sight seeing
Posted: June 17, 2010 Filed under: photography, places, sight seeing Leave a comment
an old blue house in Luang Prabang, Laos, last summer. notice the large cactus at left front.
Thai music: Joe Cummings
Posted: June 17, 2010 Filed under: articles, interviews, people 1 CommentJoe Cummings is one of the best people to talk to about anything Thai. After more than two decades roaming Thailand and Southeast Asia, he sees the scene, high and low, in great detail. In an earlier life, he created the running series of Lonely Planet Thailand guide books. I asked him to talk about the Thai music scene, especially rural music.
Roy Hamric: When farangs first come to Thailand, they eventually hear about look thung music. What is it exactly?
Joe Cummings: The name literally translates as “children of the fields,” but means, in essence, farmers. In many ways, it’s the Thai equivalent of country & western in America in its stories and tightly structured formulae. But just as country western has been moving towards rock and roll, look thung is moving that way from traditional forms. If you’re in a taxi in Bangkok most likely you’ll be listening to look thung. It’s the same kind of lyrics: lost your job, your truck broke down, your wife left you. There are two basic styles, the original suphanburi style, with lyrics in standard Thai, and an Ubon style sung in Issan (northeastern) dialect. Thailand’s most famous look thung singer, Pumpuang Duangjan, rated a royally sponsored cremation when she died in 1992.
joe cummings
Chai Muang Sing and Siriporn Amphaipong have been the most beloved look thung superstars for several years, with lesser lights coming and going. Other stars include former soap opera star Got Chakraband and Monsit Khamsoi, whose trademark silky vocal style has proved enormously popular.
Look thung has lately been adopted and adapted by long-haired Thai bands such as Carabao, the most popular pop group in Thai history, complete with electric guitars and lots of rock posturing. It’s sort of like redneck rock.
Look thung is popularly heard in the Thai café, which is anything but a coffeeshop in the Western sense, but rather a dark nightclub where a succession of scantily clad female singers take the stage to perform watered-down versions of look thung hits. There are some more grand venues for the music, however, such as the legendary Café Rama 9 in Bangkok.
Q. Some people claim Maw Lam trumps Look Thung for authenticity, originality and a look into the Thai soul.
Arguably the most authentically native strain of Thai music is maw lam which developed in northeastern Thailand and Laos around 100 years ago. Fans in the northeast breath, live and die for this music. The main instrument is still the khaen, a traditional Lao-Thai pan pipe. It has a very dynamic beat, usually a quick 3/8 tempo with a strong bass line reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s Third Stone from the Sun. The lyrics are more hard core than in look thung, with more politics, more sex and more violence. It’s almost like Mississippi Delta blues with its rougher language and songs about murder and suicide. Jintara Poonlap and Chalermphol Malaikham continue to reign as queen and king of maw lam.
When you see an authentic maw lam performance live in the northeast (as opposed to on TV in Bangkok), you’ll see how intense the bands can get, with lots of sweat and veins popping out on the forehead. The players really get into it.
It’s most commonly performed at festivals and temple fairs. One of the best festivals for maw lam is the Dok Khoon Siang Khaen Flower Festival in Khon Kaen, also Phi Ta Khon festival in Dan Sai, Loei.
Q. Some groups must have updated both Look Thung and Maw Lam?
Just as Bob Dylan took folk, blues and rock and wove them together with a political outlook in his early to mid-1960s songs, the Thai band Caravan grafted Thai rural folk melodies onto Dylan- and Springsteen-influenced song structures to create a genre of protest-oriented songs called phleng pheua cheewit (Songs for Life), beginning in the late 1970s.
Caravan and their music were banned from public performances throughout the Thai military dictatorship of the 70s and 80s. As Thai politics stablized in the late 80s, the genre was picked up by other groups and commercialized. Much as the sounds of politically oriented Buffalo Springfield were later co-opted by Poco and The Eagles in the USA, Caravan’s musical creation was taken to market by Carabao.
You won’t find much live maw lam in Bangkok or in many clubs even in Issan. Songs For Life can be heard in smaller bars typically decorated with water buffalo skulls and buffalo-cart wheels. Chiang Mai has one of the better venues for Songs For Life (although not exclusively), a bar called Sudsanan.
Q. The Pai music scene is attracting a lot of interest musically, right?
For such a small town, Pai (Mae Hong Son Province) does have an amazing music scene. Be-Bop Bar, which has been around since the late 90s, attracts musicians and bands from all over Thailand, and some from other countries as well. The place is packed with live music lovers every night, and the roster of bands change nightly. Aside from Caravan and Carabao, both of whom have performed there, Be-Bop has recently hosted Mason Ruffner (former guitarist for Bob Dylan), Aussie bluesman Mojo Webb, and New Orleans-style pianist Mitch Woods. The owner, Sucharat Panpai, is an excellent blues and jazz guitarist himself, and he plays there regularly with his own band.
Parking Pai, a branch of Bangkok’s Parking Toys, offers a variety of live music, usually local or Chiang Mai acts playing international and Thai music, sometimes something a little different, including indie bands from Bangkok. Edible Jazz does live jazz and blues in a rustic bambbo-and-wood setting.
Q. What about contemporary Thai music?
Most popular on Thai radio is T-Pop, meaning Thai pop, a borrowing from Japan’s J-Pop. I don’t find it very original-sounding, with its general emphasis on Western 80s New Wave production style, with heavily processed guitars and keyboard washes and lyrics about teen love. The language features a lot of faux naïve lyrics, again influenced by J-Pop.
Singers who are look khreung – half-Thai, half-farang– and sport Western names are particularly popular. For example, Tata Young, Nicole Theriault and the original look khreung heartthrob, Thongchai “Bird” MacIntyre.
Thai mainstream rock is more unique. Although obviously influenced by Western bands like Guns and Roses, Thai rockers have a way of taking the genre and giving it a Thai twist. Just where you might end the chord progression in a typical Western rock song, they’ll tag on a little something, often taking a minor key song back into its relative major. Loso is still the biggest traditional Thai rock band.
In the 1990s an alternative pop scene known as klawng sehrii or “free drum” in Thail, also phleng ta\^i din, “underground music”––grew in Bangkok. Hip-hop/ska artist Joey Boy not only explored new musical frontiers but released lyrics that the Department of Culture banned. Thaitanium have taken over that territory and are currently the number-one hip-hop act in Thailand. Ska seems more popular than ever. Of course the veterans on the scene are T-Bone, who groove equally well in Thai and English. They’re internationally recognized, even scored a small stage at Glastonbury a few years ago. But there are a whole bunch of new ska bands that take it much closer to the roots of the genre.
Modern Dog, a Britpop-inspired band of four Chulalongkorn University graduates, brought independent Thai music into the mainstream, and their success prompted an explosion of similar bands and indie recording labels. Among the most significant indie rock acts in Thailand, from my perspective, were Day Tripper, Silly Fools and Futon. I think Silly Fools still plays but the other two groups are gone. Gene Kasadit from Futon now does his own thing, more outrageous than ever, while other members of Futon have formed Goo, who put on a seriously kickass rock show.
There’s a new generation of indie bands who are really state of the art for Thailand, often composing songs in English or in both English and Thai. Among these, my present favourites include Zero Hero, Abuse The Youth, Revenge of the Cybermen, Class A Cigarettes.
Q. When you visit Bangkok, where do you go to hear good music?
The situation has gotten pretty dire over the last couple of years. A few special venues like Rain Dogs, The Tube and Lullaby have disappeared. Saxophone, at the Victory Circle, is an old holdover from the 80s that’s still good for blues, funk and fusion, with occasional acts from overseas like Eddie Baytos and Mason Ruffner. Ad Here the 13th, on Samsen Road near Soi 1, is a personal fave. I love the house blues band, led by owner Pong. Common Ground on Samsen Rd occasionally has a good lineup of indie bands, as does Bangkok Rocks on Sukhumvit Soi 19. Club Culture recently re-located to a spot near the Democracy Monument but has gone mostly DJ, with the occasional live show. DJ culture has just about taken over the city. Parking Toys off Kaset Nawamin Rd has a nightly line-up of bands playing rock, latin and funk, occasionally something more modern. Stu-Fe, near the Nam Kluay Thai intersection of Rama 4, is run by a musicians collective called Monotone, and on the weekends the jams can be pretty good. I’ve become a big fan of Belgian accordionist Matthieu Ha, who has played there. Overtone Music Cave, in the RCA area, has a state-of-the-art sound system and will become a popular spot for fusion and prog rock. I’m living in Bangkok now, but sometimes I have to fly to Chiang Mai to hear good live music at Guitarman.
Q. And what about classical Thai music?
Classical Thai music, known as peepat (the name of the ensemble itself), is based on styles of music imported from the Cambodian royal court during the Ayuthaya era, so it can be argued that it’s not particularly Thai. It’s also not very popular and is for the most part reserved for ceremonial performances, tourist dinner shows and occasional Thai cinema.
Classical Thai music received a huge boost in 2004 when the film Hom Rong (The Overture) was released. Based on the life story of Thai maestro Luang Pradit Phairoh (1881-1954), the film chronicles an era when Thai political leaders were trying to suppress traditional Thai music in favour of Western classical music in order to prove to would-be colonisers that Thais were “civilized.” In the first few months after the film’s opening, new students were practically standing in line to learn ranaat ehk (classical wooden xylophone) at Bangkok music schools.
Q. It seems your music life is picking up and your travel writing life is slowing down. Talk about the music…
I actually started playing in rock bands when I was 15, and by the time I was 20, I was touring with a band called The Fog that opened for the likes of Blue Oyster Cult, Uriah Heep and Edgar Winter’s White Trash. I came to Thailand shortly after that period and have been jamming around Bangkok since dinosaurs roamed Sukhumvit Road.
joe cummings and marie dance in a Chiang Mai recording studio
A few years ago I met Marie Dance, a talented singer-songwriter-guitarist from England. We played together a few times with a band called The Jackalans, based in Pai, and as we got more serious about writing and performing originals, we changed the name to The Tonic Rays. We recorded one album, which miraculously made the Billboard Critics Top 10 Albums of 2008, courtesy of rock critic Chuck Eddy. You can download the tunes at Amazon, Rhapsody, iTunes, and CDBaby. You can also hear a few tracks at www.myspace.com/tonicrays. We were based in Chiang Mai and played a lot there (at Babylon, Drunken Flower and Guitarman) and in Pai (Be-Bop and now-defunct Phu Pai), but we also played in Bangkok, Pattaya and Ko Phi Phi. Marie is out of the picture for now, but I may start another band soon. I’ve been jamming with Cannonball here in Bangkok and also in Saigon last year at a music fest. Mason Ruffner is coming back to Thailand in August, and so I’ll join him for a spell. I was in Berlin recently and really stoked by the scene there.
Q. So is Joe Cummings still in the travel writing business?
I guess you could say I have a dual life. My day job now is writing about art, culture, architecture and people for The Magazine of The Bangkok Post. Also, on my own I do mostly large format books like Lanna Renaisance, Chiang Mai Style and Buddhist Temples of Thailand, rather than guidebooks. At night, I still play music. Sometimes it feels like there’s two of me in one tired body!
Q. Now we fade to silence.
Drum roll…
searching for Orwell
Posted: June 17, 2010 Filed under: articles, people, reviews Leave a commentThis is a revised version of a review published in The Kyoto Journal prior to the 2010 national election which led to the creation of a parliament and the opening up of Burma to democracy.
Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop by Emma Larkin
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”––Nineteen Eighty-Four
By Roy Hamric
Early into Emma Larkin’s extended stay in Burma while she was gathering material for Secret Histories, she visited a Burmese scholar and brought up George Orwell’s name.
“You mean the prophet!” the man exclaimed.
In Burma today, rechristened Myanmar in 1989 by a military junta that has methodically repressed the country and turned it into a pariah state, there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one book about the country, Burmese Days, but two more: Animal Farm, the tale of a socialist revolution in which pigs overthrow human farmers and set about to destroy the farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the story of a heartless dystopia. The trilogy depicts a before-and-after picture of Burma-Myanmar.
Emma Larkin is the pseudonym of an American journalist, born in Asia, who has spent long stretches of time living in Burma, a rarity for Western writers these days. Her book has added luster now because Burma is has undergone profound changes since the 2010 elections, in which the junta handed over power to a parliament and began a rapid move to establish a democracy, a normal civil society and open up its closed culture to foreign investment and businesses.
Larkin’s book is now a time capsule on what Burma was like under a bloody totalitarian military regime, which massacred many students and other in demonstrations over a two decade period. She wisely steered clear of the tourist trail, preferring quiet visits with ordinary Burmese in the former capital of Rangoon or in towns and villages in the north and south. The result is unsurprisingly a book that feels Orwellian, a sad testament to the fact that Burma hasn’t progressed much in nearly 90 years, when Orwell was serving unhappily as a policeman for the British crown, in the waning days of its Asian empire. The Burmese eventually threw the British out, but what they got in return has been a dismal chronicle of brutal, incompetent, repressive military dictatorships which have driven the country into the ground.
Reading about life in Burma in the hands of Larkin is a pleasure on many levels. She writes a gentle prose which, largely free of polemical arguments, lets the Burmese people speak for themselves. For those who are unaware of Burma’s recent history, the book is a primer on the woeful battering suffered by its citizens at the hands of cold, ruthless military regimes that first took power in the 1950s, and is known most recently for the 1988 massacre of an estimated 3,000 people–– students, monks, citizens and children––who took to the streets to protest nearly three decades of military rule and neglect. Burma, during the time of Larkin’s book, was the same Burma of long ago. It had undergone little change. The infrastructure is still in shambles, electricity was non-existent or rationed, the press was censored, individual initiative was discouraged, political speech was repressed and pro-democracy activists were routinely rounded up and sentenced to prison on draconian charges grounded on state control. Commodities were scarce, but mostly just non-existent. Jobs were scarcer. Reliable information couldn’t be found. An ever-present fear of informers hovered over all conversations, especially with foreigners, and the fear was captured in the expression pasien yo, literally “the handle of the ax”––signifying the tool used to chop down a tree is made from the wood of the tree itself. The people are kept in line through fear of their fellow citizens.
On another level, the book is a detective story, as Larkin searches out the places where Orwell, as a young man, lived and worked. She visits all the towns where he was posted as an officer in the Imperial police force, starting in 1922: Mandalay in the country’s center; Myaungmya and Twante, in the Delta swamplands; the capital of Rangoon (now called Yangon by the junta); Moulmein, on the eastern peninsular; and Katha, in the foothills of northern Burma, which became the fictional setting for Burmese Days.
In her travels, she finds that many of the dwellings and buildings where Orwell lived and worked are still in use or now lie abandoned to dust and weeds. In each town, the people who befriend Larkin are etched in vivid portraits.
Lastly, the book is a chilling picture of what life is like on the Animal Farm in post-Nineteen Eighty-Four. Inertia, gloom, paranoia and absurdity color the days. The country stagnates, a tangible entropy unwinds downward, progress is systematically retarded: ancient taxis, held together with wire and prayers, rattle around potholes, all print and broadcast media are policed, information from the outside world is sketchy, tourists must register passports at hotels and guesthouses and state their next destination (duly recorded by the desk clerk). The Burmese themselves must inform the local authorities if anyone––Burmese or foreigner––stays overnight in their home. In such an environment, the people are expert at reading and decipher rumors, for they are often the most reliable clues to important events the government tries to suppress. Leaders of opposition groups, all brave souls, are routinely spied on, intimidated or jailed, and on and on. In one town, Larkin was required to visit nine governmental agencies to inform them that she had arrived in the town. In spite of the obstacles, the Burmese people somehow struggled on, carving out pockets of happiness in simple pleasures.
Larkin’s sympathies for the Burmese people stand out, but she offers little hope for a better life anytime soon, and recent events confirm her pessimism. China, Russia and South Africa’s recent vetoes of the U.S. and British resolutions to place Burma’s human rights record on the U.N Security Council agenda confirms that brutal regimes have friends in the world. Asean, the organization of Southeast Asian nations, had a dismal record on Burma, defending its timid stance under its “softly, softly” rubric of Asian values and non-interference in a brother state’s internal affairs.
Meanwhile, millions of Burmese were displaced over five decades by a cold-blooded military machine, whose soldiers routinely rape women and burn villages and homes of ethnic citizens, causing them to flee to the safety of the jungle and border areas.
Burma under the bloody military regime was almost beyond belief, but then again, no. In colonial Burma, George Orwell first glimpsed the dark shadows where greed, lies and governmental repression can lead. Larkin takes us farther down that totalitarian road and deep into Burma’s darkness under the military regimes which turned Orwell’s prophetic nightmare into a frightening, daily reality.
time, space
Posted: June 16, 2010 Filed under: photography, time, space Leave a comment
June 14, 6 p.m., flower vendor on Rachawitte Road. eyes of hope and eyes of trust. (Iphone photograph)
Global Portraits 2
Posted: June 15, 2010 Filed under: fiction, people, writing Leave a commentNo. 2 in a series of short fiction sketches that say something about the cultural mix that’s going on in Asia. To see all the fiction pieces, go to “Categories” and click on the “fiction” link.
2
The guy has a chicken neck, soft rolls of fat under his chin, wispy white hair. He’s like a boy in front of the most beautiful girl in the village. His eyes never leave me. He says go out, go to room. I think: Go out with this old animal again? I tell myself––Pai, if pay enough, go. I test his money. A little bar-fly girl in a black and white school uniform walks by in her white sneakers, bouncing up and down, like this, to Proud Mary.
“I see that little girl likes you,” I say, using my best smile. “I help you. You want her? Only $60.”
He said the name of Jesus, the God. “No, honey. I like you. Don’t you want to go with me?” he says.
“I want to go,” I say, “but I have to ask for a lot of money. I have to pay rent. I have two children.”
“I seen the scar,” he says.
My head was a broken plate from tequila the night before. All the dancers went to Mr. Spicy’s after work. Men went crazy buying us drinks. We had a lot of fun. Now I feel like somebody kick me in the head. He says again, “Don’t you like me, darlin’? I need another tequila.”
“Me, too,” I say. I start to feel better because that was my 74th drink this month. I made 65 drinks before the twelfth day. Now the mamasan knows I work hard to make money. $1 a drink for me. $3 for the bar. Then the old animal who is covered in tatoos says he needs another tequila to make his carrot grow. When I don’t understand, I smile and laugh. “Me too,” I said. One more dollar. He smiles and nods. Momasan walks around the dance floor, “Tomorrow, everything 50 percent off,” she says. “Not me,” says Blue.
The old animal says it’s time to put up or shut up. I know shut up means to keep quiet. Finally, he says, “Well? Let’s go, honey…”
I say, “You give me $100, Ok? We go now.” That’s how I got $30 to send to my mom yesterday. My mom’s in jail in Burma. Two more years. I want her with me. I need her close. I’m a baby too, really. I want to cry all the time.
Tomorrow night Blue and I go to the temple for Macha Bucha––about the Buddha talks to people. I will pray to take care of my mom and to live to be old with my children.
The next night all the temples in the town filled with people. The moon rose big and red like millions of nights before on this night in May. Pai and her two children prayed for her mother, and she prayed to be a good mother and to have a good heart.
favorite novels list
Posted: June 14, 2010 Filed under: books, fiction, writing Leave a commentHere’s a favorite novels list from a close friend. I post it because I have read only three of the novels, and it opens up new possibilities for me.
Camus, The Stranger
McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
DeLillo, Libra
Dickens, Dombey and Son
Johnson, Tree of Smoke
Banks, Affliction
––By Jim Giles, who taught English at what’s now The University of North Texas when I was student there.
chiang mai sketch
Posted: June 13, 2010 Filed under: people, places, writing | Tags: chiang mai sketches Leave a commentThis is an excerpt from my unpublished travel book. I’ll be posting some sketches that capture a little of the cultural mix tha t’s going on in Asia. To see more, go to “On the Record” and click on the sketches links.
1.
“That summer I went back to Vietnam, that was a strange one. Speed and cocaine was everywhere, my kids were goin’ crazy and somebody with BB guns shot the eyes out of two cows in my pasture. I finally found my youngest son in a county-line motel room filled with dirty clothes and eight other run-away kids. He was 17 then, going out with girls 23 years old. I mean beautiful girls, the prettiest in the county. My oldest son was let out of jail early ’cause he was a ‘model prisoner.’ Hell, how proud was that supposed to make me?
“Then I started getting calls on the answering machine, ‘We’re going to kill your family.’ ‘Your time’s up, hombre, say adios.’ My wife, who’d just turned Pentecostal, had done said goodbye to me. Really she didn’t say anything––she was just gone. Even took the curtains and the lawn chairs. The youngest boy, the gigolo, he finally took a high school test and placed in the Top 5 percent in the country––the Top 5. He’s smart, but stubborn. Now he’s the youngest electrician in Junction, Colorado. Joined the Pentecostals. Goes regular. Got some credit cards. Sends me a little money sometimes, but he never writes.
“I got arthritis, a big belly. It’s hard to walk. My mother’s lingering. Yesterday, my sister says, ‘I want those blue Limoge bowls.’ I said, ‘Hell, your mother’s not dead. What are you talking about?’ Then I got to thinking, and told her, ‘Ok, tell mother to get some of those stickers. Put names on the bottom of things. Then there won’t be no fighting when she goes.’ Truth was, I wanted Dad’s trunk with the old uniforms in it. He worked for the Texaco gas station when people at those stations wore real uniforms, hats, special belts, and all.
“My mother, she made me proud yesterday. She said, ‘You got good boys now.’ My oldest boy, he’s in China now. Married a Chinese gal, real cute, in San Diego after the Navy. Her father is something in their government. The boy don’t work. Says they’re tearing down all the old things in Beijing. He says they got a lot of that to knock down.
“It’s the same everywhere, I guess. Except we got a black man president now. It’s about time, I say. After I came back from Vietnam and the Airborne, I seen the world clear. I seen it for real. It’s what it is. A blessing in the center of sorrow. I dispatched the two cows, dressed them out, filled the freezer, had meat for a year, and I said to myself, it’s time to go to Vietnam. I nearly died over there two times. Once with the Airborne on Nui Cuong Mountain. Then again last year on that same mountain. “I told myself I was going to climb to the top of that mountain again, to see it all again, and I did, but it didn’t mean anything. I didn’t recognize anything. It looked like no one had ever been there. Getting back down, it nearly killed me. It turned dark, and I was on the ground – couldn’t walk. Thought I was dying. My guide, who was a good kid – I seen that when he first started to cut trail going up the mountain – he said, ‘Look at the stars, mister. They’re beautiful.’ I thought, ‘Son, I’m dying here right now.’
“Then I see the damn stars – they were beautiful. It felt like they had come down and were touching me. I said, get your ass up, you’re not dying here. The boy, he about carried me down the mountain. I think he understood what it was all about.” copyright@roy hamric
sight seeing
Posted: June 11, 2010 Filed under: people, photography, sight seeing Leave a comment
I like the distortion and colors in this self-portrait reflection on an aluminum water container on the roof of a building. (Iphone photograph)
Khao San Road
Posted: June 11, 2010 Filed under: books, places, writing 2 CommentsAn earlier version of this article originally appeared in The National Post in Canada.
By Roy Hamric
The most famous road on the Asian backpacker’s tour is only a few blocks long, and it’s in the center of Bangkok. It’s called, Khao San Road, and it’s been a required backpackers stop for nearly thirty years. The road’s image was jolted into destination status by the movie “The Beach,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Denny Boyle of “Trainspotting” fame. Based on a 1996 first novel by Alex Garland, it’s a quirky, improbable story of a 20-something, idealistic American named Richard, who checks into a guesthouse on Khao San Road, where he meets an older, mentally rattled character called “Daffy Duck,” who babbles on mysteriously about a secret island. The next morning, there’s a map to the island pinned on Richard’s door. He goes to the stranger’s room only to find him dead––his wrist slit. Too make a long, and not too interesting story, short, Richard is lured to the mysterious island—where he’s caught up in an idyllic milieu of an exotic international crowd of dreamers, misfits, run-aways and crazies. Over zealous critics compared the book to the works of Golding and Joseph Conrad, with touches (to set the record straight) of Looney Tunes, “Apocalypse Now” and Nintendo psychology thrown in for the ride.
a Penguin paperback cover
As the book begins, Richard steps out of a taxi on Khao San Road. Garland wrote: “When you hit Bangkok, the Khao San Road is the first place you come. It’s a decompression chamber between East and West.”
When I stepped out of a taxi on Khao San Road on a sweltering mid-afternoon, there was a sense of arrival––books and movies do that to you––and a sense of departure as well, to be fully accurate, for everyone, the foreigners at least, was in arriving or departing mode, just passing through. If this place were on the old Silk Road, it would be at an oasis, a spot where everyone on the road that day stopped at night to exchange the word of the day. It felt like that type of place, a place that existed for its convenience, to share warnings, to offer advice, to meet friendly traveling companions.
For me, Khao San Road stands for a single, throw-away line in Garland’s novel, when Richard, trying to explain what he’s looking for, says only two words, “something different.” For more and more people something different is exactly what they’re looking for, but they don’t know where or what it is. Only a few months earlier, I had pulled up my roots to build a new life in Thailand. I had read about Khao San Road. I was curious, but I expected it to be just more media hype.
The first day, it was sensory overload. A few feet away from the taxi, the sounds of Hank Williams’ “Hey, good lookin’, what’ cha got cookin” blared from a boom box. Across the street a boom box was blasting Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.” Music as the home you left behind… The shops along the road wedged old and new Bangkok side by side: trinket shops housed in one-story, weathered teak buildings with coruscated aluminum roofs jammed next to modern, air-conditioned Internet cafes, ATM machines, silver and gold exchanges, 7-Eleven stores, travel agencies, walk-up or walk-down back alley guest houses, tailor shops, pirated cassettes and CDs spread out on tables, street-bistro cafes, and a swirl of dozens of languages gave it all a world bazaar atmosphere, not to mention the smells wafting from restaurants with dishes from Thailand, America, China, Israel, Italy, India and Nepal.
Fresh-faced, Midwestern American farm girls were having their hair done in African braids by Thai women to the beat of pop songs coming from 5-foot TV screens. Fresh tattoos were being etched into the arms, ankles and shoulders of first-time teenage travelers. The in-tattoo for young women was a black, “linked chain” design around an ankle, and for young men, a large Thai warrior “spirit” figure, with bulging eyes, a grimacing expression and a ready sword in hand.
At nightfall, the frenetic pace eases, and the police close off the street. Shop owners move tables outside to catch a whiff of cool breeze. In the twilight, neon lights wrap a soft glow around the faces of people who you watched arrive during the day, and they’re now studying the new people struggling to pull their backpacks out of taxis, in search of a cheap room and some nightlife. The Thais have a word for what’s going on here, “saduak,” convenient, easy––make it easy, take it easy. Come to Bangkok, come to Khao San Road, it’s easy, it’s convenient, and it’s where you can learn the latest news.
My room for the night was 10X10-feet, just about large enough for a good size bed, but clean and quiet, and early the next morning I was back on the road––who were all these people streaming in and out, and what’s going on in their heads? I dropped into Buddies Beer Garden, which is really a restaurant & swimming pool, a blend of Southern California and Dali Lama decor, one of the hotter hangouts complete with lithe, young Thai women splashing in the swimming pool in back. I spotted a group of people sitting at a nearby table, backpacks leaning against their chairs. Were they Americans? You couldn’t be sure. Everybody dresses alike here––cheap Thai, Indonesian or Nepal baggy pants and T-shirts with catchy phrases (I’m a Yao), and lots of silver, stones and beads around ankles, wrists, and necks, plus various ornaments in ears, noses, lips and navels. With practice, you can gauge how long a traveler has been on the road in Asia by their tan: a two-week soft tan, a two-month soft brown, a six-month dark brown and a six-month-plus weathered leather look.
“Did you say you’ve been to Cambodia?” I asked a very attractive girl who had a dark brown tan. “We just came from Cambodia,” she said in an American accent. Her name was Hillary Glenn, and this was her fourth time passing through Khao San Road. She was surprised she’d seen so few Americans here. “We normally try to meet up with British or Dutch travelers,” she said. This reminded me of a Dutch man on holiday I had met earlier in Vientiane. “The Dutch are the Chinese of Europe,” he said. “You will find us everywhere.”
Hillary was traveling with two Americans that she’d just met in Cambodia and they planned to leave the next day for Koi (island) Phi Phi near Krabi, where a lot of the filming was done for “The Beach.” It was a little known island on the western side of Thailand’s lower peninsula, but it has turned into an eco- controversy ever since the movie production crew uprooted trees and replanted various areas with more film-worthy foliage. The publicity was a magnet that has drawn backpackers to the semi-isolated islands that dot Thailand’s gulf. After that, Hillary said the place to be was Koi Pha Ngan, an island famous for its monthly “Full Moon Party” (disco in the sand). Some people believe Garland’s novel was modeled on the Koi Pha-Ngan scene, with its Dionysian nights of dancing ravers, moonlight swimming and howling at the moon. At another table were three Swedish college girls on a two-week holiday. Carola Bragen, 29, a social work major, said her group came to the road not knowing what to expect. Garland’s novel had recently made the Swedish best-seller list. “You see it in a lot of peoples’ backpacks now,” she said. “We just knew this was a backpackers’ place.”
The road’s cultural mish-mash has a legitimate buzz on arrival, but to some long-timers here, the road’s best days are already long gone, and the novel and movie was the coup de grace.
“Khao San Road has changed,” said a man named Steve, who said he now lives near the road. He comes for coffee and to check out the scene, but he spent the past six years moving between Cambodia and Thailand. A wizened, bone thin expat, he dressed in the cool-is-uncool style. He wore checkered Bermuda shorts, high top black tennis shoes, and a T-shirt that said, “I’m Pol Pot.” He lived in a nearby $60-a-month room where he made miniature metal sculptures that sold in some of the local shops. Sipping a cup of adrenalin-charged Thai coffee, he scanned the street. “Before, this place was a lot quieter with mainly a few backers, trekkers passing through, and junkies,” he said. “The place had a seedy, low-end appeal. Very, very cheap. People came, stayed a few days and left. It’s a completely different crowd now. Lots of partying, people on the make. You see a lot of beautiful foreign women. It’s right at the point of turning yuppie. The more neon, the more yuppies. You don’t see that many Americans. It’s mainly Germans, British, Japanese, the Scandinavian countries.
“The newest bar up the street is straight out of America. In some ways, Khao San Road is one of the worst places in Thailand now. There are so many stupid, rude foreigners concentrated here. In the places I go to regularly, I see how the Thai staff really feels about most foreigners who come here. The good side is that the guest houses are still cheap. Rooms for $5 or $10. The money is good for the Thais, of course, and the money is spreading. The next ‘in’ place is Phra Athit Road, where Khao San Road curves and changes its name.”
Anyone doubting that Khao San Road has changed need look no further than the 50-some e-mail shops that have mushroomed in the past few years. Internet N/B, one of the larger shops, was filled with people doing the Internet, or eating or heading upstairs for a quick three-dollar massage (Thai or Swedish).
The owner, Napporn Bhuttan, said business was always good and was clearing several thousand dollars a month, and the road is the most computer-concentrated area of Bangkok. “The market has been slowing for the past year, but now it’s getting better again,” he said. Down the street at Gulliver’s Traveler’s Tavern, a Thai lady, Thanyatorn Srisit, who had the very casual glowing look of someone who knows she’s beautiful, was holding court with two young, tattoo-covered Americans. In a well-tailored dark blue blouse and a black ankle-length skirt with a slit discreetly rising up to mid-thigh, she fingered the cellular phone resting beside her glass of white wine. The owner of a antique fashion store on Rambutri Road, she said the road is what it is. It’s more for tourists than Thais, “but Thais are starting to come here now, to party with the foreigners and to practice their English.”
“Europeans come here to buy cheap clothes,” she said. “They ship them back and sell them to shops and make a good profit.” She said Khao San Road doesn’t have the wild night life one finds on the infamous Pat Pong Road. “Khao San isn’t for the ‘working woman,’” she said, using the polite term for ladies of the night. “There’s not too many working women here––a little bit.” She’s was right. I’d seen none of the hard-core hookers of Bangkok’s sex industry, but you did notice another type of attractive Thai woman on the road when party-time started around 10 p.m.: they were more casually dressed, and, maybe, just liberated Thai women who had day jobs, but who also liked to have fun with fralongs (foreigners).
The road’s reputation as a heavy drug scene was myth, Srisit said. “Drugs are not openly used or available,” she said. “But you see some people who have done drugs.” Earlier, on a restaurant bulletin board, I had seen a notice appealing for donations for foreigners in Bangkok prisons––mostly for drug offenses. There even a mini-tour offer for backpackers to visit prisoners with gifts of food or books, in exchange for a chance to hear hair-raising tales of misadventure.
One of the young Americans sharing Srisit’s table, his forearm covered with Thai spirit tattoos, was sorry his vacation was ending when he’d just discovered the road. “We can’t stay longer,” he said. “Yes, but you’ll be back,” said Thanyatorn.
As my time on the road was winding down, I guessed that most of the passers-through here, asked where they went in Asia, would mention Khao San Road. It had claimed their imaginations and was now a social calling card: “I spent three days on Khao San, were you there?”
Kipling’s overused line about “East is East and West is West” catches the “something different” search that’s going on with people around the world. But when he said “and never the twain shall meet,” he was wide of the mark, and he certainly knew better. It was a poem written for the popular magazines, for the armchair travelers back home. The East and West have been meeting, and blending, since history began. The fusion between East and West really has no beginning or end, but has been ever present and on- going. What’s happening on Khao San Road is a mini-version of the world to come, everyone bumping against everyone else, exactly like some bustling oasis city on the Silk Road 3,000 years ago, when a Greek, Chinese or Iranian traveler stopped over at a village bar and said, “East is East and West is West, here’s to us all…” or some such sentiment.
Garland’s young seeker had the right instinct. There is something different to be experienced by being at-large in the world, something not to be missed, and it’s taking place in cities everywhere. I could only bathe in the mysterious mix of signs and cultures that swirled around Khao San Road. It was a good place to visit.
When I left Khao San Road it quickly became a few memories of a few blocks on a longer road signifying something much larger. Probably Garland’s young man was really just trying to say he was searching for a place where he could see himself clearly without all the cultural baggage that we carry along in our lives. Everyone’s coming together on Khao San Road is just one more step in searching for that place.
time, space
Posted: June 10, 2010 Filed under: photography, places, time, space Leave a comment
June 10, 3:22 p.m., looking down from a rooftop in Chiang Mai (Iphone photograph)
the roy hamric journal 