Pattaya

Hoping to escape the overwhelming hustle of Bangkok, my Dad and I decided to take an overnight trip to Pattaya, a coastal city that sits on the beach about two hours outside of Bangkok.  We were picked up from our guesthouse at 7 am Monday morning (7pm Sunday in Boston aka missing the end of that Pats game) and started our trip to Pattaya.  Let me start off by saying that driving through downtown Bangkok during rush hours is like being in a Ruff Ryders video from the late nineties.  There is more traffic than you can imagine and half the drivers are on motorcycles or some type of motorbike.

As we drove out of the city on a highway that felt more like a rollercoaster, I kept hoping that at some point the that smog that flooded the air would let up.  I imagined that as we got away from the city the skies would clear.  This was not the case.  As I looked off into the distance as we approached Pattaya, my eyes were met with the same cloudy, grey, fog (smog) in the distance, covering the hotels that littered the shoreline.

We checked into our hotel and quickly made our way to the beach (after checking the Pats score at a local internet café).  I wanted to get as much beach time as possible because this would be our only beach travel for my entire trip.  As we made the five-minute walk down to the beach, the street scene was very similar to that of Bangkok. Pattaya is an over populated city, jam packed with restaurants, food venders, markets; massage parlors, prostitutes, and 7-11s.  This was not quite the escape I had hoped for, but I was excited to at least be on a beach.

The first thing I did on the beach was rent a jet ski.  I took one out into the water and raced along the shoreline.  The waterfront area of Pattaya looks something like Miami Beach.  There are hotels everywhere, people scattered across the beach, palm trees, you name it.  Being out on the water allows you to really see the landscape of Pattaya.  There are large mountains to one side of the beach area, but you can barely see them through the smog.  What should look green is grey.  There are skyscraping hotels all along the beach, which looks amazing from a certain perspective, but I couldn’t help myself trying to imagine what the city looked like before it was so developed.

After my ride and lying on the beach for a few hours, my dad and I walked along the beach in search of food and searching for what else Pattaya had to offer (besides water fun).  We found a local noodle vendor who had his business built on his motorcycle.  I don’t know what the legal food vendor’s rules are in Pattaya, but in the middle of preparing our noodles he said something about the police, and drove off before circling back to give us our dishes a few minutes later.  With our food craving satisfied we continued walking along the shore to explore more of Pattaya.

What we found was sex.  And a lot of it.  The main attraction for Pattaya, besides the beach (and probably more so) is sex.  Thai girls and sex.  It was very overwhelming.  You see a lot of prostitutes in Bangkok, a lot of young Thai women with creepy looking, old white men, but there’s also so much more to the city.  In Pattaya it’s literally everywhere and it’s hard to appreciate anything else the city has to offer.  As you walk along the street closest to the beach all you see is white men with young Thai women - women that a large percentage of I would guess are under the age of 18.  There is a section of Pattaya called “The Walking Street”.  The walking street is a section toward the end of the beach where no cars are allowed to travel.  There is nothing but go-go bars, seafood restaurants, massage parlors, and strip clubs on this street.  My dad and I first walked down it during the day so it was relatively empty, but I wanted to see what it looked like all lit up at night.

As we left the walking street and headed back to our hotel I could not stop thinking about the sex trade in Pattaya or in Thailand for that matter.  It seemed like every man I saw walking down the street in Pattaya either had a young Thai woman with him, or was looking for one.  These guys disgusted me.  I don’t want to be too judgmental here, I can only speak from my perspective, but it really messed with me.  It seemed like what was once a beautiful place was now a haven for white men to come and exploit the poor, young Thai women that are forced into selling themselves for money.  Maybe I don’t understand the culture of Thailand well enough or the world for that matter, but what I saw definitely upset me.  I was feeling depressed and overwhelmed as we walked along the beach so we decided to sit down on the beach for a little while before heading back to our room.  The capper came as we were walking along the beach looking for a spot to sit. 

Under a palm tree on the beach were two Thai women that smiled at us and motioned us to come over to them.  One was much older than the other, but I don’t think they were related because they did not look I alike.  The older one could speak decent English and while she did say it flat out, wanted to sell us the “services” of this young Thai girl.  She said that this young girl, Nadia, wanted to “spend time with us”.  We spoke with the two women for a while to get an understanding of how these situations, agreements, relationships, whatever you want to call them work.  We had no intentions of hiring this young woman, but through our conversation I’m sure it seemed as if we did.  When we asked how the payment works (purely of curiosity in hoping to understand this system in Thailand as suspicious as that may seem) the older woman told Nadia to go with us.  Nadia, this sweet, beautiful young Thai girl picked up her belongings and was ready to go with us and I’m sure do whatever we asked of her.  At this point my dad and I had to tell them that we were not interested and we ended the interaction to the disappointment of Nadia and the older woman.  At this point I had about had it with Pattaya.  I sat on the beach feeling so bad for these young women and angry with the men who travel here just to exploit them.

On the beach there are vendors (mostly women) that approach you every other minute selling food and crafts.  Earlier in the day I saw them as a nuisance.  After the overwhelming amount of sex selling I saw in Pattaya, I was happy to see these women on the beach.  In an effort to support their work instead of sex workers I started buying up little crafts like a mad man.  Stuff that they probably didn’t even make, low quality bracelets, I didn’t care.  Anything that supported these women who were not selling themselves I was in favor of.  I didn’t even care to bargain with them.  At one point a woman who was selling bracelets, necklaces, and hats approached me.  I looked at her stuff and bought a small yellow bracelet that she said she had made herself.  We talked for a while on the beach.  She didn’t really speak English, but her spirit lifted me.  She was charming, funny, and had a positive attitude – not that sex workers don’t have a positive attitude, it just felt more real.  She tied the bracelet around my wrist and was on her way.

My dad and I went back to our hotel unsure if we were going to go out that night.  After a nice dinner near our hotel (and another noodle bowl for desert) we decided we would go back to the Walking Street to see if the scene was any different at night.  We took a local bus and made our way along the beach again.  The beach was more vibrant at night.  Pattaya had become more alive.  There was still a lot of sex being thrown at you, but the city seemed to be more alive at night.  There were more young people out that didn’t all seem like they were in search of cheap prostitutes.  We went back down the Walking Street to find it lit up like Time Square.  Again, the main attraction was still sex shows, go-go bars, etc. but it felt better than it did during the day.  There was young kids break dancing in the street.  There was live music everywhere.  Including a Thai band doing a cover to “Its going down” by Young Joc that was laughable, but I appreciated their energy.  In the end I was glad we went back to the walking street.  We even sat at a go-go bar that was showing a replay of the Pats game and had a few drinks.  As much as I don’t approve of the sex trade stuff, the go-go bars seemed slightly less exploitive to me, and there was no denying that the women working there were gorgeous.

Pattaya was definitely not what I had expected, but in the end I was glad we saw it.  It was indeed just as much a part of Thailand as anywhere else.  Having said that, I am very much looking forward to leaving the Bangkok area.  As I write this I am traveling on a train to Chang Mai (a city in the north of Thailand).  It’s been almost 14 hours on the train and I have yet to see one skyscraper.  This area of Thailand should prove refreshing having seen what life in Bangkok is like.  From go-go bars to rural jungles, the adventure continues.

-Sam

P.S. I just have to get this off my chest about the Pats game.  I have a serious problem with Bill Belichick’s fashion choices during the playoffs.  In 2007 when we went 18-0 he wore his patented grey hoodie every game, then for the Super Bowl he wore a bright red sweatshirt.  What the hell?  Red is the color of desperation, Bill.  Then this year I don’t remember him wearing the hoodie at all this season, then he busts it out for the game against the Jets and we lose.  How about a little consistency like the good old days.  That’s all.  Go Packers or Bears!

A word or two about Pattaya

A word or two about Pattaya, Thailand - Puerto Vallarta on steroids with sex, Las Vegas with sex, Miami Beach with sex, Acapulco with sex, and far more neon, and transvestites, and gay guys, and outdoor bars, and weird old white guys wandering around, and huge crowds, and more sex.  Of course, you needn’t go there, and frankly don’t want to, unless you’re looking for sex, or for another perspective on that which is authentically Thailand, which Pattaya clearly is, whether you like it or not.  Being there with Sam, of course, changed everything, and we both struggled hard with our emotions and our judgments.  There is something very sad about Pattaya, but who are we to judge we say, something disgusting about Pattaya, but who are we to judge.  Pattaya is a modern Sodom and Gomorra, but then why expect the passage of a mere 3,000 years to necessarily wipe out something some humans obviously quintessentially are, and want … whether I like it or not.  Hey, if it’s good enough for McDonalds, where the Thai statue of Ronald bows ever so slightly in respect for the passerby, his hands in prayer at his chest, good enough for 7/11, good enough for KFC, good enough for Starbucks, and Auntie Annie’s pretzels (not quite the Bretzel Koenig of Zurich, but good), then who am I to judge.  You don’t like it, don’t do it.

What was actually most fascinating about Pattaya was watching Sam struggle with and experience of his own attitudes and judgments, his repulsion, his compassionate heart.  It reminded me in a pale way of the shock I felt when encountering Lawton Oklahoma as a young soldier stationed at Fort Sill, of my New Yorker’s naiveté about life outside the Big Apple center of the universe, and my shock in discovering the world as it was, whether I liked it or not.  

Two Pattaya vignettes and then no more: one of Sam uncovering his respect for the tribal (?) women walking up and down the beach selling trinkets (which I think were made in India) and how he wanted to support them because they were not sex-workers and bought more bracelets than he needed or wanted, and even wore a simple woven bracelet the woman said she made herself, and two, of my conversation with an older … and totally gorgeous … sex worker. 

Whereas most of the young sex workers in Thailand are just flirtatious, over obvious, and undiscriminating, calling out to me, “Hello, grandpa, I want to go out with you,” this woman saw me staring at her and said quietly, in rather good English, “Your son is very handsome.”  Naturally, I walked over to chat with her.  “Are you having a good time,” I asked.  “Not so much,” she said.  “Me neither,” I told her.  “You see,” she said, “that’s my job.”  And although it wasn’t even a bit tempting, I definitely did “like” her, wanted to know more about her, and found her personally appealing … which is what I think the Thai sex workers are really selling, not just the sex, but the notion they will somehow find you desirable, that they will be kind to you, that they will not exploit you as much as escort and accompany you, that they will give you what you think you want, and then give you something you didn’t even know you wanted, the comfort of another lost and lonely soul.  Which is when I smiled at the woman and said quietly, “No thank you.”  And she smiled back at me and said, “Have a good night.” 

-B

In search of run: Thailand edition Part 2

As we did each day during our stay in Bangkok, my dad and I would pick a destination as a starting point within the city, and explore from there.  Today our destination was to take the air tram to its last stop across the river and walk back towards downtown Bangkok.  Our explorations led us into Chinatown where we discovered my favorite food so far on the trip.  I can’t remember what its called, but essentially it’s a food stand that sells noodle dishes.  You pick the type of noodles and meat you want, they boil them, add green vegetables, spiced broth, and serve it to you hot.  It’s a simple, fresh, and delicious dish.  One bowl cost 30 baht or 1 US dollar.

After we finished our meal we continued through Chinatown, went back for another bowl of noodles five minutes later, and then we were really on our way.  As we walked around town we came to an area that looked like the courtyard of an apartment.  However, the area in the middle of what looked like small apartments was a full-length basketball court.  There were a couple of young men standing near the far hoop, but neither one had a basketball.  We decided to go inside and check it out.

I stuck up a conversation with one of the guys near the hoop.  He was a tall, skinny, and wearing a basketball uniform that said “Southern Church” on the front.  He told me that the buildings surrounding the court were part of a Christian school he belonged to.  He told me that his team was having practice soon, and that they might play a full court game later.  We talked about the NBA.  I told him my favorite team was the Celtics.  He told me his favorite player was Dwight Howard.  Shortly after I started talking to him a couple more students arrived at the court, one of who had a basketball with them.  I started shooting around with the players on the team.

I shot around with my new basketball friends for about half an hour before the “coach” showed up.  Out from the stands (that surrounded one side of the court) I heard someone say, “Can you dunk!?”  A short man wearing a blue jersey approached me.  I told him yes.  “I would very much like to see that” he said.  I threw down a two handed jam (did I mention I was wearing flip flops today?), to which he replied, “very good.”  He stepped onto the court and the team (13 players aged 18-28) huddled around him.  He introduced himself to me in front of the team.  “My name is Kim, what’s your name?”  I told him Sam and I asked if he was the coach.  With a bit of sarcasm in his voice he said, “Yes, I am sort of the coach.”  He said something in Thai and the team laughed.  Kim was a very animated guy if you can’t tell already.  He kind of reminded me of the MC (or whatever you’d call him) from the And 1 mixtape tour, the guy who screams after every play.  Most of the things he said, or yelled rather, got a laugh out of the team.  He explained to me that we were at a Christian school.  That he was Christian and the members of the team were not. He told me that he was teaching the power of god, or the gifts of god (I forget how he phrased it) through basketball.  He said that the team was going to practice and play a game later.  I asked if I could practice with them to which he said with surprise, “You want to practice with us?”  I told him I loved to play basketball and that it would be a lot of fun to practice with his team.  He said I was welcome to join them.  We took a moment to stand together and pray, and practice was under way.  Side notes:  Kim was wearing a #4 jersey that said “Jesus loves you” on the back, and there was one guy, Bob I think his name was that was wearing a green and gold #7 Al Jefferson Celtics jersey, both were pretty awesome.

I practiced with the Southern church team for about two hours.  We ran passing drills, shooting drill, rebounding drills you name it.  I can’t remember the last time I participated in a basketball practice.  It must have been college.  It was a lot of fun.  While the drills were very focused, the overall atmosphere of the practice was relaxed.  If a player made a mistake he was corrected but not overly criticized.  Everyone wanted everyone else to succeed.  There was a lot of laughing and joking around.  If a player missed a shot he had to do push ups, and when some of the players who were not so good made a shot, it was a celebration.  As I mentioned I had been wearing flip-flops this entire time.  When it came time to do the three-man weave, I ditched the flip-flops and went bare foot.  The surface of the court was concrete, but it was smooth, and the only set backs I suffered were sore, dirty feet.

At the end of the practice we split up into two teams of five, and one team of four.  We played some version of rocks, paper, scissors to decide teams.  I didn’t really understand it, you had to throw either a fist, two, or five fingers, all I know is I was on team three and we had to sit out the first game.  Each game was five on five, full court, to two by ones.  The first team to score two baskets stayed on the court.  One player from the sitting team was given a whistle and was the referee for the game on the court.  When my team got on we only had four players, so Kim joined our team.  Kim was ten times more animated as a player than as a coach.  Every time he drove to the basket and barely even got touched, he would scream in Thai, I’m assuming calling a foul.  He had a lot of energy and was a pretty good player.  Kim, myself, and the rest of our team won at least seven or eight games before we lost.

The practice started at 5:30 and it was now 7:00.  We were playing under the lights.  My dad had been watching in the stands the whole time, the misquotes were out, and as much as I know he enjoyed watching this interaction, he was ready to go.  After my team lost I told the team I had to leave.  I gathered everyone together for a picture and told them that it was a great experience playing basketball with them.  I thanked them for inviting me to play and that I hoped to play again with them in the future.  They told me next time I should bring shoes.

In regards to basketball ability, the players on the team were great shooters.  All of the players could knock down open shots from all over the court.  They were slightly less skilled in other areas.  They could definitely use more practice working on their passing and dribbling.  In the end, I had a lot of fun playing basketball with the Southern Church team and I think they enjoyed my presence as well.  Again, I want to thank Kim and his players for allowing me to practice with them.  It was truly an experience I will never forget.  I walked back to our guesthouse with my feet covered in dirt, throbbing in pain, and a big smile on my face.

-Sam

Basketball in Bangkok

We spend our last day in Bangkok wandering aimlessly, a perfectly lovely thing to do.  We take the train to the other side of the river and walk around until we get back to the river, which we re-cross on a ferry that serves the locals and costs six cents.  We have a drink at a riverside bar and hang out for a while with half a dozen very animated Thai men focused on three very young puppies playing.  We accidently find ourselves in Chinatown.  We eat spectacular Thai food in a restaurant where we point to the type of noodles, meats, and vegetables we want and watch as they are thrown in a vat of boiling water before being brought to our table by a waiter who guides us in the spicing of our dishes.  We order refills.  We walk down a street on a whim and find a basketball court where a dozen guys on a school team and their coach are preparing to run a practice.  Sam asks to joins them in his flip flops.  His participation is focused, egoless, and earnest.  While far and away the biggest and most experienced player on the court, he participates in the drills with an unselfconsciously hard working, good spirited, discipline that, to my eyes, is exemplary.  The other players are quickly and obviously comfortable with him and Sam is clearly enjoying himself running in these most rudimentary drills; laughing, smiling, encouraging, pointing to where the player should go.  They run the drills for an hour, then play full court five on five, Sam running the court now barefooted, never tiring, in on every play, not bullying, not dominating, just totally engaged and playing with his new mates.  It grows dark.  The lights go on on the court.  The mosquitoes come out.  The girls watching the game buy bottles of water they share with Sam and me.  The game continues for at least two hours, guys laughing and sweating, and just not wanting to stop.  At the end, when I pull Sam away or we’d still be there, there are high fives all around, email and facebook addresses exchanged, and a group photo taken which Sam sends to his new buddies. Then again we hit the streets of Bangkok at night.  We eat a crepe-like thing, made at a portable gas fed food stand by a beautiful girl who can’t be eleven years old, with an egg scrabbled in it as it is frying and then sweetened.  It tastes like really good French toast.  Really good.  We eat a crazy kind of curled and sweetened milk custard.  Not so good.  We take the tram back to Nana station and our hostel where I get a haircut and shave and Sam another foot massage. Later that night Sam tells me how much he enjoyed himself playing basketball in Bangkok.  He tells me the next day on the beach in Pattaya how much he enjoyed playing basketball in Bangkok.  Later that night he even says maybe he’ll come back early from Laos so he can again play ball with the guys in Bangkok. 

-B

Ride with us

Ride with us on the Saturday morning standing room only Bangkok air tram to the last stop and then just follow the tidal wave of people to the renowned “weekend market.”  Wander around – this is not an exaggeration – the five thousand stalls and shops, most of which are busy (!) selling things like shirts, dried flowers, handbags, “big eyes,” and, of course, food.  Succumb to the food sellers all rubbing their noses with their hands, handling the food and the paper money they get from 100s of other people rubbing their noses with their hands, eating things you wouldn’t eat stateside on a bet (hey, the food is hot and the bugs are dead, right?) – Thai sausages, chicken with Thai spicing, frozen bananas covered with chocolate and crushed nuts, pork and noodles in a delicious broth, mango sticky rice, crazy hard boiled eggs with red and green things on them.  Enjoy Sam finding a basketball game with very polite 15 year old Thai girls, fighting off the cutest sex workers, getting legit foot massages together (as he said, “cross that off the bucket list”), one hour’s worth for $7, without a hint of going higher than our ankles.

Ah, breathe in that fine city smog and the exhaust fumes from a million motorcycles, buses, vans, cars, tuk-tuks … is it any wonder that so many Thai’s wear masks.  Listen to that American soft rock music, some of which comes out of the omnipresent loud speakers on every street corner, set up to blast out the king’s song or national anthem twice daily, a moment when the entire Thai nation stands up and stops totally still, frozen in the street and on the stairs to the train station in respect to the king (and not a bad melody either, the king being a jazz musician/composer). Watch 1000s – now remember these are not exaggerations – 1000s of Thai kids from ages 6 to 16 riding around the central park of Bangkok on rented bicycles with a kind of 1950s innocence and joy … two kids to a bike minimum.

It is amazing to be spending this kind of time in continuous proximity to my son, something I don’t think we’ve done together since before he started day school twenty years ago, or on family vacations, the last one of those a decade ago.  Competing with him for my share of computer time!  Just being with him making small talk and tall talk.  Not quite the trip I’d pictured, but apparently the one I’m on, and loving.  Even finding the American national football league divisional semi final games on streaming video on the computer, in Thailand, rooted to our culture, familiar and current, we’re talking beer and pretzels here folks.  And in all of this at least one man not quite so alone with himself, not quite so focused on the familiar explorations of his interior space, immensely and frequently conscious of his gratitude and good fortune, breathing away the negative thoughts that serve no useful purpose, the demons they supplanted long dead, the tracks they ran on old and tired, the new tracks so much quieter, and smoother, not to mention more beautiful.  And besides all that, I can spend time on line from half the world away arguing with people about American politics, and about what grassroots looks like and means.  Can’t be better than that can it?  We’ve been here so long an American couple asked us for directions to a bar (in our neighborhood admittedly) and we knew right where it was. And besides, you cannot imagine the delicious smells wafting up to our old wooden hostel room from the street food vendor in the alley.  Welcome to Bangkok.

-B