in a (gulp-other-side-of-modern-from-pre-modern) framework. Huge buildings that spring up overnight are decrepit before they are inhabited. The whole city seems to explode out of a nothing comprising the detritus of every possible civilisation and then curves back into itself in a trick that makes the mind bleed. Cabdrivers smile as they take the wrong exit on the expressway, botulism flourishes on street corner barbecue stalls, nobody speaks a decent word of English and the leprous dogs are mating at the front door of my building. Instead of going in I wander over to the market and smell the rotting blood aromas of fifty thousand pig carcasses swinging in the heat. I step in a pile of dog shit and an old woman squirts betel juice onto my foot with a hideous leer.
I bought a watermelon for 20 baht and a bunch of bananas for fifteen. I took them home and I hunkered down to wait for the dogs to stop fucking and resume their daily and eternal battle for survival. I peeled a banana and ate it.
We're all as mad as hatters here (TW).
All right, so I had some minor complaints from people who believe that I was too hard on Singapore and major complaints from people who believe that I was too hard on Bangkok.
Well to be honest, I don't really care.
Actually, I enjoyed Singapore. The dog-sized rats and riot-police-style mall cops aside, it was very relaxing. Reminds me of certain towns I have lived in. Very pretty, relaxing, safe, and insidiously nasty to the soul. Live there too long and the moss will start to grow on you.
But in fact, were I to live as an expat in Asia for a year or two I would probably choose Singapore because there is enough to keep me amused for a good few months and then enough to keep me bitching for the rest of the time. As I'm sure you are all aware the latter is much more important to me.
Besides the rats aren't the size of dogs and the mall cops don't wear masks and don't carry shields. I lied.
But that's pretty much the only lie I have told about the place. The rest is true. I'm sure of that. 'Cause if it isn't then I've got a lot of problems. And I don't. I've just got this perpetual itch right between my shoulder blades where my fingers can't quite reach. It's driving me insane and I wake in the middle of the night screaming because I have just dreamt that an enormous millipede has entered and is starting to chew its way up to my brain. But that's another short story.
And Bangkok is probably the place to undergo analysis. It isn't a bad place at all. I'm told that it is really quite friendly and clean. Well, I'm not so sure about that. In fact I will say that anyone who loves this place has got to be slightly unbalanced. But that's OK. Better company at the pub.
Bangkok is a damn good city. I like it a lot. Of course I am allowed to like it because I am only going to be in it for another 4.5 months. It's easy to tolerate the crap when you have a return ticket and you know that champagne will be served just after takeoff.
The city is actually quite clean. Marc-Andre insists that I emphasize that point. Of course he lives just the other side of Patpong so what does he know from clean? But I won't snipe. No, in fact I praise the city. I like my pineapple, I like my neighbours, I like the cheap whisky and rum and I like the heat. Currently mid- to high-twenties and rising. It gets cool enough at night to require a blanket. The swimming pool is a bit chilly in the morning.
But that will all change. Those brief sewer whiffs we get each day will intensify as the seasons change and the sun cracks this city into a thousand glittering shards. We're all going to die. But what the hell -- the Buddhists have always been right: 'All life is suffering'. So we're going to suffer -- or as much as the AirCon will allow us to suffer.
But the narrow streets crowded on either side with food vendors shouting back and forth; plastic tables and chairs coated with the fine layer of dust belched out by the passing trucks; nasal assaults by a thousand spices mingling in the rising heat. Fried squid on the charcoal and hot woks bubbling with thick rich old oil.
In fact the other night I ate fried grasshoppers, caterpillar/butterfly chrysalids, and some weird digging insect the name of which has so far eluded me. All pretty good actually. Well, not really. The digging insect had flavour. The others weren't so hot. My excuse for this despicable behaviour is that it was a hot night. The Silom Bangkok Carnival was on and the crowds were intense (tho short) and the noise was exciting. But a different noise. Not the continual aural assault of traffic but the blaring music and screaming children that are supposed to represent fun. Good noise. So I wake in the morning and my tower rises out of the dirt surroundings like some early Las Vegas desert casino. I see the pollution rolling in from the North and I hold my breath out of sympathy. The nannies are marching along the corridors chatting and wiping babies and playing with children and they all stare at me. I'm the farang who goes swimming in the icy water at 7 AM. I'm the farang who walks to the bus stop. I'm the farang that butchers the Thai language at every available opportunity. I am (in fact) the farang without any obvious purpose. And this is scary for them.
Oh the eyes. Everywhere I walk I am an oddity. The only place I can blend in is in the tourist areas of town. In my own neighbourhood I am a freak, benevolently tolerated of course, but nonetheless no more than a grinning village idiot of a freak. But what the hell. Reminds me of London.
This horrible dribbling from my brain. I'm tired and I've been twisted three degrees off of the horizon. Does any of it make sense? Black canals evaporating their putrid scum under the midday sun? Men on bicycles trying to balance three dozen brooms -- hoping to make a buck? The finery of the hotel staff and the light tinkling bell as the boy twirls his sign and calls for 'Meester Quigley?' The low-slung boulder gut of the 50+ American casting shadows on his teenage Thai 'girlfriend?' The happy chatter of the Motorcycle boys playing Thai football (a combination of soccer and hacky-sack)? The gorgeous sight of a Chinatown street billowing steam and multilingual bargaining? The pillars of Ozymandius standing along the street hoping one day to carry a train high above the city? The bundled cloth form of the women sweeping the streets? The dogs, always the dogs, ragged tit bitches laconically meandering in the gutters? The glitz and glitter of shopping malls? The horrible and wonderful sight of the millions of lights switching on at six o'clock and twinking in the particle gloom of Bangkok sunset?
Well of course it makes sense. Somewhere, somehow, somebody has written a thesis on it and has definitively solved the mystery of Bangkok. The holy purity of the academic razor. The department considers this case to be closed.
But perspective? Can we feel sadness at the sight of Bangkok or is that as difficult as joy? Bangkok is a city. It is rich in the products of civic plunder. Civilisation perhaps.
Ahhh meaningless. Bangkok is great if you see it through the right lens. No better nor no worse than any big city, it is ripe with the sensations of history and that is all that counts. I hope.
Of course you don't have to believe me. I live here after all. I eat the mouse-shit peppers and the pavement chicken liver on a stick. I haven't been assimilated, but something much worse is happening. I think that I am clever. I think that I can beat this place. But deep down I know that the spinning cogs will get me. I'm be sucked in and mulched into a pure pulp of bone shards and rotting meat. I'll be reassembled and released, doomed to live a life of perpetual backwards reference. 'Didn't do this in Thailand ...' 'In Asia we ...' 'When I lived in Bangkok ... you didn't know that I lived in Bangkok? ... Well let me tell you ...'
I'll shut up now. This is Bangkok and the sirens are going off so I suppose that I had better evacuate the building. Wouldn't want to go into complete collapse at this crucial point in time.
Who said you wanted to read this anyway?
Report from the Aubergine Desk: Holiday in Cambodia (part I)
Ok, well first I will apologize for my recent silence. Life has managed to get rather strange in the recent weeks and months and the underbelly of Bangkok doesn't cater to cyber travellers, so etc and therefore and I figure you all get the picture. Second apology: Being one to condemn 'group' messages in the past I must ask you to forgive my hypocrisy in becoming an apologist for the practice. You have all been too good in writing me and I don't have enough hours in the day to write detailed personal messages to all of you. Blessed as many of you are with companies that kindly provide computers, email accounts, and an average 8 hours per day to send messages for free (in fact they PAY you for it ...) you have been able to bombard me with mail. I have to pay billions of baht for the privilege of email. And let's face it - how many of you are REALLY worth it? Search your souls ...
But no. That was not nice ... You are all worth every last satang of online cost. I want to cry when I think of your charity and kindly patience with me.
Ahhh yes. Good warp factor. Crying. Perfect lead-in to Cambodia.
For those of you who didn't know already I will let you know now. If you didn't get it from the subject line you are now discovering that I had a nice stress-free holiday in Cambodia.
Great place. Let's get that out of the way first off. For those of your who find my prose to be tiresome and slightly perverse you can log off now. Great place.
I had a good holiday a few years back when I went to Bruges in Belgium. Cute little lace town. Lotsa beer. Bicycles to the coast etc. etc. etc. But you know, there is a little church in the centre of Bruges and on a hot pig-shit-soul-summer-Sunday when the trees glow in the sun and the streets are crowded with tourists trying to differentiate between Flemish and Walloon this church provides a strange respite from the European mad dog noonday craziness, for if you come around the back of it you enter a small courtyard that seems to exist right out of time. The bird calls recede into the background hum and the hot shimmering air drops 15 degrees and the shade of the courtyard spreads itself over a space of blasted earth and four truly macabre statues of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. These sentinels seem to have slipped out of the ether just to have a small sampling of beer and are about to take off into nothingness with the souls of the unready and the unwise.
Well, in fact they don't. Come on. It's just sculpture after all. It's ART you see. Not death, famine, war, and pestilence. We can leave those little details to mere mortals. In fact we seem to be pretty good at doing their jobs. And nowhere more so than Cambodia.
Oh sweet Jesus, I'm about ready to burst into tears here.
Of course you are all thinking 'well that's Neil isn't it? Gets himself all worked up about everything and nothing and altogether way too emotional for his own good and why doesn't he just get to the point?'
Well I can't. Sorry. Not today. You see, I've had an interest in Cambodia for a good decade now. When I was 14 I saw the movie 'The Killing Fields' on television and though I didn't quite understand all of it certain scenes have remained burning in my brain ever since. Especially the blackened passport photo.
Yes, so where was I? OK. I have been keeping an eye on Cambodia ever since -- it took me a couple of years to figure out whether the Khmer Rouge was Communist or Capitalist. I assumed the former but the fact that the USA, UK, France, Canada, and just about every other Western country was funding them made me scratch my head. Why did the UK and the USA give Pol Pot close to $100 million?
Then I figured it all out and I was left with a taste in my mouth like the smell of a decaying abortion.
Then I forgot about it.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered that this country in which I reside (Thailand for those of you on your third spliff) happens to be right next door to Cambodia.
My Thai visa had to be renewed and the Cambodian border is pretty close to Bangkok ... you get the picture.
So my point is this - I had a holiday in Cambodia.
Long introduction but what the hell. I like to type. Sue me. Or, if you aren't interested in Cambodian military police, Khmer Rouge motorcycle guides, bombed out roads and bridges, smuggler ports, Chinese New Year Celebrations in Phnom Penh, girls, guns, gambling, and ganga (apols to Gilboa) and country walks on tight paths in minefields, just delete the email without looking at it. I'm going to write regardless of readership so do what you will.
To be (etc.) ...
Neil
My late-night evening prostitute: Holiday in Cambodia (part II)
First understand that I tried my best to talk myself out of going to Cambodia. I wanted to go with a worrisome intensity but the COST. Money. Always a factor. I could have gone down to Malaysia and saved a chunk of $US.
So I hemmed and hawed until suddenly I ran out of time and I had to leave the country NOW. Somehow I had managed to pick up a Cambodian Visa (big square stamp in blue, red, and black with all sorts of squiggly writing and Templar symbols. A bit of masonic training comes in handy when dealing with the Cambodian authorities. To be recognized as a nice person who should get good treatment one has to make an occult offering. The preferred sign is a folded photo of Ben Franklin in a nice shade of green. Access is for members only.
I decided on the 5:30 bus and made arrangements to be at the Northern Bus Terminal at 5:15 AM. I woke up, showered, brushed my teeth, displayed photocopies of my passport, Thai Visa, health insurance, and an hastily handwritten will (just in case ...). Then I took the elevator down and wouldn't you know it, wouldn't you just f%^&ing well know it. One taxi sat waiting and just three steps in front of me was an unsteady whore leaving the building to go back to her home.
Well what would you do? She's ahead of me. According to certain rules of behaviour she has right to the taxi. I couldn't just knock her aside and commandeer the taxi could I?
Agony. Sheer bloody agony. She tottered in front of me on high drunken stilettos and it would only take the smallest push. Just a gentle nudge and I would be IN COMMAND of the situation.
Just swing my bag as if to throw it over my shoulder and 'accidentally' knock her over. Easy as pie.
But no. Unfortunately I must TELL THE TRUTH. 'Cause this is fact, not fiction. If I colour it in the slightest I might as well have stayed home and typed up a piece of travel literature that is ALL fiction.
I payed for the cab. Dropped her off and then raced up to the bus terminal -- arrived at 5:10 and couldn't find the bloody bus. I was asking drunks in the toilet, bums on the street, roadsweepers, everybody with a uniform and most people without. Aranya Prathet. Aranya Prathet. Where is the bus?
5:24 AM I was directed to a ticket booth. Then to another. Then another. Finally I found the right one, bought my ticket for the 5:30 bus and ran like hell to the docking bay.
6:20 AM the 5:30 AM bus pulled out of the Terminal. This is Thailand.
Straight 5 hour run to the border. I settled into my seat and started dozing off when the pale fluorescent light in the bus glowed an unnatural shade of pink. The entire world seemed to be tinted by an eerie Fairy Cake shade of red. I watched it intensify and it sat down beside me ...
My travelling companion was a young Thai girl with bright red-pink-nuclear vomit hair that (shudder) CASCADED down her back and over her bottom. Her short-PVC-shorts-covered bottom. On the way it covered her small black leather vest and pink nylon push-together-and up bra. Blue makeup around the eyes and brows pencilled in so high up her forehead that they seemed to be nothing but a stylized rendering of the Grand Palace's roof.
This is not the usual high-school uniform of the Thai teenage girl. I leave it to you to guess what school she attended.
She was on her way home to visit her parents for the Chinese New Year weekend. She lived quite close to Aranya Pathet and was one of the best people I have ever talked to on a bus ride. Her english was pretty rough but she had a certain something that made her intriguing.
You have to kill the time somehow, don't you?
Ahhh my sweet patpong Bar-a-go-go girl. I just wonder how her parents would react to her costume. She had a baggy denim dress to cover up with but it wasn't that effective.
Ahhh my sweet psychopathic driver. The bus ride takes 5 hours. He did it in just three minutes under 3 and a half hours. He also liked to 'wai' the shrines along the route with a deep bow that took both his hands off of the wheel and his eyes off of the road.
This is Thailand. Just accept the workings of fate and relax into the ride.
The sun rose high into the sky and the road wasn't too busy. At 120 kph the scenery just melts into an Impressionist smear of honey and brown. My go-go-girl also intensified under the light into a hideous funhouse streak of day-glo colour. When she left the bus I heaved a sigh of regret and took out my jar of peanut butter.
Always travel with a bottle of water, a jar of peanut butter, and a ballpeen hammer. The hammer allows you to get out of a burning bus and the other two keep you alive until help comes.
So I had a spoonful of peanut butter and a swig of water and I watched the countryside slip by until Aranya Prathet sucker-puched me and we arrived before I knew we had stopped.
Pretty easy from here. Grabbed a tuk-tuk to the border and felt like a million bucks as I sat in the back and watched the kilometers burn under the buzzsaw engine of the tuk tuk. Makes you feel like a warzone stringer as you sit with your bags and careen through foreign streets. A good feeling. I always wanted to be a war correspondent.
The border itself is a mess. It is a carnival. A riot of marketplace frenzy. A claustrophobic world of squacking chickens and cheap clothing. Cockfights in the shade and money changing hands. A funfair in shades of brown. Brown dirt, brown stalls, brown dust everywhere -- coating people, animals, wares. My tuk tuk driver refused to go further so I paid him off and headed off to the border control.
I was the only 'farang' in sight. I love travelling solo. It is a great buzz to be lost in other worlds with no distraction. I took the border police by surprise and they gave me big smiles and laughed at my hirsute passport photo and stamped me out of Thailand with jovial slaps on the back and fingers pointing to the Cambodian side. I joined the flood of refugees and marketgoers and crossed into the chaos of Cambodia.
Neil
On a highway to Hell: Holiday in Cambodia (Part III)
The border between Cambodia and Thailand is a study in comparative economics. On the Thai side modern building blasting a/c joy to the visitor are the last vestiges of modern convenience.
The Cambodian side consists of small wooden huts.
On the whole I prefer the latter for aesthetic reasons. I'd rather live in the Thai ones but as a stupid tourist the Cambodian ones make me quiver with voyeuristic delight.
I walk into the small hut and a customs guard is swinging lazily in his hammock. He gets up, smiles sweetly and pushes me outside. Taking me passport he returns to his hut and sits at the table.
In the dim hut light the cigarette smoke frames his head in a blue halo and he studies my passport with soft concentration. Pen and paper come out. He takes down the details, and then a big stamp and inkpad come out. He puts them back. A small stamp and inkpad come out. He stamps the pad a few times. He stamps my visa and blots the page. Caressing the passport cover he stands and comes over to me. He looks at me. He looks at my picture. He looks at me. He laughs and tugs at my hair. I laugh and tug at my hair. He pats my shoulder. I shake his hand. He pulls out his Colt .45 and offers to sell it to me for $20. 'Souvenir of Cambodia,' he says. I refuse politely. He shrugs and puts it away and I sling my sack over my shoulder and notice that the road has become dirt and there are about a dozen amputees crowded around my feet with their hats out. 'Welcome to Cambodia,' the officer greets me seriously.
The pick-up truck to Siem Reap was waiting just down the road. Around it a group of children were playing 'cops and robbers' or 'cowboys and indians' or 'vietnamese and khmer rouge'. They were shouting 'bang bang' at each other and I couldn't help noticing that they were waving real guns at each other. Empty no doubt. One little boy of five or six was toting a (clip-less) AK-47 and he 'rat-a-tatted' me with a wide grin.
I pointed my finger at him and shouted 'bang, bang' but my finger didn't offer me much comfort when faced with the 'revolutionary's weapon of choice'. I passed some sweets around (trying to ignore their black gap-toothed grins) and tried to find the pick-up driver. He found me.
The road from Poipet to Siem Reap is a bad road. Really bad. As a matter of fact you can't get much worse. The first stretch isn't too bad. Just dusty. Amusing too to see the trucks piled to the sky with goods. They look like upside down icebergs with the smallest point touching the ground. You have to see it to know what I'm talking about. 'Overloaded' isn't the word I want to use.
It was a small pick-up with a bench behind the driver's seat and a normal whatever-the-hell-the-back-bit-is-called. Flatbed? I'll use flatbed. I'm overcoming my pedantry.
In the front of the pickup were 5 people (including the driver) and in the flatbed there were 9 of us. And all our bags. We were crammed right in. I tried to sit up on the side but the first crater almost sent me over the side so I slid back down. We tried to sit on packs and curl around each other and bags as best we could for the six hour ride.
Except. Except for the Belgian couple who turned up. They had two big bags and they told us (in the same tones that one would use to announce the invasion of Poland) not to sit on their bags. Fragile belongings. Then they started complaining that the husband had had two back operations and needed to sit in the passenger seat with as much legroom as possible. The 6 foot 7 inch Swede on the bench behind that seat tried to be as accomodating as possible.
After 15 minutes on the road I pulled open the small window opening to the cab and in my most courteous and polished French I asked the woman what were in her bags (I vous vous-ed her of course) 'just so we don't damage anything'.
'Expensive dresses' She replied haughtily.
THUMP THUMP. Space was apportioned fairly.
So the road. Dust and bumps. Good enough to Sisophon where we stopped at the market to change to an older more rickety pickup and to load up on baguettes and water. One old lady (old for Cambodia where 80% of the population are under 18 years of age now) well used to the backpacker trade came over with a big bag. A kilo bag of marijuana (totally legal in Cambodia where it is used as a seasoning in food). The price? She asked $20 for the kilo. The Swede got her down to $12.
A kilo of ganga. Who the hell needs a kilo of ganga? Smuggling it across the border is too risky even with a small load and a kilo is tough to hide from border police.
He felt really stupid when he found out that the guesthouses offer it free. Every guesthouse has a good bag of it behind the bar. All free. If you need to make some money bring some Rizlas and you could sell them for a hefty profit.
So we loaded up on supplies. I had a good spoonful of peanut butter and a swig of water and we bribed the police and bumped our way onto the Siem Reap road. Then the pain began.
Imagine the worst dirt road you have ever travelled. Flood it for 30 years with monsoon rains and runoff. Lob grenages and mortar rounds onto it. Lace it with mines and set them off. Cover it with red talcum powder dust. Then drive on it for six hours. My advice? Get drunk. Get very drunk. I had a bottle of Thai Sang Thip rum (supposedly illegal in the UK 'cause of trace amounts of amphetamines. True?) and we passed it around.
Actually a lot of time is spent driving off the road. Swerving around holes, surfing through the larger craters. Average speed 15 kph. Add impromptu 'toll' crossing manned by bored soldiers with excitable weapons, broken bridges with holes the size of human beings and children stopping the truck for their own 'tolls'.
And flat. Flatter than piss on a plate. The road curves through flood plains and rice fields. There is always a 360 degree horizon of trees but you rarely enter trees. The truck swerves into fields that have Skulls and Crossbones signs (DANGER!!!MINES!!!) ('No mines along road, no worry mister!') and naked children splash in mudpuddles with water buffalo and geckos.
That's the Siem Reap road. And don't try to take pictures of the soldiers colllecting their 'tolls'. They don't like it. And they're stinking mad angry drunk. One dumb-arse Brit discovered their sense of humour when he pointed his camera and they pointed right back at him with their assault rifles. He didn't get the shot.
The Siem Reap road. I still bear the bruises and my body ached for days. Like an all-over massage administered by a baseball bat studded with bottlecaps. I had a cocaine ball of red dust at the back of my throat and I had eye crap the size of cockroaches. The shower water turned a nice murky reddish-brown.
Siem Reap itself is a fun little town. Lots of guesthouses, good food and even a well-lit discotheque/whorehouse. A dollar a night got me a bed in the Naga guesthouse, sharing a double with a German fellow I met on the pickup. We got cleaned up, ate a solid Cambodian meal and went in search of ice cream. We found beer instead and went looking for motorcycle drivers. We were going to Angkor.
T.B.C. (when I have more time and more Baht)
Neil
and dance around in your bones: Holiday in Cambodia (Part IV)
Angkor
Imagine that within the city limits of Paris, between La Defense and the Place de la Nation you found thrown together Versailles, the Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, the Place de Vosges, and the palace of Fontainebleau and surrounding these, the cathedrals of Notre Dame, Chartres, Reims, Amiens, Bourges, and Strasbourg -- flanked by all the churches built in Paris before the nineteenth century.
-- Bernard Philippe Groslier
First I have to mention that I have been feeling horrible. Really rotten. I feel like a cement truck has tumbled me and rumbled me. All that running around on holiday followed by an intensive weekend of NOTHING at the French Film Festival. I went from 60 to 0 in less than 24 hours and my body is not thanking me.
I felt ill. I felt malarial. I felt like Dengue fever had chewed into my bones.
So I might be a little subdued.
I'm feeling much better now though. A couple of good meals, self pity and pampering have all contributed to my current sense of volksgeschweltungschwineselleschaft or something. So there.
Actually I'm feeling rather amused. The security guards in my building have started to salute me as I walk past. Even better than that they actually click their heels together as they hold the door open for me or take my card for the swimming pool. I keep expecting a chill 'jawohl'.
I could get used to the feeling.
But that's not bad. Maybe it is elitist, fascist, militaristic, and wrong but then so am I (at least according to one source).
And so was Angkor.
I didn't really know anything about Angkor when I came here. I came across references to it when I was studying the Ayutthaya and Sukhothai periods of Thai history but it didn't really register. It wasn't until my friend Marc-Andre (you're famous now, I promised to mention you and now I have. We're even) brought it up and educated me that I started to get wrapped up in it. So I looked into it.
You all have to go. Go now. Not next year. Go now. Go. Go. Go.
[Stuart, take your camera and go. But be warned: You will never return. You will become the mythic photographer. Like the legendary Joe Cummings you will be spotted but never seen. Talked about but never talked to. Ever in search of the elusive 'perfect' photograph you will spend your life calculating angles, shadows, lenses, and exposure. You will spend your life getting 'just one more photograph.']
Angkor. The Royal City. The ruins occupy a space of 300 square kilometers. Over one million people inhabited it at its height. 1000 temples constructed over time. Many of those have been swallowed up by the jungle, but hundreds still remain. There are 40 that are open to the public, and those 40 are the best that Angkor has to offer.
I really can't write about Angkor without my prose going as 'purple as a baboon's asshole'. Angkor turns everybody into a poet but as the dream of the place recedes in time we all turn a little bit sheepish and wonder just what came over us.
Angkor.
My favourite temple was Preah Khan. Overgrown by jungle in parts -- enormous trees growing out of the stone work, ancient worn carvings, rubble and debris everywhere, and just after sunrise I had it all to myself. The mist lifting and the sun pulling out the colours of the lichens on the stonework. The whooping sounds of the jungle and the clink of my boots on the stones. After an hour I heard some music and went to explore it. A troupe of Khmer dancers and musicians were performing scenes from the Ramayana in the ruined Hall of Dancing. I wanted to cry.
OK, OK, I always want to cry. But Angkor DOES that. It's like staring at the stonework on the facade of the Duomo on Florence and then slowly realizing that there are another four dozen Duomos to be explored.
Angkor Wat. The Mount Meru of temples. The largest temple in the world and proudly isolated. A square kilometer of monumental proportions. To reach it one must cross a wide moat on an enormous stone bridge; pass through a gate that dwarfs many other temples, and then proceeds down a causeway that seems to extend beyond the horizon. Angkor Wat is conceivably the home of God (or the gods if you prefer). All angles and inconceivably long hallways, towers, blocks of stone perfectly slotted together, and mile long carvings that look as fresh as something carved yesterday. Clinical. Dry. Precise. A staggering monument to proportion.
The Bayon. This is the work of human beings at their most potent. This is the human face of God. The awesome awareness of being alive. A jumbled chaos of stones that under cloudy skies resembles a heap of rubble is transformed in sunlight. Out of the stonework come faces. The faces of Angkor. Everywhere appear benevolently smiling heads that dominate the temple. This is the place that appeared in those dreams of childhood night when you found yourself falling in the darkness and bouncing into wakefulness. High above you you caught the glimpse of the smile.
Banteay Srei. A tiny temple that bores you until you approach it. 1000 years old but the carvings are PERFECT. Exquisite. You might still see the carver's dust behind the ear of an elephant. Tiny details spring out and you just know that we couldn't do this today.
Amazing. I could continue forever. The sunrise behind the towers of the great Wat. The sunsets. Asian sunsets. Sitting on the ruined towers of temples watching the stones melt into the night. The ... well you get the idea.
Go now. The crowds aren't there yet. They will come. And so will guide ropes, security, organised tours. Right now you can clamber over everything and never see another person (except at the most famous temples). Go.
And when I left Angkor at the end of my third day ... it was one of the saddest feelings. I was watching the sunset from high up on one of the towers of Angkor Wat. Feet dangling over the drop, the sun changing colours, the sky seemed flat. It felt as though I was sitting on top of the city in the sky, the temple on the top of the world. The ceiling of the heavens is chewed up by the long rippled planes of clouds and the sad notes of a wooden flute from some unseen flautist greet the deep orange sun as it comes over all red and moves on home.
Walking away from the temple, on the grass beside the long causeway I turn around and the details of the temples disappear until all that is left is a strong black mass with three rounded towers and two broken ones spreading out and becoming the night.
And the echoes of Angkor resound off of the new stars and carve deep into the hollows of the night. And as those echoes fade the jungle starts hooting and buzzing as it takes over the eternal city.
Go to Angkor my friends, to its ruins and to its dreams.
TBC
Neil
On the road again: Holiday in Cambodia (Part V)
The road to Phnom Penh
Angkor was the most expensive part of my trip. They really know how to charge you. 20 us$ per day. $40 for 3 days. $60 for up to one week. Ouch. But worth it. Really worth it. Another $6 per day for a motorcycle and driver. Cute children trying to sell you everything from water to t-shirts to musical instruments. Not as bad as more developed countries. At the pyramid of Teotihuacan near Mexico City some greasy mexican tried to sell me a black onyx dildo.
It can only get worse. The Cambodians are so friendly and laid back right now but within three years that could turn into the usual hardness of tourist culture.
So go.
I went and then I left. We decided to take the boat down the Tonle Sap Lake instead of the road because we couldn't face another 10 hours on the road to Phnon Penh.
Phnom Penh. Great name. Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh. I love those two words. They sound like warm chocolate chip cookies straight out of my mother's oven taste. Phnom Penh. Mmmmm.
So we got up early and took a taxi to the port. That in itself was an experience. The land is so flat thereabouts that the lake floods and recedes for miles. We had to drive for an hour before we could find water. We drove through some of the worst poverty I have ever seen. One guy in the car who spent seven years travelling through south America said that the poverty there was luxury compared to this. I wouldn't know. All I know is that it was pretty damn horrible.
The port itself was a seething stinking mass of garbage and garbage. People worked and lived there. They smiled and laughed. Small boys played soccer with an old can. Rats scurried about the shadows moved with insects. Not a pleasant place to live but at least they were making a living instead of being bombed.
Small boats took us out along a meandering river to the high speed lake boat. You have to see it. Houses float on the top of the water and the floating police shack came armed with a number of .50 calibre machine guns and a rocket launcher on the roof.
Most boats were of the long-tailed variety. Basically a car engine with a long shaft coming out into the water and a mad propeller on the end. One small boat had a normal outboard motor -- the gas line came out of the motor and fed into a coke bottle filled with petrol.
I forgot to mention that. There are very few gas pumps. Soft-drink bottle filled with gas sit in the hot sun at the side of the road. You buy a litre bottle and upend it into your gas tank. All sizes and varieties. All going mad under the noonday sun.
Our boat was packed full of people heading down to Phnom Penh for the Chinese New Year celebrations. I couldn't take the stuffy atmosphere (squeezed into an airplane tube) so I went up and flopped out on top of the baggage. A couple of Australians joined me and we had the roof to ourselves and the wind. I fell asleep as we shot out onto the middle of the lake.
It looked to be an uneventful trip but unfortunately our boat broke down somewhere between nowhere and the khmer rouge. We bobbed in the middle of the lake with black smoke streaming from the engine until another fast boat came to rescue us.
The Rambo 4. The Rambo 4 was our rescue boat. Already overloaded with people herself, she came alongside and we transferred to her rooftop. All of us. There was no room inside. There was no room up top. We all sat and couldn't move as the Rambo 4 worked herself up to speed.
Education not being a priority under the Khmer Rouge, nobody ever told the pilot of the Rambo 4 that running at top speed with 134 people on a boat built for 60 was a bad idea. So he must have been amazed when his engines decided to belch black smoke and explode with sparks. We weren't.
But the Rambo didn't break down. Made of sterner stuff than we poor mortals frying under the maddog sun she puttered about and putted along and we finally entered the Tonle Sap river running down to Phnom Penh.
But first we had to pay a 'toll' at the military boat.
Not an official stop, this rusting old wreck was nonetheless armed with an 8-barrelled rocket launcher at the front, twin mounted high calibre machine guns up top, and three lazy hammocks under a blue tarpauline. We pulled up, they woke up. Hitching up their trousers they came on board, inspected us, yawned, spat, and took their tea money from the ship's crew. As passengers we didn't see these men, nor did we even know that we had stopped. We just stared into the distance and quietly boggled.
That was the only stop. The way to Phnom Penh was a long one and when we finally arrived we were all well cooked and hopping mad. I jumped on a moto and sped off to Guesthouse Number 9.
TBC
Neil
Sixteen Shells From a 30-06: Holiday in Cambodia (Part VI)
Lunar New Year in Phnom Penh.
Do you know how many people died in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge? Over 3 million is the estimate. 700 000 murdered by the government and the rest by famine, pestilence, etc. In order to buy guns from the Chinese, the government limited the daily food ration to 100 grams of rice per day. That's it. Pick up the lizards and the cockroaches and try to suck the juice from them 'cause you're not getting more.
Then the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia. Then the Vietnamese subjugated Cambodia. Then our governments gave money to the Khmer Rouge to fight the Vietnamese. It seems that the Khmer Rouge were more 'acceptable' than the Vietnamese. Nasty business politics. Nasty business, life.
Who died? Let's do a little test. Do you wear glasses? You're dead. Do you speak another language? Dead. Education? Dead. Soft hands? Dead. Do you have an opinion? Dead.
Really. That was the general idea. Rebuild the country by killing anyone with an idea of history. Start at year zero. Brother number one will lead. Some academics link it to Plato's 'Republic'. Others link it to Stalin. I don't know. It was just ... something.
So they all died. Justice? War crime tribunal? Only 4 lawyers left alive. Only 2 archaeologists left alive. Of 37000 monks only 2000 left alive -- most of those fled to Thailand. Who is left to judge? Who can judge? Children killed their own parents. The Khmer Rouge became the good guys for a while. Who can sort it out?
I can't. And at a discussion on Cambodia at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Thailand, the panelists couldn't either.
But in Phnom Penh people are just trying to get on with their lives. To make some money, have some time to spend with their families, forget the badness. In 20 years they might need to import a lot of psychiatrists but right now they are suppressing.
Phnom Penh is a FUN city. I liked it a lot. But don't go there with any great expectations -- I saw a lot of people wandering around with copies of the new book 'Off the Rails in Phnom Penh', trying to find the street of $4 whores and trying to buy AK47s in the marketplace, and trying to see the motorcycle-jackings. Just like the hordes wandering Thailand with copies of 'The Beach' or staggering though Britain with Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. All a bit silly really. You'll see what you want to see. We all write our own stories.
Phnom Penh is a shell. It could be a beautiful city. It might have been a beautiful city. it has wide boulevards, new bars, internet access for $1 per minute, lots of crime, lots of strange money, and very little history. Once more, people have started at Year Zero.
The main tourist attractions are the gun range, the killing fields, and the holocaust museum. I didn't go to the gun range but I saw the other two.
The Killing Fields (just one of many across the country) is a horrifying place. The skulls of thousands fill a new Stupa -- all categorized as Juvenile Asian Females under 14; Senile Asian Males; European Males, etc. They come from excavated mass grave. Other graves haven't been opened.
The most horrifying thing is that you walk in this peaceful place where children play and shout next door and the birds twitter away mindlessly and you suddenly notice -- what's that? That there. What is it? And then you see more. And more. And then you notice that the entire field is littered with fragments of clothing sticking out of the ground. Sleeves. Scarves. Trouser legs. Small fragments coming up out of the dirt.
And then it hits you.
It's tough to take.
The mass of bones don't say as much as the clothing sticking out of the ground.
The Killing Fields.
The Holocaust Museum is in an old French school that was turned into a prison. Here they tortured their victims before driving them out to the killing fields and driving pick-axes through their skulls (didn't want to use precious bullets). Sometimes they didn't wait.
They photographed everything. You walk into a cell, see the bed. The led irons. A shovel. On the wall is a picture of that bed with a broken body -- the head is a mushed out smear. A bloodstained shovel lies beside the bed.
The photographs of hundreds of victims line the walls. The Khmer Rouge took before and after shots.
The Vietnamese made a made of the country out of skulls. Pretty poor taste. It hangs on the wall. A bust of Pol Pot is beside it.
Barbed wire covers the upper floors of the school so prisoners couldn't commit suicide.
It's pretty damning.
That's the history. Tough to see but it is really necessary to see it if you want to begin to try to understand what happened.
Phnom Penh.
I didn't go to the shooting range. Fire all sorts of weapons. Throw grenades. Launch rockets. I didn't want to, didn't have the money, and didn't need to. It was going off in the streets.
Chinese New Year. A lot of people can't afford fireworks. But they have lots of guns and ammo lying around. Chinese New Year was fun.
We walked out of our guesthouse to see the motorcycle drivers swigging from a bottle and firing pistols into the air. A lot of children ran around with cap pistols. Bang bang. The neighbour stood on his back deck overlooking the small lake and loosed off a full clip on his AK-47. Everyone danced and shouted and cheered and sang.
The police were right into the act too. Everyone was armed and everyone was shooting. A lion came out and danced in the centre of it all.
Lots of lion dancing. It was a hell of a party and everyone had a holiday.
In truth there wasn't a lot of gunfire. Just concentrated in a few areas and for short periods of time. Our guesthouse just seemed to be the center of one such area.
That was fun.
That was Phnom Penh. Other things happened -- saw the Mekong river for the first time, drank in the colonial wreckage of the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Cambodia, wandered down Mao Tse Tuong Boulevard and into a small funfair, watched the leprous expats emerge at night, swung in a hammock alongside the lake at sunset.
Phnom Penh was fun. Really has a good feeling to it.
But I was running out of time. I had to Complete The Circuit. I had to catch the bus to Sihanoukville, see the Sea of Siam, and rocket along the coast back to Thailand.
I left at noon.
TBC (although I am running out of energy and you are probably running out of patience. Too bad)
Neil
A rock feels no pain: Holiday in Cambodia (Part VII)
Well, that's it really. Not quite.
Sihanoukville is a sleepy coast town without much to recommend it except clean empty beaches, Taiwanese toxic waste on the docks, good seafood and brilliant ocean sunsets. I relaxed there and I felt relieved.
The road down from Phnom Penh is the best in Cambodia. Hardly any potholes. Paved and fast.
I was still travelling with the German fellow. We were the only two farangs on the bus and it seems that we were something of a hit with the children. They wouldn't let us sleep.
Their parents weren't much better. They had an annoying habit of holding their children up to us so the kids could feel our skin and hair. One little brat snatched at my glasses and tried to gum them out of shape.
But we made friends and they shared their food with us and we all laughed good-naturedly and when the bus pulled to a halt all sorts of kids pulled at us and said 'bye bye'. They were sweet.
Leaving Sihanoukville we took a fast boat up the coast close to the border with Thailand. I stayed downstairs the whole time talking with a Scottish guy who had lived in Cambodia for almost two years. He loved the place intensely. We spoke over the din from the bad thai action movie on the television screen.
The only hitch in our conversation came when they changed movies. By accident they put in some revolting (and I do not use the word lightly) chinese pornographic movie. Nobody said anything. Whole families just watched impassively until the crew rushed over and changed it to a weird romantic comedy. The only two people showing any emotion were the Scot and myself. We were guffawing and choking and we didn't stop for a good five minutes.
This is true. I don't know why it happened. But it did. That's what life brings.
I had to change to a small boat for the last run into Thailand. We zoomed out of the harbour and hit the waves and I felt great. We only stopped once to come up to a soldier swinging over the water on his hammock. We paid the tea money and the motor revved up. I had forgotten how much I have missed the ocean. The pounding of the boat on the waves, the rock from the wake of other boats, and the spray coming up and splashing out over everyone. I loved it and I was unhappy to come to a halt.
Immigration. A slow process but easy. I hit the Thai side and I felt like I was home. The aircon minibus ran us up to Trat but I had missed my connecting bus to Bangkok. The next one left 5 hours later. So I hopped into a pickup truck with four Thais and we drove to Chantaburi at an average speed of 130 kph. One guy brought out some Isaan sausage and I had a bit of whisky left so we sat in the back and watched the sunset.
We hit Chantaburi just as the Bangkok bus was pulling out. I waved my bag at it, ran to get a ticket and then pulled myself on board. There were five of us on the bus and the lights went out and i pulled the blanket up to my chin.
All my connections had worked perfectly. The trip was divinely inspired and ordained. I always made it RIGHT ON TIME. It worked. It was fated.
The bus pulled into the Big Mango at 10:30 at night. We had overtaken the Trat bus along the way so I felt GOOD. I disembarked and hailed a cab. My doorman saluted me and my dirt and he clicked his heels. I felt like a god.
That's it.
Neil
Post Scriptum:
I'm tired and I'm feeling waves of maudlin sentimentality shock through my head.
Much as I enjoyed coming back to the City of Dogs, I can't help wishing that I had stayed in Cambodia for a good few months. It's a strange place. Friendly and crazy. Big smiles, the most beautiful people in the world, madness incarnate, the smell of cordite and raw sewage, the noise of life constantly ringing in the ears.
In Siem Reap we passed a small shack where some people were dancing to really bad music -- hell, they knew it was bad. But they were dancing. Unashamedly, happily, and colourfully dancing to the bad music. And they loved it. They could dance. And it was beautiful to see.
Cambodia is like an intensely beautiful 30- car pileup on a freeway. You see it and you are horrified. The carnage is terrible, the pain is immense, and the grief wracks your lungs like a scouring pad. But in the right sort of light, rainbows play out on the shattered glass and there is a bit of glory in the chaos.
Within 72 hours of the Khmer Rouge taking power Phnom Penh was emptied. Everyone -- ill, crippled, dying, healthy were forced onto the road. Within 72 hours of the Khmer Rouge taking power Cambodia was literally wrenched back into the Stone Age. Seeing that destruction I was on the verge of tears more times than I can count. I was openly crying many times.
But at the same time there is beauty there. There is wonder in the wreckage and in the people trying to make some order for themselves. I found myself marvelling at the people and at the end, in the final moments before my own personal midnight I hope that I will remember Siem Reap and the dazzling inspiration of a few Cambodian gathering around some horrible music in a shack and dancing like there was no tomorrow.
N.
Bangkok -- Us and Them
If Phnom Penh is a flea market and Singapore is a giant shopping mall, Bangkok is like your grandparents' attic. Bits of jumble and dust piling up, lots of crap, and some absolutely brilliant finds. Spiders in the corners and dead flies on the windowsill. Hell, it's even hard to refrain from dressing up and prancing about in your grandmother's old whalebone gut buster and fur coat. Most people don't bother to resist that temptation. That's BKK. Who comes here? Many tourists are here because they have second-rate ideas of sex and sin. For them BKK is 'way out' and deviant. Maybe. Once. Not now. Compared to the fantasies it has engendered, BKK is more like a Shriner's convention gone wild in Reno. Patpong itself is not much worse than Ladies night at the Thundermug Burlesque Emporium.
I'd be lying if I wrote that BKK is harmless. There's some amateur butchery going on in the corners and paedophiles can feel right at home but that's a side your average tourist can't encounter. Closed clubs and the Right Look. Most touts on the street pulling you in with promises of their 'young sister' or 'little boy' are going to get you drunk and try to fob you off with some 45 year old ex-stripper named Siamese Ruby. 'You wan' tak' me hom' t'nigh'?'
No, don't expect to encounter hardcore central station. Won't happen. If you can spend more than 10 minutes of your life in some seedy gogo bar drinking watered down beer with some faded beauty queen flashing her mangled dugs in your face, you are a sadder man than I am Gunga Din. And if you enjoy seeing women with numbers pinned to their dresses, you'll fit right in. But that's only a small part of BKK. Nost of BKK is 'normal' barring Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza and the seedy brothel/barber shop around the corner from my place. People work their lives and live their jobs and are just trying to get past the cops, the taxman, the IMF, and the theewadee.
And the heat. The ruthless, relentless heat. I'm getting used to it now. I see new arrivals dripping with sweat and collapsing into aircon shopping malls with the thanksgiving of the newly converted. I just keep a steady sheen of perspiration on my body at all times and enjoy the steam rising from my shirt. The heat is in my blood now.
But tourists.
Had Kafka any prophetic sense of justice, his hero would have metamorphed into a fat Russian mafioso such as are seen wallowing on Thai beaches with their soft-porn beach towels and hardcore posing pouches (thankfully mostly obscured my one huge roll of fat). I prefer the roaches. Fat, yes. Abdominally so. Although my own 'six pack' seems permanently lodged in a carrier bag with two loaves of bread and an old atlas for company, I have no qualms abot calling these horrible old bastards fat useless tubs of lard. I have a particular fascinated horror for one I saw at a water park here, scoping out and sidling up to the loner children. Maybe he was just a jolly old elf, but I'm placing no bets.
If you have an impression that Thailand is sinful and horrible, modify it now. It's not. It's actually the tourists who are depraved maniacs. Certainly Thais are not all saints and can do some remarkably horrible things to each other, but proportionally, weight for weight, and in concentration, the tourists here are the most degraded bunch of sociopaths I have ever encountered outside high school.
Tourists. I'm one of them I suppose notwithstanding my address in the suburbs. We're all scum.
Different types. There's the nasty old men with their teenage 'girlfriends'. Slobbering 40+ers with bulging bankrolls and twisted libidos trying to fool the world that 'we to can get girls. Pretty ones too.' Horrible. To be fair, some of these men know that they are not fooling anybody. They know where they stand. So they flaunt it. They pinch and drool and paw and fumble away in public. I actually find this the more acceptable approach. At least it is honest.
Young fellows do it too. I talked to one 26 year old naif who mentioned that he liked walking around with his little bit of hired fluff because it made him feel more accepted. 'When I go places with my girls I get better treatment.' And 'Thais see that I'm not racist.' Indeed.
Then there was the electric fan family at the Chatuchak market. A Leave it to Beaver family such as I thought only existed in Reagan's imagination, all armed with small battery operated fans to 'beat the heat'. I was fortunate to witmess the breakdown of the youngest's fan and the near-breakdown of the mother. As they were buying some sort of splinters of the true cross, hysteria -- such as I have never before seen -- erupted. The poor mother yelped in panic and called out across the market 'Oh my Gawd! Dave, Dave, find batteries! Quick! We need batteries! Here,' she gave her fan to the young lad and fanned herself with her enormous handbag. 'Hurry up Dave!' True. Sadly true.
Then there's the Khao Sarn Road Kowboys. I hopped up that way a couple of weeks ago and it hadn't changed since my previous visit.
Insert chorus here: 'Have you read The Beach?'
There's the dirty shifting tideline where the pale pinky newcomers encounter the bright red oldtimers. There's the line of guidebook-equipped arrivals following each other from guesthouse to guesthouse in the exact order that they are printed in the books. Follow the Lonely Planet line, join the Rough Guide crew, or laugh at the Let's Goers. I haven't been able to come to grips with Khao Sarn Road (or Cow Saan as only backpackers can pronounce it). To be precise, I understand the Road well enough, but not the people who go there. Bland food, bad accomodation, and LOTS of fellow unwashed travellers crowding in together, each professing a desire to 'get away from the crowds, see the REAL Thailand'. It make even less sense when you consider that less than two blocks away there are some great places to eat and stay in an old Thai neighbourhood. Amazing. Very few of the Kowboys (Khao-boys?) leave the immediate area. They go no father than Wat Pho before needing to get back to their real Thai muesli and fried egg sandwiches. Then they declare BKK to be a horrible place not worth seeing.
Those of you who have never hefted a backpack might think that backpackers are travelling 'on the cheap'. Many are, but most I have met in the past 5 years stay in places like Khao Sarn Road which turn out to be the more expensive places in town. Especially if one books travel arrangements there. I paid 8 pounds to get from my front door to Angkor in Cambodia. Khao-boys and girls were paying 30 for the exact same ride. I didn't do anything special. I just put two guidebooks together and figured it out. Ahhh Khao Sarn Road. It's one of the reasons why I hate arriving in places. I love travelling. I love the movement and the helplessness of the train window view. I love living in new places. But getting there is usually ALL the fun because when you arrive you have to deal with dumps like KSR. But on the whole I don't see too many Khaoboys and girls 'cause they rarely venture far from their Korral.
Instead I see the Heavenly Hagglers. In BKK they are in their element. These people love to feel ripped off. Indignant, watchful, and armed with 'proof' they ambush Thais by the score. 'What! 20 Baht? (about 30 pence) Nonononono! My guidebook says 18 baht! 18, I pay no more!' I even saw one fellow on the bus: 'Nonono! 2.50 baht! not 3.50, 2.50!' The fare had increased by 1 baht since his guidebook was printed but he refused to be persuaded. This stalwart knight-errant preferred to walk the 20 blocks rather than be 'ripped off' for tuppence. Tuppence. I got to use the word! Excellent! Or should it be tuppenny? Oh shit.
Then there's the occasional Frenchman who refuses to recognize English as the lingua franca of South East Asia. Usually a male, this bright light tries to communicate with everybody in French. Hmmmm.
Ah me. Tourists. Residents too. Maggots. BKK can be a timewarp. it's possible to live the day of your arrival over and over again ad nauseum. Some people who arrived in the 70s still look like they live in the 70s. BKK can accomodate all weirdness. Mosr expats just lead ordinary lives, but there is a hard core contingent of swingers who see no reason to change and are under no obligation to change. Being out of the Thai cultural loop these guys can and do get away with anything. Including bad fashion sense and dubious hygiene. The entrepreneurs are key. The foreign gogo bar owners. The Patpong peddlers. The society pimps. Singing Christmas carols in an 'authentic Irish pub' one hot December night, I met the manager of that establishment. Our discussion revolved around fishing (for some uninteresting reason) and we were getting along like old war buddies. So he handed me his business card and said 'I also run a private gentlemen's club out on Sukhumvit. Come on over, check it out sometime. Businessmen only. Very nice. Discreet.' (For some reason he believed that I ran a small Silicon Valley company and was over in Thailand signing contracts). I was flattered. I was now eligible for the BKK business and leisure world with all the privileges therein. Then he told me: 'a bit dead [in the pub] tonight. You should come on a Friday night. Lots of nice girls here. Good families. Good girls. Prefer western boyfriends. Nice girls. Lots of class.' A real sharpshooter salesman. He didn't pay our bar bill though. Cheapskate pimp.
Oh, you know me. I'm not really criticizing any of these people. I'm poking fun at them, and well I might because there's a little bit of me in every one of these categories. Even the pervy ones. And I'm allowed to make fun of myself, aren't I?
But no matter, because I'm calling the shots here. These people are swine. All of them. From the loud Eastern European porkers to the herd of individuals (wow, I bet nobody ever thought of wearing tie-dyed trousers before. Cool! I can put beads in my hair! I'm a non-conformist!) in the Khao-pen, they are all useless. Not quite. Their presence keeps airfare and hotel prices low and compared to them, I can feel like a god. A rather shy and retiring god, I must admit, but what matter?
Once, years ago, I attended a speech by some guy (Harper I think was his name). He was the policy man in Canada's Reform Party. After the speech an old woman approached me and told me how wonderful it was to see young people interested in politics. Hoping to be written into her will I refrained from slugging her and chided her gently: 'I just came to hear what he had to say. I don't support the Party.' 'Well, whyever not?' she trilled enthusiastically. 'Their racist immigration policies, for one.' I replied uncomfortably. 'Oh that!' She laughed. 'You are young and idealistic.' Gripping my arm she hissed 'I lived in China. I know these Orientals. They all want to kill us.'
True story. She insisted that the Orientals were 'not like us you know.' I figure she had some sort of Protocols of the Elders of Siam to quote from so I was happy when my father came over and rescued me. But maybe, just maybe, she had a point. Were I to judge the entirety of Western civilisation on the strength of the evidence present in BKK I'd want to kill 'us' too.
And you know, the sad but amusing thing about BKK is that it is a fun place and there are lots of good people here -- Thai and farang -- but most of that is obscured by the vaseline lens of reports like this one. I'd hate for you to think that BKK is a bad place. Far from it. For every sucker buying a Rolex for 10 dollars or getting a great deal on gemstones for export, or frequenting pingpong shows or cheering on the gogo dancers or getting their opium dream in the small shophouse, or partying in the Khao-pen. or sitting in the British Council library typing madly for hours like some deviant glue-sniffing zookeeper with the bends, there are at least ... there must be ... oh hell. We're all twisted Interzoners madly scrabbling for something we can hang onto as we wait out our lives and we hope to hell that we can find it here. Some people get lost in sex, some in drugs, and some get lost in some mad fantasy of going native. Me? On my fourth day here I got lost on the 44 bus and had to get a taxi home. That was an adventure and a half.
Kisses to you all,
Neil
23.iii.99 Bangkok