#28: The Sizzled Lizard

Week 28 - Phnom Penh, Cambodia

SO WE: trundled back into Cambodia yesterday, rolling over the border in the early morning. Then we argued with the van drivers until midday, trying to get a reasonable price to Phnom Penh. After an hour or two I finally realized that for the whole argument I'd had the exchange rates mixed up in my head and had been offering them just over a dollar to take us some three hundred kilometres. So I felt like a knob and spent three hundred kilometres getting sniggers and icy stares from the Cambodians in the car.

Whatever: the drive was spectacular anyway, over mountains and rivers, as empty of people as any place in Australia. The occasional labourers walking home in their rags were the only people for several hours, then a few ox-carts, carrying fruit, then a town on the bank of a river, where an old lady was lugging a large, freshly-caught shark up to her stall. And then Phnom Penh: the giant, spastic, chaotic, rambling dustcloud disguised as a city, where the troubles began. In the space of an hour we were harassed, ripped off, driven in circles, given free beer by the Thai Minister for Justice (?), and offered endless amounts of drugs we couldn't afford, and we ended the day tired, hungry and shitty, in a guesthouse over the lake while a massive lightning storm played out in front of us. Apparently a couple of months in Thailand has softened us up quite a bit.

Or perhaps it was starting our travels with a week on a tropical island, which is about the most softening travel experience you can go through that doesn't involve a cruise ship or actually physically transforming yourself into a sponge. We spent the days on Ko Chang waking up late and lolling about in the warm clear water until lunchtime, when we'd join the other travellers getting happy shakes at the Treehouse and return hours later blissful and double-glazed. Glassy-eyed, we'd sit around staring at the geckos chasing flies across the ceiling or hold meandering debates about the relative merits of The Cosby Show versus Saved by the Bell. And then it would be nighttime, and some bar along the beach would have a full moon party, or a half moon party, or a three sixteenths moon party, and that would carry us through until it was time to wake up and go swimming. It was, without hyperbole, the toughest experience of my entire life.

The beaches were filled with fish and frogs and giant beetles that flew into my back at such high speeds that I thought I was being punched; up the road from our bungalows, a troop of monkeys hung out on the power lines, having gladiatorial contests to knock each other off the poles and racing each other along the thick black cables. At one point while swimming a large lizard surfaced only a couple of metres frome Erin and I. We watched it dive for fish among the rocks - an amazing experience until the Thais on the beach spotted the lizard as well and immediately dropped everything they were doing to pounce on it. The lizard ended up on the barbecue at the bungalows that night.

It's been about six months since we last came to Cambodia and I'd completely forgotten the massive amount of difference between the two countries, which is obvious from the moment you cross the border. The difference is simple - Thailand has money, Cambodia doesn't - but it's profound nonetheless. Seeing the naked toddlers playing in the toxic goo that fills the gutters, the pavement hairdressers, the razor wire around poles to stop people stealing the power cables for cash, the ox-pulled carts, the large cauldrons along the main roads that serve as public bins and which are burned each night, the way people driving down the road will just fling bags of garbage out of their windows as a matter of habit - this is the naked life that goes on in Cambodia, disgusting and thrilling and miserable and ecstatic. And addictive, which is why we've come back for more. Tomorrow we head to Siem Reap, which Adam has not seen before, and then we head into lands unknown - Battambang, Sisophon, rivers, jungles and bamboo trains.

Hope you're all well and enjoying the warmer weather (Phnom Penh is, as ever and always, stifling) - oh and the first episode of our TV show is up and running: www.pingpongkapow.tumbler.org!

Ping Pong Ka-Pow,

Lachie

#27: Bangkok Sinking

Week 27 - Koh Chang, Thailand

AND AWAY: we go...

There's blood in the streets of Bangkok again, and once again you'd never know it unless you read the paper and / or received frantic calls from friends and family. Two people are dead this time; eight more had limbs blown off from ping pong bombs or tear gas canisters. The leader of the PAD is in prison; the prime minister says he wants to quit; the police are getting malicious; and the army chief - who, bizarrely, has assumed the role of The Voice of Reason - is being bullied into another coup.

It's time to leave Bangkok and never look back.

Two days ago Ronald, one of the teachers I work with, got drugged and robbed. He went to a coffeeshop, pulled out his paper to have a read and next thing he knows, it's morning, and he's awake face down in the gutter several miles away with no wallet. Worst part is, he's already lost everything once: he used to own a hotel in Phuket, pre-tsunami. Now he's working shitty teaching jobs just to get by, and he's lost everything he saved. He spent the next couple of days vomiting copiously after the massive dose they handed him.

Telling the story brought on an avalanche of other desperate tales. Marvin, another teacher I work with, took a girl home to his apartment. They were stark sober, but after one bite of his dinner he lost all memory and woke to an empty apartment. Security cameras showed that she had remained in his apartment for an hour and a half, rigorously cleaning the apartment of every one of his belongings.

Maxwell, one of Clarice's friends, also took a girl home. He didn't get drugged, but did fall asleep. He woke to find her swiping his laptop, and chased her out through the corridor, catching up with her in the elevator. Whereupon she promptly stabbed him in the chest, puncturing his lung.

Also: it's time to leave Bangkok, and never look back.

Aaron left a few days ago, on the bus down to Ko Chang, and waited out the week swinging in a hammock with an evil grin on his evil face, clutching a cocktail with an evil claw and cackling his evil cackle, evilly, as he thought about us slaving away at our braingrinding jobs.

And now we're gone too, off on the Grand Adventure. We've met up with Aaron in Ko Chang, which is, if anything, more perfect and idyllic and sunny and warm and gorgeous than the last time we were here, in April. If all goes well we should be in Cambodia in a week or so. And then: onwards and upwards.

Hope you're all well,

Lachlan

#25: Chased by Wild Elephants Through the Jungle

AND BUT: then we round the corner, thick trees on either side, and Doc slams the jeep to a halt. The jungle is screeching. Ahead, there are three 4WDs in front of us, sitting idly. A face pops out of a window of the car in front.

"Chang moho!" he cries, waving his hands frantically at us.

And now Doc slams the car into reverse and starts backing up the road - the only road out of the jungle - at a fair speed. There are cars behind us. Doc leans out the window and yells.

"Chang moho! Bpai! Chang moho!"

Finally, he turns to us to explain.

"There is an elephant coming." He raises his eyebrows meaningfully. "An angry elephant. When people beep beep - [he motions beeping the horn] - elephant does this - [he motions the elephant crushing the car and murderously chasing down and slaughtering those who crawl, bloodied and screaming, from the vehicle]".

"Oh" we say in unison.

He nods at us. We have been hitchhiking with Doc for the last hour. "Safety first," he says, pushing the car further up the road, and lifts a handgun onto his lap - unbeknownst to Edie and I, but seen by Aaron, who thereafter has the distinct look of a man who knows his body will never be found by the authorities.

At that moment a soldier dressed in dark fatigues comes pelting round the corner like the vanguard of a horde of Japanese people fleeing Godzilla. He jumps onto the back of a truck, screams for it to go faster.

But we can't go faster. The cars behind us are trying to turn around, rather than reverse any further, and now everybody's stuck for a few minutes while the blockage clears. And now, round the corner, the great bull elephant lumbers. He's a fantastic beast, with magnificent tusks, and he looks stressed and frightened. The road's designed to keep the wildlife off it; but once they're on it, it's very difficult to exit because of the side trenches. So he keeps marching toward us and we stumble backwards, each car trying not to collide with the next.

This surreal chase, which lasts for another fifteen kilometres before a ranger's truck finally forces the elephant from the road, reaches its peak when we are all not only being chased up the road by a wild elephant but also trapped in our cars by a troop of about fifty large red-assed monkeys, who surround the cars and seem playful from the window but screech and bare their teeth as soon as a door is opened.

Mental. But really the incident saved the weekend, which at that point was seeming like a bit of a blowout. See, we had a great time at Khao Yai jungle last time, all trekking and waterfalls and watching monkeys swing through trees and so on. So we decided we'd come one last time before we leave the area, forgetting one key factor: the wet season.

Yes, after all my bitching the wet season began in force a couple of weeks ago. At school I had to wade through shin-deep water; the road outside looked like a river filled with a thousand Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bangs. It entailed all the wading and gnashing of teeth that I'd thought it would. The temperature has even got significantly cooler. It's great.

Until you get to the jungle. It was raining lightly, and cold up in the mountains, and so the waterfalls were a write-off. As for the trekking - well, most of the tracks were closed because of flooding, especially the longer ones. So we decided to join together a couple of the shorter ones, get a good walk in, and head back to town.

We got ten metres down the track, when I heard Edie's voice behind me. "What's that on the ground?" she asked, ominously. Twenty more metres, and Aaron pipes in, "Is that a leech on my foot?", and then, the call from Edie after another twenty metres "They're everywhere!".

We picked up the pace.

Actually, we ran the entire way. There was literally a carpet of leeches on the ground, thousands upon thousands of the little bastards waving their little tooth-filled heads at us mockingly. Luckily we were on the shortest track, a 1200m circular 'Nature Trail' so that we were back at the visitor centre inside of twenty minutes. By that stage, we each had at least a dozen leeches on each of our shoes, with more of the little fucking creatures burrowed inside our socks and ankles. I'd never seen anything like it. The lighters came out in force and at one point we accidentally set Aaron's shoe on fire. For whatever reason Edie got away unscathed, but Aaron and I marched around the rest of the day looking as if someone had gone at our ankles with a hacksaw.

So the rampaging bull elephant really was an improvement on our day. Even better: the handgun-wielding air-duct installation man we were hitchhiking with offered to take us out to dinner with his friends. We agreed - they couldn't speak much English and we couldn't speak much Thai but several bottles of whisky saw a rapid end to those concerns. We garbled our own languages, let alone the other, and spent most of the night making extravagant gestures with our hands. It was a fantastic night, and we ended it back in Bangkok on a high.

I should mention that Edie has become something of a whisky monster over here. The fact that you can buy a bottle of the meanest whisky in Thailand (Mehkong), plus soda, cola and ice for around $4 altogether (to paraphrase that stupid song nobody knows the name of: Ain't no party like a $4 party!) has released something bestial and broken-beer-bottle-wielding in Edie. Or maybe she just likes it alot. In any case, if you're mixing the drinks, better make sure you get the proportions exactly right - and DO NOT forget to give a last little 'jush' with the spoon to mix it up. Otherwise you might just get a broken glass to the face, followed by a shouted, "Shhhhhh!! Stop crying!!! [hiccup] Whaddayya say we don't [hiccup] tell the cops about this, hey? How about we jus...Zzzzzzzzzzz"

Two weeks-ish til we leave this accursed city, though I finished work last week. Still, I've found that life in Bangkok is vastly improved by a) not working and b) locking yourself in the apartment and playing Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" at full volume on repeat all day even if you're supposed to, like, maybe, do the dishes or take out the rubbish or something. But whatever, don't be a, like, fascist. I'll do it this afternoon! Jesus! Lay off!

Lachie

#23 & 24: The Dengue Daze

Weeks 23 and 24, Thailand

WELL, WELL: this was uncalled for. I am currently coming to the end of a week-and-a-half-long battle with Dengue fever, which has left me battered, bruised and sorta sleepy. My fingers are still swollen (it feels like I'm mashing at the keyboard with a set of cold football hotdogs), my muscles still ache, I'm as weak as a day-old kitten, and my head is still very fuzzy, so this may not be the most coherent letter that I've ever moose apple bulldozer. But I'm improving, at least.

Dengue fever is not nearly as much fun as I had thought it would be. I'd thought: instant cred for the price of a week lying in bed flipping through magazines in my pyjamas. Sweet deal, I thought. Not so. Instead I spent a week staring at a small patch on the ceiling and trying very, very hard not to move. Any movement - any at all - and I was off into dizzyness and nausea for the rest of the day. I couldn't eat, I couldn't drink; I couldn't sleep; I almost went through liver failure. I glowed red day and night and my hands and feet swelled up like balloons. My motivation to do anything was shot: all I wanted to do was lie and stare at the ceiling - and that's all I did, all throughout the day and night in my apartment; then, when the doctors told me I was no longer healthy enough to stay at home, I stared at the hospital ceiling.

It was a truly boring disease. I didn't even get hypercoloured fever dreams about decapitated cattle. The closest I came was when I convinced myself at 4am one morning that I was a businessman from eastern China and that it was absolutely imperative that I work out what number one gets when you multiply all the numbers on a Sudoku board together (it's 3, 265, 720, incidentally). Even my fantasies were boring.

Hospital was fine, and I even kinda got used to pissing into a jug. Started to enjoy it, really. I'm considering getting one for the apartment. A large sign above my bed announced to the world that I was a "Bleeding Precaution", which made me look pretty hardcore to the other patients, I think. Well, those that could read English, anyway. The man next to me had a young son who came to visit him regularly, lugging along a videogame thing-y that made loud, ridiculous noises every few seconds. That boy died a million gratuitously-violent deaths in my head over the time I was in hospital, deaths which usually involved him being forced to eat that stupid videogame thing, or having it otherwise inserted into his body painfully.

The fever baked away any last remnants of Thai language that I still carried around with me and so I was left to communicate with the nurses in garbled sign language and monosyllabic directions. The doctor just said "Cannot go home yet" while she watched my bank account disappear; when there was nothing left to take I finally got "Okay, you go home now".

And I finally emerged into the light and quickly retreated back into the dark of my apartment. Now I've got to make a desperate scramble to remake some of the money I lost so that this time here hasn't been wasted because of a mosquito. (Back at work today, this is what passed for co-worker sympathy from Jack the Canadian: "Dengue fever? Where the fuck do you live, man? In a hammock over a swamp?")

In other developments, the Thai PM has finally been sacked - for illegally making money from his cooking shows while acting as PM - so the protests should dry up fairly soon out here, although the people they've put up as his replacements look like an even bigger bunch of clowns.

Anyway, I apologize for the short update this week but as I said, I'm still fairly weak and it hurts a little to look at the computer screen. I hope you're all doing better than I'm doing, and I'll catch up again next week with what will hopefully be better news.

Lachie

#22: The Angry Mop

Week 22, Thailand

OH BOY: things are getting strange. It was last Friday, as I was leaving my last class, that I heard a low whining sound, like a long "Eeeeeeeeeee".

Hmmm, I thought.

I rounded the corner, still with the "Eeeeeee" buzzing in my head, and saw down the other end of the corridor one of the Thai teachers running toward me at full pelt. She was making the low droning sound, and, with a look of panic in her eyes, spat one word at me as she passed:

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemergenceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...."

Hmmm, I thought.

I continued down the corridor, walked into the staffroom, which was mysteriously empty and looked like it had been deserted hastily. I slumped behind my desk and looked out the window at an empty playground. I heard a stamping of feet, and a Thai teacher racing down the stairs spotted me through the doorway. She rushed in.

"We must go home!" she cried, "School is being evacuated!"

"What? Why?"

"There is a mop!" she cried.

"A mop?" I asked, confused. She took my repetition as evidence that I had understood.

"Yes! A mop is coming toward the school! We must go!"

"A mop?" I asked again.

"Yes, an angry mop!"

And with that she fled. I sat, shuffled some papers, thought about going home and then what the teacher had been saying finally hit me: Oh, an angry mob. Oh. I grabbed my things and ran full pelt toward the front gates, pushing children out of my way and making a low "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" sound.

In the end that turned out to be a false alarm; there was rioting and a lot of injuries but it didn't come within 500m of my school. But things were obviously on the slide so Edie and I decided to bust out of Bangkok for the weekend, trying to flee the angry mops, head down to the beach for some much needed R & R. But the PAD, in its protests, shut down the trains, the buses, and the planes, and we found ourselves trapped inside the city.

If you can't beat them, join them. The next day Aaron and I headed straight into the mouth of the beast, heading out to Government House to hang with the protesters behind their crudely built barricades of car tyres and old bicycles, their tinny loudspeakers and their ratty tents and sweaty headscarves. It was exciting, though we felt a bit like outsiders having made the ill-informed decision to come wearing black (the protesters are almost exclusively decked out in yellow, which isn't the greatest fashion statement but is quite a thing to behold). We made it all the way into Government House itself, allowed through a small breach in the gates by a couple of smiling protesters, to where hundreds more people of all stripes are permanently camped out in a bid to bring down the government. It was there I got a phone call from my mother.

"Uh...Hi mum."
"I'm just calling to make sure you're safely away from all this unrest that's going on."
"Ah, actually..."
"Actually?"
"Actually, I'm at the protest now."
"No you're not."
"Yes I am."
"No you're not."
"Yes I-"
"No, you're not, because you're not that stupid. And even if you were that stupid, you're definitely not stupid enough to tell your poor mother that that's where you are..."

Some of the protesters were obviously a bit suspicious that we were reporters; some asked us bluntly and others fled with a nervous laugh if we asked too many questions. But on the whole they were very friendly, wanting to involve Aaron and I in the story of what was going on, showing Aaron photos of the riots, shaking our hands and just generally being pretty cool guys and girls.

Since then, of course, things have progressed downhill. The police, who have maintained a permanent presence near the protest since it began in May, mysteriously disappeared on Monday night, just in time for an angry pro-government mob to clash with the PAD, in the course of which fighting several guns were fired, fifty-odd people were wounded, and one man died. The PM announced a state of emergency several hours later; the PAD announced a civil war (later retracted); the army general was placed in control of the city; our schools were closed down; and we are now banned from having public gatherings of more than five people. Good times.

In the meantime, in a bid to end our boredom, Edie and I have been catching buses all around Bangkok. The buses - crusty, ancient clattering machines with wooden floorboards and large open windows - were always a bit of a mystery to us, their destinations in Thai script whizzing by us before I could decipher them ("Uh...that says Pa-ra...Is that a G or a D? Um... Pa-ra-ga- Oh shit it's gone...") but in the last couple of weeks they've opened up a new world to us, taking us to places almost impossible to get to without a stiff taxi fare otherwise. We catch them to places we don't know, to buzzing night markets and streets filled with cut flowers, to bridges filled with giggling high school students hanging with their friends, to Chinatown and Little India, where we eat sickeningly sweet Punjabi lollies and stuff ourselves on chapati. It's a whole new side of Bangkok, and I find myself falling back in love with the city, almost in spite of myself.

I'm pretty sure things will settle in the next week, though I've been saying that for more than a week and it hasn't happened yet. But the army's in control now, and once they decide on which side of the fence they fall, it'll come to a head fairly quickly, for better or worse, I think. Until then, we have only to avoid the angry mops and pray that our schools remain closed. And practice lying to our mothers.

Lachie

#21: It's Revolution, Baby!

IT FILTERED: down to us very slowly, as usual. By the time it reached me, dripping sweat and staring at the wall from my desk, the manic shouting, the slogan-chanting, the clash of sweaty singlets against riot shields, had decreased to a murmur. The first thing I noticed was that the Thai teachers had the television on in the staffroom. The sound was off. They'd had it on occasionally when the Thai boxers were competing in the Olympics, but never otherwise. Odd, but not anything worth investigating. Then, later in the day, an email from a friend in Singapore:

Wow, Bangkok looks pretty exciting at the moment.

What? No it doesn't. I followed the links and there it was: the People's Alliance for Democracy had taken Government House and the government TV station, and blocked all highways into and out of Bangkok.

Now, I've made my thoughts on PM Samak known elsewhere in the blog; if the protesters succeed then good riddance to bad rubbish (just to recap: he's a television chef. The prime minister of a significant nation has two - count 'em - two cooking shows each week, as well as a celebrity talk show). Will it succeed though? Probably not, because the army isn't willing to back the protesters, and nothing ever happens in Thailand without the army weighing in. Let's hear it for military dictatorships posing as functioning democracies to receive millions in US funding and snap-happy tourists! Hip-hip!

But what amazes me is the Thais' deep love of a good coup.

Bear in mind, this is a land in which, if it weren't for the blare of traffic whistles and the whine of two-stroke engines, the roads would be almost silent - no-one ever, ever dares to use their car horn. A land in which people never, ever raise their voice, except via a karaoke machine. Where conflict is simply bad form and to be avoided at all times. It's simply not done. And yet, and yet: they're not just willing, but eager, to congregate en masse every couple of months to depose and behead the current political leader.

I had always wondered what it would be like to live through a coup, attempted or otherwise. I imagine that in a smaller town with a more excitable populace, say Phnom Penh or Port Moresby, that the reverberations of the revolt would ripple instantaneously throughout the city. But in a metropolis the size of Bangkok, with a people as fiercely, stubbornly calm as the Thais, the coup basically boils down to a few half-excited conversations with friends around the city:

"Hey! There was a coup today!"

"What? A coup! Really?"

"Yeah!"

"Wow."

"..."

"So..."

"How was work today?"

There's not much else to say.

We didn't make it to the jungle last weekend; instead we went out with Jen and Clarice and a few others, celebrating Jen's birthday at the Flying Chicken outside of town. This place - it is easily the restaurant most likely to end my long stint at vegetarianism.

Not because the food's particularly good, you understand - it is very good, but so are most places in Bangkok - but because when your chicken is cooked, they cover it in brandy, light it on fire, put it in a slingshot, and fire it to a waiter waiting on a unicycle, who deftly catches it with a spike on the top of his hat.

I'll wait here while you read that again.

Done? Yes, it's amazing - more amazing because there are several choices as to how your chicken is caught, including having a second waiter on top of the first waiter's shoulders (who, just to repeat, is on a motherfucking unicycle), more amazing still because we didn't get to see it at all. We missed the entire affair, as we were subjected to VIP treatment (read: locked in a karaoke room and subjected to endless balloon animals from a drunken Thai clown).

Still, it managed to be bizarre. The Thai clown was amazing with the balloons, creating really complex designs like a small piglet wearing sunglasses (!) or a poodle wearing sunglasses (!) - well, okay: the truth is he did all the standard designs and then used a small balloon to make sunglasses for them. It was pretty enthralling after a few whiskeys, though. And we chucked on a good mix of mopey Thai karaoke dirges for the Thais in attendance and the 'Ghostbusters' theme song for the rest of us ("I AIN'T AFRAID OF NO GHOST!"). And when the chickens were finally delivered to us after their flight, they were presented standing up like little dolls, with a flower where the head should be, and a little American flag in their little roast chicken arms. It was creepy.

Sunday we hung with Aaron, who informed us that he is, after much debate, leaving his job and joining us on our long road north. Excellent! My dream was always to lead a communal trip, picking up people along the way - I watched The Muppet Movie far, far too often in the lead-up to this trip (sing it with me now: 'Movin' right along, dun-de-dun, dun-de-dun, footloose and fancy-free...'). Our last month in Bangkok is upon us, the road stretches before us like a dream, and soon we will be carried along it like leaves in a stream.

But for now we work, and watch events in Bangkok unfold. On Tuesday, the day of the revolt, my last class was interrupted after twenty minutes by a loudspeaker announcement; the children stood suddenly and ran out; and, mystified, I retired to the staff room, slumping in a heap behind my desk. Bill, a veteran of many years teaching in Thailand, turned around to me and smiled.

"I love it when they have a coup," he said, "We all get to go home early."

Viva la revolucion!

Lachie

#20: Bangkok I Love You (But You're Bringing Me Down)

Kill Time: Still the coolest bar in Bangkok

Week 20, Thailand

HAVE I: been a bit down on Bangkok, recently?

I haven't meant to be. I guess it's just something that comes with spending a long time in one place; the ugly bits tend to stick out and poke you in the eye a bit more than earlier, when you first arrive, smiling, clutching closely to your ideas of what the place should be like with the breathless optimism of migrants and Barack Obama. And being poor: being poor is a grinding dullness that can make a mockery of any city's nightlife. Add to that a boring job - a job with the kind of crushing paralysis that sees you sitting at your desk furiously trying to work out how many cents you are earning per minute, or wondering whether dogs hear sound the same way fish do, or spending hours staring at the clock trying to work out if the second hand is moving slower than it was a few hours ago. Suddenly you're trapped and bored all day by the job and trapped and bored all night by your inability to spend money. So, in the words of 90's relationship guidebooks: It's not you, Bangkok. It's me.

And I should be fair to Bangkok, even though I agree with Theroux when he calls it "a preposterous mixture of temples and brothels". This city is cool. The young guys with cigarettes hanging limply from mouths surrounded by ambitious facial hair, pouring whiskey for their friends at run-down little college bars. The old ladies doing tai chi in the morning and preparing their alms to give to the monks wandering past in a sea of wide grins, saffron robes, and hands pressed together in thanks. The fat men behind the food stalls, hazy with chili smoke and laughing with grease stains down their chest, each one a consummate master of the only dish they have ever made or will ever make. The slimy canals that criss cross the city, filled with boats; the evil laughs of tuk-tuk drivers; the hammocks over train tracks filled with labourers escaping the midday heat; the endless games of bottle-top checkers and makruk; the children shouting "Hello! I love you!" and the young guys and girls anxious to find out everything about you and all your thoughts on Thailand. And the food! There is an unspoken rule in Thailand that the more one spends on food here, the worse it will be, and vice versa. Beautiful, tongue-scorching, stomach-filling meals are available everywhere for less than the cost of a Paddle-Pop, in Sydney.

But just as Bangkok has many brilliant sights, tastes and sounds that are found only here, and nowhere else in the world, it also has its bastions of shittiness, the things that seem deliberately tailored to make your day a little harder. So, in the interests of getting everything out on the table, a few of the lamer aspects of living here:

GROUP AEROBICS:

So, even though Thais are genetically the slimmest people on earth, they nevertheless are determined to rub our faces in our own fat arses by exercising constantly. Parks come with every conceivable sporting arena - tennis, badminton, bocce, basketball, soccer, futbol, pools, running tracks - plus huge areas of free exercise equipment, weights and dumbells and stationary bikes and that one where you press your arms together and another where you spin your arms in opposite circles and another that makes you look like you're practicing having sex, which is really funny.

Every large corporate building has a stereo system out the front and every afternoon (you guessed it) they unite in their spandex glory to do an hour of aerobics. This would be more goofy than annoying if they hadn't decided to set up one such aerobics arena right outside our window, so that now we suffer through two hours of techno remixes of "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" (I wish I was kidding) filtering into our apartment. I've got enough on my plate, what with all this blogger-ing (?) and surfing (?) the inter-web (?) without having to listen to music that sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks dropping some pills and buying a drum machine. Lame!

THE WET SEASON:

Aka, the Most Disappointing Event of My Life. Each week since June, we've doubted ourselves, saying, "Oh, maybe it'll start next week", but I'm ready to call bullshit on the whole thing. Wet season? Where? I'm expecting lightning, floods, screaming, sandbags, being trapped in our apartment block, much gnashing of teeth, old men with long beards measuring things in cubits. Instead, we get a half-hour storm every couple of days. Meh? Sure, hundreds of people are dying in mudslides and flooding in Laos and Vietnam, but here? They should rename this the Mildly Damp Season. Lame!

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS:

Traffic in Bangkok is bad, it's true. But it's not so bad. It's rare that you're stuck in the one place for more than fifteen or twenty minutes; the subway and the SkyTrain have taken alot of pressure off the roads. Some roads would almost be kinda pleasant to sit by. Almost, that is, if it weren't for the Thai obsession with blowing whistles at anything that moves.

A car reverses out of its driveway - BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP goes the security guard on his whistle.

Put your foot over the yellow line on the SkyTrain - BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP goes the train guard.

As for traffic cops, just forget about it: they will sit on their whistle going BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP even if they're not doing anything. It's mind-numbingly constant but no matter how much you hear it, it's always just as irritating as the first time. My "punching the goddamn whistle out of their stupid goddamn mouth" fantasies have proceeded to boiling point, but they're lucky, because these violent fantasies always start with me going "The next person I hear blowing a whistle..." and since the sound never stops, it's difficult to work out who that person is.

Plus security guards and policeman wear uniforms that are skin-tight, so even while they're irritating you, you're forced to imagine them naked. Lame!

THE EDUCATION SYSTEM:

Learning by rote is so lame. Here's how my lessons go:

"Okay, everyone, repeat: I am going to the supermarket."

"I ahm goo-ing too tha supahmahkut."

"Good. Now say: I will buy some milk."

"Guhd. Nao sae: I will bay sum mik."

"Okay, good, but we don't need to say good..."

"Oh-kay, guhd, but wee-"

"No, no, don't repeat everything I say..."

"Noh, noh, dot rupeet -"

Sometimes I want to scream "STOP COPYING ME!" like a five-year old getting picked on by an older brother. I'm totally going to have a temper tantrum soon. Lame!

FOOTPATHS

Everybody here is smaller than me. So I hit my head on everything - poles, lightbulbs, roofs, electric wires. Plus, they seem intent on making footpaths into obstacle courses of potholes, sudden steps, dead rats, dogshit, and wandering babies. I've never been what you'd call the elegant, graceful type, but over here clumsiness is a life-threatening condition. Lame!

THE DREGS OF SOCIETY

Look, I'm not one of these anti-whitey whiteys. A lot of backpackers will make a big show of trying to avoid other travellers, expats and well-known places (god forbid a place should appear in a guidebook), but it's all bullshit, really: without other English-speakers we'd have no-one to inflict our mind-numbingly boring stories on (even the Thais have limits to their 'nodding and smiling politely while white guy talks about his adventures' behaviour).

I don't mind tourists and ultra-touristed areas; they have their good sides and I won't go out of my way to avoid them. But here in Bangkok: well, it can be a struggle. Bangkok attracts a certain type of person, and, not to put too fine a point on it, that person is either:

a) a drunken, overweight Australian man in his fifties, here for the promise of free sex, no matter how ugly you are.
b) a muscular German with glasses in his mid-forties, here for the promise of free sex, no matter how boring you are.
c) a drunken, tattooed British guy in his early thirties, here for the promise of free sex, no matter what a brain-dead slobbering moron you are. [You can tell these ones by the way they drool while shouting "She showed me her booby!" to their mates on the phone.]

Sex for sale is nothing new, and the girls here make a good living from it, with little of the shame and violence that happens elsewhere. And the way Bangkok's reputation collects all these people who couldn't make it anywhere else, like a beach collecting driftwood and dead seaweed: it's nothing new, either - Goa and Laos act as just as much a magnet for failed hippies as Bangkok does for sex-deprived middle-aged men. But none of that stops it being the most depressing sight on earth, sometimes. Plus, it makes every conversation with a Thai girl feel more like a possible transaction than a chat. Lame!

Phew, so that's all off my chest. Now I can get back to the good stuff. According to current plans, we should be heading back to the jungle this weekend. See you then.

Lachie

ps, My brother Daniel has just started his own blog, obviously looking to cash in on the limitless wealth and fame achieved by this one. Since he's five years younger than me, it will automatically be at least 17 time more dynamic, relevant, edgy and youth-y than this one (O young people! Tell me your secrets! Like, where is this so-called Timbaland, and how do I get there? Can I take the bus?).

I suggest we all jump ship immediately. http://modern-day.blogspot.com/