The good, the bad, and Cambodia. [Part 1]

“Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender."

-W.C. Fields


The good, the bad, and Cambodia [Part 1]

Upon exiting Thailand allow me to induce you to visit.

I was recently on the receiving end of a ninety minute massage--and only a massage, you pervert--for 150 baht (about $5). In corporeal euphoria I gave the masseuse another 100 baht, gratuity for a job well done. She waied me several times as if I were a Buddhist relic. My physical form already on cloud nine and now here’s my mind. Carrying the peace of a philanthropist. Bliss in both body and brain for a mere $8.

So, have you booked your ticket to Thailand yet? As your pack your rucksack for the Land of Smiles please throw in a couple sticks of Old Spice. My travel size containers were exhausted days ago. It’s all natural from here on out because how can one pay for deodorant at over 150 baht a stick when the same can purchase three full meals at a food stall or a ninety minute rubdown?

This isn’t going to sound right. I love Thai children. Imagine a three year-old on a six hour train ride. How about a four year-old on a seven hour, painfully bumpy bus ride. Imagine the child doing two things throughout the entire transportation process. Smiling and sleeping. I’m unsure if they’re given opiates ahead of time or if they’re just naturally content, but I never see these auburn babies upset. I never hear them whine or pine for extra sweets or toys at the store. When I was at the Chang Mai Zoo weeks ago there were busloads of schoolchildren wandering around and they were all so damn happy. Way, way too happy. Not in respects to being at a zoo--the animals didn’t seem to impress them much at all--but just a general sense of joy. Many of them, with sheepish grins, would volunteer a ‘hello’ my way, hoping for a response in kind. The best words to describe their disposition: relaxed delight. Infectious, anytime they were around there was usually a smile on my face too. Something about as rare as a crimson moon. I have a Skype session scheduled with Angelina Jolie for next Tuesday. I’m going to find out how to take one of these things home.

The term ‘things’ is appropriate because they can’t be human. People, especially lawyers and children, get upset and frustrated and gripe and talk back. They spit and stammer and stomp their feet. They flick snot-burgers. I haven’t see anything of the sort from these happily opiated Thai cyborg children. At least give me the software so I can download one.

Thank god (whoever yours may be) for American exhaust regulations. Here, while the modes of transport seem to be more fuel efficient--motorbikes, go-cart tricycle taxis, public buses--the fumes released bring to mind coal power plants. Those on motorbikes favor surgical masks over helmets ten to one for good reason. By mid-afternoon I usually find myself light headed and wheezing. Sometimes it’s the traffic and sometimes it’s because I just passed the most beautiful Asian woman I’ve ever seen. Again.

Skin-moisturizer in Thailand is like toothpaste. You can’t buy one that doesn’t contain a ‘whitening’ formula. To be dark is to be a second class citizen. It’s better to have more Chinese DNA (associated with intelligence and wealth) than Khmer (associated with farming and peasantry). Thais are the world’s most tolerant racists. Refrain from the tanning bed at least two weeks before entry.

This will be difficult to accept with your farang egoism. Thailand is far more advanced than the country you currently find yourself in. 543 years more advanced, to be precise. The Thai calendar measures from the beginning of the Buddhist era, the year of Siddhartha’s enlightenment, or 543 B.C. When a guest house receipt shows a checkout date for the sixth month of the year 2554 one initially thinks one either (1) received the greatest deal since the United States stole bought its west coast from Mexico, or (2) traveled in time. For me, the latter. Fear not Chicago Cubs fans. A World Series is realized in the year 2452. (Or 1908 with a farang calendar. I guess I can only prophesize the past.)

In Thailand you’re never without a wat within a five minute walk. Incredibly, they’re all beautiful. Take a bus ride 100 kilometers out of the city and there, in the middle of nowhere, is yet another temple complex harboring yet another chedi (stupa). Gilded and gleaming, the Buddha is with you wherever you go. His image is always accompanied by a sign: DONATIONS ARE APPRECIATED. There’s never a fee, one can’t buy enlightenment in baht.

Strike that. This is Theravada Buddhism, where even the lay disciple (a non-monk) has a chance at nirvana.

It’s called a ninety minute massage. It costs five dollars.

Keep drifting.



Ko Phi Phi, Thailand, where photo editing is never needed.

Fortunately, even paradise needs a sewer system.

“Paradise is exactly like where you are right now… only much, much better."

-Laurie Anderson


Fortunately, even paradise needs a sewer system.

Cambodia is an entirely different, far more haggard and hard-edged animal than Thailand, but that’s for a later entry. You’re still in Ko Phi Phi, always straggling days behind. Like Lance Armstong devoid of blood doping. You know it’s not cheating if everyone is doing it, right?

I appreciate your integrity. So to the islands we go.

Ko Phi Phi, Thailand refers to a collection of 6 islands, the only of which is inhabited is Ko Phi Phi Don, the largest. As per the Lonely Planet guidebook, “Ko Phi Phi could sweep all the global beach ‘best’ categories and everyone knows it.” My first day on the island ended clambering up a hill to watch the sunset. I won’t try to encapsulate the splendor. Words would be inane. Okay, fine, but I’m no Hemingway. I’m not even Hemingway’s mole on his left shoulder that he had removed fourteen years before suicide-by-shotgun. How about: a picture perfect paradise so stunning pictures are incapable of capturing it. Why fumble around with a camera when photographs are as inept as words? A complete and comprehensive failure. Worse than my efforts not to ogle the opposite sex on the beach.

A glance, a double or even a triple take, that’s socially acceptable. A fourth gander borderline. An unyielding ogling, a tongue connected to the collar bone, a saliva sweat line, this reeks of indecency

Hello, officer. No sir, no one’s been stalking here. We both just happened to be lost and were wondering around in identical misdirection. What? She spent the last hour trying to lose me? Please, it’s only been forty-five minutes.

Similar to the surroundings, describing the women in Ko Phi Phi is unfeasible for an amateur writer. I’m no Hugh Heffner. I have much better taste. These aren’t creatures of the peroxide and silicone variety, but natural international sun-kissed beauties glistening in the humidity. It’s as if only the world’s most beautiful people were allowed onto the world’s most beautiful collection of isles and I managed to sneak in through the sewer system. It was well worth it, even though after seven showers my upper lip still smells like whatever it is you last flushed down.

Urine, feces, or a combination of both is an appropriate segue when transitioning into on my budget ‘accommodations.’ At 300 baht a night (about $10) this is about the most I’ve paid for a room since I started, the cheapest in Ko Phi Phi. It is also the most appalling. The mattress and walls have tiny dark stains, indicative of old blood. The deduction: bedbugs, Dr. Watson. So it’s time to tip the mattress against the wall, lay down a towel, and use a pair of pants for a pillow. Yes, I did indeed sneak through the sewer system. For a rat I am alarmingly close to the beach, the view of the ocean “inspired”. (I am unsure as to what this means, but many elegant men have used the term in such instances and so, to distance myself from the other filth floating around in the drainage, I employ it too.) How can a room like this, the square footage and squalor of which make a prison cell superior, be situated in a place like this?

The perfect day. One of those where, by mid-afternoon, you’re thinking, ‘this is it.’ The reason I’ve been inhaling and exhaling since the caesarian section. Whatever, it was only a snorkeling trip. A full day for only 350 baht (less than $12), lunch and pineapple snack included. I was situated on the boat next to a pleasant French girl, shy in demeanor yet daringly extroverted in beach dress. As if swimsuit material were spun from gold and she was on the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale. We toured around sheer limestone crags jutting out of the sea, a landscape as dramatic as the Grand Canyon. Except, of course, in the opposite direction. A snorkeling odyssey from island to cove to inlet, from places like Monkey Beach to Maya Bay to Shark’s Point. Lunch on the beach from, well, you know, The Beach. It ended with a sunset. A red-orange sphere melding into the ocean, eventually swallowed by limestone cliff silhouettes.

To want nothing more is how a man should feel on his wedding day. I’m unsure if I should be proposing to the French girl or the scenery.

Whatever happens with these Ko Phi-Phi natural international sun-kissed beauties, well, that’s for the personal journal. Yes, bitter failures go into the personal journal. Yes, the ‘s’ at the end of ‘failure’ indicates there was a multitude. Yes, you’re unusually perceptive, it was upwards of fifty-seven. Okay, it was ninety-two. And yes, I tried the ‘Did it hurt when you fell from heaven line?’, but it didn’t make sense. I’m there. There is no where to fall from.

Not until I get back to my budget ‘accommodations.’

Keep drifting.

A snorkeling Shangri-la.

To the left, Ko Phi Phi Ley, home of The Beach.

A Ko Phi Phi Don sunset; what may appear to be an adequate picture until viewing it in the flesh.

Ronald McDonald is a drag queen.

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”

–Dagobert D. Rune


Ronald McDonald is a drag queen.

Phuket, Thailand, the country’s largest island, is a Euro utopia, the beach all butchered English and speedos and brazenly bare middle-aged breasts. Oftentimes it’s difficult to tell whether said boobs belong to man or woman as most have fallen victim to both gravity and excess, their nipples and bellybuttons close enough neighbors to be on good speaking terms. Not that I’m looking.

This comes as quite a contrast to the Thais, who are generally quite modest, often observed bathing in both swimsuit and shirt. Paddling right between banana-hammock Europeans, the Caucasoid pillars baking under the tropical sun. Hope you like your meat well done.

Without premeditation I’ve wound up sleeping at the guesthouse appearing on film in The Beach. It’s not as decrepit as depicted on the silver screen over a decade ago, but I am happy to report still has plenty of down and out charm. What happenstance, I set off for Ko Phi Phi shortly, home to the beach from, well, you know, The Beach. How incredibly inadvertent.

There’s good reason why Phuket is the country’s richest province as result of tourism and why you’re just as likely to hear a Germanic language on the beach as Thai. If allowed, the jungle stretches to the sea, which is clear when caressing the sand and then fades from turquoise to emerald and jade, the ocean one giant, glistening gem. Upon snorkel submersion one becomes the camera for a National Geographic video. The fish all colors of the rainbow and extroverted, schools swimming into your facemask, a three-hundred and fifty-nine degree panorama of underwater enchantment. That last degree spoiled; just as you’re about to complete the circle one of those middle-aged breasts finds its way into your camera lens. Not that you’re looking.

As the sun rises Phuket life is all about snorkeling and skidoos and riding an inflated banana over the ocean top as its pulled along by a long-tail boat. As the sun sets the entertainment is decidedly different. You know that sweet ’ol aunt of yours, the one that hasn’t missed Sunday service since 1968 when she just had her appendix removed? Don’t let her leave the hotel in the evening.

While similar in appearance, this isn’t Hawaii on the humid setting. Phuket is far more seedy. Sure, there are tranquil, family stretches of beach and secluded bays for the rich and well-known. Then there’s Patong. Home of the more-famous-than-one-ought-think lady-boy cabaret. A class act all the way, from the costumes to the original score, but I find myself unable to pay for such things when already inundated with transgender entertainment while walking the streets. Some sois bring about gender confusion and I find it necessary to check my bits and pieces both before and after passage through to ensure I am still, at least technically, a man.

Awkward is walking down an alleyway while uncertain whether boy, lady, or a combination of both, is licking his or her or its lips and purring like a kitten. If unsuspicious one might remark on the length and leanness of the leg, the shortness of the skirt, the supple contours of the abdomen, or the brassiere that leaves just enough to the imagination. Or the Adam’s Apple.

Head down, check the bits, everything’s in order, keep walking. Hell, after lying on the beach all day isn’t a jog in order?

Real-Time Travel Tip #3: Embrace the uncomfortable. Figuratively. It usually means you’re in the middle of something interesting.

Now, if you can just make it out sans bite marks…

How about some advice in earnest? Don’t let those of transgender engender you to scratch Thailand off your travel bucket list. If you and your aunt are of a similarly sweet disposition please note that lady-boys are largely well-received within Thai culture and seem fairly sweet themselves. This is why you left home in the first place. To feel the wind at another longitude. Sometimes the breeze begets goose bumps.

Unease the new fad, it’s anti-escapism, forcing you into the moment.

So fleeting, after navigating another soi the lady-boys bring nothing more than nonchalance. As common as rice and your daydream work concerns return. Now a McDonald’s, that’s something I haven’t seen in Thailand before. Cool, there’s a statue of Ronald outside forming a wai. Adorned with a woman’s wig, he’s really become one with the locale.

Clown transvestites I can handle. The naturally born women who, to grab your attention outside a massage parlor, literally grab you, quickly detract from one’s sense of sea-gifted harmony. The exact opposite of the lady-boys, first it’s flattering. The cooing, the ‘hey big handsome man’, the hand on your butt. Then you realize they’re doing the same thing to those Euro man-boobed men who flew out here for the very thing. Just like the tuk-tuk drivers pulling aside you asking, ‘Hey you, where you go?’ thrice every block, it’s the service industry sucking-the-paradise-out-of-paradise in all it’s ulcer-inducing glory, intent on separating a farang from his baht.

Okay, you’re right. The hand on the butt, it’s not so bad.

At least until you spot the Adam’s Apple.

Keep drifting.

Chalong Bay, Phuket, Thailand

I splurged, paying an extra $1.50 for a room with its own bathroom; a model of efficiency, the showerhead is above the sink next to the squat toilet.

A hidden beach, between Kamala and Surin beaches, Phuket, Thailand