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  hardie karges 11:28 am on July 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: PROSTITUTION ( 4 ), Thailand   

  The real problem is the dark side: 

  child prostitution, sex slavery, AIDS, etc. Even in modern almost-ready-for-prime-time Thailand, such unsavory situations still raise their ugly heads and lower their ugly butts on to the fresh silky-smooth forms of young girls that can only be described as flesh-candy to the mostly lower-class local male population. Everybody gets in on the deal in a situation in which women routinely get the short end of the stick in a society where the first male child is the unquestioned crown prince. Old habits die hard in a Chinese-descended culture. Parents don’t want to pay to educate a girl who’s going to marry and never use it. Many women love the idea of playing housewife to the big strong male, at least until he dumps her for some teen-ager, and she’s left to fend for herself. It’s a vicious cycle. Of course, there’s also another Dark Side: long dark hair and big dark eyes. That one’s easier to swallow. Ignorance lures eternal, twitching its cute little butt with a rhythm akin to salsa, a universality akin to ketchup. All you need is the missing link.

   

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  hardie karges 8:38 am on July 16, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: PROSTITUTION ( 4 ), Thailand   

  Thailand’s imperfect mix 

  shows its smiling face to the modern world as a fait accompli with little knowledge of the particular punctuations in its cultural evolution, and semi-deliberate masking of some of its more onerous social problems. Many, if not most, third world countries have grievous social problems. It might even be considered a rite of passage into a higher orbit of civilization if the bumps in the road weren’t so painful sometimes. Unlike the problems of racism, drug economies, violence, corruption, and stealth that other third world countries suffer, the main social problem in Thailand is the ‘victimless’ crime of prostitution, and its convenient scapegoat, poverty. Like other victimless crimes such as gambling and drug use, prostitution is especially difficult to eradicate since it can be a selling point for tourism that brings in the much-needed hard stuff, cash, that is. The much-needed physical love that so many Western men lack in their own ‘femi-nazied’ countries gets filled by professionals in the service of industry, so no one gets hurt. At least that’s the idea. The reality of course can be somewhat different. For one thing, most up-for-grab Thai women aren’t especially professional. Many wear their hearts right on their sleeves, and those hearts can get hurt or hardened. For another thing, the tourists go home, usually. The Thais are left in a society where Buddhist merit making frequently takes second priority to materialistic meretriciousness. Of course, many tourists decide to stay and live or retire, and many Thai women go abroad with their newfound boyfriends and husbands. I wouldn’t say they’re Thailand’s largest export yet, but their numbers are significant. But that’s not the real problem, of course.
   
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  hardie karges 9:30 am on May 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: REVENGE ( 3 ), Thailand   

  FUTILE SYSTEM 

  “Eye for an eye” is a much misunderstood phrase, typically considered to be encouragement of revenge as the highest form of justice. In fact it is an admonition to limit compensation to no more than actual damages, in other words, NO REVENGE, or at least, no punitive damages. This is a lesson a few American lawyers should consider. Some Thai females take the example to a new extreme, whacking off the genitals of a partner who has done them wrong, or so the urban legends go. Sometimes it can be sewed back on, if it can be found, but not always. One tale even has the unit sent flying to parts unknown by hot air balloon, a forlorn member of a very select club sent on its way to never-never land with no return ticket. Welcome to the lives of the cheap and dirty, humanity laid bare for pubic consumption, the American dream, docile natives in service to their superiors. As weird as Interzone is, Thailand is even weirder. Like Navajos in turquoise, Thais like to wear their bank accounts around their necks, 24 K gold redeemable in cash on demand. Most have never had credit cards, and for good reason. They run up a huge bill, and then wonder why the credit gets cut off, and the bills keep coming. Very few Thais use checks for the same reason, so nobody will take them. They bounce, and bounce, and bounce. This is the futile system, in God we trust, as long as he pays cash. But I digress.

   
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  hardie karges 1:29 am on February 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: life ( 33 ), Mexico ( 7 ), Thailand, travel ( 14 )   

  Night Life 

  The girls of Ensenada will never make a Playboy shoot.  I know that there are a lot of lonely people in the world, but this is ridiculous!  Nightlife in Mexico is surreal.  With their bouffant hairdos and gaudily painted faces, it’s like something from a dream, or a circus, or maybe just the past.  Mexican women are to normal women as Mexican food and music are to their ‘normal’ counterparts, an acquired taste.  Ensenada comes awake all of a sudden when the love-boat lands.  It’s like night and day.  The only thing I’ve seen like it is in Songkhla, Thailand, where bar girls watch and wait behind counters deadly silent, counting I guess, as if something will surely happen if only they wait long enough.  It does.  The foreign off-shore oil-field support workers come in, somebody rings the bell hanging over the bar, and all of a sudden the place is an uproar, with dancing and drinking erupting as if from a long dormant volcano.  Of course, nothing beats the ‘wookie bar’ along Sukhumvit in Bangkok for surrealism.  If you turned Thailand up on edge to sort out the loose nuts, this is where you’d go to pick them up.  Is this where you end up after cruising the parking lot of Shoney’s Big Boy in Jackson, Mississippi, as a teenager?  It’s bumper-to-bumper on a Saturday night in Ensenada.

  Sukeri is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Sukeri 9:49 am on February 11, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    Great post! Found another site which I must admit has come in handy while working remote: TravelMonks

    They have a pretty good dynamic map of a lot of places and things, like this one on nightlife or this one on wireless internet places.

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  hardie karges 1:03 am on February 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: sticky rice ( 2 ), Thai food ( 4 ), Thailand   

  Northern Thai Food 

  Then there’s the dark side.  Northern Thailand has its own food, most famous of which is probably kaow soi, though more typical would be nam ngieow, a hot murky tomato-based concoction served over khanom jeen or rice noodles, and which people here in Chiang Rai go ape-shit over.  Ditto for gaeng awm, something like lahp that apparently got lost and then rescued a few days later, older but wilder.  They also go ape-shit over som tam, which is shredded unripe papaya salad mixed with peanuts, tomatoes, crab, hot peppers, and only God knows what else.  He still ain’t tellin’. If you’re eating papayas to help promote bowel movements, this’ll get you there in a hurry.  Naturally it’s eaten with sticky rice to help repair the damage.  Does raw papaya sound strange?  Thais also typically eat their mangoes green.  Go figure.  By the time they get ripe, supermarkets are discounting the price and I’m stocking up.  Some varieties are actually quite tasty green, but I can’t help feel they’re missing the boat on this one, ripe mango being one of the finer flavors in the world.  So, if you like green mangoes, hot spicy raw papaya salad, and gut-slashing spicy noodles, then northern Thailand might be just the ticket for you, especially if you like Mexican food already.  Mexicans in LA are some of the best customers for Thai food in the not-so-fancy restaurants. 

   
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  hardie karges 9:35 am on February 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thai food ( 4 ), Thailand   

  More Thai Food 

  Thai food has taken its rightful place as one of the world’s most interesting cuisines, famous for the subtle blend of flavors to be found in its sweet and sour and spicy soups and creamy coconut-milk curries, such as tom yam goong, gaeng kieow wahn, gaeng mussaman, and tom kha gai.  The reality ‘in country’, of course, is a bit different.  First of all, the Thai food in overseas restaurants is from the central and southern regions predominantly.  Except for lahp, which is starting to be found more in the US, almost no dishes come from the north or northeast, which are more influenced by Burma and Laos, respectively, than the Malaysian-inspired dishes of the south.  Second, some popular dishes in US restaurants, like pat thai and kaow pat, are street food in Thailand, and quite different from the stylized US restaurant versions.  The curries and soups, on the other hand, might be difficult to find in street stalls in Thailand and spring rolls next to impossible.  That’s Vietnam.  Probably the single most popular street food in Thailand, though, noodle soup, also originally from Vietnam, would be hard to find in a US-based Thai restaurant. 

   
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  hardie karges 2:12 am on February 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: sticky rice ( 2 ), Thai food ( 4 ), Thailand   

  Sticky Rice 

  Somebody needs to clear the air on the subject of ‘sticky rice’.  Some people talk about it and pay tribute without real knowledge of what it really is.  Sticky rice is not rice that somebody came along and decided to make sticky for reasons of good taste, nor for reasons of tasting good.  Sticky rice is a different breed; ‘glutinous’ rice is probably a better word.  It has more protein and is a favorite of village people (no, not THOSE village people) in Southeast Asia, particularly Thais and Tais and Dais (yes, related).  The brown sticky stuff can even be had in Laos.  It goes good with opium, unless you’ve got constipation.  Kidding aside, actually it goes good with hot raunchy stuff like lahp or somtam, since the diarrheic tendencies of those delicacies tend to balance out the constipatory tendencies of sticky rice.  Eat it with your hands.  You are what you eat, remember.  Of course city people don’t condescend to nibble rice-balls dunked in chili paste.  They only eat the finest ‘pretty’ ‘sweet-smelling’ ‘jasmine’ rice, stripped of every last vitamin and amino acid until fit for the mouth of Manu.  What indeed hath God wrought?  Of course, sticky rice can be further ‘stickified’ by cooking in coconut milk and served with mango as a dessert.  Now you can melt the hearts and minds of the most hardened city-dweller with this tasty dish.  But you better stock up on laxative or lahp, because this is triple constipation.  I ate this dish once a day for a week about ten years ago, and haven’t had a good shit since.

   
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  hardie karges 2:54 am on February 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Thai food ( 4 ), Thailand   

  Thai Food 

  Thailand is all about entertainment, fun fun fun, and more than anything else, that means food, both within country and without.  Hardly a word gets spoken or a song gets sung in Thailand without the obligatory munchies to accompany it.  Thais make Italians look like dilettantes around a table.  The first Thai restaurant opened its doors in LA in the early 1980’s, and the rest is history.  Thais may be a little slow off the starting block, but they’re experts at emulating a successful formula.  The Thai word for ‘recipe’ in fact is the same as for a course of study, derived from the Sanskrit word ‘sutra’.  Thai food is some of the best in the world, but deviate from a recipe and you can hear grumbling around the table.  It became what it is by incorporating the local dishes from the areas they populated and conquered, and the influences absorbed and incorporated.  Thus Malaysian curries became Thai curries, though that fact would likely never be acknowledged in polite company.  ‘Thai-ness’ is a very dearly held concept, sacrosanct and inviolable.  Nevertheless, these dishes are largely unknown in non-Siamese, though very ‘Tai’, Laos, Shan state Burma, Xishuangbanna China, and northwestern Vietnam, and the process has become extinct and the results standardized, in Thailand itself.  To me the best cooks would create spontaneous masterpieces with no recipe at all.  The first food to have been cooked anywhere in the world may well have occurred in what is now Guangdong, China, likely the ancestral home of the Thai.

   
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  hardie karges 12:17 am on February 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: culture ( 21 ), language ( 216 ), lingua franca, Thailand   

  Lingua Franca 

  Cheerleading is an art form in Thailand; no football, no marching bands, no white lines or referees, just cheerleaders, like acrobats in a Chinese circus, forming human pyramids and human waterfalls, flipping and tumbling like human jumping beans.  I’m not sure if they cop the language or not, though I’m sure they emulate the actual cheering aspect.  Something is always lost in translation whenever one culture apelike imitates another, as if some benefit might accrue by sympathetic magic.  The English word ‘cheer’ has long been adopted into the Thai language, coming to mean much more than the original, though in the American, not the British, sense.  Loanwords don’t follow land borders.  Logic would make you think that words would filter across borders selectively finding additional cross-cultural use among its border crossers.  Thailand is not logical.  Thailand follows the hand that holds the money.  Nowadays Thailand borrows words from English, and English only, also known as ‘pahsah Farang’, literally ‘lingua franca’.  It’s as if the only thing that had changed internationally over the last eight hundred years was that Pig Latin had somehow morphed into Pidgin English and the people were still essentially the same, Crusaders of the Lost Ark.  Maybe they’re right. 

   
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  hardie karges 1:12 am on January 31, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Laos ( 2 ), Tai, Thailand, transvestite   

  Transvestite Travesty 

  Transvestite shows are popular the world over, especially Thailand, which is convenient since they have more transvestites than anywhere else.  Many of the shows in other parts of the world are comprised of all-Thai casts, also.  They are a regular feature in such Thai tourist locations as Pattaya and elsewhere.  Of course the real show goes on unofficially, transvestites posing as real girls in dimly lit pick-up bars.  Many end up going home with clients who only find out too late, to their drunken horror, that their cute little pick-up has got a cute little stick-shift that got lost in the shuffle of nickel ads and cheap brochures.  Many hospitals in Thailand have whole sections for sex-change operations, also, which ads a whole new dimension to the phenomenon.  More than one guy has had the existential dilemma of deciding whether to dump the best wife he ever had because she used to be a he.  Ethnic-Tai Laos is the same, just more hidden because of the official Communist party line.  Those parties are boring.  Chinese go by the busloads to the Burmese border just to cross over and see the transvestite shows in mostly-Tai Shan state.  But no, the phenomenon is certainly not limited to the ethnic-Tai arena.  Mexico, for one, has them also.  There they’re called ‘travesty shows’.  Look it up in the OED.