The Ghosts Of Neanderthals

I have wandered through the caves near our rice farm in Ban Nok, Thailand. I shut off my light to be immediately cast into utter darkness. Not even a Neanderthal could't see their hand in such complete blackness.

The creation legend from the Old Testament's Genesis claimed that on the first day of Creation Elohim boomed in a similar darkness, "Let there be light." and created the heaven and earth, although the sun was an afterthought for the fourth day.

To err is human. To err all the time and not care is the blessing only afforded the Divine. His divine alter ego Yahweh spent the next five days covering Earth with water, rising land from under the seas, dividing day and night without any uniformity, covered the planet with animals, and then on the sixth day formed man in his image.

The seventh day Yahweh fucked off for the eternal shabbath of rest kicking back with other Gods forgotten by Monotheists. Yahweh had been speaking to these nameless deities since before Light and decided that He needed new company, since the other Gods no longer laughed at his jokes.

Thus Adam who as a the only white man wasn't shamed by his small penis, although Yahweh wore a toga to hide his less than godly member, but as an atheist I reject all Creation myths as well as Evolution.

Scientists have searched for the 'missing link' for centuries without success, because there is no genetic bridge between homo sapiens and the apes.

Maybe some of us have Simian descendants, but when I go to Rockaway Beach I spot humans with lizard, ursine, and sloth DNA.

My Neanderthal blood has been adulterated by countless sexual unions with Cromagnons, Desnovians, and countless other human breeds and I know the truth.

And we are not scared of caves

Only the darkness.

Dtik Ang - Stuttering in Thai

My speech problems were many in my youth across the harbor from Portland, Maine.

A stutter coupled with a lisp and stammer forced the school authorities of Falmouth Foresides to test my mental competence. The teachers were surprised to discover through a battery of intelligence exams that I was the smartest child within the school system, especially since I sounded 'retarded' to them.

Thankfully I had hidden my dyslexia otherwise the school ppolice

would have imprisoned me at Mackworth Island and nothing good ever happened on Mackworth Island.

My fellow classmates passed through these stages , but I still spoke with difficulty. Bullies had recognized a weak member of society and my teachers wrote in my report cards, "Great student, but can not say S."

My uncle Russ thought my saying, "I lub youd." was cute, however my father saw a hard road ahead and we went to see specialists at the Maine Medical Center in Portland. My grandfather had been a doctor there and I was treated like a damaged godling. After intensive examinations the doctors reported to my father that my tongue was too big for my mouth instilling laziness into my speech patterns.

"Best, we slice your son's palate to force his tongue to work harder."

Slice it how?"

"With razor blades."

My father was an electrical engineer, not a doctor, but realized these experts know nothing and said, "I'd rather him have a lisp than be tortured by doctors."

I spent years in therapy.

I learned how to black out time.

I allowed my tongue to wait for syllables.

Consonants were more problematic, but I passed more or less, although smarter sorts heard my weakness in other language as I lived around the world.

I learned the word for stutter in foreign languages.

Bégayer.

Sssstottern in German.

Gagap in Bahasa Indonesian.

Phūd tidx̀āng in Thai.

Even in my 50s I stuttered. My Thai cousin in Ban Nok suggested an easy fool-safe remedy.

"Eat the hee of a pig."

"Pig vagina?" I played along, because there's nothing better that upcountry-Thai rice farmers like better than making a fool of a farang.

"Mai CCCCCHua."

It can't hurt," my wife said, but she hadn't loved me in years.

"OOOOOKKKKay."

I dug into my wallet and said, "B-B-B-uy a pig and beer."

Jan. 2, 2007 Going Home

It was still dark yesterday morning, when my wife terminated her holiday stay in Pattaya. She packed the car with my daughter, my adopted niece, her sister, my dog, and about three weeks of food which would be consumed during the five our journey to Ban Nok outside of Chai-nat.

Nu was no longer angry. The photo evidence of my having a mia noi was inconclusive. I didn't go out at night and let her spend New Year's Eve with her friends possibly an ex-husband, while I took care of our daughter.

Not that I am a saint.

Just that New Year's Eve is a night for fools and not sinners.

I was sad to see them go, especailly my daughter.

She is the light of my life however life in the country is better for a kid than the last Babylon and even I have to admit that seeing birds in the monring is better for a kid than watching drunken farangs wrestle dok thongs into the nearest hotel.

"I don't want her to see all this." My wife loves the country.

We have 20 rai growing weeds. Ten are destined for teakwood trees. It'll be a forest by the time I'm 70 and I'll earn enough money from the carbon trading programs to buy a bottle of whiskey once a month.

I wish I could go up country now and let my hair grow long like a Carabao hippie, but I have some work to do before I can retire to Ban Nok. Something like a 15 year sentence of hard labor at Pattaya Minimum Security Penal Colony.

It could be worse and probably will be if my mia noi has anything to do with it.

Fro a related article click of this URL

 http://www.mangozeen.com/buying-a-house-pattaya.htm

Bannok Loves Farangs

Middle-Age farang males vacation in Thailand for the beaches and the temples. A friend sometimes suggests a visit to the Last Babylon. In Pattaya the man meets a girl. Past and present are unimportant. She is something out of a dream and they spent an idyllic vacation on Koh Samet.

The disgust of fat western women rivals the envy barely hidden on these obese cows’ husbands. The two make love five times a day, mostly to make up for years of abstinence. Upon their return to Pattaya, she doesn’t seem to mind accompanying the farang to go-gos. Love so blinds the western male that he can’t see that she doesn’t trust him out of her sight.

This has to be paradise and two weeks into the honeymoon his beloved says, “I want see my family. You come with me?”

It seems like an innocent proposition and he agrees to this journey to Ban Nok.

Hearing your plans his bar friends exchange a knowingly glance.

“What’s wrong?” You really want to know.

“Nothing.” They smile like the farang had brought a blind donkey “Have a great time.”

“Thanks.”

He rents a car for several days and leaves Pattaya for this great adventure. Ban Mai-mee-tee-nai is not on the map. He asks his sweetheart for directions. She is about a minute from a semi-coma and points north. “Isaan.”

Isaan.

The mythic plateau of Northeast Thailand has figured into his friends jokes about the sick buffalo, blind aunt, feeding a host of hundreds and drinking lao whiskey with toothless rice farmers till dawn.

Leaving Pattaya the farang realizes that he don’t know what he has gotten himself into and his tilat isn’t explaining either, because she scrunched against the door in a state of exhaustion.

Oblivion comes easy are two weeks of making love to a Viagra-crazed farang.

The highway turns into a two lane road. At one point his darling opens an eye and indicates a dirt road. By the time the car hits the first pothole, she has lapsed into another coma.

The electric lines disappear and dry fields stretch to a hazy horizon. Buffalo laze in a torpor.

No cars. No people.

Crossing a bridge over a muddy creek and his girlfriend opens her eyes. “We here.”

“Ban Mai-mee-tee-nai?”

“My home.” She beeps the horn, as the car pull into a forested complex.

A horde of Thais surge from several wooden houses. He haven’t seen any place this ramshackle outside of a National Geographic magazine, but everyone is all smiles. He smiles back. Kids pull on his leg. An old geezer man greets him with a bow. The farang gracelessly effects a wai back as directed by his girlfriend. Everyone chortles at his clumsy gesture. Food appears out of nowhere. Everyone sits down and eats on the ground. The westerner thinks this isn’t too bad, until his legs cramp up and everyone laughs at his uncomfortability.

His girlfriend’s ‘brother’ gets him a chair dating back three centuries. The heat is stultifying.Sweat pours from his skin. He is offered beer with ice. The farang disdained drinking it before. Now it’s perfect. More food is eaten. Some of it he doesn’t recognize. He tastes a little. Your mouth is on fire. He drinks more beer. Soon it’s gone.

“Need more beer.” His girlfriend holds out her hand.

The farang reaches into your pocket. Hss girlfriend grabs 2000 baht and jumps on a dilapidated motorcycle. “Be back soon.”

The remaining crones clear the food and he is left to drink lao whiskey with the male family members. They insist on his drinking this villainous concoction, even though he passed triple the legal limit for DWI an hour ago. His girlfriend hasn’t shown up and the man peak his ears for the sound of the motorcycle, only to hear the buzz of the early evening’s mozzies.

Several hours later the man wakes on the floor of a house with three men downing a plastic bag of lao whiskey. His GPS is off line. His wallet is still in his pants. Thais are very honest. Female voices babble under the floor. Nothing they say makes any sense. The man climbs over the pile of drinking men and descends a vertiginous set of stairs to the ground.

Over head stars blaze in their billions. A fire burns in the yard. Some of it is plastic. His girlfriend sits with a gaggle of women. She smiles at him. He smiles back, wishing a doctor could shoot him with an injection to get rid of his growing hangover.

Footsteps sound behind him. The men carry down the plastic bags of lao whiskey. The farang protests against being offered a glass. His girlfriend frowns. The lao goes right to his stomach and he rushes into the bushes to heave like a Girl Scout drunk from sherry. Everyone laughs and that’s the last sound he remembers before waking to roosters crowing in the dawn.

His girlfriend is asleep and so is everyone else.

He tries to go back to sleep, but his feet have been gnawed raw by mozzies hungry for a new taste of blood. Soon dogs are barking and the sky is getting light. A loudspeaker crackles to life. For the next hour a man rants in Thai. No one stirs from their slumber and the westerner wishes that he could click his heels like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ to transport himself back in his hotel.

Air-con. Cable TV. Swimming pool. Mobile phone service. Western food. Chairs. Beds. Beaches. bikinis. Go-go bars.

Of course his girlfriend doesn’t respond to any hint about a return to Pattaya other than to say that tonight is a big party, which ends up a repeat of the first night only with more family members. Everyone is having a good time, since no one has put a hand into their pocket since his arrival and the farang mentally calculates that he could have flown to Bali for the price of the last two days ie bar fine, car rental, and expenses.

And his girlfriend hasn’t as much as kissed you, as she has reverted to a village girl.

Food, friends, family, everyone having a good time. And she knows how to play a man, farang or Thai, because at the night’s end, she comes up to him and says, “Everyone like you. Me, I love you, because you not make face.”

“Make face?”

“Yes, make face same dog, because you spend too much money.” She sneaks a kiss and everyone laughs. The farang too and he decides to stick it another day.

On the fourth day the farang wakes up and packs the car. Everyone waves good-bye, except for the three family members joining him for the voyage south.

Back in Pattaya the farang drops off the relatives. They get out of the car without a word of thanks. He delivers the car three hours late for a half-day penalty. At the hotel the westerner is glad to be back in civilization, although his girlfriend cries, “I miss my family.”

They make love for the first time in four days and she cries throughout the labor. The farang feels like he's having sex with a war widow and almost stops, except those years of abstinence have created a monster and he completes his mission, after which the farang leave the girlfriend in the hotel room watching TV to meet his friends. She is on the phone to a family member. She barely notices his departure.

Later night the gang at his favorite bar ask, “How was it?”

“It was great.”

And they nodded in unison because they’ve said the same thing too.

And it's all true, because they've never experienced anything in years.

Bannok loves farangs.

The Choice Of Life

Beijing and rampant consumption under the myth of sustainable growth.

Or Ban Nok Thailand.

The rice fields slowly recovering fromthe poisoning of pesticides and debts to the banks.

I vote for the Village of the Birds.

The Western Forests are home.

Going Up Country - Thai Style

Back in the 60s Canned Heat had a small hit GOING UP COUNTRY.

"Going up country, baby, do you want to come along?"

After Altamont longhairs abandoned the rip-offs, bummers, and downers of the big cities to establish Aquarian communes in the hinterland offering free love, organic food, and reefer to establish a democracy on the foundations of the new age agrarian revolution, unfortunately few of these utopias lasted past the past the winter of the Moral Majority after the Summer of Love.

Why was well-portrayed in T. C. Boyle's novel DROP CITY about the collapse of a Northern Californian commune and the surviving members' exodus to Alaska, but that didn't keep hippies from coming together for another try.

Like Alan Lage in Encinitas. 1974.

The Iowan had survived cancer as a teen and was living with an LSD professor on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I dropped acid with him and his blonde girlfriend on Black's Beach. Leslie looked like Pattie Hearst, the kidnapped heiress turned bank robber. The cops raided us as SLA revolutionaries. The acid was on paper. They touched it. Within twenty minutes the officers were getting a rush. We left town that night not wanting to witness the cops' wrath in the morning. I said good-bye to Alan and his girl on the PCH.

"We're going to Marin live off the country."

I almost joined them, but knew the cops up north would be after Pattie Hurst too.

A year later he showed up in Woodstock New York. Leslie had been replaced by Nona, half-New Jersey/half-Filipino. Skinny as Olive Oyl and smelling of cinnamon. They had a commune of two in a chicken farm. Grass, organic food, and John Lennon. Nona danced to Alan's guitar. Her sinuous body weaved a trance invading my dreams. She was Alan's chick and while I might covet my friend's chick I wasn't going to steal her, because I only break one commandment at a time and this night I went home with a fat girl I met at the Joyous Lake Bar. Babs had big breasts. We had sex in her bathtub next to a babbling creek. Later in her bed we committed sodomy. I should have stayed, but had the ambition to become a writer in ?New York.

And I thought writers need to live in the city.

Not the country.

Almost 35 years in Boston, New York, LA, Paris, Hamburg, Bangkok, Pattaya.

My first Thai wife doesn't like Pattaya.

She preferred living in Ban Nam Phu west of Chai-nat.

2 hours by bus to Morchit. Another 3 hours to Chai-nat, then a 50 kilometer car ride.

Over our years together she has bought 20 rai of land and ten cows. The land was being prepared for a teakwood forest, so we can sell carbon rights to polluting factories and harvest the timber in 15 years. I went up once a month to visit my wife and daughter.

Crossing the river at Wat Sing we entered a land without farangs.

Rice paddies, egrets, buffalos, butterflies, pigs, trees, mountains, dirt roads, and early evenings drinking beer with rice farmers under a billion stars in the sky.

"Going up-country, baby, do you want to come along?"

Sometimes I think it'd be nice.

Smoke a little weed, drink a lot of beer, but what would I do for work?

Grow rice?

Only to brew lao-khao whiskey.

Teach English.

The headmaster of my daughter's school would like that.

10,000 baht/month.

Nature. Quiet. Wife. Daughter. Farm. Beer. Reefer.

But then I ask myself what would happen if civilization collapsed under the weight of global warming. No electricity. No cars. No airplanes. No way to get back to the West.

The sea would flood Pattaya and Bangkok. People would flee inland. I would head up to my wife's farm. It was on higher ground. 110 feet above sea level. My daughter would be happy to see me. My wife would view me as another mouth to feed.

"What can he do?"

Back in 1996 I was in Tibet with my friend Tim Challon. The road to Nepal had been smothered by a mudslide. We were sort of stranded in Lhasa. He asked, "If the world fell apart, what would be do to live here?"

The choices were simple in Tibet.

Become a monk or a clown.

A clown like Sean Connery and Michael Caine in A MAN WHO WOULD BE KING.

Tim liked the idea and this weekend I had everyone laughing at a family dinner telling them about getting a penis transplant from a horse and charging everyone 10 baht to see the farang with the ham ma yoow or long horse cock.

20 baht to touch it.

A hippie freak show clown.

That would be my calling after the Armageddon.

"Going up-country, baby, you want to come along?"

Ears Made For Insects

Earwigs exist in almost every part of the world and the myth of their laying eggs in a human ear has survived all explanations to the contrary, although my most recent ear infection had my Thai neighbors telling stories about up-country relatives going to the hospital to discover a nest of insects gnawing at their brains. No one could name anyone to which this phenomena had happened, but swore it was a common occurrence in the Isaan Plateau. I googled 'insect lay eggs brain thailand' and found a report about the famed Nile explorer John Speke having a beetle burrow into his ear. He attempted to drown the insect in hot butter, then tried to extract the dead carcass with a penknife. The infection from this self-inflicted surgery almost killed the adventurer. So insects can enter the ear, but few are capable of gnawing a passage from one ear to the other. Every house in Thailand is infested with thousands, if not millions of insects. Fenway's mom is constantly on the prowl for any creatures that my wander into our son's ear. She takes her mission seriously as well as she should for I found the following medical advice for insect in the ear. 1.) Evaluate the child's complaint. Suspect an insect if he or she describes a crunching or popping sound (possibly with a ticklish feeling) in the ear canal. 2.) Remain calm and do not panic. Children take cues from adults. Removing the insect will be much less traumatic if you both stay calm. 3.) Hold the child's head over a sink or bathtub with the problem ear facing upward. 4.) Fill the ear canal with baby, mineral, olive or vegetable oil. Tug lightly downward on the earlobe to remove air bubbles. Wait two minutes. This will drown the insect, making it easier to remove. 5.) Pour a cup of warm, clean water into the ear slowly, allowing it to overflow. 6.) Watch carefully for the insect to exit the ear canal. If it is not intact, repeat until you remove all fragments. 7.) Still having difficulty? You may have missed seeing the insect come out. Stop what you are doing and allow some time for the ear canal to dry. If the symptoms persist, it is time to call the doctor. Otherwise my only suggestion is that of my Irish grandmother, who said, "Never put anything bigger than your elbow into your ear." Her wisdom doesn't make much sense until you try to put your elbow in your ear. Impossible. I know, because I tried at an early age, when my bones and jointers were limber.

The Thai Anti-MIdas Touch

One of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen in Pattaya was Ann. Her beauty lasted longer than most, as she bathed in the fountain of youth created by her countless sponsors’ generous donation of cash and clothing. The veteran mistress managed these farangs with the skill of a circus juggler yet she was always broke, for beauty has its costs.

Several years ago one night at the Marine Disco a French marine asked Ann to go home. Her refusal evoked an expletive in his native language. Ann had had many frog beaus in her career and told the dejected garlic-eater, “Fuck ta mère.”

The Frenchman reacted to this insult to his mother by throwing a glass of beer in Ann’s face. The impact shattered the glass and a shard tore an inch scar behind her jaw. Blood splattered on the dance floor. Ann was taken to the hospital. Angry Thais wanted to kill the farang. The police arrested him. The chief inspector said that he was looking at 6 months in jail, but after coming out of the hospital Ann settled for 500,000 baht plus medical cost to drop charges. After the French marine paid the money, he was freed from the monkey house with a warning to be nicer to young girls.

Ann's scar was no threat to her beauty. Friends congratulated her good luck. The police took their cut on the action leaving Ann with about 400,000 baht.

The average annual income in Ann's Isaan village is about 60,000 baht. If she retired to Bannok, that money could last years, but Ann was too young to quit the game, so she sent home 50,000 and spent his punitive reward in less than a week.

10 baht of gold = 100K.

New motorcycle = 50K.

Partying for a week = 50K.

New clothes = 50K.

Lending money to friends = 50K.

Money goes quick when you’re having fun, but even Ann was surprised how fast 400K evaporated with the pedal pushed to the metal.

Jamie Parker, a man of little wisdom, heard this story of riches to rags and said, “The Midas Touch works in reverse for a Thai bargirl. Any gold they touch turns into lead, but it doesn’t matter because they think, “There’s plenty more where that went.”

Jamie was right, because a week later Ann was seeing the French marine.

They were in love.

Kwahm Lak 100%., because a girl has to live.

The roots of this need to spend is highlighted in an article from this 1928 article featured in 2bangkok.com

Bangkok, Siam… It has always been a moot question in all minds as to why people of Siam are never over-burdened with riches. Now the answer comes in the form of a series of pictures which demonstrates in graphic way how surplus riches of the people are disposed of. When a man of Siam thinks he’s too wealthy to go to heaven he promptly goes out and purchases as much food, clothing, fruit, etc. as will relieve him of his surplus money. He then mounts a high platform built for the express purpose and throws his gifts down to members of the poorer class below. Since all have a right to the food and clothing offered a merry battle goes on for possession of the offerings. Hooks are even made which might tend to give the seeker a better chance to make a good haul. However, before the foodstuffs and clothing are given away, prayers and praises to the king of the devil or “Phya Yomaraj” are sung. The prayers insure the donors of recognition when they dies and are led before the king of the devil for entrance to heaven. After the prayers are said and the food distributed, the huge image is burnt, and residents of Siam must wait until they pile up more coin of the realm before they can stage another similar celebration. This article was published by a Thai newspaper in October 23, 1928.

Easy come, easy go.

Something things stay the same and the same is sometimes good.