Bikes and Buses / No Cars

Thai Girls actually Love Farangs

From this url http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/7/5/focus/21744660&sec=focus

The cliche that love eludes farang women in Bangkok is a malicious propaganda by jilted European men who visit the city to have sex with bar girls, according to a writer looking to set the record straight.

HERE’S a book to read to avoid the cliches of Bangkok. It is titled Bangkok Blondes and it is a collection of short stories and poems about Bangkok by 14 women writers (13 Westerners and one Thai) who are from the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group (BWWG).

“It is a good book to read before you come to Bangkok as it gives you an idea of real everyday life in Bangkok. And it pays attention to the small things in life,” gushes Anette Pollner, who is the coordinator of BWWG, which was founded in 2000.

Bangkok Blondes, notes Pollner, is different from 90% of the English-language non-fiction books published in Thailand because it is not testosterone-laden with Bangkok stereotypes such as a farang (Thai for westerner) falling in love with bar girls or a farang ending up in prison.

These books (My Name Lon, You Like Me? Even Thai Girls Cry. A Farang Affair), which are written by farang male writers, says Pollner, portray aspects (such as prostitution, drugs, gangster and prison) of Bangkok which are completely different from the experience of the majority of the Thai and farang population in the City of Angels.

“As a resident of this city I feel angry that Bangkok has been misrepresented in a very negative way,” declares the over-40 writer who has been living in the Big Mango, as Bangkok is affectionately known, since 2003.

When Pollner, who describes herself as a citizen of the world, returns to Europe, she is usually asked, “Isn’t living in Bangkok dangerous?” or “Aren’t there many bar girls in your street?”

“When I tell them, ‘No, Bangkok is safe’ or ‘No, in my whole district there aren’t any bar girls’, they don’t believe me because they believe the (cliche-laden) books they’ve read,” relates the farang who lives in Ari, a trendy district.

Pollner’s Bangkok is far removed from Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza, which are Bangkok’s touristy red light area. Her life revolves around the Bangkok Opera (she’s the theatre director), National Museum (she’s a volunteer) and BWWG.

You get the picture. She breathes a cultured, cosmopolitan life.

However, she admits that before visiting the Thai capital she thought it was “seedy, full of bar girls, and you have to be careful not to get shot in the street”.

In 2003, while backpacking around the world, Pollner decided to visit the City of Angels for three nights and found her notions were false.

“My experience was against the cliche – farang women can’t find love in Bangkok. I met my lover here. And he was not a bar boy but someone I could have met in London,” reveals the writer whose story of that romance The Last of the Great White Lovers is immortalised in Bangkok Blondes.

The cliche that love eludes farang women in Bangkok, according to Pollner, is a malicious propaganda by men who visit the city to have sex with bar girls because they could not find a partner back in Europe.

There are Thai-based websites where these men write hate message against Western women who live in Bangkok, she adds.

Ironically, as the manuscript compiler of Bangkok Blondes, Pollner reinforces the stereotype when she include Jess Tansutat’s short story Butterfly Game, which is about how it could be frustrating for Western women living in Bangkok to find real romantic partner.

“The choices for decent men are limited here,” writes Jess, who is a Thai.

“There are several possible factors. Although Thai and Asian men are generally sweet and gentle, they can also be a bit immature and too feminine.

“The ones who are good-looking, dress well and smart can turn out to be the ‘sorry, lady, I’m gay’ type. (Farang guys) are spoilt. Thailand is just a big playground for them.”

Refusing to be drawn into a discussion on whether Jess’s story is a cliche, Pollner points out there are other stories in the book where various authors narrate their relations with men in Bangkok.

For example, Chloe Trindall’s trilogy titled Love Bangkok Style focuses on her romance with a poor Thai boy from a small village in Isaan.

So what’s real everyday life in Bangkok?

In Anna Bennetts’ Ghostbusters, it is speaking to the spirit haunting a farang woman’s new apartment.

She who laughs loudest laughs alone

Jittarat Wongsomboon of Thailand won the Ripley's International Laughing Contest in Pattaya July 5, 2008. The 55 year-old laughed for 12 minutes after hearing a joke about the blind Cambodian and the elephant. Her decibel level hit 110, which is equivalent to standing 3 feet from a chain saw cutting through a pine. Pain begins at 125dB.

Someone has to tell this woman ain't nothing that funny.

Although my boss Manny always said, "If you can make a woman laugh, then you got it made."

And Manny knows.

10 words for McCain and Obama

It's the silly political season of July. The GOP and Democratic candidates can relax throughout the Senate break. Vacation with the family and avoid any gaffs. Both candidates are taking advantage of this lull to combat the American public's perception of their personae.

The top 10 answers people volunteered when asked to describe presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Monday. Included is the percentage of people who gave each answer. More than one response was allowed. Both candidates have plus and minuses.

According to a yahoo.news poll the first word that came to 19% of the survey when they heard John McCain was 'old'.

Old?

I'm closer in age to him than I am to Dwight Eisenhower.

9% thought military service. Another 8% qualified. 14% associated him with a Bush insider with 6% felt he was synonymous with Iraq and terrorism. 5% regarded the old dude as honest with 5% accepting him as a member of the GOP and he was tied with 4% opting for either good/evil.

Barack Obama was most well-known for representing an outsider interested in change, although 13% of respondents considered him inexperienced, although they didn't say at what. A whopping 9% reckoned he was honest, while a bedazzled 8% found the Senator from Illinois 'inspiring'. A damn liberal for 6% and two groups of 6% voted for young and black. 5% didn't like him. 4% figured he was small and 10% wrongly accused the candidate of being a Muslim.

This survey proves Americans can't tell the truth.

No one mentioned about McCain that he was bald and more 6% see him as a black man.

Has he ever been stopped for DWB or Driving while black'?

Or like in BLAZING SADDLES.

"Here comes our new ______________"

Fill in the blacks, I mean blank.

Imagine no cars

I spoke with my wife last night. She said gas in Thailand is over 40 baht a liter. It's $4.06 on the Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, but not for long. Several petroleum experts are predicting $200/barrel by summer's end, despite GW Bush begging the Saudi's to produce more oil. That price will push gas over $5 a gallon. Driving is already 6% down from June 2007. Public transit is booming in the cities. Suburbs without access to trains are cut-off from the malls by the price of gas. This morning a writer proposed to sue OPEC since the true cost of getting oil out of the ground is around $15.



Sue them so the lawyers can earn 33% of the penalties and the price of gas will rise to cover the punishment.

So how do we combat the cost of gas?

By doing nothing, because if oil was ruled by the laws of supply and demand then the price would have fallen along with the driving miles, however oil has become a speculative asset and the investors will push the price until it reaches the bubble's breaking point.

$200 a barrel? $300 a barrel. $500 a barrel.

At this point there is no ceiling.

But at $10 a gallon we'll see a lot more bikes.

And less Hummers, but the SUV still rules the road in the USA, since the real reason Americans drive SUV is the following; "They don't make me look fat."

Housebreaker Madonna at it again

In the summer of 1982 a young girl came to my apartment on East 10th Street. She was looking to sublet it, while I was in Europe. Her name was Madonna. She checked the bathtub in the kitchen and the water closet off the small living room, then said, "I'll think about it."

Madonna never called back and within six months she was a star.

In 1995 I had three dreams about having sex with Madonna.

They scared the bejesus out of me and now 13 years later the newspapers are reporting her affair with A-rod, the New York Yankees star player. Her husband, an English director, has returned from the land of the teabags not in a good mood.

I liked his film SNATCH. I haven't listened to any of her music since MATERIAL GIRL and I hate the Yankees, especially A-Rod.

After all I'm a Red Sox fan.

Still I bet she's a little kinky. Just a little and we like that.

Cyber-crime Cops on the Prowl

It's said that 90% of crimes are solved by good police work; ie investigations by diligent detectives and the officers of Bangkok's cyber-crime unit are bringing a new tool online to pursue hardened criminals such as webmasters of Thai porno sites offering users explicit sex photos for free or even worse for money. A crime under the 2008 Computer Crime Act punishable by 100,000 baht and/or 5 years.

5 years for nude photos seems a little harsh, however Pol Lt-Col Panya Chaaimtet estimates there are more than 300 Thai sexsites and prosecution is difficult due to sexmasters' more proficient talents and online practices. They go from internet cafe to cafe. Never staying more than a few hours and rarely using their own names, making it hard for police to present the courts with evidence.

Users paying 150 baht for access to these websites are not the targets as they number in the ten if not hundreds of thousand.

Is this really a danger?

We only have to go to the statement of Gore Vidal, "The use of pornography only leads to the use of more pornography."

And we know that path leads to Sodom and Gomorrah.