#4 They call it Bangkok

A list of things commonly seen in Bangkok: beggars that are deformed, immaculately dressed people on their way to work, awkward looking foreigners, white men and Thai women, transsexuals, motorbikes with a mother, father, and infant, but only one helmet and the infant isn't wearing it, police and traffic cops wearing uniforms that cover every single bit of skin except their eyes, pretty girls with loudspeakers dressed in over the top costumes promoting some product, old men so thin they look like they will blow away in the wind.

Of all these things the most discussed are the transsexuals. The beggars are too depressing to discuss, the impeccably dressed people on their way to work who probably earn less than me only make me feel guilty, and the awkward foreigners grow tiresome quickly. Seeing white men and Thai women usually just makes me angry. The insanity of the motorbike culture here is amazing but makes a poor conversation piece amongst people who see it every day. The police and traffic cops who blow their whistles constantly for reasons that escape me are simply annoying. The same goes for the promotional girls with loudspeakers, they're just too loud. The thin old men make me want to sit down next to them and collect some stories. However, back to the original point here, the transsexuals are everywhere, some just cruising for a good time and others looking for some cash. Every time I pass a questionable looking girl I turn to whoever is next to me and we weigh the odds of her being a man. If you're drunk and out in Nana they can be quite aggressive, coming right up to you and touching you while you're one of the anonymous members of the crowd of partiers.

Amongst the foreigners there is certainly an unspoken prejudice, as if they're trying to embarrass you. Amongst the Thais they are simply a fact, an undeniable creation of the culture of Thailand. For me the most bizarre part about the whole thing is the fact that nearly everyone I talk to about it thinks that a fully converted male to female transsexual is still a man, or something else, even more taboo. If we're going to make the argument about genetics or organs then I can understand it, but what matters most is the qualitative side of a person.

Do you have a hole or a pole, if you've got an apple you've got a banana, are you a tanner, a stoodler, a beatrice or a trava? All of these are euphemisms and anecdotes about the lovely transsexuals that are everywhere in Thailand. Why there are so many here I have no idea, I could guess but I'm sure I'd be wrong, the psychology of it is too intense for me to understand.

The other night Andrew woke up on my kitchen floor in a pair of my boxers with a sign next to

him that read, “Lad on Tour.”

My housemate Ollie got home at six in the morning and saw him passed out there and drunkenly scrawled the joke that the rest of us would see in just a few hours time. Poor Andrew got too drunk and checked for an adam's apple on the girl he'd brought back to my place. Unfortunately he checked with two hands and a little too forcefully. I ended up paying for her cab home. I told him he should take it easy with the booze and that maybe the next time he is worried the lady is actually a boy he should just ask if she has a dick. That way she can still maintain femininity and yet let you know what you're getting yourself into. She can still be a lady, she's just a lady with a dick. Oddly enough one of the guys I live with saw me with a girl and was sure she was a man. She was tall for a Thai girl, she had breasts that were too large for a Thai girl, but I can assure you that if she ever was a man, which she isn't anymore, then I need to shake the hand of the doctor that switched her over because that job was amazing.

There's a host of transsexuals everywhere you go, every club on every street and every place you find yourself you're not more than a few minutes from your next sighting. “Two : one that one's a man, five : one, she's not got enough muscle on her legs to be a dude.” It's a common way of passing the time on any given evening. There's a transsexual who sells tea on the side of the road that I pass everyday on the way to work. She's not one of the more beautiful ones, perhaps to some she's pretty but to me she's just a thin man with long hair who wears makeup. There are beautiful ones though, ones that make you wonder what exactly gender means to you, ones that make you wish they were women. The girl that Andrew chocked that night, she was almost that beautiful. Man or woman I feel worse for her than for Andrew. Some stupid drunk guy from Blackburn wraps his hands around your neck and starts searching for an adam's apple, does it really matter if he finds it, either way he's not getting laid? Besides, there are plenty of Asian women who's breasts are so small and hips so narrow that they would pass better for men than women, and certainly the transsexuals make better women than most Asian women who are actually women. I guess the moral of the story is that if you want to know if she's a guy you're better off just waiting until she's got her nickers off.

Morals are for the righteous though, and there's no righteous here. In Bangkok the righteous are the foolish because in a city of utter sin, where the lawmakers laws make little sense and the money in your pocket has more weight than any words that might come out of your mouth, in a place like that, what's the use of righteousness? There are western women who are quite upset at the proliferation and infiltration of Thai girls into their dating circles. There are only two complaints that come from western women about Thai men, and only one of them seems to be brought up on a regular basis. Thai men don't speak English well enough to hold real conversation and they're usually shorter than their western dates. Which one is the part that is most complained about do you think? They aren't tall enough. Western women who've come here have had enough of talk, they want to see some action, and I'm not talking under the covers. The Thai men here do quite well for themselves when it comes to westerners, it's not just the boys who have all the fun. Thai culture promotes a dire fear of confrontation and as a result Thai men are excellent at diffusing any conflict or resulting anger. The western women love it.

The odd part is that the stigma around dating Thais is pretty exclusive, men are looked down upon nearly all the time when they date a Thai woman but western women, for them it's almost seen as a liberation from the manly, guteral, masculinity that states, “Tomorrow I'm going to watch the football game and get drunk and after that we're going to the pub. I'll see you Sunday morning at around four and when you ask where I've been I'll vomit on the floor.” Is it a surprise that western women don't want to deal with this? Perhaps I'm a slight bit biased. The only woman who's caught my eye here is a British girl who's my age but dating an eighteen year old Thai boy. If I had an eighteen year old Thai girlfriend who I'd been dating since I was seventeen I'd be frightened as hell to tell anyone let alone everyone, but for the girls, it's just a bit of well deserved fun, payback for all the underage Thai prostitutes that us western men's older counterparts are taking home. For the young guys it's a waste of time, what do we want with an under age girl, we can have the real thing, a woman who's old enough to know what to do and smart enough to know what she wants? Perhaps I'm just not old enough to fully understand the allure of youth.

The next week when I went out, after Andrew had his night of disaster and embarrassment, I ran into the girl he took home. She was in a group of women and some of them were transsexuals. There was one that was a girl and I was sure she'd been a man but they told me no. There were a few that fooled me and were actually men, and there were the obvious ones who were either women or men. I became quite friendly with the bunch, nearly all of them wanted to take me home that night, but for me it was just a chance to learn what Thai culture really is, the part they don't promote. We sat in a McDonald's, the ultimate western symbol, they told me stories about blow jobs in the bathroom and nights gone home with men of every country. Most of them don't take money for sex, there was one who said she did and another that everyone else said she did, but they were just girls if you asked me. What a group they all made, and they trusted me, because when Andrew was an asshole I took care of things, they respected that, and they talked.

Good bye for now friends, and when you think of me remember, they call it Bangkok, not Bangcunt. At least that's what the locals say.