Thailand Part 4: Only Slightly Gay

Welcome to part 4 of my Thailand adventure. If you missed the previous three parts, start here. If you're all caught up, enjoy:

Day 4: Chiang Mai

By the time we arrived in Chiang Mai at 6:30 the next morning, I was exhausted. We stood in the cold morning air while I complained about the utter lack of comfort I had just experienced. We were promised a ride to our guest house by the travel agency, but we waited and watched as our entire bus party found transportation to whisk them away to their lodging. Eventually our ride came when enough curses had escaped my mouth.

The guest house, S. K. House, was pleasingly decorated with traditional Thai paintings and sculptures, but at the moment I was more interested in my bed. Thankfully, we managed to get a room with two of them. It didn’t take long for me to pass out and get some real sleep.

When I woke up, K. and I went out for lunch and to explore the town. Many towns in Thailand have an old part, called old town, and a new part, called new town. We happened to be situated in the old town of Chiang Mai, so there was plenty of culture around us; temples, a moat, and the old city walls. We checked it all out, taking our time to relax in temples and talking to travel agents to compare prices on various adventures available around the area. One of those travel agents, named Anh, was particularly friendly. We’ll return to him in a little bit.

Returning to the guest house, we decided to take a little swim in the pool. The sun was only hitting a small corner of the pool and the high altitude air was chilly in the shade. I slipped into the freezing water, yipping like a puppy, while K. sensibly sat on the edge with a book and her iPod. After a few laps, I was done with the cold and left to go take a long, hot shower.

Later, we hit the town again to get some food. Walking around afterwards, we passed a tailor’s shop. It had to be one of millions in Thailand, but the thing that caught my eye was a mannequin outside that was wearing a thick jacket that looked a lot like my style. I popped inside to inquire about the jacket, but one thing led to another and I was suddenly getting measured for a new winter coat. My favorite coat had been stolen from me several years back, so I saw this as an opportunity to get it replaced for cheap.

We returned to Anh’s travel agency as dark was setting in and engaged him about an ATV riding excursion that K. had gotten excited about. Chiang Mai is known as the adventure tourism capital of Thailand, so there were plenty of opportunities to get out and have fun. K. had never been ATV riding before and Anh was very good at explaining to us the differences between the various options we had. Most of the other travel agents had only a basic grasp of English, but we were able to have a nice conversation with Anh and we became fast friends.

Maybe a little too fast. Once we had decided on the best ATV trip for us, Anh decided to throw in a little bit extra. “You come back from ATV riding, I get you ladyboy massage,” he said. Wait. Hold up. Did I just hear that? Before I could register it completely, Anh had moved on to another subject, as if he had just dropped an embarrassingly bad joke.

Full disclosure: In Thailand, a ladyboy is a male-to-female transsexual. In my opinion, due to the stereotypical effeminate Asian male population, ladyboys are typically more feminine-looking than their Caucasian or black counterparts. They are also more socially accepted there, referred to as Thailand’s third gender. Romantically and physically, I am attracted to women; masculinity is a total turn-off for me. That being said, a pre-op ladyboy is actually a bit of a sexual curiosity for me; the caveat being that she has to be absolutely feminine in every way (frame, face, mannerisms) except, of course, for the penis.

We talked about ATV riding some more before my curiosity got the better of me. “So, about that ladyboy massage,” I said during a break in the action. Anh sidestepped the mention by revealing to us that he was an organizer of ladyboy beauty pageants there in Chiang Mai, so he happened to know a lot of beautiful ladyboys who looks just like girls. He told us about how they develop dementia over time due to all of the hormone treatment they undergo. He told us about how their genitals stop working (sexually) and how their voices get all weird.

Finally, Anh turned his attention to my curiosity. He asked me if I was gay. “No, I’m not.” He admitted to being “20% gay,” but that didn’t change my answer. “Are you sure you’re not gay?” he asked again. I hadn’t turned gay in the last minute, so my answer was still “no.” I explained that I liked the concept of someone who was wholly female in every way, except for the genitals. I admitted that I didn’t really think about what I would do with a ladyboy if I met one. Anh asked me if I would like to make love to one and my face wrinkled up.

“I’m just fascinated by the idea, really,” I said. “I realize that what I have in mind might not be wholly possible. I accept that it is totally fantasy. I’m still quite curious, though. I wouldn’t mind exploring.”

I knew that the probability that Anh knew a ladyboy that matched my fantasy was low, but it was still higher than my chances of just finding one by hitting up the bars. After all, he dealt with ladyboys who knew how to look legitimately feminine enough to win beauty contests. When I asked once more about the massage, he relented and told me to meet him the following evening.

Saying our goodbyes, K. and I decided to explore the town and grab a beer. Walking out of old town through the old front gateway, we eventually found ourselves walking along Chiang Mai’s central strip of bars and nightlife. It was still early, so waitresses from all points on the sliding scale of attractiveness crowded around the entrances, chatting amongst themselves, paying no attention to the passers-by. We killed a little time browsing through some shops before finally settling on a bar near the end of the strip.

Each table at the bar had a Connect Four game, so we played as we sipped our beers and conversed. As coincidence would have it, there was a ladyboy working at the bar. She was definitely on the high end of the attractiveness scale, more so than many born-females, but the more I looked, the more my attraction was replaced by mere curiosity. When she spoke, she croaked. When she laughed, it was a cackle. The way she stood was masculine. The way she played pool against one of the customers was very competitive. I became aware that I was chasing an elusive specter, but I still looked forward to the following evening.

We finished the day by exploring Chiang Mai’s expansive night bazaar, which was not quite as raw as we had been hoping for. We had expected rows of temporary stalls, dim lighting and rowdy crowds. It was actually held in a permanent structure with solid walls, bright lights, a performance stage, and a food court. We would have to wait for the real authentic market culture. As we walked back to our guest house through tight, dark alleys, we talked about travel safety and literature.

Update: The Process-Supported Life

A week ago, I posted a blog entry telling about how I was going to change my life by going to bed and waking up at responsible times, along with making daily trips to the gym. This here entry is where I tell you how I've been doing for the last week, and hopefully make some predictions for the next week.

Well, I have only one word for the experiment so far:

Failure.

The night that I started it, I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me. I spent the night tossing and turning as thoughts and ideas tore up my brain. I sat up a few times just to jot them down and get them out of my head, but they would not stop. I didn't fall asleep until about 6am. As a result, I did not wake up until much later than I had hoped, thus preventing me from going to the gym because I had other things scheduled that day. Going to bed on the second night was difficult because of my severely truncated waking schedule and the whole thing started to fall apart.

Fast forward to tonight, Sunday, and I have logged a total of two workouts in the past week with only one day where I actually managed to sleep before 1am. Waking up at 9? Forget about it. I did wake up quite early this morning, 7:30, but that had more to do with the 6 slices of pizza and 4 beers I had the night before.

This experiment is laughing at me quite heartily. On the mornings when I have woken up to my alarm, I have been completely unphased by it. I hit snooze and disappear for another hour. When there is no real need to get up, I seem to have no discipline to needlessly make myself suffer. So, with a week passed and absolutely no progress made, let's look at the next week to see if anything can be done differently.

A friend suggested that I keep a glass of water near the bed and to drink it entirely as soon as I wake up. I'm going to attempt that tomorrow morning. No promises.

There are two main situational reasons why my schedule has been a failure. The first is that it is really fucking cold in my apartment. This makes it hard for me to fall asleep and even more difficult for me to wake up. I have remedied this by adding a flannel sheet to my bed, which seems to promote heat so much better than smooth cotton. The second reason is that I have been working on a very large project every day. It's fun and it takes up a lot of my thoughts and attention. It is the reason I can't fall asleep even when I am comfortable - I am too busy thinking of what I want to accomplish and how. I honestly have no solution to this "problem" because, honestly, I don't want to stop thinking about it. I like the fact that I am so motivated to work on it; to the point where I don't care if it sabotages my little experiment. As long as I keep working at it, I am happy.

The cold is also what has been keeping me away from the gym. Now I heard via email that there has been some structural damage to the men's locker rooms, which creates another excuse for me not to go in (at least for the next couple days). I don't have any solution to the cold except to wait it out, but that sort of defeats the purpose of doing this now. I guess I'm going to have to get over it, huh?

We'll find out in a week if I am able to grow some balls or not.

Thailand Part 3: Cold But Clean Feet

Welcome to part 3 of my Thailand adventure. If you missed the previous two parts, start here. If you're all caught up, enjoy:

Day 3: Bangkok

After another breakfast in the nearby outdoor market, K. and I checked out of the hotel. Since we knew that we would be coming back to Bangkok for New Year’s, we figured that our stay there had been fairly pleasant and so decided to book another room for our return. K. offered to make the reservation while I sat outside and played around on my phone, which was fine with me. The reason I mention this is not immediately apparent, but it will be a few parts later, so pay attention.

Leaving our bags at the hotel, we decided to walk down Silom Road toward the State Tower. At about this time, I was thinking about all of the food I would probably be craving at the end of this trip. Donuts, I decided, would be high on the list of my cravings, despite the fact that I never ate them regularly back home. I relayed this thought to K., for idle conversation.

Our first stop was a Hindu temple that was beautifully colored and decorated with detailed carvings. A chant played in loops on the temple’s speaker system, but it seemed to fade into the background as I took in the otherwise serene atmosphere. The day was hot and the shade was welcoming, so we sat down and watched everyone praying.

We started back along our route and it wasn’t long before we ran into… drum roll… a donut shop. It was a fancy one, too. The donut I bought had all sorts of chocolate going on and it was soft and melty and crummy all at the same time. We laughed about the coincidence of running into the shop after I had figured that we wouldn’t see one for the entire length of our trip, but I guess it wasn’t such a stretch considering they also had McDonalds and KFC over there. Speaking from the vantage point of almost two months later, I haven’t craved a donut since.

We reached the State Tower, known as both the second tallest building in Thailand and the location of a rooftop hotel scene in the movie The Hangover 2. A dress code posted in the lobby informed us that we were ill-prepared for this adventure, but we decided to press our luck. Though we were dressed like ragged backpackers, the tower employees pointed us up to the famous rooftop bar, where we were able to look out over the city. We weren’t able to actually go outside, though, as the deck was closed. Regardless, we determined that it would make a good location to celebrate New Year’s from.

The rest of our morning was spent relaxing in front of a gigantic display of Thailand’s king. K. and I remarked about how he just didn’t look very regal. He looked more like a schoolteacher than a king. He was demure and his clothes didn’t even fit that well. Never the less, there are posters of him everywhere. He seemed like a nice guy, but it’s a good thing that he’s just a figurehead because I couldn’t take him too seriously if he was supposed to be the all-power ruling monarch.

We figured that it was time to get a real massage, so we returned to the area that we had scouted the day before with all of the massage parlors. K. had decided already on where she was going; one of the legitimate professional-looking places for a 2-hour Thai massage. I, however, was feeling a little frustrated from working myself up the previous two nights with nothing to show for it. I decided to check out the parlor that offered the “testicle massage.”

After removing my shoes and walking in, I was greeted by an old woman who then presented me with a price list. In addition to the testicle massage, the parlor offered cryptically titled treatments such as the “Blue Body,” “Orange Blossom,” and a few others whose names escape me. She explained to me in veiled innuendo, obscured by her broken English, what each menu item meant, but all I needed to do was see the prices, which were far beyond those at other parlors, to really understand what I was getting into.

I pointed to the most expensive item on the list, making the old woman smile and nod happily. She then called out to the girls, who were sitting around in the back of the room behind a curtain of small potted trees. Five girls came to line up before me and I scanned their faces, looking for the features that I always do when on the prowl. I didn’t find what I was looking for. Many of the girls were pudgy, and if they weren’t, their faces were awkward. What can I say? I’m very particular about what I like.

Sheepishly smiling, I turned to the old woman, telling her that I didn’t see anything that interested me. I then smiled embarrassedly at the girls, thanking them and turning back to the door. At that moment, I began to wonder if I was being picky out of fear and discomfort. I guess it didn’t matter. I was looking for a specific experience, not just some quick relief.

Forgetting my main option, I chose to join K. for a two hour, very tame, foot bath and Thai massage. The whole concept of a Thai massage was kind of cool to me. Instead of being prodded and kneaded by someone who is reaching across your body from the side, the masseuse actually, for lack of a better term, gets in there, crawls all over you, and puts your body and limbs in different positions that feel quite therapeutic when they are done just right. If that means putting your leg over their lap or digging their knee into your back, then so be it.

With that said, the whole experience was akin to getting my ass kicked by a small Asian woman. While I’ve always enjoyed massages on my lower body, it was downright excruciating when she worked on my back and shoulders. The whole thing was a learning experience, as I hadn’t received too many professional massages in my lifetime. When it was all over, I looked across the dim room at K. with a bewildered expression. She had enjoyed every moment of her massage while I felt like I had been through some initiation hazing. My favorite part was the delicious tea that was served afterward.

Let’s fast-forward now to the moment where K. and I were dropped off at a travel agency outpost to wait for the bus that would take us to Chiang Mai. Setting our luggage down, we checked the time and asked our chauffeur, a tall, very awkward and manly transsexual, if we had enough time to walk around the block to check out the shops. We were given twenty minutes, so we left our bags in a large pile with everyone else’s and set off.

Returning only ten minutes later, we found the outpost deserted, with our two bags leaning against each other in the middle of the street. We couldn’t find anyone who we recognized in the immediate area. There wasn’t even anyone walking on the street. Determined not to panic, we strapped our backpacks on and headed to the corner, hoping to catch up with our party, wherever they might have gone. A man standing on the corner seemed to sense our confusion and urgency. He looked at us and pointed down the street to his right where we saw a crowd of people waiting to climb onto a bus.

Long distance bus rides in Thailand seem to follow a strict formula: they begin with a loud, violent movie played on a tiny, outdated television, then, once you’re finally able to relax a bit, they stop for food. The entire ride, you’re also usually kept crisp by air conditioning units borrowed from industrial refrigerators. Here’s a tip: never let them seat you in the last row. That’s where K. and I ended up and it was a waking nightmare, seeing as sleep never came for me. The seats failed to recline and my tall frame in a short seat meant that I also had no headrest. There was nothing to be done, though, except get through it, so that’s what we did.

Experiment: The Process-Supported Life Framework

I haven't had a job since last June, so there has been little incentive for me to live by the same rules that everyone else does. I go to sleep when I want and wake up whenever my body is tired of sleeping. Meals happen when I get hungry and any non-essential task is easily pushed aside until it either becomes essential or I get frustrated with myself enough to actually do it. As you might imagine, this isn't the most organized way to live. My time management skills have deteriorated since leaving the workforce, so I'm thinking that it might be time for another experiment, similar to my vegetarianism one a couple weeks ago. Here are the details:

Experiment length: 2 weeks
Starts: Monday, February 27th.
Rules:
1. Wake up every day by 9am.
2. Sleep every day by 1am.
3. Go to the gym every weekday at 10am.
Exceptions: Social engagements
Goals:
1. Develop sleep/wake schedule that is compatible with working life.
2. Discipline myself to do tasks at the time they are meant to be done.
3. Push through the initial defeating mindset of discomfort and inconvenience and adapt a positive outlook on the results.

I am leaving out a few things from this experiment because I do not want to bite off too much at once. For instance, I haven't set schedules for things like chores or meals. I also have not set and specific goals with the time at the gym. Additionally, I thought about specifying time every day to either read or write. While I'd like to limit the amount of time that I waste on entertainment, I'm actually hoping that the simple structure of sleeping and waking, along with a standard activity to start my day, will set the tone for productive waking hours without the need to micromanage every hour or minute. It also helps that I am currently working on a personal project, of which I actually enjoy the process over spending hours playing mindless video games or watching movies.

I will post an update in the middle of this to keep myself honest and to track my feelings at the halfway point to see if they change any by the time I am done. I really have so much free time that there is no excuse to not be using it to its potential. I've always considered myself someone who runs on inspiration, but when the inspiration runs out or the confidence level drops, the fumes sometimes aren't enough to keep all the systems running. That's how I know it is time to adapt a framework for my life and start moving away from the inspiration-only model to the process-supported model.

Wish me luck!

Why Is Religion Popular in the Third World?

The question is not mine, but rather it was asked by someone in an open debate forum. My response:

First, let's figure out why various religions exist in certain countries in the first place. In the case of Africa and South America, Christian missionaries forcibly spread their religion to these places. Old traditions were forced out and the subjugated masses were made to adopt a new faith at gunpoint. In the Middle East, Islam has been around since it began, but it spread to placed like Malaysia and Indonesia through trade, where the ruling class first converted and then impressed it on the rest of the population. There are third world countries that are mostly Buddhist and Hindu, but those religions also have a history of conquest.

The point to take away from this is that religion is seldom a choice of the people. More often it is forced upon a population through their rulers or conquerors. Thus the next question regards why these countries are "third world" in the first place. Setting aside the original Cold War definition of Third World, let's take a brief look at what factors contribute to a third world country's typical status as poor or "developing."

In today's world, politics play a huge part in whether your nation is wealthy or not. Corrupt, oppressive or isolationist rulers usually solicit economic ostracism. This much can be observed in a fair chunk of all third world countries. Further, the basic political and economic structure that a government employs also has a huge impact on its country's ability to grow. It's not always about politics, though. Some countries simply do not have the right resources, geography or infrastructure to join the global community. Sometimes that's because the politics won't let it happen, other times it is simply a reality of the land they inhabit and their population.

When your country's infrastructure is in the ditch, it complicates a whole range of problems. Trade, communication, social services and education all run into brick walls if they lack the means to run efficiently. It's been said that it only takes a few billion dollars to make sure the entire world is fed. If it were that easy, it would be done by now, because figures like that are donated every month across the world. The reason why the problem never seems to get fixed is because there is no current way to deliver all that food and medicine to the people who need it. Political turmoil, bad roads, lack of management and a whole number of other issues block the way.

The numbers speak for themselves; low education, high occurrence of violence, high corruption, and high religiosity are all typical characteristics of third world countries. In contrast, wealthy first world countries are usually at the opposite ends of those scales. All of these factors correlate quite beautifully, but is it premature to start drawing some conclusions?

I want to say that people in third world countries are more religious because they lack the education and flow of information to introduce modern ways of thinking and to show them alternative ways to live.

Even if we take the anthropological approach and assume that religiosity is more a function of community than it is a result of the lack of education, that communal mentality is still an artifact of an isolated existence. Without the promise of economic mobility, people never seek to expand their world. The American Dream, for example, is all about economic mobility - the idea that through hard work, you can achieve any type of life you desire. This allows individuals to transcend the small communities where they are raised and chase after their (seemingly) individualistic dreams. Without those kinds of opportunities, individuals are less likely to stray from their communities. The religious stay religious.

And let's not forget religion's part in keeping everything stagnant. Traditional values can often mean that certain individuals (women) are simply not allowed to obtain an education or even stray from their post at home. This means that a full 50 percent of the working-age population is underutilized within a religious country's society.

In India, where women are notoriously abused and shelved at home, some communities have recently seen their female education rate rise, and their domestic violence rates and birth rates drop. All of these adjustments are very good things, but what was the cause? The communities saw the increase after finally receiving cable TV. The women of the community, taking examples from the fierce portrayals of heroines on television, began to develop a sense of worth. Result is that the traditions of their oppressive religion and community were shelved in favor of living a more modern, more enlightened lifestyle. This is just one example of infrastructure allowing the spread of information and education, thus displacing antiquated concepts like religion and tradition.

Let's look at religion in terms of its supposed benefits, though. Apologists would say that religion helps the suffering cope with their reality. Whether this is true or not doesn't matter for the sake of the next point. It has been suggested that because third world citizens are more familiar with suffering than first world citizens, they recognize the worth of religion more and thus utilize it more intensely than in wealthier places with less suffering. My rebuttal to ties my original argument about education: without the knowledge of alternative approaches to handling suffering, one cannot be given credit for choosing religion over other means. Rather, religion is the only tool in the shed for those people, and when they are finally given alternatives, they toss out religion with a quickness.

The Vegetarian Experiment: Results

It's been a week since I began my personal experiment in cutting out meat and dairy from my diet. In a short while, I will have my final "required" vegetarian meal and then start considering if I want to continue living this way. Right now, it's not looking so good.

Was eating vegetarian hard? No, it was actually a lot easier than I expected. Aside from having a few misfires when cooking meals that I had never attempted before, finding stuff to eat was actually kind of simple. Did I enjoy it? Fuck no. Aside from the fruits I ate, most everything I had was flavorless and soulless. I know I am new at this and I have a lot to learn, but sheesh! Nearly every meal I had was mostly a matter of chewing and swallowing until my plate was clear. Just get it in my stomach, that's all I had to do. It was like participating in the most boring episode of Fear Factor.

Friends asked me if they were being rude by eating meat around me. Nah. I didn't mind. It was an experiment to see if I could do it, not some moral obligation to animals or something silly like that. In fact, I sort of cheated when I followed a friend to a cheese shop and hung out while she tasted and deliberated. I confess to taking the tiniest of slivers of cheese from her just to get a clue about what she was doing. I'd never seen someone taste cheese with the nuance of a servant ordering groceries for Darth Vader.

How about the health effects? My goal with cutting out dairy was to hopefully clear up my sinuses that have been bugging me for months. Right now, my sinuses are very clear, but I still have a bit of weird congestion. You know when you can hear your own breathing from the inside of your ear drums? Can't get rid of it and I don't think the last week helped any.

As far as the lack of meat affecting my health or energy, I can't say it has or it hasn't. Once again, it's only been a week. I did work out a few times during the week and was pleased with my overall endurance, but I couldn't attribute that to my diet without experimenting further. I suppose that if I had a problem to fix in the beginning that I would be able to see progress (or not), but I was really just doing it to see if I could.

So, will the experiment continue? I gotta say that I am dying for some bacon right about now. And a nice, filling bite of a marinated chicken breast. And a... oh god... a burger... mmmmmmmm. I certainly haven't found any good meals that can replace meat in terms of both nutrition and taste. It could be that I simply need more time or practice, but I am going to need a damn miracle of flavor to happen if this is going to keep on.

Thailand Part 2: Nice and Naughty

Welcome to part 2 of my Thailand adventure. If you missed the first part, start here. If you're all caught up, enjoy:

Day 2: Bangkok

Our day began slowly as we recovered from the night before. For breakfast, we scouted the outdoor market that we had seen on our tuk tuk ride from Khaosan the previous evening. The market consisted of two large aircraft hangar-like buildings with rows and rows of tables in the middle and food vendors lining the sides. At the time we showed up, the feeding frenzy had died down and only the vendors near the entrance were still serving. Even then, I managed to find some delicious noodles with dark, tasty broth.

As we walked through the neighborhood, we made note of a few more buildings. There were many massage parlors, each catering to different tastes. One massage parlor advertised a “testicle massage” for 800 baht for an hour. Their placard read: “Help you feel more relaxing. Have a good blood pressure and to relieve a backache. (100% recoverying to be young)” The venue also had photos of their many good-looking female masseuses posted for all to see. Other parlors were staffed by strapping young men, who called out to K. as we passed by. Others, still, were plain and respectable in their presentation, not to mention boasting far cheaper prices.

It was getting quite hot, so we headed to a park at the end of Silom Road and found a shaded patch of grass beside a small lake. Compared with the hectic pace of our first day, it was refreshing to take our time and to not feel pressured into making the most out of every second of our trip. In a way, sitting there was making the most of it somehow. We planned out the rest of our daylit hours on our tourist map, then worked on hailing a cab to take us to Wat Pho.

Taxis are not as easy as they seem in Bangkok. Unlike back in Manhattan, the drivers will keep the doors locked until you tell them where you’re going, and if you’re not going where they want to go, they will drive off. Though all the taxis are clearly marked, some will try to behave like gypsy cabs, negotiating a price with you instead of using the meter. The negotiated price is almost always a rip-off. This is all to say that we had a difficult time getting a taxi to take us across town while also agreeing to the metered fare. But we got there eventually.

Wat Pho is known for housing the world’s largest reclining Buddha statue, but it also has a number of other Buddhas. Hundreds, in fact. Some are just a few feet high while others take up entire rooms. The reclining Buddha, though, is ridiculous. It’s so big that it takes up the entire building it is housed in and it is impossible to photograph the entire statue from the side. After walking past its feet, there is a long row of eighty brass bowls that people drop coins in to make wishes. Since I’m not the type to believe in those things, K. and I split the cost of purchasing a set of coins, which were actually old quarter-baht coins that were no longer in circulation, and fished out some of them for souvenirs.

Next, we found a water ferry to take us across the river to Wat Arun, known as the Temple of the Dawn. There, the central building is tall and pyramid-shaped with stairs of increasing steepness leading up all four sides. K. and I dutifully climbed to the top and took photos from our vantage point, but there was little else to see there.

We were getting hungry for dinner at this point, so we decided, inexplicably, to walk a fair distance to Chinatown in search of food. Our path brought us past the famed flower market, where millions of flowers were piled up in every open storefront, waiting to be strung into garlands or placed into intricate arrangements. We’re not talking about a mere string of florist shops. There were bundles and bags of flowers, sans stems, piled up high, filling trucks, storage units, sidewalks and shops. This kept going for several blocks.

After navigating through a few shady back alleys, we reached Chinatown proper. It only took a few more minutes after that to spot a side alley with a number of restaurants and stalls. This was the crux of our travel strategy: following our nose rather than a guidebook. I was still getting the hang of ordering foreign food from people who I didn’t understand and who didn’t understand me, but after a series of hand gestures and a lot of pointing, K. and I ended up with individual bowls of rice and three small dishes to share: fish, squid and vegetables. All delicious.

Our exploration had exhausted us, but we weren’t far from the train station at that point, so we decided to stop by and check the availability of trains to Chiang Mai. We planned on heading up the following day and had just assumed there would be plenty of choices. Nope. All trains were sold out. With our spirits and guard down, we didn’t even put up a fight when a station attendant led us to a travel agent’s desk to discuss getting there via bus.

We walked out of the station with overnight bus tickets for the next day, reservations for three nights at a guest house and plans for a full-day excursion. There is usually something to be said about package deals and the piece of mind that they give you by taking a lot of the stress off your shoulders, but we were certain that we could have paid far less than we did for what we got. Alas, when you’re dealing in Thai currency, everything is cheap so even a rip-off starts to look sort of cute in the right light.

Predictably, we crashed as soon as we got back to our hotel room, but we woke up from our nap in time to get going on another night of debauchery. This time, our destination was Nana Plaza, a multi-storied mall of sex in the Sukhumvit district.

We casually scoped out the first two stories of the plaza by strolling by the bars and peeking inside. The scene was similar to Patpong the night before; scantly-clad women lazily dancing up on stage. In front of each bar was a small crowd of women in full (read: minimal) stripper garb, taking their break from the arduous task of looking sexy (it was harder for some). Many smiled at me as I walked past.

These women had the worst smiles I had ever seen. It was the pained way they stretched their lips over their teeth like smiling was some bizarre Western custom that they had only recently learned about since they had been raised in a village their whole life and were only now coming into the city to make a living. Try smiling at people without moving your cheeks and see if they don’t move right on past you like I did these girls.

We eventually passed a bar named Angelwitch where the girls outside actually looked quite nice and their outfits, black lingerie and black vinyl high heeled boots, had my head turning to look behind me, so we stopped in our tracks, knowing I had found my calling. Inside, the stage show was far more involved than anything we had seen in any of the other bars. Every few minutes there was a choreographed number with multiple women gazing down lustfully at the patrons lining the room. To my delight, they occasionally got naked, too.

One dance featured women in traditional slutty Thai outfits, while another had girls covered in soap bubbles writhing around on each other. The bubbles themselves were a spectacle, as they never seemed to lose their consistency and always stayed in their place. After that show, a girl in a naughty maid uniform was sent to clean up the bubbles while crawling on all fours. At this point, I knew I could easily stay the entire night, but K. was getting bored. All these women were eye candy for me, but none of Bangkok’s sex industry seemed to be geared toward women.

It was then that four more girls took the stage, along with a padded bench. They fished a man out of the crowd; most likely a military serviceman on leave. He was then stripped of his shirt and pants, laid back across the bench, and tied up. Now we were talkin’. The guy was clearly handsome with a great muscular body. One look over in K.’s direction told me that she approved. Then the dance began.

I thought about how much I would have liked to be that guy as the dancers slowly lost their bikinis and took turns teasing him and grinding on him. The guy snapped playfully at the women, trying to disrupt their planned routine, but they kept on dancing, teasing, and touching. Eventually, the girls were all naked, but I knew the act had to end some time. Out of nowhere, as the music rose toward a crescendo, one of the dancers produced a heavy leather flail. She brought it down hard on his stomach, the loud crack drawing a collective cringe from the crowd and signaling the end of the music. Maybe, I thought, I was fine with just watching.

In between the entertainment, there were periods where the tone would shift and all of the bar girls would get up on stage to lazily dance for the patrons, waiting to be ordered, like in all the other bars. Each girl had a button on her with a number, and they rotated slowly around the stage, changing positions slightly after each song. Most girls had a bit of a gut, so I became obsessed with finding one with a flat stomach. When my eyes finally found a navel that wasn’t closer to me than the panty line, I lifted my eyes to study the girl’s bored face. She seemed even less happy to be on stage than all of the others, but her relaxed, non-plussed face was also youthful, fitting with her slim body quite well. Her number was 10.

It wasn’t the cost that stopped me this time, it was the fact that I was all out of baht due to the earlier unexpected reservations we had made and I didn’t want to run out and exchange more money. All I could do was sit and stare and think about what distracted thoughts must be running through number 10’s mind until my second beer was drained and K. was bored out of her skull. So we settled up and walked out.