Visa promise

I apply for a new 12-month visa soon, which renews my commitment to this place for another year. I can always leave sooner, of course, but in Maiyuu’s eyes, if not my own, it is a symbolic event.

Last year, he was worried that I might not actually renew it. This year, when I told him I was about to apply for a new visa at the immigration office, he seemed unperturbed. I suspect he can see I am happy and want to stay, so why worry?

Rich man's dogs

When we walk outdoors, Maiyuu takes the lead.

Every so often he will signal with his hand for me to move off the road to avoid traffic coming up from behind (he has eyes in the back of his head, or at least better ears than I do) - or to avoid dog poo, which is everywhere in Bangkok.

‘Why do these wealthy types who raise dogs around here let them poo on the footpath and the road?’ he asked.

‘They don’t want it in their front yard,’ I said.

Before 8am today we walked to the local 7-11 to pay the internet bill which Maiyuu had forgotten the month before. The last day for payment had passed, so that when I turned on the computer this morning I found the internet had been cut off.

After paying the bill we visited a small morning market on Pra Ram 4. This evening we shall visit another collection of stalls, closer to home. This part of town is good for markets, places where we can buy snacks and odds and ends.

We squeezed through crowds to make our way past the stalls. Many people were dressed for work or school.

As I watched the young Thais bustling around me, I caught a glimpse of myself as a new arrival in this land nine years ago, when everything looked so mysterious and exciting.

These days, in my bad moments, it is just another place to live. Instead of looking for fun outdoors or in the company of strangers, I amuse myself in other ways, by putting my energy into work or the boyfriend instead.

Liquor fast, anyone?

If gym queens are a bore – I imagine they talk about little else – are diet queens any better?

I have decided to ban whisky from my diet. Liquor can add weight to your hips, even when taken with water.

One glass of martini, according to one depressing website, puts on the same amount of calories as a slice of pizza!

I am a good whisky drinker, as the booze helps me think. No more! I shall just have to use my brain at a slower pace. Will anyone notice?

‘The body processes alcohol before fat, protein or carbohydrates. Thus, drinking slows down the burning of fat.

‘This means that if you love your drink AND want to lose weight, you have a major uphill task in your hands,’ says one nutrition consultant.

How dispiriting, so to speak. While I am devising some low-cal substitute, read more about the booze-calories connection here.

Hide that bottle: Social etiquette for the foreigner

Like anyone else, foreigners have to observe social etiquette in the Land of Smiles. Many Thais think foreigners are drunks.

Most Thais wouldn’t mind, but the hi-so crowd might object. This morning I took an empty whisky bottle out to the rubbish bin on the landing outside my place.

I poked my head out the door first, to make sure the coast was clear ... it was. I crept up the stairs, and deposited my bottle in the rubbish.

Back inside, I took a new bottle of whisky out of its box. Intending also to deposit the empty box in the rubbish, I opened the door again – then stopped.

A high-so Thai-Chinese woman in her 50s, possibly from the place opposite, was on the landing.

She had her hair bouffed up (sure sign of a hi-so), and was wearing a waist-length silk jacket (another reliable sign), the type which middle-aged Thai women seem able to wear without breaking into a sweat, even in the 45deg heat.

Thankfully, she had her back to me. I quickly withdrew and closed the door. Maiyuu took the empty booze box out to the rubbish instead.

He rarely drinks, but more importantly doesn’t care what Thais think.

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Earlier, a security guard stopped me as I was about to cross from the condo across a vacant lot to the local 7-11. I was intending to buy the bottle of whisky I mentioned above.

‘Why don’t you try the shop to the left?’ he asked. ‘It’s closer.’

He knows I go over there to the convenience store to buy liquor, as he sees me returning from the shop with my bottle in a bag.

However, it's a long walk, if you're a Thai. They'd rather hop on a motorbike than go by foot, even if the shop is only 50m away.

'It's too far to walk over there,' he added.

At his suggestion, I tried the little shop next to the condo, which is part of the slum. I had never seen it before, and in fact didn't know it was there.

Half a dozen men in their 50s were sitting on the step outside when I approached the shop, set in a small block of slum housing which has grown up on one side of the condo carpark.

‘Hello!’ they said.

I returned the greeting, and asked the owner if his little shop – it looked like a rough cupboard cut into a wall - stocked my brand of whisky. No.

I was walking out again, heading for my original destination, when a motorcyclist stopped by my side.

The girl, aged in her early 20s, was riding one of those smart Yamaha Fino motorcycles, and invited me to hop on. We were strangers, but she must have known I was in need.

‘Sit carefully,' she advised, as the bike wobbled.

'Am I heavy?' I asked.

'Yes, you are.'

My new friend took me to another 7-11 store, in the tourist district.

I enjoyed travelling behind her, as we whizzed down side streets behind the condo.

Thai guys looked at us as we passed. I hope they were envious.

The girl, who did not give her name, had just showered. I could smell the shampoo in her hair.

She stopped outside a 7-11 in the tourist district.

As I clambered off her bike, I tried not to touch her body. Some Thai girls are sensitive about that, especially if it's some farang stranger.

‘Ask one of motorsai guys to take you back,’ she suggested, as she sped off.

Motorcycle hire guys were sitting at a stand across the road.

I looked at them. A rough-looking bunch, they were wearing their regulation motorcycle hire vests. No, thanks.

They could not compare with the pretty, soft little thing who had just appeared out of nowhere, and because she was a generous soul, offered to give me a lift.

Bottle of whisky in hand, I decided to make the journey back on foot instead.

Into the Wild: Unlovely are the young

I missed several hours of sleep last night, after watching Sean Penn’s Into the Wild.

Images of the young man who starred in the film kept haunting me. Memories from my own youth came back and intermingled with those I saw in the film.

It's the story of a university graduate who runs away from home – fleeing the materialism of middle-class life represented by his parents - for a road, forest and river adventure in the US and Mexico.

Based on the non-fiction best-seller by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild (2007) depicts the true story of Christopher McCandless, who was to die alone in the Alaskan wilds, two years after setting out on his journey. He is played in the film by Emile Hirsch.

‘He looks like you when you were young!’ Maiyuu exclaimed as we watched the film. He was commenting on the bearded, slightly built Hirsch.

That was a sweet thing to say. Years ago, I showed Maiyuu a picture of myself taken from my late 20s, back in the days when I wore a full head of wavy hair, and a beard. I was surprised Maiyuu remembered it.

For me, the best part of the film was the friendships between rebel Christopher, who dubbed himself Alex Supertramp, and people he met on his travels – including a young girl from a hippy community in the desert; and an old leather worker, played by Hal Holbrook, who asks if he can adopt the young man.

I cared less for Chris's idealism, which ultimately was to cost him his life. I was moved more by the effect which Chris's optimism had on older people around him.

As a youth, did I ever make people happy, just by being me, or being around them? I hope I did.

So many young people, however, are just naive and disappointing. Sean Penn himself can’t explain why Chris should have such a positive effect on the sad, non-conformist types he meets.

The lad – whose solitary adventures are likened to those of Huck Finn, or Holden Caulfield – befriends strangers, but cares not a fig for the distraught parents he left behind without so much as a goodbye.

‘Chris is pure and Christ-like and leaves an indelible mark on everyone he encounters, although the film does not convincingly make clear why and how. He is always aloof,' says a review taken from a most unlikely source (at least for this blog) - the World Socialist website.

In real life, as in the film, Chris died after a swollen river traps him in the Alaskan wilds, where he spent more than 100 days living on an abandoned bus used by moose hunters.

He carries about tattered books by author/philosopher Thoreau: ‘Rather than Love, than Money, than Fame, give me Truth.’

They must have given him great comfort as he lay there starving.

From the WSWS:

A park ranger quoted by MoviesOnline said the real Chris McCandless was ‘not particularly daring, but just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate.

'There was a hand-operated tram a mile away from where he tried to cross the river [his inability to do so led to his death by starvation] that any decent map that most hikers would carry in a national park would have shown.’

The trailer is here.