Week 14, Thailand
DEEP INSIDE: this city exists a whole other freakshow, thrilling and nauseating, thick with scum and puke and chili. When you dig right under Bangkok, trawl under its skin, you find... well, you find nothing, except more Bangkok. There is no hidden layer, no sudden change of direction: the smells just get stronger, the sights more bizarre and the tastes more ass-burning. The place is the same from the bottom as it is from the top, from the left or the right, from the inside or the outside. It's just a question of how weird you want things to get.
The week started off with a storm. Not just any storm, mind you - this was the End of the World. We walked out onto the balcony and the sky was green. It was eerily silent too - and Bangkok is never, ever quiet. The only sound we could hear were flags flapping in the wind atop a building several hundred yards away. The clouds were moving fast, as they used to when I would go bushwalking in the mountains, but they weren't just moving across the sky - they were pushing up and down as well. We could look straight up and it looked as if a massive column of cloud was pushing down toward us. Everywhere these columns of cloud were pushing up and down. I thought we were in tornado country, and started freaking out, then I remembered that scene in Independence Day where the spaceships turn up (for those of you who have sat through that piece of trash: that is exactly what the clouds looked like) and I started shitting my pants, then Edie said it looked like Armageddon and I completely lost my shit and started running around the room shouting "Allah! Buddha! Jesus! I'm sorry!" and trying to remember snatches of Catholic prayers from school scripture lessons ("Um...We thank you for our daily bed?") and tossing the water in the sink over my head as if it were holy water.
The green clouds passed after a few minutes, followed up by a white sheet of rain. Not even acid rain, or hail, or rain with fish in it, or rain red with the blood of sinners, or anything. Just regular, anticlimactic rain.
Things would only get worse. Later in the week, jobless and bored, we decided to check out the forensic museum across town. We'd heard that there were a few funny things in there, and, okay, that was sort of true. In a cabinet to the left, there was the bloodied t-shirt of somebody who was stabbed to death with a dildo. I'm going to say that again, because it makes me giggle: stabbed to death with a dildo. But it steadily descended into a bizarre, macabre conveyor belt of horror and depravity. I didn't mind the jars full of internal organs pierced with bullets or crushed by cars. I was even okay with the six (count 'em) fully-intact leathery human corpses - rapists and serial killers who were executed by the state and then placed on full display to the public. That was okay. Even when we found a severed tiger's foot placed randomly among the otherwise exclusively human organs, we were okay. But the place was full of things so much more grisly - bodies melted in explosions, pictures of people crushed by industrial accidents, and dead babies in jars - so many dead babies in jars - too many horrors to mention, all neatly catalogued and displayed for the viewing pleasure of giggly high school students and dirty old white men in Chicago Bulls singlets.
Next door, the parasitology museum. We both felt pretty nauseous and disgusted in ourselves after an hour at the forensics museum, but we figured the parasitology museum couldn't be any worse. And, apart from a few grotesque photos of tapeworms and such (I'll spare you the details): apart from that, it wasn't too bad. Except for the centrepiece, which is as great a monument to Bangkok as I've ever seen: in the centre of the museum, taking pride of place, is the gigantic, mammoth scrotum of a man with elephantitis, floating in a jar of preservatives. The Bloated Scrotum of Bangkok: I've tried for a while to think of something of a similar size to compare it to, but I'm struggling - let's just say it was much, much bigger than your head. Like, at least four times as large. It was in the shape of a cube, for some reason. Suddenly, the two dollars we'd paid to get into the medical museums seemed well worth it.
After that whole experience we decided that we'd had too much time on our hands and it was time to get serious about getting jobs. We each got an interview over the weekend, and the circus continued. My interview was with a man from Pakistan named Matt, for a job teaching English at a high school; from the moment I walked in he spent the hour-long interview listing reasons why I shouldn't take the job. There's no air-conditioning, he said. The school's an hour away by bus, and there are fifty students in each class, he said. Not only that, but the students can't speak any English and don't respect their teachers whatsoever. You get only three days sick leave per year, he said, and the students have no study materials except the ones you make yourself. There is only one computer for all the staff to share, and it doesn't have the internet. Also, he said, we suggest that you try not to talk to other staff, as the Thai teachers dislike the foreign teachers and vice versa, and some of the foreign teachers don't like new teachers and will try to get rid of you.
On and on it went. I'd never heard a spiel like it. I thought, this has gotta end with him saying something like "But if you get through it, you get $5000 a month with an end-of-year bonus". It didn't.
"Oh, and we can't pay you well. $1200 a month. No bonus. Do you want the job?"
I weighed it up. As awful as he'd made it sound, we were running out of money and I just wanted an easy job that I wouldn't have to think or care about too much. And the money was enough to cover our living expenses, if nothing else. Then came the kicker.
"What hours do I teach?"
"You teach classes from nine to three. Sometimes you finish at 2:30."
"Oh. Cool. That sounds good."
"..."
"What? Did you mutter something?"
"...extra hours...come in early..."
"Speak up, what are you saying?"
"Um... You have to come into school by 7:30 each morning. And you don't leave til four."
"What? Why?"
"...parents..."
"Stop mumbling! Why do I come in at 7:30 if I don't teach til 9:00?"
"So that the school gets to show off all the white teachers to the parents."
Aha. I thought poor Matt was going to cry when I told him I couldn't take the job. Edie's interview was even more surreal. She walked into the chaotic office of Shane, a British agent who finds teachers for schools:
"Ah!" he said, "You're white. Great. When can you start?"
"But -"
"I've got a school that needs a teacher from next week. Can you do that?"
"Um, yes, but -"
"Here's your timetable. I'll email you some lesson plans. Okay?"
"Um... Did you want to look at my resume?"
"Oh yes, suppose I should, let's see here..." [3 seconds later] "...all seems in order. Great! Welcome aboard!"
"You know I've never taught before, right?"
"Oh, it's nothing. Piece of piss, really."
"And that I have no qualifications to teach, at all."
"Quite right. If you did, I'd be sending you to a school for white kids. But you'll be going to a Thai public school."
"Oh."
"Starting Monday. Enjoy!"
So: that's the way it is over here, apparently. In any case, Edie's got a job lined up for next week and I've got a few more interviews to make before the weekend. It's all a goddamned three-ring circus, and it's kind of degrading even being a part of it, but we need that cash if we're to push any further into Asia or Europe. So we're going to have to dance like bears on hotplates, be the big clowns riding the tiny little bikes, and just play whatever little games the city has in store for us. Hand me my over-sized clown shoes. I'm going in.
Lachie.
NEXT WEEK: National parks! Tigers! Monkeys! Hiking! Sweating! Collapsing!
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