Wintertime In Pattaya

I've spent the best part of the 21st Century in Thailand, especially from 2000-2008. For the most part the weather was hot, hotter, or hot and rainy during the monsoon season. There was also a brief winter and in 2007 an intense high pressure system stalled over Thailand inflicting seasonally cooler weather on the entire country. The temperature in Pattaya dropped to 22 (73 Farenheit) during the day and Chiang Mai registered a low of 12. My ex-wife called from Chai-nat saying it was freezing in the Western Forest.

I pulled on a sweater, but UK tourists walked along the Beach Road with bare-chests. I called my friend Nick to ask his opinion.

“I didn’t turn on my AC, but it isn’t cold. You’ve been out here too long if you think this is cold.”

"Maybe you're right."

Living in the tropics tended to thin out your blood.

I rode my scooter with my faithful dog Champoo to Jomtien.

Russian vacationers were swimming in the wind-chopped sea, while tour boats were loaded Chinese holiday-makers for a trip to Koh Lann, the nearest island to Pattaya.

Two old ladies from the Ukraine slathered their wrinkled flesh with skin-frying oils. As they lay on the sun palette, I realized that Darwin was completely wrong. Mankind did not descend from apes.

Well, maybe some of us, but the rest of humanity genetic make-up evolved from either ET tampering or orgiastic miscegenation between the species of the animal kingdom.

Dogs and snakes (Jim Carey).

Horses and giraffes (John Holmes).

You get the picture.

In the case of the stocky Ukrainian matrons their first ancestor was a walrus and the skinny old dudes in the g-strings on the sea wall reminded me on monitor lizards basking on a rock.

Evolution from more than one source, because Adam wasn’t celibate before Eve.