4th of July – 5 Things I Love About America - 2007

I was born in the USA. Bruce Springsteen sings the line in his hit BORN IN THE USA about fifty times. The Thai go-go girls at Tahitian Queen 1 dance to that song every day. None of them join in the chorus, but the ex-pats on the bar stools chant every word of the refrain to their teary compatriots so far from the Land of the Free.

“Born in the USA.”

While there is a lot I like about the USA, this song is not one of them. I mean Bruce keeps going on and on like he has amnesia or an early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease or that people are so stupid that he had to sing 400 times so they got what he was saying.

Anyway here are the five things I love about the USA.

1.) Road trips.

Several years back a friend and I were discussing why he liked his Ferrari. He said it was for the freedom. At the time we were sat in bumper to bumper traffic on the Verrazano Bridge. The open roads were for fast cars and just cruising.

Route 100 in Vermont. Route 25 to 113 in Maine. Route 1 beyond Ellsworth Maine and south of Homestead FLA. The PCH anywhere isn’t a city. Las Vegas-Grand Canyon-Monument Valley-Arches-Capitol Reef-Bryce Canyon-Zion Canyon-Vegas. The Jones Beach Parkway. Anyplace in Montana. In fact I like these trips because they remind me of being free.

In Montana the speed limit used to be ‘WHATEVER IS REASONABLE AND PROPER’.

In 1995 I was zooming on Interstate 90 outside of Billings at 110mph. Passed a semi-trailer and spotted a lurking state trooper. Two choices. Put on the brakes or else keep up to speed. I chose the latter, because the former was an admission of guilt.

Montana recently changed that speed limit due to a class action suit by motorists with shitty cars who said the speed limit was prejudiced against them.

Freedom of expression challenged by those too slow to care.

It’s unAmerican, but then what isn’t these days?

Not #2

2.) Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

I was once asked for my philosophy of life.

The question stumped me.

Zen, Nihilism, Materialism?

Not a chance.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Especially the latter.

Fun fun fun.

3.) Baseball.

Baseball has been the great American pastime since before the Civil War. The game is played all around the world no matter what the teabags (Brits) think about it. Baseball isn’t half as boring as Cricket, although I appreciate the bravery of the infielders’ barehanding the hard-hit ball.

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Ouch.

Unfortunately baseball doesn’t get played as much as before. Americans are too fat to round the bases, parents are too scared of weirdos to let their kids out of the house, not that they aren’t a lot of weirdoes in the house too, and lastly people work too much to take off the three two hours when they could be watching TV.

Not baseball on TV.

Just TV.

I have a baseball glove here in Pattaya.

I throw the ball against the garage wall.

I’ve broken every window within 15 feet of the strike zone.

My arm is getting stronger.

In August I’m heading to the States and I’m challenging anyone to play.

Batter up and wear your helmet.

4.) Speaking freely.

The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech.

You can say whatever you want in America and this goes against the grain of Fox News who consider the 1st Amendment to mean that you are free to say whatever you want as long as it’s doesn’t mean anything. To do otherwise is treason.

Impeach the president.

“Weakens the troops’ resolve.”

Pull out of Iraq.

“Cut and run.”

Free Sex.

“What about the children?”

The Freedom of Speech deserves to be practiced even if the speaker is talking shit.

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So what?

In Germany you can be arrested for flipping the bird.

Not in America.

It’s the national highway salute to bad drivers.

5.) Amnesia.

Americans forget their mistakes faster than any other nation.

Most don’t even think we’re in Iraq anymore.

Of course a die-hard group will carry a grudge forever, but most Americans will move on. Life’s too short to worry about bad things.
Let’s have a BBQ.

So enjoy the fireworks and have a real beer.

Not Budweiser.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is abandoning the proud maker of panther piss next year.

Hopefully it’s be replaced by Stella Artois.

It ain’t American and neither is Heineken, but it don’t matter, because you’re American as long as you’re in America. You might be illegal. You might be foreign born. You might be a 10 generation Yankee like me.

But it’s star and stripes forever.

Even for anarchists like me.

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VDO Imbiss Cambodia 2007

Published Feb 11, 2024

During Songkran 2009 Nik Reiter and I overlanded across Cambodia from Pattaya to Sihanoukville. Someplace betwixt point A and point B we had to stop for a river ferry in the middle of nowhere. Upstream the Preak Piphot disappeared into the jungle. A small stall on the muddy bank sold frikadeller, a German delight. a strange offering on a road mostly traveled by locals. The shop was owned by an old Kraut from Berlin in his sixties. I ordered a few frikadeller and spoke with him in German. My accent pure South Shore Boston. South of the ferry landing workers were constructing a bridge and after bidding him 'chus', we crossed the river sad to think another nowhere would vanish for good, but damn those frikadellers were good.

Road Trip - To Sihanoukville 2007

2007 road trip with Nik Reiter from Pattaya to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. A ferry crossing over the Preat River powered by a dragon boat car engine. No one stays in the cars during the trip. Up river a jungle to the sea a bridge under construction spelling the wooden ferry's demise in the future. On the southern bank an old German sells frikadelle, fried German meat balls, from a wooden shack. He recounted a story about having flown out of Stalingrad. How he had been a Luftwaffe corpman on one of the last planes out of the beseiged city. The wounded were stacked inside the fuselage. One atop of the other. Triage with the more seriously wounded atop the potential survivors to keep them warm. Tears rolled from his eyes. Over fifty years later now on a tropical river far from the Russian winter. He was that old.

A Dutch tourist smelled so bad, the van passengers voted to leave him behind. Old Stinky.

I loved ferry crossings. Bridges aren't that interesting.

Christmas on Walking Street 2007

My four year-old daughter, Angie, had a long Christmas Eve in Pattaya.

Gifts in the morning.

Khao Khio Zoo at noon and then a swim at the Shaba Hut pool. 

By 7pm her eyes drifted together and her weary muscles refused to support her weight. I carried Angie into the bedroom and laid her on the mattress. She fell asleep within thirty seconds.

I cracked open a bottle of Chardonnay and poured two glasses. My wife took a sip. It was a little off, but I drank the wine while listening to Serge Gainsbourg's BALLADE OF MELODY NELSON. Not really Christmas music, yet still is the best twenty-seven minutes of music ever produced by France.

I wandered back into the main house and my wife was putting on make-up. This was not a good sign.

"Where do you think you're going?" I slurred in my Boston-accented Thai.

"We're going to Walking Street. My mother will take care of Angie."

"We?" My wife hated the nightlife and I avoided the popular destination for drunken farangs during high season like an Ebola-infested Congo village.

"Yes, we." Nu glanced at my clothes.

My twenty year-old shirt and torn jeans didn't make it on Walking Street, the Champs-Elysees of Pattaya.

"Go get changed and look handsome."

"That'll be easy."

After a bottle of wine and withiut my glaases my reflection in the mirror resembled a young Rock Hudson. I changed into a white Armani shirt and Versace jeans with Gucci loafers. None were a copy either.

My wife waited in the garden. Nu was in a new dress. I kissed her on the cheek. "You look beautiful. What about we go to the bedroom first?"

"No." Nu wasn't buying this trick to not go to Walking Street.

Nu's mother waved tonight. I had 2000 baht was in my wallet and I surrendered saying. We hadn't been to Walking Street in years. At least not together. "Okay, let's go."

We got on my motor scooter and I drove to Soi Diamond. My wife didn't want to go to any go-go bar. Neither did I. They were packed with sex-starved Western men and there was no telling what they wanted from man or woman. Instead we wandered through the throngs of sweating Russians, wide-eyed Indian men, and giggling Chinese tourists to the Hot Tuna bar.

Pi-Ek, the owner, sat on a stool. A bottle of whiskey was on the small table. He wai-ed my wife and we sat down for a few drinks. My wife didn't take long to ask about my mia noi.

"Only time I see your husband here, he is always alone." Pi-Ek was telling the truth and I wouldn't ask him to lie, because I wouldn't be caught dead on Walking Street with another woman, because my wife would kill me and I have full intentions of living out my natural span of life.

After a third drink my wife was enjoying herself. She laughed at our jokes and made fun of the passers-by, but by 11 we were ready to call it a night and headed back home. She kissed me before falling asleep and I laid on the bed ready for dreams of sugarplums.

Everyone wished us "Happy Christmas."

Thais love a good time.

Tonight everyone was all smiles and I drove back to our house on the motorcycle with my wife's arms around my waist.

There was no telling what Santa Claus would do in Pattaya on Christmas Eve although neither would I tell Mrs. Claus and neither would any of his reindeers, if they didn't want to end up as reindeer stew.

And I knew the same.

NEVER WANT TO GIVE YOU UP 2007

THE GODFATHER 3 was a horrible movie; Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola, and Al Pacino's wretched line, "No sooner than I think I'm out, then they pulling me back in.

Unfortunately those words held a personal resonance in early November of 2007, for like Michael Corleone's failure to leave the Mafia, I was unable to end my affair with Mint, a twenty-two year-old masseuse from Soi 6. Our affair lasted through a long tempestuous hot season on the Gulf of Siam. We were as good for each other as we were bad.

Ours should have been a one-afternoon stand.

I had a 'wife' who didn't love me, but I couldn't leave Nu, because of our daughter, Angie.

Mint had two children. She worked Soi 6 for them. The sex meant nothing, except with me, but I meant nothing, because she could only be my mia noi. We fought more than a married couple and she shouted that I was a fool to think my 'wife' was ever coming back from up-country.

"She have boyfriend. You give money. Why she need you?"

I hated hearing the truth and plotted a coup de grace to our ill-fated romance. She said that a rich Californian client was coming down from Bangkok to spend the Loy Krathong holiday with her. Her voice rang with conviction on the phone, as she said, "I have to take care of my babies. Not call me. I have new life. You have old life. I want nothing from you." She hung up the phone without hearing my saying, "Good luck."

Mint's future mattered to me and I put some money in her bank account. It was enough for a good time tonight.

That night I called my 'wife'. No one answered the phone. It came as no surprise. Bedtime came early in the rice villages north of Bangkok.

That night I drank with Fabo, the seismic oil explorer from Charleroi, at the Buffalo Bar, a short distance from my house on Moo 9 He downed Heinekens as fast as I drank vodka-tonics. The girls at the bar were eager to go upstairs for a short-time session.

Tomorrow was Loy Krathong, the annual festival venerating Siddhartha Guatama by floating a candle on a banana leaf raft to symbolically the sins of past twelve months. A more glamorous aspect of the Buddhist celebration required women and girls to attire themselves as an ancient king's favorite consort. These traditional outfits cost 1000s of baht to rent for the evening. Mint had a stunning outfit planned for the following evening. The rich American wanted only the best.

"Hey, Yankee Dog. You are a free man again. You can go with anyone." Fabo knew my taste ran to skinny and the young Belgian invited several young beauties to join us for drinks.

"Pick one. The bar fine is on me." Fabo earned big money on the exploration ships. There were no bars on the high seas. He blew his wad in Pattaya.

"Thanks the offer." My inner eyes were blind to temptation. I called Mint every half-hour. She had had blocked my phone and I resigned my destiny to just holding hands with more vodka-tonics. The bar girls hated my dedication to drink and ignored me. Fabo and I bought their love with shots of tequila.

I woke the next morning to Fabo in bed with the lovely Gai in my spare bedrrom. Both of them were more dead than alive. I wished I was more the former than the latter. I cooked the couple breakfast in bed. Gai was a good eater. Fabo wanted more beer. Within six days he would be off the frozen waters of Norway with a sullen crew of Poles.

"Yankee, we drink tonight."

"Yes, we drink tonight." My life was a tabla rasa or clean slate.

My 'wife' had deserted me six months ago. Our daughter was the one reason I left New York. Mint was at a high-class hotel with the LA millionaire. She was an expert at happierness. I was cursed to live a life alone and rode my motor scooter to the fishing village of Ban Samae San.

A hilltop temple dedicated to a mythical water goddess overlooked the unpopulated archipelago stretching south into the Gulf of Siam. I struck the bells outside the wat with a wooden mallet and beseeched Phra Mae Khongkha, the adopted Hindu water goddess, to forgive my mistreatment of her holy element. Part of the ritual requires striking the bells alongside the lofty wat. After the metallic peals cleared the air and I drove the motorcycle down to the Navy pier.

Several skin-divers were working on the quay's support pillars. They glanced at me without a second thought. They dealt with farangs from the US Navy during the yearly Cobra Gold war games. The sea was unsullied by tourism. Civilian use of the islands was banned by the military. I hadn't been in the ocean since my motorcycle accident in September.

That night I had been coming home from Mint's place in Jomtien. We had fought over my 'wife'. Traffic over the hill was light, but my mind wasn't on the road and I didn't see the motorcyclist veer into my lane to avoid a pothole. He clipped my handle bar at full speed.

My front wheel wobbled out of control and I was tossed from my bike.

I hit the asphalt hard, but got to my feet seemingly without any serious injury. Blood was flowing heavily down my arm. The deep wound zagging across my forearm looked like the aftermath of a shark attack. I could see bone. The emergency ward at Banglamung Hospital did a great job of stitching together the slab of flesh and muscles. Mint had disinfected the scar everyday. My 'wife' merely phoned to say that I should drive better. I could do nothing good in her eyes.

I had told my daughter that my people came from the sea. We were khon talay. The ocean made us strong. She loved the beach. Neither her mother nor Mint favored the sea. I didn't have to worry about them. I was free and stripped down to my swimming shorts at the end of the pier and climbed a low derrick. The surface was a good twelve-foot drop from where I stood. Colorful fish darted between the shell-encrusted support beams. I dove head first to prove my New Englander's love for the sea.

I re-surfaced with a renewed sense of exhilaration. The Navy skin-divers helped me up the ladder. None of them had ever seen anyone dive from the pier. I explained in rudimentary Thai that my girlfriend had left me for a rich man and I wanted to wash my body clean of her.

"Mai dii," the CPO explained wisely, because he felt the only way to end it with your mia noi was to have her find you with another woman. "Lucky she not cut off penis."

"And feed to duck." Thai newspapers chronically reran gory tales of wives severing a philandering husband's penis. They gave it to ducks, because pigs wouldn't eat penis.

The Navy Seals invited me aboard their Zodiac and we rode at high speed over to the nearest island. The water was as clear as 150-proof vodka and the sand was as powdery as flour. The divers were happy to meet a farang, who could speak Thai, if only badly, and I ended the day with them with a promise to return the following weekend for an excursion to a more distant island.

The ride back to Pattaya almost felt entering a new city, until I stopped for gas. My mobile was ringing. It was Mint. I didn't have the strength to turn off the phone and answered it with exasperation, "Yeah, what?"

"I not go with farang from California."

"Why not?" I was ready for a song and dance.

"Buah." Like most bargirls she can't bear to spend more than thirty minutes with a boring westerner. "He not same you."

"How so?" I was all ears, since it was obvious that Mint had to have seen the rich guy in order to be bored by him.

"You same me. You crazy. You hurt same me. Rich man only same farang. Want sex."

"And so do I." Most men my age were addicted to Viagra to overcome penile dysfunction. Sexual arousal was another of our strong suit. I needed none, since you only needed Viagra to have sex with women you didn't want. "What about Loy Krathong?"

"I have beautiful dress. I look like goddess. You want come see me."

And like that Barry White started singing NEVER WANNA GIVE YOU UP in my ears.

Twenty minutes later I was in Mint's arms, telling her words of love in several languages and meaning most of them. She was a goddess for Loy Krathong and I worshipped more than her feet, but both of us knew that we were postponing the inevitable no matter what Barry White growled on that hit record, because something as good as Mint and I has to be bad in the end and I could deal with bad, because bad is always better than worst.

Halloween in Pattaya 2007

In 2007 Pattaya celebrated the old Celtic festival of Samhain with a singularly Thai flavor. Bar girls dressed in skimpy dresses and go-go girls painted fake blood on their faces. Farangs drank more than normal nights. It's a pagan holiday and nothing says pagan better than bar-fining a go-go girls, beer, and a devilish hang-over the morning-after.

That Halloween I got no farther than the Buffalo Bar.

I wore my Ramones outfit.

Torn jeans, Keds sneakers, a Ramones t-shirt, and Ramones baseball cap.

None of the girls made any comment, since I had worn the same outfit to the bar on innumerable occasions.

I drank five Chang beers. 6.9 % alcohol.

I asked three lesbians to short-time with me.

They laughed at my lewd suggestions, knowing I was a faithful farang to my two wives.

The scary thing about Halloween 2007 was my two-minute motorcycle ride home.

Which on five Chang beers was a mighty scary trip.

1-1-2007 - PATTAYA

Having gone to sleep slightly after the stroke of 12am on New Year's Eve, I woke with the dawn the next morning. Champoo, my little dog, was dying for a walk and I tiptoed through the sprawled bodies of my wife's guests. They had had too much food and drink unlike me. I was nearly stone-sober.

My fingers were cold and so were my toes.

It wasn't a heart attack.

Only winter in Pattaya.

72 Farenheit.

I went back inside for a leather jacket and escorted Champoo through her AM routine of sniffing every urine stain on the soi. She is an epicurean of eau de chien pee-pee. The larger dogs on the soi kept their distance. The large stick in my hand was an old friend. Ten minutes later I returned to the hosue.

No one was awake.

I watched three episodes of Star Trek ENTERPRISE.

Champoo growled for food, as the Vulcans betrayed Star Fleet. We had bacon and eggs. My wife's sister came into the kitchen to cook rice, spare ribs and vegetables. She's a peasant rice farmer with two front teeth. One look at the farang concoction had her muttering something disrespectful about western cuisine. I've learned to deadened my hearing to Thais, otherwise my jai yen would be burning like an overloaded reactor 99% of the time.

New Year's Day.

Bright and sunny with a chill in the air.

My wife and daughter asleep in the bed.

Everyone in Pattaya nursing whiskey hang-overs.

And I'm feeling fine.

A friend of mine once said that your year will be determined by wahtever you do on the first day of the year.

Sober, full, and loving my daughter.

I will love my daughter for the rest of the year, but the sober will not last long.

Not in Pattaya or Bangkok or anywhere else in the world.

Happy 2008. enjoy it well, because supposedly the world ends Jan. 19, 2008.

Dives of Pattaya - Entry Date - Aug 3, 2007

Aug 3, 2007

Wikpedia defines a 'dive' as a rundown drinking establishment offering the cheap drinks of a high alcohol content to a questionable clientele frequenting the bar for the sole purpose of drinking and not petty drinking either.

New York City had been loaded with such dubious haunts on the Bowery ot the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. 50 cents a beer and $1 a shot and no red-faced stockbrokers lusting after big-haired secretariesb on a Friday night. Only busted-down drunks with a couple of front teeth like Pattaya during low season.

Wendy Mitchell who wrote NYC's BEST DIVE BARS considered a good jukebox, a seat at the bar, an affable bartender, and not-too-bright lighting as essentials for accreditation as a dive. Gotham Books' staff prided itself on having drank in most of them. My favorite was the beach bar in the Rockaways. Drunken Indians and transients at a end of a subway line. Everyone knew this was nowhere.

Pattaya is reputed to have 1400 bars

No one can claim to have drank at all of them, although some Englishmen have sacrificed their livers in the attempt.

For Queen and Country.

None really qualify as a dive, but a few come close.

I've never seen a juke box in my 20 years in Thailand. Not a pin ball machine either, although many have condom dispensers in the bathroom. The music tends to be HOTEL CALIFORNIA or pop music for the girls. Lights too bright with bar stool stressed by overweight drinkers and bartenders with moods rivaling the Wicked Witch of the West. Drinks might be cheap but the measures are more a whisper for hard-drinkers.

There are few exceptions.

The Welkom Inn on Soi 3 with its dim lighting comes close. You can usually get a seat and the old ladies behind the bar are good-tempered despite having to listen to the drivel of drunken farangs day after day after day.

Soi 6 bars are sleazy and dark, however no one goes to a short-time bar to drink. 90 baht for a thimble of vodka and tonic. The Bus Stop isn't bad because the music is almost punk. Viking Bar is awful, but Mint used to work there. maybe she will again once her boyfriend's money runs out.

The only actual dive is Maggie May's on Soi Chaiyapoon.

It only features drinking.

No girls.

Stale peanuts.

Sports on the TV.

The dregs of society on the bar stools.

"Drinks for me and my drink," Mickey Rourke called out in the movie BAR FLY about the poet Charles Bukowski's drinking life. People are shouting out the same in Maggie May's. The music sometimes sucks, but the beer is cold and during happy hours as cheap as it gets in Pattaya.

The other day I saw Dave from the old Dang Bar. We had fought on Soi 6 last winter. He had called me a spineless cunt too many times. Something about not liking that I didn't drink in his bar. 50 year-old men fighting on Soi 6. My mother should be crying in heaven over that sad spectacle.

At least I won, Ma.

I hadn't seen Dave since the fight and said, "Hello."

The bald Aussie nodded and drank his beer.

Maggie May's.

You wear it well.

#1 Dive of Pattaya

Still open in 2023

Maggie Mays, 383, 21 Soi Chalermphrakiat 25, Pattaya City, Bang Lamung District, Chon Buri 20150, Thailand

Yai Chang - Pattaya

Outside my house on Moo 9 in Pattaya I had a mango tree which bore fruit every year. The mahouts of the tourist traps wandered the night with their elephants, selling sugar cane to people to feed their friends. One older pachyderm Yai eyed my mango tree when the flowers burst from the limbs. I knew what time of year it was, but we had an understanding and that understanding gave us a friendship.

To hear the finish of this tale, please go to this url

https://youtu.be/Gmht6sgSqSE

Imbiss On Cambodian River

Back in 1971 I hitchhiked through the Northwest with Cliff Tyson Gorr. We were hippies. Loggers and cops didn't like longhairs and rides were hard to get, especially since Interstate 90 was under construction from the Idaho Stateline to Butte Montana.

The same was true for the road winding through the Cardamom Mountains between Koh Kong and Sihanoukville in 2007. Earthmovers cut a savage scar into the jungle. The government had big plans for this route.

Bangkok.

Koh Kong.

Sihanoukville.

Phnom Penh

Saigon.

No one was working on this grand project, because of the New Year holiday.

Our driver sped on the dirt road. He had family waiting for him on the coast. It was the Cambodian New Year too.

I had been on this road before.

Over seven years ago.

The first river at Trepeang Rung remained unspanned, requiring a stop for a ramshackle ferry.

The driver parked the van and said, "Twenty minutes."

The river was perhaps 200 meters across. The new bridge was about two years from completion. The forests swarmed over the mountains like the Earth had never heard of Man.

Nick had served in the Royal Navy and asked, "Fancy a beer?"

"Sure." It was well past noon.

The ferry crossing had several shacks. One had a sign nailed to a post offering 'meatballs'. A German sat on the porch. His pregnant wife brought us beers. A pot on the table held not meatballs, but 'frickadella' a German delïcacy. I had two.

"You really think that's wise." Nick was more particular about where he ate.

"The worst thing that can happen is that I get sick and lose five kilos from the shits." Actually I was hoping for that result, since I've gained a little too much weight over the past three months. I blame it on Scoby's Pizza.

"Wohin Kommst du?" I asked the German.

The sixty year-old looked like he could have been in the Panzer Korps. He had been on this river for three years. His house was five kilometers up a dirt road. No electricity. No TV. Only a radio for WeltRadio Deutschland. This was his Montana. We spoke about a pimp I knew in Hamburg.

We laughed about the Reeperbahn. Nick's father had brought his son to a Frankfurt brothel. He had been 15. The woman 20. Ït was sehr gut."

The driver beeped the horn.

It was time to go.

Another group of travelers took our place.

If you get there, have a meatball.

"Es ist sehr gut."