Save the last bullet for yourself

 Another long fucking bus ride.  17 hours from Phnom Pen Cambodia to Bangkok.  I try to find a seat with nobody next to me, but my search is in vain.  This time I am solo.  My lady friend has gone on to visit her family in Laos.  Our man in Cambodia waved goodbye to me, and wished me luck.  Not that it's hard to sit on a bus.  There are no more fears of Khmer Rouge Guerrillas hijacking the bus and cutting off my head, which was a very real possibility 10 years ago.  The only real worry is sitting next to someone who won't shut the fuck up while I am trying to read.
I have never won the lottery.  I have never won anything for that matter.  Cancer?  Yeah, I'd win that.  Drugged and left for dead?  Yep, already happened.  Sit next to a 70 year old Christian missionary on a 17 hour bus ride?  Jackpot!

Let's call her Ethel...outdated jeans, flowery shirt, curly hair, and expanding waist line which she cleverly hides by pulling her jeans almost all the way up to her throat.  Subtle, yet ostentatious crucifix hanging around her neck --  that falls between her breasts, which are, as I notice,  smaller than her stomach.  Harsh huh?  Stay with me...

I can feel Ethel is trying to size me up through her peripheral vision.  I know she is dying to talk, so I bury my nose in my book.  I don't need to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to figure out that she is a Missionary.  She has prominently displayed her Bible on her lap, along with several religious pamphlets depicting some sort of rapturous event on the cover.  I am minding my own biz.  Just another dipshit who couldn't afford a plane ticket straight to Bangkok.  I also pull out my Buddhist amulet from underneath my T-shirt and let it hang between my man boobs, which are also smaller than my stomach (you see? Self-effacing humor to balance out my rip on Ethel, so fuck you Ethel).
Her opening line is rather ham-handed...

"Would you like to read a book on forgiveness?"
I pretend not to have heard her.
She taps my arm.
"Excuse me."  She whispers, as if to lessen her intrusion.
"Yeah, what's up?"
"I can see you are reading.  Do you like to read?"
"Try to."
"May I ask what you are reading?"
"History."
"Oh really?  History of Cambodia maybe?"
"Nope."
"Oh."

I can be fairly anti-social if I want to.  I roll up my sleeves to show more tattoo.  Like a dumb ass I chose a Japanese motif, replete with pink cherry blossoms, and flowing water patterns.  Rather non-threatening.  Now I am kicking myself for not going with the gangster prison style.

"Oh my, your tattoos are lovely.  Are those Japanese?"
"Yep."
"Did you get those in Japan?"
"Nope."
"Where did you get those?"
"San Diego." Fuck!  I fucked up....
Ethel turns what she can of her large ass in her seat so she is facing me.
"Are you from San Diego?"
"Nope."  I sigh heavily.  The sigh that says please shut the fuck up.
I'm fucked though.  Ethel has wormed her way in.
"Where are you from?"
"Chicago...originally"
"And where are you now?"
"L.A."
"Oh my, Los Angeles is beautiful."
"It's a shithole.  I fucking hate it."
"I'm sorry?"
"LA, it's a fucking shithole.  I wish somebody would bomb it already.  Just blow it the fuck up."

Ethel straightens up her posture and sits facing forward again.  Ahh...Silence.  That should buy me at least a few hours.  Ten minutes later, she turns to me again.

"So what brings you to Cambodia?"
"Drugs and hookers."
Ehtel doesn't miss a beat.  She hastens to give me one of her religious tracts.
"You are exactly the man I want to talk to!"
Mother fucker...
"Did you ever think of the repercussions of your actions here in Cambodia, and of the victimization of the women you exploit?"
"I'm just bullshitting you.  I was here to see Angkor Wat with some friends."
Ethel raises a judgmental eyebrow.  A skill honed from years of being a Christian missionary.
"Really now?  What else were you doing?"
I put my book down, turn to her and give her the evil eye.  It has zero effect.  She is under the holy light of God, and He is her protector and guide.  Every one of her actions has been sanctified from on high.
"You know, to be honest, I don't need to explain myself to you.  So if you wouldn't mind, could we just please end this conversation?  I'm not trying to be rude.  I just really want to finish my book."
Ethel takes a kinder tone.
"I'm sorry, we got off to a bad start.  I shouldn't have snapped at you like that.  You must think I'm some crazy lady."
"Yeah, with like ten cats right?" Ha ha.
"How'd you know?" she laughs, then under her breath she starts praying for me.  Something to the effect of "Heavenly father please guide this lost soul out of the darkness into the light.  Please Lord Jesus save this man from himself."

Shit.  Sounds like my own prayers to myself every night.  Minus the Jesus part.

Ethel begins again..."Well, you are probably wondering about what I'm doing in Cambodia right?"
I shake my head horizontally, apparently not overtly enough.
"I'm here as part of a group that finds alternative jobs for girls who are forced into the sex trade."
Ethel has genuinely piqued my interest.  A topic that enthralls me.
"No kidding?  What sort of alternative jobs do you find for them?"
"Well, when we meet an exploited girl, we teach her how to farm, how to cut hair, do nails, maybe find her a job cleaning a hotel or something."
"Yeah?  How's that working out?"
"Oh, well, you know.  It works with the older gals, but the young ones are harder to get through to."
"You mean the old ladies who nobody wants to sleep with anymore go for it, but the young attractive ones don't?"
"Not quite that simple but basically yes."
"Ah."
"Now, I'm not saying you frequent prostitutes, but if you do, or maybe if you have friends that do, it would be great if you could hand them out my cards."
Ethel hands me her business card.
"Ok, well, I'll keep that in mind."
For some vague reason, I feel it necessary to justify my trip to this parasite.
"I have a girlfriend in Thailand, by the way.  Gonna get married soon."
"Oh, congratulations.  How did you meet her?"
"She worked at a restaurant near the Muay Thai gym I train at."
"Muay thai?  Oh yes.  That fight ing stuff. So violent. Brrr."  She shakes.
Now it's my turn.
"Can I ask you a question?" I ask
"Sure. Anything."
"Have you ever done what they call cock math with these girls?"
"What?"
"Cock math.  It's really simple.  You ask a girl why she started working.  She's gonna say the usual thing like support my family or build a home for her parents.  You then ask her how long she's been working, how many days per week, how many customers per day, etcetera.  Then you ask her how much money she has saved.  She will probably look at you with a blank face and then say she hasn't saved anything.  Because bargirls just blow all their money on cel phones, clothes and other bullshit.  So you just add it up for her and do the cock math.  For instance, let's say she worked for two years, five days a week, at two customers per day..that would be..."

Ethel arrives at the number before I do.  So I suck at math.  Big deal.

"One thousand and forty." She says.

"Yeah, that's a lot of cocks.  Tell her that big ass number, and then tell her she slept with over one thousand men and has absolutely nothing to show for it.  Then give her your sales pitch about the hair salon. I'm sure you will catch a few with that approach.  Just try it."

Ethel is uncomfortable with my over emphasis of the word cock. 

"Well, we would have to come up with a better name for it, but I can see how doing the math would help them to understand how they are wasting their lives away.  It breaks my heart."

"Yep.  Gotta do the cock math with em."

Ethel ponders this and I go back to reading my book.

"May I ask what book you are reading?"  She asks.

I turn the book over and show her the cover.

"The Christ Conspiracy." She reads aloud. "Sounds interesting.  Is it about Judas and his betrayal of Jesus."

"Nope.  It's about how Jesus never existed as a historical figure, and his myth was plagiarized from the Egyptian God Horus.  Also how there were sixteen crucified saviors in ancient mythology.  All of them were plagiarizations of one another.  The Romans simply used the Christ myth to unify the then divided empire under Constantine, believing that a monotheistic religion could be used to justify rule under one emperor.  Basically it just says that Christianity is bullshit."

"Oh."

Ethel turns to look out the window.  She begins to pray for me again under her breath, and I assume, doing her own cock math in her head.

Scambodia

Dedicated to Haywire...

A few trips back, my lady friend and I, decided to go visit a pal who was living and working in Cambodia.  The journey was simple enough.  Take a train to the border. cross, and he would meet us there.  At the train station in Bangkok, I was stoked to see a original "Orient Express" train sitting on the tracks.  It's history is legendary.  It was not to be though, and we were directed to one of the non-air conditioned cattle cars that take the Thai country people back to their homeland.
We are to take this train to the border town of Aranpayet, transfer to a Tuk Tuk, and then cross into Poipet, Cambodia.  Easy to remember because Poipet rhymes with toilet.
The train ride itself was third world chic.  Wood bench seating, open windows, food vendors, etc.  Something about the sway of the train, the countryside, clean air, and $1 price for an 8 hour ride made it tolerable.  The strung out looking German couple a few seats up from us had already confirmed what I had suspected.  That a lot of drug tourists, finding Thailand dry in comparison, opt for the lax laws on the Cambodian side of the wire.  Cambodia is, as I would later find out, a non-extradition treaty country with the USA.  Note that in case you are ever on the lam.
My lady friend and I have been platonic buddies for many years.  I keep her around, if anything, for the purpose of showing other women that a girl can tolerate my presence for more than five consecutive minutes.
It is good to catch up with her, as she gabs almost as much as I do, and it makes the 8 hours go by relatively quick.
At the border crossing, it was the usual suspects.  Hippies, backpackers, Euro-trash, and that one stand out guy, who you just know deep inside, is there to be a pervert.  The large posters hanging on the walls don't say "Welcome to Cambodia", instead, they say, in several languages, what amounts to "Please don't fuck our children."  That creepy vibe I already had about Cambodia went up a few notches after seeing the signs.
Crossing from Thailand into Cambodia is similar to crossing from San Diego to Tijuana.  The chaos hits you like a punch in the face.  "Our man in Cambodia" isn't there to meet us yet.  Upon calling him, we find out he is hitching a ride in a truck and will meet us in an hour or so, allowing us some time to decompress and take in the border sights.  Beautiful, fair-skinned girls pull up on moto-taxis by the droves and enter a casino.  Presumably to work as hostesses, judging by their attire.  Hawkers sell the endless buffet of bootleg DVDs, fake purses, and rancid meat on a stick.  I chain smoke the local brand which has a delightful depiction of a cancer-ridden lung on the package.  My friend and I sulk in the mid-day heat, until our contact arrives.

Big bro hugs, and wassup man's? are exchanged, and then our man in Cambodia starts the process of finding us a ride to Siem Reap.  While negotiating the price of a car, a man spots me from a fair distance away, and makes a bee line for me.
"Mister Joel! Welcome back to Cambodia!"  He says, extending his hand for a shake.
My friends look at me, I look at them, then look back at the guy.
"Huh? No, man, this is my first time here."
"No, you are Mister Joel right?"
"Yeah."
"Yes, you come here, Cambodia before, two years ago, I remember, I take you around."

Now, I must say, I have been hit in the head a lot over the years.  I am punch drunk at times, and even suffer from short term memory loss.  I have had black outs, I sleep walk, and have other neurological problems, but is it possible that I was here two years ago, and was so fucked up that I have no recollection of it?

"I think you got the wrong guy man."
He insists, and is even incredulous that I don't remember.
"Mister Joel, yes.  I meet you two years ago.  I remember your tattoo.  I take you around before."
My friends look at me.  I am wondering to myself, shit, was I here two years ago?  He even has me doubting myself.
Our man in Cambodia has haggled a price for a car to Siem Reap.  I wave my pal from two years ago away, assuming that this is some sort of complex scam, and jump into the car with my crew.

"What was that about?"  My lady friend asks.
"I have no fucking idea. That guy insisted I was here two years ago, which is freaking me out because I was in Thailand two years ago, and I did party a lot.  Maybe I got so fucked up I came here and don't remember?  My passport would have a stamp though right?"
This incident has since then dubbed me Mister Joel.

I would later learn (just a few months ago) that it is very simple to cross into Cambodia at many un-official checkpoints without a stamp.  I have since hiked into Cambodia a few times near my girlfriends house with her brother on a never ending quest to buy black market cigarettes.

Siem Reap is a lovely city.  It is South East Asia's version of New Orleans French Quarter.  The instability of the Cambodian Riel has led most of the country to function on the US Dollar.  ATM machines spit out dollars.  Restaurants, hotels, and seemingly everything else is priced in US Dollars, with the vendor giving you Riel's back in change. 

My first Cambodian language lesson begins shortly after arriving.  I ask our man in Cambodia "How do you say no in Khmer?
"Ataay."
"How do you say yes?"
"Baat."
I walk down the street with my friends feeling super suave.
"Taxi sir?"
"Ataay."
5 seconds later..."Taxi sir?"
"Ataay."
Another 5 seconds..."Taxi sir?"
"Ataay."

This is driving me fucking nuts.  Our man in Cambodia, however,  is all smiles and relaxed.  Nothing seems to disturb his equilibrium.  His command of the Khmer language usually stops people dead in their tracks when talking with them, and he is able to arrange a Tuk Tuk ride to the temples the next day.

Apparently I snore, really fucking loud, because my lady friend who I am sharing a room with, wakes me up several times to tell me to shut up.   This, among other things, is what has kept us in the platonic phase for so long.  Now, she will just be my travel buddy, and occasional cock-blocker, when I try to bust a move in a bar.

We awaken, and our man in Cambodia is already on the scene with our Tuk Tuk ready.  About 20 minutes later, we arrive at the outskirts of the temples.  The Tuk Tuk driver has been hired for next to nothing for an entire day of driving us around.  At first sight, the road we are on goes straight through the temple complex gate.  The benevolent visage of king Jayavarman looks down from above as we drive through the gate and into another world.  I have waited my whole life to come here.  I love ancient history to the point of it being my second wife.  This is Indiana Jones shit.  Tomb Raider shit.  Johnny fucking Quest,  Apocalypse Now, World of Suzie Wong, and every other thing that has shaped my mindscape since birth.  The vines, monkeys, elephants, women in sarongs, along with the heat, the smells....aww fuck.

We get out of the Tuk Tuk and begin the 6 hour slog through the different sites.  It is almost too much to take in.  I am trying to project myself back in time.  Trying to picture what life was like back when these monuments were built.  The Temples at Angkor are still active Buddhist shrines, and many of the alcoves have Buddhas adorned with fresh flowers and offerings. As I emerge from a tunnel in the complex, I am confronted by a group of children holding trinkets for sale.
"Mister!  You buy! Mister! You buy!"
"Ataay."
they grow louder and follow me. "Mister! You buy!"
I try and wave then away.  They just follow with that awkward little kid trot and keep repeating their mantra.
"Mister! You buy!"

We finally lose the first pack of feral children and move through the temples.  Just when I start to get into that meditative, trying to picture what the fuck life was like back a thousand years ago state of mind, I am snapped out of my trance by another pack of children trying to sell me shit.
"Mister! You buy! Mister!  You buy!"
One kid comes up with a more novel money making strategy.  He says that he can, If I tell him the country I am from, tell me the capital city and population. I tell him I am Hungarian.
"Oh.  You capital city is Budapest. Population--" Whatever the fuck he said. "You give me one dollar!"

I ask our man in Cambodia if this ever ends.  He tells me to take out my cel phone and pretend to talk on it.  Pretty soon, whenever we see a pack of kids, all three of us pull out our cel phones and have fake conversations on them.  This acts like a force field from Star Trek, and for whatever reason, even desperate, aggressive street urchins respect the sanctity of the cel phone call and they stay away.

We walk through the temples for hours on end.  Pretending to call in Napalm strikes on our phones.
"Yeah, bomb the village. Danger close.  I repeat, danger close fire mission."

The kids leave us alone until we stop for a bite to eat.

Our man in Cambodia has a pack of eight or so girls around him.  He is speaking in Khmer to them and they are floored that he can speak it so well.
"What do they want?" I ask him
"They want me to read something in the newspaper to them, to prove I can read Khmer.  I'm not a monkey.  I don't want to perform."
"Just read something and they'll go away."
Our man in Cambodia reads a line from the paper and the pack of girls are in awe.  Next thing I know, Our man in Cambodia's face turns flush.
"They want me to show them my dick."
"What the fuck?"
"One of them just asked if I have a girlfriend and wants to see my dick.  She says she's never seen a Westerners dick before."
Thankfully, this request was made by a girl in the group around 20 years old.  Our man in Cambodia is peeved.  He tells me how he has lived here for so long, taken the time to learn the language, and still gets treated like an outsider. 
"They never would have asked a Cambodian man that.  It bugs me that they seem to think it's OK to ask me because I am white."

We eat, and bomb more villages on our cel phones.  I meander along with my bad hip, begging sunscreen from a passing English couple like it is water in the desert.  I only catch fleeting glimpses of this forgotten world in my minds eye, as I am constantly harassed by the evil urchins proffering their wares.

My lady friend is all teary eyed.  Too many hours of Oprah have made her a sap for this stuff.
"Oh, I just wish I could take them all home.  I feel so bad for these kids.  If I could, I would be like Angelina Jolie, and adopt them all.  Just take all of them home."

My cynical side can't stop and I lay into her.  "So go ahead...take one home.  This is Cambodia.  I'm sure you can grease some wheels and take a orphan child off their hands for the right price.  Then you can take her back to the States, and teach her English.  Sure, she will only be behind in school 5 or 6 years but she'll catch up. You can be a full time mom.  Just like you always wanted."

Her tears suddenly dry up, and I am happy to have spared her her disillusionment. 

We slouch on through the heat, with the urchins hot on our heels.  All the while, calling in

"Danger close fire mission.  I repeat, danger close."

Voodoo Dollhouse

Standing on the edge of the Chao Phraya river.  Waiting for one of the express boats to take my girl and I up to Bangkwang prison.  We have decided to visit one of the Western inmates there, after seeing him on a TV show about Farangs locked up in Thai jails.  The guy we intend to visit is a British lad, sentenced to 30 years at the age of 18 for smuggling.  I don't know what I intend to say to him.  Maybe just ask him how he's doing.  To tell me about life in there, and how he is coping.  If anything, to give him a sympathetic ear for a while.
While waiting for the boat, I receive an ill omen, in the form of an animal totem that appears to me just before something catastrophic happens in my life.  It has appeared throughout my life, and I have cultivated my own superstitious belief that it serves as a warning, not a curse.
I tell my girl that I have changed my mind.  I decide to tell her about the animal and expect her to think I'm insane.  Instead, she shrugs, as if I have given a perfectly logical explanation why I can't go now.

Since being with my girlfriend Nok, I have been exposed to a particular version of Theravadan Buddhism that is practiced by many of the rural Thai people.  It mixes ancient animistic beliefs within the structure of the Buddhist religion.  The only thing I can compare it to is Haitian Voodoo, or Santeria.  The dead are all around us.  You just have to train your eye to see them.  The Thai word for these spirits is Phi.

Almost every Thai believes in Phi.  From the Tuk Tuk drivers who are afraid to visit the beaches in Phuket where the Tsunami hit, because it is haunted by the spirits of thousands of dead.  To the Thai Navy Seals unit.
Those who passed the physical tests have to face what trainers call a ''ghost stage''. Trainees are forced to confront a corpse. Then they have to find a document hidden in a coffin.

Many of these Phi are given a home in the Spirit Houses that are found all over Thailand.  A consultation with a monk is often sought over where to best display these miniature votive houses.  The purpose of which is to appease the dead so they don't make problems for the living.  Spirit houses are found everywhere from 5 star hotels, to the top of luxury condos.

Crews building the new airport refused to work after Phi were spotted.  Monks had to be called in to purify the land and get the crews back to work.

The stories are endless.  My favorite being the Thai cop who uses magic to solve crimes.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/crimes/34452/old-style-cop-floats-in-the-twilight-zone

Within this context of magical realism, I have adjusted my eyes to see the unseen.   Also, to understand the Thai mind and in particular, my girlfriends, I have decided to go all in, and follow her along while she performs her daily rituals.  First I have to learn from her about the different Phi that are all around us, and know how to handle them.  My girl is convinced that a Phi lives in her apartment.  When I would call her from the USA, she would tell me she is sleeping with the lights on because she can feel it's presence.  None of her Buddha talismans are working.  She needs stronger magic that is only available from one type of person called a Moh Phi, or Ghost Doctor.  I agreed over the phone that I would go with her when I arrived in Bangkok.  Now she is calling in my promise.

The Moh Phi's job is to combat a particularly annoying or even deadly ghost that may inhabit a place or attach itself to a person.  My girl knows a Moh Phi in the Huai Kwang area and we go visit him together.  

The Moh Phi has no eyes.  He's not just blind.  He has no fucking eyes.  I can see the red flesh in the back of his eye sockets.  I can't help but think of all the beggar scams in Bangkok, and that since this guy just happens to have no eyes, some industrious gang put him on the payroll as a ghost hunter instead of a beggar.  His appearance is perfect.  After all, "One doesn't need eyes to see in the spirit world."  I love it.  Bullshit or not.  I love it.  Simply because the guy is far scarier looking than any ghost my girl could have imagined. 

The Moh Phi tells us about the different ghosts that wander and haunt.  Play ticks on us or try to cause our death.  He even hands me a pamphlet (for 100 Baht) that explains the different Phi.

Phi Kraseu is depicted as a female with a head only and entrails hanging out. This is the most feared ghost and she is perpetually on the hunt for dead bodies or human shit,  but will devour live bodies, when their feces is unavailable. She is said to haunt the area around cemeteries and can lower property values in areas around them.  Hard to imagine why. 

The Phi Tai Hong is a ghost with a grudge. These are the spirits of people who have died under bad circumstances, such as murder or traffic accidents or a baby who was stillborn. Their untimely deaths makes them want to vent their wrath on the living.

The Phi Tai Tong Glom is a female who died giving birth and her baby died also. This doubles the evil strength of this spirit, and houses where such an incident occurred are avoided like the plague. This ghost is actually a variant of Phi Tai Hong and is sometimes referred to as Phi Tai Hong Tong Glom.

Phi Pret is a ghost with an insatiable appetite for everything, food, money, power or sex. The cause of this unending desire is that Phi Pret has has a tiny mouth no bigger than a pin hole. Never satiated, Phi Pret is also known as a hungry ghost.  This ghost is widely known and I have heard girls in the bar areas say that a particular man who shags a new girl every night will become a Phi Pret when he dies.

Phi Pop is a spiritual parasite that inhabits the living and feeds off their intestines, much like a tape worm. Usually depicted as a beautiful female, Phi Pop lives on flesh and blood of humans. This ghost is one of the most difficult to get rid of. Mho Phi will perform a spinning dance to catch the attention of Phi Pop and as the dance reaches it's apex, the Phi Pop gets carried away in the whirl wind.

Female tree living spirits are referred to as Phi Nang Mai. In Northern Thailand you will see many trees with cloth wrapped round them to show that it is the home of a spirit. In the past, Buddhist Monks used this fear of tree ghosts by blessing trees and wrapping them with saffron cloth to try and prevent de-forestation. These trees cannot be cut down without first providing an alternative residence for the occupying spirit.

Phi Tanee is a variant of Phi Ton Mai and lives in banana trees. It is said that when the banana tree blossom is about to open these spirits become visible to the naked eye.

After listening to the Moh Phi, and reading the literature, I feel educated about what we are to do battle with.  The Moh Phi asks my girl what type of ghost she saw.  She tells him it was hardly visible but she could feel it.

The  Moh Phi nods and asks her if there are any banana trees near her apartment.  Yes, she tells him.  There is one on the ground floor, just below her window.  The Moh Phi smiles.  I am trying not to look at his face with his empty eye sockets, because he  looks at me directly in the eyes with them and it's freaking me out.

A house call is going to cost a donation of 30,000 Baht.  This will include his prayers, exorcism, whatever fucking amulets, spells, incantations, magic carpets, etc that he uses.  It's a fairly all-inclusive package, for a low low price of roughly 1000 bucks. We agree, and he says he will be by tomorrow.

I can see a wave of relief pass over Nok's face.  This is a small price to pay for my own sanity, as now my girl and I can sleep with the lights off.

Cheeseburger Ladyboy

Waking up with that familiar feeling.  A feeling I haven't had in years.  The room is spinning and my insides are melting.  I am in a hotel.  In a bed. Safe.
I roll over and my girlfriend is sleeping next to me.  Knowing her as well as I do, she may sleep another 10 hours.  In her former life she was a cat.  Sleeping all fucking day, awakening only to eat, and go back to sleep again.
I stumble for the bathroom and let it fly.  Things I don't remember eating are coming up perfectly intact.  All those hours of watching Forensic Files has put my digestion time-line at only a few hours ago.  I look at the clock in the room.  8 AM.
I try to piece together the previous night.  We are in Bangkok, Thailand.  That I know.  I don't even know the name of the hotel we are in.  The room is ugly as fuck though, and I can't imagine choosing this place. I walk to the window and look outside.  I can tell we are in the Sukhumvit area because of the familiar high rises surrounding us.  This isn't the hotel my suitcase is at.  The hotel with all my shit is on the other side of town.
I try to wake up my girl. "Nok.....Nok wake up."
"Uhhhhh."
I shake her arm.  "Nok, wake up...wake up...NOK WAKE UP!"
"Uhhhh....whaaat?"
"Where are we?"
"Hotel."
"Yeah, I get that.  Which one?"
"Nana."
"Nana?  We're at the fucking Nana Hotel?  Why are we at the fucking Nana?"
"Sleep."  Is all she says.

My skin starts to crawl.  If one Hotel in the world could talk, it would be the Nana Hotel in Bangkok.  Located across from the Nana Entertainment Complex, which is a 3 story building full of GoGo bars.  The Nana hotel is where most of the monger's take their bar girls for an all night shag.  My mind goes back to Forensic Files.  If I had a black light and a bottle of Lumanol, I would be seeing a room where 90% of it's surface area is covered in body fluids.
I reluctantly sit down in a chair and reach for TV remote, then think twice.  Elevator buttons and hotel remotes are supposed to be the dirtiest things you can touch.  A remote at the Nana gets you an instant case of Herpes.  
My mind is a total blank.  I have blacked out before.  Once, in Puerto Rico, I was slipped some roofies and then robbed at a nightclub.  It took 6 months for the details of that night to come back.  The blackout scarred the shit out of me.  Waking up covered in dirt and blood.  Wondering if I had killed somebody.
Knowing my girl is, and was with me is somewhat comforting.  I couldn't have gotten into that much trouble.
I check my wallet.  I'm down $800.  How the fuck do you spend $800 in Bangkok in one night?  I have lived a month in Thailand on $800 before.  Even if a guy was shagging everything in sight, he might only be down $200.  Being that my girl was with me, and how conservative she is, I know she wouldn't have let me run off with another lady.
My girl is a devout Buddhist.  To the point of being a zealot.  She doesn't drink, smoke, or do any drugs.  Seeing her innocent face resting on a greasy pillow at the Nana Hotel is giving me chills.
I try again, 5 minutes of shaking her doesn't wake her up.  I consider dumping cold water on her, but then decide against it.  She is suffering enough just by being here.

I look around the room.  Hideous, brown, wood panel walls.  Velvet paintings of naked ladies.  A phone from the 1980's, and a vibe so heavy, you could cut it with a dildo.  I remember the line from the Graham Greene novel, The Quiet American:  "Every house has a ghost, if you make peace with it, it will leave you alone."
I ask the spirits of all the dead hookers that haunt this place to forgive us our presence.  We will be here only temporary.  I pray that all the human suffering that has passed through this hotel with find peace in another life.
I try to wake her up again.
"Cheeseburger."  She says.
"What?  Cheeseburger?"  You want a cheeseburger?  Nok, what happened to all my money?"
"Ladyboy."
"Huh?"
"Cheeseburger... Ladyboy."  She mutters.
"What the fuck are you talking about?  Baby, wake up.  We gotta go."

My girl gradually sits up and opens her eyes.  It's like watching the hatching of a sea turtle.  She is still in her clothes from the night before, so I can rule out that I got lucky.
"Nok, what happened last night?  All my money is gone."
"Jam dai mai ?(Do you remember?)"
"No, Jam mai dai (I don't remember)"
"You drink too much last night.  Maybe drink 20 Tiger beers.  I try to stop you but you don't listen.  Iet you have fun because you say you never drink at home your country."

The good part of having a Thai girlfriend is they pretty much let you do whatever you want.  The bad part is that they pretty much let you do whatever you want too.  The Thai word Sanuk means fun.  Everything that is sanuk is good to the Thai people.  As long as you are having fun, and aren't hurting anybody, nobody fucks with you.

"OK, I drink tiger beer then what?"
My girl crosses her arms, and her face forms a scowl.  She looks like an angry baby.
"Then you say you want to go to Soi Cowboy to look at the lights.  You tell me you only want to go take pictures of the bar...."
Soi Cowboy is another girlie bar area of Bangkok.  It is unique for it's Vietnam war era neon signs.  It is a miniature Asian Las Vegas.  My favorite sign is of the Super Pussy agogo,(*I was wrong about this, it's in Patpong, but hey, I was fucked up.  See Rick's comment below*) with a 1970's sign featuring a Asian woman wearing a Cheongsam, and a beehive hairdo, riding a Vespa.  Pure kitsch.
"...Then you say you want more beer, but only bar have lady in it, and I don't want to go inside but you make me go.  Every lady dancing no clothes and you forget I'm with you.  Then lady come to you and you touch her boob, and I get angry and leave."
I couldn't help myself, and I start laughing.  Mainly because I have zero recollection of it.
"Really? God, I'm a total dick honey.  I'm so sorry.  Are you angry still?"
She smiles, and shakes her head.
"No.  I love you.  Maybe you angry at me still?"
"Why would I be angry at you?"
"Because of joke I play to you last night."
"What joke?"
"You don't remember?"
My forehead is sweating now, and I can feel my balls shrink up inside my stomach.  Stories like this always end up bad.
"I can't remember shit."
"You say you only touch boob on lady and it's no big deal, and you mao mak (really drunk), so not your fault and I say OK, you want to touch lady boob, I take you to place with many beautiful lady and you can touch all the boob you want.  So I ask taxi to take us to Cascade bar."
"What's Cascade bar?"
"It Ladyboy bar, Very beautiful ladyboys sit next to us and we talking and you drink ten more Tiger beer, and they show you her boob"


My head sinks.  Ladyboy's, for those who live in a cave, are extremely passable Thai transsexuals.  So passable that the US Navy briefs their men before shore leave that "If she's really pretty, it's probably a guy."

"Please don't tell me I banged a Ladyboy last night."
"No honey, you don't.  I just play joke because I angry you want to touch lady boob and I thinking, OK let him play with ladyboy boob, but then very ugly ladyboy come talk to us and even though you very drunk, you look around you now know they not real lady and I think you going to get mad but you just drink more beer.  You are very happy when you drunk.  Maybe too happy.  You tip every lady in the bar all night long.  You say it so nice to go to a bar with no fighting, and no old man want to ask me how much for sex.  You say ladyboy bar the only place in Bangkok where you can relax and just have fun."

I am relieved.  I'm strangely amused that my simple little country girl is a devious little shit and would pull a prank on me like that.

"That's it?"
"No...then the bar close and none of the ladyboy have customer, and you feel bad they don't make any money so you try to give them 1,000 Baht each but I stop you."
"Apparently not.  All my money is gone."
"Then you say you want to get Water Buffalo cheeseburger, and you say Nana Hotel restaurant have one and you want to go eat.  Then you invite all the ladyboy to come eat with us at restaurant.  You big man now.  They say you jai gwang (Generous) because you tip them so much and buy them food."
My girl reaches for her purse and pulls out her digital camera.
"Here.  I show you picture from last night."

I brace myself and look through the photos.  It is a montage of a drunken idiot on a rampage in Bangkok.  Everything that I tend to hate about tourists, I managed to encapsulate in one evening.  The only difference is that I was with my girl, and for the most part, she kept me out of trouble and watched my back.  She then reaches into her bag and pulls out a wad of napkins, and hands them to me.  On them are scribbled about 10 phone numbers with lipstick kiss marks on them.

"After we done eating, you too drunk and fall asleep in restaurant.  You say you want to stay here in hotel because you don't want to take taxi for an hour to your hotel.  When all the ladyboy say goodbye I take you upstairs and help you undress.  I find all of the phone numbers the ladyboy put in your shirt pockets."

I look at the pile of phone numbers.  One of them reads:  Next time come to Bangkok alone, and call me.

I grab my girlfriend and hug her...really fucking hard.

*Addendum*

The Nana Hotel remains a monolith to all the misery a human life can experience.  It's rooms, and those that frequent them, create a black hole of negative energy that remains long after they are gone.  To this day, I pray for all the human life that lived and died under it's roof.  Especially for the Poltergeist, that I know followed me home.

Cesspool agogo

We arrived at Sisaket bus terminal in Eastern Thailand in late afternoon.  Sisaket is only a stones throw from the Cambodian border.  There are no Westerners here, except for the stories I have heard from my girl about the 75 year old British Expat who married a Ladyboy, or a Thai transsexual,  and built the two of them a Barbi Doll inspired home on the outskirts of the city.  The term TIT is used to mean "This is Thailand", which reflects the Thai peoples seemingly unique sense of time.  TIT, after all, is why we wait at the bus terminal for 2 hours for one of my girls family members to pick us up.

Our ride finally shows up.  It is a giant logging truck, replete with a haul of freshly cut timber for sale on the market.  We hop in the back with the logs, and begin our journey to the family farm.

My girl's home is 30 miles away from the main town.  The roads, if you can call them that, are simply a trail of mud and crater sized holes.  Our truck shares the road with water buffalo, packs of wild dogs, and the occasional human toddler wandering around with no supervision.  The journey takes over an hour.  Along the way, the landscape is one from a  save the children commercial....."Won't you send some money, so this child can have a pair of shoes, and clean water to drink?"

We pass the ubiquitous houses, or rather shacks on stilts that dot the Thai countryside.  All of them seem to have a 1980's era huge satellite dish on top of them.  When you don't have indoor plumbing, or running water, it must be nice to at least be able to get Baywatch on the tube.
Families sit outside their shacks and absolutely every person is walking out to the road to see the strange white guy riding on the back of a logging truck.  Children cry out "Ma! Farang!"  or "Mom, come look at the white guy!  Why the Hell is there a white guy around here, and why do you think he's sitting on top of a bunch of dead trees?"

Our truck finally arrives at my girl's home.  Her house is a step up from the others.  It has walls made from poorly arranged cinder blocks instead of rotting wood beams.  We unpack and I am shown my room.  It consits of a 2 inch thick pad on the floor under a mosquito net.

It is late and everyone is tired.  In the countryside, most people go to bed around 8pm.  The flicker of TV sets glow in the absolute darkness, being visible in the neighboring houses through the spaces between the decayed wood planks that make up their walls.  I hear the sounds of the Jing Joak, which are the the lizzards that inhabit every house in this part of the country.  They make a sound similar to someone getting kissed rapid and loudly.  They are the surest sign that night time has arrived, and you had better get under your mosquito net soon or suffer the consequences.
I go to sleep with my girl.  She asks me if I want to go to swim in the pool tomorrow. 
"Pool?"  I say. 
"Yes, we have pool. Can swim tomorrow if you want.  Very hot, swim in pool make you feel good."

I go to sleep, or try to with the din of howling dogs in the distance.  Wishing I was in Laos where they at least have opium dens.

I wake up and my room is filled with the acrid smell of smoke from burning wood.  The kitchen is outside my window and consists of a charcoal pit on the ground where they cook the food.  It is old school all the way.  The way mankind lived for thousands of years before we turned into a bunch of pampered princesses with steel appliances, and granite counter tops.  My girl prepares me a delicious Thai feast for breakfast.  I look at her, and then look around.  I can't believe a girl this happy and lovely grew up in such austere conditions.

Finally time comes for us to go swimming.  I am given the keys to my girlfriend's sisters Hello Kitty scooter.  It is a nauseating pink scooter covered in Hello Kitty designs.  Only in Asia, would this be a valid marketing gimmick for a scooter company.  I hop on and rev it up.  I can feel my estrogen levels rise as we navigate the mud roads on the short trek to the pool.  We arrive at the family farm.  It's over 500 acres of rice, and Issan potato's which look like dirty twigs but taste the same as the ones in the West.

"There's the pool."  She says.
"Where?"
"Over There."
"That Thing?"
"Yes, come, we go swim."

I walk up to the large hole in the ground, filled with stagnant, shit colored water.  My girl strips off her T-shirt, and gets down to a bikini.
"Come, go swim with me."  She says.
"In there? No fucking way man."
"Why? Aren't you hot?  Water make you cool.  Go swim."
"What the fuck?  I'm not swimming in that.  That water's fucking filthy.  Some kind of worm is going to swim up my dick and eat it's way into my brain."
My girl only understood the "I 'm not swimming" part of that and looked at me confused.
"No, water fun. I swim in pool since I was little girl.  You be okay na."

I know I am wasting my breath and she won't get what I'm saying but I try anyway....
"You will be okay because your people lived here for thousands of years and you have a natural immunity to the shit in these waters.  Remember when you told me you got bit by a cobra when you were little but didn't die?  didn't even get sick for that matter.  That's because you and your people have been in this part of the country since the time of Angkor Wat.  If my white ass goes in there, I'll die from some messed up parasite that's going to get inside of me."

My girlfriend tilted her head, as if the marbles in her brain would function better if they all rolled to one side.

"You no want to swim with me?  Okay. You sit and read your book.  I go swim."

At that, she walked down into the water.  Up to her waist in her leech bath.  She splashes around like a four year old, laughing to herself and seemingly, having the time of her life.  I sit on the dirt, brushing away red ants, and everything else that has emerged from the ground to make a feast of the tender white flesh that makes up my legs.  I, for the first time in my life, am in harmony with nature.  Simply with the realization that mother nature doesn't give a rats ass about me or any of us.  I am, at this moment, simply a fresh piece of meat for the insects to consume.   They don't want to wait for my corpse to be in the ground.  Perhaps because they are denied this pleasure since Buddhists cremate their loved ones.

"Drink up fuckers."  I tell them.

After ten minutes of getting eaten alive, I strip down to my boxers and jump in the pool.

NOTE:  A over the counter drug called Albendazole is available in most Thai Pharmacies.  It is an Anti-Parasitic.  I highly recommend you take a dose after any prolonged stay in the Thai countryside.  Or if you enjoy eating at street food stalls for that matter.