This is a story I wrote for the Toronto Star in 2006, reprinted here as a supplemental to an episode of The Bangkok Podcast on tourist scams. “Why are you being so stupid?” shouted ‘The Godfather’ through uneven brown teeth as he jabbed a gaudily-jeweled finger toward me. I sat across the rickety table from him, as a bead of sweat marched its way down my temple, sticky from the tropical heat. How did I wind up here?
Bangkok’s history is fascinating. Its spaghetti-like maze of streets and alleys that have been worked and reworked since before the city was founded in 1782, and peeling back the layers of 230+ years of history reveals some incredibly interesting stuff.
One of the best ways to appreciate this is with a book called Bangkok Then & Now by Steve Van Beek, the 4th edition of which was just released. Steve is an old Bangkok hand and in his forty-plus years in Bangkok has amassed an impressive collection of photos and information on the capital throughout the years. (Read this post where […]
When I first came to Thailand in 2001, Lonely Planet was the authority on travel. Their books dominated travel sections in book stores, their television shows were on my schedule every week, and their burgeoning Thorn Tree forum was the place to go for travel info. A lot has changed since then – both in the wide world as well as in the travel industry. The company was bought out by the BBC in 2007 and the internet and smartphones have revolutionized how info is digested by travelers, but LP is still […]
This particular entry isn't my normal Bangkok-focused blog post, but it's a topic close to my GeekHeart so I thought I'd put it up anyway. A few weeks ago the Bangkok Post asked me write a 2,000-word story about superhero films, which I quickly agreed to because I am a nerd. I started writing off the top of my head and soon had over 3,000 words; cutting it down to just over 2,000 was hard, but they accepted it, so I guess it's good, and they told me they liked it. Anyway, since I'm a huge geek (in the manliest way possible) and I think this is fascinating stuff, I thought I'd throw it up here. This version is my original version, which differs slightly from the one the paper printed after a bit of snipping, as they are wont to do. Enjoy, fellow geeks!
While browsing the local Kinokuniya the other day - in my humble opinion, the best English-language bookstore in Bangkok - I came across a couple of gems that I knew I had to put on my website. There's a famous old saying in Thailand that in a marriage, a man is the front feet of an elephant and the woman is the back feet; they are both responsible for support, but the front feet lead. (I often joke that in my case, I'm the front feet and the back feet, and my girlfriend is the guy who sits on top and beats me with a pointed stick, but I digress). At any rate, the battle of the sexes certainly isn't a foreign concept here, and although these books are written with a western relationship in mind, I'm curious as to how a Thai would view them.
Google's a pretty neat tool, and it's fascinating to see how it's evolved over the past ten years. When I first came to Thailand in 2001, I did all my searches using either Lycos, HotBot, or Excite, but now I - indeed, most of the world - simply uses Google. It's pretty amazing how far their shadow stretches, touching pretty much every corner of the internet, no matter how insignificant. For non-insansely smart computer geeks, it's a bit hard to wrap your mind around exactly how access to all this seemingly minor information can congeal into a useful whole, but a new Google tool called Ngram consolidates an incredible amount of information - 200 years' worth, to be precise - and lets you search. Just for fun, I did some popular searches for Thai terms.
It's the classic image of paradise - blue water, swaying palm trees, and white sand stretching back into a gorgeous sunset. Throw in a couple of ladies massaging your feet and/or cooking you freshly-caught seafood and you've got pretty much any beach in Thailand... well, most of them, anyway. But I saw a picture about a year ago - not specifically about Thailand, but beaches in general - and it's been bugging me ever since. It cropped up again today and I had to vent, so please excuse the release of a little bit of steam.
Free speech has the ability to make you behave in much the same way that a child does after a bowl of sugar-coated Corn Flakes - once you've tasted it, going back to how you had it before is a kick in the head. Be it a rant against The Man or a punch-bowl full of sugary goodness, it feels good to exercise our freedom to speak and/or eat. (It's in the Constitution, I checked). So it was interesting a while back when something happened and I thought to myself, "I should put this on my blog" but then decided against it. But the thing that stuck in my craw was the reason I decided against it.
It's a bit difficult for me to speak credibly about the topic of how sex and violence affects youth, because my experience is often in contrast to my beliefs. Personally, I think that a young kid seeing all kinds of brutal violence and graphic sex is bad; however, in my oft-hooliganistic youth, I saw more of both than any normal kid should and managed to turn out (mostly) okay. It's one of those issues where lines blur in different places for different people. But nowhere is this issue blurred more than in Thailand, where several issues come together in a big ol' pile of censorship, hypocrisy and unintentional comedy.