#12 - 1...2...3...Fight!

It's the end of the second round and my lungs are on fire. Two hours of grossly transient sleep marred by shouting children and blades of sun burning through my shut eyelids has left me less than prepared for what's coming next. Olly is bent at the waist in front of me giving me encouraging words, a Thai man who I've never seen before has locked my knee straight and is lifting my leg up towards the sky that caps this island night. A young boy of perhaps seven or eight is doing his best Mickey Goldmill impersonation on my shoulders. All that I can manage to define out of the mess of thoughts is that I'm almost there.

The queen's birthday is today and we've just been up all night. Ian dives onto Olly to wake him up. His obsenities are laughed off as I photograph Ian planking on Olly, the silly photo trend known as planking has yielded millions of photos and at least one confirmed death. We went to the after hours bar known as Wongs. The drinks are cheap and the only thing that is more memorable than the décor is the pure sleeze mixed with classy aged expat drag queens. As the sun rose the bar kicked us out and we went to an Argentine designer's house. We go in two cabs and we're all drunk. We arrive first and one of the Russian girls points the house out to me. We are stuck standing outside the front gate until the other cab arrives but I can see the latch on the other side of the eight foot fence isn't locked. As I leap down from the top of the fence I land awkwardly and scrape my elbow. I've made better decisions in my life than this most recent one. This wisdom is made even more apparent when a woman who must have been nearly one hundred starts shouting from the balcony of the house at me.                                 

Ian

“Adam, guy, what are you doing?” Ian seems distressed and I suddenly realize that the fall off the fence isn't the funny feeling I have it's the realization that I've just jumped into some random persons front yard. I vault the fence quickly and land with an adeptness that betrays my drunkenness. The Russian girl never explains why she pointed me towards the wrong house, a joke perhaps?

It is only one hour and two beers before the Argentine kicks us out of his house. The next thing I know we've all dispersed and the Russian girls who said they wanted to come to our place decide at the last minute to go home. Thank god, we have to get going to Koh Samet if we're going to enjoy our first day on the island paradise that the Thais coloquially refer to as Magic Crystal Island.

The ferry away from the island

The bus ride is loud but having not slept in thirty six hours and consciously becoming soar from a massive work out about twelve hours before I manage to close my eyes and turn off my brain, it could hardly be considered restful. Off the bus then on to a ferry that will carry us across the Gulf of Thailand where we will be deposited on Koh Samet. Little do I know what awaits me on the island.

                           

A sign at the head of the beach entrance
We support to conserve environment
A perfect example of Tinglish

We are walking down the main street towards the largest beach on the island when Olly spots someone he knows from a previous trip to Samet. Roger, a Canadian who's moved to Samet and opened up a restaurant that also rents out a couple of rooms in the back seems to be a cool free spirited sort of guy. He tells us he's all booked up but if we want we can crash upstairs for free. There are a couple of mattresses, a few sheets folded in the corner, a fan, an empty wardrobe and in the middle of the room sits a disconnected toilet, thankfully it is brand new. We tell him we'll have a walk about the island and if we want to crash at his place we'll come back. After an hours walk we find that there are no double rooms left anywhere near where we want to stay and the prices are high. We return to Roger to drop our bags off and have some dinner.

Before the sun drops below the horizon we have a dip in the gorgeous crystalline water and then rest on the beach with a host of people from my work who arrived on the island the day before. After dinner we walk to the open air bar next door which has a huge ring in it for Muay Thai fighting. One of the people in the bar we start talking with tells us that the matches will be starting in one hour and that they're looking for a second on the four card fight. They recruited an amateur Thai fighter earlier that night but they were still looking for a challenger. I laughingly told Ian that I'd fight but only if it was a farang. We all laughed about it but in about ten minutes the Thai fighter's friend came over to me and began negotiating for a fight. I had only had half a beer in the last two hours, it was still sitting in my hand and while I will admit to being rather skeptical I was also deathly curious. The Thai fighter had only been training in Muay Thai a few months and he was about six inches shorter than me. He looked in shape but I had sparred with people who'd been trained in martial arts for years and I knew how vastly important size was in a striking sport such as Muay Thai.

If I said I was making a good decision to accept a Muay Thai fight working on two hours sleep the night after a major work out I'd have to be as crazy now as I was then. The closer the fight came, about a forty-five minute wait, the more confident I became. Olly and Ian had gathered all my friends from work and many more farang followed upon hearing news that there was a nak muay farang, the Thai title for a farang kick boxer, about to step into the ring with a Thai boxer. The Thai boxer and I dressed in the grass above the bar. Twelve year old boys watched us as we had our jock straps affixed to us and our hands wrapped in cloth. I hadn't worn any underpants and the young boys snickered at my nakedness. Our gloves were then put on and it was explained to me that there were no elbow strikes allowed. Though I was thankful for this it was also contrary to the name Muay Thai. Muay Thai comes from a Sanskrit word that means science of eight limbs.

The beginning of the fight and I can
see the intimidating look the fighter has on his face

My housemate and trainer Olly on the left
the referee on the right

When the referee looked us both in the face he held a bit of dread in his eyes, I was quite sure at this point that not a soul in the bar thought I could survive even one round. The bell rang and I stepped into the middle of the ring and danced on the balls of my feet around him to try and spread his narrow frame.  The moment I paused he flung a stiff sweeping right right side kick at my head. It was at this point that I realized he didn't have a chance against me if I played defense and waited for him to get tired. The kick, close as it was to striking me, posed absolutely no threat given my height, and speed. In that first minute of the match he had slap kicked me twice in the leg and I had landed a series of solid fist combinations including a couple of front kicks directly into his chest. The next two minutes I switched over to fighting left handed, my natural stance, and the look on his face was priceless when he realized that I was in fact left handed. Before the round was out I had vaulted him over my hip and onto his back scoring the first knock down of the fight. As I sat back in my corner and looked across the ring I could see his friends looking back and forth at each other wondering what just happened.

That's my corner

Olly jumped into the ring as though I'd already won, screaming that I had this in the bag. Someone poured ice cold water over me from behind, the shock of it was a little unsettling. With a couple helpful words of wisdom about keeping my hands near my face the second round started. I was in complete control, his short limbs couldn't reach me and every time he came at me I used my quickness to evade him. A light drizzle began to fall and the mat grew slick and I decided to make my move. I threw a fainted punch that missed horribly and then spun around with a back fist that landed right on his guard. The move had failed in practice but the theory of it had succeeded, his surprise was so great that he forgot his ring position and the next punch I threw caught him off guard, he tried to back up but found the ropes and the corner behind him, I landed it squarely between his gloves and knocked his head back. He began flailing aimlessly and I would block with something less than precision but more than carelessness. Then without pause I would hurl my own fists out to pin ball his head. It wouldn't be long before I would score the second knock down of the fight and all hell would break loose in the ring. He began coming at me like he was trapped and with every approach he only tired more and took more pummeling. I threw him down once more, as he also did to me and then the second round was over.

This is where we all started, at the end of the second round with Olly calling out different ways to break his guard and Ian jumping up and down on the side of the ring like he'd won a new car. I could hear my co-workers cheering, I could hear everyone cheering. Oddly enough I think the Thai's were more excited that I was winning than anyone. As I stood up for the third and final round I was tapped on the back and someone stuck a camera in my face.  I smiled with my mouth guard stuck to my top teeth and then three steps into the middle of the ring the referee began waving his arms, the Thai fighter had quit, I'd won the match. I had the referee pull off my right hand glove and I walked over to the other fighter and shook his hand. A few minutes later after I had put on my clothes and was out of my boxing shorts I brought him a shot of whiskey and a beer. We exchanged what words we knew of each others language and then I pointed to my right index finger and said jep, the Thai word for hurt. He then took both of his hands and pointed from his waist up to his head and said jep, jep. We laughed, a genuine thing that neither of us could control, not knowing what reaction he would have losing to a farang my guard was up double that of when I was in the ring and yet he had broken right through it, unfortunately for him it was the only time he broke my guard that night. I returned to the bar where many congratulations were had and astonished Thais came up to me and said things to me with huge smiles and chipper voices. A British girl approached me and asked if I had a light, an obvious chance at a pick up. Olly had a light and I didn't, she invited us over to speak with her friends, I stayed only as long as I had to and returned to my crowd. Everyone was happy to have seen the match, there wasn't a single sour face in the bar, even the fighter's own friends seemed happy to have seen the match, I was happy to have seen it end.

The young boy massaging me as Ian encourages and the Thai guy massages my abs

The night continued, we found ourselves bouncing around in chest high water with a collection of people who we had never met. The water was warm and so were our insides. Some girl grabbed me and started kissing me, she was from Indiana, six weeks shy from a plane ride to Korea for a job that would last a year. Then as the night drug on, nearer to morning than the preceding evening, we were sitting in Roger's restaurant around a large central table. Travis, an Australian traveler who'd been staying with Roger for a week was regaling us with stories of his travels, they were extensive. Roger too was quite the globe trekker, he had taken his son with him through South East Asia for a month long excursion. He also told us about his Thai wife, whom we'd met earlier in the day. She was pregnant, a beautiful thing in its own right. Roger had gone back to Canada three months earlier to tell his Canadian wife of the new child, needless to say she was not happy.

Olly and Ian in Roger's restaurant
I don't know what Olly just said but the look on Ian's face is priceless

It was nearly five in the morning when Roger called in our tabs and began collecting money. We all found our cash, all except for a sour drunk Swede, he was quite in communicative and it was not clear if he simply didn't have his money or was not going to pay. Travis, who'd invited him, began talking with him quietly while we all watched Roger stalk back into the kitchen for a moment to check his math and count our money. When Roger came back out, he was drunk and angrier than before, the tension was electric. Roger is about six foot three and though his physique was nothing to be admired the sheer size and breadth of his body was an intimidating thing. Unfortunately this Swede was also no small man, though smaller than Roger he certainly outweighed everyone else in the room. In Roger's drunkenness his English slipped into what we refer to as Tinglish, an amalgamation of Thai and English that is spoken almost exclusively by Thai's and Westerners who are in relationships together. It is essentially English words spoken with Thai grammar and the occasional Thai word for clarification. It's one thing when you hear a Thai say,

“He give you card for birthday, red.” It is quite another when you see a six foot three Canadian who was speaking excellent English moments earlier break out into,

“You no have? You no have! I no like you. Out, out! You not welcome back, no come here any more. Out!”

We were all standing up and Travis was trying to usher his friend towards the door while Ian Olly and myself all stood in front of Roger interrupting his broken, angry tirade. Eventually the Swede was out in the street and Roger was in the doorway yelling at him with all three of us standing on the porch. There was no way we were letting anyone get Roger in trouble, he'd been too nice to us, and unfortunately it didn't matter if someone hit Roger or Roger hit someone, he'd be in trouble either way. Travis returned from the street and apologized from bringing the Swede, we all agreed that the man needed to be sorted out and that if we saw him the next day he'd be ignored.

Met them on Kho Samet

Despite the one odd unfortunate encounter there were loads of other people abound, Germans, Portuguese, Americans, Brits, and more, people who would be people forever but only in our life for a moment or a night or a weekend. There in lies the problem with such things as this. What permanence can be had when we cannot maintain an established base. Enjoy the moment? Enjoy the pleasure that you will never again regain? Maybe that's the thing of it though, maybe it is perpetually lost to the seconds on the clock ticking away, these moments don't last even if the people do, everything fades away in time.

A photo I messed around with from the fight

Ian, Nat, and Olly

Reason #55 not to become a professional Muay Thai fighter, glove burns

Once one girl did it they all wanted to

And again

Even Olly got his

A host of teachers I work with and the housemates as well

#11 It's not our own but we call it home

Ever wonder how people get good at cup stacking, practice.

Check check it yo! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0YgrUKfTcA

I buy an iced americano, a thin sandwich, and an apple for two dollars and sixteen cents. Walking in to work all of the Brits are buzzing about the rioting and looting back home. They post on Facebook to show their displeasure, “Nice job lads, great advert for the Olympics next year.” They ask themselves where the parents of the thirteen year old boy who carries a television down the street are. They realize the parents are probably only thirteen years older than the boy and out there right behind the kid carrying every sort of profitable merchandise one can acquire. Six teachers board the company van, the Thai teachers sit together in the back. The van climbs up a small rise on the highway towards Chonburi, then the bottom drops out and our stomachs stretch to our throats, this is the next hour and a half for us. We also see a yellow stream emit from a man who's truck is stopped on the opposite side of the road from us. His urine is a neon dehydrated slash into the green landscape that lines the highway. Jules and Charlie and I discuss Jewels masters degree work and then her last year spent working with victims of sexual exploitation in London. She's come to Thailand to do what she can here about it, she has her work cut out for her. The clouds shelter us from the sun as we traipse across the courtyard, our legs still asleep from our hour long van ride. Before we enter our classrooms we join our hands and bow our heads to the head mistress of the school. It's just another day in paradise.

“Thanks boys. You guys are the SHIT! I'm in love with Bangkok thanks to you. Thank you for such a fun bad ass weekend! I hope to see you again soon (speak more Thai) Take care. Maure”

It's just a note left for us by a friend of a friend after they'd spent the weekend staying in our spare room, but I think it pretty accurately describes what it's like in this city if you're stuck with our lot. You can always leave, but you wont want to. Then the definitive moment comes when you realize that with us you're just a tourist looking in on the life of a few lads who reside in this world of times so good they can kill you, I believe that most people living this life might have their very sanity sucked out of them. I am glad we're not like most people.

After a stint at the gym with Olly we dress up and head out to the seafood restaurant that recently opened, we're lucky enough to be just the type of boys to bring round the younger expat crowd and so we get cheap drinks and good service.

We're handed sheets of paper to participate in the pub quiz. One sheet is full of aircraft of various kinds and Ronnie, the former aeronautics engineer, names them all off without hesitation. The next sheet of paper has bridges from all over the world, between us we've seen every bridge on the paper except for some random bridge I'd never heard of in San Diego. We're a group of such divergent talents, Swiss, American, Brit, South African, Belgian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, country, city, old, young, teacher, executive, designer, and negotiator, there simply isn't much that someone in our group doesn't have some sort of experience with. This evening is not like all the rest, there is no evening that too closely resembles any other, except perhaps for the diversity, that seems to always be there. Oddly enough the only real friction that anyone seems to be able to produce comes from an American who until he opens his mouth appears to be fresh off the boat from India. When he drinks he becomes an asshole. Last year he blacked out drunk in a beach town south of Bangkok, he woke up to two men kicking in his doors and then breaking his legs with a pipe. The only story that could be gathered by those of our group that went to get him out of the hospital was that someone had seen him talking to a girl. We all knew what happened even though it was never confirmed, we'd seen him go off before. She probably mentioned she had a boyfriend and he then probably began to be very rude at which point her boyfriend took notice and had him thrown out of the bar. They followed him back to his hotel and then broke in once he was asleep. He is the type of American that makes it hard for me to be an American, he is why it pays to be a nice person, and this is me saying that I can now actually say I know someone who had their legs broken.

When he's with us we take care to ensure that he leaves before he gets into trouble, friends like these are hard to come by back home, but here there's no doubt that we all need to be watching out for each other. Once when the American was in a slightly more sober state he negotiated for a random tourist who had found themselves being fined three thousand baht for tossing a cigarette butt onto the street. He had the fine reduced to a tenth what it started at thanks to his Thai tongue and his insistence. We all come with our good and bad, usually none too equal, and without a mass of others to fit into our gaps and holes we would be a miserable wretch of lost travelers trying to fit into a culture that we don't call our own but strive to call our home.

The queen's birthday is tomorrow. The streets are lined with plastic chairs and, oddly enough, tables. A few of the office buildings on my street have erected large installations with her picture on it. Many of the pictures are not flattering, but as concerned with aesthetics as most Thais are they are also well aware that beauty and the lack there of mean something. An aged matriarch who's lost her beauty is probably the most comforting maternal figure there is, provided her husband is the greatest king your country has ever known, and he is.

In the morning at one of my schools they were rehearsing songs to sing during the party they would throw on Thursday, today, the day before the queen's birthday. Then just after lunch these girls were dancing in the quad, also practice for the big party. I asked if the king's birthday was a bigger deal and every one said no, that's reassuring.

More fabulous names: Amy spelled A-Me, Doo Doo, Phu pronounced Pooh, Be Be, Ian except they spelled it Yhian, Make only they misspelled it into Mek, a poor boy named Anette, thankfully they misspelled it A-net, Cartoon, Crap, which is actually a misspelling of Khap, a polite word that one puts at the end of sentences to show respect, Rew, the Thai word for quick, Fatten, and yes it signifies exactly what it sounds like, I-Tim, a misspelling of Item, this kid is really smart, Soccer, Ice, and another kid in the same class named Eyes but pronounced ice, Bam, Boom, Golf, Off, Oat, Putter, Ping, and lastly a lovely young girl named Film. Her upper lip is deformed and I pray they understand the irony of that.

Adios amigos, and the next time you write a note think of me and how much you would enjoy writing one after a weekend in Bangkok.

Hmmmm...is there something wrong here?

One of the many monks on the street accepting an offering from a passerby. Off screen left is a man holding a trash bag full of the offerings this monk has received today, and it's only eight in the morning!

#10 All That Glitters is not Gold

I arrived home last Thursday, rather late in the afternoon, and ready to go out and grab a bite to eat. There was a car parked out front of the garage, none of us drive and to my knowledge neither do any of our friends. I went into the house, which was locked, and as I entered the foyer a woman's voice called to me from upstairs.

“Oliver?”

“No, not Oliver.”

“Oh! Adam.”

“Yeah, that's me.”

A very pretty Thai girl comes walking down the stairs and smiles at me.

“Who are you?” I ask innocently.

“You don't remember me?”

At this point I'm thinking oh shit what did I do. I don't get black out drunk so I didn't randomly pick up on this girl and then forget, besides, the Thai girls don't generally do it for me. Then I realized she wasn't here for me, she just knew who I was, and obviously had at some point met me though I didn't remember when or how.

“I'm sorry, when did we meet.”

“Other night, in the car.”

Shit, shit, shit, what car, what the fuck is going on........OH!

“That's right, you were in the car next to our cab and you handed Ian your phone through the window. We drove a few blocks and put his number in your phone and then gave it back to you at the next stop light. Wow, how did you get in the house. [You crazy psycho]”

She searched her brain for the proper words to describe the insanity which she was about to unleash upon me, but then she just motioned for me to follow her and we walked into the living room and she slid open the glass door.

“Oh! It was unlocked.” I said, “Prang spent the night last night and left out the glass door this morning. That's right I forgot. Does Ian know you're here?”

“Yes, I ask him.”

“Cool, how was the date?” I have at this point remembered that she and Ian went out on a date about three nights ago when Olly and I were in Hua Hin.

“I'm new girlfriend.”

“Oh cool, it went well then. Good.”

“I ironing, you need ironing?”

“No thanks, I'm good.”

At this point I took my leave and the second I got in my room I texted Ian telling him I met his new girlfriend. Needless to say his response was not a happy one. On my way out of the house I found her car had been moved around the corner and she was sitting in the passenger seat staring out the window. She got out and began talking to me in a very different tone then she had used earlier.

“What wrong?”

“Nothings wrong, I'm just going out to get some dinner.”

“What wrong?”

“Nothing, is there something the matter?”

“What you say to Ian?”

“Oh! I just told him you were at the house.”

“Yes, what wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong, I'm going to go get some dinner now, see you.”

Needless to say she was upset and when I got back to the house a couple of hours later she was still sitting in her car. Ian and Olly were in the dining room when I got there.

“Ian, did you see her on your way in?”

“No, guy, where is she?”

“She's outside in her car.”

“Shit guy, lets go.”

Olly ran up to his room wanting no part of the situation and Ian and I headed out to where her car was parked. She wasn't in it anymore and though we looked around outside for a bit we didn't find her. We came back to the gate which we leave unlocked when we're home and then went our separate ways. I went up to Olly's room and began telling him about the Tazy girl who was waiting for me when I got home. A minute or two into the story Ian called down the stairs from his room.

“She's here.”

“Where?” We both call out.

“Here.”

“In your room?”

“Yeah guy.”

They talked up in his room for a couple of minutes and then Ian walked her out and we've not heard from her since. Ian had gone out with this girl on one date, they didn't have sex, she hadn't even been inside the house before, she dropped him off and then left. How long it took her to figure out the glass door was open I don't know, why she thought it was ok to tell me she'd told Ian she was here when she hadn't is beyond me, but most of all I can't fathom how she thought it would be ok to enter the house uninvited when none of us were home. Oddly enough she did actually iron Ian's clothes for him. Olly said that the next time she breaks into the house she had better put his clothes in the wash too.

There is a phenomenon here in Thailand, it's rather widely known and accepted among anyone who lives here for any amount of time. It is beginning to gain notoriety outside of Thailand as well, but in truth it is kept out of the spot light in an attempt to promote tourism. It is known as the Crazy Thai Woman, from now onward and forever we will shorten it to Tazy.

“What happened to that girl you were seeing, oh she went Tazy.”

Basically nearly every woman in Thailand seems to have this affliction from time to time. Some live in a perpetual state of Tazy while with others it comes and goes. There are some women who have managed to avoid it all together but these examples are few and far between. To allay your fears right now, no this is not some sexist diatribe. I actually am going to trash men and women relatively equally in this little foray into the psychology of love and dating in Thailand.

Thai men are notorious philanderers and stories of mass infidelity are wide spread. More so than in America the extra monogamous relationship is not only a coveted luxury but is nearly a right. It is not discussed by a couple but it is usually understood that both have a gig. The word gig is a variable word that some say comes from the word gigolo. More likely however is that the word comes from the Thai word meaning laugh or flirt, ironically enough you could say that gig comes from the Thai word for giggle, though it is only a convenient coincidence. The gig is for some exclusively a sexual relationship, for others only kissing is permitted, to further confuse the situation there are still others who only go out on dates with their gig but keep it secret as no Thai woman would permit a man to socialize alone with another woman regardless of any long standing platonic history between the friends. While both men and women have gigs it is the men who catch most of the flack for this, I don't know why but I guess that it has something to do with women typically being smarter about their infidelities and as a result getting caught less often. My original idea was simply that men are more apt to cheat but nearly every single woman, Thai or otherwise, has said that women cheat just as much as men they simply get caught less frequently. So I put forth that this is not something I personally came up with but something that has come from a consensus of conversation.

The gig though is not the only form of infidelity, there is also a mia noi and a choo. Mia noi translates into extra wife and choo doesn't translate very well but it essentially is a secret wife. Despite the use of the word wife these relationships are not only for married men to partake in, they are simply terms to describe the nature of the relationship. A gig implies there is no illusion of romance or a possibility of a future relationship, a mia noi on the other hand will at least keep up the pretenses of love and a possible future with their counterpart. In Thai newspapers there are frequently stories about women who are fed up with their cheating husbands or boyfriends and to gain retribution they chop off the penis of the offending party. These stories are kept out of the English language newspapers but if you dig a little and ask really nice the Thai's will tell you that by the end of the story it's usually revealed that the husband wasn't the only one being unfaithful. The articles are often accompanied by rather graphic pictures.

Given the prevalence and general acceptance of infidelity the basic logic would follow that either Thai women should expect it and be relatively unsurprised by it, or try and combat it tooth and nail fighting in every which way they can in an attempt at changing the status quo. The later is the progenitor of Tazy.

After hearing the millionth story about a Thai woman going berserk on a foreign guy for a deed either done or imagined, I asked, “Why don't they just date Thai guys?” At this point I was laughed at and told that with a foreign guy you might get cheated on, with a Thai guy you will get cheated on. If you're going to be a girl in Thai land and play with fire then you mind as well go for a big pay day, which is ultimately my biggest gripe with dating Thai women. In the end, our value as westerners is seen as so much higher in this country simply because our passports are blue or green or red, that there is little that can distinguish between interest in self advancement and a future for their family and actual honest to goodness love. I was told once that to a Thai my passport was worth more than gold, I didn't believe them until I met Ahn. Ahn works at an ex-pat bar near Asok, an area with what is probably the most famous strip of go-go bars. The ex-pat bar has bar girls but they are not dancers and they leave you alone unless you approach them. Ahn is one such girl who as I was speaking with some old salty dogs about their history in Thailand they called over to chat with us. My curiosity was enough for them to give me an example of the massive power imbalance that exists between myself and the people who's country I live in.

Ahn was married, she's not beautiful but she's good looking and she has two kids. Her husband was British and a drug dealer who was by all accounts a rotten person. There are plenty of westerners I know who are sterling individuals and are married to Thai women, this man was not one of them. He was eventually caught and put away in jail for a very long long time as Thai law generally dictates. Ahn was left with nothing but her two kids. She now works at this bar seven nights a week, she does a great job and she says she doesn't take men home anymore though the salty dogs I was talking to said they'd seen it once or twice. Ahn makes roughly one third what I make in a month and she says that if she had a chance to do it all over again she would have found a different foreigner but a foreigner none the less, her children will be able to leave Thailand if they choose, and that's worth more than any good father or kind husband. Thai people can of course leave Thailand, however the clout and financial power that it takes to make it happen restricts such endeavors to the very rich.

It makes me wonder sometimes if all the smashed TV's and the phone calls at three in the morning just to check up actually make sense. Is all the Tazy that everyone despises perhaps just the way things need to be? Olly had a girl text messaging him for weeks from an unrecognized number, she would never tell him who she was but she would send him, “Have you already forgotten me?” and “How is your new girlfriend?” These sorts of things. Eventually he met up with a girl he'd been out with a few times ages ago and she confessed to being the random text messager. What sense does this make? One of the very few dates I went out on with a Thai girl ended in her climbing onto me telling me she loved me. I just wanted to ask her if she actually knew what the word love meant. One girl told a guy I knew, upon their breaking up, that if she ever saw him with another woman she'd have him killed. Yet another told a guy I know upon break up that she had HIV. All this insanity and yet everywhere you go there is a cute little Thai girl tossing herself at you making eyes at you and just waiting for you to even look back at her so that she can begin the process again, maybe this one will be the one she must think, but probably not.

Good bye for now friends, and every time you think, "Damn that ______ is crazy!" Remember, at least they're not Tazy.

A four foot by four foot sculpture in a hotel in Cambodia

Welcome to the Kindom of Cambodia

These signs are actually what they think of foreigners. We have to be told not to shit, pee, fuck, vomit, or fart while in a cab. When I took the picture the cab driver laughed at me and then waved his finger, "no no."