China & Japan Facing Off

At the moment China and Japan are getting a tad volatile with each other due to a Japanese Coastguard stopping a Chinese fishing trawler around disputed island territory. Now, in the past it would have been quite usual for China to step back and act in a conciliatory fashion, but things have changed... and there's still the issue of the Nanjing massacre for both countries to talk about before there can be understanding. Things really have changed and the new balance is very different now.

Beauty, Sex and Theft in Bangkok

On Sex: Now this is always an interesting topic and one that occupies the consciousness of many of my gender via the good god granting men hard-wired limbic systems with subtle arrays of complex receptors throughout our mortal body-life from between ages of about 13 and 200. The male moral compass is one that usually simply points firmly upward, at least in theory. It is probably why men do not need complex maps. There is a part of them that never really gets lost.

I'll prepare an essay on this topic and put it here soon.
It is interesting not only because it is interesting because women are interesting but also it is interesting how Thai society is bound to a 'binary relativism' in just about every aspect of life, and has been bound to this for 900 years; it's a mindset that doesnt stem directly from Buddhism, but co-exists quite well with it. Morality, or whatever one wishes to call what is 'appropriate' in any culture, as in every single individual, has variations and intrigues that cannot be understood.

Gender is interesting in Bangkok. Thus the large numbers of beautiful transgender folk (ladyboys, kathoeys)working in women's make up shops in the upper-strata centres. Often sexual re-assignment is both a personal choice, sometimes a bad one, and sometimes a smart economic move as well as a simple exuberance of physical beauty echoing a deep feminine beauty in the soul.  Thai folk, women and men, to me, have a certain 'beauty DNA' that is quite common here yet rare elsewhere. I think the Thai Prime Minister is very beautiful, and far more beautiful than the Australian Prime Minister. That one is a man and the other a woman is hardly the point.

I've always been an admirer of beauty whether it be physical, intellectual, spiritual or mechanical. The Ducati 996 for example. The new Lambhorgini. Vespa motorscooters. Fresh flowers. The beauty of the human voice. The beauty of dialect. The smile. Laughter. Chinese songs. The writings of Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and Michel de Montaigne. To admire beauty and indeed have an interest in human sexuality doesnt actually mean one is out there rooting all the time, to use an Australian vernacular. There is not much 'natural beauty' as in landscapes and perfect skies in Bangkok, but there is a giant array of human and mechanical beauty.

For instance, Chinatown 'runs' on and because of Vespa motorscooters from the early 60s. There are tens of thousands of them and they cart pretty well everything that can be sold in the narrow alleys of the markets. They are, to me, beautiful machines.  As for the beauty of the clear night sky, well, we've seen stars maybe on 20 nights in 3 years. There are the frequent clouds of course, but also there's the dense opaque layer of suspended carbon that you can acually wear home from Chinatown. On any sunny day there's no need for hats, sunglasses or sun-protection lotion in Bangkok city.

Usually talk of sex/massage in Bangkok is based in one of two convictions: 1: That it is a social evil and a crime against women perperated by foreign devils. 2: That Bangkok is a very exciting & dreamlike destination for disillusioned overweight middle-aged men from Australia, England, America, Germany and France. I'd like to put together a far more succinct portrayal. Many are from Japan and from the Middle East although the majority are middle to upper class Thai men. The median age is around 28. A lot of English speaking guys seem to be in their early twenties and some especially like to have sex for hours and run off without paying. This perhaps perfects the 'social evil of men' aspect more than anything else. Not only are young women corrupted, but also robbed.

How do you know if a Thai massage shop in Bangkok is a legitimate Thai massage shop or a sex place when many are exactly both? I was talking to a young guy from Collaroy in Sydney who explained it thus: "If you are not very bright, mate, you can get a bit of an idea when you are having a foot massage and the masseuse sticks her perfect pink tongue in your ear." I can understand that. Something would dawn.

Personally, I find the most beautiful looking women come from North Eastern China, especially Shen Yang, and both North and South Korea; where Thailand overtakes them I guess is also in the physical beauty of the men; and of those inbetween the genders especially.

On Theft: Street theft/pickpocketing etc. This has only happened to us once in 3 years and the thief, who was very adept and opportunistic, was a young Western European tourist, most likely an Englander, in a Starbucks coffee shop at MBK.

Being a fastly vastly modernising metropolis, the thing one really needs to be careful about is wi-fi theft of identity. the number of false-sites that look so perfect when you try to connect anywhere is remarkable.

Social Dangers in Bangkok versus in Australia

Now, being educated in the health sciences in Australia I'd be the first to say one needs to be careful with one's food choices in the streets of Bangkok but it's interesting to note that in 3 years in Bangkok I've only been ill once following a huge public celebration a Nonthaburi Pier when many new food vendors descended upon the event. The regular folk are very attuned to the need for food safety because they know what they are doing and their business depends upon returning customers. Anyway, whatever the toxin was, it was a heady one and I was sick for a month. In comparison, I was in Rockhampton, Australia, last year for six months and was sick from restaurant-food 5 times although only for a few days to a week each time.

The 'great poisoning' in Nonthaburi happened when about a million of us; yes, a real million, crowded down in very narrow streets with out any crowd-control etc, and for awhile we, in the middle, were carried along for 100 metres with our feet off the ground, pressure packed together. It was only when the real crush-peril dawned on everyone in this remarkable multi-way procession that kids were hoisted up on shoulders to stop them from being crushed and asphixiated. At the same time, interestingly, this is when everyone started to smile. Somehow the smiling made it all bearable and 'de-tuned' the panic. It was only when I got home that the food poisoning set in and that was me for a month; actually sicker than I've been before. I think the small black crabs often crushed into seafood meals for added flavour are sometimes not so fresh.

Still, when you think about it, that was only once in 3 years of relatively reckless eating in Bangkok streets, compared with 5 times in 6 months in well-regulated 'first world' Australian restaurants. 

General Satisfaction In Bangkok

We live in an enclave that runs off the third street in 'The Neighborhood of General Happiness'. We've been here about three years, in Pak Kret, Nonthaburi, about 20km North of Bangkok CBD although where the city begins and ends remains a mystery that we are well within. Its a giant thing, Bangkok, or Krung Thep Mahanakorn. The ancient design was that of a Mandala but now is more like a pine tree, a tree that looks in part as if its falling. It's a place that takes years to know. I'm proud of the things I know: That it's best not to try to get into the CBD on a Friday at the end of the month because the roads will be jammed tight for hours, many hours, because this is the time of month when people get paid.

So, if you have to get into town, you try to get the taxi to take you to Mo Chit BTS and from there get the Skytrain into Siam/Ploenchit etc depending on where you need to go. If you want to get to Chinatown, well, you can take the BTS from Mo Chit or the MRT underground from Chatuchat Park (which is also Mo Chit) and that'll take you through to just near Yarowat and you can get a tuk-tuk from there, although some wont want to take you; its only a 10 minute stroll from there anyway.

Sometimes its very hard to get a taxi around 2pm because its driver-change over time. If you're in a taxi with a reluctant driver he may well , mid journey, say 'no. I cant do it.' and he'll wave down another cab and then 5kms along in the new cab, the driver might say 'no, I cant do it.' and he'll flag down your third cab.
Some drivers just dont know where things are, which is fair enough, because its such a giant place. Sometimes you cant change directions for 20 minues or so , thus if you take a wrong turn, well, it may take you 20-40 minutes to get back on track.

The road sysem is very odd and resembles nothing so much as a big plate of one-way noodles; some that dont actually seem to connect to any others.
The joy of the Skytrain and the MRT is that you can get to most places in the city fast and economically and if you have an understanding of where things are, well, you can get on at Ploenchit, go to Asoke, go to On Nut, or do the run to Thaksin Bridge -National Stadium, and the mysterious and heady steamy mixture of sex and international diplomacy of Sala Daeng etc.

Motorcycle taxis are really the best way to get around at street level because you can go on footpaths, through lobbies, down train tracks, across prohibited land etc in the most creative of journeys.
Motor cycle deaths happen about once per hour in the city so this form of rapid transit has its issues, but whilst you are alive, you certainly know you are even if at the destination you note your elbows and knees are sore from whacking into various parts of moving cars.

It's very satisfying to know your way around, that's for sure. Sometimes the great thing about a journey is that you proved yes, it could be done; or you have suffered enough by trying and you know a little more about the Giant that is Bangkok, Krung Thep Mahanakorn. The City.

5 scholars shopping in Bangkok Chinatown

Bangkok Chinatown

We took 4 friends from Singapore on an afternoon and evening shopping expedition in Bangkok's Chinatown yesterday. This is my favourite place in Bangkok. Then we had dinner at the open-air on the footpath Red Shirt seafood restaurant that appears at 6pm each evening, takes over the footpath, and then the first lane of traffic with tables and tiny chairs. It is just across the narrow Soi from the Green Shirt seafood restaurant that also sprawls out into the traffic.

The food: fresh crabs and prawns and scampi and fish from the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea. So fresh, fast, & hot barbecued and you sit there not so much watching the world go by, but rather the world winds its way between the small metal tables, as if they are rocks sticking through the flow in a fast river. The rich, poor, old, young all pouring through; and sometimes a 1961 Vespa all-metal Motorscooter comes through as well. Strong smells of chestnuts cooked in coal, of fruit from everywhere. Carbon dust. Food smells, meat, fish and the sewers.

I think Chinatown Bangkok is the most 'historically true and living' of Asian cities in its crowded unruled way. Just as the peak hour traffic of cars and buses and tuk tuks starts to really rise into something phenomenal, thats when the restaurant chairs and tables take over one lane of traffic and the squeeze becomes 'palpable'. Thai folk ability to include and to blend all forms into a flow is quite a human achievement and its done each day in the most tolerant and considerate way. It as if everything, the society itself, is held together in fine complex webs of silk that cannot be undone except by unfortunate fire.

The crowds are everywhere as are the smiles. Bangkok was 'prettier' before the uprising a few months back. I think it would take years to get the city to that tinsel-like glittering beauty again and I don't know if that will happen because the causes of the social anger are deep and abiding and obviously reached some point of no-return with so many deaths this year. At the same time, the nature of people remains warm and smiling and kind and you really dont get that, to my knowledge, anywhere else in the world. I have great respect for the complexity of Thailand and the willingness to accept the flow of life rather than to diminsih and control it. There is a high price to this of course but there is always, always the right, and indeed the responsibility, to smile and bargain.

Young breezes

We've put a big wind chime at the back door patio of the apartment. Its a big glass sliding door on the ground floor. The chime is the standard six lengths of aluminium tubing and a wooden gong on a string; the only difference is that the six pieces of tubing are each about two metres long, so its a very very big windchime. From the lounge room you can see the wide-eyed expressions on the faces of the local kids who sneak up to it and clang about with the gong before running off.