Legend has it....

...the monsoon season is in its death throes, and the 'cold' season is about to set in. I don't really expect to ever be cold here, and I'm thinking about mailing my jeans to Russia, where they will fetch a pretty price, especially if I leave the bacon strips in them. (by pretty price, I mean in rubles, which are a wild card on the best of days. 30 rubles in a buck, depending on the US market openings tomorrow.) Actually, the average Thai watches currency exchange rates far more closely than the average US citizen, who is usually standing in line behind Mark Wallace to buy the newest iPhone.

Mark, however, already knows up-to-date market valuations, because he's trying so hard to be a corp-douche. He's not quite nailing it. Smallace, that's a compliment. (most following this don't know Mark, but trust me, he's got some dude named Patel on a help line right now yelling "I just want this thing to make a good phone call!" "Oh, and also download apps in the Chicago L train tunnel." "Sure... I'll wait..."

Anyway, back to business. The theft of intellectual property in this country is alive and well. Makes the napster guy and the Ninja Video crew look like amateurs. Amateurs who weren't paying off the government, that is. I bought a version of Photoshop for 100 Baht (under $4) and a laptop-saving version of Windows XP Recovery disc for the same price. In the Mega Happy Software Blowup Sale (I think they wanted to say 'blowout', and if they had the sign made in neon and mounted, it's not really a sale... I think they meant 'store', not 'sale'), the disc cases on the shelf are empty, and after you show baht, the counter hottie disappears for about 35 seconds, and reemerges with a blank DVD that shows burn tracks on the underside. Upon my return home, I found both to be cracked, fully functional, and both even auto-filled the field for the registration code, thus making them ready for all those goddamn annoying upgrades. But they didn't even bother to label them with a sharpie marker, and I ended up confusing the two, almost re-installing Windows instead of upgrading Photoshop.

As for Photoshop, here's what I have so far....

I think it's rather flattering, if not a bit narcissitic. I am not totally Set, nor do I have a nu bis. Note that I refrained from shaving to add an edge to my image. (actually, the face shot was taken during my 'nobody is calling me for work' phase. Clearly, that left me plenty of time to work out and become deeply tanned. I also seemed to have had my nipples lowered.) Some of you have seen this pic in previous e-mails, but the more I spread my mental flotsam, the greater the chance that someone will stop me before it's too late.

I miss my friends terribly, and although I am having a great time, I don't feel grounded on any level. I have been moving around my whole life, and invariably, each time, one friend or another will say "Why are you going there? Your friends are all here."

My stock response is "I have friends all over the world... I just haven't met them yet."

I very much believe in that notion, and I live by my answer every day; but it's a bit glib, and it dodges the deeper meaning behind the question. And that question is "What about your history with loved ones... times you'll cherish, the times you've made amazing rock together (if only amazing to us), the love you've left behind, and your country, and your culture, and your language, and your family, and your nephews, and driving on the proper side of the road, and sanitation, and people with nosebridges, and your beloved motorbike?"

Hopefully my stock response still handily sidesteps all of that. After all, a response is not an answer at all....

The truth is, I never left you, just like you never left me. B

Some of my favorite student names

All the Temple pics and bluffside buddhas here are shot from my balcony. The kids I think I will shoot from a nearby treeline or perhaps a moving scooter.

Yeah, that's my school, yeah, that's my apartment, no that's not my creepy cool van.

Ok, it may not be that sweet to lampoon helpless kids, but my kids lampoon me relentlessly and I don't even know it on account of my sketchy Thai. But in my mind ( a dark, smelly place crammed full of rationalization mechanisms) i believe an insult unheard is one that has not happened. Insult is a function of the receiver, not the sender. Take, for example, one evening in Chiang Mai, sitting at dinner, a table of Thai men (looking sort of Muy Thai, quite capable, and probably very kicky) were drinking whiskey and obviously talking about me. Soon, they abandoned all pretense and were hooting things at me in Thai. Well, I am not really the paranoid sort or a conspiracy theorist, so I figured they were just having fun with a farang, no big deal. They probably know swear words in English, so if I stick to something obscure, I could totally leave em in the dust. So I said back at one of em "Maybe when you're done being a complete tool, you can squeeze my Johnson." They were frozen for a sec in the headlights of rapid-fire English, and then they laughed uproariously, even coming over to slap me on the back. I ended up saying several things to them that were complicated and totally out of line, and they worked themselves into a sweat trying to decipher. Two days later, I saw one at the same place, and he bought me a beverage (which I didn't down... Thai whiskey and alcoholics don't mix, at least for very long) and he yells at me " I squeeze you, Mr. Johnson!" So they figured my name was Johnson, and they knew 'squeeze' is a verb. Interesting.

Anyway, on to helpless children..... The names border on the absurd here. I thought Beer and Pie were funny when I met them in Chicago, but dig these:

Titiporn, Smoke, Soup, Kornporn, Lick, James Bond, Strike (actually kinda cool), Head, Tease (a girl, of course), Boob, Tits, (there's also a radio station in Chiang Mai called T.I.T.S), Tit, Cock (in his parent's defense, they own a cockfighting training facility, and his handle was meant to be heroic), Oops, Where, and Fag. More later, when I start to work at the Kindergarten.

I actually love the one name system, because, as a teacher, I have to work with their real names, such as Attyathanattaphon Chanrathannataporn. Fit that into a field at the DMV, I dare ya.

Nakhon Sawan make creature happy!

Thailand is proving to be all I hoped it could be, and less. I’m in my 7th month here, and I’ve been teaching on some level pretty much since I arrived. I was working part-time with two different private schools in Chiang Mai, and now I teach at Nakhon Sawan English School in Nakhon Sawan. The schools have been very different, as are the impressionable young minds I am misshaping.
At ALC, I trained flight attendant hopefuls for industry-specific English usage. I also taught them to mistrust men. At Kumon, I taught mostly reading pronunciation to kids between 6 and 14 years of age. Both gigs were very rewarding and fun for completely different reasons, but both were part-time, and I had to move on toward something more stable. Thus, my move to Nakhon Sawan. Most Thai students are hard-working and respectful to the core. Some are very shy and have performance anxiety in front of the teachers, especially the foreign ones, and some are absolutely unself-conscious and blissfully silly.
Having said that, My Nakhon Sawan students are all drop-outs from other schools, and I am a disciplinarian more than a teacher. They are nightmares, every last one, and putting me in charge of discipline is indeed a cosmic jest. And if I have to confiscate one more cell-phone or digital translation unit from these little shavers, I’m goin’ Godzilla on someone. Furthermore, the admin guy that hired me is hardwired to be incompetent, and has screwed up everyone’s work visas.
I am currently entertaining an offer for a full-time contract at a kindergarten school with some 400 – 500 kids. If it comes through, I will stay for sure. I like Nakhon Sawan better than Chiang Mai, because it is smaller and less touristy. White guys are a rarity here, and I’m kind of like a minor celebrity. Not like a rock star, but more like a game show host. The city marks the center of the country, and is much more upcountry, with villages and rice fields all around. The people are also more village-y, and they have a weathered ruddiness that lends them a rather more fearsome aspect. They are also more traditional than the Guns N Roses Thais of Chiang Mai, and the Metro wannabes of Bangkok. They are much closer to their Buddhism, and respect and peace is very much central to their mind-set. And that’s rad. The little kids shout “Hello!” and the really tiny ones count coo, like monkeys and Native American braves. They appear out of nowhere, slap your calf, and dart away giggling. It’s really fun. There is a big lake in the center of town that has been converted to a park, with running trails and fitness machines out for free use. There goes my every excuse. The lake is boiling with fish, and permits no fishing, so one of my favorite pastimes is to feed the fish with Thais off the center of the bridge. Some catfish are 5 or 6 feet long. I buy loaves of stale bread for pennies and toss the crumbly bits to the fish. There is one particular species of fish that can evidently see up and out of the water, and they can time a leap to snatch the bread before it hits the water, thus screwing over the others. (Thus passing on the jumping genes to ever larger egg sacs than the others, blah blah)
The wildlife here is much richer, including monitor lizards, monkeys, giant centipedes, and dragon flies that could transport packaged goods if they were trainable. Speaking of trainable, and I’ll end for now with this; I was the hapless victim of a macaque attack. I was trekking up a mossy and overgrown stair set, seemingly endless, to one of the mountain temples, and was brained by a coconut. As I stumbled around and fell, a big macaque (monkey of the Gibbon family) dropped out of a tree and started slapping me on the belly. It turns out, owners of plantations hire a service to harvest coconuts, and the service consists of a dude with a macaque. The monkey scales the trees and throws down the coconuts, and is later fed for his efforts. When they get too old to do 100 or so nuts an hour, they are replaced by young ones, and driven away. This was one such, and he thought he was being a good boy, but I thought he was attacking me. That’s right… I got my ass handed to me by a homeless, out of work monkey. What’re ya gonna do?

Sent from Laos during my second Visa run

You have to leave the country to get a Visa to enter the country, thus the 'Visa run" to Laos.

On the pictures, besides the obvious scorpion boats, and my messed up skeleton, the drunk chicks in the minivan are all from Brazil, and we spent a sordid evening together riding all night in blissfully cramped quarters. If there was any doubt of my self-control with regards to partying, the girls were this far gone on booze and cigarettes, and I was still up and taking pictures. (editor's note: images have been edited for content) And if Jarod had been on the van, he would have slept with them all and left me table scraps.

And as far as the monk rock drums, I think we all can picture the scene. I actually have more fun with the bells, because if you slap them with the knuckle gristle of your thumbs, like slapping on a bass guitar, you can get really clear and pretty sounds out of them. Even the discordant ones are gorgeous in the morning.

And the tuk tuk motorbike taxis in Laos are a point of particular pride, as is obvious. I greased a driver 24,000 Lao kip (just under $3 US) to let me drive the tuk tuk to the border, which was 30k away. He sat in the back and chatted on his cell phone the whole time. Magic.

Part of an e-mail sent to my folks:

Ok, the phone reception is sketchy here, and Vientiene is a sleepy sort of hamlet. I am hale and well, upright and taking nourishment. My Visa paperwork seems to be going through, but I won't really know until I go into the Consulate (should that be capitalized?) and pick up my passport tomorrow after 12 noon.

A large dump truck barreled through the outdoor seating of the restaurant I was eating at tonight. I was eating inside, where the air-conditioning was, and several yards from the fray. Others not so lucky. Oddly, I noticed that the driver and the owner negotiated liability, with no authorities called whatsoever. The injured were put in taxis and whisked off.

I think it's prudent to keep you in the loop concerning the Guest Houses I stay in while traveling through other countries. It's called Kabayan, and it's 200 meters from the US consulate in Vientiene, Laos.

My room is OK, but the manager gave me the wrong key after letting me in to the room. Long story short, I was coming out of the communal shower, down the hallway from my room (which was of course locked) and found I could not get back into the room without returning to the lobby/restaurant to get the proper key. What I'm saying is, I strode into a busy restaurant wearing only a threadbare towlette and a scowl to melt even the hardiest. Jayzus this is a struggle sometimes.

This is just a check-in message, and so I don't have anything to relate that will concern you, but I think late-breaking updates on my exact whereabouts while out of the country of Thailand is prudent.

As always, I love you and I am as alive as I've ever been.

And another excerpt, sent to someone else entirely when back in Chiang Mai:

Sorry so busy... I'm teaching at two schools now, and getting the hang of it. I'm between classes, so I can't give you much now, but I'll get with you soon. Had a motorcycle wreck last week, and the foot peg punched through my calf muscle. That sucked. lost skin, not as pretty anymore, but still alive. Four stitches outside, two inside. Glad I didn't choose Korea to teach in, because they soon will be at war I believe.

And another to Sondra, a couple of weeks later:

I killed a dog the other night... At least I'm pretty sure I did. There's a pack of ferals down at the corner that likes to jump out at scooters and chase after them, barking and snapping. One jumped out at me a bit early, and I plowed over his spine. He was pretty big, and scooter wheels are bulls**t, so I went down. The other mutts took off, but the one I hit was howling to beat the beat the band, and trying to drag his back half off the street. It was a kind of surreal scene, to be honest. Anyway, I'm ok after that, just more scrapes.

Also, the last three open rooms in my building have been rented by ladyboys, and each one of them has two or three friends staying with them. So, the halls are filled with ladyboys, drugs, and gross prostitution. Burglary can't be far behind. I'll be moving out before the end of the week. There are plenty of serviced apartments available for roughly what I'm paying here, and they will be furnished, with security and linen service.

Catch up # 2, from Chiang Mai period

(From an e-mail sent to my folks several months back)

My life has changed from being a terribly empty and boring piece of s**t to something

relentlessly fascinating.

If I could snap my fingers and make my motorbike appear here, I'd be in heaven.

Of course, my timing being what it is, the whole country erupted into political chaos the very f*#king week I arrived.

The temples (called Wat) are kinda staggering. Lives are devoted to their upkeep.

I recently survived Songkran (that's Thai New Year celebration, the year here being 2553) Songkran is a week-long water fight, involving super soakers, buckets of water being thrown on everyone by everyone, and lost contact lenses. I have never seen anything like it in my life… simple assault being endured and enjoyed by all.

Chiang Mai is a northern province, ringed by mountains and giant golden Buddhas in the jungle. I knew I didn't want Bangkok, because I didn't want to trade one giant f*#ked-up city for another one. I knew I didn't want some podunk village where I'd have to carry my water bucket up from the river, towing a yak on a rope.

Chiang Mai is pretty well in the middle, size wise, and it's got bong loads of history, ancient temples, and monk rock. The bars here own their drum sets, and the drums stay on the stage at all times, just waiting for some freak to jump up and show what good old fashioned American double-bass metal is all about.

I have eaten some odd dishes, one being 'Dancing Shrimp' (dancing not because they are happy, but because they are writhing in agony, having been suddenly doused with flash-sauteed pepper oil), another called 'Natural Law with Curdled Blood of Pig' (which had me confined to quarters for a spell), and a simple big mess of bugs at the Night Market during a Full Moon party thrown by Monks. I haven't produced a solid stool since Narita Airport in Tokyo.

I have black cobras in the back yard, and more elephants and monkeys than we had in Cadillac.

I am finally tall... taller than most; (these are tiny, tiny folk) and dammit, I have a nose bridge. That's what sets me apart now.

Catch up #1

Ok, no one asked for it, so you got it. I’ve been worse than ever aboot keeping up with my correspondence. My friends in Chicago, Vegas, and Michigan are getting along just fine without my long-winded, overly dramatic style of delivery. This cannot continue. If I have to use the intro net to fill the air with my mental debris, so be it. I’m gonna try doin’ it bloggy-style.

Since I’ve been so inconsistent with my e-mails, I’m going to cut-and paste some excerpts from a few I’ve sent out to individuals, so bear with me if a couple of you have seen some of this crap before.

One I sent to Scott:

Greetings from the sweltering Northern Province. I'm up early on a Saturday, my busy teaching day, but just wanted to shoot some pictures to you. The friends on scooters are Ivan the Russian and his new girlfriend whose name I fail to pronounce, so I just call her New. We took scooters up to the mountain, to the Huay Teung Thao reservoir, and passed some cool Wats (temples) along the way. Chiang Mai has the highest concentration of temples in Thailand, and the one with the tall, old-looking tower is the oldest in Thailand, dating back to the early 1400s.

The blue tennis raquet thing is a bug zapper. Two D-cells go into the handle, and you push the button to charge the net. I suggest not putting your tongue on it to test. This is a strange and hazardous country for electrics. The powerlines are often sagging low enough to touch, which is not recommended.

My mozzie net over the bed came out swimmingly, my first net install! Since hanging it, the insect carnage has decreased to a manageable state. The monsoon season will be my next challenge for mosquitoes. It seems I'm delicious....

Songkran is approaching; a traditional waterfight in the hot season that involves simple assault with water rifles. The days begin with a ritual flicking of water onto strangers with the fingers. The days end with supersoakers across the city moat and being slammed with casks of rancid pond water from passing vehicles. I won't be surprised to get a case of the tadpoles. What're ya gonna do, right?

I have my address written in Thai on a slip of paper in my wallet, in case the Tuktuk driver can't speak English. And I have yet to hire a tuktuk (motorcycle taxi) that can speak English. I really like this area where I'm living, as the tourist count is low, and the true Thai experience is all around me. The bathroom is traditional Thai style, however, which means the shower is just out in the bathroom itself, and everything gets inundated. It's truly a water closet.

My students at ALC Airline Academy love me, and my antics, and they are all actively working on doing impressions of my accent. Most teachers here are from UK, Scotland, and Ireland, so an authentic Midwest accent is most anomalous. Despite my total lack of experience, I have been able to create the illusion of teaching acumen. Let's hope I can keep it going....

The squid on a plate I ate the other night has exacted a terrible revenge. I won't patronize that particular establishment again.

I also had "Dancing Shrimp" at the reservoir, which is a plate of tiny live shrimps. They went down without much of a fight, but there wasn't anything they could do against the grinding of giant mandibles. As far as their effect on my gastro tract, the votes are still coming in.