Farewell, Chiang Mai

Long ago and far away, a very intelligent and impatient young woman exasperatedly asked me when I planned to stop gathering data and start making decisions. She puzzled me. I had no idea what she meant by the question, because I'd never really thought of life as being anything other than a quest for information. Since then, I've had many opportunities to recall that question, and to consider what it meant to me wherever I happened to be at the

time. I'm sure it would come as no surprise to her that my information habit persists, and I still find it very hard to put a period at the end of any one of my many experiments. It's never easy to admit that further inquiry may not yield any more insight, or any better answers than the ones I have in hand. Sometimes, it takes years to let things go, sometimes less, and it's never easy to call a halt to the investigation, even when it's been obvious for a very long time that all the salient facts are in, and the conclusion inevitable.

If you're reading this, madame mayor, I hope you'll accept my apology for not being the man you hoped would jump in and save you from an unhappy existence. I also hope you actually found the happiness I heard you did. You couldn't have conjured up a nicer man than the one you found that crazy night by the railroad tracks, and you were fortunate to have been one of those who simply stood aside and let my lost ship sail on into the future.

I would have made you even crazier than you already were, and we both know things worked out as they should. You needed a man who could comfort you in your sorrow, not that pretty boy from the evening news, nor a brooding rock and roll refugee from Muscle Shoals like me.

How I got where I am now is an intricate and lengthy fable that I hope to tell some day when I'm in the mood to listen to myself that long. Suffice it to say I'm 12,000 miles from home, and a million light years away from the life I started on December 23, 1946. It's almost irrelevant to say, but the name of the place I'm in is Chiang Mai,Thailand, and the date is Sunday, February 7, 2010. As I write this, it's 4:30 in the afternoon. Where my car is parked, it's 4:30 in the morning, and the Super Bowl starts in about fourteen hours. I'll be watching the game

during brunch on Monday morning while my US friends are sitting down to a late Sunday afternoon beer and snack. In other words, I'm a long way from home, but not more than a few milliseconds away from the global communion of our media culture. We may be separated in space and by linear time measurement, but we're still paddling along in our

accustomed river of electronic data bits as if we could reach across the life raft and shake hands. That my culture would turn out to be so pervasive and powerful is something I hadn't considered when I began this trek around the world. What I thought I'd find after such an arduous hike was a different sort of world than the one I left behind. I think it's fair to say that what I've found is a carnival funhouse mirror version of what I already know.

I didn't come into this part of the world without having done a lot of preparatory research. It's what I do. As one of my friends commented a few months back, it appeared I was trying to live the trip in advance, to rehearse the unknown. He was right of course. We can't do anything in advance, and life has no dress rehearsals, but it doesn't stop us from making plans and telling ourselves stories about what might happen in the future. There are many who believe this is the way things get done, and I will concede there's a possibility we collectively visualize the world to come. Without a dream of coming to Asia and finding something meaningful in Chiang Mai, I'd probably be driving around the US in my van, destined by my choices to grow old and never partake of these alien experiences. At that level, it's certain that my will to change my life and luck propelled me into a future at least partially dependent on personal vision and planning.

What isn't implicit is that the details of my experience are the result of anything I knew, or could have known about the place I was headed, or the intentions I brought to the enterprise. I would never have guessed that it's now the fashion to put sugar instead of chilis on one's Pad Thai, or that 2.4 million Thais have been diagnosed with diabetes while the number of undiagnosed cases is thought to be twice that. I'd never have guessed I'd become a neighborhood curiosity because I walk a few blocks to get where I'm going instead of renting a motorcycle or hopping in a tuk-tuk. I'd heard about, but refused to believe that air quality in this part of the world is stunningly bad, and kills thousands of people every year. That's quite obviously true to anyone who spends any time here. I shoulda listened. No way I can live here.

In three days, I'll have been in Thailand a month, and I've managed to focus my attention on a microcosm of the culture without spending a lot of time and money sampling the tourist attractions. I went to see the tiger farm and the fighting cocks, but I avoided the insult of riding out to take pictures of sullen people with long necks and no country, and I passed on the opportunity to sit down with tribal drug lords and smoke opium with the other back-packing "eco-tourists."In spite of considerable efforts on the part of my fellow travelers and their local enablers, I managed to avoid the girl friend trap, and sidled away from the ever-present pot of gold at the end of all kinds of great real estate deals.

In the end, eco-tourism seems to be about paying loads of guilt money to impose our fantasies on other people's vanishing worlds. We rationalize that we're raising their standard of living while trying to minimize the impact of our crash landing on their forests, mountains and rivers. We fill the jungles with giant SUVs, helicopters and tree-top ropelines. Every mountain trail rings with the Seven Dwarf sea shanties of the young and wealthy out on holiday, and every step of the way is littered with disposable plastic water bottles, cigarette butts and granola bar wrappers. The "primitive" freak show goes on as always, and people with the means to produce drugs to sell to those with too much time on their hands will always make money. Strange women don't love you and if there was a pot of gold behind every shuttered shop up for lease, people would be standing in line to rent them. These things are true no matter where you go, and they're all brutally obvious in the brilliant sunlight of Thailand.

When I first arrived, I went to Cheerful Charlie's Fish and Chips for dinner, and met a man who gave me some free insight into my new home. "How long do you plan to stay?," he asked.

"A month to six weeks," I replied.

"That's perfect. Just enough time to settle in, make a mistake and work your way out of it."

I looked at him quizzically.

"Oh, don't worry," he laughed. "You're in a good place here. Nobody will harm you. But you can never win."

He got up to leave, and I asked him if he'd be around.

"Not after tomorrow," he replied.

"I'm headed back to Africa. Thailand is a vacation for me. I"ve been working with an NGO for sixteen years, andI've spent the last four in Africa. It's so bad there that women actually compliment you on the size of your belly.They figure if you can feed yourself that well, it's a cinch you can feed them. In Thailand, when they rub yourbelly they're just making fun of you."

I've had my belly rubbed in Chiang Mai as much as I care to for a while. I'm packing my bags and heading down to the heart of darkness. I can't tell you how many farangs I've met in CM who tell me they come here to escape the flagrant exploitation and immorality of Pattaya. That's what I want to see now. If I'm going to be in place where I'm considered fair game, I figure it may be more amusing if I can see the game face to face. A fiercely disagreeable

Pattaya dweller who briefly served as an advisor for this trip informed me long ago that the only true window into Thailand was the one he was looking through. Soon, I'll have a chance to see what he meant by that.

I hate to say it, but just about everything he told me so far has turned out to be true.

Miracles of modern medicine

As anyone with a few seasons of House under their belts knows, the auto-immune system is a mixed blessing.

My sensitivity to airborne particulates causes an immune reaction in the lungs that produces inflammation. This inflammation causes the airways to constrict, and the resulting difficulty in breathing subsequently affects the entire body.

On the advice of a trusted friend and physician, I decided to try taking the medicine instead of fleeing Chiang Mai willy-nilly, and am now dosing myself with moderate amounts of Prednisone.

At least the local pharmacist assures me it's Prednisone. It doesn't look like any other form of the medicine I've seen, as it comes in a blue gel cover that she assures me is tropical packaging to help slow down the effects of heat and humidity on the drug inside.

I haven't cut one open yet, although that would be simple enough.

I prefer to leave some things to fate and faith, and drugs generally fall into that category.

The effects have been immediate and dramatic.

All the soreness and stiffness in my joints and muscles has disappeared.

The burning sensation in my lungs is almost gone, and I'm not wheezing nearly as much.

After weeks of walking and massage, I feel normal for the first time.

Shame it can't last.

Ooops! Time for a parade break. Today is the Flower Festival climax, and everybody's in town for the show. The street out front has filled, and I hear drums...

Recent scenes from Chiang Mai

In search of the Grail

PHOTO DOES NOT INCLUDE ANYONE MENTIONED BELOW

In a comment on one of the entries about men who fall in love with Thai women, Meg notes the English have never been good at keeping their wits about them in foreign countries.

At first, I thought that was wrong.

Now that I think about it, I realize it's really very accurate.

It's a question of defining wit, ultimately, and I'm realizing there's a level at which the Empire does show a remarkable failure to grasp reality.

It's clear that my friends here in Chiang Mai are very clever men who seem able to make a living wherever they go. They have a way of finding an angle and exploiting it that's much more sophisticated than any of my coping skills. I wouldn't bet against any of them when there's money on the table, because they usually come out ahead, no matter what the game.

They aren't afraid of power, either. I haven't spoken to a single Brit who isn't fully prepared to go the distance to defend his position. They never assume anyone has the upper hand just because they happen to be in their own country, tending to their own interests.

Such details fail to interest the guys I'm meeting, and I think it's the assumptions that underpinned the former global empire which give them their courage.

I haven't met a one of them who wasn't fundamentally convinced he was standing on property the Crown had conditionally lent back to less-deserving people. These native people are still viewed as child-like, and in need of British guidance when it comes to commerce, science and engineering. That's a potent ego-boosting set of assumptions, and they work well for the expat in Thailand.

However, there's another side to the character of these men that makes them an enigma.

Their pursuit of romance is as persistently pure and unselfconscious as it was in the time of Elinor of Aquitaine. They will do anything for love, and are perfectly content to use trainloads of acumen and negotiating prowess to talk one Thai woman into stepping in and relieving them of their dearly won spoils. They do this serially, in the case of those who've had the time, and the sad example of one mate after another who's been taken to the cleaners hasn't the slightest sobering effect on new arrivals. They all seem to get off the plane with one thing in mind - hooking up with a "good" Thai woman, and settling into a long-term relationship filled with exquisite bliss.

As one man said to me last night, "they do everything so well." He meant it as a compliment to Thai women, of course, but I could see the painful reserve behind his broad smile. He's a two-time loser already, and isn't even thirty-five yet. He's on his second business, and has decided on a course that's pretty much guaranteed to bring him another rousing failure. He's decided to turn his little bar into a girlie place, where attractive young women hang around waiting for someone to show them a good time. He'll get a percentage of each drink they have, and when they leave with their client, he'll get a substantial "bar fine" from the man who's taking away his employee.

"Look at it this way," he said.

"Cassius changed over in October, and he has thirty girls working for him. I dropped in for a beer late last Friday night, and he had only three girls in the bar looking for a date. That means he had 27 girls bar-fined out for the night. That's 27 times 400 baht!"

He had to stop and do some mental calculations.

"That's nearly 11,000 baht - more than my week's drink sales by far."

I asked him if he thought all thirty girls reliably showed up for work every night, and he brushed the unwanted thought aside.

"Doesn't matter really. The fact remains he's raking in the cash and he has no money invested in them. Whatever you get is pure profit."

"How about the police?"

"The police are easy. All they want is 1,000 baht a week for the tea money fund, and an occasional drink. They may need a girl from time to time, but the girls understand that, and it's no skin off me. Besides, if they want to do a clean-up, it never lasts very long, and they mostly go after the lady-boy places. I can just go back to selling beer and hamburgers."

His waitress came over to chat me up a little while he discussed something sotto voce with an associate who'd shown up with a tough-looking cookie a third his age. Just as she did, another woman came in and greeted her. It turns out they're sisters, and landed the position so they could share it. When one doesn't want to work, the other comes in. He's never sober, so they handle all the accounts payable and receivable. The books don't interest him. At the end of each night, they hand him a stack of cash, and he staggers upstairs to sleep it off.

They have a younger sister they're bringing in next year when she's old enough to sell alcohol, they tell me. I look at him watching us out of the corner of his eye, and I realize he's jealous. The ladies move to the back of the bar to settle the day's accounts, and he rejoins me. He's having an affair with the oldest sister, of course, and tells me later he can't wait to get his hands on the youngest one. He's already told big sister he wants a piece of her whenever that's possible.

"I'm hoping they give her to me for my birthday present," he said. "It's on February 14."

"You serious?" I asked.

"Yeah, I know. It's odd, but I really am a Valentine's baby."

I wished him a good night, and promised to drop by for his birthday party.

Men who love Thai women, part three

I spent the evening listening to Dylan's lament about his Thai bar partner, and am in no better position to know what will happen in that drama than when we started.

He's confident he has the bases covered, and that he'll end up being the sole proprietor of the bar, and the police will force her to take the kids and hit the street.

By Thai law, any company set up in the country has to be majority Thai owned, but the company he has is governed by a board of several Thai citizens living here and abroad - not by his new ex-best-friend. If that works, and if the lack of a common law marriage provision is a fact, he may be home free on the legal front. Where he stands on the personal front is anybody's guess. Foreigners have a way of turning up dead all over the country, and almost without exception there's an offended Thai family somewhere just offstage. Seldom do these "suicides" and "accidents" make it to court, and when they do, very little if any punishment gets handed down. You can be executed here for possessing any one of many illegal drugs, but it's rare for anyone to do much hard time for a violent crime against a farang.

That's what they call us.

Farang.

Dylan said after five years with Wilai her family still addressed him as "farang" and never by his actual name. The best story I've heard about the word is that it's from ancient Farsi, and referred to the Frankish people Persian traders encountered in Northern Europe. It's a lifetime honorific in Thailand. Once you are a farang, you always will be one. For example, there's a 76-year-old man living in a small hotel room next door to Dylan's bar whose Thai wife died last year. He lived with her in a village outside Chiang Mai for forty years. He built a house for them, adopted her children and served for years as a volunteer English teacher and football coach at the local secondary school. When she died, he was devastated, but after four years of sitting alone in the house, he decided to meet some new people through an organization specializing in problems of the elderly. At one of their dances, he met a nice expatriate Englishwoman in her sixties, and decided to ask her out to dinner. They went out once, and then she had to leave for a while to take care of settling affairs back in the UK.

Two days after the woman left, his adoptive elder daughter showed up with a policeman and ordered him out of the house. She said he'd defamed the memory of her mother by seeing another woman, and was no longer welcome in the village. She refused to address him as anything but "farang." Not Dad for sure, and certainly not by name.

The policeman told him he had no legal right to occupy the house after his wife's death, and that the family would begin civil proceedings to recover rent for the time he'd spent there since her demise. Also, his pottery wheel, kiln and all other supplies related to his cottage industry were to be left where they lay in the outbuilding, because nothing on the property belonged to him any longer.

He got a lawyer to represent him, and after months of negotiation he ended up with the tools of his trade. Nothing more. In Thailand, only a native-born citizen can own property, and that right can not be handed along to anyone who isn't native born. The house, the land and all the improvements belonged to the daughter, and it was only by her mercy he came away with anything to show for his forty years. He rented a small shed behind the hotel and resumed his pottery business. I'll be very surprised if he lasts much longer. It's a lot of turmoil for an old man to endure, and he doesn't much like city life after all those years in the country. His hotel room is the cheapest, and there's no air-conditioning. I can't imagine what that's going to be like in a few months, but he assures me he's never going to leave Thailand.

He loves the place, and has no intention of going home.

Maybe he'll get lucky and meet a nice woman...

Men who love Thai women, continued

Okay. Heads up here. In the ass-backward world of blogging, this post follows the one below it.

If you haven't read it already, hurry down and do that while we wait.

So my hapless friend, who talks a tough game but is actually a hopeless romantic, is left with egg all over his face and a serious case of hurt feelings by this airing of what he thought were his deepest, darkest secrets in front of a woman he wants to impress. To his credit, he took the offensive right away by confronting his accuser in the presence of her benefactor. Unfortunately, this tactic resulted in alienating his friend, who does after all love the girl and who also has to live with her once Richard is back in England for another year. So the upshot is he's lost a friend, lost an opportunity to romance a woman he finds very attractive and is now in constant danger of being outed over his Thai misadventures once he's safely away and back in England. The only relief he's had in the matter came from the lady bar manager. At my insistence, he went to her and explained his situation as well as he could, and she agreed to join him for dinner.

They had a lovely time, and dinner is all there was to the evening.

Then she pretty much disappeared until he had gone.

Meanwhile, back at the bar things were popping in a another entirely different soap opera. It's a juicy story, and I hate to sell it short, so suffice it to say for now that another Brit who should know better is treading on very thin ice after breaking up with his Thai partner of five years He found out she was keeping another man on the leash for the times he was out of the country on business. It might not have been such an affront, but he discovered the guy was making off with a fair chunk of change from the business he shared with his companion. The fact that he'd fed, clothed and housed her and her children from a previous marriage for all those years also nettled him a bit, and he summarily asked her to leave.

We'll see. Breaking story.

Anyhow, my poor friend with the kid in Isaan shared a cautionary story with me as he packed to leave this morning. Seems he'd gone out last night for one last beer and a gentlemanly farewell to all the bargirls down at the entertainment complex. When he went in one bar with the news he was leaving, the manager told him he'd be missed, especially by Ma, the elder lady who serves as a mother hen for the young girls. She's not the mamasan even. She's like the mamasan emeritus for the place. Turns out she'd decided during the course of this year's visit that she really loved Richard, and had told the bar manager. Naturally, the manager thought it only fair to call her up and tell her Richard was there saying goodbye. When he realized what was going on, Richard beat a hasty retreat, but it was too late. The damage had been done.

When he got back to his guest house, the very proper landlady and her husband were sitting at a table out front, waiting for him. Behind them, he could see the old woman sitting on the ground crying and rocking back and forth. His hostess inquired if he really knew this woman who'd shown up calling his name, and he admitted he did. The old woman leaped to her feet and grabbed him around the neck. She showered him with kisses and began singing a traditional Thai love song while massaging his neck and chest. The landlady and husband looked on without comment. It took him a half hour to extricate himself, but finally he led the woman to the entrance gate, pressed some cash into her hand and promised her he'd be back next year. He locked the gate behind him, and turned to see his hosts smiling. They congratulated him on a job well done, and assured him there was nothing especially odd about the encounter. "She old now," they said, "and she need man to help her. You nice man, and very strong. She pick you."

He was still looking over his shoulder when I last saw him.

Men who love Thai women, and the women who let them

THE PHOTO INCLUDES NO ONE MENTIONED BELOW

HOWEVER, THERE IS A CERTAIN GENERIC RESEMBLANCE...

There's plenty of evidence to support the conclusion that I find it difficult to form close relationships with women. I enjoy them, and prefer their company most of the time, but intimacy is something I try to avoid.

I've done some reading about it, and it appears I suffered a moment of clarity about just how far I could trust my mother early in life. My mom was a classic case of the 1950s housewife who took enough pharmaceuticals to make Dow, Lily and Sandoz into the international cash cows they are today. My dad was distant, even absent, so there wasn't much help from that quarter, and the gramma who moved in to help out was prone to seeing ghosts and other haints around every corner. I'm not sure how she'd be classified according to the DSM IV, but I doubt she'd score many points as a nurturing role model.

Not that anybody in the family wasn't trying to do the right thing. I just don't think they actually had much idea what normal was, and flailed away at living life in the same way all of us do.

We play, learn, grow up, make mistakes, reproduce, work to support our families and wash up on the beach at the end - covered with barnacles and twisted into the shape life gave us. I know there are people who seem to do all this far more gracefully than others, but I haven't met anyone yet who was entirely satisfied with the way things went down.

Sometimes, our disabilities can prove useful if we let them, however, so I encourage myself in the belief that there's a possibility of redemption in almost anything.

I, for example, will not be leaving behind any weeping women or illegitimate children in Thailand. You may think that's not so uncommon, but it's been surprising to me how many men come here and fall prey to the combination of personal fantasy and feminine competence that so universally defines the love affairs that lure and then captivate so many who visit here.

When you're me, a woman who casually offers herself is a red flag and wailing siren, but thousands of willing victims arrive here daily, and fearlessly leap into the deep end of the gene pool. If they're lucky, these guys end up only losing money and then flying back to London or LA with their figurative tails between their legs. Of course there are those hardened mongers who glory in the endless procession of available flesh at discount prices and are able to resist having any human emotions about their encounters, but I suspect those are more exceptional than most men like to confess. I think it's far more common for the foreign male to arrive here with the idea he's going to be able to finally have the sex of his dreams, and totally fail at the endeavor.

Not that you can't have sex all the time if that's what you want. Nothing and no one is here to stop you from doing just that. However, unless you have the heart of a porn star and the desire of Casanova, you'll soon find yourself with a woman who has a few millenia of training in how to occupy a man's total attention, and more time will be spent at the shopping mall than in bed.

Western men tend to like these women a lot more than the ladies they left back home, and for very simple reasons. Asian women don't mind taking care of your ego while you hand them your wallet, and they're extraordinarily good at all the "acts of love" that westerners of both sexes have let slide into disuse. They will cry for you, sing for you, smile at you in the morning, brush your hair, make great noises during sex and never, ever smell bad.

They will also have extended families with a never-ending supply of elderly who need cash infusions for health care, children from previous lovers who left them in the lurch and, often enough, real, live Thai husbands who show up at inopportune moments to shake you down for walking around money. They often turn out to have multiple boy friends in addition to their husband of record, and these can be even more trouble, especially if they happen to be policemen or connected to powerful men in politics or the military. Thai women are very industrious in plying their trade, and appear uninhibited by any of the usual notions about morals and proper relationships that so trouble people living on the opposite side of the world.

This morning I had breakfast with a man who appears to have done as good a job of mastering this sport as anyone. He's been coming to Thailand for a month each year for several years now, and has the scars to show for it. Three years ago, he helped a friend's live-in Thai girl friend move her sister up North to "save" her from her life as a bargirl in Pattaya. In exchange for his substantial monetary contribution, the newly-arrived sister (who turned out to be very "nice" and stunningly attractive) stayed with him for a week of fun and frolic before going on to live with her family in Isaan. Her mom was very ill and dad needed some help around the house, so, as the daughter with no husband nor any steady job, it fell to her to fill the slot. My friend was sorry to see her go, but returned to England in a week or so and put her out of his mind.

When he returned a year later, his friend who lives in Thailand full time asked him over for dinner. Over drinks, he learned he was, at the age of fifty, a father. His friend's girl friend explained to him they hadn't wanted to bother him with the news while he was in England, because they understood he was married and it might cause him trouble in his personal life. However, she and her sister thought he should take responsibility now that he was back, and wanted him to set up a schedule of monthly payments. He would be allowed to meet the child and former lover at a neutral site, but he wasn't allowed to see them at their home in the boonies. They settled on a place near the Laotian border, and he caught an overnight bus to Nong Kha.

When he got there, he spent a little more than one hour with his new son. The mother thanked him for coming, and accepted his gifts. He asked her how old the child was, but she couldn't tell him exactly. She was hazy on the birth date, and brushed him aside when he told her that was outrageous. He knew the date of conception had to fall inside one week of the previous year, and assuming a normal pregnancy, the child should be about three months old. It appeared to be several months older, and didn't seem to have any European features, but his pride won out over good sense, and he soon let his doubts fade into the background. "I was proud to be a dad again," he said. "I didn't want to believe she would lie to me." He went back to England, and sent money. He couldn't send it directly. It always had to go through the sister who had made the initial arrangement.

This year, he brought a lot of stuff with him from England, because the child would now be a toddler and more easily engaged with toys and amusements. He also brought money he'd been setting aside from his business, hoping to build the boy a room of his own in the crowded family place. He also had his cap set for another woman he'd met late the previous year - a lady in her forties who manages a bar in Chiang Mai, and who is as solid as anyone I've met here. He only knew her from observing her at work, but was determined to at least have dinner with her during this year's visit. Without thinking it through very well, he told his expat friend about this woman in the presence of his girl friend. She said nothing at the time, but when he next visited his friend at the bar, he was surprised to discover big sister had told his new friend all about the baby in Isaan, and about what a cad he really was once you got to know him. When he confronted his accuser, she redoubled her assault and demanded more money.

To be continued after I recharge my battery and take a nap ....

Up in smoke

After three weeks' stay in Chiang Mai, it's sadly obvious that I can't stay here much longer.

It's a great city, and I regret I won't have the opportunity to delve a lot deeper. A place this old and complicated is a mystery to outsiders who've lived and worked here for years, so my little sojourn has no chance of backing up any conclusions I might make.

The brutal fact is I can't breath the air.

Within days of arriving, I contracted what I assumed to be a cold, and I used over-the-counter remedies to treat the symptoms so I could function. For a few days I felt better, but strangely enervated. I've been awakening early, and getting out of bed, but the energy to conduct higher-level functions required for decent writing and photography hasn't been present almost the entire time I've been here.

When nine o'clock rolls around, I'm ready for bed, and with rare exceptions I've been asleep before eleven every night. The moaning hookers next door interrupt my rest from time to time, but it's been a very rare night that I haven't slept eight hours or more.

I'm living off pulmonary decongestants, really. I bought my third round in a week this morning, and can already feel the difference as my airways open and some oxygen trickles into the brain. Every day I skip them leads to the same reactive airway symptoms I was warned might reappear if I came to Southeast Asia.

I don't have emphysema, but for a time my doctors thought I did. I smoked pretty heavily for thirty years, and when I quit my lungs were a mess. That was ten years ago, and I've been very fortunate to have a marked recovery of function since. Welcome as it is, that recovery can't make up for such a long period of abuse, and I'm left with working lungs that are now extremely sensitive to environmental irritants.

They tell me it's reactive airway disorder, and that it's manageable.

I just have to stay away from smoke and heavy concentrations of particulates in the air.

In Georgia, I seldom had a problem, even in Atlanta, but here it's a problem that isn't going away until I move away from the cause. Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand are notorious for having some of the world's highest concentrations of airborne particulates. The ancient custom of burning off the fields after rice harvest has collided with a burgeoning population of internal combustion engines and Chinese industrial pollution to create a toxic soup so powerful that several years have seen the area marked by the World Health Organization as a hazard to the health of some travelers.

I happen to be one of those travelers, and I hate to have to admit it.

I'm not sure what my next move will be, but I have to make it pretty soon.

I have a flight booked into Malaysia on February 25, but I don't think I'll last that long.

I'm going to try and change the booking when I get back on the street, and hope to leave within a week. With any luck, the next few days won't be as bad as the last week has been, and I'll have a chance to recuperate. Maybe a few days on the beaches down south will restore my well-being, and I'll be in a better position to make decisions about the future.

As I write this, I'm listening to a man coughing up a lung at his sidewalk table thirty feet away. He's in his thirties, and still assumes he's an immortal. His Thai girl friend is looking at him with concern.

It's inconceivable to me that anyone would have his breakfast in the middle of an Asian traffic jam, but the Europeans who make up most of the clientele here at Phon-non seem happy to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes while surrounded by 100CC motorcycles and fume-belching tuk-tuks. I guess it's that boulevardier lifestyle training.

One more Maurice Chevalier movie when I was a kid, and I might be out there with them.

Cock fighting in Thailand

When I heard about this place, I was very skeptical, but got talked into going in spite of my reservations.

Glad I did. It was an excellent half-day trip.

Thai cock-fighting is very different from the blood sport common to Southeast Asia and much of the rest of the world. Most places have some kind of chicken combat available, but it's usually so distasteful and exploitative that it's illegal.

In Thailand, it's a royal sport with a long history. There are no fights to the death, no steel spurs with sharpened surfaces and no using the animal until it's totally spent.

The average bird fights six to eight bouts in a lifetime, and is retired to reproductive duties when he's about four years old. His fighting life starts at the age of two, and there is a one-year training program before he's put in the ring.

The chickens are kept well all their lives, because they're very expensive to buy and maintain. Even a bird who's not especially successful as a fighter may have great features, making him attractive to collectors and breeders.

Random travel notes for whatever day this is

I know it may look like I'm following Mr. Kurtz off into the deep end from the title, but the fact is things are looking better after two days of lying in bed. My nose is red and sore, and I still sneeze violently at inopportune moments, but I think the virus has done its worst and is moving on.

I'd like to thank my parents for passing along a hardy constitution, and Boots' Pharmacy for having an intelligible selection of over-the-counter meds for a white guy gone wrong.

They're up on Thapae Road near the gate, and were a godsend after my adventures among the drug stores of Loi Kroh Road.

At one of those, an eager young pharmacist pretty much refused to sell me aspirin, because as she saw it that drug was for headaches, not colds. I asked for a mucolytic agent, and she offered me some ginger and honey cough drops.

Viagra, xanax and fancy condoms everywhere, but nothing for a rhinovirus.

At the moment, it's evening, and a pleasant breeze is blowing through the open front of Phon-non Restaurant, bringing with it the aroma that haunts all city centers world-wide: internal combustion engine by-products.

Above my head a large flat screen is showing the evening news, which is in French at the moment. The French have at least two news channels operating in this part of the world, one in the mother tongue and the other in English. If you know the general look and feel of the BBC, they're very much in that mold, but less charismatic. (For those not sporting their irony detectors, now would be a good time to switch on.) The lighting is dim, and very warm, making it difficult to see any details in the many autographed photos of Elvis that decorate the walls. It's okay with me. I've seen a million pictures of The King, and the details no longer interest me. Sitting at the table next to me, a man is somehow managing to read a fat paperback while eating a big plate of spaghetti and drinking a Coke on ice.

The waitress, who is terribly sweet and quite cute in spite of her totally dominant and gorgeous younger sister, has been having a hard time understanding my warped appetite these past two days, and expressed something approaching open disapproval of my decision to drink beer on ice instead of eating a proper dinner tonight. I understand, and love her in spite of herself. I even correct her atrocious arithmetic every time she brings my bill and shortchanges herself by half yet again. Her sister is beautiful, young, married to the owner and barely lifts a carefully manicured finger all day, while my waitress toils like Cinderella to make it all possible.

She may not have the brains or the looks, but she has the heart, and I'm daily becoming more attracted to that quality. Good on her. Still, I'm just having the beer, and she'll have to get used to me. When I move back, it will be to this neighborhood, and I plan to sit at this table many more times before the sun goes down forever.

Baby hookers for breakfast

This morning on the way out my door for breakfast, two very young Thai girls stopped me and asked if I wanted some.

That didn't register right away, so I stared at them for a moment, and the short one asked again.

Only then did the proposition register , and I politely informed her I wasn't interested.

She did a cute little moue of disappointment, and quickly recovered.

"We see you any time," she said.

"We live next door to you now."

I asked how long they planned to stay and she replied they'd be around as long as they could - maybe a month.

Just what I need. Amateur Thai hookers for neighbors.

I knew the noise level had been picking up for the last couple of days, but had no idea my seedy guest house had transitioned into an active brothel. Keep in mind that I'm staying on the fourth floor of this building. Not exactly street-level digs.

When I returned from breakfast, two young Thai guys were standing outside the girls' door, tapping lightly. The only response they got was the thudding of moving furniture, a man laughing and a delighted feminine shriek. They looked at me and leered. We shared a chuckle.

I went in my room and they sat down on the concrete bench which has become the official waiting area, I suppose. Turned on the AC and the television in preparation for a total chillout session. I didn't wake up until noon, and when I did there was no more action next door.

I guess the speed wore off and they ran out of customers.

Last night the elephant handlers came down Loi Kroh to Good Friends, and I tried an experiment. I bought a bag of the sugar cane treats

and, standing among several people, offered him one. He took it instantly, and reached for the entire bag in my other hand. Obviously, he had taken in the entire scene, and connected the dots between what I offered and what I had in stock.

I took another piece and held it behind my back in my open hand, turned so he couldn't see my face, but had direct access to the cane.

Nothing.

I moved to his right side, and then his left. Same thing.

I placed myself squarely in front of him, not two feet away. Nothing.

I pivoted to bring myself back into face-to-face contact, and he immediately took the stick which had been freely available the entire time, and then snuffled around the pocket where I'd hidden the remainder.

I tried this sequence twice with the same result.

Ate at the Palm Beer Garden last night, and had schweinehaxen with potatos and sauerkraut. Delicious and obscenely huge. I made yesterday a work-free area, so I didn't have the camera along to record the feast. I'm going back to get a picture later. That much food on one plate deserves to be recorded for posterity. A true Bourdain moment.