Apart from the obvious, I'm around people I know and I wasn't before, there's something about the way the days flow. There's something a lot more exhausting about making every decision yourself, as if you can leech energy from buddies. There's more pressure to get out and do something, which is great. It's just easier to go out and face it when you've got that buffer, when you've got a reference point to home that strolls with you down the street, that acts as a shield from the worst parts of feeling lost.
On the other hand, it also shields you from some of the best parts of being lost. At times I miss the solitude of solo travel. The relative self-sufficiency. All the things that make it more difficult also make it on the whole a little more rewarding psychologically. But how much introspection can you really put yourself through without going batshit? This trip is partly to figure things out, but partly an attempt to truly unwind after a long period of servitude to myself and anyone who expect things of me. The first is, at times, harder with friends around, the second is much easier. Of course this is all filtered through my own experiences in this one situation, as well as my own particular intricacies as a human being. The case could be quite jumbled or downright reversed in a different set of circumstances.
It's a funny group.
MKH (a.k.a. Alfie) has been a buddy and a rock to me since we formed our punk band together - early on in high school in Chicago. When I emailed him six months ago, it had been months since I'd seen him, before that it had been years. We hadn't fallen out of touch, but the occasional call or Idiotbook message doesn't really prepare you for six weeks in near constant company. Still, I didn't hesitate for a second to propose this trip. It didn't seem like he really hesitated to accept. He's been working long days for the past year in the lab at the Duke Singapore campus doing neuroscience research that I couldn't really explain with a gun to my head, but the snippets I understand are riveting. He's really fallen out of love with it and I can understand why. The stakes are high. All this research comes at a cost. To your life (social and otherwise) and to the monkeys and other animals that are haphazardly butchered and tortured to prove theories about the brain that in the end, only a handful take note of. He's figuring some things out on this trip too. It's a total privilege to get to know him again, and it's a good balance, since he's the only person I know of my age whose views of American policy makes me seem like a flag-waver. We work well together. The two pronged attack is the secret to haggling, by the way. One acts overeager, the other tries to drag the one away, starts to succeed and BAM. You just bought something crappy for like a dollar less than you would have...it's pretty dramatic in a very conflicting way. But if you don't know you're being grifted it makes it hard to haggle.
(Bangkok)
J-Shizzle (a.k.a. Murda Murda, a.k.a. Brawn, a.k.a. The Brooklyn Beast) has been a close friend for just as long, having just finished up a stint at Pratt, an art school in Brooklyn, and found a job working in an artist's studio. Just trying to shake down the apple for a dollar and its gold teeth - a noble cause. All three of us have been friends for 10+ years, but just the three of us together for this time felt like a crapshoot. Haven't spent this much time before and certainly not much time for years. Since Alfie was in Mass and Brawn was in NYC, they've actually spent more time together in the past six years than I have with either of them, but I digress. Brawn can be a pretty dark dude, his art is much more insightfully depraved than mine - I mean that in the best way - and overall he is the exactly the kind of person you want to add into the mix if you are two curmudgeonly writers (indeed Alfie, if I am then you are) in one of the strangest places on Earth.
Ah, Pattaya, our first grift.
So we got duped. This really nice guy in Bangkok talked to us for a bit while we waited out a mid-day downpour, then told us some exciting news! It was a holiday! The government was paying for all taxi's gasoline and he could get us a killer deal on a tour of the city. Our plans had just been screwed by the rain so we quickly accepted. What a nice guy!
He talked our tuk-tuk driver (three wheeled motorcycle carriage) down to a ridiculous price and the driver started taking us around. First we went to laughing Buddha, a temple that was free (they always start with something free to disarm you) and a little underwhelming. Brawn and Alfie got me a suit for my birthday (yes, a birthday suit), at a place where they custom tailor them. Extra extra baller. Finally, we got dropped at a travel agency to get some information about planning our next step. What a nightmare. We got duped. Not too bad, but we got duped. Cost us an extra fifty dollars a head over the next six days, but we got transport to the beach, a couple rooms and our flight booked from BKK to Ho Chi Minh City in five days - in the south of Vietnam. Then we'll work our way north by train to get to the north by the end of August - meeting some other companions in Ha Noi on the 1st of the new month.
But this is no ordinary beach town. This is the goddamn sex-tourism capital of Asia. I've seen some people in Pattaya so far that would make you cringe; the thousand yard stare, pressed khakis, horn-rimmed glasses and a general aura about them that says, "I'm here to do horrible things to an innocent." It's beyond horrifying, but there are also some elderly foreigners that are married to locals in what appear to be healthy and "normal" relationships - if you'll pardon the imaginary concept of normality. When it gets right down to it, this whole prostitution game is happening. Everywhere. I'm not a huge fan of the concept, but I'm trying to be realistic. Maybe I'm being fatalistic.
You can make it illegal, make them criminals, make them slaves to a pimp for protection, let the pimp string them out on cocaine or meth or heroin so all their money goes right back to him - or you could do away with this absurd pretense that you can fight a war against it and structure the system for safety and good treatment all around. This isn't a great life for someone, but in some instances it's a better option than others. It's conflicting. It's complicated. There are a thousand valid reasons not to do this, but I think there are ten thousand reasons we should. It's like waging a war against drugs. It's like waging a war on terror. As David Cross says it's like waging a war on jealousy. It's not a war you're not gonna win. Shit, the government could even tax it all and let the so-called criminals help dig us out of our economic disaster. But it won't happen any time soon. Alfie says we're still too puritanical - and fucking how - we're also too greedy, too fat, too egotistical, narcissistic, imperialistic, unrealistic, transgressive, conservative, liberal and FUCKED. My current wish is that we can take the inevitable nosedive with a hint of grace and dignity - with a minimum of chaos. Fat chance.
Otherwise it's a relatively nice beach with some hilarious things to see (uh, late night boat drop-off drug deal? Hilarious). A good way to get completely out of yourself and just unwind. Motorcycle drawn food carts churn out good soup noodles. Alfie has been driving me around on the back of his scooter cause I'm too shaken up to drive shit like that anymore. I went ass over forehead off an ATV several years back and now it's all I can imagine when I drive something like it. Such a thin line we love to walk. (Edit: I rented a scooter and it's awesome).
We finally made it to see some Muay Thai Kickboxing. It was mostly, and I shit you not, kids between six and eight beating the shit out of each other with Pattaya locals screaming, gesticulating, and waving baht around in a complex dance of wagering.
Anyways, not my favorite stop on the trip, but not bad at all. Stoked to take off tomorrow and see Vietnam.
You walk here.
Bye.
Location:Pattaya, Thailand
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