Chiang Mai Is For The Birds

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Chiang Mai

Whether by myself, with friends, or just with Noom, I always stay within walking distance of the Tha Pae Gate when visiting Chiang Mai. Usually, just across the street at what once was called The Montri and is now trying to brand itself as the Hotel M. It is a convenient, centralized location with plenty of restaurants, bars, and night life. And the plaza just in front of the gate is a great place to kick back and people watch. It may not quite rival St. Mark’s Square in Venice, but it’s also a good place to commune with pigeons.

Even when travelling alone I manage to spend a few hours on the plaza. When travelling with Noom, there’s little chance of missing that pleasure. If there is an hour or two to kill he always wants to go feed the birds. Even if we’ve already done that several times during that trip already. The food sold by an old guy in a rickety cart is supposed to be for the fish in the moat; sometimes they get a bit of Noom’s attention but the birds always get the bulk of food. I don’t think it’s so much that he prefers birds over fish, but rather once he has a humongous flock of birds surrounding him, some little kid will come along and want to play. Noom wears the child within him on his sleeve. It’s one of the things I love about him.

There is a 7/11 across the street from the plaza, and another just down the street from Hotel M. They are about the same distance away from the hotel. When we are in the room and I decide I need something from 7/11, Noom always asks which one I’m going to. If it’s the one down the street, he rolls over for nap. If it’s the store across from the plaza, he goes with me. At least as far as the plaza. Then while I pick up whatever it was I needed, he buys a bag of fish food and starts playing with the birds. On those occasions, it’s a quick feeding frenzy. He’s done by the time I get back.

Knowing that feeding fish and birds is a form of merit making, at least at temples, I asked him once, “Merit making?”

His answer was short and to the point. “No,” he said. “It fun.”

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Noom Meets The Dragon Lady

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Markets & Shopping

It was a battle of epic proportions. Not a knock down drag out Mike Tyson bites your ear off type of fight; it wasn’t so much about blows being traded. At least not physical ones. But ego, face, status – those all suffered damage as did the psyche. And even when it is mental not physical damage being inflicted, in Bangkok, when blood is spilled someone has to pay. It’s amazing how often that someone is my wallet.

The battle between good and evil is the stuff of legends. The story, as on-going as it may be, is as old as the hills. It is the basis of the myths we’re taught as religion, the fables we’re told as children to teach us right from wrong and the consequence of choosing the wrong path. It is what moves every piece of literature ever written, it serves as the basic story structure of every play ever performed. Hollywood has never awarded an Oscar to any movie that failed to triumph good over evil, and dressing the good guy in a white hat and the villain in black is always a must to ensure the audience knows who to root for. It is the storyline of every war ever fought, and thanks to the victor being blessed with the right to write history, good always prevails while evil slinks off to lick its wounds waiting for its next opportunity to do the devil’s work. It’s America and apple pie versus Islamic extremists who are only interested in the virgins they will be rewarded with in the afterlife. It’s Wall Street versus those strange Occupy folk; Newt, Michele, Sarah, The Donald, and Hannity against the man from Kenya. And on a tiny street in Bangkok where the gods of consumerism hold sway, it was the story of an angelic bar boy and the draconian black heart known as the Dragon Lady of Khaosan Road.

Noom – my bar boy friend and current love of my life – for the record, is not into wearing hats. So even for literary purposes I can’t dress him in a white one for this tale. But then Thais have never made convincing cowboys, and Noom’s skin tight T-shirt, hugging every muscle in his chest and arms to show off a build that could only be wrought with the gods’ blessings was blinding white, a dazzling apparition reflecting the rays of the hot afternoon sun. So the vision still works. And since all heroes must have a fault, Noom allowed his T-shirt to do double duty with its bold black print proudly proclaiming ‘I’m Not Gay But My Boyfriend Is’, a joke that I knew he wouldn’t quite get but would succumb to displaying out of the fondness for English that he shares with his countrymen regardless of any slogan’s meaning or lack thereof. Sidekicks to The Man in White, at least according to Hollywood, are supposed to be on the side of good too. In real life, sometimes they are demented and a necessary evil. But then what farang isn’t?

When I hit town and hook up with Noom he moves in for the duration. Whether that is for a few days or a month or more, we pretty much spend 24/7 together. If I have places to go and people to see for business, which I almost always do, Noom tags along. Unless shopping is involved that can be boring for him. But he’s a trooper. And being bored to death is part of what he feels is his duty in taking care of me. I suspect as honor bound to our relationship as he is, that 80% of my business does in fact include shopping has a lot to do with his constant attention to my needs. Still, I try to get a lot of that work out of the way within the first day or two of a trip, before we hook up and he no longer has a choice in the matter. Doing battle with the Dragon Lady is almost always a part of my business, though when the two of us go head to head it isn’t so much about good versus evil as it is about our never-ending effort of agreeing to a lose-lose proposition. Ours is a dysfunctional relationship with both of us viewing the other as the parasite on our respective back. But it familiar and it works.

The Dragon Lady owns a small wholesale silver shop on Khaosan Road. Staffed by minions of the devil, and overseen by Her Surliness herself, the establishment doesn’t exist to turn a profit but rather provides the Dragon Lady with a lair in which to maul her prey out of eyesight of the passing hordes who nonetheless from some basic atavistic instinct tend to steer clear, often inexplicability crossing the road to safe passage on the other side of the street. Rumor has it that she served as the model for the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

Even a willing as I am to deal with the devil when it comes to turning a buck, I too would avoid the Dragon Lady like the plague that she is, but she carries a small silver bead that no one else in town stocks, and unfortunately, by accident, it became an integral though largely unnoticed part of the line of jewelry I manufacture. I have no doubt that in her succubus form she visited me in my sleep one night, implanting that cruel design in my head where it would fester until it forced me to her small shop’s doors. Too late now, the devil’s pact was agreed to and every visit I make to Bangkok includes paying homage at her self-built shrine. But that’s my bad karma. To date, Noom had lucked out. Though he had accompanied me to Khaosan on several trips in the past, he’d never had the joy of feeling the Dragon Lady’s talons encircle his heart, had never experienced the blackness of her heart that was so deep it made midnight jealous.

Perhaps it was the Dragon Lady’s version of a siren’s song, an other worldly enticement that could only be heard by soi dogs and the foolish, a plea born from the depths of hell for fresh meat and new souls to ravage that caused Noom’s first visit to her store. Maybe it was some failing of his in a previous life that finally demanded to be tallied. I’d hate to think my karma is so bad that it would suck those I love to their doom too, but there is always that. More than likely, because the gods are neither good or evil but endlessly bored and enjoy watching the tribulations of mankind, it was probably nothing more than a cosmic joke that would allow fate to determine who would be the punch line. A bar boy and a Dragon Lady walk into a bar . . . somehow you know slapstick will be the comedic device chosen, that as yet unnamed in the prank it’d be my ass that got bitch slapped.

Being known by sight by a demon is never a good idea. Unfortunately, the Dragon Lady knows me. Or perhaps just scents a familiar fear when I walk through her door. On good days my appearance on her door step is met with indifference. But those days are few and far between. More often my greeting is the sight of her aged mouth scrunched into a disapproving pout, her entire face puckered like a dog’s ass sucking on lemons. If we are to do business, rather than waste her vocal chords on the undeserving, she waves me in summoning me to her perch behind an ancient desk overflowing with invoices that is tucked into the darkest recess of her narrow store. Where she will rape my wallet into an inch of its life. If not, when my money is of little concern to her world, she stops me with a banshee’s cry, “You no shop here today!”

But that’s a story I’ve told before.

On this fateful day before she could decide which version of fucking with me would be the most pleasurable, The Man In White (With The Gay Slogan On His Chest) stepped out from behind me and let loose with one of his more dazzling smiles, the one in which his entire face takes part in bestowing a welcoming benevolence on all in its path. And with a simple, “Sawadee kap!” the Dragon Lady was fucked.

Goodness, even in its bar boy from, was not something the Dragon Lady was used to dealing with. Being forced to consider respective status while in her own domain was a foriegn experience for her. And it fouled her mood even though as with all Thais her ability to assign this strange creature’s role in society moved at a speed that would make a Cray computer weep. But it was a tough call nonetheless. She had him on age (though that was always a given since true evil existed even before the creation of the earth). As a businesswoman, even if that was only a disguise, she probably ranked higher too. Her wealth surrounded her and certainly was of higher value than that displayed on his every finger and draped around his neck (though those disturbing flashes of gold in her world of silver gave pause). His trump card however was that he was with a farang, a feat the Dragon Lady could never pull off since most farang are taught the dangers of ugly old crones as children. Worse yet, in the world of Thai the lesser creature always takes the initiative to pay honor when it is due, and this strange apparition was just standing there beaming out that accursed light that was causing her minions to quake and giving her the mother of all headaches at the same time.

Ambivalent over the lack of greeting he’d received, with bling on display Noom got busy pouring over her store of riches looking for the choicest pieces to plunder. The Dragon Lady’s devil spawn in their guise of shop clerks followed closely at his heels mindful of their fate should a dastardly customer pilfer their good lady’s riches. Noom, who usually makes best friends for life with any store clerk at any shop ignored them until he found a piece he liked. Then, turning to the closest one, he dropped the piece into her hand and waved her off in a manner so imperious the Dragon Lady was stunned, speechless and gazing in awe and admiration.

One of her minions tittered. The Dragon Lady shot her a withering glance that caused her to burst into flames, sending her soul back to the bowels of hell where it had been born. Noom casually selected a second piece of bling and dropped it over his shoulder, assuming one of the surviving devil spawn would make a life sacrificing dive to catch it and add it to his growing pile of goods. Game on.

Noom and I have rules regarding his shopping while I’m conducting business. We’ve never discussed them, never laid them out, never acknowledged they exist, but both studiously comply with them nonetheless. There is a limit on how much of my money he can spend, based on the amount of time I take and the amount of goods I purchase for business. And the bling we buy to adorn his body instead of my store’s shelves is all about me, not him. Because the more I buy for business, the cheaper his bling will be. So it’s not about buying him stuff. It’s about me saving money. And saving me money is what he’s all about. We had not spent that much time in the store, and while the pile of silver I’d picked out wasn’t small, Noom had certainly watched me buy much more on other occasions. Regardless, from the amount of bling he’d picked out for himself it looked like he planned on saving me a hell of a lot of money that day.

The one rule we have that we have discussed, which took every ounce of tact on my part in establishing, is that when it comes time to barter over price Noom is supposed to make himself scarce. As inbred as haggling over a purchase as it is in Thais, as shoppers they suck at it. Big time. So Noom allows me to indulge myself as long as we both acknowledge that he could get the better deal. Even though he can’t. But when you are operating inside of a black hole, all bets are off, the normal rules do not apply. When it came time to settle up with the Dragon Lady, Noom stepped up to the plate.

“How Mut?” he asked sweetly with yet another blinding smile while flicking his hand in a circular motion over our respective piles of silver, a casual indication of indifference that could have meant all of it, or the desk too, even possibly the entire shop and the Dragon Lady’s lair to boot.

Silver at wholesale pricing is by the gram; it is a discounted price by weight in recognition of quantity bought. No problemo. Except Noom’s pile comprised single pieces, which too would be priced by weight but at a much higher rate. The Dragon Lady reached down, separating the two piles while her mind fulminated on a price to quote that would bring the most profit while not scaring the sale away. Noom wasn’t buying it. At least not in the sense of one from column A and one from column B. He pushed the two piles back together before she could come up with a starting price. And flashed the Dragon Lady a smile that should have caused the scales on her back to shudder.

Nostrils flaring and so upset at the affront that she forgot to hide the smoke spewing forth from them, the Dragon Lady sputtered out a baht per gram price as ridiculous as those charged foolish backpackers out on the street. My heart dropped in anticipation of the damage about to be inflicted on my wallet. From past experience, and the reason why we do not allow Noom to barter, I knew his countermove would be to agree to that price. But he didn’t. Instead he picked up the most expensive piece of bling he’d selected, set it to the side and then indicating the remaining pile of silver asked again, and just as sweetly, “How mut?”

The Dragon Lady reared back in astonishment. What kind of black magic bartering was this? You don’t get a better per gram price by buying less, you get it by buying more. She looked at Noom, hoping for a clue and completely flummoxed over his odd method of bargaining. She looked at me, hoping I’d be a source of reason and explain to The Man In White that this was not how it was done. She looked at her minions, daring any one of them to find the least bit of enjoyment in her predicament. And Noom calmly removed a second costly piece of bling from the pile, goading her with another polite enquiry, “How mut?”

The temerity of Noom’s move left the Dragon Lady feeling more frustrated than an Amish electrician. Looking as happy as a bulldog chewing on a wasp, she fell in line with his unusual form of negotiations and lowered her asking price. With an expression as blank as a dead man’s mind, Noom ignored that she’d even made an offer and moved even more of his bling to the side, asking once again, “How mut?”

David took on Goliath with nothing more than a small rock. Little Red Riding Hood trounced the big bad wolf despite the big teeth that he had. James Stewart fired a single shot to kill Lee Marvin (even though it was John Wayne’s bullet that did the deed). The basic goodness of the Autobots will always prevail over the Decepticons despite Shia LaBeouf being an ungrateful little bitch with a not very impressive penis. I routinely went one on one with the Dragon Lady and still always overpaid for my goods, at least when she would allow it. Noom fought the good fight never acting as though he was doing anything other than making a routine purchase. The pricey pile of bling we started with slowly diminished with each offer the Dragon Lady put forth until none of the jewelry Noom had picked out was left. And I ended up scoring the best rate I’d ever gotten out of the Dragon Lady for the silver that we did buy from her that day.

“Why you buy from her?” Noom asked me as we strolled away from the Dragon Lady’s store, leaving her to take out her displeasure on the minions who served her in hell. I started to explain about the bead she sold that I couldn’t find elsewhere. He wasn’t interested. “She not good,” he said, the first inkling he’d given for his motivation in bartering with her. I’ve seen Noom upset over being slighted, both imagined and real, but he had not felt his ego had suffered at her hands. I’ve seen Noom incensed when some fellow countryman of his failed to treat him in the manner he expects Thais to treat Thais, but that wasn’t the case either. “She tink you too easy,” he informed me, the fault possibly mine but the slight as much of a blow had it been directed toward him.

“You not shop here witout me now,” he said settling the matter for any future dealings I might have with the Dragon Lady. And for once I wisely followed his advice. I do as much business with the old bitch as I ever had, but my participation is no longer required. I take Noom with me when I visit Khaosan Road, and then patiently wait out on the street while he deals with the devil on my behalf. Ours is still a dysfunctional relationship, even more so now. And it works even better.

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Going Native In Bangkok

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Bangkok, Scams

But then sometimes a little evil is a good thing.

Generally, I’m an upstanding citizen. My moral compass may have a slightly different north than yours, but – within reason – I’m honest, loyal, trustworthy, and all that other good stuff the Boy Scouts wanted me to be. As long as you overlook the gay thing. In business, I have a rep for being both honest and fair. And while many have trouble working their little minds around it, I say what I mean, shoot straight from the hip, and my word is sacrosanct. That doesn’t mean I won’t take advantage of a situation when it is to my advantage to do so, but even then it depends more on the person I’m dealing with than it does on the profits I may make. I take great pleasure in scoring a win against blowhards and know it alls. Fleecing the exceptionally stupid too appeals to me. Everyone else is safe. Okay, so maybe my moral compass’ north is where south is on yours. But my friend Noom tells me I’m a good man, so that’s what I’m going with.

I’ve written before – more than once – about the scams that await the unsuspecting touri in Bangkok. Each time I’ve done so I’ve pointed out that the best way to avoid being scammed is to reign in your greed. Greed plays an integral part in any scam. The chance to get something for free or at an unbelievably low price is what makes you overlook all of the warning signs that would otherwise tell you to flee. So when I say ‘exceptionally stupid’ I really mean ‘greedy little bastard who should know better’. And to a lesser degree, since all of the traditional scams in Bangkok are so well known, anyone who doesn’t do just a tiny bit of pre-trip research and then for failing to do so falls victim to a scam has it coming. Walking blindly into a scam that everyone knows about is stupid.

Now you may consider the locals who run these scams to be dishonest. I don’t. There may be a good deal of subterfuge involved, but when it comes down to it – when your money becomes their money – seldom are you getting anything less than what you agreed to. Take the Grand Palace Is Closed Scam for example. Yes, the Grand Palace isn’t closed, but the 50 baht tuk tuk tour of several wats is a real bargain; you get more than what you pay for with that part of the scam. Yes, the professional gentleman you happen to meet while touring one of those wats who clues you into the money you can make by buying gems and jewelry in Bangkok and then reselling them back home is a lying sack of shit. But then if you take business advice from strangers you meet on the street . . . well, I guess it’s your call whether you are greedy or just plain stupid. And then when you are delivered to the huge jewelry store where you are offered incredible savings on expensive pieces of bling of which you have no knowledge as to its value . . . seriously? Minus greed at work, would you make a purchase like that back home?

Did you get what you paid for?

The part of that scam where money exchanges hands is the purchase of jewelry. Where the unsuspecting feel they’ve been scammed is in that they bought a piece they were led to believe was worth a few thousand dollars that they were getting for a few hundred when its retail value is much lower. I’d agree it was a scam if you were sold a piece of glass instead of a gem, or the metal was plated instead of real gold or silver. But that’s not what happens. What happens is your greed allows you to grossly overpay for a cheap piece of bling. And whose fault is that?

Ditto for the suits for 99 baht tailor shops where your custom tailored clothing doesn’t include even a single fitting. You paid a cheap price for a tailor-made outfit and you got a cheap outfit worth every penny you paid. That’s not a scam, that’s greed and stupidity at work. And an Indian tailor. It is no different than paying $100 for a $10 fake Rolex. The vendor cleaned up, but you agreed to the price. And I don’t consider that dishonesty on the part of the vendor.

So it’s not surprising that I found myself one day while visiting the Weekend market helping a vendor who I’d done business with before to scam a touri who was just asking for it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do they say. It just so happens I was in Bangkok instead so I decided to go native. And fleece a touri.

Thai handcrafts made in Vietnam:
Scam, not a scam, or time to book a flight to Saigon?

The vendor is a little old Thai lady who speaks no English. Her small shop is filled with dazzling displays of cut gems and a little bit of finished jewelry. She also sells rough (un-faceted / un-polished) gems. The first time I bought from her the initial price per gram she quoted by using her calculator was laughable. So I did. And then promptly pecked out a figure as ridiculous as hers has been. Which gave her a good laugh too. Game on.

I enjoy bartering with Thais. They have a good time with it and seldom get angry as long as you are working toward a common goal. No claim to buttress your price is too outrageous. In fact, you’ll gain points – and a lower price – for originality. Using the sick or dying relative card before they get the chance to is greatly appreciated too. In this case, once she realized it wasn’t just for the sake of haggling but that I knew the value of what she was selling, we came to a price with which we were both happy. And we were both happy with each other. I’ve visited her tiny store on every trip I’ve made to Bangkok since then, and as soon as she spots me she pulls out trays of treasures she knows I’ll be interested in. Which means, I’m sure, regardless of the great deal I assume I managed to barter for on that initial visit, in her mind I payed far more than I should have.

On one visit, a middle-aged touri from Brazil was busy inspecting a tray of cut green stones while the old lady and I were busy cracking each other up with far-flung prices and tales of woe. I never understand her stories, I doubt if she understands mine. But the general gist is obvious from the vocal tones we use and the faces we make while taking turns punching out new numbers on her ancient little calculator. The lady from Brazil was impressed. And then, assuming she could speak English in front of the vendor without her understanding what she said, asked me if the woman was a thief or if she could be trusted.

A different kind of uncut gem.

Huh. Now you could ask me if a price was fair, you could ask me what the value of a stone was, you could ask me if I thought a particular stone was a bargain at the price you were haggling toward. Asking me if someone I like is a thief isn’t a good move. And then compounding your error by showing your greed and stupidity in one fell swoop . . . okay, so maybe my moral compass’ arrow fell off a few years ago.

I told the touri that I’d been doing business with the lady for years in reply to her question about the vendor’s honesty. Then, holding up the stone she was interested in she asked me, “Is this emerald real?”

Not that I’m that pedantic , but usually when I get the ‘is it real?’ question my reply is, “No, it is a figment of your imagination.” This time I shot a quick look at the old lady. Who managed to keep a straight face while her eyes implored me not to kill her sale. She does not speak English, but does know the English names of stones and undoubtedly knows the difference between an emerald and a piece of tourmaline. Taking advantage of someone’s stupidity is one thing, purposely mis-identifying a stone is another. I asked the touri what the vendor had told her and her reply was, “She doesn’t speak English, she just used her calculator”

The vendor had not said the stone was an emerald, the touri had decided it was. Emeralds are not native to Thailand. You are not going to get a good deal on an emerald in Thailand. You would though in a country where they are mined. Like Brazil. Idiot. “How much does she want?” I asked.

Rough has its admirers too.

In a low whisper to not alert the gods to her good fortune, her eyes filled with greed, she murmured, “She only wants 2,000 baht!”

The old lady followed our conversation, her eyes moving from one of us to the other as we discussed her goods. That piece of tourmaline, had it been an emerald, would have sold on the wholesale market for at least five grand. U.S. dollars. Using the same clandestine voice, I told the touri what she wanted to hear, “At 2,000 baht for an emerald of that size, it’s a steal.”

And it would have been. But for a piece of tourmaline it was about ten times higher than what it should have been at retail. The Brazilian woman quickly handed over her cash and scurried away quite pleased with the deal she’d just pulled over on the stupid old Thai woman. She knew she’d just been part of a scam but thought she was the scammer. When she’d cleared the area, the vendor let loose with the epitome of a Thai smile (which you may just want to keep in mind the next time you are on the receiving end of one of those glorious face-wide smiles). And then offered up a tray of rough that I always buy a few pieces of with a nod and, not surprisingly, one of the few English words she knew, “Free!”

Not only did I get to participate in a scam on the side of the scammer, I got a cut of the profits too. Now whenever I visit her booth the first thing she does is pull out her tray of tourmaline to offer to me, a joke so that we can both have a laugh and remember our day of mutual good fortune. That woman from Brazil, on the other hand, has probably been busy telling everyone she knows about how dishonest Thais are and of the gem scam she got taken for during her visit to Bangkok.

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Bangkok, Transportation

At four o’clock in the morning Bangkok is an exhausted prizefighter, recuperating after surviving another brutal round of ceaseless blows to the groin delivered by a night pissed off by its existence. Emulating tipsy touri returning to their hotel from unsuccessful forays into the less than salubrious neon-lit depths of the city’s after-hour clubs, cars swerve drunkenly along near-empty avenues, freed for a brief hour from the constant bullying of buses and trucks and the demolition-derby antics of crazed tuk tuk drivers who keep everything that is anything a safe distance from the road. The clear skies of recent days, now under siege from masses of dark clouds, promise an ineffectual drenching that will paint the city with muted water colors leaving the day’s break looking as though some giant dog slobbered all over the town.

Even at such a godless hour, like a seductive woman Bangkok hints at unparalleled delights while always keeping part of itself covered, hidden from view – a secret yet to be revealed – while cruelly offering tempting whispered promises of sexual fulfillment that would make a porn star blush. But that temptress (a goddess greatly revered by the local nut-brown skinned population) as with all those recently disembarked and spewed rudely into a toxic cacophony designed to stun the senses and make one and all easy pickings for government sanctioned scams, must wait its turn for a taxi driver to embody her promise with the lurid come-on of, “ You want girl? You want young girl?” the evil, puppy-drowning vileness of the pedophiliac offer disguised behind a smile so wide and warm it hugs your body that nonetheless prods some atavistic instinct deep within to decline participation regardless of the ensuing fine to be coughed up in lieu as fare for safe passage to lodging, where the registration clerk with an expression as blank as a dead man’s mind will echo the same greeting of happy endings to come, along with a reminder that the hotel has chosen to play the role of pimp and collect its share of the city’s sin tax in the form of a joiner’s fee, an act that decades later will remind you that despite the protestations of a more recent movie there is, and always was, a valid reason for the town to be known as Bangcunt instead.

But that is all fun yet to come, the Big Mango’s inaugural greeting is the welcoming arms of SE Asia’s oppressive humidity that makes you feel like you are walking around between two loaves of warm bread, a mind-numbing assault to the body afforded equally to both the travelling reprobate and the vice-free people who conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority, whose knack for sucking the life right out of a party is no less noxious than the coming event of having the life-blood sucked from your soul by the sudden babble of foreign tongues and strange lighting coupled to create a frisson of excitement in the former and a feeling of well-deserved dread in the latter, encouraging both to readily accept fate as delivered by the first approach of salvation offering transport into the depths of a city known for its casual disregard for the value of human life in favor of the prospect of the more heady and intrinsic value of an orgasm bought and paid for.

Hurriedly dodging persistent, fat lazy drops of rain that pester like flies that can not be killed, accompanied by the miasma of bloated diesel fumes floating above the odor of unidentifiable dead things, zombie-like, travellers follow the local version of Charon to his clown car that, with an intricate clattering of gears and belching clouds of smoke, scurries onto dimly lit roadways to do battle with a kaleidoscopic army of four-wheeled beasts with no brakes, or piloted by taxi drivers with a strong superstition against touching them.

Flying past the same strange houses of worship, filled with gods whose long elegant fingers twisted in ritual shapes are reminiscent of gang members flashing hand signals, as those disinclined to pay for an equally lengthy tollway ride whose fare suspiciously duplicates the same coinage charged for a boat ride to Hades, forward and onward your ride breaches a coming dawn garishly illuminated by twisted flickering tubes of neon and a graveyard of 1970s fluorescent tubing that cast a pallor on the few denizens still awake, begrudgingly finishing up the task of cleaning their kill of the night, your chariot that no gods would ever deign to ride makes a circuitous route through one way streets being traversed in three directions, screeching past hasty flashes of the competing dioramas of a developed, world-class capital city and a third world slum reeking of despair, both equally enveloped in a smoky haze from fires lit for cooking or warmth, their often mixed use smoke permeating the city with the smells of an ill-conceived dinner of street food viciously hawked back up and splattered over the broken, crumbling paving stones that often serve as a bed for human and dog alike. There but for the grace of the gods, and the grand good fortune of not being born Thai, go I.

Crawling through small, poorly lit, twisted streets that mirror the morals of its residents, past mange-ridden soi dogs whose existence provides muse to the warning of letting sleeping dogs lie, with the languorously paced speed of your ride timed to provide yet one last flip of the meter, your arrival at what only in Bangkok would you willingly call home is announced by the sputtering attempt at life of a hundred light bulbs doing the job of one that fill the ceiling of a once grand portico now sentenced to guard the entrance to a slatternly hotel ominously reeking a sense of seediness and foreboding that would give Hitchcock a chub, it’s decrepit exterior recently refreshed with a new layer of grime thanks to the morning’s rain that is equally responsible for the cascade of liquid sewage blubbering off its eaves like a wound that bleeds afresh.

Past a somnolent, rail-thin guard wearing the uniform of a general, who’d be incapable of providing security against an ill-tempered child, the exotic, fetid odor of durian provides as welcoming of a greeting as the surly check-in clerk whose mind decided your worth was not justification for arousing from its two-day slumber, the only version of the world famous Thai smile that greets your arrival are those chirped your way by the bruised flesh colored geckos busily dropping their recently digested turds onto the counter below.

Formalities concluded, and with a final reminder of the pound of flesh soon to be owed for the flesh you’ll later be pounding that undoubtedly belongs to the clerk’s sister, brother, or child – or in some cases all three – your tired body beaten senseless by passage through a dozen time zones makes its way on autopilot to fill an elevator with the posted capacity of eight for a five minute ride to the second floor whose empty, dead silence is broken only by the buzzing of tiny mosquitos pulverizing the still of the night with the beating of wings in a frenzy over the scent of fresh meat, to a room decorated by the unskilled labor of a few dozen refurbishments in the hands of locals to whom your comfort is as unimportant as the plight of the deformed beggars who crawl the streets just outside your hotel’s door competing for space with the city’s rats, and a bed whose thin mattress is stuffed with the sins and shame of hundreds of sex touri who have come before, and came often.

Sleep, blessed sleep; your mind craves rest from the bloody assault you’ve put it through, all for the unbridled joy of the cheap sexual conquests and drunken binges you’ll fill your next two weeks of nights with, but for this morning the ankle high repository of 80 count man-made fiber sheets laundered stiff by chemicals banned in your country twenty years ago and the promise of awakening to a tepid shower of polluted water in which you’ll have to kneel to wet your head is all that matters, for you have arrived.

Ahh, those were the days.

[As of October 1st this year Don Muang airport, now officially spelled ‘Don Mueang’ will serve as Bangkok’s LCC airport for both domestic and international flights. The say you can’t go home again and in this instance I’m going to follow that sage advice; the ambiance of Don Muang in the days of old was a fitting greeting to the Big Mango, a slightly decrepit enormously cramped run down at the heels complex drenched in teak and filled with strange colors and even stranger people that hinted at the exotic delights that awaited just outside its doors.

It was a welcome partially responsible for my falling in love with Thailand, one that today would probably convince me instead to book the next plane out of town. Don Muang is a cherished place in my memories, one that I don’t wish to contaminate by revisiting the place in an effort to save a buck or two, no more than I’d want to track down the first guy I offed from a bar. That that gives me good reason to never set foot on an Air Asia flight again is just a happy bonus]

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Chiang Mai, Gay GoGo Bars

Ooops, wrong religion . . .

In my post about Wat Phra Singh the other day I mentioned a photograph my friend Noom took of the main Buddha at the wiharn which was surrounded by mysterious spheres of light, light reflecting off a dirty camera lens in my estimation, the power of the Buddha being captured on film in his. I couldn’t locate the shot for that post but have since so I thought I’d throw it into the mix.

Noom has a very intimate relationship with his gods and expects that they know of him and are willing to pay an equal amount of attention to the glory that is Noom. The photo below was taken at the white wat just outside of Chiang Rai (that’s the public restroom in the background). The beam of light wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but showed up in the photograph. The result got a very satisfied nod from Noom. I’d argue, again, that the boy needs to clean his camera lens a bit more often, but then I can’t really disagree that the gods shouldn’t favor him. At least not if they have good taste in men.

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Stupid Tourist Tricks, Wats

The first time I became aware of the concept of merit making by Buddhists was thanks to a vendor at a sparsely visited temple who was making merit of a different kind by selling caged birds to touri to set free. This practice was not originally geared toward visitors but rather toward locals. It’s but one of hundreds of ways Buddhists earn brownie points for performing a good deed. But someone figured out touri were willing to drop a few baht to participate too and a new industry was born.

It is still practiced by locals, there is always a vendor with a stack of sparrows confined in brightly painted red cages at the entrance to the Erawan Shrine, a popular place of worship located near the Grand Hyatt Erawan in Bangkok. I don’t think many Thais patronize the vendor selling them at the entrance to the Bo Sang Umbrella Village in Chiang Mai where they are restrained in small woven baskets though. Whether a religious practice or an interactive touri experience, I’d always thought the custom was cool; friends visiting the Kingdom with me also always enjoyed the experience.

It wasn’t until a visit to Phnom Penh that I began to consider the birds’ side of the ritual. One evening as dusk approached I was visiting a small, rather popular shrine on Sisowath Quay, the pedestrian boulevard that runs along the Mekong. Several bird vendors were busy selling their feathered friends to the locals to set free. A great photo op, maneuvering for the best shot I ended up next to a dumpster and watched one of the vendors unceremoniously pulling dead birds out of his cage to throw into the dumpster. I don’t think the Buddha would have been pleased.

Up north on the same trip I began running into signs posted along the inside of temple grounds asking visitors to not patronize the bird sellers; a short explanation of why the wat’s monks frowned on the practice was included. You’d think the better option would be to not allow the vendors to conduct their business within the wat, but Thai culture tends to be non-confrontational, and I guess when it comes to racking up karma points it’s best to leave it to the individual on whether they are striving to reach enlightenment or setting themselves to come back as a cockroach the next time around.

Not being part of the Buddhist sect that refuses to even harm an earth worm, Thais don’t place a high value on animals’ lives. I doubt PETA has an active branch in Bangkok. I really can’t fault locals who release the caged birds as part of their religious beliefs – and I note the signs asking people not to that I’ve seen have all been in English only so perhaps the monks too are willing to cut the local populace some slack.

For touri, sometimes ignorance is bliss; knowing that by participating in the ritual (which has no religious connotations for you) you are encouraging the mistreatment of the birds is kind of a bummer. I’ve been with too many friends who have enjoyed the experience, and I’ll miss not doing so in the future. You’ll have to weigh the experience against the consequences yourself. And if you did consider participating in the practice as a way to earn merit, maybe you can off a barboy and let him fly free for the night instead.

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Attractions, Markets & Shopping, Stupid Tourist Tricks

The floating market holds many surprises.

It seems like every trip I make to Thailand with a group of friends, one of them turns out to be exceptionally cheap. I don’t mean somewhat frugal or cost-conscious. I mean down right cheap. Miserly. A skinflint. But that can be quite entertaining in its own right. It’s hard to do cheap well. And an American trying to be cheap is no match for a Thai trying to pry open a touri’s wallet – you don’t stand a chance.

But Karen’s passion for squeezing the last nickel out of every dollar helped make a memorable trip become an even more memorable one; she insured that we got a great deal – totally unbargained for – that at the time seemed to be much ado about nothing. That her money savings antics gave the rest of us something to laugh at was an added bonus.

I knew Karen before the trip. She was not a close friend, but more friend than acquaintance. Her love affair with money had not been something I’d noticed before. She was a CPA, her partner an attorney. Just past 30, Karen was a tall blonde athletic in build and friendly in nature. Hearing that several of us were going to Thailand, she invited herself along and proved to be a good travelling companion. At least during the first part of the trip.

Thailand seems to specialize in slightly demented old ladies.

Karen had travelled extensively in her pre-college days, backpacking her way through Europe. She had great tales to tell of her previous travels including one about three days spent confined in a snow covered no-name town just inside of the Russian border, the local authorities deciding an American travelling alone was the perfect victim to hold until sufficient money had been paid. She saw it as a unexpected three day visit to Russia, and provided the locals a lesson in how difficult it is to force a bribe of any size out of someone who values her pocketbook more than her life.

Her cheapness didn’t really shine through during the first few days of our holiday together. My friend Ann had booked our hotels in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, both were cheap and downmarket enough to fit Karen’s taste. Though she took to bartering with a bit more passion than the rest of us, it wasn’t like she refused to spend money. Just that she always had to get the best possible deal. Regardless of the cost.

When we returned to Bangkok we went to look at a $25 a night hotel, and ad for which I had pointed out to Ann in Thai Air’s on-board magazine. I’d meant it as a joke. Ann, who could be quite frugal in her own right, was ecstatic. Of course it was a major dump, so we took a pass. And found instead a nice hotel nearby for a bit over $50 a night that became our hotel of choice for the next few years. During our inspection of the other hotels on the soi, Karen discovered one with $35 rooms and decided it was a better choice, booking herself a room that was small, cramped, and done in red. Red walls, decades old red carpeting, a red ceiling, and a red bedspread that was dark enough to hide the numerous stains it had gathered over its lifetime. Whether it was the result of spending too much time in a red room, or just that her natural inclinations finally took wing, from that point on Karen became a money-saving monster.

An early morning visit to the floating market means no crowds and lots of boats available for hire.

Both hotels, just across the soi from each other, had tour desks. The tour company operating out of Karen’s hotel, serving a more downmarket crowd, offered much cheaper prices for the same tour itineraries as the tour desk at our hotel. And they were willing to barter. So we let Karen work her magic, arranging a car and driver for a day trip to the Damnoen Saduak floating market. Cheapskates are not my favorite type of travelling companion, but I have no qualms about taking advantage of their skills. The tour company would not lower their price by much, but did allow Karen to score us a few extra hours of travel. Using up the hours she’d fought so hard for meant an early departure so after loading up with caffeine we were off to the floating market at 6:00 am the next morning.

Every newbie touri to Thailand wants to go to the floating market. All it takes is seeing one picture of the vendors in their small wood boats poling their way along the canals and you’re hooked. The actual experience for most, unfortunately, does not live up to the hype. Most people take one of the numerous large tour buses to the market and share the experience with a few thousand of their fellow touri. They don’t know any better. And neither did we. But thanks to Karen’s thriftiness, we arrived to find a sleepy little Thai version of Venice just starting to come awake.

The more you haggle for prices in Thailand, the better you get. Experience is a great teacher. So you also learn a few dos and don’ts. One of the most effective ploys is if the seller is not coming down to the price you’ve decided on, walk away. It has the same effect on a Thai as seeing a twenty dollar bill blowing down the street does in the U.S. They take off running, hands stretched out ready to grab the cash. You may think you are a touri, street market vendors see you as baht. And they’ll never let you get away.

Floating food to go.

Conversely, the worst bargaining technique to use is to make use of whatever it is that you are bargaining for before agreeing to a price. Pop the cap off a bottle of water and then ask how much and you’ll get screwed. Wait until you get to your destination before asking how much the ride costs and you are at your driver’s mercy. Except he will not have any. Having five of your fellow travellers jump into a small boat while you are still on shore haggling over twenty baht . . . Karen was not a happy camper with her travel mates. And she got the worst seat in the boat as a reward.

But the old lady who began polling us through the small waterways of Damnoen Saduak was pleased with the bargain she’d struck and rewarded us with a lengthy tour of the back canals of the town, even stopping at her home to offer us refreshments. It was a lazy morning, a languid ride, that offered a stupefying view of shallow banks overgrown with scraggly weeds occasionally broken with the monotony of some villager’s small hut. Six cameras clicked away constantly. We’d found the ‘real Thailand.’ We’d stumbled into the hidden part of the Kingdom that touri never get to see. At least we did until the first long-tail boat filled with touri to swamping capacity with its diesel racing car engine belching fumes and its ear-shattering engine howling echoes of pain came tearing down the canal. The tour buses had arrived.

When we got back to the dock the sleepy little town had transformed into a bustling metropolis filled with fat, sunburned visitors crammed together on rickety wood walkways precariously perched high above the waterway. Even then, vendors selling all of the same crap you could find back in Bangkok outnumbered touri two to one. Using long bamboo poles to transfer merchandise in exchange for baht, they stood in their tiny boats striking quick deals over tacky souvenirs with the hordes clamoring for a purchase – both monetarily and literally – far above the banks. And another haggling truism became evident. When your tour bus is leaving in five minutes the vendor you are bartering with knows which of you is constrained by time. Desperation in all of its forms is always costly.

When you are on a slow boat you become part of the attraction.

Our plan when we’d arrived that morning was to take a quick boat tour and then afterwards wander along the banks of the river sampling the numerous delicacies offered by old women who were cooking the food on small braziers mounted in their tiny boats. It was a postcard picture perfect ideal that appealed to all of the senses. But by the time we arrived back in town, the old women were gone, the smoke of their cooking fires replaced by the diesel fumes of the long-tail boats. The tranquil setting had turned into tourism on steroids. Plan #2 was to get the hell out of Dodge.

Mother Nature it seems has a firm belief in karma. People who are tight with a buck always end up paying one way or another. It’s the only answer I’ve been able to come up with for the odd phenomenon that I’ve seen hold true over and over again. Those who find it difficult to let loose of a penny secrete a scent that mosquitoes find hard to pass. The sluggish water we’d been touring through was an ideal breeding ground for the little creatures and while they left five of us alone, they’d turned Karen into a travelling blood bank, extracting their pint of blood from her quite freely. The itching in her palms had expanded to itching all over and she needed relief. A believer in old wives tales and home remedies, or just out of desperation, the answer in Karen’s book was Tiger Balm, and for some odd reason the vendors of Damnoen Saduak considered little jars of Tiger Balm a great souvenir to sell to touri.

And so the hunt began.

Postcard perfect souvenirs. That run half the price back in Bangkok.

From shop to stall to strolling vendor to floating vendor, Karen began hitting up everyone in town who counted Tiger Balm among their wares for the best price she could negotiate. Hers was a systematic process, the initial twenty vendors she haggled with was not about making a purchase but rather finding out just how low she could get each to go. Deftly pushing touri in search of the perfect postcard, the best straw hat, the tackiest souvenir with an elephant glued to it out of her way, she trounced vendor after vendor, her starting price lower and lower as she made her way through the market.

Finally satisfied with her market research and ready to make a purchase for a pittance, Karen spied an old Thai lady in a disintegrating cotton smock standing in the middle of a bridge over the canal, a small shallow basket her entire storefront, a half-dozen jars of Tiger balm – slightly out numbering the amount of teeth in her mouth – her sole product. Karen moved in for the kill.

Their transaction was not a pretty sight. Both went at it with a fury that would put a pair of heavyweight boxers to shame. Using threats coupled with tales of woe and poverty highlighted with pleas of mercy, both speaking in a language unknown to the other, the two begrudgingly gave up a baht at a time, slowly moving to a price somewhere in the middle of where they’d begun. The five of us were embarrassed over Karen’s thriftiness. The locals watched in awe, all with anticipatory glee evident in their smiles. A deal was finally struck. Twenty-two baht the agreed to price. Both gave the other a congratulatory nod, winner or loser (and which was which was debatable in their respective minds) the battle had been hard fought resulting in mutual respect for each other’s skill and efforts.

Who’s laughing now?

Karen carefully counted out the exact change and handed her part of the transaction over. The old lady palmed the coins, then reached down, grabbed the hem of her smock, and pulled it up over her head exposing her thin naked body and aged almost hairless cunt while crackling with glee. Karen was dumbstruck. Ann peed herself in laughter. The crowd, who knew what the punch line was, laughed uproariously. And the old lady dropped her dress, turned smartly on her heels and stomped off looking for her next victim.

It was undoubtedly one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had in Thailand. Being new to Thailand at the time and having no Thai I’ve never figured out if there was a setup spoken during the bartering or if the old lady was just bat shit crazy from the get-go. It wasn’t a one-off, the reaction from the locals proved otherwise. Perhaps it was a trade of scratch for snatch. I don’t know what the old lady’s story was, or why jars of Tiger Balm were necessary to her act. But twenty years later I still giggle whenever I see a jar.

We headed back to Bangkok with Karen itching and scratching the whole way. She wasn’t brave enough to attempt haggling for another jar until we were back safely in civilization. The final bitch slap awarded for her parsimoniousness was the jar she bought at the Family Mart on the corner by our hotel that was marked with a fifteen baht price tag. That and that she will always be known among my circle of friends as Tiger Balm Karen.

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Chiang Mai, Markets & Shopping

Art, and Angry Birds, abound at Chiang Mai’s night markets.

Years ago I worked with a guy named Jerry at a winery in Monterey who had the soul of an artist. His world would have been a happier one if his artistic abilities matched his leanings. His was drawn to composing pencil drawings of people, an attempt at capturing faces in pencil that took on photographic qualities though his output was often closer to a simple sketch. With a lot of dark angry shading. The biggest problem with his portraits, however, was that he didn’t seem to be able to draw any person’s face without making the eyes look slightly crossed in a Barbra Streisand kind of way.

Jerry was a street artist without a street. Instead he preyed on visitors to the tasting room, busily sketching when he was supposed to be pouring. Sooner or later a customer would take note of his efforts and would, having already sampled a bit too much of the grape, hire Jerry to draw his wife, girlfriend, or weekend shack-up. A bit of a freak, Jerry only drew women. Which went a long way in satisfying his other than artistic needs since he rarely scored one for anything other than a portrait session.

Jerry’s second favorite passion was masturbation. And he’d willingly and quite enthusiastically regale you with his mastabatory tales that often involved unsuspecting women who’d became the victim of his fantasy; what really got Jerry off was to wank one off over some broad who wandered by in a public place never knowing Jer was busy stroking himself just out of view. Jerry was twisted enough he could easily have become a well-known and famous artist if it just weren’t for that Barbra Streisand thingy. Even then, his customers always seemed pleased with his work. Even though the poor woman who was his latest subject – for both the sketch and an orgasm I suspect – always ended up looking she was channeling Jack Nicholson doing his “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” bit in The Shining.

Chiang Mai’s artists are often works of art themselves.

Jerry’s persona more than his artistic abilities has stayed with me over the years. So I always get a chuckle out of street artists, regardless of how talented they are or how life-like their portraits appear. I try to control my laughter though: generally, artistic people do not appreciate you finding humor in their work. Fortunately, the sheer number of portrait artists working Chiang Mai induces a sensory overload that stays my laughter. Besides, unlike Jerry, a lot of their work is really quite good.

I’m never quite sure if those who draw from a photograph are only mechanically skilled or if they actually have artistic talents. There are plenty of other artists around town who produce original works, so maybe the sketchers merely practice that trade to pay the bills. I’d like to think they also allow their artistic side free range outside of their street-side studio, that instead of only transferring a photograph into a pencil drawing they also let their heart soar. Or that at the very least they occasionally score a woman as a customer who is hot enough to provide them a good orgasm later when they get home and get to stroke over the memory of the customer who paid them to put their pencil strokes on paper.

There is a large gaggle of these artists at Chiang Mai’s Night Bazaar, headquarters seems to be at the front of the basement of the Kalare Night Bazaar building. Lots of the work they have on display to entice a commissioned piece out of passerbys is instantly recognizable: Bob Marley hiding behind a cloud of ganja smoke is a perennial favorite, that iconic National Geographic photograph of an Afgani girl’s hypnotic green eyes is a staple too even though it loses a but of intensity when done in black and white. Anytime I visit the Night Bazaar I take time to visit the artists and watch while they create a new piece, though I’ve never bought any of their work. Art makes for a good souvenir. I’ve bought more oils, water colors, and even pencil drawings from my travels around the world than I have wall space for. But the only piece I’ve ever purchased in Chiang Mai was done by an elephant.

As many artists selling their skills as there are, I’m afraid their artistic abilities outweigh the number of customers they have.

I’m never quite sure where the division between art and craft is, but believe both tend to stem from the same part of the soul. Whether it is selling to touri or not, I think craftsmen make a better living out of practicing their skills than artists do. For years the street markets in Thailand that cater to the touri crowd have been filled with booths selling those little flowers carved from soap. The carvers re-create duplicates of each type of flower over and over again, so it seems less like art than craft but that they are skilled at what they do can not be denied. At most markets you only get to see the result, actually watching the craftsmen (or woman) create those little piece of art is not as common as seeing their work for sale. When you do stumble across one, watching him makes you appreciate his creativity and abilities even more.

One night I ran across one of these master carvers busy at work. His stall at the Night Bazaar was filled with his work, which had nothing to do with carving. He reproduced paintings by Picasso, with a slight Thai flair, offering his work both on canvas and on t-shirts. Neither was selling well, and disinterested in making a few baht he was busy creating a carved flower out of a small watermelon. He caught me watching him out of the corner of his eye, smiled, and went right back to work.

I watched him for a while and when he looked up again asked by gesture if I could take his picture. Nodding in agreement, he went right back to carving his masterpiece. The next time he looked up to see if I was still enjoying the show I nodded toward the piece he was carving and asked, “For sale?”

He smiled ruefully. “No,“ he said shaking his head. “Dinner.”

Eat your heart out Picasso!

I guess sometimes you can feed your artistic soul and stomach at the same time.

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Bangkok, Scams, Transportation

Bangkok’s taxis are one of the most colorful things about the city.

Mr. Thanusuwannasak is a taxi driver in Bangkok. He’s an old fart, ancient and scrawny as only an elderly Asian can be. But he has a half-inch long pony tail. Dyed blonde. That kind of vanity looks stupid when you have wrinkles, but you have to give Mr. Thanusuwannasak credit for the effort. Besides, he’s a giggler. Braving Bangkok’s bloody traffic in a small taxi that almost guarantees at the least loss of a limb should an accident occur just becomes that much more surreal when your driver can’t stop giggling.

I met Mr. Thanusuwannasak at the airport in Bangkok. Newbies to Thailand fall pray to the AOT and their overpriced limos. Which are the same vehicles used by most taxi drivers except they are a staid factory silver rather than the neon pinks, greens, and oranges favored by the taxi companies. Those visitors who’ve been to Bangkok before, or who are cheap enough to seek out the public taxi concession, make the long trek down to the first floor of the airport and get in line for the ordeal of saving a few bucks.

On my most recent trip for some reason there were very few taxis waiting. But then maybe there was a reason. A lot of Bangkok’s taxi drivers are temporary hires from up north. The bad flooding probably kept them at home driving boats in their old neighborhood instead of taxis in the capital. Whatever the reason, I had extra time waiting for a cab and, for the first time, noticed a large sign that explained that the taxis servicing the airport were required by law to use their meter. The sign went on in great detail, warning touri about fixed fare scams. Nice. About time someone noticed and put an end to that scam. But then I noted the date on the sign was 2008. I think its intent was not to serve notice to touri, but rather to clue in new taxi drivers to the potential of making a few extra bucks by ignoring their meter and haggling for a fixed fare instead. Ya gotta love Thailand.

Bangkok is known for its horrendous traffic problem. If they got rid of half of the taxis plying the streets the problem would go away.

By the luck of the draw, I drew Mr. Thanusuwannasak as a driver, who between giggles actually acted like he knew where my hotel was. But I wasn’t fooled by his obviously contrived jocularity and prepared myself for the usual driver attempt at quoting an inflated price for the ride into town. Instead, Mr. Thanusuwannasak immediately turned on his meter. Maybe business has been slow enough he had the time to read that sign. And didn’t realize, like all rules in Thailand, it could be ignored.

Mr. Thanusuwannasak made such a production out of presenting his business card to me that I made a noble effort at pronouncing his name. I got another giggle in reply. I’m not sure if his was a congratulatory chuckle, or if I’d mangled his name so badly it was worth a laugh. It might have been that I’d insulted his mother. I decided the safest bet was to just start calling him Mr. Giggles. Which he responded to well. With yet another giggle.

Mr. Giggles asked where I was from, a typical query from airport taxi drivers and bar boys alike as your answer clues them into how big of a tipper you may be. He then asked if I knew about the flooding. I did. And I made the proper noises of compassion for the plight of the millions of Thais whose lives have been impacted by the rising waters. Mr. Giggles made a few properly sympathetic noises himself. Or perhaps found a new octave to giggle in. And then thanked me for coming to Thailand even though I knew how bad the weather was. Sincerely. And he quit giggling for a minute while he did so. I was amazed. It’s been a decade or more since I received that kind of welcome to Thailand. And yet that was the exact type of attitude that made me fall in love with the country in the first place. Mr. Giggles and his blonde ponytail earned themselves a nice tip on the ride. And I kept his card.

Catching a taxi in Bangkok can be a hassle, but then other transpo options are not much better.

Flip a coin. Heads or tails. You have as much chance of landing a taxi driver at Suvarnabhumi Airport who lets loose with one of the glorious welcoming smiles that the Thai people are known for as you do one who grins just as broadly not in welcome but rather in anticipation of the few extra baht he’s gonna scam the stupid falang out of. And when it is the latter, it really is only a few extra baht. Maybe that’s why those guys don’t bother me as much as they once did. Seems like a lot of work and a nasty impact on your karma for what amounts to but a buck or two.

So yes, as officially posted, all airport taxis must charge by the meter. In practice, they almost all try and get a fixed fare out of you. 500 baht seems to be the preferred figure. That’s been the standard mode of operation for a few years now. For a while, it pissed me off and I’d run a small scam right back at them, acting dumb and confused to see how far down the road I could get them to drive before having to give up and demand they turn the meter on. But more recently I’ve mellowed. And now when the driver quotes some ridiculous fare I laugh, point at the meter, and settle back for the ride into town. The world looks far different when you giggle at it.

I’m not longer a strapping lad, but am still quite capable of carrying my own luggage. Taxi drivers at the airport all assume that’s part of their job though, even when they’ve got a good ten years on you. That the driver I pulled by the luck of the draw on a short hop back into Bangkok never even made an attempt at grabbing my bags should have clued me into a potential problem. When I hopped into his cab and he asked for ‘my paper’ I knew it was a clue to a potential problem. The driver gets his own portion of the receipt the girl at the taxi line scribbles on. She hands his to him, and yours to you. Yours has a ton of legalese on it but also includes the phone number to call to lodge a complaint when your driver misbehaves. Bad drivers like to get that information away from you. I’ve learned to tuck the receipt away in one of my bags that gets thrown in the trunk. Then I can act dumb when the driver asks for it.

You may get scammed by a taxi driver in Bangkok. You will get scammed by a tuk tuk driver in Bangkok.

The surprise though is what came next. Usually the driver asks if 500 baht is good. Instead, my not too helpful but ready to scam me driver pointed at the meter, turned it on, then added that there was a 50 baht additional charge (there is, it’s imposed by the airport). His apparent honesty threw me off my game. Until I realized it was a classic case of misdirection: get their focus on one hand so they don’t see what the other hand is doing. The other hand in this case was the meter. It started clicking away at a speed not normally used by anyone or anything in Thailand.

I’d read about this scam. Some drivers in Bangkok have their meters set to turn over at a quicker rate. And I finally had run into one of the rigged meters. By the time we hit the first toll plaza, the meter was already close to 200 baht. Shit. The problem was obvious. How to deal with it was not.

Confrontation is never a smart option in Thailand. But then neither is being a victim of a scam. Traffic was heavy and moving slow, so I had plenty of time to consider how best to handle the situation. I briefly considered and discarded the idea of jumping out of the cab at the next toll plaza. It’s not the best place in the world to catch a new taxi.

Catching Bangkok’s light rail system is always a better move than hailing a cab.

I was staying at a hotel I frequent often where I’ve become buddies with the bell hops, security guards, and the other dozen or so Thai guys who hang out around the lobby with no apparent job duties to perform. The ‘little guys’ often are the ones who can make your stay the most enjoyable. So I’m always friendly with them, pass out tips, and sneak a few cold beers back to hand around late at night when I return to the hotel from the bars. I decided I could press the issue when I arrived at the hotel, and that my buddies there might have my back (you can never be sure; Thais usually side with a fellow Thai regardless of the grievance).

I’d just decided that I’d hand him the regular fare and ignore the inflated fare on his meter when my driver got a phone call. After rattling off a bunch of Thai that I could barely get the gist of, he hung up and then apologized to me for taking the call. But his loom had just become ocean front property. The flood they’d been warning of had finally reached Bangkok. And, cuz karma works that way, the waters had made a bee line for his abode.

“Water. Up, up, up!” he explained using his outstretched hand to demonstrate the new heights the river had reached. “My loom,” he added shaking his head in sorrow, “No sleep.”

Shit. Not only had he become human and talkative, but was in the midst of experiencing a personal disaster. And as cold hearted as you may assume I am (which, really, is a safe assumption), the idea of arguing over 100 baht with a man whose living quarters had just been destroyed hardly seemed sporting. Especially since when we reached the hotel the scam part of the fare only came to 70 baht, just over two bucks.

During the 2011 floods, taxi companies parked their vehicles in long lines along highway overpasses to keep them high and dry.

The usual handful of smartly dressed hotel employees in their vaguely militaristic uniforms encircled the taxi as is the norm when we pulled up to the lobby entrance. And I think I made the right call. Or at least I did by my moral compass. After my bags had all been removed from his vehicle, I handed him the full figure shown on the meter. Plus the 50 baht the airport charges. But no tip. And then laid my hand gently on his shoulder while wagging my index finger at him and said in a reproachful manner, “Your meter . . .”

He got it. Immediately. My disappointment in his failing to be the good man Thais aspire to be was obvious. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he replied apologetically nodding his head with each expression of regret. He’d been busted and knew it. But the gods had bitch slapped him once already in a major way, and made up for it somewhat by producing a falang who wasn’t willing to kick him while he was down.

I dunno. Maybe that was the wrong call. It really didn’t cost me anything, but it also allowed him to sail off and fleece some other unsuspecting touri. I’d like to think he considered the near bust a warning and had his meter set back to its proper speed. But I doubt it. And with my luck, I’ll get him instead of Mr. Giggles at the airport on my next trip too.

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Speaking The Language Of The Foreign White Devil

Coming Soon To A Taxi Near You

Up In Smoke

Tags

Scams, Stupid Tourist Tricks

Smoking in Thailand carries its own set of dangers.

Dave’s eyes were filled with tears. That, in itself, was not unusual. For a strapping hunk who epitomized the macho version of masculinity, his eyes peed a lot. And often. Even happy moments could result in waterworks where Dave was concerned. Smiling through his tears, he lived life in a constant state of emotion. But this time his usual infectious smile had fled his face leaving behind no traces it had ever been there. I’d answered his hurried knock on our hotel room’s door expecting nothing more than the usual ball of energy that announced his presence in a room. The tempest that swept in instead was unexpected. He’d only been gone for a few minutes. He’d only made a quick trip down to the closest Family Mart to pick up yet another six pack of beer. There’d hardly been enough time for trouble to find him. Even for Dave.

Real men don’t cry. Or at least those who profess to be manly straight guys don’t. Dave had never managed to convince me that his claims of being a breeder were true. Though there were other tells that convinced me otherwise, his propensity for crying at the drop of a hat added had always aroused my suspicions. But he usually started blubbering like a little girl due to some tenderhearted moment; the hero rescuing the damsel in distress in Hollywood’s latest blockbuster, Bambi’s mother meeting the wrong end of a shot gun, or even a patriotic moment like the playing of the national anthem at a sporting event. With Dave, tears of pain, tears of agony, tears from frustration and unfairness were not the norm.

In between his loud gulping of air, his body’s attempt to calm itself, he poured out his tale of woe. Dave, an American, a giant among men, a wise world traveller of some renown, and above all things just being Dave – which the world was suppose to recognize and rightfully pay him his due – had been laid low on the teeming streets of Bangkok by a gaggle of locals, diminutive doll-like Thais who in this instance had been dressed in brown. It wasn’t just the blow to his ego that caused the tears to flood down his face, it was the injustice suffered at the hands of those charged with bringing justice in this strange land too.

Leave it to the Thais to find an excuse to punish visitors.

Warnings abound these days about the Boys In Brown on the prowl, streaming through Bangkok’s streets in search of opportunity to add to their week’s take of tea money. When walking through areas heavily trafficked by tourist these days, like a midget at a urinal you need to be on your toes. In the Middle East, baksheesh is a well-known part of daily life. It is as common in Thailand where corruption and graft is a normal part of doing business, but though Thais have assimilated the idea into their society – stealing from other cultures being one of their favorite pastimes – they’ve yet to come up with a local, Thai sounding word for farang to use that encompasses monetary donations to those in authority that works quite as well. Tea money sounds too western and too innocuous. But then the amount of baht involved is usually as petty as the phrase sounds.

Twenty years ago being preyed upon by the local police in the pursuit of baht justified by the uniform they wore was not unheard of. But it wasn’t as common as it is today either. As a vising farang contributing much needed touri dollars to the local economy there was always some protection from becoming a victim of official corruption. But Dave had just done his part in assisting that statistic to rise. And a hunk of his cash had just gone up in smoke. Thanks to his habit of smoking.

A drunk, a drug user, a smoker, a porn addict, Dave proudly wore those labels rather than attempt to claim they were not true. But he had standards. A litter-bug he was not. He even went as far as filling one of the pockets of his jeans with cigarette butts when out for the day rather than throwing stubs to the ground. It was a small ecological effort, not worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, nor did he expect a pat on the back for not adding to the debris that fills Bangkok’s streets like teeth under a meth addict’s pillow. But then he didn’t expect to get busted for littering as a reward either.

A run-in with the boys in brown would be more pleasurable if they’d take a slight uniform modification suggestion from me.

A block and a half trip down Sukhumvit to the local convenience store was all it had taken for Dave to run afoul of the law. The cops had noticed he was smoking and made the fairly safe assumption that he’d tossed a butt away after the final drag on a ciggy. Two of them swooped in, leveled their littering charges, and demanded 2,000 baht as a fine. Dave’s initial reaction was to laugh. They were obviously mistaken,. And that these two little guys – who if one stood on the shoulders of the other would still fall short of Dave’s height – had decided to take him on was both preposterous and humorous. Laughing at a cop in Thailand is not a recommended technique to use in settling your differences. Telling any Thai that he is wrong is not much better.

The offense would have been greater in Dave’s estimation if he’d not already bought his beer. I too thanked the gods for that small favor. Separating an alcoholic from filling his immediate need of sustenance is never a pretty picture. But that purchase had left Dave with just a few hundred baht in his pocket and the boys in brown were interested in a few more zeros for their take. Growing more upset by the minute, Dave had tried reasoning with them. He’d tried explaining that he did not litter; he’d even shown them his evidence pulling out a small handful of cigarette butts from his pocket. Truth and justice were on his side. But then the cops were not seeking truth, justice was not what they were after. Baht was. And they undoubtedly thought Dave’s protestations were nothing more than an opening attempt at haggling the price of his fine down.

It wasn’t until he’d emptied his pockets and the cops had demanded to look in his wallet that they realized their bad luck in nabbing a farang scofflaw who had only a few hundred baht on him. The truth of his lack of wealth was evident, the truth of his lack of littering was of no concern. But tea money is tea money and a few hundred baht was more than they had a few minutes before so they confiscated the contents of his wallet and sent him on his way. Back to the hotel where instead of the ice cold beer I was expecting I got to deal with a 6’4” 260 lb. crying baby.

Even when you are right arguing with one of the boys in brown is a lot like playing Russian roulette. With a fully loaded gun.

You’d think as much time as I’ve spent in The Land of Smiles, I’d have numerous stories of run-ins with the Boys in Brown. As much time as I’ve spent in and around Patpong – where now they even have signs posted warning of both littering and jaywalking fines – that I would have dropped a few thousand baht into the country’s kitty by now. But that is yet an experience that I have not had first hand. Thanks to Dave, I am careful about where I throw my cigarette butts. I know better than to toss them on the ground. As a farang, doing so is just asking to be relieved of 2,000 in tea money. So instead when I take the last drag off a smoke I flick the burning head off and hand the butt to my friend Noom. And then he throws it on the ground. In Thailand, there are benefits to being a Thai.