Thailand

Of all the places I've visited in Asia, Thailand is the one I regret most for not having spent more time to experience it. It's a fantastic combination of inexpensive, beautiful, interesting, convenient, friendly, and civilized.

I arrived in Bangkok having done about 30 minutes of research on Thailand. Jidesh came in with zero research. We stayed in the backpacker ghetto known as Khao San. This street is a chameleon, turning from charming daytime market to lively evening drinking scene to 3am hustle-fest for the working girls to find a job before the police roll in heavy. The next street north, Ram Butri, offers a much cleaner local scene. It's surprising the difference on block makes.

We did some sight seeing on the first day. We took a water taxi on the filthy river that runs through the city and did a walking tour, seeing Wat Pho and part of the Grand Palace. We went home, and sat out a torrential but typical southeast asia-style downpour. We then visited Patpong, the original Bangkok red light district, which was a mixed experience. King's Castle I was a nice enough go-go bar. I have only one observation to note: all the girls wore a standard white bikini. I noticed one whose bottom tag was showing, and the label was marked "L." She appeared to be about 5'4" and 115lbs. This pretty much exemplifies Thailand; their chaff is our wheat.

But we were interested in a particular show. A hawker lead the way. I asked how much. 100 Baht (3USD)? Yes. Jidesh said he thought he heard 1,000. I asked again. 100 Baht? Yes.

We sat down. Ordered a beer. This place looks kind of sketchy. The show begins. It is not at all what we expected. Terrible, really ... just awful. Then a woman comes by, and screeches "Here is bill. You pay now!" We looked at the paper she had, which claimed we owed 2,600 baht. While this is not problematic from a financial perspective, I can't stand being blatantly ripped off. I refused to pay, insisting we were told 100 baht. Jidesh and I threw down a hundred each on the bar and started to leave. The woman said we couldn't go out that way. In fact, I couldn't see where we had come in at all. I just knew it was in a certain direction, and she was insisting we go the other way. My mind raced. I recalled reading in the Lonely Planet about a common scam involving vastly inflated bills and threats of violence for nonpayment. I was extremely suspicious about being forced to exit a different way than we had entered, especially given the circumstances. I ignored her; I pushed my way back the way I knew we had come in, found a curtain covering a door, thrust the curtain aside, opened the door, and found our way back to the main street.

What just happened? What would have happened if we had gone the way she insisted?

We pondered this in the safety of a sidewalk bar open to the street. This sucks. This is not our scene. What is wrong with all these people?

The next day I organized a day trip to the nearest beach. We'd had enough of Bangkok city life for one trip. I found a driver to drive us all the way to Pattaya and back, a 200+ mile round trip, for a quite reasonable 2,800 baht, with all highway tolls included. Pattaya is not a fantastic beach by Thai standards, but dammit it's a white sand beach and I've spent the last 4 years in a place without a decent beach, and this was the closest I was going to get. We lounged all day. The water was like a hot bath, almost uncomfortable unless you get past your knees. Hawkers walked by showing us increasingly absurd things to buy, such as electric nose hair trimmers. As an aside, Pattaya is popular with the Russian crowd. Ahem.

Our beach day over, we spent the evening in the more relaxed atmosphere of Ram Butri and the nearby environs. Jidesh left the next morning. Due to a planning error on my part (24hr time is confusing), my flight was schedule to leave at Monday 1:20am and not Sunday 1:20pm, so I had the whole of Sunday to kill. I rode a Tuk-Tuk to the Grand Palace, did the full tour, came back, did some souvenir shopping, got a $8 manicure/pedicure (they do a better job for your money in China...), and went to Sukhumvit for a taste of how the expats live. I had some great tex-mex, which is hard to find outside tex or mex, and saw The Dark Night in the VIP section of a movie theater. VIP tickets are almost twice as expensive, but still cheaper than a standard ticket in the US. And you get a comfy reclining chair and service. I hired the same driver who took me to Pattaya to speed me to the airport, spent a sleepless 5 hours aboard China Airlines, and was back in Beijing on Monday at 7am. Jeez. Next time I have to be careful about that AM/PM thing.

Also next time I need to spend more time on the beach. Much, much, more time...

Beijing Olympics

The opening ceremony passed without incident. The day itself was a bit surreal. All government offices and state-owned enterprises were closed for the day (a Friday), and most private businesses, including restaurants and shops, closed as well. Very few cars were on the road and very few people rode the subway. The whole city seemed to be bracing something.

I met up with Andrew and some of his buddies at his coworker’s apartment to watch the opening ceremony. The ceremony itself was quite impressive. Although some of the fireworks were pre-recorded and digitally enhanced, and the cutest little girl anyone has ever seen on this planet turned out to be lip syncing, they did put on quite a show of synchronized performances, surpassing DPRK’s Mass Games in complexity and imagination, though not scale. And the torch bearer suddenly flying up to do a lap around the roof of the bird’s nest surprised me, and the torch itself looks really cool burning up there. The intervening two and a half hours of countries proceeding through the stadium were sheer tedium, though, helped only by the copious amounts of gin available at the apartment. And the amusing fact that Taiwan is officially known to the Olympic organizers as “Chinese Taipei.”

As the games ended around midnight, we decided to go to SanLiTun, per normal operating procedure for a Friday night. However, we were all the way by the new US Embassy near NuRenJie, and no taxis were anywhere to be found. So Andy and I had to walk nearly an hour, during which time we saw zero available taxis but several armored personnel carriers roaming the streets, which I had never seen in the city before.

The city atmosphere has since changed from one under siege to a restrained enthusiasm. The city is blanketed with Olympic media; busses and subway trains feature live or pre-recorded TV of events. All advertising in the entire city of 17 million is now controlled by the Beijing Olympic organizers, to prevent non-sponsors from free-riding. All outdoor advertisements are either for Olympic sponsors, or are placeholder posters proclaiming “One World, One Dream,” the Olympic motto for this year.

Yet the rules surrounding the Olympics prevent any sort of unapproved fun. Tickets are tightly controlled; tickets to one event only get you access to that immediate area. I was hoping to go to the Bird’s Nest for a picture with my Tennis tickets, but no such luck. I’ve since found out that you can talk your way to get outside a different venue in if you have valid tickets for that day, but you have to argue with the security staff. So maybe I’ll still get my picture.

A coworker generously gave me a pair of tickets to tennis, and I figured we could take the new Olympic subway line 8 to get there. Right? No. They built an entire subway line that doesn’t go to events. Instead I had to take a bus from the subway station all the way to the godforsaken fifth ring road to get to the tennis grounds. The games begin at 5pm, so of course I didn’t have a chance to eat dinner, but I assumed given that outside food was strictly forbidden that they would not pass up an opportunity to charge people and would have adequate food on hand for sale. No. All the concession stands had were terrible ho-ho-like dessert cakes. The menu tantalizingly offered hot dogs, but this was blacked out with electrical tape. You see, with seven years in planning and billions of dollars spent, they were not able to secure adequate hot dog supplies. Only dessert cakes and Yanjing beer. And no outside food allowed. Too much of a security risk.

Well anyway the games were pretty awesome, we saw a fantastic doubles match between Venus and Serena Williams and some Czech women. Some Czech athletes were present in the crowd and were very vocal, chanting between every point. Eventually the Americans in the crowd responded with a thundering “USA! USA! USA!” And of course the Williams sisters responded by coming back from one lost set to win the match.

One last thing amused me. The Chinese are still learning what it means to be first-world. It is normal practice for Chinese babies to wear pajamas with a hole cut at the bottom for them to defecate through in public at the nearest convenient bush. However when I saw this occur inside the Olympic venue, it was a matter of moments before an Olympic volunteer ran up to the family to inform them that a toilet was in fact only about 10 meters away, and that this was the preferred place for their child to relieve himself. The Chinese also are not the best audience for a tennis match. They have an inexplicable need to speak unbelievably loudly into their phones while having a conversation, and don’t understand that this may be distracting to someone who is about to serve while playing Olympic tennis. The poor volunteers worked very hard that evening keeping the crowd in line (from my observation, about 80% of spectators are Chinese). The referee even pleaded a few times through his microphone for the crowd to remain quiet.

Hopefully I will be able to borrow some tickets and get my picture at the Bird’s Nest before I leave. In my mind the Chinese have done an outstanding logistical job with the Olympics, but have really missed an opportunity to let people enjoy themselves and the fruits of all their labors.

Saigon, Kerouac-Style

After two days in KL, I met Emily, Sophie, and Linden in Saigon. We stayed in the backpacker area of Saigon, where there are an annoying number of western backpackers ambling around in flip-flops, board shorts, and t-shirts. There are a handful of bars there, which is good if you're looking for prostitutes (NO) or other westerners to chat with (double-NO). So we decided we'd hit the alleys and see what life was like for the locals. I just read On the Road by Jack Kerouac, so I have this writing style stuck on me. Here goes:

Linden and I were of the same mind, we both think it is wonderful and right to drink beer on the sidewalk, so we did this on the first night. The girls saw a tailor open, so they went to inquire about having a business suit made. Linden and I sat on tiny foot-high plastic chairs outside drinking 65-cent beers. Some guy went into the shop we were loitering in front of, and we heard some crazy music coming out of some cheap beat boombox, and the guy was singing! We couldn't understand a word but got a kick out of the distorted sound and off-key signing. Sing! Woo! This was great, drinking cheap beer on the sidewalk in Saigon, listening to some cat sing a song we couldn't understand. Two more beers! Make them Tiger this time!

We were out there drinking for about thirty minutes, so we were sure the girls were buying something. We needed to change the scene, so we walked off down the street. Here's a place, this one's called Oblivion! Yeah that place looks cool! Dig the beats coming from that place! We peek inside and instantly we are the focus of attention of half a dozen Vietnamese beauties, their eyes lighting up at the sight of us. Two of them come running out and grabbed us, come in, come in! Right away we knew what this place was, and we struggled to leave. "No, stay, stay, we want to talk to you! Please!" This one gone cutie had my arm and I had to wrest her off me by peeling one delicate finger from my wrist at a time. I turned and saw Linden, the girl on him was half his height, hugging him around the waist sideways and smiling sweetly. "Stay! Stay! Awwww!" Linden finally got out of the grip of his girl, and as she turned back to the bar she asked where we were from. "California? Oh, God, California!! Ahhh!!" She said it so jealously it was incredible. Everyone in the whole world knows California, they all want to be from there. Somehow that golden land is still what everyone dreams of, even surprisingly cute and sweet Vietnamese prostitutes.

Linden and I found a boring and respectable place to have another beer and wait for the girls. Some advertising executive struck up a conversation with us. I told him I was putting him out of business, I don't watch TV. Ah, no, there's still the Internet! Yes! His ads will play there, even if no one watches TV. The girls came back. We instantly forgot the ad exec and talked to the girls. I could see he was jealous; he was in his fifties and alone in a boring bar in Saigon, and we had two beauties with us, even though neither was a girlfriend of ours, he didn't know that. I liked that he was jealous. We got bored and then we went to some backpackers bars. Boring. We said goodnight to the girls and set off on our own.

We wandered through alleyways, digging the crazy alley life. Everything was kind of shoddy but in a comfortable way. You could see people sleeping through their windows. Some doors were open and you could see folks in their tiny ragged apartment eating noodles and caring for crying babes. These people were poor but there was no bitterness; this was their life and they were OK with it.

It was past midnight, and we heard music. We followed. We found a table with men sitting at it, musicians, monks, large floral arrangements. One man sitting at the table jumped to greet us, asking us to sit down in broken English. Again we sat down on tiny plastic chairs, now surrounded by some Vietnamese guys we found in the alley. They had a bucket full of beer, and I don't mean bottles of beer, I mean a great red bucket with beer sloshing around in it. They added large chunks of ice. There was one cup, the man who greeted us dipped it in and offered it to me. I held it up in thanks, and he said I must finish it quickly! I chugged it down. I passed the glass back, it was refilled and Linden did the same. "This man, his mother is died," the man said, pointing at another man sitting with us. We solemnly offered condolences. "FIVE people from the USA fly out for this funeral. FIVE from Los Angeles!" We nodded in agreement. The cup was passed around and around, we drank and drank. We tried to talk to them, but we we didn't know any Vietnamese and the guy's English was limited. It didn't matter though, we were a bunch of men sitting in an alley drinking beer and listening to music. Dig this! We're hanging out at a funeral in an alley in Saigon! You won't find that in the Lonely Planet! The man invited us to light incense for the dead mother. I took off my shoes to enter, he showed me how to light the incense. I burned my hand on another incense stick. It didn't matter. I bowed respectfully and placed the incense. I waited for Linden, he did the same. The man came up to me. "You know, FIVE people from the USA came for this!" He held up five fingers for emphasis. This guy cracked me up but I couldn't laugh. The music was done. The monks were eating their meal. I sensed it was time to go. We said our thanks and our condolences and took off into the alleys again...