The Bone Collector

I just read a random thailand travelogue by a girl who spent most of her time there working with children. However, at one point she went to Ko Phi Phi (the island where they filmed The Beach, like paradise until the tsunami hit it, now still like paradise but with much less people) to do a bit of volunteer work, I believe, something Bryson and I wish to do (if there's any left, that is).

She was sitting on thebeach, talking to a couple of newlyweds, idly streaming her hand through the sand beside her. She ran across what she thought was a big seashell. She picked it up. She glanced at it.

It was a human pelvic bone.

It turns out that there are still as many as 500 bodies unaccounted for on Ko Phi Phi alone, and bones wash up on that particular beach all the time. It's just a sad fact of life for the people there. After a point, everything must seem like a seashell to them. What are seashells anyway, other than pretty bones shed from the outside? Their former owners are dead, too.

Sigh.

My next post will be upbeat, I swear!

The Other Story

Okay, I'm ready for the other story. This is the story I coerce Bryson to relate every time we meet new people. It's a black comedy.. . . .


After suffering an abominable twenty-hour plane journey, our two protagonists (Bryson and Jeff, age nineteen) arrive in the turbulent madness that is Bangkok, Thailand. It is the middle of the night. As they step out of the airport they are immediately accosted by dozens of taxi drivers, cawing and clawing. Eventually they clamber into a cab and are taken to a hostel.

Upon arriving at the hostel, they unload their heavy backpacks and discuss the possibilities. Jet-lagged and restless, our boys decide venture to the hostel lobby, where they entreat the owner to recommend a good bar or nightclub. He offers to call a cab for them, which shortly arrives outside.The cab is a BMW.

Our boys assume that BMWs must be typical Thai transportation for the tourist class, and enjoy their luxurious ride. When they arrive at the club, it is drizzling outside, but no fear. Two men with umbrellas rush out to usher our boys inside, ascertaining not a drop of water soils their hair or shoulders. This must be some club, our boys fancy.

The first sight that corrupts their eyes as the doors swing open: an entire wall of baseball bleachers behind a wall of glass. Fully occupied by Thai girls. Dozens of them, blowing kisses and waving, pouting and wiggling, grinning and winking. Each with a blatant number looped around her neck.

Immediately, the man of the house, or pimp if you will, hastens up to them with a smile. "What you want? What you want?" he inquired. "Fucky fucky? Sucky sucky? Or whole package?"

Our boys are quite distraught, visibly it seems, for the pimp started to bargain. The prices started slipping downward. New girls were added, threesomes, foursomes. "You like superstar?" he asked (as if the bleacher bombshells' looks were the problem) and pointed across the room to a handful of couches. Upon each, a beautiful Thai girl sprawled. These girls were too good for the bleachers.

I commend our boys for getting out of it, somehow, unscathed, with their legs unbroken. They ended up at a go-go bar, equally hooker-packed, but without the pressure. Welcome to Thailand, boys.

Welcome to the reality of a poverty-shattered country, where the average wage is four dollars a day, and which they (and now I) paid seven hundred dollars to reach. Welcome to the reality of a heartbreaking business that boys like ours, not ours specifically, but thousands and millions just like them, keep running.

Whole Package?

In a comment below, my lovely twin/wombmate Danielle mentioned Thai massages. On that note, I thought I'd share a quick story:

During his trip four years ago, Bryson was very excited about experiencing his first massage. He and his travel buddy Jeff entered the clinic, or whorehouse or whatever, and after shedding their shirts, lay upon their respective tables, or beds or whatever. They were very, very excited.

However, when the girls entered the room, they immediately began speaking back and forth in rapid Thai. Then they started laughing, really cracking up, in an uproar, tears and everything.

Bryson and Jeff grew very uncomfortable with this twist of events. Bryson rolled over and sat up, and this caused the girls to laugh even harder.

Finally, one managed to burst out one sordid English phrase:
"Hairy like monkey!!!!!!"

True story. See for yourself:

Get it?

A recent one-sided conversation between Bryson and I:

Asrai Maiden (1:48:01 PM): And guess what else?????
BigFishUCSD (1:48:06 PM): ?
Asrai Maiden (1:48:30 PM): I started a Thailand blog for us. . .I'm writing in it already, so we have pre-trip stuff too. . .
Asrai Maiden (1:48:35 PM): Thailandia was taken
Asrai Maiden (1:48:46 PM): I thought it would be a funny one for us
Asrai Maiden (1:48:53 PM): but I named it. . . .
Asrai Maiden (1:49:03 PM): Thailanding!!!!!
Asrai Maiden (1:57:00 PM): hello?
Asrai Maiden (1:57:05 PM): Thailanding??? Like we're Thailanding through the country???
Asrai Maiden (1:58:11 PM): *cough*
Asrai Maiden (1:59:17 PM): Is this thing on????
BigFishUCSD (1:59:30 PM): working

In the beginning. . .

Let's commence with a quick cameo from that dear old curmudgeon, Charles Schultz:

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."

And as a matter of fact, it's also tomorrow in Thailand.

Even though Bryson, my soul mate and scrappy traveling companion, adventured a three-weeker through the country four years ago at nineteen(a few months before we met), and over the years I've pried every story out of him, the whole time-zone phenomenon had never crossed my mind. He had mentioned crossing multiple sunsets (or was it sunrises?) journeying over there (or was he journeying homeward?), and certainly I knew about the eighteen-hour plane ride. But it didn't actually hit me until we booked our tickets.

I was the one doing the booking, as I'm the half of this relationship that always does anything remotely tedious or typey or internetwise. For example, I've registered Bryson for all his classes during the last three years of his college education. So naturally I'd be the one to scour travelocity and orbitz and expedia and priceline and cheaptickets and statravel, all of them, to unearth the best possible deal.

The cheapest tickets overall were through an innovatively titled Chinese airline, China Airlines, for $714 including taxes. We were (I was) about to book when I wondered, "Are Chinese airlines safe?"

Although I am stinkingly liberal, I'll be the first to admit that every single one of us retains at least some sort of ethnocentric mistrust of international products (except Japanese cars, perhaps, and cheese and chocolate). However, no matter how often I fly I remain trembly when it comes to planes, and I wasn't about to gamble. Epinions was the next stop on my internet itinerary.

China Airlines has an overall rating of three and a half stars, enough to raise my eyebrows. But when I discovered that all the bad reviews cite the airline's poor safety record, including recent crashes, strange creaks and rumbling during takeoff, bouncing during landings and horrible screechy noises, I moseyed right back to orbitz and booked two tickets with EVA air, another Taiwanese airline, with no crashes since 1991 and the only epinions cons pertaining to service.

I can handle mean flight attendants.

So back to what I was speaking of before all this mad digression. Bryson and I take off around 5:30 from LAX, on September fifth. The first arc of flight ends in Taipei fourteen hours later. We can scamper around the airport a bit before our second flight, which is a nifty four hours from Taipei to Bangkok. We arrive there around one a.m., just after the second day commences: September seventh. 5:30 p.m. plus about twenty hours equals 1:30 p.m, the time it would be back in California.

Thus, because of the swirl of the world, our flight will be an endless time warp stealing much more of our time than we had ever allotted. Not to mention the loveliness of a fourteen-hour coach plane ride. Whatever shall I do?

Just remember, gentle reader, that if the world does end during the blustery month of September, I will be on the other side of the world, and I will know about it first. And because I love you, I will not tell you about it. I will not warn you. For that would ruin the surprise.