thai.doc

You might come back from your 3 week vacation and realize that you have very few pictures as the presence of mind required to photograph was mostly absent, and justly so. Your time spent in Thailand was so spontaneous that it rarely seemed appropriate to stop and fish out your camera to capture anything at all. Also your camera batteries were of the ‘made in Taiwan’ and very light variety which rendered most of your few photographic attempts useless. You may have traveled with your mother and your brother for the first 2 weeks and your final week with just your brother and newly arrived old pal friend pal. On your travels, specifically the Island paradise section you would meet some other friends that were instant and perfectly fleeting; they were in the same frame of mind as you sharing the paradisio-bubble. Anywhere else you would’ve never looked up at all. Koh Wai. You might swim a bunch in the clear and green water and near the end of your week there you’d feel pretty confident in your newfound swimmin’ skills. Your brother and your mother cherished lying under the visible waves of sunlight—you refused it. For you, the Island was a real heaven, like ‘died and gone to heaven’ heaven. Ah but then you must remember it is contrasted and relative to the scrapping and scraping city of Bangkok. Bangkok yes, poor and loud, dirty, underhanded. The local river passes slowly, warm and murky. Plastic and shit-germ garbage, it all heaps and heaps upon the muddy banks below the wood and found-scrap shacks disguised as kitchens and houses. The cheating taxi drivers smile at every foreign face saying “Tuk Tuk(Tri-wheely taxi)?” “Ping Pong show?” or “Hey man, where you go? Where you from?”-- they all need money. Another Thai man sits under the lights of a Happy Mart, he points at his leg and is proud to show off a wound on the top his foot, well closer to the ankle really, it’s a gouged-out wound, maybe a centimeter deep and about 6 cm in diameter. The dirt coats it in some places in other places the wound still looks fresh and wet. The guy looks truly injured and pitiful the 1st night you see him showing off his wound for loot but but but the same wound on the 19th night? well that tells you of a more appalling tale; he’s obviously picking his wound every day and not allowing it to heal—his main source of income. Some poor and pretty little girl begs for pennies/peanuts just down from her poor and ugly mother’s dirty face as clean knees scrape past her nose and folded hands. You feel both guilty and guiltless; it’s not your fault you were born clean and she was born dirty—ah but keeping yourself clean and another dirty might be blameworthy enough—humbug, enough thinking! Thinking is for the guilty. The vendors like to barter. You do not like to barter. The guesthouse walls are smeared with handprints and food and grimy sexual escapades. The food is cheap and everywhere. The fulfilling street vendor delicacy of papaya salad and sticky rice is 30Baht or $0.93(CND). There are some stray dogs playing and fucking around. The goofy twosome playing are an odd couple, the passive hound is very blind and very old and very pleased to be roughed up and the aggressor is muzzled and friendly and bounding and not unlike some good dogs you might know back home. The Hookers in Pat Pong like to rub your hairy white legs and venture near your long, weighted, long waitin’ balls-- and that’s just for walking in the door! You entered the bar/strip club/brothel as a drunk. You and your pals followed the funny little Thai-man that offers you no less than the world and a specifically a sex/strip-show specialty called “Pussy Cat Banana”. In the end there is no ‘Pussy Cat Banana’ to be seen/had so you and your friends just settle in for a beer and the whores love that you’re there, why they must think you’re a real wonderful guy, husband material even. “Whore” might be too simple of a term, cuz they’re more like greeters or hostesses but you’d have to give them money ‘cause they’d suck your dick in an instant. If you don’t want sex but just the leggy, creeping rub down and winning company they’ll say you gotta go. If you refuse they’ll say “but Mista, we rub you for long time!” and then you might say “yeah, but I never asked you to and I don’t think I should have to pay, I’m just sitting down and the beer is so overpriced, we all bought one…let us drink this and then we’ll go…no, I never asked you to rub my leg…no…no…shoo, go away…pussy cat banana…go away…forget it, I’m not paying!” and then the one with the sideways-crooked teeth would say “You leave!” and you would leave as she powerlessly tries to yank you up. The lady-boy on the right would still be trying to convince you that you would be better off if her square-jaw could ‘finish you off’ in the back room. Then you go to an after hours party and some bitch is being a bitch. She demands early in the night that you let her sit in your seat simply because she’s a woman(you refuse) and then later as you wait in line to use the washroom upstairs she honestly and belligerently thinks you should allow her to cut in front, again because she’s a girl(you refuse). Eventually you tell her in mid-argument that if she says another word that you’re gonna throw her down the fucking stairs! Then she really respects you. Really! At 4:50 am you get on the bus that takes you to the airport and 7 out of the 11 passengers are all exhibiting signs of cold or Avian flu: coughing, sneezing, clearing a probable sore throat, and all the while you are saying to yourself “Come to think of it my throat does kinda hurt…”