Worldwide Ace

The moat around the old city in Chiang Mai glows late at night.
For more brilliant pictures of Thailand, click here.

I guess it’s simply the luck of the draw that no matter how good a time we have in our destination, our travel between places just doesn’t quite work out.

Standing in the train station, our journey back from Chiang Mai finally come to a close, I’m struck with a sudden appreciation for solitude during my sleeping hours. The train itself had been moderately comfortable. The beds were just large enough to wedge my feet against one end and the base of my neck, my head crooked painfully, against the other. Were it not for the Lawnmower man across from us buzzing loudly and forcing me to utilize earplugs just to avoid murdering him in his sleep, I would be far more rested now that we’ve arrived.

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The mountains above Chiang Mai are lush and beautiful.
For more aerie pictures of Thailand, click here.

I awake to the sound of a rooster signaling sunrise. As I peel my eyes open, there is no difference, the darkness identical beneath my eyelids as outside. I consider getting up to watch the sunrise, but my eyes are still crusty and milky and I have no desire to fumble through the darkness, my torch with Chris on the other side of the longhouse. By the time I’m awake again, people are sitting at the table chatting about their morning constitutionals.

I pull myself into a sitting position, letting my eyes adjust and listening to Matt tell Claudia and Matteo about wandering the rice fields in the early morning light. I’m envious and disappointed in myself for not getting up earlier as well. During his meandering, he ran into a rifle-toting Karen carrying a pair of birds, quail most likely. It’s times like this I wish he were the photographer.

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Light slips in through cracks, illuminating the longhouse provided for us in Karen.
For more serene photographs of Thailand, click here.

In the mountains outside the city of Chiang Mai lies a series of villages which are merely referred to as Ban Mai in Thai. To the people of these villages, our guide Samruam (Sam for short) among them, they are known by different names. Sam and his people call their village Karen, the same name they use to refer to their local mountain dialect. This Karen, like most of these villages which seem to have adopted the same title, is a primarily agricultural community. Its 110 inhabitants grow rice and raise livestock at .6 miles (1 km) above sea level, nearly three times the elevation of the city of Chiang Mai.

Karen emerges from the woods like an oasis from the dense foliage. Birds, crickets, and small Thai cicadas chirp and buzz in the distance. Radios play the same station from nearly every house while the sounds of chickens, pigs, and wild dogs intermingle with children playing in the oncoming dusk. Everything is there, and yet it’s oddly quiet for having so many sounds playing right alongside the crunching gravel beneath my feet.

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Matt rests after chowing down during a stop in the port town of Champorn.
For more gluttonous pictures from Thailand, click here.

What a difference a few days make.

I’m currently in the midst of 36 hours straight of travel from the Southern island of Koh Samui to the Northern jungle city of Chiang Mai. Only a few short hours in the early morning separate 17 hours of ferry and bus to Bangkok from 12 hours on a train to Chiang Mai.

The past few days have offered surprising insight into Matt’s inner workings. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone more relaxed, more at peace without a steady morphine drip. And yet some moments have featured, as Matt put it, “enough worry for 20 pairs of us.” Admittedly, the sheer absurdity of our journey down was enough to make even me fret, despite my eternally copacetic outlook on travel.

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Barnacles wait to destroy the extremities of unsuspecting passersby.
For more sharp and dangerous pictures of Thailand, click here.

I’m in pain… and it feels wonderful.

My hands sting with every movement from the cuts received on the barnacles. My whole body shakes with the pink fluorescence of slightly sunburned skin. My back aches where I overextended myself diving for an errant volleyball in a pickup game. My knees glow red where the sand left rashes along them. Yet it’s because of these things, any one of which could be termed an annoyance or an unfortunate effect of island life, that I feel more accomplished in my final full day here.

I’ve always held a strange understanding that sacrifice should be written in scars. When one is truly living, his or her body should show the world written on their skin. These might be small temporary scrapes or bruises gained in physical exertion. They might be lines of worry or crow’s feet built by countless hours of study or laughter. Perhaps they’re deep scars from a summer at a lake or clean cuts now healed from an important surgery. They might even be tattoos and piercings chosen to outline belief, lifestyle, or merely a good time in Tijuana, if that’s what floats your boat.

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The old man we helped paddles his boat along the coast at sunset, collecting his net.
For more calm and relaxing photos of Thailand, click here.

Babes, beaches and beer. Three Bs that can instantly relax almost any man. The beer on Koh Samui is priced roughly equal to some American bars, but the babes and the beaches come complimentary with the price of a room, though only the beach can be slipped into easily.

Our arrival was a welcome one, our simple wooden bungalow left waiting while we dove into the tide, my sexual frustration washed away in the sweet surf along with the funk from the bus and the 17 hour journey from Bangkok. Here was the island paradise we’d been promised, complete with a brilliant lilac sunset and rows of tanned and toned visitors splayed across the brilliant white surface leading to the water.

Lamai beach isn’t the main beach of Koh Samui. It is, rather, the secondary beach; a long stretch of white sand lying in a cove beyond the southern outcrop of the main port. Though still playing host to many tourists, I am told Lamai is far less crowded than the main drag. The majority of resort goers seem to be Italian or Israeli, a smattering of Aussies, French, Brits and Germans mixed in for good measure. Matt and I, however, seem to be the lone Americans.

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A trio of catalog ready Italian girls walk along Lamai Beach in Koh Samui.
For more babe-a-licious pictures of Thailand, click here.

I’m suddenly finding myself having second thoughts about this Thai island paradise. The ferry is full of bleary eyed faces looking exactly how I feel after a long night of restless bus riding–if, of course, I were some perfect, glossy Abercrombie model.

Years spent in Boulder surrounded by the masses of the conforming elite– sorostitutes so perfect on the surface their impossible good looks actually creating revulsion in us idealists and free thinkers–should have prepared me for the fact that their plasticine image is based not only on the large color ads in Glamour and Seventeen, but on a European standard from which these models are cut. Instead, I’m somewhere between shock, dismay, eager anticipation, and an intense bout of self-loathing.

The men stand tall, their chiseled jaws peppered with youthful bristles, unable to form a true beard and instead settling for that perfect 5-o’clock shadow seen only in blue jean ads and on underwear models. The women are lithe and supple, their simple attire capturing the girl next door look more perfectly than a Tommy Hilfiger advert. Their beauty and perfection drags lust from my core like a finger sitting at the back of my throat, the bile bubbling ever upward out of my control. I am lost among a cast of idle Aphrodites and errant Adonises, damned to find escape only by closing my eyes.

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The Thai countryside passes by as we travel onwards.
For more pacifying pictures of Thailand, click here.

I hate John Denver. I know what you’re thinking: “How can you hate someone so sweet, innocent and pure?” Fuck that. John Denver is the middle finger on the right hand of Satan masquerading as a Christian country musician full of god. Anyone can see that.

But one thing I hate more than John Denver is boarding an overnight bus in Bangkok and finding myself banished to the downstairs ghetto where the bathroom’s stench of stale urine and body odor grow ever stronger in the half light while John Fucking Denver blares from the intercom like heavy metal fired painfully into Noriega’s compound by military forces.

As the first notes rang out, alarm was raised by passengers all across the horizontal tower of Babel. “No,” I said in disbelief.

“Yes,” said Matt, a twisted grin crossing his face.

“John Fucking Denver,” we cried in unison, our smiles bemused and tinged with mocking irony.

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The modern Kwai River Bridge spans the Kwai Yai River, people crossing when trains aren’t.
For more time and space spanning pictures from Thailand, click here.

My father used to take regular trips to Hawaii for business when I was a child. A couple times each year, my mother and I would accompany him, lounging at some beachside resort, waiting for him to join us on forays out into the beautiful mystery of the islands. It was during one of these trips that my parents and I paid a visit to the USS Arizona Pearl Harbor memorial.

Many of the details of that visit have long since faded into the fog of time ever encroaching on my memories. The floor may have gray marble or rivet speckled metal. The light may have been artificial, bright bulbs carefully placed to enhance the magic of the monument, or natural sunlight streaming through windows and slits in the wall. The memorial may have been near empty, a few souls choosing to visit on that day at that time in that year, or my eagerness may have put me ahead of the crowd slowly filtering in behind me where my eyes couldn’t see.

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While I’d love to dive right into my entry tonight, Matt has told me that some of you have complained to him that there aren’t enough pictures. I’m taking well over 30 a day, so if that’s not enough, either you’re too demanding or you haven’t realized there’s a link beneath the first picture on each and every post that takes you to my photobucket album. If the former is your issue, I apologize. I only have so much battery for my camera. I did upgrade my storage, so that’s no longer an issue and I plan on picking up a spare battery in Singapore. Until then, you will have to bear with me and even then, not every picture will turn out. I am, however, improving, getting more good photos from fewer shots, preserving that battery and capturing more things in quality images. If the latter is your issue, you can see photos from the Philippines, Guam, or Thailand in their respective folders.

And now, without further ado, tonight’s entry:

Skyscrapers tower above us in Siam Square.
For more OBVIOUSLY LINKED photos of Thailand, click here.

The city of Bangkok isn’t actually a city. It’s rather two cities separated by a river, much like Minneapolis and St. Paul. On the East is Bangkok proper. On the West Thonburi or Bangkok Noi (either name is appropriate). While Bangkok was made the seat of power and hosts the grand palace and most of the modern sights, Thonburi is the older city, housing government and most of the people long before the capital was brought South from Ayutthaya.

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The monkeys of the Grand Palace, complete in their modern excuse for modesty.
For more historically reinvented pictures of Thailand, click here.

The monkeys stood stalwart, a rainbow of emotion carved onto their faces—happy, sad, scared, excited—their hands stiffly holding the golden spire they surrounded. their bodies glistened in the afternoon sun, the gaudy stage jewelry they wore as an excuse for clothing refracting their bright hues in every direction.

“They didn’t look like that before,” Matt said to me. “When I came here as a child, our guide asked my mother if she knew how to tell the boy monkeys from the girls. He said it was because the boys had penises.” I did a quick double take, looking for the phallic reminder that most ancient art was, in some way, obsessed with sex, reproduction, and the phallus. The glimmering faux clothing, however, left no hint of what hung from the crotch of select monkeys.

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A newly arrived Matt admires the temple next to the Big Buddha in Bangkok, Thailand.
For more gold tinged photos from Thailand, click here.

After no sign of Matt last night, I once again resumed my post waiting for him at the base of the Lamphu House. Starved as I was from not eating the day before, I ordered some noodles. During my second bite, I heard my name ring out across the courtyard. Matt, indeed, had arrived.

The International Dateline isn’t as simple as the CBS news show Dateline or the 1-800 Datelines you see advertised on late night TV. While it was true that Matt departed a day after me, the fact that I had already crossed the dateline eluded him. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing.

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“See you soon,” I typed, the promise of excitement giving me just enough adrenaline to make my weary body hang awake as I slapped my computer shut and fell into bed. In a mere 12 hours, Matt would arrive and I could begin my exploration of Bangkok and Thailand in earnest.

I had spent my evening wandering around and gaining my bearings. The streets of this area are filled European faces and accents. The guidebook says Bangkok should feel enough like home to make you feel welcome, but it’s so Western in its facets here, I feel uncomfortable. It’s what Stout would describe as stamped-outness—a feeling of being lost in the formulaic trappings of chain restaurants and repetitive global culture. Whenever we went to Chilis, he would get a deer in headlights look and comment on this experience. I understood, but I never shared his aversion. Still, I feel like I’m in Thaitown in some European country rather than Thailand. It’s unnerving.

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Part of the Manila Skyline sits idly in the mid-day heat by the Pasig River.
For more heat stifled pictures of the Philippines, click here.

NOTE: This entry was written the afternoon of August 11
during a two day stop in Manila. Because my laptop ran out of
batteries attempting to get a signal in the Bangkok airport,
I didn’t have time to publish it until now.

The shadow of the can is unavoidable. At this time of evening, the dying sun is at exactly the right angle to spray it on the wall opposite the open window. It looks like a black square with a slight curve at the top, but I’ve stared at that can every time I passed through the doorway. It’s green, and covered in Arabic. There’s no English on it; no sell-by dates or other numbers. It’s obviously been out here a while based on the flimsy layer of rust that rings the top. The can itself is empty, save a touch of water sprayed into it by the daily rains. What it housed once is a mystery to me.

I’m sure the can’s gotten good use. After all, Jhoan’s sink is lined with old 1.5 liter bottles now filled with water for when the apartment runs out in the early afternoon. Even San Miguel Beer arrives with a piece of paper towel around its open neck with which to wipe the rust off, as every bottle is cleansed and reused to save production cost. Denise once commented about her coke bottle having a bottle date in 1997 before finding out this fact. It’s not unsafe. It’s just cheaper, faster and easier than melting them down and remaking them like they do with aluminum cans.

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My arrival in Bangkok was tumultuous. As I approached immigration, I saw a long line for visas on arrival. After standing in line nearly 15 minutes and filling out the form, I saw that the US wasn’t on the list of countries requiring the visa. I quickly proceeded to plop myself in the standard line for incoming immigrants with foreign passports. I noticed the man in front of me also sported the stylish blue of a US passport, so I asked him about visas. He didn’t know any better than I, so we laughed and chatted while the long line got shorter.

Overall the conversation was nice. the gentleman was from New York City and flying in from Kuala Lampur. He had extended a business trip to Tokyo to visit friends in Hong Kong and Singapore and was planning on continuing on to Manila next. Though his stay in Bangkok was for 4 days, he planned to “see some golden pagodas and get laid,” which sounds like a solid plan as long as I ignored his previous statement that he was “glad [his] wife couldn’t join him.’ She’s meeting him in Manila.

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The sun sets behind some clouds in Agat on my final night on Guam.
For more distant photographs of Guam, click here.

In a scant six hours, I’ll be on plane departing the island. Last night, I tossed and turned, waking every 20 minutes with nervous excitement for the resumation of my journey, yet I spent most fo the day parked on the couch avoiding packing at all costs.

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Hammocks at Jeff’s Pirate Cove are clearly marked for “adult relaxation only.”
For more adult pictures of Guam, click here.

As I hiked past old ordinance, decaying weapons, the rusted silhouettes of old buildings and crumbled latte
stones (that’s lah-tee, not lah-tay), I began to wonder what life on Guam is truly like. Here I am, amidst the all the trappings of Western culture and American consumerism, the car graveyards on nearly every corner and the same Chamorro tropes stamped on every surface because they’re all that’s left of native culture. What have we done?

When the Spanish first arrived here, they decimated the Chamorro peoples. They wiped out every male Chamorro, forcing the few that survived to hide among the jungle and sneak about in the many caves. When the Japanese came, they indentured the Chamorro. Without rest from their daily toil and with internment camps at the ready, they had no choice. And then we arrived, bold faced with promises of safety and offerings of capitalism, government, and the military, which both claims much of the native lands and provides much of the local economy. What’s left are scraps and I want nothing more than to point fingers at the people responsible.

I leave Guam early Sunday morning, and despite nearly two months here, I’m still unsure how I feel about this place.

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There’s few things I dread more than having things I remember fondly dragged through the gutter for another iteration. Despite a wonderful day jaunting around Guam, my mind is drunk with sadness at what’s happened to one of my favorite games.

When the Xbox first launched, a good friend of mine bought one. For the first few weeks after, I found myself in front of his TV every other day. While I didn’t own a system myself, he and I spent hours on end playing.

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A young boy fishes as the sun sets at the Governor’s Complex in Hagåtña, Guam.
For more relaxing pictures of Guam, click here.

I’ve never been a small guy. I was tall for my age until I stopped growing up. Sadly, I kept growing out. These days, an XL shirt is just a tad too small to be comfortable and a tad too short to let me move freely.

When I arrived in Guam, my first stop was Ross, where I picked up a few Hawaiian shirts, since I packed a little too lightly. They were glorious, perfect, and huge.

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Men are dogs.

I don’t mean to say that men are conniving, lying cheaters who are destined to turn on their girlfriend, wife or lover. I mean that we’re trained animals.

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