This Crazy City

We're back in Bangkok, because it seems you can't get from one place to another without a pit stop in Thailand's uproarious crossroads. Tomorrow evening, we'll embark on a night bus down the narrow southwestern strip and ferry across to Ko Samui, an island Bryson had been to. It's a much wilder, more boisterous place than Ko Chang, but luckily Ko Tao, a simple hop over and our subsequent stop, is more relaxed.


I Can't Stop Looking

The prostitutes here absolutely fascinate me. Before arriving in Thailand, I had this vision of Thai girls dressed in provocative outfits, gyrating under red lights for the pleasure of Western soldiers. Muggy hotel rooms, rushed couplings.

I'm sure there are places like that, many of them, littering crowded Bangkok streets I have not been to. However, the business is far more intricate and emotionally complex than I had realized.

On the night of our arrival, when Bryson and I were camping out in the downstairs bar and waiting for daylight, I saw my first hookers. They were startlingly normal-looking. Dressed in outfits much less showy than anything you'd find in a Gaslamp nightclub, two or three of them were hanging around a nearby table with several European guys. The whole group was talking and laughing, and all present seemed to be having a hell of a great time. Yet on our way to bed that night, I noticed a handwritten sign dictating: No Thai Peoples Allowed In Hotel Rooms.

On Ko Chang Bryson and I rented a motorbike, and we sped up and down the hilly road that loops the island, stopping for views and taking loads of pictures (below). On our way back home from our massages (another story), we passed by a large nightclub, ringed by blazing pink lights. "Did I tell you?" Bryson called back to me, over his shoulder. "Pink means go-go bars. Pink means hookers." I glanced back and my eyes hooked around the face of one girl in particular. She was gazing out at the road, expressionless.

Last night I came down with the migraine that had been threatening me all day. There's a monster living inside my skull, I explained to Bryson, and sometimes he wakes up. When he does, he's furious.

In accordance with my requests for the most subdued evening activity possible, we sprawled on our backs in the sand while the sun began to set over the water. Whenever anyone went by, I'd prop myself up on one elbow to watch, clutching my temple with my free hand. Eventually. group of four approached, kicking a soccer bar along the edge of the surf. There were two white guys and two Thai girls, skipping and slapping up footfulls of water, throwing their arms around each other, laughing. I pointed them out to Bryson, and together we watched the show.

"I get it," I said suddenly. "But it's so much different than I'd thought."

"What is?" Bryson asked.

"The hookers," I said. "They're just like girlfriends, for a time. They're having so much fun, they both can fool themselves that the girl's not getting paid."

Walking to dinner that night, I noticed several other white men coupled up with Thai girls, always walking hand in hand, or with their arms around each other. Then, this morning I witnessed a poignant moment. We were waiting at the side of the road for a pick-up taxi to offer us a ride down to the dock. Beside us were an Irish guy, about our age, and a pretty Thai girl with high cheekbones and a short skirt. The guy had his backpack at his feet and his hand curved around her waist. The girl looked as if she was about to cry. We couldn't make out their words, but it was obvious they were exchanging difficult goodbyes. If we had been anywhere besides Thailand, I'd have thought they were simply a parting late summer fling, not a hooker and her john.

When we finally hailed a taxi, we were crammed in beside three white guys, each sitting beside a Thai girl. One guy, with a garish tattoo of Wales on his arm, was sharing a loudmouthed monologue with the others.

"I come back as much as possible," I heard him say. "We have a little girl together."

There's a story here. There's a whole book of stories, a whole shelf of novels. And they're different books than I'd thought they were.

Bryson finished The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and now he's well into The Hot Zone. I'm so proud. He's even suggested, "tonight, why don't we just lay around somewhere and read?" This coming from a boy who's read nothing but computer code and emails over the year since our last trip. Hooray!!

Attacked!!

Yes, Bryson and I were attacked last night.

It all started when the ferry docked on Ko Chang and left us to the clutches of island taxis, which are pickup trucks with benches and roofs, that the drivers squeeze unearthly numbers of sweaty backpackers inside. Our particular brood of sweaty backpackers were unanimously eager to ride halfway around the island to Lonely Beach, and stay at an "extremely basic" backpacker paradise called Treehouse.

Bryson and I were up for anything, and so we went along. The road runs along the beachfront developments on one side and these enormous, volcanic mountains craggy with rainforest on the other. By the time we pulled up, it was raining again.

We followed the other backpackers down a muddy, puddle-pocked path to the Treehouse, which was indeed extremely basic. The cabin offered to us was constructed mainly of bamboo, and the single weak light bulb did little to make it feel accommodating. A bright blue sheet of mosquito netting guarded the mattress, which was slightly greyed, set one step up from the floor. We accepted the room, for by then it was dark and we had no choice. It was absurdly cheap: 100 baht, which is two dollars and fifty cents. For the both of us.

The common area was amazing, albeit rustic, with low tables, rugs and mats to sit on, and hammocks to read in while the rain shattered down. There were no walls, and a large wet deck overlooked a rocky stretch of sea and a fraction of the archipelago beyond. The food was the cheapest and best I've ever had while traveling. That night we shared barbequed red snapper, corn on the cob, and garlic bread with melted cheese--- not very Thai, I'm afraid, but so good---and the next morning, after our ordeal, we shared deep fried tofu with sweet and sour sauce, curried vegetables with more tofu (I'm turning Bryson away from meat, I swear) and a "Treehouse Pancake", which was more of a crepe wrapped around pineapple and bananas, with nuts, fresh coconut, and sweet milk on top.

We sat and had a conversation after dinner with two Australian girls, who had been volunteering in Sri Lanka during the tsunami. They spoke about it as if their words were programmed (which they admitted), although their story was very affecting. They were on a bus, and they first report they heard from the driver was that there had been a small tidal wave and one person had died. Understatement of the year. Their town was devastated, and they thought the end of the world had come; at least, when they could think--- at first, all they felt was shock, or vomit-shock, as one girl said.

Anyway, we decided to go to bed around nine. We hiked back to our cabin, unexcited about the prospect of sleeping in it, especially because the light bulb was so dim that we couldn't see the bugs. In addition, the bathrooms were quite a hike away.

Luckily, w slept okay, although we did have to brave it to the bathrooms a couple times. By five I was wide awake, although Bryson was still sleeping. I had no light to read by, and so I played games in my head. First, I went through the alphabet, naming and animal for every letter. They I did it with countries. Then cities. Yes, I was extremely bored.

I decided to get something out of our smallest backpack, and so I reached under the mosquito netting and hauled it in. All of a sudden, I was being bitten. I smacked at my forearms, my shoulders, my feet. Whatever they were, they were even biting my fingertips. I screamed Bryson awake. "There's mosquitoes everywhere!" I yelled. He sat up and began slapping at his ankles.

"Did you open the mosquito netting?" he demanded.

"Only enough to bring in the backpack," I cried.

He looked at the backpack. "They're all over it!!"

We hurled it off the bed and outside the netting. However, where the backpack had lain, our sheet was swarming---with ants.

It turns out we had set the backpack, filled with snacks, as well as my camera and both our money belts, upon an easily accessible shelf. The ants were in every pocket, in every crevice, and swirled over the shelf in a hungry black sheet. Our big backpacks were on the ground, and to our relief, none got inside those, as well as our clothing that had been hanging from bamboo spikes. But cleaning the backpack by the pale dawning light was a painful (literally) ordeal. The thing was filled with four different types of ants, devouring our food in an endearing symbiosis.

1. Grease ants, or what my mother calls piss ants (because they are yellowish and trails of them look like you-know what), the absurdly tiny ones that can squeeze into sealed jars.

2. Weird, medium-sized ants with long spidery legs, that lift their butts up in the air and wiggle them when you look close.

3. Red ants.

4. Giant ants of terror!! Black, at the minimum half an inch long, with vicious-looking mouth-talons and curvy claw-like legs.

By eight, after lots of shaking and slapping and the implementation of a good deal of DEET, we had salvaged our possessions and the backpack as well. But immediately after breakfast, we fled to the main road and hailed a ride to take us back to the touristy beach, packed with bungalows, and for the most part, ant-free.

You'd think this place was paradise. Sadly, we forgot to take picture of the inside.

Stormy

After a six hour bus ride yesterday, we were rained in at the ferry station for an hour. The monsoons are so powerful, at times, that they render everyone around us speechless, even people who are Thai and who must be used to the storms by now. Luckily, the weather is usually decent in between, and today Bryson and I got to swim in the bathwarm sea under a partially cloudy sky.

Thai Toilets

The basins are on the ground. You drop your pants, place your feet in the grooves, and squat. There's never any toilet paper, and to flush, you dip a bowl of water from a trough beside the toilet and pour it in repeatedly. Also, mosquitoes.

Jet Lag Can Kiss My Ass

Immediately after my last post, Bryson and I went back to our room and fells asleep for four hours. Then we forced ourselves to get up and go to dinner. I had tomato soup, intensely flavorful. This was no Campbell's. Thai people seem to prefer foods designed to electrocute your taste buds.

Afterward, we forced ourselves to sleep though the night, which was a strenuous endeavor, since it was daytime in the states, and there was that boisterous club/cafe below us. Halfway through the night we remembered to take our malaria pills. An hour later, I woke up and scurried to the bathroom to throw it up. No fun at all. I hope I had already absorbed most of it.

Now we're catching a bus (air-conditioned. . . we're not the truest of true backpackers, really) to Ko Chang, as I mentioned before. I'm going to run right in the ocean.

We Made it

I am feeling very loopy right now. My circadian rhythms have gone bonkers. It's one in the afternoon here, but it's eleven in the evening back in California.

We arrived at Kao Sahn Road, the madcap backpacker's ghetto, at about two-thirty in the morning. Because it was noon at home, we weren't sleepy enough to pay extra for a room that night, and so we sat around eating weird deep fried won tons wraped around American cheese, tofu soup, and rum and super-sweet cokes. We hung out with our waiter and thought he was a swell guy until he threatened me with a knife---jokingly, of course, ha ha, yeah--- and then overcharged us. At six in the morning Thai time, four in the afternoon Cali-time, we got a room and slept until nine. Now, because it's bedtime at home, our bodies are winding down, protesting the sunlight.

So my writing isn't at its best, but damn if I'm going to pimp this thing out and not write in it like mad. So here's some bits and pieces of our experience so far.

The Plane

Although I have flown many times, I have never flown west from California. I thought immediately after takeoff it would be sea forever, but I forgot about the strange topography of the coastline around LA. Going west from LAX meant following an outcrop of coastline that I'd usually thought of as north. After the mountains around Malibu, there came a flat valley unfurling out to sea, patchworked by crops. A nice surprise: it was Oxnard, my hometown, something I haven't seen by air in my memorable memory.

We flew on EVA, the Taiwanese airline with the highest safety rating.

The airplane kept feeding us dinner. I had requested special vegetarian meals upon booking the tickets, and that meant steamed vegetables and rice. Over and over. They woke us up in the middle of the night to feed us. Nearly everyone on the plane would be slumbering peacefully, and then the flight attendants would flick on all the lights. Time for another dinner!

The sunset chased us all the way to Taiwan, our transfer. Daylight was remarkably long. When the sunset caught up with us, it was a brilliant strip of color along the horizon, brightening and then fading with night. The flight attendants requested we keep our windows closed, but periodically I'd risk a peek to see what the day was doing. "Ocean, huh?" Bryson joked every time, as if there was anything else. I never knew how vast the Pacific was until I flew over it.

The Airport

Flying red-eye was a great idea. Bryson kept on about the tumultuous airport lobby, packed with tourists and taxi drivers herding you into their tuk-tuks. However, upon our arrival there the place was nearly empty. We exchanged ourselves some greenbacks for a little baht. After nearly being double-charged, we found ourselves a safe taxi to Kao Sahn road.

Bangkok

Driving through Bangkok at night was much like driving through San Jose in Costa Rica, except for the swirly Thai letters on everything. It's the loveliest language I've ever seen, although it somehow reminds me of ebola.



As I mentioned above, we weathered out the night in our hostel bar/restaurant. But this morning we had the chance to walk around. Our hostel is right on the corner of Kao Sahn road and the real Thai world. Walk one way and it's ultimate backpackersville, peopled by grungy western kids in flip flops, dreadlocks, headrags, and baggy Thai pants. Walk the other and it's urban Bangkok, filled with Thai people, peddling an immense variety of unrecognizable food, nearly running each other down in taxis and tuk-tuks, yelling, laughing, going about their everyday business.

Back in California, I had mistakenly ordered contact lenses pf the wrong prescription for my left eye, and thus I came to Thailand with only one spare. The one in my eye I had already worn twice as long as recommended. Luckily, Bangkok had everything, and everything is absurdly cheap. A block from out hostel, I passed at least four eye shops advertising contacts, and the one I went into had my prescription right there. I bought two monthlies for about two-fifty each. As in two dollars and fifty cents. I have one on now, and Thailand is bright and beautiful and deliciously clear.

We had lunch on Kao Sahn Road, in a cafe that was a jungle of dark wooden beams. It was full of kittens. They were all the docked-tail type, minxes or manxes, and looked like kitty-bunny hybrids.

Bryson ordered Pad Thai, a dish which San Diego is overrun with. However, it was honestly the best I'd ever had. Nothing's like cultural dining in the place of origin. I had these thick pancakes with hot pineapples and bananas cooked right inside. How come Americans never think of that? No dish was over a dollar fifty, and bottles of water are usually around fifteen cents. It's all I can do to keep from shopping, but anything I buy I have to lug on my back for a month.

And. . .

The bathrooms have no toilet paper. It's all about keeping a couple napkins in your pocket.

Tomorrow we'll be headed to the first of the islands: Ko Chang. It's the second biggest after Phuket but not nearly as touristy, which is exactly how we like it. My last backpacking trip was much more rigid in its itinerary-- it had to be, since we were visiting six countries--but this one's so quiveringly open-ended. How exciting.

A Funny Story to Tide You Over While I'm on the Plane

At Target, Bryson thought the peppers were pretty. I dared himto eat one.



After he chewed and swallowed, his expression began to change.



"My stomach's on fire!" he exclaimed.



Is this any indication of how Bryson's going to fare in Thailand, land of smiles and of notoriously spicy dining? You be the judge.