Monday, July 28, 2008

#17: Don't Dream it's Over (or, "Don't Dream: It's Over")


Week 17, Thailand

OKAY, SO: we're perched on the precipice of a potentially trip-ending complication. And it was all starting to go so perfectly...

I am, finally, employed. It took two more interviews, but I got there. I'm working now at a high school who's name I cannot pronounce or even spell, for a principal who's name I do not know, without a contract or any official looking document, through a woman whose name I do not know even though I'm on the phone to her every day (it's gotten to that "It would be really embarassing to ask now" sort of phase where I'm thinking up complicated schemes to get her to blurt out her own name). But it's a job. It's easy, the hours are good, the pay is shit but live-able, and the school's close by. So I'm happy.

The first interview I went to last week, however, almost broke me. I walked into an office, was handed a form to fill in in a different room, sat down and wrote my details. When I finished I walked out to hand it to them and -

"Get back in the room!" barked some Thai guy from his desk.

I retreated.

I sat in the room and stared out the window for about fifteen minutes when in walks this Thai couple, all shy smiles and giggles. They sit, and stare at me.

I sit, and stare back.

Finally, they say: "Um, could you introduce yourself, please."

Uh, okay. "I'm Lachlan, and I'm a teacher from Australia." I felt like I was at an AA meeting.

They nodded. We chatted for a while as it became increasingly clear that they couldn't speak English very well, and couldn't understand my half-assed attempts at Thai. The interview became a symphony of "What?" "What?" "What?" in three different voices. I'd had enough, and started to wind the interview up, when they asked:

"Would you be able to do a demonstration class?"

"Sure!" I exclaimed like a boy scout.

They stared at me. I stared back. After two minutes of staring I asked, "Uh... When would you like me to do the demo class?"

"Now," they said.

"Oh. I haven't got anything prepared."

"A teacher doesn't prepare. You must teach from the heart."

I didn't realize I was being interviewed by Confucius, but there you go.

"Oh, okay. Where is the class?"

They looked confused.

"There is no class, is there?" I ventured.

They shook their heads.

"So, you'd like me to stand up, in front of two fully grown adults, with no preparation or plan, and pretend those two adults are actually fifty eleven-year olds for one hour, with no resources. Is that correct?"

"Yes, please," they chimed together.

I walked out. I told myself I'd try one more, and that ended up being the jackpot, in that everybody involved could almost be mistaken for a regular, run-of-the-mill human being. So that's all good.

But perhaps it's all for nothing. Visa talk is boring, so I'll keep this simple: for the whole time we've been here, we've been able to walk across the border into Thailand, and they've given us a free 30-day stamp. No visas, no costs, no hassle - the only thing we had to do was get ourselves back across the border each month to reset the 30 days. The advice we had was that we could continue to do so, ad infinitum.

Turns out our advice is a couple of years out of date. So we rumbled down to the Cambodian border on Friday with no intention to do anything except get a stamp and run back to Bangkok. It's six hours each way, so it's no small journey. When we got there we were informed by a very nice military-looking guy that we had exceeded our 90-day limit on the stamps, and if we crossed the border to Cambodia he would not be able to let us back in.

Shit.

I tried my naive-white-guy best to bribe him, all raised eyebrows and "Is there a special fine we could pay now to get this done? Like, an express fine so we don't have to travel to Phnom Penh and wait a week for a visa?" Nudge, nudge, wink wink. He didn't budge. Border guards are scum; just when you need precisely their breed of complete corruptibility, it evaporates before your eyes.

So, we're back in Bangkok, our stamps have expired and we're racking up a $40 bill for each day we stay here. There are three broad directions this could head. Maybe we go to Laos tomorrow; everything works perfectly; we get our visas in two days and come back to Bangkok where our jobs will welcome us back with open arms. That's what we're banking on.

Or: Maybe we go to Laos, but the visas take longer than they should and we come back to Bangkok only to find that two equally inexperienced and underqualified Westerners are working our jobs. Which would mean that we'd have to start again. Which, in terms of our current bank accounts and mental states, is a potential trip ender.

Or: Maybe we go to Laos, to find out - as has been suggested by some sources - that we will be barred from re-entry into Thailand and not allowed a new visa for another 90 days. Since we are dirt poor and all our stuff will still be in an apartment in Bangkok, completely inaccessible to our greedy little hands, this would almost certainly be a trip-ender.

We don't know how things are going to pan out, but we're hoping for the best. And somehow, deep down, I believe it's our solemn destiny to spend the rest of our lives swinging in hammocks over the Mekong with straw fedoras pulled lazily over our heads, waiting for someone to bring us a beer.

Nothing stands in the way of destiny.

Lachie

Monday, July 21, 2008

#16: Chuck Norris Pipe Dreams



Week 16, Thailand

CAMBODIA OR BUST: that was the plan. We were to cross the border at Poipet, jump in a pickup for the ride over nonexistent road to Sisophon, then onto the little bamboo train (built by villagers and powered by a boat engine) to Battambang, for the long jungle river ride out to Siem Reap, where I sweated out a nasty mushroom pizza four months ago. That's where I'm supposed to be, telling you all about our grand river voyage.

Didn't happen.

We missed the train, then the bus, then wandered around like you do at 8am on New Year's Day when the Stay Out vs Go Home debate starts to turn the corner from one conclusion to the other but your brain and body aren't quite in sync yet so you sort of walk a couple of steps in one direction, then turn and go in another, until someone slaps you. That's what we did, for a while, like scattered amnesiacs, until at some point in the evening we ended up heading west, in a taxi bound for Kanchanaburi.

Kanchanaburi! Don't even try to say it. The Australian accent makes it almost impossible for any of us to pronounce properly. If you really need to give it a go, put on your best Rooty Hill bogan-with-more-VB-singlets-than-teeth accent and say the following dialogue:
'Can't ya?'
'Nahh, Brie'
There you go. That's pretty close. Now practice in front of a mirror for three weeks.

Never mind the pronunciation: Kanchanaburi is really just the River Kwai. as in, 'Bridge on the...', and the bridge in question is still standing in the middle of town, ferrying gawking white tourists back and forth across the river by train. But it's not much of a drawcard, being fairly small and unimpressive and surrounded by large stages and river barges filled with overweight Thais belting out karaoke classics.

THE 'I HATE KARAOKE' SIDENOTE: I hate karaoke. Not generally, you understand, just here. I enjoyed it in the Philippines, for instance, where it was drunken fun, or in Sydney, where it was also drunken fun. Over here, it's drunken seriousness. People here - or, okay, men here - belt out these awful, awful Thai-pop staples with all the grave solemnity of a funeral dirge. That would be okay, but they do it so loudly and for sooooooo long into the night that you start to get these Chuck-Norris-martial-arts fantasies while lying in bed, in which you walk down to that stage in your boxer shorts and totally belt the shit out of all the singer's henchmen and then down the man himself with a mean right hook, before picking up the microphone and giving them a taste of 'Eye of the Tiger' before spitting out some witty one-liner and dropping the mic on the guy's head (I haven't thought of the witty one-liner yet). Also: they play karaoke DVDs constantly on the long-distance buses, except in all of Thailand there must be - let's see here - oh, three karaoke DVDs. That's the impression I get, anyway, after having sat through one particular DVD with a denim-clad douchebag proudly displaying 'Nescafe' logos all over his set while crooning about how he wants to 'soop' my 'ong-ka-chaat' at least five times over the last couple of months. Again - very loudly and on repeat for long enough that the Chuck-Norris fantasies reoccur and you can almost feel the way the driver will scream when you give him a swift and lethal karate chop to the neck.

Kanchanaburi's a lovely little town to sit by the river and waste a couple of days but since we're a bunch of fist-pumping, fast-driving, carpe-diem-shouting, techno-music-listening-to adrenaline junkies we decided that the only thing for it was to rent a couple of the fastest motorbikes in town and burn up and down the highways. So we found a couple of mopeds and sped off at an insane 63km/hr. Because we're crazy! Because nothing can stand in our way! Then Aaron's bike broke down; we had to go back; we got yelled at; we said we were sorry; we got a new bike.

The moment we left Kanchanaburi the landscape exploded into great long, spiky mountains rising sharply in every direction, carved apart by wide brown rivers and softened by long, golden cornfields pocked here and there with a shining red-and-gold temple. We visited a ridiculously large waterfall with seven tiers, each tier massive and filled with swimming Thais and big fish that bit the ankles the moment we stepped in. We showered under the waterfalls; stayed the night in a cabin that floated out on the river, held up by empty oil barrels, the rocking motion gently counteracted by several Singha beers.

We rode around a lot that weekend. When it rained - and it rained - we would become wretched, ragged creatures, our bodies the consistency of wet socks, our mouths alternating between thick cursing and spitting water. When it stopped, and the mountains were strung with mist like tinsel around a christmas tree, it was beautiful. And when the clouds parted altogether and the mountains sung with light and the cornfields glowed in almost radioactive magnificence: then it was one of the all-time highlights of this entire voyage away. We went to some geothermal hot springs not too far from the Burmese border: they were, unsurprisingly, quite hot. Fortunately they were placed two metres from a cold river that snaked its way through the forest, so we were able to jump from one to the other. Lying in those sweaty springs while sweet thick tropical rain poured down on our heads, though: that was also one of the best moments I've had away. Truly excellent.

I'm still struggling on the job front and starting to feel more like a pathetic loser with each passing day. But there's an opportunity around every corner. Like, maybe I could be a crazy bag lady? Or one of those dudes who looks for coins on the beach? They must have it good, check out all that expensive electronic equipment they own. Or, like, I heard about this one website that buys toenail clippings from people! I can make those! Or I could sell my hair to a wigmaker. It's pretty fucking nice hair. Plus, I had a really great 'Desert Storm' trading card collection when I was young. That must be worth a fortune! I hope mum's kept it, or else she'll owe me several thousand dollars... I could collect recyclable paper! The opportunities for an enterprising guy like me: limitless.

Lachie

#15: Where the Wild Things Are




Week 15, Thailand

ON A SIGN: for a particularly classy-looking massage parlour downtown, with the particularly classy-sounding name of 'Teen Smile Massage', there is a large list of prices. The regular at the top - Thai massage 350 baht; foot massage 200 baht; oil massage 350 baht. Then as you work your way down, things get interesting - oil massage with testicle massage 600 baht; foot and testicle massage 500 baht, sexy testicle massage 800 baht, happy sexy testicle massage 1000 baht. Maybe it's me: while imagining a 'testicle massage' all I can picture is a brutish Swedish woman named Helga manhandling my scrotum with iron fingers, and it's not a particularly pleasant image (in fact, it tends to make me sort of dizzy and nauseous and I usually need to sit down afterward). But different strokes for different folks, I guess.

So: it turns out that the reason I have had more trouble than Edie in getting a job over here is the Filipino Factor. Edie got a call from her boss Shane last week, who's also trying to locate a job for me:

HIM: So I'm trying to get your boyfriend a job at a school.
HER: Cool.
HIM: But, um...
HER: ...
HIM: ...Um, where's he from?
HER: Australia.
HIM: Oh, great, Australia.
HER: ...
HIM: ...
HER: ...Was there anything else you wanted?
HIM: No. Yes. Um.
HER: ...
HIM: ...
HER: What?
HIM: ... Um... What race is he?
HER: He's white.
HIM: Oh. Cool. That was all they wanted to know.

In a nutshell: my resume says that I worked for a couple of months in the Philippines, so all the employers immediately assume that I am, therefore, Filipino. They then assume that because I am Filipino, I am not white, and am thus only suitable for cleaning jobs. What a fucking circus. There are plenty of ads for teaching jobs which say, clear as day: NO FILIPINOS. IF YOU ARE FILIPINO YOUR APPLICATION WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED. It's pretty gross.

So I inserted a photo of myself into my resume and, of course, got offers for interviews immediately. I went to a job interview across town for a Catholic girls school and was interviewed, coincidentally, by a Filipino nun. She was tiny, no higher than my hip, a little hobgoblin who, when I told her that the school was probably too far to travel to each day, said, 'Maybe you should get your own apartment, then, over this way. Away from your girlfriend. Ever heard of abstinence?'.

And that, as they say, was that.

The job-hunting thing is a fairly depressing affair, generally, as job-hunting often is, but it was alleviated a bit last week when Edie and Aaron and I decided to hoof it into the jungles of Thailand a few hours north of Bangkok. Utterly magnificent: vines and butterflies everywhere, the long siren-like hoots and hollers of the gibbons in the jungle, massive waterfalls plunging into cold water - we swam at the waterfall that they used in the film, The Beach, which might mean something more to me if I had actually watched that film at some point. But I have now swum in the same water that Leonardo diCaprio once swam in. That's gotta count for something.

And we decided to go off on a jungle trek, unguided, for a few hours. That sounds hardcore but every time there was a rustling in the bushes near us, Edie would shout 'SNAKE!', Aaron would shout 'TIGER!', and I would shout 'AAARGH!' (people screaming scary animal names terrifies the shit out of me) and we would all pelt off at different directions into the jungle, and then have to find each other again. It's actually surprisingly nerve-wracking walking through a jungle in which there are known to be tigers and leopards and wild elephants and the like; even though they're extremely rare and avoid humans and all, and you know that you have a better chance of stumbling across an undiscovered civilisation of small blue men than a man-eating tiger, you can't help but silently plan out which way you're going to run when the roar finally comes and some massive bundle of orange and black and teeth is bounding toward you. My eventual plan was elegantly simple: hide behind Aaron. It's not often that I have the luxury of having someone taller than me to use as a human shield, and I planned to exploit that circumstance as far as possible.

But the walk was pleasant, the air was cool and there were monkeys swinging through the trees every so often. No shit: those are clumsy animals. They can climb better than I could, sure, but they make a hell of a lot of noise when they do it. A couple of monkeys swinging through the trees makes about the same level of banging and rustling as a charging bull elephant. Some lemur-looking thing crossed our path, too, scooting up a tree when we approached; there were deer with beautiful dark patterns across their throats wandering up the paths; a freshwater siamese crocodile paddled lazily down a stream. Too bad that not a single one of us had a camera, since Aaron's and Edie's were broken and I'd forgotten to charge mine. But now it feels like a secret: the day was fantastic and the three of us will be the only ones who knew what it looked like.

And the people we met there were so lovely; no public transport in the jungle so we had to hitch rides in the backs of utes going back and forth. Everyone would offer us a lift, go out of their way to take us where we wanted to go. It was superb. It was surreal waking up to the smog and grime of the city after being in such a pristine place but all things must pass, as George Harrison said (except I think he swiped that from the bible? Maybe?). And anyway we're heading off again, this evening, it being yet another long weekend (the Thais have something like fourteen public holidays per year). Back off to Cambodia to sail down the river and live out my Martin-Sheen-Apocalypse-Now fantasies. Be warned, extremely-obese-Marlon Brando! I'm on my way, and my axe is sharp!

Lachie

Monday, July 7, 2008

#14: The Bloated Scrotum of Bangkok



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!