January 12, 2012
Looking around in New Merry's bar, it becomes obvious that this is a particularly popular hangout for the previously mentioned nostalgia-challenged Kaho San population. Unlike in the rest of the local backpacker ghetto crowd, a good portion of the New Merry guests are of the graveyard-blond set. That might be because this guesthouse is one of the older haunts - it looks it too - and thus a bunch of us oldies are repeat guests, trying to re-create the lusty times of yesteryear, a vastly different era in our lives. Some might have been here in their hippy years - quite a few of them have that, je ne sais quoi, former hippy aura, timid little signs of rebellion against standard rules, like wearing a necktie over a T-shirt, or a puny ponytail made of a few strands of thinning hair. Some of the women have multiple earrings per ear, hefty necklaces made of wood, shells with voluminous pendants engraved with Buddha images, evil eyes, clumps of turquoise framed in silver, all the stuff that used to be the rage in their days. Some also sport tattoos, now pretty much faded. Their designs are also smaller than today's ubiquitous body covering creations. Alas, those once free spirits got married, had kids, slaved away at jobs, had bosses, pay checks, car payments, parent-teacher meetings, soccer practice, dental and doctor appointments - some not only for the children but, as of late, also for their implants or dentures.
Many of them could easily stay in upscale, starred hotels, but now, as they have become grandparents and thicker around the waist, and as mentioned, men's hair gotten thinner - or non-existent and women's hair don't flow so freely and carefree anymore, they remember the good old times, the times before they were second hand, also rans. Retracing their youthful journeys, they are naturally drawn back to their old haunts like the New Merry.
Ooooops! Got emailed questions about certain colored light districts in Bangkok.
That is a delicate subject,
Since .....
My children might worry that their children, my grand children, who might read the blog, would get a wrong impression about their grandfather.
In some ways I'd like to say Doodle Pip!
.... but I refrain from telling anyway because I grant them their right of having their fully expected prudish opinions (I'd never hear the end of it if I didn't).
As for my blog photo woes, they still woe. After trying, experimenting, trying again, endless fidgeting, swearing, moaning, all to get pictures from the camera into the blog, I gave up and went to ask a pretty, very young (an absolute requirement for IT competency - I think it is a generational thing!) girl. She tried almost as long and intensively as I had and finally assured me that I am not a complete dolt. She couldn't do it either.
She sent me to Bangkok's digital shopping center, a one-acre per floor, five-story building with nothing but electronic stores, a gazillion miles away from New Merry V. Along the way in a taxi, once more new Bangkok vistas opened up. This time we crossed a few bridges.
Lo and behold, one of the Bangkok IT wizards in the IT heaven found out that New York's B&H IT wizard had sold me a bill of goods, a wrong connection cable. With that knowledge there is now less worry about my digital adroitness - at least in my mind!
So, if yours truly manages to figure out my new camera so that pictures don't turn out blurry (even though the camera is programmed to operate on fully automatic), there might be the occasional picture in the blog.
My extensive taxi rides bring up yet another New York analogy. If you were to take a taxi, two times up and two times down, let's say from West Broadway and West Huston to West 86th street, unless it was Sunday morning or any night at four AM when there is absolutely no traffic, the ride would always be the same, Westside highway to the closest exit of 86th street and vice versa. During off traffic times some driver might go down Broadway.
In Bangkok drivers play to a different tune. I've been up twice and down twice to the Myanmar embassy and got an incredibly diverse view of the city. The only invariable was omnipresent gilded temples. On every route we passed oodles of them.
As mentioned before, with every driver I needed to negotiate a price for the trip. If I offered less than the equivalent of six dollars, he invariable drove off. Returning from the Myanmar embassy the last time a driver pointed to the meter when I asked the price to start the negotiating process. Even though the traffic was heavier than on previous trips, the metered price was, instead of the regular six, a tad less than three dollars. I gave him a hefty tip to reward him for honesty.
The line for Myanmar visa pick up was enormous but it went fast. I now have the Burmese passport entry.
Back in the ghetto I went to one of the agents advertising visas for China. For roughly two-hundred-and-ten dollars, plus a plane ticket to and from the country, plus hotel reservations in China I could have the visa in three days, she said.
Bummer! Whichever route I plan to take, none would involve an airplane. A hotel reservation for a certain day, with my intended way to travel, is a joke. The agent assured me I would not have to take the flight nor did I have to go to the reserved hotel. As for paying these things, they are only pro-forma, I'd only pay a handling fee. It shows there are many ways of skinning a cat.
One instance in my travels tells me there is something to the visa proposition here. When we planned to get into Tibet illegally by crossing over the Himalayas in an uninhabited region, at an uncontrolled border, also the source of Brahmaputra, we got such a Chinese visa with pro-forma travel arrangement from Kathmandu. It helped a lot when the Chinese authorities caught up with us in the wilds of Tibet without having checked into the country.
The difference now is that I don't know if I'll end up in India or in China. The original intended route ends up in India.
I'll soon post my decision. Stay tuned (if you care to know!)
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