For one day only, to prove I was there, I will publish these pictures.
photographs: Jen and I at a photo booth at Ngam Wong Wan shopping mall, in October 2001.
photographs: Me and Dew at Wat Pra Keow. Dew took most of the pictures.
photographs: Yours Truly at Khao Din Zoo at Suan Dusit Park, in Bangkok.
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I am an old hand when it comes to travelling. Although travelling to Thailand seems like a good idea at first, here
are some things you may want to consider:
Expats in Thailand have spent the last few years in some linguistic backwater. So to rationalize that they create
some image one that they actually believe in, that Thailand is a paradise and you can have many women and that
people in "the West" don't have as many women compared to the expats of Thailand. And then to further create some
rarefied ideal of artificial scarcity, they then say, "Some of you deserve to come here and some of you don't."
First of all the available women in Thailand and the sex industry has been described by sociologist James Henslin
as patriotic prostitution. Their government does not give their people welfare like they do here in the West,
instead they encourage their women to work in massage parlours and "massage parlours" as a way to boost the GNP.
If the illegality of drugs creates an artificial scarcity thus justifying their expense, the availability of whores
in Thailand, thanks to patriotic prostitution, is an artificial surplus.
However, they neglect to mention that there is a class of people in Thailand, the Buddhist Priests who in that
country there exists such a percentage of the population and they are celibate to a degree that no one in North
America is. They are not allowed to touch women even to shake their hand nor to take money from them. No one in
the West is celibate like that! Of course this is to enable a polygamist society.
In Mormonism, the Priests are polygamist and the secular population is not. In Thailand the laypeople is
polygamist and the Priests are celibate. Populations are born 50% men, 50% women. So for that Thai politician or
the wealthy expat to have four women on his arm, some Thai men got to be knocked out of the equation. Hence the
institution of celibacy of monks that they have there.
Religions are an anachronistic control system. I read too much of Carl Jung and his idea of archetypes and have
had too much scientific training to be worried about religion. If God created the Universe, who made God? What,
an anthropomorphic God?! Thank God I am an atheist, and thank God there are many religions.
That's besides the point. It can be expressed in mathematical notation: fun travelling plus 10 points, sex with
whores plus 10 points, exotic experience plus 10 points, whatever else positive you were going to do there plus
10 points, the hot hot weather minus 10 points, the visa runs and the bureaucratic hassles of travelling minus 10
points, and the language minus 10 points. In the end the things cancel each other out and you are arguably better
They used to have free meals, free booze as much as you wanted on flights. Now nothing is free and everything,
meals, booze is charged. Used to be one carry on and one stow area luggage was allowed free. Now all is charged
even carry on. Not worth it to travel. Fascist venal money grabs.
Visa runs are awful. Just bloody atrocious. Being an English teacher in Southeast Asia is empowering, going on a
visa run is disempowering. Looks like one thing cancels the other one out! I hated those visa runs!
The language. Gooky geeky, anal tonal, all tonal languages are anal. Imagine after centuries, someone came along
called Sigmund Freud who could perfectly describe those languages. "Ha." "No, it's not ha, it's haaa." How anal
is that?
Fifty miles outside of the country and the language is irrelevant.
It is such a language! The words in the sentences do not have any spaces between them, that always got to me.
No capital letters. And every sentence has to end with the same words, krap kup or ka. How slavishly sycophantic
goody goody two shoes, typically gook square.If one were to decide to live there indefinitely, then it would be that language for hours on end every day, day in day out, week in week out, year in year out. Yeah, right. Speak that language every day as if it was making a difference. Speak that language everyday as if it had something to do with the price of coffee. Some dilettante obscure language or else some obscure dilettante language. The weather in Thailand is the shits. It is like Dawson Creek in reverse. Dawson Creek was minus 20 degrees for eight months of the year. In Thailand, the movie Celsius 41 point 1; the temperature at which the brain starts cooking inside the skull. Here an electric fan is a luxury. There, it is vital or essential for survival. The weather here where I am now is enviable. The weather in Thailand is unenviable. My friend in Thailand wrote me a letter on facebook recently: "I miss you. Plz come to Thailand." Wow. What an ignorant thing to say. Not asking too much there! Gooks will typically operate on such square parameters as expecting you to honour promises involving travelling great distances. They are famous for saying ignorant things like that. Repatriated expats get letter like that by the thousands every year, "My mother sick, my buffalo sick, I need to go to school, can you send me 2000 baht or what is the equivalent of $80?" I wrote back to him, saying, "You sir, are a trap." Expats in Thailand, a lot of them have sold out their own country for a little bit of slant eyed pussy. When a normal guy goes with an ethnic girl he is delving into something exotic, when a ethnic guy goes with an ethnic girl he is towing some ethnic line. I see going with an ethnic as a regression to some primitive world. But marriages are tawdry. If you do drugs at all, do not go to Thailand. They are absolutely squares when it comes to drugs. Zero tolerance. They live a stone's throw away from Malaysia, for God's sake! Drugs illegality is an artificial scarcity as a pretext to a form of price fixing. It is a cat and mouse game, it is a paper chase, it is a make work project and keeps certain channels of money flowing. Equating drug possession with violent crimes like murder. It's narco-fascism. Before people were put into prisons or concentration camps for being of the wrong religion. Now people are put into prisons merely for using or possessing a chemical deemed illegal versus using or possessing a chemical deemed legal. You shouldn't do drugs anyways. Most drugs are garbage. But if you do drugs, going to Thailand would be a square assed waste of time for you. Those who are thinking of getting married in some exotic overseas marriage or some bullshit like that would think of going to Thailand but however, for me, I don't want to get married or have children. I do not have the temperament for marriage. Raising children is a hassle. I like to live alone and to be alone at all times. There is an existential joy in that. I don't come from a family that I intellectually believe in at all. So I don't care at all if I do not continue the family line. I don't care if I don't have any children. I never want to go to Thailand again. If someone wants you to go to Thailand it is because they want to co-opt you or to collect you. The whole mentality behind that is "Misery loves company." They are stuck in some place with bad weather and a language that is pretty much useless internationally and they want you to be there too! Thailand has got some problems that even if a thousand of me were to go there, those problems would not be mitigated, ameliorated nor assuaged. Stanley Kubrick never left England. The task in life is to travel to a few places but never going back to anywhere you have been, never regress, that is muddy and usually does not end well, do not travel to jerkwater towns or town s which the first langauge is not English. Then finally find some place that suits you and some place that you real ly finally intellectually believe in and stay there. I can say that I am in a town that I intellectually believe in and I plan to stay here for the rest of my life. It is up to you to decide if you want to travel or not. You should be old enough to think for yourself. Hopefully this article gave you some things to consider. This article is not just about Thailand. Travelling to all countries is equally unfeasible, untenable, and is a hassle all around. Travelling is a hassle! The whole thing reeks of effort! A Christian and not a drug user at all said that customs officers are more strict now and ask more questions than before. And he is a straight laced Christian, no drugs. If someone like him would say that, how would that apply to the normal traveller who is no stranger to the world of drugs? Every third World country is the same as Thailand, shitty weather, shitty language, atrociously awful visa runs, the same squares writing you the same square letters. This article is only going to be published for this one day. I will publish it again from time to time. Places not to travel to 1. backwater towns - Shithole jerkwater towns are anachronisms. Going to a backwater town is to take a step backwards. 2. "Never go back to where you have been." A British saying which means to Never regress. 3. Never go to any towns in the so called first world that is worse than places in the 3rd world like North of 60 or the downtown eastside main and hastings junkie area of Vancouver. These places actually honest to God believe that they are first World. 4. Places in which the climate is very different from body temperature. "But I'm not wrong!" -Bill Maher
