Arriving in Ko Tao

Night train running past the noodle cart, Chumphon


Ban Chalok, as seen from the Viewpoint restaurant


More Ban Chalok


Mosquito net. Useless against ants, and no help against the hand-sized spiders in the bathroom. Offers some protection, however, against gecko droppings from the foot-long beast on my ceiling.


Main street, Ko Tao

Chinatown, BKK

Welcome to Chinatown


Possible corollary: if it don't shine, I am sitting on it


I could have taken the train down to Canal St and seen much the same, yeah?

Pairadise

After saying goodbye to my French (by way of London) dive-buddy Damien and my fellow German/Austrian divers, I left little Ko Tao on a 4PM ferry. Then I spent the next 2 hours on a boat, 2 hours in Chumphon (where one can find huge cockroaches and rats scurrying around on the train platform), 9 hours on a sleeper train to Bangkok, 2 hours at the train station and, finally, 12 terrible hours on a "Sprinter"-class train up to Chiang Mai, which revealed itself to be an unpleasant city full of expat English teachers. It was something like a provincial Shanghai.

So the following day (which happens to be today) I boarded a 4-hour bus to a little hippie outpost called Pai, which despite its earthiness is a beautiful place that seems to be just my speed.

A river runs through Pai, and all around it are mountains, as far as you can see. The streets are bustling with Chinese Muslims, Shan women from the hill country, tattooed Farangs, Japanese hippies and, of course, friendly Thais. I am staying at a beautiful place called Pairadise a short walk from town.

I just dropped off my laundry at a little house, and out front was a baby monkey playing with a neighborhood dog. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Pai.

An update from Ko Tao

I have not touched the Inter-Nets in the past four days and the updates have been piling up. Rather than put up the tedious paragraphs in whole, I will summarize in a few Powerpoint-friendly bullets:

- Escape from Bangkok: Chinatown, malls, heat and humidity, and finally the train station

- Second-class sleeper down to Chumpon, red-eye ferry over to Ko Tao

- Advanced Open Water certification over five dives with a bunch of Germans. Night dive (ludicrously awesome). Further fraternizing with the Teutonic divers at what has to be the chillest bar in all of Thailand.

- Finally, ticket back to Bankok tomorrow, and then immediately up to Chiang Mai. I'll spend one night there and then try to head to Pai.

Once I again have access to cheap and fast access to the Inter-Nets, I will no doubt put up some pictures as well as the tedious details in full.

I, too, am curious.


Street art


Suk 11


Jetlag = night photos


Suk 11

Suhkumvit, Bangkok

On my flight to Thailand I sat next to a woman from Richmond who was on her way to visiting her globe-trekking daughter. She told me that she had previously been to Egypt (I LOOOOVVVED Egypt!), the Phillipines (I LOOOOOVVVED the Phillipines!), Honduras and Costa Rica (I LOOOOVVVVED Honduras! I LOOOOOOVVVVVVED Costa Rica!), and a few other countries that she most likely loved very much. I checked my watch: only sixteen more hours to go.

What little I have seen of Bangkok is more or less what I expected. I am staying at a pleasant place called Suk 11, which is full of backpackers and pulled-luggagers alike. The neighborhood is a hotbed of sexual commerce, and I can hear, even now at five in the morning, the very faint thumping beat of aweful trance music from the girlie bar around the corner. Old and overweight caucasian gentlemen walk the streets with their young Thai girlfriends.

After walking and sweating I realized that the Skytrain and the subway were more hydrating means of getting around. Unable to work up the courage for the street vendors, I wolfed down some fried rice and laksa at an indoor food mall that looked like a chic cafeteria. Then I managed to get a train ticket out of here. Tonight I leave Bangkok on the overnight sleeper to Chumphon, where I will take a bus and a ferry to Ko Tao.

Suk 11

Ji-Soo: Intrepid Adventurer, Man of Mystery

There's not much to admire about solitary travel. The lone traveler imagines a personal adventure in the third person, assigns to himself such qualities as fearlessness, curiosity and tolerance, and goes about "discovering" the foreign land. But the lone traveler mostly engages in introspection, and the unfamiliar backdrop fuels his self-consciousness. Even this self-discovery is mostly fiction; having removed himself from his everyday existence and the judgments of those who know him, he is free to invent an idealized version of himself -- one that he hopes will last for some time when he returns to the world as he knows it. So solitary travel is just a high form of self-absorption, and the lone traveler is just wallowing in crude therapy.

I don't mean to exclude myself from the above verdict, or to apologize for my wannabe trip. I have a knack for self-absorption, and it is perhaps my defining personality trait. I fully intend to glorify every bit of my insignificant journey through Thailand, and to use these experiences to draw bold conclusions -- mostly positive -- about my character. The above crap about solitary travel targets the handful of people on whom I may impose these brutal observations, and hopefully it will preempt some of the eye-rolling and reflexive gagging that may accompany the consumption of my running commentary. The effort might be unnecessary, given that my mother is likely the only person who cares at all to keep up with my travels (hi mom!). She is blinded by a biological bond that renders her incapable of seeing any irony in what I do or say.

But if there is anyone else out there, please indulge me.

We treasure ourselves for looking forward, anticipating what's to come. We also measure the past -- collectively, obsessively. One leads to the other, but neither serves us well.

Now is a good time, see.

Shanghai-ku

Toes tickle expat
ballsacks; teabags in China
steep eternally.

Taikang-lu

Jarrett suggested that I take a look at this new-school alley just off of Taikang-lu, full of arts and crafts. Good call.


The alley


China is apparently experimenting with intellectual property. Only in this alley, though.


There's a street like this in Seoul.


North Korean propaganda posters at Postcard


Contribute to national growth with increased coal production! Afterwards, kegger at the Dear Leader's place!


Souvenirs through a shop window


Woman, dried flowers

Shanghai Streets

Man smokes, releases bird; bird strikes bell, returns to man.


Laundry and pushcart in the old city.


Man and his puppy on a sidewalk in the French Concession


62580000


How long before this cluster of tenements becomes a skyscraper?


Market street near the old city


Crimes against anatidae


Songbird apartments

Changshu-lu, Anfu-lu

Mike / Michael lives in a sweet bachelor pad that befits his official status as Premier of the Shanghai Expats / Chief Officer of Native Training. Its prime location in the French Concession is notable for its proximity to both the Steamed Bun boulevard and the Soup Dumpling street. Just across the street is the skyscraper mysteriously named The Center.


Mike's room


My quarters


Old Man Descending Chinese Staircase

An American Barbecue in China

After these photos were taken, Yuan became mysteriously trashed, and then we dosed him.


Yuan brought the dirty South to Shanghai. He channeled Bob Ross into some happy potatoes.


Meanwhile, Michael channeled some chocolate onto a metal pan in a process that took several hours.


"I was thinking mousse, mousse, cake, chocolate, mousse, cake, mousse?"
"Can I dip my balls it when you're done?"


Did he?


A cake grows in a Chinese refrigerator.


My contribution to the cause: stalking mushrooms. Then I went prowling for tomatoes.


Yuan's watermelon relish.

in defense of meaningless pleasure

She who cries without tears stands before the cameras and begs for forgiveness. I am in a generous mood, begot by boredom. Miss U.S.A. goes out drinking, blows a little coke along the way, and ends up with her tongue inside her fellow beauty queen Miss Teen U.S.A. on some dance floor in Manhattan. Moments of low inhibition and raging hedonism are allowances we make to those we celebrate, particularly one chosen to embody our blondest aesthetic ideals. We have -- well, I suppose we have not; a panel of free-agent celebrities has judged this young woman against our reproductive ideals and deemed her to be the finest in the country. It was Kansas this year, corn-fed and coal-powered, an old-fashioned gal from the Land of Tomorrow. She defines what is possible for the rest of us. If she can't let go and dance into the night, what and how much can we expect for ourselves?

AC

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