Free food!

I went to visit a friend of mine, who recently started working at a new bar. The bar is fairly swanky. Big, comfy leather chairs. Pricey, frou-frou cocktails. Lots of pretty girls to make conversation with customers.

Unfortunately it's on the notorious Street 136, where all of the quote-unquote hostess bars are. These are the bars where male tourists go to find young ladies to take home. We'll see how long a bar with more legitimate intentions and non-working girls can last surrounded by sleaze.

It must have been happy hour because there was a complimentary pile of fresh fruit. In the bathroom.


Why buy urinal cakes when you can use a couple pieces of fruit for the same effect?

In a previous blog post I wrote about a German professional photographer named Michael Riehle that I traveled with in Chiang Mai. One of the reasons I liked Michael so much is because even though he has seen more of the world than anyone I've ever met -- including some of the worst parts -- for him travel was still fun and exciting. He was delighted to find lemon slices in the urinals in a bathroom in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was struck how someone who has seen so much could be so amused by something so small.

So many travelers get jaded. For some their unwillingness to enjoy travel is almost a badge of honor. No matter what they do or see it only reminds them of something they've already done or seen.

Oh yeah, you see them everywhere in Indonesia. The best ones are on a little island in Malaysia. You've probably never heard of it. But that was 10 years ago before tourists ruined the place.

That kind of nonsense. I will never see or do as much as Michael has, but I hope I retain his ability to be surprised and entertained by the little things.

Back in the BKK

I'm in Bangkok now. I came here partly because it's much cheaper to fly from Bangkok to Kathmandu than from any other hub in SE Asia. So I traveled by bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh and then onto Bangkok.

The other reason I came to Bangkok is because I wanted to visit Bangkok! I wanted to experience a couple days of craziness on Khao San Road before disappearing into the mountains in Nepal.

At night I like to sit at one of the sidewalk bars on Khao San Road and watch the freak show. It so happens that the guys who work at the bar where I was hanging out are all from Nepal. I showed them the tattoo I got in Pokhara last year and told them I was going back this week. They love me.

One night while I was sitting there a barhopping expedition formed. It was probably the most demographically diverse group ever assembled, given the size. The roster:

* our leader, a gay Thai guy who works as a tout for one of the bars
* his sister, who recently returned to Bangkok after working as a prostitute in Amsterdam for seven years
* a black Australian tattoo artist who works on Khao San Road
* a Filipino ladyboy with original equipment below the belt but expensive additions up top
* a German girl who took turns hitting on both the tattoo artist and the ladyboy
* me: heterosexual, white American man. How boring.

Where else in the world could this group of people come together for a social outing?!

Just Kathmandu it

One of my few regrets from my round-the-world trip was that I didn't budget my time well in Nepal. I didn't leave myself enough time to hike what is considered the best trail in Nepal, the Annapurna Circuit. I hiked to Annapurna Base Camp, but did not do the full circuit. It takes at least three weeks. The best time to do it is in October.

I just finished my TEFL class and have been stressing about where to teach. I haven't even decided which country to teach in, let alone which city, school or grade. I took a bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh and spent a couple days there. I took a bus from Phnom Penh to Bangkok, which is where I am now.

Tomorrow I fly to Kathmandu. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. When is the next time I will have the entire month of October free? I really can't afford it, but I can't pass up the chance. It'll give me time to think, unwind and lose some weight!

I have a few more posts I'll try to publish before I hit the trail. I was flabbergasted last year when I found internet cafes on the trails in the Himalayas, so I wouldn't be surprised to find internet access on this hike. For all intents and purposes though, once I start the hike I will be off the grid for at least three weeks.

Once more unto the beach

The first time I was in Hoi An I spent a day at Cau Dai beach. It's leisurely 20-minute bike ride from the town. The day was windy and overcast and downright chilly when I got on the beach. But the beach itself seemed quite nice. I wondered what it would look like on a clear, sunny day.

Now I know. It wasn't just hot and sunny. It was probably the hottest day I've ever spent on a beach. The sand scalded my feet even through my flip-flops. Even in the shade of a beach umbrella the heat was suffocating.

But the water was refreshingly cool, so I got in every 20 or 30 minutes or so to cool off. In Thailand, by way of comparison, the water is so warm that it doesn't cool you off. It's hard to tell where the air ends and the water begins.

One of the knocks against Vietnam is that, even though it's a beautiful country and easy to get around and the food is delicious and the people are wonderful, the beaches don't compare to Thailand.

I don't get it. I was hugely disappointed by the beaches in Thailand. The ones I visited were narrow, crowded and loud. It's impossible to relax while you're fending off a never-ending stream of beach vendors, 10 or 12 per minute at times.

The beaches in Vietnam are long, wide and relatively undeveloped, although that's changing quickly. Nowhere in Vietnam did I see anything like Hat Chaweng, the biggest beach on Koh Samui in Thailand.



I had plenty of time to check out the Vietnam coastline from the air this past week because I flew four times. Danang-Hanoi, Hanoi-Danang, Danang-Saigon, Saigon-Hanoi. Long story.

There are miles and miles of pristine beach with no commercial development whatsoever. The water isn't as clear as I've seen in other parts of SE Asia but aside from that I like the beaches in Vietnam much, much more than those in Thailand. I don't want to be too hasty in my appraisal, though. I think this warrants further research. I think I should spend a few more weeks beach-hopping before I submit an official opinion.

I've mentioned before how I think it's funny how overweight, pasty-skinned tourists suffer through the scorching mid-day heat in skimpy clothes while the locals do everything they can to avoid the sun. Women here will cover literally every inch of skin during the day: sunhat, mask, scarf, long sleeves, gloves, pants, socks and sandals. The only part they don't cover is their eyes.

The reason, as I understand it, and as with most things I "understand" I'm probably dead wrong, is due to a cultural belief that goes back literally thousands of years. Dark skin is traditionally a sign that the person farms or fishes or toils at some other "common" work in the sun all day. Lighter skin is a sign of wealth or refinement.

When locals go to the beach for fun they go in the morning or the evening, when the sun is low and the air is cooler. This makes a lot of sense, aside from the fact that these are the times when sharks feed.

This is a stretch of beach near my sunbed at mid-day.



This is almost the same shot near sunset, with the beach full of locals.



One way to pass the time is to watch the local fishermen working. These circular boats practically beg to have their photos taken.



Fishermen stand up as they row these with a single long paddle. This is a shot from Cham Island (which I'll cover in a separate post). Try this at home. I dare you. I think I'd be able to stay on a rodeo bull longer than I could stand up in one of these boats.



Later in the day they create just the right amount of shade for a man to play with his granddaughter on the beach.



I met a woman who lives in Saigon but was in Hoi An visiting family. She invited me to dinner at a beach a few miles up the road that I hadn't heard or read about. It was packed with people eating, swimming and relaxing on the beach. I did not see another tourist.

Tourists always pay more. I don't have a problem with that, as long as I don't think I'm getting fleeced. Even at inflated prices I pay much less than I would at home. We ordered two big grilled fish, picked the meat off and rolled it in rice paper with fresh greens. I'm sure there's a name for this but I don't know it. I was too stuffed to ask. We each had a soda. The entire meal cost about twice as much as the coffee I'm drinking as I write this!

Another day, another protest

I was in Bangkok during the airport strike last year. I started working on a post about the political situation in Thailand but never finished it. I wish I had. I predicted the worst was yet to come. And for once in my life I was right. As I write this I'm watching news footage of the Thai military shooting in the streets, burnt vehicles being towed away, and other typical scenes of a Southeast Asian vacation.

I was stuck in Bangkok for a week when I went back to the city after aggravating my back diving in Koh Tao. I received emails from folks wondering if I was OK. The bombings in Mumbai happened at the same time and it was easy to confuse the two.

At the time I was perfectly safe at a comfortable hostel in Silom, the financial district. There was no sign that anything was amiss, except that attendance at the hostel dwindled. One night I was the only guest! On the streets there was no sign that the country had been shut off from the outside world.

Bangkok is the main hub not just for Bangkok but for all of SE Asia. If you fly to Rangoon or Hanoi or Phnom Penh the odds are pretty good that you'll go through Bangkok. So by shutting down Bangkok the protestors were effectively shutting down the whole region.

I was fascinated at the time by the way the story was being covered, not just in the American and Western press, but also in the SE Asian media. They totally missed the point. I read the English-language reports online and in the local press, and the story was all the same.

A group of peaceful protestors from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) shut down the airport because they wanted to force out a corrupt prime minister (Somchai), who was actually just a puppet for a previous corrupt prime minister (Thaksin), who is living in exile to escape justice in Bangkok.

Sounds perfectly noble, doesn't it? The protestors were well-behaved, articulate, organized and had the best interests of the country in mind. Right?

Not so fast.

The former prime minister who is living in exile is actually wildly popular and was elected in a landslide. He was forced out of office in 2006, not by an election or even a trial, but a coup. The people who are protesting now want him to return.

His successor was likewise elected in a landslide election. Both were successful because they understand one fundamental truth in politics, no matter what the country: There are more poor people than rich people.

Both PMs appealed to the rural poor of Thailand, the farmers and the fishermen. They've been accused of buying votes. A scathing commentary in Forbes magazine during the protest explains how these votes are "bought":

"Thaksin and Somchai are loved by the rural poor whom they have showered with grants and subsidies, some of them venally political in nature, but others more worthy. They have nudged elitist and stuffy Thai banks to open up affordable credit lines to impoverished farmers, which is no small thing given that for generations those same people have languished in misery, forgotten and despised by the urban elites and unable to raise any capital whatsoever outside of ruinous loan sharks."

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/02/thailand-class-airport-oped-cx_lo_1202osborne.html

In other words, sure there were some shenanigans, but they instituted policies that would help the poor become ... not poor.

Thaksin also made the catastrophic mistake of butting heads with the king. Thailand is a monarchy, remember. The people there love the king. It's no act. They literally worship the guy. It is genuine, but they are required by law to do so.

The Thailand constitution says:

"The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action."

The Thai Criminal code further states:

"Whoever defames, insults or threatens the King, Queen or the Heir-apparent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to 15 years."

By all accounts, though, King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been a good leader. He has used his almost literally infinite wealth to sponsor thousands of public works project. (In 2008 Forbes ranked him as the world's richest monarch, with an estimated wealth of $35 billion. Thais will not pass up an opportunity to vigorously dispute this, as they believe that the king's wealth is Thailand's wealth and vice versa.)

During his reign there have been a bewildering succession of coups and changes in government, but the king has managed to remain respectfully above the fray.

Which brings us back to the PAD. They wear gold to show their allegiance to the king. The People's Alliance for Democracy is actually a pro-monarchy group. But you'll only find that crucial nugget at the bottom of news stories, if at all.

“If Thaksin’s puppet government returns or they make any attempt to amend the constitution in Thaksin’s favor or reduce the king’s power, the People’s Alliance for Democracy will come back,” protest leader Sondhi Limthongkul said during the airport strike.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aezhA7mHQmIc&refer=asia

So the story was grossly misinterpreted in the way the media completely missed that this "democratic" organization's goal is to solidify the king's power. The two PMs appeal to the vast numbers of rural poor, so what can the educated/rich/pro-monarchy group do?

They want to take away the vote from poor people.

I am not simplifying or paraphrasing. That is the stated goal of the PAD. A news article says the PAD "is now considering moves to take away the power of the vote from the rural masses, with parliament members to be appointed."

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=420664&publicationSubCategoryId=64

The legislators would be "appointed" by members of certain professions, professions which, not coincidentally, happen to make up the bulk of the PAD.

Surgeon Noppakoon Lagum, one of the airport protestor said: "Rural people have good hearts but they don't know the truth like we do in Bangkok. It is our duty to re-educate them."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081204/ap_on_re_as/as_thailand_political_unrest

It is astonishing that in 2009 a political group can so boldly and nakedly embark on a program to disenfranchise poor people simply because they're poor without anyone even noticing! You have to give the PAD credit for the way they managed the media. They were so well-behaved and so darned reasonable that no one in the media -- not even locally -- bothered to question their motives.

The PAD was able to steer the conversation in such a way that the story became "Look at all these poor stranded tourists!' They were able to engineer the situation in such a way that the media, even the local media, focused on how it was affecting foreigners, and not how it would stand to affect Thais.

Maybe it's because the situation is so hard to simplify into terms Western readers can digest. The Forbes commentary I quote above says "make no mistake that this is class warfare. But forget the usual categories of left and right. This is class war in a consumerist Theravada technocracy ruled by an uneasy mish-mosh of divine kingship, a shadowy military, business interests and inherited money. It is outside Western categories."

I was sure there would be a backlash. When a small minority engineers not one but two coups in as part of a systematic attempt to take away the vote from the vast majority of the people, the people whose votes are threatened are going to react. Again, it's important to remember that both PMs won huge victories in democratic elections. The minority doesn't like the results, so they're going to change the entire system of government.

I am a bit torn on this because I believe -- and I love dropping this conversational hand grenade -- that universal voting rights are a bad idea. The Founding Fathers instituted the Electoral College because they felt the vast majority of the population was quite simply not educated or informed enough to make a responsible choice.

Of course they were all rich, white, educated landowners, aristocrats who felt they were best-suited to run the country. They never in their worst nightmares imagined a scenario in which everyone could vote.

A person can live in a Unabomber shack in the woods and stumble into town once every two or four years and cast completely arbitrary votes. His vote counts the same as mine. If someone votes purely along party lines, without even knowing the names, let alone platforms, of the candidates, her vote counts the same as mine.

Voting is a right but it is also a responsbility. If you do not take it upon yourself to make the most informed decision possible, sorry, you don't get to vote. And yes, this rule would apply to me in some recent elections.

I met a girl last year in Nepal who said she wouldn't vote for Obama because he's a Muslim. If you vote on one issue, you don't get to vote. Period. If you vote on one issue and you are demonstrably wrong about it, you don't get to vote for the rest of your life. The 25 percent of people who still approved of Bush when he left office? No more votes, sorry.

I question whether voting rights should be universal but it's just plain evil to take away votes from poor people simply because they're poor. Wealth, class, profession -- these are not reliable indicators of a person's intelligence or political acumen. There is a certain rich private-school guy who served two terms as president even though he is as dumb as a box of hammers.

Back to the king. When I first arrived in Bangkok much of the city was shut down for a state funeral. The king's sister had died several months before. The official explanation for the delay was a "national period of mourning" or something along those lines. I was told on the sly that the delay may have been due to the king's health, that he was not well enough for full-day of ceremonies. The funeral was delayed until he was up to it.

He turned 81 in December. He traditionally gives a radio address to the nation on his birthday. This year his son, the crown prince, gave the address. Last month he was hospitalized.

The PAD wants to protect the power of the king. The king is truly loved by the people but that doesn't mean future kings will necessarily inherit the goodwill he has built up during his 63-year reign. He is the longest-serving head of state in the world. There hasn't been much for the royal heir to do .

A 2002 issue of The Economist was banned in Thailand for criticizing the crown prince's personal life. He's on his third wife. He put the lèse majesté laws to clever use during his first divorce. He claimed his wife was totally at fault for the failure of their marriage. Because she was forbidden by law of accusing or criticizing him, she was unable to refute his accusations!

So if the PAD achieves its goal it will be just in time to see the king's newly-solidified power pass to the hands of the crown prince, who does not enjoy unquestioning adoration as his father does.

The situation is obviously far too complicated for an American tourist to grasp, although I do think I see the finer points of the controversy better than most of the journalists paid to cover it.

One thing I know for sure: I'm glad I left Thailand when I did!

Things that may interest only me: Sun halo

While on the Koh Phi Phi boat trip I saw an amazing natural phenomenon I can only remember seeing once before, a rainbow around the sun.



It's called a halo. I spent nearly 30 seconds researching the phenomenon through google and learned it is a circular rainbow caused by ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. Ice! It was about 147 degrees Celsius in the sun that day and I'm looking at a rainbow caused by ice?

It covered the whole sky, so there was just no way to get a complete photo of it, especially with a crappy camera, without burning out my eyes in the process. I was blown away even further when a perfect second ring formed.



It was a startling, breathtaking sight, but perhaps more surprising was that no one else on the boat cared! I was sitting in the front of the boat with a bunch of drunken Finns. Maybe they drive to work every day with the Aurora Borealis blazing overhead, and that's why they weren't impressed. Or, more likely, they were too drunk to see it or care.

But as for the rest of the people on the boat ... Do these people live in places where dinosaurs roam freely and volcanoes erupt miles into the atmosphere every day? How could you not be impressed by this?

Sheesh.

Koh Phi Phi

Alex Garland's debut novel "The Beach" is a near-masterpiece. It's a ruthless dissection of backpacker culture. In it a group of backpackers finds the perfect beach, a hidden oasis -- paradise. And then proceed to ruin it.

Garland also wrote the screenplay for the movie. The prodigiously talented Leonardo DiCaprio plays the lead role, which was rewritten as an American for him. It was directed by Danny Boyle, who just won an Oscar for directing "Slumdog Millionaire".

So why is the movie so bad?!

In the book the beach is so perfect partly because it's not visible from the ocean. It's can only be reached by an underwater tunnel or by jumping off an inland waterfall.

The filmmakers had to find the perfect beach in Thailand. They chose Maya Cove on Koh Phi Phi Ley. It's pronounced pee-pee-lay.

Go ahead. I'll wait until you're done giggling.

As I understand it no one used the beach until it was rediscovered for the movie. When permission was granted to the filmmakers to use the island there was much criticism.

No one is complaining now that the island is a cash cow. Thanks to the movie, the secret is out. Paradise is Lost. This is the view from my tour boat backing up to the beach.



Half the beach is lined with boats. The other is crammed with tourists.



Bear in mind that there is no accomodation on the island. These people are all here on day trips.

And no wonder. It is a truly magnificent site. The beach isn't completely concealed, as it is in the book, but it is almost completely encircled by limestone cliffs. The water is pristine. This is the view from the beach.



From Maya Cove we traveled up a channel where the water color is a series of startling greens that seem almost unnatural.



We also stopped by Viking Cove. Apparently even Vikings needed a vacation after months of looting and pillaging. (Actually the cave gets its name from paintings of boats inside that are said to look like Viking ships.)



The scaffolding is for harvesters of swallows' nests, which are used in soups and drinks. I ate a bird's nest in Beijing and it's actually worse than it sounds. The nest isn't made from twigs or bark, it's made of hardened strands of saliva.

Mmm ... bird spit.

Collecting birds' nests is a controversial practice because if you steal a bird's nest it can't breed. Thus no baby birds, thus no more bird's nests. Men climb rickety ladders hundreds of feet in the dark to find them. It's dangerous work, but they fetch a ton of money.

We stopped briefly at a surprisingly nice snorkel site, then had lunch on the biggest of the islands, Koh Phi Phi Don, the bigger of the two principal islands. This is where all the tourist infrastructure is.

The Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 wiped this island clean. Today it's back at full strength, but in the aftermath of the disaster there was absolutely nothing left.

We sat in the front of the boat with a rowdy group of Finns who were all snotslinging drunk. I wish Americans would just spontaneously break into song when we have a few beers in us. Of course, drunken Finns sing Finnish folk songs. Americans would end up singing Bon Jovi or 50 Cent and the world would hate us even more.



I couldn't pronounce their names so I won't attempt to spell them. The two guys on the right are both in severe pain. Can't you tell?

The guy on the right had one of the worst sunburns I've ever seen. He took his shirt off to go snorkeling and everyone on the boat said "Ooohhh". He looked he fell asleep on the beach. For a month.

The guy in the middle has a scar on his right shoulder from a motorbike accident. His shoulder is broken.

Kippis! (Cheers!)

Phuket

This is a tshirt I saw at Karon Beach, on the island of Phuket, in Thailand. Patong is the biggest beach on the biggest island in Thailand.

Here's what you really need to know to understand Phuket: The hotel where I stayed in Phuket had a sign advertising a performance by a Thai Elvis impersonator. We didn't see or hear him, so I can't say if Elvis left or even entered the building.

After a few days at Patong I took a short but hugely expensive cab ride to Karon Beach. There I saw, not one, but two Thai Elvis impersonators, performing on the same night -- a Wednesday!-- not a half mile apart.

In the past nine months I have met hundreds of people who have traveled in Thailand. I have never heard one good thing about Phuket.

It lived down to its reputation.

I will say this: The beaches are gorgeous. The other islands I've visited have narrow beaches that disappear completely at high tide. The beaches on Phuket are long and wide. I flew into the island from Ko Samui and from the air it appeared that most of the island's coastline is beach.

I hesitate to use the word 'touristy' as an insult, as so many travelers do. I am a tourist, after all. When I hear travel snobs say that they don't like a place because it's 'too touristy' or 'there are too many tourists there' I will politely point out that they, as travelers in a country not their own, are, by definition, tourists.

It is possible for a place to give itself over to tourism in a good way. The hiking trails in Nepal are a good example. There much has been done to accommodate tourists while equal efforts are made to protect the environment and protect the local population from exploitation.

Phuket is the exact opposite.



The beaches are nice but they are completely overrun with Eurotrash, Russian nouveau riche and sex tourists from everywhere. People wear horribly inappropriate bathing suits that don't begin to cover enough skin, but yet don't bother to wear sunscreen.

So everywhere you see overweight men in Speedos who look like they spent the last hour standing in a blast furnace. The women you'd like to see topless keep their tops on, of course, but the others made me pause to wonder if the Taliban might be onto something with that burqa thing.

Okay, even I thought that was in poor taste. My point is that while Western travelers in Arabic countries know to dress appropriately few travelers in Phuket bother to learn, or simply don't care, that Thais frown on public nudity. Thais swim fully clothed. They know that tourists wear skimpy clothes on the beach (and the young men love it), but at a certain point it becomes disrespectful.

Therein lies the root of the problem with Phuket. It's not a Thai resort. It's a Western resort that happens to be in Thailand. It could be anywhere.

I was in Bangkok last year during the airport strike. A lot of tourists were able to leave Thailand by finding their way to Phuket and flying out of the international airport there. Direct flights to most major hubs in Europe and the Middle East leave daily.

But when I left Phuket I had to fly through Bangkok to get to Saigon. I'm sure there are flights from Phuket to cities in the region, but in general it's easier to get from Phuket to another continent than it is to hop across the Gulf of Thailand to other countries in Southeast Asia.

There are so many Western restaurants that those that serve Thai food will say so on their signs. Imagine, by way of comparison, going to Italy and seeing restaurants advertising that they serve Italian food!

It's a place for people who want to travel to Thailand without feeling like they're actually in Thailand.

Except for the sex tourists, of course. I saw far more prostitutes with their 'dates' than I've seen anywhere in Thailand. Patong makes Bangkok look like a church social.

After Patong I thought I'd try out another beach, to give the island another chance. Karon Beach is even more beautiful than Patong.



There are fewer sex tourists and more more families. But the per capita age on the beach was still about 115. I felt like I'd stumbled into a Scandinavian retirement community.

Note: I don't have anything against Scandinavians. Some of my best travel buddies hail from the northern climes. I merely point out that there were more businesses catering towards Danes, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians than I've seen anywhere else.

I stayed in a guest house that was roughly equidistant from Karon and another beach, Kata. Kata Beach is also gorgeous and attracts a younger crowd. I didn't feel like I'd stumbled onto the set of 'Cocoon'.



On all three beaches food and drink are ridiculously expensive. In Bangkok I loved eating from street vendors. I could eat a full meal of delicious, freshly-cooked food for less than a dollar. To eat at a nice sit-down restaurant in Bangkok costs from $3-5 per plate.

(I hasten to add I have eaten street food in every country I've been to on this trip and I have never gotten sick from it. I caught a stomach bug for the first time in Patong, where I ate almost entirely in Western-style restaurants.)

Phuket prices are not just expensive by Thailand standards, they're just expensive. In Karon I had a terrible pizza and a terrible fruit shake for $12.

(I've become addicted to fruit shakes. There are usually stands everywhere. They cut up fresh fruit -- mango, coconut, banana, strawberry, or, my personal favorite, watermelon -- and blend it with ice and a little water. It's pretty hard to screw up a fruit shake but this place managed to do it.)

I would have eaten food from street vendors but, here's the thing -- there are none! I'm sure there are in back neighborhoods, but I haven't yet been anywhere in Thailand where I had to go looking for street food, and that includes Chiang Mai, which was the most Westernized place I'd been in Thailand until I came to Phuket.

I've been in some dirty, rundown, scary places on this trip. But Phuket is the worst. It's sleazy, expensive and entirely lacking in character. It's inspiring to see how well it has bounced back after getting clobbered by the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. But I wouldn't come back.

Quick pronunciation guide: The 'Ph' in Thai is pronounced like a P, not an F. (There is actually a difference between the 'hard' P sound and the 'soft' PH sound but to Westerners it's basically the same. And in Thai there is a sound that is somewhere between a G and a K, so the letters can be used interchangeably: gung can be spelled kung, for instance.

So Phuket is pronounced 'poo-GET'. Having been there, I would pronounce it in a more Western manner. The Ph should be an F, the u should be soft, the k should be a k and not a g and should be part of the first syllable and not the second.

Perhaps I'm being too coy, in which case: Phuk-et.

Koh Nang Yuan

Just off the coast of Koh Tao is the island of Koh Nang Yuan. As much as I like the lazy vibe of Koh Tao, the beaches kinda suck. If I had known what I would find just a short longtail boat ride away, I would have skipped the Koh Tao beaches altogether.

San Sebastian is the most gorgeous urban beach I've ever seen. I said at the time that it was so perfect that it looked like it had been designed by a computer graphics artist.

Koh Nang Yuan is the most gorgeous island beach I've ever seen. Like San Sebastian it's hard to believe it's a real place.

This is the view from above.



It's a trio of small islands connected by strips of beach maybe 30 meters wide. The water is crystal clear. And efforts are made to keep it pristine. There is accomodation there, but bottles and cans are not allowed on the beach. There is no trash. If only they had some sort of rule against four young douchebags blaring their crappy music from the sunbeds 20 feet away, it would have been perfect...

There are sandbars that disappear under the high tide, making it look like this little dude with the water wings is walking on water.



One of the tricks to sunbathing is to stay at the proper to the sun. On a normal beach, if you follow the sun, you eventually have to turn so that you're facing away from the action. Here, because the narrow beach has ocean on each side, no matter where the sun is, you're always facing the water!

There is just no way to take a single photo of it that does it any justice. But I couldn't resist taking a pic of this couple in bright yellow and orange crocs.



Even the tropical fish were saying, "Whoa, those things are bright!"

It's a great snorkeling spot. The critters literally come right up to the beach. I'm in calf deep water looking down at a gorgeous, footlong teal parrotfish.



Dark spots in the water turned out to be sea cucumbers, in such profusion that it was difficult to walk without stepping on them.

Here's a shaky video I took with my digital camera from the pier which hopefully gives a better idea of how breathtaking the place is.

Koh Tao

When I first visited Thailand in November I went to the islands of Samui, Pha Ngan and Tao. (Koh means island.) Like Little Red Riding Hood I found Samui to be horribly over-commercialized, Pha Ngan to be a grubby backpacker haven and Tao to be just right.

It's completely given over to tourism, but has a mellow, laidback feel. There's a small road, basically a glorified sidewalk, that runs between the main road and the beach. Most of the dive shops and guest houses can be found along the 'yellow brick road'.



Motorbikes and motorized carts use it, which is a nuisance, but otherwise it makes for a pleasant stroll when you're trying to choose a dive shop or looking for a place to eat.

Koh Tao is also one of the premier diving destinations in Southeast Asia. When I was here last year it was raining and the visibility was poor, but I was looking forward to diving so I went anyway. I aggravated my old back injuries and had to spend a week recuperating in Bangkok.

No such problems, this time around. The weather was hot and sunny. The diving was great. The beaches on all these islands are surprisingly narrow, though. This is the main beach, Hat Sairee, at low tide.



That hump in the distance is Koh Nang Yuan. It's the most gorgeous beach I've ever seen, so it deserves its own post.

Here is the "longtail" boat with our gear which ferried us to the dive boat, in the distance on the left. Even at high tide the water is so shallow you can walk nearly all the way to the boat.



The dive sites were great, but horribly overcrowded at times.



When I dove here last year I went with Ban's Diving Resort, which I didn't care for at all. This time I went with a smaller outfit called Scuba Junction, which I liked a lot. Our divemaster was a local girl named Kay. If you dive on Koh Tao I would recommend you dive with her.

I'm a bit biased because she saved my life. Well, maybe not my life, but she did save me from a berserk titan triggerfish. These fish are territorial, and mean. This one was close to three feet long and seriously pissed off.

What you need to know about triggerfish is how they feed. They bite off chunks of coral, sort out the chewy parts, and then spit out the rest. You do not want to get bitten by a fish that eats rock.

He came after Kay and I. As divemaster its her responsibility to make sure that I make it back to the surface with all of my flesh intact. He came at us several times. We fended him off with our fins. She gestured for me to get behind her. I set chivalry aside for a few moments and obeyed.

He went away. We swam off.

He came back. It took several minutes to finally get him to go away. Topside we talked about the encounter. She said she's been diving in those waters all her life and never seen a triggerfish that aggressive. Normally they just want to scare you off their territory.

On a less stressful note, as required by blogger bylaws, here is the obligatory sunset shot.

My life as a non-sex tourist

Southeast Asia, and Thailand specifically, and Bangkok even more specifically, are famous as destinations for sex tourists. For reasons I won't go into here -- stacks of books have been written on the subject, after all -- the culture here is more tolerant of prostitution. There are few places in the world where a man can walk down the street or sit in a restaurant with a woman (or man) who is obviously a prostitute without inviting public scorn.

Expatriates, or expats, are people who take up residence in a foreign country. Southeast Asia has its own variety, men who move here to enjoy the sex trade. They're called sexpats.

I haven't sampled the wares, so to speak. Honest. But I can't help but wonder what it would be like to be a sex tourist. I see men all over the region traveling with women who -- I'm going to go out on a limb here -- are being paid for their company. They travel with them for days or weeks, to beaches, on boat trips, etc.

How would it feel to be a Western guy walking down the street with a Southeast Asian woman? What kind of looks would I get? (And what the heck do they talk about?!)

Now I know.

Sort of.

While I was visiting the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh I was approached by a Southeast Asian woman. She was friendly, gorgeous and effortlessly glamorous. I had no idea how to react... Something was going on that was beyond my experience.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover she was another solo tourist from Indonesia. She wanted to know if I was having any luck deciphering the map. (I wasn't.) We were both planning on visiting the main tourist sites in Phnom Penh so we spent the day sightseeing together.

Until she mentioned it I had never thought about it, but you just don't see Southeast Asian women traveling alone in Southeast Asia.

Luckily she has a sense of humor, because no matter where she goes in SE Asia she looks just enough like a local that other locals assume she is a prostitute.

We went to a club one night. A guy checked me through security while a woman checked her. The security woman spoke to her in Khmer. I heard her saying "I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm Indonesian." It was like that everywhere she said. Locals speak to her in the local language.

When she pointed out that everyone assumed she was a prostitute I realized that meant that everyone assumed I was a sex tourist! I noticed the looks we got. Because men assumed she was a prostitute they made no secret about looking her up and down and then sizing me up.

There were more prostitutes in the bar than actual customers, and they all gave her nasty looks, presumably because they didn't recognize her and thought she was poaching on their turf.

When she got up to use the toilet or take a photo two or three of the local girls would approach me instantly, trying to arrange a future business transaction.

I had wondered what the girly bars were like in Bangkok but was afraid to check them out. I just wanted to see the inside of one. I had hoped to find a group of people to go with but hadn't had any luck.

I am pretty fearless in some ways. Traveling 5,000 miles on a train through Siberia didn't scare me at all. But there is no way I'd go into a go-go bar by myself. I'd be helpless!

So it was quite a learning experience to visit one with a Southeast Asian woman.

In Nha Trang, Vietnam I met what I thought was a young Vietnamese couple on a boat trip. It turns out they were childhood friends. She had been living in Australia for years and was home visiting friends and family.

I hung out with them for two days until he had to go back to Saigon for work. I hung out with her for two days after he left.

In Vietnam the sex trade isn't as prominent as in Thailand, but it's there. It's not quite as accepted, though. In Bangkok, for instance, hotels and guest houses will charge a fee for any "guest" who stays the night. In Vietnam most guest houses don't allow "guests" at all.

My Vietnamese friend is a gorgeous young woman. She was concerned about how people would react to seeing us together. We were just eating, drinking and sitting on the beach together, but she's obviously Vietnamese, and I'm obviously not, so we did get some looks.

So now I know how it feels to be a sex tourist in Southeast Asia. Except without the sex.

Somehow, somewhere, something went terribly wrong....

Bangkok, at last

I have now been through Bangkok seven times. I'm convinced that when I die, whether I go to Heaven or Hell, I'll have to fly through Bangkok to get there.

I purposely put off sightseeing in the city because I knew a friend from the States would be visiting in February. I decided to wait to check out the city with her.

The defining physical feature of the city is the Chao Praya river. Millions of people live, work or commute on the river. We took the ferry from where we were staying (Silom, the financial district) to the Royal Palace.

It is, literally, a place fit for a king. The king doesn't live here, however. He moved into another palace after his brother -- who would have been king -- was found shot to death here in 1946. The 'case', for lack of a better term, has never been solved. You absolutely, positively do NOT mention the subject in Thailand.

The palace is a huge, sprawling complex, an ostentatious and display of both wealth and reverence for the Buddha. The grounds are a maze of temples and monuments so lavishly decorated that it's hard for the eyes and brain to process it all.

As soon as you enter you are greeted with a riot of colors and shapes.



Look at how much effort goes into maintaining the trees that line the walkways.



Among the buildings is the most sacred temple in Thailand, Wat Phra Kaew, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The temple houses a highly-prized sculpture of the Buddha (which is actually made of jade) which has bounced around Southeast Asia for centuries. Both Laos and Cambodia claim to be its rightful resting place.

Taking photos within the temple is forbidden so here's a blurry shot of the statue from just outside the door.



The statue has three official sets of clothing, for summer, winter and going to the gym. The image is so revered that the king himself attends the ceremony during which the clothes are changed.

The Thais and Khmers have been at each others' throats for centuries. Thais tend to look down on their Cambodian neighbors as being a bit coarse, so it's a bit of a sticking point that the biggest tourist attraction in Southeast Asia and one of the world's most awesome architectural monuments is in Cambodia. (I've seen the ruins of the Thai kingdoms, and they're like outhouses by comparison.)

So, apropos of nothing, there's a giant model of Angkor Wat in the Palace.



From there we went to Wat Pho, the largest temple in Bangkok. It is also known as Wat Phra Chetuphon, or Temple of the Reclining Buddha, because of an enormous, breathtaking statue. The tourist standing to the left of the statue gives some idea of the scale.



It's 46 meters long, 15 meters high and is covered in gold plating, except for the eyes and soles of the feet, which are covered in mother of pearl. When you try to squeeze yourself and it into a picture you begin to understand how big it is.



You can also get a massage on the grounds, which seemed a bit shocking, until you realize that the temple is also believed to be the birthplace of traditional art of Thai massage. No 'happy ending' here...

Saigon, Round Two

I had planned on flying to Buenos Aires the day my friend from the States flew back home, but I decided instead to return to Vietnam. (I had purchased a multi-entry visa with this possibility in mind.)

I only got to see Saigon and Nha Trang on my previous visit here. I want to see more of the country, especially Halong Bay, which is in the north. So I'll take a couple weeks to travel up the coast. From there ... we'll see.

It may be too late to do the two things I most want to do in Argentina: hike in Patagonia and check out the wildlife on Peninsula Valdes. So maybe I'll spend the rest of the trip in Southeast Asia. There's still plenty to see and do here. Plus, it's kinda cool having a tan for the first time in, oh, 15 years!

I had always planned on making Machu Picchu the last major stop on the trip, for sentimental reasons. So I'll probably just do a shortened version of my original planned itinerary for South America. A travel buddy I met in Morocco just moved to Buenos Aires, so it would be foolish to not go.

Ask me tomorrow and I'll have a different plan...

I've decided to set aside tomorrow to get caught up on the blog, email and other computer nerd stuff. I think I have 12 or 15 posts swimming around in my head, so I foresee a long day at the coffee shop...

In the meantime, here's a picture taken from Maya Cove on Koh Phi Phi Leh, the beach used in the crappy movie "The Beach".



The beach itself is maybe 150 meters long. Just to the right of this picture are, oh, about 10,000 tourists. I am exaggerating, but not by much.

Khao San Road

From Vientiane I took an overnight bus to Bangkok. We took a tuk-tuk to the Friendship Bridge, which connects Laos and Thailand across the Mekong. There we hopped on our VIP bus, went through customs, and stopped for dinner. We actually ate a reasonable hour, instead of 1:30 a.m., as we did on the Phonsavan-Vientiane trip.

The trip was wonderful. There were only 15 people on the bus, so we each had our own row of fully reclining seats. I was told we'd arrive on Khao San Road in Bangkok at 6:20 a.m. That's early, but not too bad, since Khao San is a nuthouse, and I was confident I could find a room at one of the bazillion guest houses there.

We arrived at 4:15 a.m. The tuk-tuk drivers were waiting for us. There were three for every person on the bus, and I am not exaggerating.

But more to the point, I was pissed, and a little scared. There isn't a city on God's green earth that I want to wander around at 4:15 a.m. I found the only bus in the world that arrives over two hours early.

Luckily, guest houses there are accustomed to admitting guests at all hours, so I was able to find a place. Actually, I just followed two cute girls I met on the bus who knew of a place and invited me along, so I can't really claim to have done much of anything except be a slave to my hormones.

On my previous stays in Bangkok I slept in the financial district, called Silom. I've never seen so many banks. It's clean and quiet, close to shopping but not much else. (It's is close to Patpong, one of the most famous stretches of go-go bars, but I haven't been brave enough to venture there.)

To really experience Bangkok as a backpacker you have to visit Thanon Khao San, the legendary tourist ghetto. (It's where Leonardo DiCaprio stayed in the awful film version of "The Beach".) It and Thamel in Kathmandu are the most famous backpacker hangouts in the world. I've been to both and I think Khao San actually has a higher concentration of dreadlocks.

It lived up to the hype. Here it is during the day, before it gets crazy.



There are shops along the street. And shops in front of them on the sidewalk. And shops in front of them on the street. And shops in front of them. And vendors in the street.

I love Thai food but I'm not a big fan of pad thai, the staple food here. But you can buy it from street vendors about every 50 feet for 20 to 30 baht (less than a
dollar).



At night makeshift bars open everywhere. Draft bars are set up in front of 7-11s.



Other entrepreneurial souls roll bars onto the sidewalk and set up plastic stools.



Here is a businessman who truly understands how to market to his target demographic.



Of course I had to buy a beer from him.

There was a New Year celebration in the street, featuring an acrobat in a dragon suit performing on a pole four stories above the street.



But the stars were ... elephants! These were the three most amazing elephants I've ever seen. When I was in Nepal I thought the mahouts were unnecessarily cruel. Now I know. These elephants did some pretty fantastic tricks, and it wasn't clear what the mahouts were doing or saying to get them to do it. The mahouts in Nepal were constantly kicking and whacking the elephants. These mahouts got their elephants to perform with just a word or a scratch behind the ear.

Here is the smallest one, and by far the most fun to watch, handing the mahout a donation from a tourist.



There were a group of hippies banging on drums, usually something I run away from like my hair's on fire, but this mahout had his elephant bobbing its head up and down to the beat. But he also had it lift its front leg and opposite back leg, then switch to the opposite legs, so it looked for all the world like the elephant was dancing to the music.

(Elephants are physically incapable of jumping, so this can't be an easy trick to teach.)

I never felt like the mahouts I saw in Nepal were truly in control of their animals. This guy was on a crowded, noisy city street at night, with neon light everywhere and camera flashes going off (elephants have poor eyesight), and yet it was clear he was in absolute control. It was really fun to watch.

The Durian

There are hotels in Southeast Asia that prohibit guests from bringing durians into the building. They are forbidden on airplanes and some public transport systems. They're nearly impossible to find in popular tourist areas because they don't want tourists to have them. And truth be told, most tourists don't want them anyway.

This is a picture I pulled off the web, from Singapore.



On the sign it looks like a hand grenade but the durian is a fruit. The reason they're restricted is because of the smell. It's incredibly powerful and lingers for days. Everyone has an opinion. Most of them are bad. Anthony Burgess, the British author of "A Clockwork Orange," said it's "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory." Travel writer Richard Sterling says "its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock".

But I wanted to see, smell and taste for myself. I could not and find them in Bangkok. Here is a stack of them at a market in Luang Prabang, Laos.



The things are huge, up to a foot long and as heavy as seven pounds. Workers wear hard hats when harvesting, in case one falls, because not only are they heavy, they're covered with sharp spines. Farmers kick them into baskets rather than pick them up.

The photo above is from Laos but I actually tried durian in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I stumbled across them by accident. I had walked to the US consulate, and was walking back through a residential neighborhood when I saw a stall selling them. I confirmed that it was durian and made my purchase.

Inside are two loaf-shaped hunks of meat, about the size of a small sub roll. I bought a package of two small loaves for 100 baht, or about three bucks. The couple I bought it from were amused by my purchase. As I walked down the street three Thais pointed at the bag, asked "Durian?" and walked away laughing. They knew what I had in store...

To me it smells like rotten onions. Anyone who knows me that I'm a pretty adventurous eater but I absolutely can not abide the taste or smell of onions. But I did force myself to eat a few bites. The texture was smooth, like a custard, perhaps, and the taste was surprisingly mild, somewhat nutty with notes of vanilla.

I wanted my German photographer friend Michael to have a taste so I left it in my room for a few hours. Big mistake. When I got back the room smelled like an outhouse. Michael has seen more of the world than anyone I've met so he's pretty hard to surprise, but when he took his first whiff he literally gagged!

There are dozens of varieties of the fruit, each with its own special character. People that like durians love durians. But I don't expect to eat one ever again.

There is another fruit called the jack fruit which looks much like the durian, but has smaller pockets of meat inside. Oh, and the jack fruit is actually edible. I've met many tourists here who think they've experienced durian but have actually eaten jack fruit. Trust me, you'll know when it's a durian.

Happy New Year!

I booked a deal through my guest house in Chiang Mai to get to Laos. A minivan picked me up there in the morning and drove me to Chiang Khong, a small town on the Thailand-Laos border. I was given accomodation in a decent guest house overlooking the Mekong River, three meals, a taxi to the dock, a ferry to Laos, a taxi to the dock on the Laos side, and two days on the slow boat, all for about $50.

People have suggested I write a book about the trip. If I were, I think it would be about how disappointingly easy it's been. I've read that even a few years ago this was a tricky border crossing. It took me about five minutes to arrange door-to-door service, and I didn't even need to leave my guest house.

A few of us at the guest house decided to walk through town and find a place to grab a beer. We heard music coming from a parking lot a bit off the road so we wandered down, into a raging karaoke party.

Apparently the local power company was having it's Lunar New Year celebration. Notice that even though they work in a fairly remote corner of Thailand their uniforms are printed in English.



I think. It was hard to tell because I don't speak Thai, they didn't speak English, and they were all snotslinging drunk. Plates and empty beer and whiskey bottles were piled on picnic tables, so it seemed they had been going at it for a long time.

They managed to convince some of the tourists to get onstage and sing karaoke. It was one of those weird surreal travel moments, being on the Thai-Lao border watching three Germans sing John Denver's "Country Roads" in English.



They were generous with their alcohol. They tried to give me whiskey, but I said I'd prefer beer. So someone handed me a glass of ice, then poured warm beer over it. Mmm...

Then they poured the whiskey over the beer.

What's the Thai word for "hangover"?

Mardi Gras, Thailand-style

I really knew it was time to leave Chiang Mai when I saw the sign for this convention.



You know how crazy things can get when the International Workshop on Sustainable Management of Disused Sealed Radiation Sources gets together.

Chiang Mai

From Lampang I went to Chiang Mai, the tourist hub for northern Thailand. Everyone that I've met whose been there loved it. I met a retired American couple in Lampang and a retired American man in Siem Reap who had gone to Chiang Mai for a visit and ended up buying homes there. So I was excited to get there.

And really disappointed when I did. It's a great town for ex-pats, with lots of Western-style restaurants, Starbucks, bookstores, etc. But it could be a town anywhere. It didn't feel like Thailand. It felt pretty sleazy, in fact.

There wasn't much I was interested in doing. It's the jump-off point for lots of outdoorsy type things like rafting and rock climbing, but the main reason people go there is to go hiking to visit the hill tribes.

There are groups of non-Thai ethnic groups living in the hills trying to maintain some semblance of a traditional lifestyle. But they've also figured out that there is money to be made by making themselves available to tourists. From what I've read, and heard from people who have been there, is that the encounters with these people feel staged (which they are), and that they are being exploited by the tourist companies.

For instance, there's one particular group that tourists love to see because the girls there wear a stack of metal rings around their necks. As they get older, they add more rings, so their necks become abnormally long. This obviously causes serious health risk, because the neck becomes too long and weak to support the head on its own. The practice was apparently falling by the wayside, until the tourists started showing up. Now the practice is back in full. I didn't want to contribute to that.

So everywhere in Chiang Mai you see travel agents with signs outside advertising treks to "Visit Longneck Karen", Karen being the name of the tribe. But I can't help but imagine a longnecked woman named Karen sitting in her living room watching TV while a parade of tourists passes through. Now THAT I'd pay to see.

Since time is becoming a factor, I decided to get out of Chiang Mai and head to Laos.

Elephants!

I hadn't planned on going to Lampang, but Michael, the German photographer, said he was going there for a day, mostly to check out the Elephant Conservation Institute, so I tagged along The complex serves a number of purposes. It puts on elephant shows for tourists, of course. Here is one of them painting.



I bought this piece of art. The lesson here, as always: I am a dork. (Or a ding-dong, as my friend Kellda so aptly called me, after I explained how I messed up my plans to visit her home country of Vietnam.)

The facility also offers multi-day courses where tourists can learn to be mahouts, or elephant drivers. The elephants perform with the mahout trainees on their backs.

It also has (so they say) the world's first elephant hospital, and offers a mobile clinic with which they will treat a wounded or sick elephant free of charge. This poor old girl was rescued after she stepped on a landmine and nearly died of infection.



She may have lived but her left front leg is horribly twisted, making it difficult for her to walk. But without this facility she would be dead.

It was a geeky, touristy way to spend a day, but seriously, who doesn't love elephants? They're endlessly fascinating. And it was quite touching to watch how gentle and patient they were with the Thai schoolchildren visiting the camp.



Here I am feeding one a banana.



The town of Lampang was pleasant enough, and the Riverside Guest House was fantastic, but the main sights to see are temples, but, quite frankly, I've seen enough temples. I did ride a bike just a bit outside of town to visit Wat Chedi Sao Lang, known for its 20 golen chedis, or monuments. It was worth the trip. There were a number of groups of schoolchildren but we were the only tourists there. And the temple itself was unlike any other we had seen.



It is customary here to remove your shoes before entering a temple (or a home) so all the kids' shoes are piled up at the foot of the stairs. And guarding them are just a few of the many stray dogs at the temple.



This place had perhaps the highest concentration of stray dogs I've seen since I've been traveling, and that, my friends, is saying something. Maybe it's because here, at a Buddhist temple, they don't have to worry about getting run over or kicked. Or maybe it's just a nice place to lie in the sun.