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Hey Nicolle. Here in Thailand you quickly realise that you should keep halving what you paid for anything last time you paid for it, and keep doing this every day until you've reached something approximating the true cost. Damn it! We'll be living on our means by the time we reach Malaysia, and then we'll have to start all over again. Exhausted? Try existing out here in 100 per cent humidity, where you can't touch the ice because it's made from tainted water and you do anyway because you have to, and then regret it shortly afterwards if you know what I mean. Yesterday, we took a train ride which lasted for three weeks, straight into the rush of a night time bazaar. Fuck those dirty old wheelbarrow-come-scooters called tuk tuks you're supposed to think are cute: they're the worst rip-off offenders of all. Today we saw a couple of massive gold Buddhas in temples of dust and reason, and met a nice man who'd visited Newcastle who warned us it was gonna rain shortly and we better watch our blessed white cotton socks. The temples were beautiful; they inspired awe even in this septic sceptic. Charlotte took one photo. I felt it wasn't my place. We don't drink anything out here - except from the elixir of love and sweat in equal proportions, and, no, I'm not going smutty on you. Best bet if you're feeling overwhelmed? Head for the temples where the traffic magically disappears. Earlier, we ate a very fine green curry with garlic and shrimp while the sky behaved like it thought it was in Kansas. Made me feel quite homesick for Seattle, it did. Perhaps I'm writing to you from my mum's house and we never went away? Charlotte eloped with a swarthy Italian man named "Bear Rack Saunders" and left me with nothing but a smile and a few piano scores. I listen to bad continental Hammond versions of "Wind Beneath My Wings" all day and dream of Nintendo 128s. The day will come, I'm sure. Life is a blur of people with broken accents saying "hello", or "allez" if they confuse our nationalities, and heat-smudged roadsides. Today we walked for over a mile in the wrong direction and my shirt changed from green to pure liquid. Damn it. On the train yesterday, Japanese girls giggled at me as I passed and I thought of another time, another country - with tall, goateed Kevin Westenberg in an underground market in Tokyo where we weren't just the only two Westerners present, we were the only two men, and everyone hid their faces behind their hands and giggled as we walked past smiling. We recorded a warped version of "Do Nuts" in a telephone box later on, edited onto CD. I thought if only we could've got Soundgarden to record an a cappella version of "Spoonman" there, we could've had the ultimate competition prize. This letter is old now. I sit in Chiang Mai disappointed because our lovely Thai lady friends in the travel office arranged a massage costing 800 Bart and the damn people never showed. We needed it, too - after trekking across the jungle, fighting off spiders and elephants in equal amounts, and brown water rafting. There was an embarrassing abundance of matchstick tricks shown off by our guide Rocky when we stopped for the night in our quaint, atypical Thailand woodland village. We looked at their way of life and they looked at us - what strange figures we must have seemed!, grimy and bedecked with crap designer logos and backpacks bulging with fake water. I didn't venture past the ones selling their beads: I have enough a problem with being a white man at the best of times. Whatever. I didn't know I could still march that far - or indeed that I wanted to. Thai rice whiskey is nice if you have a nose for these things. I don't. I'm making no sense now. I need to find food. (Now we're in Phuket: well-named, it's what we say all the time to the tuk tuk drivers and hotel ladies who could've flown here direct from New York - smug, supercilious and bloody useless. It's tourist hell here, pointless, and the monsoon weather doesn't make much difference. We run into the sea and laugh at all the sand caught in our underpants. It's like being caught in the middle of a bad BBC documentary about Club Med - or perhaps a rainy day in Bournemouth where the piped music in cafes in chosen specifically to make the elderly ladies feel miserable. Tomorrow we go to "James Bond island". Maybe.) Cheers, ET |
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