They just have different rules - Thailand (with some photos)

Everything...no rules! Actually they only seem to have guide books

One arrives to Thailand and soon starts to spot the differences. How hot…in December! It was snowing back home. Everything is so cheap, you can eat with a dollar…with that money I can't even get a coffee where I come from. And finally the most surprising of them all: everything that is forbidden where we come from is allowed here, or at least tolerated. In the worst case scenario you can buy it with a bribe.
You can purchase pirated DVDs and software in broad daylight. Fake driving licenses, university degrees and membership cards of various type. Imitation jeans, shirts and bags. You can display the sign of an illegal business and nobody says anything about it. You can spot four people without helmets and a dog riding a motorbike, and the police is fine with that. Twenty kids in the back of a pick up truck, instead of hiding, are all laughing and singing. After 2am bars cannot sell alcoholic drinks but if your beer is poured in a paper cup or a coffee mug then it's alright. Nightclubs are competing for who pays the biggest bribe to the police, so that they can stay open until late and the competitors are forced to close early. And then sex, orgies, viagra, cialis, kamagra, women…young, old, fantastic, horrible, shameless or chaste women. Yeah, here you can even find chaste hookers. And then homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals. Even asexual ones.
Hey, I can do anything I want here - the newcomer inspired by promises of freedom and impunity will be thinking - this is great! Hooray! And his holiday soon turns into a sequence of troubles.

Italians in Thailand/7: the human sewage keeps flowing down

It looks like sewage but it actually is a stream

And it keeps flowing precisely from here...

Story 3) A third whoremonger was loafing around the dolphin square with a fancy new videocamera. A pretty girl approached him. After a brief conversation the two of them left together. His whore-monging colleagues looked at each other, amazed by what they had just seen. How come such a knockout left with a loser like him? (a personal note: I was not expecting that, but it seems that even to pick up a hooker you need to be cool and attractive) None of them saw him for a whole day. When he didn't show up for another night they suddenly remembered about the videocamera, put together the pieces of that puzzle, got worried and set out to look for him. Finding him was not such a difficult feat: he had been sedated and was still noisily snoring in one of the rooms where they all had been so often, with other women of the same kind. For a few days (!) they took care of him. As he was always half asleep they continuously tried to keep him awake, dragging him to take a breath of fresh air at regular intervals. Neither the victim nor anyone of his wretched friends had (or wanted to spend) money for a hospital. Besides his videocamera that moonlighter (whore and anesthetist) robbed him of all the money he had on him. Without needing to take even her shoes off. We can accuse her of a lot of wickednesses but not of been someone who sells her body for a song.

Story 4) Even S was drugged by a whore once (or maybe more).

Italians in Thailand/6: the escalating squalor

Squalor

As I've already explained you, even though I left Pattaya a few months ago I am not done telling you all the anecdotes I've learned when I was staying there. 

These are the latest stories S told me (we first met S here). I hope they also happen to be the last ones, as the escalation of their squalor doesn't seem to subside.
I jotted them down immediately after I listened to them, careful not to forget anything, using low level tone and terminology, sticking to what I had just heard. I meant to polish them all later on but then I thought that this kind of trash deserves expressive tools of a comparable quality. "Prostitutes" are therefore called "whores", "having a sexual intercourse" is "fucking" and...etcetera etcetera, we don't really need to open a vocabulary section here. If you cannot digest this hodgepodge (content and style) I really am sorry about it, I hope you can find other posts in this blog that you like better than this one. I had to write this one exactly the way I did though. Under certain circumstances you need to have an armored soul even to try to be politically correct. At the time of writing, mine is like a soap bubble that wavers and gets deformed while it glides downwards, bound to explode if it gets hit by just a gust of dusty air.

Story 1)
Mr. Gallina (a made up name that means "Hen" in Italian. Actually it's a different bird, but he's still Italian) got married with a whore and then bought a house where they went to live together.

After a lot of honey, a little mudslinging as well (with photos) - Burma

An inspiring panoramic view of the room

After pouring jars of honey on it, it's finally time to mudsling Burma a little as well. I do it both because I am an asshole and I can't help it and because I think that highlighting the pros of something and covering up its cons is not gonna help promoting it. Whatever that thing is.
As you have already noticed if you've read the previous posts this nice and charming country also has its flaws. First of all Burma is not a clean place. Trash is piled up anywhere, next to the roads, on the hills and the riverbanks: if a Burmese is left with an empty plastic bag in his hand he will throw it away, no matter where he is. However, after all the years spent traveling in Asia, I am quite used to it. You might say I'm a bit nuts but a little rubbish, decaying and colorful confusion rather than depress me often tend to put me in a good mood. The taxi drivers racket at the bus or train stations and the airports though is definitely annoying. Especially when you find out that, after having negotiated the price like a money lender to be ripped off anyway, a few hundred meters away there are a lot of honest guys who are obviously not allowed to ambush the travelers who have just arrived. Solution: look for those honest ones and negotiate a price, with firmness, alright, but a little comprehension as well. The chances to get food poisoning are also high, due the the bad hygienic conditions: you need to be careful but not paranoid, otherwise you will miss lots of the fun the country has to offer. In the worst case scenario you will be pissing a little shit-velouté out of your ass. After a while there won't be anything else to piss and everything will shortly get back to the good old solid state.
For the time being though, the worst aspect of the country for those who visit it is the accommodation scene.

Italians in Thailand/4: the shady guys

Good old S just came back to Pattaya, where he's gonna stay for the next six months. His girlfriend is pregnant and he wants to stay close to her. I meet him at the Big Buddha hill trail, where I go jogging in the evenings. He's got another one of his bombs in store for me.
A few months ago, still in Pattaya, he met another Italian, one of those wretches who scrape through life in a not-so-clear way. Apparently he seemed to be a nice, easy-going, honest guy. Just apparently. We - who are endowed with hindsight powers - won't call him the honest guy, but the shady one. One day the shady guy wants to walk S to his hotel. S hasn't got any particular reason to say no. Once in S's room the shady guy looks carefully around, then he remembers that he doesn't have any money on him and asks S if he can borrow a few baht. S agrees, after all it's just a little sum. The shady guy insistently looks at him when he goes to fetch his moneybox. Just in case, a little thoughtlessly though, S decided to carry a big amount of money with him, a few thousands euros, cash. The shady guy drops a sequence of funny comments, such as: "Why so furtive?" and "Oh Jesus, I see, look at that stack of banknotes!"

Customer care-less - Thailand

This is another accusatory post. I'm publishing it for the benefit of those who are facing the same problem I had. And to try to affect as much as I can the reputation of the company involved, so that they can learn a lesson and act fairly in the future. For those who are not interested in the matter it might actually be a bit boring: just skip it and move on to the next post of this blog.

This time my target is the IT City group, a Thai store chain, specializing in computers and electronic products.
Before I start I actually have to admit that these probably are the best-stocked and fairest priced stores in Thailand. Unfortunately though, when I had a chance to test their attitude towards customers who have some problems (the so called customer or post sales service), the flunking was inevitable, immediate and absolute. And it definitely wasn't an isolated incident: the sequence of unacceptable situations was too long and serious to make any sort of extenuating circumstances applicable.
Here are the facts. My iFox USB internet card is out of order. It's my fault, it has been subjected to an unbearable sequence of blows and torsions, something inside was damaged and my PC doesn't recognize it anymore. It's a shame, I used to use it with a cheap AIS 3G plan and it never gave me any problem. I also tried to repair it: if possible I even made it worse. I'm a bit ashamed of that, but I was only trying to do what I had to do. My engineering qualification required me to try, success was hoped for but not to be taken for granted. 

Italians in Thailand/3: more on the seafront clique - Pattaya

Continued from here

And then there are non sex-related scams as well.

- "What did you say? Your visa is about to expire? No problem at all, we can arrange a return trip to the Cambodian border. It won't take more than two, three days at most. You pay us and we'll take care of everything...great, isn't it?" And then it's all a sequence of inflated prices: transportation, accommodation, immigration procedures, duty free, casino, meals, revelries, imitation Viagra and, if one cannot stay away from them even for a couple of nights, more hookers, just to have a taste of Khmer culture as well, besides the Thai one, because after all you don't get to know the world just by listening to what other people say, looking at it from behind a car window or reading a few pages of a travel guide: you need first hand experience, meeting the locals...that's the secret!

"Give me two more boxes of that generic Viagra then..."

I suppose that the whole trip will cost him no less than 10000 to 15000 baht (about 300-500 USD), but it might be much more depending on the vices the dupe will indulge on. If he only knew that various agencies in town organize visa runs by minivan, leaving at 6am and returning at about 3 pm on the same day, for a total of just 2000 baht (70 USD), including the Cambodian visa. They would only need to know ten English words. Or the help of an honest Italian, of course...

Italians in Thailand/2: the seafront clique - Pattaya

If you haven't done it yet you can read this propaedeutic post before you proceed.

"They are wretches, living hand to mouth. They loaf around the dolphins statue and are often arguing over one baht (equivalent to 1/30 of a dollar, or 3.3 cents, Fabio's note)"

That's how S' story starts. Not because this is the first thing he told me but as this is the most accurate and to the point description that he managed to give me of those scoundrels. Few key words with heavy implications: wretches, hand to mouth, loaf around, arguing, one baht.

Among the waves of the rough sea of faults that I've always tried to fight back, one of the few qualities I know I can count on is that of making people who have a story to tell trust me. Perhaps it's because I have never turned anybody down and people can feel that I don't have any intention to use their words against them: vibrations that reach their hearts, brains, souls - or whatever the element is where these sensors are hidden - and reassure them. Because S has got a whole sack of manure to empty: he has carried it around on his shoulder for too long but he doesn't want to unload it in front of someone who will use it to throw excrement at him. I only intend to take a look at it, maybe a little sniff so that I can tell you about it, but I definitely don't wanna handle it and hurl it at his face. That's why for the whole length of the story S will simply be called S. Which is not the initial of his name but of the word someone, just someone. And I will be very careful not to disclose any information that might lead to his identification, even though he did provide lots of details about himself and his past, some of them rather embarrassing. This post only wants to tell a (nasty) series of stories that in five or six years happened not only to S but to other Italians he met, and who knows to how many other people. And hopefully to forewarn those who might fall into the same traps. That's all. Here are the stories then...

Neglected promenade - Pattaya, Thailand

Pattaya's promenade could really be a nice place. Its wide walkway where one can stroll, jog or sit down and watch the bay, its palm trees and the colorful multi-ethnic turmoil behind. Even the scant depth of the beach, only a few meters, from this point of view can become an enriching element in the composition of the picture: those looking at the sea will enjoy the deceptive impression of a single-phase horizontal plane that, although veined and streaked with ripples and shades, within the macro-element framework (water, sky, headlands and hills) appears pretty much like a uniform body, with hues that depending on the hour and the weather conditions can vary from dirty sleet to rhino armor, passing through the various standard gradations of flask glass and summer alpine sky.

It could be a nice place, indeed. But it turns out to be one of the most decadent (if not even degraded) areas of Pattaya, which in turn is one of the most decadent cities in South East Asia. One should wonder why the authorities have decided to loosen their grip on it to such an extent, to ignore it altogether in a way, when there already are lots of red light districts in town, catering to vice lovers of various kind, and this area could be the perfect haven for the innocent side of the city tourism.

Swarming in the pasta pack - Pattaya, Thailand

I open a pack of pasta and just when I am about to pour it into a bowl and weigh it I notice with disgust that dozens of little black hairy insects are crawling among the penne. I'll have to throw it away, damn, it was a new 1kg-pack. Well, at least I didn't eat it. 
When I return to the supermarket where I bought it I shake a few more packs of the same (Italian) brand and I take a close look at them: from behind a rigatone or a pennetta rigata one of the small animals often sticks its head out. This supermarket must have received an infested batch. I change shop, carry out the same test and obtain the same result. This means that the problem is bigger than I thought. Maybe a whole container of this pasta brand has been attacked. Then I have a hunch. I grab random packs of other brands, Italian, French, Australian: some of them are infested. It's a mess. I don't think the health-related risk is particularly serious, as the pasta is usually boiled for several minutes, but...how disgusting!
I can't be the only one who noticed this. And while the thought is taking shape in my mind I put together fragments of memories, images, sensations. Those free sauce cans taped to the packs, the suspicious discounts, the smart shelf layouts. Slowly I start to grasp the most disconcerting aspect of the situation: these guys know everything and instead of complaining with those who come before them in the supply chain or scrapping the whole batch and lose money...they still try to sell it on the sly! And I wouldn't be surprised if they had already greased the wheels that will save their asses in case someone protests or even sues them. 

Poor consumers. It's a dirty war, us against them all, we've got to keep our yes wide open if we don't want to succumb.

Image: one of those insects in a pack of penne rigate

Police surcharge - Bangkok, Thailand

There is a little street in Bangkok, a few dozen meters from one of the most touristy roads of the country. In the past ten years I've heard its funny name - Rambuttri - mispronounced in several ways: Rainbow street, Rain on tree, and there was even a movie-version, Rambo 3. There is a place in that street that for the sake of anonymity - without keeping it too vague though - I'll just call SH. Back when it opened the SH used to be a guest house for low-budget tourists: two stories, a few rooms and a simple restaurant located near the main entrance. The owners are smart: they keep developing their place, which expands continuously over the years. A travel agency is added, the restaurant is open 24 hours and at night it becomes a bar with plenty of atmosphere, with soft lights and music that you can listen to in the coolest clubs of New York, Paris or Ibiza. The menu is divided into a Thai and an international section and the cocktail list is so long that an alcoholic could get bored just half-way through it. In the mid '00s they add a sort of a mezzanine floor, with pool tables and air-conditioning (the rest of the seats are outdoor). Later on the restaurant expands its boundaries and takes over the lower floor of a building two blocks away, next to a bank. A few more months and the gap is filled: the house that causes the solution of continuity is torn down and its place is taken by a large room decorated with Siamese and Balinese sculptures. As a last touch tables pop up along both sides of the alley, around a stall where a foreign guy prepares and serves shishas, water-pipes filled with flavored tobacco.

AirAsia: not so cool anymore

Having been a rather regular customer of AirAsia - since the beginning, when they were still using old planes and few people trusted them (“They are always late...they'll lose your luggage.” was the typical refrain people were singing in Malaysia) - I can say that their online booking procedure was fast, simple, transparent and fair, their prices among the cheapest and their brand one of the coolest. Well...not anymore.

Going through just a few screens, filling a limited number of fields and clicking some buttons one could choose date, destination, number of passengers, one way or return, could select their favorite flight among the available options, enter their personal data, the credit card ones and that was it. As I said: fast, simple, transparent and fair. No free meal and no seat allocation, true, but their prices were dirt cheap, really unbeatable on some routes.

This took by surprise the traditional carriers that lost large shares of the market while AirAsia, from a small player of the low cost niche, became one of the sector leaders. A real success story for Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian who, from a Warner Music manager, after acquiring an almost bankrupt state owned airline, got to be one of the richest and most innovative Asian entrepreneurs.

Little by little the disbanded forces of the enemies managed to reorganize themselves, filling the gap, while AirAsia incredibly decided to waste its resources of know-how and excellent reputation accumulated over the years, starting to make some of the same mistakes that had forced their competitors to give up their leading positions, plus others whose copyright its management is fully entitled to claim.

Elections and scams - Bangkok, Thailand

July 2011. It's election time in Thailand. Continuous waves of people are converging toward the main arteries of Bangkok - Sukhumvit, Vipawadee, Pahonyothin - headed for their provinces of origin, in most cases located in Isan, in the North-east, close to Laos.

I'm walking W. to get a taxi that will take her to Mochit, a bus station that today is sunk in a grounding-time international airport kind of chaos. A tuk-tuk driver offers his service for 300 baht when normally, using a metered taxi, the ride should cost 100-150. We get rid of him quickly. The first taxi driver asks 300 baht as well. She lets him go and waves another down. Same story. The third cab too, as well as the fourth one.

This smells fishy. It's a stench that pricked my nostrils often in the past. I follow my instinct, as if it was one of those lines of smoke chased by the long and quivering noses of the cartoons. While she's walking toward the center of the road to give it another try I stay near the curb and look carefully around. As she's drawing near the window to speak with the driver, the tuk-tuk owner that wanted to cheat her is waving his arms about and signaling to his colleague to ask her 300 baht. The other follows his advice and W., obviously, dismisses him.

This time I got you, lousy swindler. I take W. by the arm and walk her a few meters away. She follows me - incredulous while I tell her what I've just seen - far enough from the scoundrel, where a taxi driver - honest like most of those who don't swarm around the tourists - agrees on using the meter.

"Thais should never behave like that...especially with other Thai people..." she keeps repeating until the door is closed.

"...with anybody..." I think while I wave her goodbye.

She won't be able to reach home and vote, as all the bus seats are sold out until the next morning, but at least she managed to hold on to her dignity. And a few banknotes as well.

Image by globalvoicesonline

High-altitude scalpers - Medan, Indonesia

Crossing the morning sky, by Docbudie (CC)

We're done with Sumatra, we tick the item in the list and we proceed with our next destination: Java. We get back to Medan and we start to look for a flight. At the first travel agency a bored employee tells us that the flights to Jakarta - and to any other Indonesian city - are all full, for a few days.

"How...all of them?"

"All of them!"

This guy doesn't want to work, we all think at once while we start to look for another agency. Maybe the workers of the local tourism sector are lazy and bored, but this has nothing to do with flights availability. Due to some holiday the Indonesians, the students in particular, are traveling, migrating, flying. To go home, on vacation, to visit some friends, nobody knows where exactly, what we know is that they have completely jammed the national air traffic.

But we belong to an ancient breed of tough travelers and we won't give up that easily. We reach the airport with a rickety taxi. The national departures area is a bedlam of people who are camping everywhere, hoping for a waiting list to be cleared soon. We try the ticket offices of some airlines but this time we are not surprised by their answers: all full! A female scalper who got wind of the opportunity to cheat three pale-faced fools draws near us and offers us three boarding passes for a huge sum.

Your bag is open - New Delhi, India

(Spring 2003)
I need a new passport, the old one is gone: no more pages left, stamped off in few years, with Asian touches of red and blue ink, a South American opening and Australian stickers. First thing that I need are two passport photos and I'm going to get them at Connaught place. "Don't listen to anybody when you walk in that area, the place is full of swindlers and touts" people have told me again and again. I'm walking on the sidewalk, with steady pace. I sense that somebody is following me. "Sir...Sir...excuse me, Sir...Sir...Sir...your bag is open..." I follow the advice and pretend I don't hear him. "Sir...wait...you're bag is open!" I'm deaf, I'm an idiot, I can't speak English, whatever it is, I'm not going to reply. "Sir...SIIIRRR! YOU'RE BAG IS OPEN!" I walk, walk, keep walking, non-stop. "SIR! SIR!" Still no reaction. "SIR! SIR! FUCK YOU MAN!" He finally quits and fades away. I arrive at the shop and reach for the bag...fuck you man, it was open indeed!"

Image "Boston terrier puppy inside a bag" by Fogstock Llc, from AllPosters.com

A ver-r-r-ry lucky per-r-r-rson - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

With the Pakistani restaurant behind my back, another Thai one that appears on my right and a Japanese hotel just in front of me, it's like walking on an imaginary map of Asia, from the bottom-left corner towards north-east. An Indian man walks out of the hotel, beard secured, big belly and turban. I start to play a solitary game, with background calculations of derivatives and integrals, analyzing the functions that govern our paths, seeking an inflection, a maximum or a limit, trying to determine a point of intersection. My mind is making involuntary calculations and my steps are following an ample curve whose inclination is gradually and imperceptibly changing. Without even knowing it the Indian replies, countering my opening with accurate moves, which hold our position in a dynamic balance, towards a clash in an immutable point, which we both relentlessly come up to. When I'm a meter away I decide to quit, I swerve to the left with a few ballet steps. He turns around and stares at me, with a hypnotizing glance that makes me smile, then shatters my illusion of being playing by myself: "Do you know that you ar-r-r-re a ver-r-r-ry lucky guy?" I'm in a hurry and I keep on going. While I walk away his masala "r-r-r" keep reaching me like the whistle of a train, modulated and distorted by the Doppler effect. "And do you know why?" "Yes, yes...of course I know." And with that last remark I disappear.

What would I have done had I not recognize him? But I of course I knew it all. The Sikh fortune tellers, those impostors in Bangkok, you saw them often in the tourist areas. The Filipino who was asked six thousand baht. I speed up my pace under the twelve o'clock heat. From behind a corner two more Sikhs pop up. Some general of the Army Corps of the North-west has unleashed a number of these mystic platoons, seeking palms to read and simpletons to rip off. They are walking towards me, along the sidewalk. "Do you know that you ar-r-r-re a ver-r-r-ry lucky guy?" "Yes, sure, of course I know." "And do you know why?" "Because I managed not to be fooled by your friend, as well as I'm not going to be fooled by you!" I don't know until what point I have pronounced that sentence and from where I've started to keep it for myself. But one thing is certain, declared, exposed: I am a ver-r-r-ry lucky per-r-r-rson indeed.

Image "Fortune teller" by Daniel Fort, from AllPosters.com

Dr Jekyll exists, and he lives in Phnom Penh - Cambodia

(From my 2004 diary)

The traffic light turns green and our bike gains speed but after few meters we come to a stop. We have been around for eight ours at least and we got caught at dusk, when we were almost back. The policeman smiles and approaches us. We already know what he's looking for and we decide that first he will enjoy our show.

He throws a glance at Lorenzo's licence, then ask if we have an international one. We pretend that we can't speak a word in English, that we are also quite nervous and rather dumb. When he asks for the papers we look at each other, we slowly translate his words in Italian, then finally grin and hand in the same licence. He points out again that this one is not good, that we need to have a document written in English. Once more we throw amazed looks at each other, then we patiently explain him that this one is Italian.

After five minutes of this slapstick show he finally invites us to make a donation. When we hear the word “dollars” we smile and yell, as if we had finally understood what he means. A beam of satisfaction brightens his face, as he sees his efforts bringing back a reward. But it's a short-lived joy and his frustration is back when we pull the rental contract out of our bag.

After a few more more minutes of this back and forth, we decide it's enough and we bargain the price. He pockets the money without writing a fine. You can tell by the way he's greeting us that the daily sum was a well-earned one.

The next day we're reading a local paper in English. A journalist writes about corruption and bribes. Part of the article is an interview with an officer, who explains that the problem is a serious one. At the end of the column there's a photo of the cop. The man is proudly standing next to his bike. A shiny white helmet, U.S. Air Force shades, a confident smile and a thin black mustache.

We look at the picture and try to make out that face. We wonder if the author could possibly know that the nice Dr Jekyll who was talking to him, is the same Mr Hyde who entertained us.

Image: Richard Mansfield in The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Henry van Der Weyde (PD), circa 1895, from Wikipedia.org

The Balinese extortionists - Bali, Indonesia

(From my 2003 diary)

The traffic is heavy on this stretch of road. A few meters ahead we spot a cop. He seems to be relaxed, and doesn't do much, just lazily observes the cars passing by. When he spots our faces through the shiny glass, his body stirs, he steps forward and with his hand he motions us to stop. The look that the encounter has painted on his face is the one of a fox breaking into a roost.

A colleague of him has joined the scene. The confab they hold while they check our papers reminds of two pirates studying a map. When they have verified that the licence is all right, they move on with a thorough overhaul of the car. Once they have made sure that there is nothing wrong, they start to mumble about a mysterious offence. We are amazed, we smile and try to explain that this is just a rental car. But soon we understand that it's a useless try and that we're only making fools of ourselves.

They have already seen this, and they even look bored when they list the absurd consequences that we might face. We cut it short and ask how much. They shoot a figure and wait for our laughs. We keep them happy and start to bargain, we even joke while we negotiate. At the end we pay and they let us go.

A few hours later, when we're back from Ubud, we happen to drive past the same place. The scene of the morning is staged once again, only the actors are different ones. Before the policemen start to check our car, we tell them straight that we've already paid. They look at us a little surprised and without any shame they ask us how much. Lorenzo tells them a puffed-up sum, and we observe the indignation permeating their faces. They ask us to follow them inside the station and to try to recognize the greedy ones.

That's how we ended up helping those guys to find the colleagues who didn't share our bribe!