Phnom Penh, a Whitewash of History

February 29, 2012

The first impression was correct, Phnom Penh has become a playground for international bon-vivants, well-dressed first-class hotel dwellers, globetrotters and backpackers and everything in between. There are accommodations, eateries, watering holes aplenty, for each kind.

I am loving it even though it rides roughshod over the waistline I'd hoped to reduce in this "forlorn backwater" of my memories.

Although near the end of the dry season, Phnom Penh days are sweltering hot and dripping humid. It looks like I am not alone in seeking a midday refuge in an air conditioned or fanned room. Around that time the streets become deserted. As if popping out of hibernation, masses of humanity re-emerge from their hidden daytime shelters as soon as the sun drops behind the haze in the west.

Just as it was when I thought catching up a bit with world news was a possibility in Rangoon, when CNN, and other news channels, blabbed about nothing besides the important life achievements of Witney Houston, I got duped again. My cheap Phnom Penh digs, besides air-conditioning, also had a little TV. When checking in, they assured me CNN was available - and it was - but with a bummer discovery. This time Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Republican primaries, record cold spell in Europe and what Berlusconi's girlfriend had for breakfast, all of it was replaced by the Red Carpet parade of "glitterati" making their way to the Academy Award ceremonies. I watched for a while and came to a conclusion: Most of the Cambodian women who try to entice you into their restaurant for a two-dollar dinner look infinitely better with their winning smiles than the dolled up, fake, modified, transformed, "Babes" and "Dudes" who strut the red carpet on the way in to the Academy Awards ceremony.

Day before yesterday I picked up a (pirated, photocopied) book from a street seller, FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER, A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. By Loung Ung.

That story would definitively qualify better for having the title of my blog HITTING THE HEAD WITH A HAMMER than my actual blog. While reading it, in my air-conditioned room (the Academy Awards still dominated the TV news!), it felt like exposure to constant head hammering, in this case Cambodian heads. It tells the story of one family under the unspeakable brutality of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

I chose the blog title to facetiously illustrate how good it feels when one stops hammering, but under Pol Pot's reign, for the countless people who had their heads bashed in with hammers, there was no such relief, they were dead, about two million of them, out of a population of a little over ten million.

On my last visit to Phnom Penh, about eighteen-years(?) ago, I visited the Killing Fields and the S-21 prison torture headquarters where daily about a hundred people got bludgeoned to death. It was a shocker then but since the town in those days had already put you into a mood of doom, with it's dark, forlorn alleys, and general depressing allure, the impact was not as great a contrast as reading the book now, in comfort during the midday heat, knowing full-well in the evening you can go out to hoot it up and be merry - options joyfully offered by the people who had endured the Khmer Rouge horrors.

I got an invitation to spend time in a village yet two reasons kept me from accepting.

Life out in the country, as described in the book, was so depressing, I didn't want to be reminded, but ... in reality there was another, more important reason why I declined.

Teth, a very beautiful, twenty-nine-year old woman I got to know rather well during my six-day stay in Phnom Penh, was married in her village when she was twenty. Her husband, ten month after the wedding, died in an accident, almost the same day as her daughter was born. When I asked how her husband had died, she started to cry. Of course, under the circumstances I didn't pursue the question. I'd read in the Cambodia Journal, a small English newspaper I bought from a pint-sized newspaper boy in the street, that this year already eleven people, mostly farmers, had died from stepping on land mines. After her husband's death Teth tried to make a go as a widow with a young child, but that was difficult in her rural village.

She left her daughter with her mother and came to the city, "to make enough money to assure a good education for my child," she said.

Right away she started taking English lesson. To finance her living and school expenses she worked as a masseuse, Khmer massage that has not much similarity with the — probably more lucrative — massage  with "happy ending" available all over southeast Asia. While we strolled in the market early one morning, it turned out she knows the English names of all the vegetables, fruits and meats, a good indication that her English comes from a school where one learns these kinds of words as opposed to the chit-chat girls pick up from working in bars. For her lodging, she pays thirty-dollars a month and the school costs a grand total of three-hundred a year.

After the total feel-good experience in Mandalay, where a lousy thousand dollars from me helped in creating a doctor, a dentist, a computer programmer and an electrical engineer! I paid her tuition for the year. She had been paying month by month.

As in Mandalay, the show of gratitude (the Mandalay version is described in a former posting) was totally embarrassing. She cried, prayed and bowed to me, and prayed and bowed again, and again. Whether in a restaurant or in a Tuck-Tuck, my arm that happens to be next to her gets totally over-massaged. When we eat in restaurants together, she requests hot water to clean my eating utensils. She prepares and improves the meals with condiments and supplied extras. She keeps crying and laughing.

Yesterday her younger sister, a real farm girl with rough, calloused hands, came to visit her in Phnom Penh. Even at universally known words, like "thank you", she looks to her sister to find out what I said.

Teth invited me to come with them to the village for a few days. With what looked more and more like infatuation, even though born from gratitude, I was reluctant to encourage that — a beautiful young woman with a potentially fulfilling future and me, an old man, me — just didn't seem right. I gave her my e-mail address and said I had to leave Phnom Penh. She cried a little. Were I to stay longer, my inevitable departure would become more difficult.

I booked a bus ride to Siem Reap. A Canadian backpacker couple from Calgary, said Siem Reap looked now like a hippy heaven blended with a free-for-all wild west town and Disney World. Twelve years ago, at me last visit, Siem Reap, like Phnom Penh, was a rather quiet backwater.

The bus journey, even though mostly through a beautiful, emerald green rice paddy landscape, interspersed by Lotus ponds, fish farms, mango groves, lush vegetable plots, and cow pastures, was depressing. The whole country side is decorated with plastic bags, styrofoam containers, and, and, and ... whatever else should, in the best case,  be seen only in a garbage dump.

I was in Siem Reap, ages ago with Emilie. From there we took a boat across Tonlé Sap lake and, past floating villages and countless fishermen, floated down on the Tonlé Sap River to Phnom Penh. Tonlé lake and Tonlé river are reputed to be the world's most productive fresh water fish habitats.

The reason lays in a rare configuration. Tonlé Sap River, along with the Casiciares in southeastern Venezuela, are two planetary abnormalities. Both rivers flow both ways, depending on which end the water level is higher. During dry season, Tonlé Sap river leads out of Tonlé Sap lake into the Mekong. During rainy season the Mekong water level rises tremendously and thus reverses the flow of Tonlé Sap which fills up the lake, like a huge reservoir. That river water is very rich in nutrients.

The Casiciares is a river way out in the Amazon jungle between the upper reaches of the Rio Negro (Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela) and the Orinoco (Venezuela). The Casiciares flows east to west when the Orinoco is higher and west to east when the Rio Negro carries more water.

Now I have done both of them, in both cases from West to East.

Observations / vignettes.

In Phnom Penh, kids with heavy baskets, full of books, DVD (pirated stuff), newspapers and trinkets, ply the streets, the river promenade, cafés, bars and restaurants, trying to sell their wares. Some, to judge by the looks barely out of kindergarten, have incredible language skills. They usually try their sales pitch in English, when they get no response they switch to French, German, Spanish, or Italian. On people with an oriental appearance they try Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

That reminds me of my first encounter with English words. It was: "Chewing gum, please."

After the war American GIs came to Switzerland for R&R. I would hang out where they could be found; in the streets, the Limmat river promenade, cafés and restaurants. I hunted and pestered them just as the Phnom Penh kids did with me. I tugged at their pants and pleaded: "Chewing gum please".

Chewing gum, the American invention, in those days was the coolest thing to possess. A big wad in your mouth, even if it was days old and had absolutely no more flavor, could be traded for a day in exchange for a hokey stick, a bike or whatever one wanted from some chewing gum-less kid. A strict rule was that no food or drink could be in the mouth while the borrowed wad was being masticated.

In the US a large portion of heavy construction machinery have names like KOMATSU, VOLVO, names of foreign brands. Here in south-east Asia, much closer to Japan than the US, I see almost exclusively Caterpillar machines. What gives?

On the bus I had to (silently) commiserate with an Austrian woman. The man she was with, talked with no interruption, but with a heavy Austrian accent. That prattle went on the whole six hours of the bus ride. Sometimes he forgot to breathe 'til, like a victim of Hypoxia, he had to desperately gulp for air. The subject of his talk was everything, absolutely everything, as long as it was banal. He was one of these people who know absolutely everything about everything and lets the world around him know about it.

I resisted an attempt to strangle him but the woman with him seemed to listen.

Siem Reap.

Last night I ran into a couple from Oregon who had been on the boat from Saigon to Phnom Penh.

First time in Siem Reap, they didn't suffer the same shock as I at the sight of that town. Similar to the bazar the foot of the mountain below the other world famous historical site, Machu Picchu, acres upon acres of souvenir stalls are crowded into, what it is advertised in giant blinking neon signs: DAY MARKET and NIGHT MARKET. They both look the same and both were open day and night. One is on the left side of the river and the other on the right side. Quaint bridges connect the two as if there might be a chance that a potential customer couldn't find what he/she was looking for in either one of them. Future dust collectors (read souvenirs) in Europe, Japan, Korea, China, Singapore, Malaysia, North, Central and South America, are offered in multiples of thousands.

There are streets with wall-to-wall bars and restaurants, one is called Pub and Bar street? There is even a traffic barrier on both ends of the street so that tuck-tucks and motorcycle taxi drivers won't interfere with the masses of drinking, eating and general merry-making of international tourists. Not all offer local Cambodian fare. You get to choose specialities from across the globe, from pizza, over sushi, hot dogs, fish and chips and Röschti to borscht to the ubiquitous Southeast Asian noodle soups. Beautiful local girls smile and coo at you and try to pull you in wherever you pass — for drink, happy hour, "we serve Margarita, Sunrise, Piña Colada, Mojito, half price", for food, "Khmer, Italian, Chinese, French, Barbecue", for massage, "very happy", for fish that nibble on your feet, for buying souvenirs.

Even though in many ways similar to the Khao San area in Banglamphu, Bangkok's backpacker and budget traveler ghetto, a place I really like (as described in earlier posts), this tourist Mecca here in Siem Reap is over the top. It seems like a parody for "cater to tourist excess". Also, since Siem Reap is like a small village compared to Bangkok, the "fancy" people from the multi-star hotels, that also abound in this town, mingle with the backpacker riffraff. Table with pink Safari outfit clad, white tennis garb clothed, tasseled loafers on feet and coiffed hairdos on heads, stand among tables with  — mostly younger — groups. Those sport tattoos, headbands, beards and beads, are wrapped in rumpled, loose fitting, easy-to-wash outfits. There is also a groups of bright blue eyed and so-blond-it-almost-looks-white-haired Scandinavian students. Asian restaurants have mostly Caucasian guests while Asians munch on Pizzas, Spaghetti and Wurst.

Jayavarman II, the Devaraja (god-king), when he started building Angkor Watt in 802 AD, could never have guessed what a gold mine he created for a future Cambodia. Even though I don't plan to visit the ruins of Angkor Watt again — done that years ago — I came to Siem Reap because it is the staging town for visits to the famous of Angkor Watt. With what I had heard about the town's transformation,  my curiosity drew me here.

Food and drink is good, people are friendly — if you manage to see a locals who is not a tuck-tuck or motorcycle taxi drivers, or shopkeepers, or restaurant and bar employees, or masseuses, or hotel receptionists.

Last time we came to Siem Reap on the back of a pickup truck from Thailand. For a long stretch the truck drove far off the road. "There are still mines on and near the road," was the explanation. Our bones bones got shaken out of our bodies when we rumpled over the uneven terrain of eastern Cambodia. I sat on one of the truck's spare tires. I remember thinking how nice it would be if it was less inflated.

Now the town is full of pictures advertising super fancy buses that bring you to Bangkok - and everywhere else you might want to go — in apparent comfort. I"ll ride on one because from Bangkok it is easy to get to almost anywhere on the planet. Maybe I'll end up laying on a tropical beach before getting to cold Europe, to New York and to Vermont.

De Gustibus non est Disputandum

March 10, 2012

Yesterday, during a five-hour trek through big parts of Bangkok, I returned to my HAPPY HOUSE guesthouse almost deaf. Thai noise regulations are clearly different from the Vietnam and Cambodia ones. In Bangkok you are surrounded by an infernal racket. Ratt-tatt-tatt motorcycles, mopeds, scooters, tuck-tucks, assault your eardrums while you're roaming the streets. The same kinds of contraptions in Vietnam and Cambodia zip around almost soundlessly.

During my long distance city exploration, massage was offered only once, but this time with pictures about what to expect; a treatment by not one, but several sparsely clad ladies - simultaneously. Of course, without hesitation - and also being sweaty and dirty - I refused to indulge in such licentiousness.

In my new passport are now two unused visas, one for China and one for India, all that because my Burma border bashing plans went sour. Instead of adventuring in one of the destination countries - freezing my butt off in China, or finding a drink in dry Manipur - had I succeeded with one of the border crossings - it now means making do with places like Saigon, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Bangkok. They all offer such easy living options that adventure and surprise are effectively banished; no head hammering to earn browny points for rewards. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, where you want it, how you like it, how much you want to pay for it, all of it is readily available, always, everywhere, your choice. Even with little money you can feel like Croesus.

Just to please Jade, my youngest daughter, I booked and paid for, online, a room in four-and-one-half-star(!) HORIZON BEACH RESORT in Phuket. One time on this journey, the plan is to luxuriate in dolce far niente like many other holiday makers routinely do. I am looking forward to the change of pace. Jade wrote that she, she alone, will be responsible to heed the call, should I request help while in Phuket, that international beach holiday magnet.

Emilie and I were in Phuket almost twenty years ago. We stayed in a comfortable guest house above nearly deserted Patong beach. A few ladies offered massage in the sand, not an ideal place for it, because the grainy friction between the masseuse's hand and your body was not all that pleasurable - especially if you opted for the aromatic-oil-version. Above the beach several cozy seafood restaurants offered fresh fish. A few high end resort hotels lined the sandy bay.

Tomorrow an airplane will deliver me to there.

.... and here I am in the four-and-one-half-star HORIZON BEACH RESORT on Patong Beach on Phuket island.

From the airport a taxi brought me here. This is not the place, I told myself, for that cheap minivan stuff where you need to await departure 'til they have a full load of twelve passengers.

A porter carried my pack to my huge room overlooking one of the place's two pools, turned on the television to demonstrate that it works, turned on the air-conditioning, set at a temperature that would remind me how cold I would have felt in China's deep-freeze-spell, turned on all the lights, in mid-afternoon, pointed out the room's safe and the balcony's seating arrangements. Next to the bed there was so much space I could practice summersaults without banging into furniture. In my last Bangkok room at HAPPY HOUSE, there was barely enough room to walk sideways between the bed and the wall, a real problem if you sport a belly!

At check in they handed me a stack of brochures, offering elephant rides, Thai cooking classes, ATV adventure rides - with pictures that show crossing a river with the machine, a boat rip to Pipi islands, a four- wheel drive jungle safari (1 1/2 hours), jet boat rental, tandem skydiving, presumably the kind George Herbert Walker Bush, the elder of our glorious Bush presidents, made famous when he did it for his ninetieth(?) birthday.

Room instructions warned against tattoos because they risk coloring the bed sheets, 50 dollars for such bed sheet damage. Loss of a beach towel would set me back 25 dollars, loss of room key 60 dollars, loss of safe key - the guest's problem if stuff got stolen from there - but the key costs 70 dollars. Also, the instructions said, is is not permitted to hang laundry from the balcony railing.

I felt real happy and welcomed, but wondered if there are costs/penalties involved with my washing my own sweaty shirt and underpants. Bravely risking it, the stuff got washed - by me - and draped over the TV to dry, not on the balcony.

Just to get the password for WiFi you have to practically crawl in front of the reception, they treat it as a generous extra gift to valued guests. All the cheap guesthouses so far had WiFi and visibly posted the password for anyone, guest or no guest, to simply copy it.

"If you bring a guest to your room it will cost you an additional eighty-dollars per night," the helpful receptionist said.

"Even if she sleeps only on my side of the bed and doesn't brush her teeth?" I was tempted to say, but didn't.

As for the nearly deserted Patong Beach of twenty-years ago that I remember, whatever words one might chose to describe it now, "nearly deserted" would be a gross misuse of vocabulary. It is a carnival - in my opinion not a pretty one. My description of Cambodia's Siem Reap over-the-top commercialization, could be applied here if one added a few derogative adjectives.

Here in Phuket's Patong Beach, the Indian tailors with offers of fifty-dollar suits, including shirt and tie, don't take "no thank you" for an answer. They pull you towards their establishment just as vigorously as the massage girls, the straw hat sellers, the restaurant touts, and hordes of other sellers of stuff and services. In an absurd way I feel sorry for them. They all try to make a living but the competition is so tremendous none have a chance unless they are ruthlessly aggressive.

Signage is in Russian, Chinese, German, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, French and, of course, English and Thai. Restaurants offer fare from all over the world. Even in the simple plain ones, in side alleys, food costs at least double of what is goes for in my favorite parts of Bangkok.

When checking out Phuket digs online, HORIZON BEACH RESORT HOTEL listed no requirement that guests have to be overweight. So, as a pleasant surprise I discovered one pleasant aspect in my four-and-one-half-star temporary home. At breakfast (included in hotel price) I feel slim, trim and fit, compared with the majority of other guests. With rare exceptions the chubby crowd looks hairless, for men, or coiffed in blueish-whiteish hairdos, for ladies. Most are dressed in brightly colored "mod" outfits graced by crocodile, polo, CC and D&G emblems. A Russian at the table next to mine in the lobby - the only place where the hotel's precious WiFi works - yells since quite a while at some travel agent on his cell phone because he wants his elephant ride excursion deposit money back on account of today's rain.

The rain is the reason why I write instead of walking from one end of the beach to the other.

Got to find out where I can extend my Thai visa. It turns out, when coming into Thailand by land, they issue only fifteen-day visas, as opposed to thirty days with an airport entry. With my booked March 22 departure I would overstay my overland-fifteen-day visa by seven days. A German backpacker in Khao San pointed that potential problem out to me because it happened to him. Today he even sent me an e-mail with a reminder because it would be an expensive omission not to get the extension before the day of departure. Thank you Klaus, I'd already forgotten about it.

Now, after getting the run around for one-and-a-half days, fifty-five dollars for taxi rides, a few dollars for passport photos and photocopies, and sixty-dollars to Thai Immigration for a seven-day visa extension, the problem is solved.

Idle observations:

What do they do in Thailand with plain-looking young women? Practically none are to be seen, anywhere, anytime. The young women's visible spectrum goes from "good-looking" to "fabulous" and then all the way to "absolutely stunning".

Eight o'clock this morning the driver from the day before's visa extension ride, who now knows where the immigration office is in Phuket Town, waited for me down by the beach road, as agreed. This time of day the streets are practically empty but it revealed yet another way creative local women attempt to invite men for whatever. They sit on a motorcycle, point to the back seat to take you to ... I have no idea where. To judge from the looks, their clothing and the kind of gestures they use to invite you for the ride, they are definitively not taxi motorcycle drivers. But then ... who else besides someone who needs to go to immigration for a visa extension, would be up and about this time of day in a holiday resort? Questions, questions.

Two times going and two times coming between Patong and Phuket Town, the taxi driver, along with all others on the road, honked long and loudly every time we crest a certain hill. There was no visible obstacle, so I asked.

"Buddha!" he said.

Indeed there is a little Buddha statue near the road there. They all greet him in passing - by honking.

Among all the restaurants along the beach, several of them Thai, one had a sign: Sorry, no alcohol served today because it is Buddha appreciation day.

The sole restaurant I saw thus honoring Buddha is an Irish Pub.

Next door to where I drink an outdoor beer, the top blinking neon sign announces: liquor, cigar, phone card, cold drink, ice cream

The sign below: massage, money change, travel/excursion desk.

Nowadays, every time I walk by a reflecting surface where an image of my body shoots back at me, a sound emerges that goes like, "eeeeek!" Maybe now, after my four-and-half-star beach resort, and having gone from one end of Patong beach to the other, and back, about a two-hour walk along the promenade of tanning humanity, that looks very much like a walrus colony, I might not be so critical about my own appearance anymore. 

The previous facetious question about what they did with plain-looking women in Thailand has to be reversed to a more serious; what did they do with good-looking Caucasian people, both women and men at Patong Beach? It is not just the body volumes that give the beach that Walmart parody look, it is also the body decorations, more so with males than with females. Hefty men give themselves the macho look - at least they think they do - with shark tooth, boar tusk, fire coral, all hanging from leather strings that compete with heavy gold chains around wobbly necks and golden loops in ear lobes. Favorite tattoos are of skulls, animal and human. Creatively shaped snow white bleached Fu Man Chu beards and jet black colored hair, or if that is impossible on account of bald spots, shaved craniums, are in.

Big bellies are predominant - none of the owners probably like them but carry them around just the same - I personally know that for a fact. It would be nice to to be able to say: Been there, done that, but sadly, in reality I'd have to say: Am here, doing that.

As for the women, most seem to have simply given up pretending and don't care anymore. It is lucky that going topless is not very in on Patong beach because the few that are bare chested make you want to run for anti nausea medication. Bikinis are just not made to restrain wobbly rolls of fat but some of the wearers try anyway.

I am here with them all and realize with horror, I fit in. My black leather eye patch must have been taken by many as a cool accessory.

Unlike on most beaches the world over, on Patong children practically don't exist.

The sand smells of sun screen. Off-shore is full of jet boats roaring about. Tandem para gliders, pulled along by speed boats, populate the ski. Water skiing, something that requires strong legs and good balance, is absent.

Way out in the bay a floating apartment complex, a cruise ship, lays at anchor. It is too far out to see what nationality.

At the south end of the beach a string of connected pontoons leads out to deeper water where the apartment complex's launches unload their charges; cruise inmates let out for a shoreside visit. Just having done my beach walk and ogled the walrus community, it seemed impossible to discover a yet worse looking collection of humanity. But the string of shore visitors coming over the connected pontoons proved that theory wrong.

To judge others as I do is ugly, unjust, unfair and elitist, but my excuse is the Romans' wisdom: De gustibus non est disputandum (there is no accounting for taste). What I am trying to say is, I prefer another lifestyle, other activities, other contacts. I certainly don't expect others to share my views and all are welcome to judge me as I judge them.

Most, probably a majority of holiday makers on Patong Beach in Phuket, love the scene and back home will describe it in glowing terms. As for yours truly, signed up and pre-paid online for a week, I am now counting the days left before departure.

For this afternoon I signed up to a Thai cooking course!!!!

A diploma will be issued to participants.

Students get to eat what they cooked.

Last night I had drinks with a young woman from Kunming in China (where I would have ended up if the Burma Road thing had happened! - and, yes, she confirmed, it was very cold there). Her father paid for the holiday to help her overcome a failed affair. We both drank way too much - and in the end we both giggled.

As another feather in the crown of my worldly achievements, I just got a diploma as a trained Thai chef. If you can amass the mess of ingredients required for the four dishes; Tom Yam Goong (Spicy Prawns and Lemon Grass Soup), Kaeng Khaiaw Warn Gai (Green Chicken Curry), Gai Phad Med Mamuang (Chicken with Cashew nuts), and Bua Loy (Rice Dumpling in sweet coconut milk), one learns how to make, you theoretically could, after the course, prepare a tasty Thai meal at home.

Future visitors to the loft or the farm - beware!

About misogynistic Chauvinists

March 15, 2012

... but first things first ... friendliness is in reverse proportion to cost.

Back in Bangkok, after six out of seven days in brilliant sunshine in Phuket, I went to one of the Khao San area places I'd seen before. They advertise: ALL OUR ROOMS HAVE WINDOWS.

In my four-and-one-half-star Phuket resort, I'd gotten reacquainted with finding out if it is morning by looking at the window instead of at the watch. Another good thing about the four-and...... resort was that, when I checked out, they gave almost the whole cash deposit back because I had lost neither the door key, nor the safe key, and I hadn't raided the mini bar. The beach towel was still there and the bed sheets had no tattoo ink spots. The couple of dollars they deducted, I have no idea what they were for, didn't ask. I just wanted out.

Being back in Bangkok's backpacker ghetto, made me happy - until I got to the lobby of the guesthouse that has windows in every room. A windowed room costs only about five dollars more than the former windowless ones, twenty-five dollars instead of twenty, that's good, but the dour mines of the reception staff blocked the expected daylight.

I got answers to my previous question about what they do with plain-looking women in Thailand: They send them to places like the reception at Rambuttri Village Inn, the place where a promise of windows had drawn me to, or the big, tastily wood-paneled reception area at the four-and-one-half-star resort in Phuket. With a few notable exceptions they are a dour-looking, dour-acting, and absolutely-no-joy-projecting lot.

At Rambuttri Village Inn (some part of the name appropriately sounds like "putrid"), the woman with a soiled face mask and short cropped hair - assuming from her clothes it was a woman - gave muffled instructions about what I was allowed to do and what not - if you plan to have a female Thai visitor she has to register here at reception! - thirty dollars deposit for key - three percent surcharge for credit card payment - no WiFi anywhere here - you pay now in full for your stay, then she pointed out a note on the receipt, after I'd paid, it said: No Refunds!

"About that female Thai visitor's registration, what about a Russian one?" I was tempted to ask, but didn't.

In my previous, mostly windowless digs, invariably the person(s) at reception brought the sunshine in with their expressions and actions. Ruefully I thought of the super helpful pointy teeth lady in Yangoon, the smiling, frail old lady in Mandalay who always tried to beat me to the door to open it for me, the cute girls at Madame Cùc's in Saigon who rubbed my belly and cooed "happy Buddha", the pregnant receptionist in the Phnom Penh lobby who had two small children with her and her roasting garlic for the dinner preparation perfumed the whole place. The lobby was her living room, children's bedroom, her kitchen. Once I saw her husband emerging from a closet on the second-floor landing, clearly their bedroom. She always had a smile for everyone who passed.

Things are not always what one thinks they are.

That, sort of, brings me to the ubiquitous middle-aged and old men, one sees traveling, dining, strolling, sightseeing with pretty young women. The species can be spotted all over the world but predominantly in areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bali, the Philippines, Central America, Columbia, Equator and Cuba.

The men, as in a knee jerk reaction, are routinely branded as misogynistic chauvinists, creeps, lechers, pigs, exploiters, deviates, depending on who does the judging. I also often can't help thinking in such terms because some of those men clearly are - but ...

I'll try, without getting into "too much information", to explain why in my opinion some of those "creeps" need not be ashamed or embarrassed.

With excessive time to reflect, muse and rationalize, here in Thailand, especially, while repeatedly walking alongside the beach-chair covered and sun-shaded walrus colony of Phuket's Patong Beach, where the young-woman-old-man image is so omnipresent, I've come up with a few "insights".

The book I am reading now, a Phnom Penh bought, pirated photo copy version of THE WHITE TIGER, a Booker Price winning novel by Aravind Adiga, started my rationalizing about that sore subject.

Aravind Adiga, an Indian, describes the life of a servant in his home land.

By his family's scraping meager funds together to allow him to learn how to drive a car, Balram Halawi became a driver and thus eventually got a salary. The deal was, since the family paid for his education, they'd get 90% of his future pay.

The Indian driver job entails far more than what we'd imagine to be a driver's duty. Halwai, the name of his caste, "sweets maker", was the name he was called. Nobody cared to know his real given name, Balram. He played with the boss' kids whenever, whatever, however it was requested. He had to remove the old man's flaky skin on his legs and got constantly hit over the head because he went to slow, too fast, to hard, too light, the water too hot, the water too cold. He was the family's gofer, for everything, anything. He kissed dirty feet - was expected to - for countless reasons. He got hit, slapped, clobbered for any, or little reason by all, except by the one son who had spent time in the US. The US educated one thought hitting servants was not proper thus the others in the household considered him weird. He slept on the floor - only the family's head driver had a bed. He was treated like dirt - while he had a highly desirable job, one his family had made great sacrifice for him to get.

That is one life, steeped in servitude, inhumanity, degradation of dignity, so prevalent in many countries. That Halwai (sweets maker) was thrilled to have his job because a huge portion of the population in his socioeconomic group will never, ever find a paying job.

We hear of activists trying to alleviate working conditions of factory workers in some countries. They call for improvements in jobs that pay barely an existence minimum, that are unsanitary, accident prone, with long hours, no worker's rights, with workers living in packed dormitories without even minimal access to privacy. Often these workers protest against the ones who try to improve their lot, fearing they'd lose the little they have.

Many people, the world over are malnourished, undernourished, starving, thus willing - just to eat - do whatever comes their way.

The reasons for the old-man-young-woman scene does not need to be so dramatic. I'll try to give a few illustrative, but nameless, case histories that I know about, presenting them as housebroken as possible. A few readers will recognize individuals because they heard the stories before.

Once upon a time ...

Two men picked up two twenty-year old "working" girls in a Manila bar. They had a good time and, since the men planned to travel around in the Philippines for two weeks, they invited the girls along for part of the trip. The girls, through their job, knew a fair amount of English. During their journey the men found out that each girl claimed to do what they did to finance schooling for, mainly male, siblings. One of the two men, financially well established - to say the least - asked how much they made, or rather, how much they needed to support their families. They told him.

"What would you do if you didn't need to prostitute yourselves," he then asked.

One said she'd like to be a nurse, the other said schoolteacher. The well-off man offered to pay the education for both, plus living expenses, plus supply the funds they used to send to their families. He opened a bank account for both.

After one year, I forgot which one, nurse or teacher, had stopped withdrawing money because she had gone back to her old occupation - imagine the integrity admitting that and not taking the money from the account anymore! The other had already passed intermediary tests and proudly forwarded copies of reports to the man who paid for school.

Once upon another time ...

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, an old man, after a long hike, went to one of many massage places, a real massage in a well lit room with several massage tables and a glass door to the outside to tempt passers by.

The masseuse, a very pretty woman (later turned out to be twenty-nine years old), did a very good, relaxing job to sore muscles. She also spoke some English. The man asked if he could invite her for dinner after her work was done. She accepted. Dinner was pleasant. They had some drinks and interesting conversation. Then as these kinds of things often tend to go, the man asked the woman if he could show her his stamp collection (not really, but an equivalent, in this case a DVD). The woman accepted.

In the course of the evening he found out that she was married at age twenty. About ten month after the wedding her husband, a farmer, was killed in an accident. She didn't say because she had started to cry when asked about what kind of accident. A report in a Cambodian February bulletin said that since the beginning of the year, already eleven people, mostly farmers, had been either killed, or mutilated by land mines.

A daughter was born almost the same time her father died.

The woman tried to make a living as a widow in her farming village but saw no future. She left the baby with her mother and went to the city to try making enough money to assure a good education for her daughter.

With the strong hands of a farmer she became an exceptional masseuse. Right from the beginning she also started taking English courses. The man found out she paid thirty-dollars for her lodging. School cost three-hundred per year. She paid for school in monthly installments.

Since the man might pay three-hundred dollars for a dinner with a good wine at home - okay maybe for more than one person - it didn't take much for him to decide to give the woman the funds to pay her school for a year, especially since he'd always maintained that education is the best solution to solve most problems of the world.

He didn't give her the funds for the resulting demonstration of gratitude, but he'll never deny, even though a bit embarrassed, he liked it just the same.

And yet another once upon a time ...

An elderly man in Havana went to a music bar. The music was great. At a nearby table sat two beautiful women. The man asked if he could join them. They said yes.

After they'd chatted for a while, the man mentioned he planned to be in Cuba for about one month and that he would like to get to know real Cuban life, away from the well known tourist action at some of the shore resorts, places where most ordinary Cubans are not even allowed to go.

Both women were hair stylists, the younger in Havana and the older in the big southern city, Santiago de Cuba. There is almost no work there, she said. That is why she came to Havana. She and her sister planned to open shop in the living room of a cousin's house. When things are going well, they said, they make about two dollars a day.

The man said he planned to rent a car for a month and he would love to have a Cuban person to show him around, to make it possible to live with Cubans, to eat with Cubans and hopefully never to see a tourist. He said he'd offer a hundred-dollars per week to such a person. The sisters, one early twenties, the other thirty-one, got into a tussle over which could take the job. The man chose the older one, Marlene, assuming it would look less ... ehhh ... weird because of a ten-year smaller age difference. Also, as she had said, she was still married but her husband had taken an expensive boat trip to Florida and wasn't planning to ever return.

The younger sister was depressed so the three of them, and once also the cousin in whose house they planned to start their business, went out to dinners. The man found, in the places they ate, usually a private home that doubles as a restaurant for the initiated, a meal for several people costs less than what he had previously paid for himself alone, in a tourist approved restaurant.

Two-and-a-half weeks of the trip were like magic, plus, hanging out only with Cubans, the Cuban way, it was also dirt cheap. They slept in private houses and visited with the girls' mother in the south. She was then married with another man. Then they visited her father, a carpenter. Lodging down on the south shore was in a simple house on the beach. A family served them home made lunches in the sand. In the evenings they invited friends and neighbors. Cuban rum flowed freely and life was good.

Driving south through the country side, they had bought from enterprising farmers big clumps of cheese, hams, braids of onions and garlic. In the city, Santiago de Cuba, and on the beach, these difficult to obtain goods from the trunk of their car, created a party mood wherever they went.

On the way back up north along the picturesque east coast, partly devastated by a recent hurricane, they got into a police road block. When asked what their relationship was, the man said they were friends. Marlene got arrested for consorting with a foreigner. She was hauled to local court and given a summons to appear in a Havana court because she had given her Havana address. The man put her on an express bus to Havana.

Most of the rest of the trip was a comparative letdown. Alone then in the car, but picking up many hitch hikers, that lined the roads everywhere, and held out money, a sign they were willing to pay for the ride, or some women holding out other things in lieu of cash payment, the man made it to the north coast. For one night in a pretty luxurious tourist hotel there, as a walk-in, he paid almost as much as the previous two-and-half weeks with Marlene had cost. That was another of the Cuban tourist rip offs. The man paid four-hundred-and-fifty dollars for one night, food and drink included. At one of the many hotel bars a Canadian told him he'd paid one-thousand-one-hundred dollars for a ten-day vacation in that same place, flight from Canada and airport pick up included.

Back in Havana the man visited Marlene in her cousin's house where she and her sister had started a veritable beauty salon. The money from the man had helped making it happen. Marlene was suffering from a severe cold. Unfamiliar with a/c, thus without anything warm to put on in the air conditioned tourist bus to Havana, she practically froze to death.

In court she was fined twenty dollars for hooking up and traveling with a foreigner. The man, of course, gave her the twenty dollars, and, because it was the day of his departure, all the Cuban money he had left because it would be useless outside the country.

Other musings:

As one can gather from listening to TV stations from around the world, whose programs stream into hotel rooms of international guest in the tourist spots I've recently been to, the USA is not doing well in world opinion. Righteous, hypocritical, bullying, insensitive, arrogant are the kind of words frequently used when referring to actions taken be the US.

Yet ...

Wherever there is music for an international public, almost to the exclusion of everything else, one hears, Georgia on my Mind, New York, New York (if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere), Pretty Woman, I found my Sweetheart on Blueberry Hill, someone crooning something about San Francisco, or the wide open land, something or other about the Mississippi. Almost to the exclusion of everything else, the chosen music is typically American.

Maybe we should stick to music instead of trying to impose our "values" on the world.

Some don't do Budget Travel
March 19, 2012

Ex communists don't do budget travel.

Okay, no rule without exceptions.

But,

I made the rule - and am sticking to it.

While sitting on a wobbly plastic chair in my favorite, very cheap, people watching spot at the Gecko bar in Bangkok, things seen in the stream of passing humanity, and things overheard from seat neighbors, or people who asked, "is this chair free?" at my little table, lit a Gedankensblitz (don't know an English word for Gedankensblitz which, sort of, means a lightning and enlightening thought).

I overhear conversations in English with accents from almost every corner of the world. Apart from a working knowledge of English, most have another thing in common. They are budget travelers, predominantly backpackers. With a common language, and a desire to communicate about where, what, when, why, and how, in search of new places and adventures, conversations between these strangers are spontaneous and come easy. Few have fixed schedules. They are not bound to certain dates, by hotel or plane reservations. They (we) are the new vagabonds.

Conversations start spontaneously because there is a feeling of kinship brought on by similar traveling modes and traveling goals - and budgetary considerations. Except in backpacker saturated areas like Bangkok's Khao San neighborhood, whenever backpack carrying backpackers meet other backpack carrying backpackers, it is very likely a conversation will start: Where from? Where to? How long? Got an idea about ...? How much for ...? Oh, by the way, my name is ...

Today's citizens of former communist societies, the Soviet Union and it's influence sphere, and those from the present communist ruled China, are practically absent from that backpacker scene, even though they have caught up to us - big time - in the monied tourist movement that converges in multi-stared hotels, restaurants, and stores. Because I don't usually hang out in such places, I don't know for sure if that is a world-wide phenomena, even though I had glimpses of it just about every place this present trip took me. Same thing during last year's backpacking journey through East and South Africa. Also in New York's, now fancy and expensive SoHo, a place I know real well, having lived there the last thirty-six years (when home), one overhears in the streets Russian and Chinese more and more frequently.

In "exclusive" - depending on who does the judging - Phuket many of the tailors who advertise themselves as High End Fashion house, "We carry Armani, Boss, Versace, Uomo", "Better Looking, Better Fitting", have their signs written in Cyrillic letters and/or Chinese symbols. The same goes for jewelers, for silk shops, for hotels, restaurants and their menus.

I can't eavesdrop on seat neighbors in restaurants and bars in those places because they speak Russian, or Kyrgyz or whatever other ....stan language, and Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Rumanian. Many others look, and talk, Chinese.

On Phuket, only very rarely can one spot a sandaled group, couple, or singles, lugging their backpacks through the streets in search of cheap digs. It is reasonable to assume funky affordable guesthouses are a thing of the past and backpackers in places like Phuket an endangered species.

Almost the same thing, even though not as pronounced like in Phuket, is happening in Bangkok, in Saigon, in Phnom Penh. In posher areas where the big hotels are concentrated, many former English store signs have been replaced by Russian and Chinese ones.

I am not partial to the use of English, it is only my third language (after German and French) but common sense would suggest it be used as the international lingua franca. In addition to the native tongue English speakers, the rest of western Europe, Central and South America, most of Africa, most of Asia, in short, practically the whole world, has learned, or, provided with the opportunity, is learning English as a second language. Practically every international traveler has a working knowledge of English.

Oooops! Right after claiming there are no Russians in Khao San I had to go change some dollars into bahts. In front of me at the money change counter two Russians, one in pink pants and the other in bright yellow, were changing dollars into bahts.

The Bangkok areas catering to Thailand's sex tourism are concentrated in the Sukhumvit and Patpong neighborhoods where you also find many of the starred hotels.

Nowhere in the Khao San backpacker ghetto have I ever seen anything resembling the wares offered by Sukhumvit and Patpong street sellers; porno DVD, porno books, porno pictures, dildo carved in wood, wood carvings of sex positions, huge assortments of speciality condoms, and girls trying to haul you into massage parlors with privacy cabins, or sex shows.

There is plenty of massaging offered in the Khao San area, but it is all outdoors, on long rows of cots lined up out in the street or in well lit indoor places that have full view glass fronts to the outside. No hanky-pinky is visible, or even suggested, anywhere. The male to female ratio in massage providers is roughly fifty-fifty.

Yesterday, after a four-hour walkabout in the searing hot town, totally soaked in sweat and pretty dirty, I took a shower, washed the sweaty clothes, hung them up to dry under the air conditioner and went down into the street for a foot and neck massage. Every time I do that, an inner, nagging voice calls me masochist. They massage so intensively, so vigorously, it is a mystery to me how not all the fellow massaged victims on nearby cots howl in pain. But, after all there must be something good about it because today, despite yesterday's extensive power walk, I have no sore muscles.

Two different worlds!

OMG!!! ... and how different!

Arriving from Seoul I slept in a Sukhumvit hotel (an online reservation made because of a past midnight arrival). Being totally bushed, I didn't go out. The following morning I tuck-tucked to my familiar home-away-from-home region, the Khao San area.

Now, after walking around in daytime's Sukhumvit, and fully aware it is more of a night spot, I went there last night and found a day-time slumbering beast fully awake and roaring. Having been to Hamburg's Reeperbahn, Amsterdam's grachts, Paris' Pigalle, Tokyo' Asakusa, New York's (before Giuliani) Time-square, and Zürich's Niederdorf, and, yes, Bangkok's Patpong, it seemed reasonable to assume I'd seen pretty much the full spectrum of licentious night life.

Wrong!

Sukhumvit takes the cake - passes everything I'd seen so far - big time.

My former attempt to defend the old-man-young-girl syndrome, at least in some cases, would fall on deaf ears with anyone who'd witnessed the Sukhumvit spectacle. Words like repulsive, obscene, grotesque, won't suffice to describe my impressions from the moment I came down the stairs from the Sky train's Nana station. Right past the station exit a side alley leads off from Sukhumvit street. There, side by side bars packed chockfull with old men and young girls can barely be seen because the streets in front of them were also packed with old men and young girls, and tuck-tucks delivering more tourists, and motorcycle taxis delivering more girls, and taxis delivering more old men, and food sellers, and sellers of roasted roaches, and younger men jugging beer from bottles, and young girls gesturing, cajoling, entreating, masseuses trying to pull you into their dens, competing with ruckus from juke boxes and giant tv screen soccer game cheering from old soccer fans in "sports - or sporting? - bars".

I escaped into a small Japanese restaurant, for dinner and a curative retreat from the sensory onslaught outside. A young woman asked if the other chair by my table was free. It was. She sat.

"You speak English?"

"Yes," I said.

"Where are you from?"

"New York."

"What's your name?"

"Ernst."

"I am ...." (forgot what names she said).

"Which hotel you stay?"

"It is a four-hour walk from here," I said.

"Oh, you strong man, walk so much."

"Yes."

"You want good time?"

"Yes, drinking a beer, watching the scene then go home. You are wasting your time with me. I am not a customer."

"Thank you for not wasting my time."

"I'll buy you a drink, that's all."

"Thank you."

She had a beer, we talked for a while, then she went in search of a more promising prospect.

I had some more beer on a bar counter facing out into the street, a perfect observation spot. Next to me sat one of the old men. To judge from the way he was dressed, I took him for African American. He said he was a doctor from Ethiopia. He came to Thailand to study treatment of HIV/AIDS.

You came to the right place, but instead of treatment, to study its promotion, I thought, but, of course, didn't say it.

Vignette:

Having time in Bangkok 'til my flight to Switzerland I went to a tailor for an advertised fifty-dollars suit, shirt, tie and clothes carrying bag. For fifty bucks, I reasoned, how can one go wrong. Such a suit could be worn just for a lark, maybe to an outdoor barbecue in Vermont.

"A white suit," I said and improvised, "it is for a beach wedding."

"What is your budget?" the Indian tailor asked.

"Oh, the advertised fifty dollars for an Armani suit," I said"

"Ah, you wouldn't want that, it is no good."

"What you advertise is no good, even with an Armani label?"

"Cheap material, cheap labor."

"How much for a good one?"

"What is your budget?"

"Never mind my budget, I say what I like and you tell me how much.

He handed me a book with photos of suits. I looked through it.

"This one," I said and pointed at a picture.

"You have excellent taste," he said. "This is one of our most expensive, but price worthy models. "Which fabric you'd like?"

I pointed to a bolt.

"You have excellent taste. This is the best we carry."

"How much?"

"What is your budget?"

"Never mind. How much?"

"Armani? We are licensed to produce Armani suits.""

"Sure. How much?"

"Three-hundred-and-fifty dollars, a special price for you because you are clearly a connoisseur."

"What about the advertised fifty dollars, with shirt, tie and clothes bag?"

"Dear sir, don't insult yourself. Those are for people who don't know the difference between quality and junk."

"You also licensed for making Hugo Boss suits?"

"Of course. Same price."

"I'll think about it," I said and walked towards the door.

He caught me by an arm. "Because you are such a connoisseur I will also give you a quality shirt."

"I'll think about it," I said, but couldn't get out of his grip.

"And a silk tie."

"I'll think about it."

He still wouldn't let go of my arm. "Okay, you are clearly an experienced business man and you know how to make a deal. Three-hundred for you."

"I'll think about it." He still held on to me.

"How much you offer?"

"Fifty dollars."

"You obviously don't understand anything about fine clothing," he said and let me go.

Out in the street, just outside the tailor's lair, a bar is set up. A sign says: Cocktails, prepared only with quality brand spirits, 70 baht (about two dollars). On the bar stands a row of bottles, Johnny Walker, Black and Blue label, Chivas Regal and Jack Daniels, Courvoisier and Cointreau, Sky and Smirnoff, Beefeater and and Gordon's, and HavanaClub, in short, all with labels of well known, mostly expensive brands.

From the looks of him, the bartender was the tailor's younger brother.

I wondered if a couple of cocktails from that bar turned you blind or simply left you completely sober.

Last night, on my way to the restaurant with so-so food but with the beautiful waitress - we exchange smiles all the time and she knows which condiments I like - I passed a place that is usually not particularly popular, but that evening was mobbed. So many patrons had spilled out into the street that traffic was blocked. I went up to a group and asked what was the occasion for the party.

"St. Paddy's day," she said.

Should have known, they all wore green and all drank beer and the name of the joint is: O' Hungry.

Late at night, and very early in the morning, male and female backpack carrying backpackers - the big pack on the back, the small pack in the front - roam the streets in search of accommodation. They must have arrived on overnight busses, or the cheap flights that have weird departure and arrival times. They have no reservations but look mostly happy for having arrived after a long journey.

With their way of traveling they have learned to improvise, to make do with what they can find, to search out opportunities, to be self-reliant, to be persistent, to have stamina and perseverance, to be goal oriented, to have all the qualities successful entrepreneurs are supposed to possess.

Might they be the future entrepreneurs?

And Then ...
April 12, 2012

The train just pulled into the station, so it must be 08:39 because the train schedule said the train will arrive at 08:39. I am in Switzerland, on my way by train from Zürich to my daughter Nina and the newest granddaughter, Freya, in Geneva. Outside, with an early Spring, the deep green cow pastures zipping past the high speed train look neat like golf courses.

  They make me jealous because they remind me how soon thistles, burdocks, and sorrels will emerge from my sheep, cow and horse pastures in Vermont in fierce competition with the grass.

  Late last night in Bangkok's Khao San area, my last in Asia, a line, like gander, goose and goslings; Dad, with a giant backpack, Mom with a big backpack, one child with a smaller backpack, a smaller child with a yet smaller backpack and the Benjamin with a tiny backpack, passed my observation post. They, probably having arrived on a late bus, like many others, were clearly in search of lodging.

"Dad! Here?" Benjamin said and pointed at the outside tables where I sat. He looked dead tired. "That's a bar," Dad said. "Oh," Benjamin said. The gander, goose and goslings moved on. Imagine the lasting, vivid memories these children will have of the time traveling with their parents.

 ... I was so tired I could have dropped dead!

... we missed that bus and it was raining cats and dogs!

... you won't believe the food we got! ... we all slept in one room without windows! ... the bus broke down and a guy with a truck took us to town!

... Dad caught the guy who tried to steal my pack!

... this was the most beautiful sunset, ever!

... we stayed with that family on the mountain!

... I almost starved!

... etc. etc. etc.

 No risk.

Somewhere in one of the first blog postings of this southeast Asia trip I claimed to know the secret for not getting Montezuma's revenge, or the Asian Runs, or just simply becoming a captive of toilets or having to constantly run for the bushes. With the proper method and without Imodium or similar medication, I said, one can travel everywhere, eat and drink everything, anytime without worrying about food-born illness - at least not any more than one might expect at home.

   Now, after hanging out for almost three months in this part of the world, eating and drinking from street vendors, roadside stalls, in villages without even the most rudimentary sanitary systems, everything, everywhere, anytime, I am sitting in the Bangkok airport waiting for a flight to Switzerland where you can set your watch according to the posted arrival time of your train - and super hygiene. No time during this southeast Asia trip was I condemned to eat crow about my cocksure claim, and now, the day of departure, feeling totally fine, I boast and claim vindication of my method - no medication but natural immunization.

    Almost every other traveler I met was on one of the numerous, often very expensive, anti malarial prophylactic medications - and quite a few complained about gruesome side effects. Some had their yellow international immunization certificates full of entries, vaccinations against all kinds of exotic-sounding diseases. My card has an entry for Yellow Fever (some countries won't let you in unless you have a Yellow Fever Vaccination) and Tetanus. My medicine supply, in a little plastic box, contains Tums, Aspirin, Viagra, sore throat lozenges (in case of trekking at high altitude), antiseptic ointment, bandaid, gauze, tape, Iodine, mouthwash, and ... can't think of anything else.

   Also, unlike many of my fellow travelers, I can enjoy a cold drink, no worries about local ice cubes - if there are any - and feast on salads. With no need to carry provisions on some trips, because I eat whatever the locals eat, my luggage is lighter and less voluminous.

But ...

I must have a homing beacon on me that directs bureaucrats my way. For the flight Bangkok - Zurich there was a transfer in Delhi from Thai to Swiss airline, a transit without checking into or out of India. There was an interminable line at the security checkpoint - for people that came from other flights without ever getting out of the secure area. When I finally came to the machine, ready to take off shoes and belt that holds up my pants, etc. a uniform stopped me and said:

"No DT on your boarding pass."

"What?" I said.

"DT, here on boarding pass," he said.

"Sorry, I don't understand," I said.

"DT, like dog and, ah,... Tamil," he said.

"Where do I get a dog and a Tamil?" I said.

"Desk outside.

"Outside where?" The uniform pointed past the security checkpoint's interminable line, the one I just endured to get to where I was waiting for the x-ray machine passage. I went past a gazillion people to the desk outside.

"I need a DT," I said.

"A what?"

"DT, like dog and, ah .... Tamil."

"Oh!" The lady wrote with her pen "DT" on the boarding pass, no stamp, no sticker, nothing but a scribbled "DT".

"Thank you." I took a direct route back, avoiding the security check line, waving my DT-ed boarding card. With the scribbled "DT" on the boarding pass, I was allowed to pass through the x-ray machine.

 This now is the end of the southeast Asia blog. On the way back I went skiing in France with my daughter, Nina and her family, plaid cards in the mountains with my brothers, ate all the nostalgia food I could cram into my maw, went for lunch in Lichtenstein with my daughter Jade and her family, arrived in the Big Apple and fell in love with it, all over again.

If it doesn't surpass my IT skills, there might be an addition of trip photographs. Especially during the Buddhist Monk Initiation ceremony in a little, way out in the boonies, Burmese farming village, some really cool pictures found their way into my camera. In the villagers' memory I was the first foreigner to visit after an Englishman many years before.

Back in the US, I'll be for a couple of days in the Big Apple, see friends, take care of some business, have a lot of sushi (and sake), then, via my son Tony's go to the farm in Vermont to start the garden.

Maybe, if there are interesting happenings on the farm, I might put them in the blog.

During that past trip I was reminded in an e-mail of a frequent exclamation of mine when frustration set in: "I'd like to own a whore house in Borneo", or, "I'd rather manage a whore house in Borneo!" I often said.

Now with time catching up - getting closer to what might be considered old age - maybe next time when snow and ice chase me from the farm in Vermont, I'll go off checking out the Borneo territory - maybe the continuation of the blog!

Musings by a "misogynistic chauvinist" about misogynistic chauvinists

... but first things first ... friendliness is in reverse proportion to cost.

Back in Bangkok, after six out of seven days in brilliant sunshine in Phuket, I went to one of the Khao San area places I'd seen before. They advertise: ALL OUR ROOMS HAVE WINDOWS.
In my four-and-one-half-star Phuket resort, I'd gotten reacquainted with finding out if it is morning by looking at the window instead of at the watch. Another good thing about the four-and...... resort was that, when I checked out, they gave almost the whole cash deposit back because I had lost neither the door key, nor the safe key, and I hadn't raided the mini bar. The beach towel was still there and the bed sheets had no tattoo ink spots. The couple of dollars they deducted, I have no idea what they were for, didn't ask. I just wanted out.
Being back in Bangkok's backpacker ghetto, made me happy - until I got to the lobby of the guesthouse that has windows in every room. A windowed room costs only about five dollars more than the former windowless ones, twenty-five dollars instead of twenty, that's good, but the dour mines of the reception staff blocked the expected daylight.

I got answers to my previous question about what they do with plain-looking women in Thailand: They send them to places like the reception at Rambuttri Village Inn, the place where a promise of windows had drawn me to, or the big, tastily wood-paneled reception area at the four-and-one-half-star resort in Phuket. With a few notable exceptions they are a dour-looking, dour-acting, and absolutely-no-joy-projecting lot.
At Rambuttri Village Inn (some part of the name appropriately sounds like "putrid"), the woman with a soiled face mask and short cropped hair - assuming from her clothes it was a woman - gave muffled instructions about what I was allowed to do and what not - if you plan to have a female Thai visitor she has to register here at reception! - thirty dollars deposit for key - three percent surcharge for credit card payment - no WiFi anywhere here - you pay now in full for your stay, then she pointed out a note on the receipt, after I'd paid, it said: No Refunds!
"About that female Thai visitor's registration, what about a Russian one?" I was tempted to ask, but didn't.

In my previous, mostly windowless digs, invariably the person(s) at reception brought the sunshine in with their expressions and actions. Ruefully I thought of the super helpful pointy teeth lady in Yangoon, the smiling, frail old lady in Mandalay who always tried to beat me to the door to open it for me, the cute girls at Madame Cùc's in Saigon who rubbed my belly and cooed "happy Buddha", the pregnant receptionist in the Phnom Penh lobby who had two small children with her and her roasting garlic for the dinner preparation perfumed the whole place. The lobby was her living room, children's bedroom, her kitchen. Once I saw her husband emerging from a closet on the second-floor landing, clearly their bedroom. She always had a smile for everyone who passed.

Things are not always what one thinks they are.

That, sort of, brings me to the ubiquitous middle-aged and old men, one sees traveling, dining, strolling, sightseeing with pretty young women. The species can be spotted all over the world but predominantly in areas of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bali, the Philippines, Central America, Columbia, Equator and Cuba.
The men, as in a knee jerk reaction, are routinely branded as misogynistic chauvinists, creeps, lechers, pigs, exploiters, deviates, depending on who does the judging. I also often can't help thinking in such terms because some of those men clearly are - but ...
I'll try, without getting into "too much information", to explain why in my opinion some of those "creeps" need not be ashamed or embarrassed.

With excessive time to reflect, muse and rationalize, here in Thailand, especially, while repeatedly walking alongside the beach-chair covered and sun-shaded walrus colony of Phuket's Patong Beach, where the young-woman-old-man image is so omnipresent, I've come up with a few "insights".

The book I am reading now, a Phnom Penh bought, pirated photo copy version of THE WHITE TIGER, a Booker Price winning novel by Aravind Adiga, started my rationalizing about that sore subject.
Aravind Adiga, an Indian, describes the life of a servant in his home land.
By his family's scraping meager funds together to allow him to learn how to drive a car, Balram Halawi became a driver and thus eventually got a salary. The deal was, since the family paid for his education, they'd get 90% of his future pay.
The Indian driver job entails far more than what we'd imagine to be a driver's duty. Halwai, the name of his caste, "sweets maker", was the name he was called. Nobody cared to know his real given name, Balram. He played with the boss' kids whenever, whatever, however it was requested. He had to remove the old man's flaky skin on his legs and got constantly hit over the head because he went to slow, too fast, to hard, too light, the water too hot, the water too cold. He was the family's gofer, for everything, anything. He kissed dirty feet - was expected to - for countless reasons. He got hit, slapped, clobbered for any, or little reason by all, except by the one son who had spent time in the US. The US educated one thought hitting servants was not proper thus the others in the household considered him weird. He slept on the floor - only the family's head driver had a bed. He was treated like dirt - while he had a highly desirable job, one his family had made great sacrifice for him to get.
That is one life, steeped in servitude, inhumanity, degradation of dignity, so prevalent in many countries. That Halwai (sweets maker) was thrilled to have his job because a huge portion of the population in his socioeconomic group will never, ever find a paying job.
We hear of activists trying to alleviate working conditions of factory workers in some countries. They call for improvements in jobs that pay barely an existence minimum, that are unsanitary, accident prone, with long hours, no worker's rights, with workers living in packed dormitories without even minimal access to privacy. Often these workers protest against the ones who try to improve their lot, fearing they'd lose the little they have.
Many people, the world over are malnourished, undernourished, starving, thus willing - just to eat - do whatever comes their way.

The reasons for the old-man-young-woman scene does not need to be so dramatic. I'll try to give a few illustrative, but nameless, case histories that I know about, presenting them as housebroken as possible. A few readers will recognize individuals because they heard the stories before.

Once upon a time ...

Two men picked up two twenty-year old "working" girls in a Manila bar. They had a good time and, since the men planned to travel around in the Philippines for two weeks, they invited the girls along for part of the trip. The girls, through their job, knew a fair amount of English. During their journey the men found out that each girl claimed to do what they did to finance schooling for, mainly male, siblings. One of the two men, financially well established - to say the least - asked how much they made, or rather, how much they needed to support their families. They told him.
"What would you do if you didn't need to prostitute yourselves," he then asked.
One said she'd like to be a nurse, the other said schoolteacher. The well-off man offered to pay the education for both, plus living expenses, plus supply the funds they used to send to their families. He opened a bank account for both.
After one year, I forgot which one, nurse or teacher, had stopped withdrawing money because she had gone back to her old occupation - imagine the integrity admitting that and not taking the money from the account anymore! The other had already passed intermediary tests and proudly forwarded copies of reports to the man who paid for school.

Once upon another time ...

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, an old man, after a long hike, went to one of many massage places, a real massage in a well lit room with several massage tables and a glass door to the outside to tempt passers by.
The masseuse, a very pretty woman (later turned out to be twenty-nine years old), did a very good, relaxing job to sore muscles. She also spoke some English. The man asked if he could invite her for dinner after her work was done. She accepted. Dinner was pleasant. They had some drinks and interesting conversation. Then as these kinds of things often tend to go, the man asked the woman if he could show her his stamp collection (not really, but an equivalent, in this case a DVD). The woman accepted.
In the course of the evening he found out that she was married at age twenty. About ten month after the wedding her husband, a farmer, was killed in an accident. She didn't say because she had started to cry when asked about what kind of accident. A report in a Cambodian February bulletin said that since the beginning of the year, already eleven people, mostly farmers, had been either killed, or mutilated by land mines.
A daughter was born almost the same time her father died.
The woman tried to make a living as a widow in her farming village but saw no future. She left the baby with her mother and went to the city to try making enough money to assure a good education for her daughter.
With the strong hands of a farmer she became an exceptional masseuse. Right from the beginning she also started taking English courses. The man found out she paid thirty-dollars for her lodging. School cost three-hundred per year. She paid for school in monthly installments.
Since the man might pay three-hundred dollars for a dinner with a good wine at home - okay maybe for more than one person - it didn't take much for him to decide to give the woman the funds to pay her school for a year, especially since he'd always maintained that education is the best solution to solve most problems of the world.
He didn't give her the funds for the resulting demonstration of gratitude, but he'll never deny, even though a bit embarrassed, he liked it just the same.

And yet another once upon a time ...

An elderly man in Havana went to a music bar. The music was great. At a nearby table sat two beautiful women. The man asked if he could join them. They said yes.
After they'd chatted for a while, the man mentioned he planned to be in Cuba for about one month and that he would like to get to know real Cuban life, away from the well known tourist action at some of the shore resorts, places where most ordinary Cubans are not even allowed to go.
Both women were hair stylists, the younger in Havana and the older in the big southern city, Santiago de Cuba. There is almost no work there, she said. That is why she came to Havana. She and her sister planned to open shop in the living room of a cousin's house. When things are going well, they said, they make about two dollars a day.
The man said he planned to rent a car for a month and he would love to have a Cuban person to show him around, to make it possible to live with Cubans, to eat with Cubans and hopefully never to see a tourist. He said he'd offer a hundred-dollars per week to such a person. The sisters, one early twenties, the other thirty-one, got into a tussle over which could take the job. The man chose the older one, Marlene, assuming it would look less ... ehhh ... weird because of a ten-year smaller age difference. Also, as she had said, she was still married but her husband had taken an expensive boat trip to Florida and wasn't planning to ever return.
The younger sister was depressed so the three of them, and once also the cousin in whose house they planned to start their business, went out to dinners. The man found, in the places they ate, usually a private home that doubles as a restaurant for the initiated, a meal for several people costs less than what he had previously paid for himself alone, in a tourist approved restaurant.
Two-and-a-half weeks of the trip were like magic, plus, hanging out only with Cubans, the Cuban way, it was also dirt cheap. They slept in private houses and visited with the girls' mother in the south. She was then married with another man. Then they visited her father, a carpenter. Lodging down on the south shore was in a simple house on the beach. A family served them home made lunches in the sand. In the evenings they invited friends and neighbors. Cuban rum flowed freely and life was good.
Driving south through the country side, they had bought from enterprising farmers big clumps of cheese, hams, braids of onions and garlic. In the city, Santiago de Cuba, and on the beach, these difficult to obtain goods from the trunk of their car, created a party mood wherever they went.
On the way back up north along the picturesque east coast, partly devastated by a recent hurricane, they got into a police road block. When asked what their relationship was, the man said they were friends. Marlene got arrested for consorting with a foreigner. She was hauled to local court and given a summons to appear in a Havana court because she had given her Havana address. The man put her on an express bus to Havana.
Most of the rest of the trip was a comparative letdown. Alone then in the car, but picking up many hitch hikers, that lined the roads everywhere, and held out money, a sign they were willing to pay for the ride, or some women holding out other things in lieu of cash payment, the man made it to the north coast. For one night in a pretty luxurious tourist hotel there, as a walk-in, he paid almost as much as the previous two-and-half weeks with Marlene had cost. That was another of the Cuban tourist rip offs. The man paid four-hundred-and-fifty dollars for one night, food and drink included. At one of the many hotel bars a Canadian told him he'd paid one-thousand-one-hundred dollars for a ten-day vacation in that same place, flight from Canada and airport pick up included.
Back in Havana the man visited Marlene in her cousin's house where she and her sister had started a veritable beauty salon. The money from the man had helped making it happen. Marlene was suffering from a severe cold. Unfamiliar with a/c, thus without anything warm to put on in the air conditioned tourist bus to Havana, she practically froze to death.
In court she was fined twenty dollars for hooking up and traveling with a foreigner. The man, of course, gave her the twenty dollars, and, because it was the day of his departure, all the Cuban money he had left because it would be useless outside the country.

Other musings:

As one can gather from listening to TV stations from around the world, whose programs stream into hotel rooms of international guest in the tourist spots I've recently been to, the USA is not doing well in world opinion. Righteous, hypocritical, bullying, insensitive, arrogant are the kind of words frequently used when referring to actions taken be the US.
Yet ...
Wherever there is music for an international public, almost to the exclusion of everything else, one hears, Georgia on my Mind, New York, New York (if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere), Pretty Woman, I found my Sweetheart on Blueberry Hill, someone crooning something about San Francisco, or the wide open land, something or other about the Mississippi. Almost to the exclusion of everything else, the chosen music is typically American.

Maybe we should stick to music instead of trying to impose our "values" on the world.