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  hardie karges 7:34 am on August 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: entertainment ( 3 ), Thailand ( 82 )   

  Thai waitresses will ask you if you want more beer 

  when the bottle’s empty, not the glass you’re drinking from. That’ll help you lose count, for sure. I still can’t figure out what that final cube of ice riding on top of the glass is for, I guess to clean your upper lip so that nothing suspicious drips into the glass. It’s hard to drink with an ice cube up your nostril, though there it is, every time. The East loves conformity and predictability every bit as much as the West loves diversity and individualism. In Thailand audiences clap when a performer begins a song, and usually know every word that comes out of the human jukebox’s mouth. Only in a large show would a performer be expected to do a set of his own choosing. Thai ‘artists’ delight in reproducing a picture in its exact detail as if a human camera, while most non-representational work looks stiff and forced, derivative, that is, copied. To copy from a photograph would evoke abject horror in any art class in the Western world. In the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai, they take center stage.

   

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  hardie karges 8:02 am on August 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand ( 82 )   

  In Thailand sheets go on top of the bed, 

  
  so you can find them, I guess. Or maybe they’re just proud of them, especially if there’s two. It’s hard to find a matching set. That’s no problem for hotels; they just use basic white and forego the contoured edges. For domestic use, the set is usually a contoured sheet and a matching blanket. The blanket usually gets folded on the end of the bed. Why do you need a blanket in Thailand in the first place? Hey, it gets cold up here in the Triangle! Actually it DOES get cool for a few months in the winter, cold enough that you’re glad to see it go. There’s no house heat, remember. Of course, if I turn on the fan at night, then Tang’s deep under the covers, while I’m on top of it all, crack to the breeze.

   
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  hardie karges 8:25 am on August 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand ( 82 )   

  In Thailand refrigerators are more like crispers, 

  
  coolers, or cupboards than food preservation devices. Potato chips go straight into the refrigerator, while fresh eggs might never. Tang and her son Jeng frequently eat something sweet before a meal, following up with potato chips afterward. Leftovers go straight into the pie-safe (remember those? Neither do I, but all my exes were antique buffs), never a fridge. Did I mention that Tang had TB when I met her? I’ve accused her of looking for a Farang to take care of her family after her imminent death, but she denies it. Fortunately, with Farangs come cures. I spent one hour on the Internet and correctly diagnosed what three Thai doctors had missed. She’s now had enough AIDS tests to last a lifetime, though. Thais like easy answers, magic pills that cure everything, at once and forever.

   
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  hardie karges 8:48 am on August 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand ( 82 )   

  Thai DJ’s play a song on the radio, and then repeat it. 

  Somehow that seems to ensure that you’ll not be able to get it out of your head, short of psychological or divine intervention. This is like subtle brainwashing, though for no apparent benefit nor reason, just an unwillingness to say, “it’s over”. My wife Tang will go to a party of her friends, mostly fellow ‘wives of foreigners’, and not only will it typically last at least half the day, but they’ll move it somewhere else the next day. Talk about a moveable feast! There’s just no proportion to much of their activities and little sense of partaking of diversity in little doses regularly. Tang’s father will stop at a soymilk stall on the way home and buy a liter or two for four people and it will be gone within hours if not minutes. If I do the same, it’ll last a week or so. Refrigeration is still a relatively new concept, and though appreciated for its chilling esthetic enhancement, is little thought of as a way to delay the spoilage of food. Don’t even think about putting a real dairy product in a Thai person’s coffee. ‘Cream’ is a white powder that comes in a can.

   
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  hardie karges 7:37 am on August 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand ( 82 )   

  In Thailand, you’re supposed to leave your shoes outside, 

  
  a religious thing to be sure, but also presumably to keep the floors inside clean.  Of course, as just mentioned, sometimes it’s difficult to know just where ‘outside’ begins. I’ve had the maid follow me down the hallway with a mop in some guest houses because I didn’t remove my shoes at the steps, whereas elsewhere that would be absurd. Once inside, if footwear is needed, you’ll need another pair, usually something slippery, rubbery, in the bathroom. This is not so bad if weather necessitates nothing more than sandals on a typical day. Why all the fuss, though, for something considered low, therefore dirty, anyway? Tang frequently throws things on the floor for the morning sweep rather than bother with trash baskets, which I’ve had to introduce. Nevertheless, leave the hiking boots at home, though cowboy boots aren’t bad, since non-laceable, and do work well with motorcycles, especially if you’re riding a fully-chopped 100cc Honda and want to facilitate the pretense.

  Matthew C is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Matthew C 1:46 pm on August 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    I think the Thai custom of removing shoes is excellent.

    I have dedicated an whole blog to the subject of removing shoes: Shoes Off at the Door, Please You might want to take a look.

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  hardie karges 8:00 am on August 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thailand ( 82 )   

  Thailand is a fairy tale, a children’s story, a parallel reality, 

  a mirror image where everything is the opposite of the ‘real world’. In Thailand most houses are surrounded by a permanent fence with a lockable gate. In Thailand, when you’re home the gate usually stays closed to keep you from slipping out unbeknownst to anyone. When you’re gone, of course, the gate is usually wide open. “We’re gone now; y’all come on in! Be sure to leave us cab fare!” In defense of the ‘at home’ system, the entire yard could be seen as an extension of the house, so that those doors can be left open, but that negates any defense of the ‘we’re gone’ system. In Thailand, people will enter a house unannounced, also, particularly friends, but will usually respect a closed gate. Tang says it keeps the salesmen at bay.

   
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  hardie karges 8:58 am on July 31, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: conspiracy theory ( 10 ), Thailand ( 82 )   

  Along the lines of good ‘conspiracy theory’, 

  or maybe the ‘world of opposites’ like ‘The Matrix’ or ‘Vanilla Sky’ or ‘Truman Show’, maybe SE Asia doesn’t even really exist at all. Maybe this is all a set-up and my vitals are being monitored for their responses to given stimuli or my body’s in cold storage somewhere and I’m just being fed images for continuity while my brain’s working nights doing basic computing for NASA. How would we ever know anymore? A lot is taken on faith these days. You step on a plane, pop some Valiums, cop some ZZZZ’s, and the next thing you know you’re going through Customs at Bangkok International. It’s almost as if the intervening space wasn’t even really crossed. You just entered a time-and-space machine and came out again a day later out the other end of a long wormhole. No one takes the long surface route anymore, so how would you know? The fact that we’re losing touch, literally, with the very earth under our feet makes stories of conspiracy and ‘misplaced reality’ not only feasible, but attractive, especially to the disenchanted. Conspiracy theory is more of a danger than conspiracy itself. Conspiracy lurks around every corner. Conspiracy theory follows a logic that attempts to transcend the ordinary, but there’s a logic that transcends conspiracy, i.e. produce the evidence.

   
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  hardie karges 8:49 am on July 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Family ( 6 ), love ( 49 )   

  Thank God for other people’s parents and kids, 

  families made to order and marriages of inconvenience. If I had to start from scratch, I might just change my mind. The itch is strong, but it doesn’t last too long. An empty table might be like looking at a plate too full for eating, a battle too long for fighting. Before it’s over, you forgot why you were there in the first place. One way or another we make ends meet, odds and ends meeting in lines and bars and open spaces, under covers and dirty drawers and filthy files. The world has a life of its own, born in a swirl of open equations and feeding on the dreams of its spurious offspring. We patch things together the best we can, a quilt born of necessity, cozy and warm and infinitely expandable. Male and female find each other with biological radar, hormones and pheromones mixing and mingling on the dance floor. The smell of future sex wafts outward on wobbly legs and uncertain feet, soon cracking the code and catching the rhythm, doing the latest steps without effort nor affectation, a honeybee revealing the source of available nectar. Don’t look down when you’re learning to fly.

   
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  hardie karges 8:33 am on July 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hill tribes ( 3 ), nationality, Thailan, women ( 5 )   

  Human flotsam and jetsam bob in the surf, 

  stateless girls latching on to men in girl-less states of mind and body. Their options are limited; their smiles are not. Maybe the more pathetic the state, such as Burma, the bigger the smile, the greater the willingness to go for escape velocity. Life in the hills can be hard: no home, no birthday, no rights. Lives come and go at the speed of shock waves through shit, no prom, no brownies, and no football heroes, just cheerleaders. Life is cheap and your price is known. This is the origin of slavery. This is the origin of marriage. This is ‘lives of the cheap and dirty’, coming soon to the prime-time schedule. This is the gene pool, time for a swim.

   
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  hardie karges 7:36 am on July 28, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: citizenship, IMMIGRATION ( 4 ), Thailand ( 82 )   

  If it’s shocking that there are stateless people in the modern world, 

  it’s even more shocking that it’s not uncommon at all. You would expect it in refugee situations of outright war, of course, but not otherwise. This is part of the problem, of course. Nations aren’t anxious to hand out citizenship and its benefits to casual wanderers. The world has only recently had firm borders, lines on a map defining states. They’ve never played much of a role in the lives of tribal people. Tribal people don’t get stamps in their passports when they cross borders. Most don’t even know the exact date of their birth, nor the full extent of their families. Morals break down easily in the outback, as do nationalities. In Thailand you have to prove your citizenship constantly, in the form of a national identification card and house registration. This promotes home ownership, of course, rendering anything else ‘not official’. Did I mention that rental rates are very reasonable in Thailand? Of course, now that Thailand has moved up the economic ladder, illegals do much of the work that Thai nationals won’t, or at least not for cheap. More than anything else, it seems that governments must constantly justify their existence by enforcing the rules and reinforcing the boundaries. Only an innate love of bureaucracy threatens freedom more than Communism or Islam. The political choice has always been freedom vs. control; the only question is ‘whose’?