“The Land of Siam”

by Justin Chapman

“I have a girlfriend,” I thought as I tried to avert my eyes. “What the hell am I doing here? Why am I in a Bangkok brothel at three in the morning?”

I knew perfectly well that the Thai government imposes a strict 2am whorehouse curfew for the hundreds if not thousands of fine institutions of love across the various provinces of Bangkok, or as the locals call it, Krung Thep (more on that later). 

“The difference between me getting arrested tonight or not completely depends on the ‘protection’ that the mamasan pays off to the cops. This being one of the seedier places still open past the curfew, one must ask oneself, ‘Do I feel safe?’ Hmm. Quite the quandary.”

I tried to focus on my Singha beer instead of the 20 or 30 assorted Asian girls, not more than 25 years old, lined up next to each other on the couch. Not naked exactly, but the message was crystal clear. 

At least I wasn’t alone. Two other 19 year olds I just met a couple hours earlier were busy chatting it up with two of the girls. I sat there awkwardly and nursed my brew.

In situations like these, it’s important to take a moment to retrace your steps.

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I had never been to Asia before, and had no idea what to expect. I signed up for this “humanitarian” vacation in December of 2004, and had until August to think about what I was getting myself into. There was to be 14 of us, aged 18 to 23, including our 40 year old leader, Steve Ferringer.

I had been to Australia & New Zealand back in the summer of 2000 with the same program, People to People International, founded by President Eisenhower, and again to Colorado & Wyoming for a peace summit in the summer of 2003. This was different. It was a test run designed for young adults, meaning we were responsible for ourselves and would not be meeting each other beforehand. We all came from different states.

We got to know each other quickly once we touched down in the land of Siam. We stayed in the airport hotel that night, and that’s when two of the guys, Tyler Piper & Bobby Wall, and I went out on the town at 3 o’clock in the morning. That’s why we ended up at one of the seedier places in the downtown area, because we wanted to get drunk (oh-so-legally), in between the Buddhist temples glittering under the dim streetlights like gold, the skyscrapers as impressive as ours, and the half-finished freeways which they stopped building 20 years ago because “the economy collapsed, and they just couldn’t complete it,” said our taxi driver, Tom.

We arrived at S & N Bar, down this dark alley off the main road. The place was a hole in the wall, and the aura of it was indistinguishable. The mamasan, a round, 60-something Thai woman, asked us if we wanted a girl for the night for 5,000 baht, roughly 90 to 100 American dollars. The ratio is 40:1.

The mamasan counsels all of the girls who work for her about all of their most intimate problems or confessions, such as pregnancy or suicide. She advises they charge extra for anal intrusion, requested mostly by the French, Italians, and Americans. “I'm good,” I said, but she convinced me to just talk to a girl and buy her two drinks. Tyler and Bobby were already well acquainted with their picks.

The mamasan took me by the hand and led me to the group, then asked me to pick out a girl. It was very awkward because I didn’t even want to be there. I had a girlfriend back home whom I loved and adored. Someone I would never want to hurt.

I ordered another Singha small and sat down next to a girl, but not before asking Bobby if he bought a pack of smokes, which he did. I don’t smoke, mind you. Only on vacation, you understand.

The best part about this place was the small Chinese Buddhist shrine at the foot of the main entrance, to “protect the place.”

Bobby had to borrow money from Tyler and me while we played pool upstairs. When we got back to the hotel, Tom made us wait with him by the car while Bobby ran upstairs to get the cashola. The problem was Tom said quite a few Americans had played this trick on him before, so we could understand his skepticism: they told him to wait by the car while they ran up to their room for the money, then they would check out of the hotel without notifying him and run across the concealed bridge directly over his head to a waiting airplane. Two hours later Tom would be told the guest checked out, and he would have to deal with the pimps and the mamasan back at S & N for his share of the deal.  It was a horrific scene, and everyone was trying to convince us otherwise, even Tom. His livelihood depended on it. While I was waiting for Bobby and Tyler to finish up, I walked out to the sidewalk by the main road to smoke a stogie and drink my beer. Tom followed me and asked me to come back inside.  “There are police out here,” he told me, then explained how if I were anywhere but downtown Bangkok, the police would take one good look at me and arrest me for buying a prostitute, even if I hadn’t planned on doing so. But here in DT Bangkok, the bar and brothel owners paid a hefty sum to the police to look the other way.

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The next morning, after paying off our hotel bills, we set off on the Thai highway. People, cars, and scooters were everywhere. I wouldn't even want to attempt driving in these hectic conditions.

There were pictures of the queen adorned with flower arrangements every couple of blocks (you don’t talk crap about the queen), along with advertisements for “Wedding Crashers” and McDonald's. Along the highway ran a forest green ravine. On the opposite bank, sloppy wooden houses on stilts looked as if they were about to slip into the murky sewage water. We didn't see one single person in that water. Sometimes I could see down to the alleys and streets below the highway through the cracks in the meridian. A homeless mother and her child push a shopping cart over ignored vegetation and around small abandoned structures, their expressions sunken. Sex tourism is an ugly, ugly thing. I don't care what anyone says. Our guide was a lady named Aea. She told us many things in broken English, such as land rapists stealing forest from the government, cutting down too many trees, not planting any new ones, thus causing a lack of rain and a drought, even during those wet winter months of July and August; such as Buddhist teachers in southern Thailand being assassinated by Moslem extremists who want independence from the establishment; such as wives and daughters having to work now, too, alongside their husbands while still cooking, cleaning, and serving the man in what has become an embarrassment to them, their other option being the nighttime workforce.

We traveled in a sore thumb of a tour bus to the Phanom Rung Temple, built by a king in the 10th century on top of an extinct volcanic cone so he could live as a hermit. It took us 6 hours to reach the top of this hill, overlooking miles of vast Thai farmland, and behind the mountains--Cambodia. It is the largest and best restored of all the Khmer monuments in Thailand, created at the apex of Angkor architecture. Its artistic achievement is on par with the temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which is over 200 acres. The craftsmanship in the stones was absolutely amazing.

The next four days we stayed in a small, poor village near the Thai/Cambodian border called Ban Kraut, where about 125 families lived. They were amazingly generous and friendly people. We each stayed in a different family’s home for the three nights and they gave us anything we needed. They trusted us more than we trusted them. They cooked us delicious meals, setup bedding for us, washed our clothes. The language barrier was difficult at first but we soon found new ways to communicate with each other.

Life was very simple in the village. Showers consisted of standing in the bathroom naked and pouring buckets of cold water over you from a concrete tub. We were lucky enough to have a Western toilet, as opposed to a hole in the ground, but there was no toilet paper and no flusher.

The village was basically a jungle. The foliage was a deep green rarely seen in suburbia. The only eyesore was the trash. The people of this region, until recently, only used biodegradable products, so they don’t understand that it’s not OK to throw plastic and other trash on the ground. Some places it piled up several feet high. You look around and see a contrasting sea of green and white.

The first morning we took a tour of the village and learned how they make rubber from rubber trees. They have huge forests of these trees lined up perfectly, each with a little cup attached to the trunk, just below a cut where the rubber sap slowly drips out. We also planted rice in a muddy paddy field.

The morning after that we spent two hours at the Cambodian border, waiting for clearance into the country. Earlier that week some Cambodians snuck into Thailand and stole several motorbikes, a very popular method of transportation in Southeast Asia. Looking for any excuse to exercise its power, the Thai government shut the border down, and we weren’t allowed in.

It was probably just as well. Off the roads in Cambodia the land is littered with thousands of land mines from the 1970s, put in by the Chinese, the Vietnamese, Pol Pot, and of course the US. It costs $5 to put one in the ground, and about $1,000 to take it out. 

There were little posts everywhere, a Buddhist shrine, a rifle tower, and poor Cambodian women selling food and such to the soldiers. A couple trucks were packed to the brim with thatched roofs, which are made in Cambodia and sold to the Thais because the labor is so damn cheap.

There were officials from three or four different agencies present. I was talking to the head honcho on site with our translator, and he offered me a cigarette. We also went up into the rifle tower, and looked out over Cambodia. Bobby and I ate some guava and other fruit with chili powder & cane sugar with the Thai soldiers and tried to communicate with each other. Every afternoon we went to the local school and taught English for three hours.

My partner, Eric Summerfield, and I had about sixteen 6th graders, aged 11-14. We taught them some useful phrases and played games. At one point a couple students wrote “I love you, Eric & Justin” on the board.

We got some money together and bought the school three DVD players, three English lessons on DVD, sports equipment, and other supplies. They were very grateful and offered us gifts of pillows, flowers, and cards when we left the third day. It was hard to go. The children chased our vans as we drove away.

We talked about how economic strains have been forcing these people to think

more like Americans: competition, capitalism, success, higher education, etc. For example, in the class we taught, there was one girl who exceeded over everyone. Even a generation ago, there was no exception like that. Next time there will be five exceeding students, and then ten. The stress to push for more in life is becoming essential for survival. We drove on to the Northern Surin Province and road elephants through the jungle. When we arrived, I was in awe of the elephants. These were truly incredible creatures. At one point, there were about ten elephants surrounding us, including babies, lifting up their trunks and screeching.

The Thais that rode them with us had these spike tools they would dig into the elephants’ foreheads if they disobeyed. I bought some sugar cane and fed it to a couple babies. I felt their tusks as well, which had been cut down. I think they sold the ivory. At least they didn’t kill them. They abused all their animals. Smacked their malnourished dogs around and such.

After we said our tearful goodbyes at the village, we drove down to the waterfront passed Bangkok and got on a boat to Koh Samed, a resort island half an hour off the mainland. Ten steps out of our resort was the beach: crystal blue water and smooth white sand. Our cottages looked out over the sunset side of the island.

We went to several bars around the island for the three nights we stayed there. At Silver Sand there were fire dancers on the beach, twirling sticks on fire around their bodies so fast they formed constant rings.

We also rented motorbikes and crashed often. Several minor injuries, a few major ones. Fortunately, the resort offered a menu of massages at their spa. I got a flower petal bath with a body oil massage, a traditional Thai massage, and foot reflexology.

An American at Silver Sand told us that that day some Thai girl, who came here from another part of Thailand for vacation, was swimming in the ocean and went too far. Her boyfriend swam after her to rescue her, and got tired himself. He couldn't handle the waves, and quickly passed out. They brought him back to land, but nobody on the island knew CPR, so they hung him up by his feet and shook him. He died, but the girlfriend survived. The next day red flags guarded the beach. One day we went out on a boat to the other side of the island, anchored, and went snorkeling in the Gulf of Thailand. After that I sat in the back of the boat with the Thai captain and first mate and helped them cook fish wrapped in foil over a charcoal fire. It kept us warm because it started raining. The first mate made me a delicious vegetable dish with rice and gave me a free beer. When the fish was done, they cooked squid. After that we headed back to the pier and stopped at a shark farm. There were several squares of water sectioned off by nets. Thin wooden walkways surrounded the squares, nailed to buoys. Someone could've easily fallen in. There were a lot of colored fish, old sea turtles, and good sized sharks.

One of the days on the island was the queen’s 73rd birthday, and we partied hardy. I checked several newspapers that day, and not one of them had any word of dissent or disapproval about the queen.

After we left the island we went shopping in Bangkok in the open air markets, which were very Western. They were directly outside of a disappointingly familiar indoor mall, where every other store sold cell phones. Outside the McDonald’s in the mall stood a life-size statue of Ronald McDonald in a wai position (putting your hands together near your forehead in a respectful bow).

That night we went to a popular attraction for young tourists, Kaosan Road, where hundreds of people filled a small street that stretched for about half a mile. There were bars, strip clubs, pool halls, souvenir shops, Internet cafes, a 7-11, a pharmacy, and food carts with several different kinds of meat or falafels. Closer to midnight the girls in leopard skin leotards came out and started flirting with everyone who passed by, guy or girl, trying to get them to come into Club Lava or Superpussy or Gulliver’s Travels.

One guy tried to get us to go in his taxi to a peep show where girls inserted tubes in their vaginas while you held a balloon in your hand. Then they would put darts in the tube, shoot them out, and pop the balloon. As compelling & enticing as that sounded, images of some dark basement dive on the outskirts of Bangkok convinced me to pass on the gentleman’s offer.

The next morning a couple of us had to go to the local hospital, a Seventh Day Adventist institution, to get our various wounds, bites, and rashes looked at. We were immediately taken in to see an American, Dr. Nick, in front of several Thais that were waiting before us, and were still waiting when we left. The entire visit to Mission Hospital, including the many prescriptions I had filled, cost me only $18 American, which was not even worth the hassle of going through the insurance company for reimbursement.

Then we went to the Grand Palace and Emerald Buddha. The palace area was at least 60 acres. It was guarded by a huge white wall that wrapped around the property, along with several Thai soldiers with assault rifles and a mounted machine gun aimed right at the entrance. There were about 50 Thai temples and buildings. One was a gigantic bell shaped structure made out of solid 14 karat gold tiles, about one square centimeter each. We saw the building President Bush stayed in during his trip here two years ago for an OPEC conference. We went inside many temples and I prayed to the emerald Buddha sitting on the throne so peaceful and unaffected.

After that palace we went to a temple with the biggest Buddha I've ever seen. It was all gold and lay on its side. It stood about 50 feet high and at least a quarter mile long.

Then we walked through a totally ghetto area, and everyone kept staring at us. We were nothing but passing farangs with pockets full of baht. One Thai guy yelled hello at Tyler, who responded by saying, “We’re from America.”

“That was a dead give away,” Steve whispered to me. 

“Um, I think it’s already painfully obvious,” I replied.

We went through a temple courtyard to get to the dock. We got on our boat and rode around the Chao Phraya River to the island of Koh Kred. I chilled on the very back of the boat by the water, drank a Beer Chang, and watched the houses on stilts go by. We went to a pottery factory, then made our way back to the dock. We saw several monks walking through the courtyard as we got off the boat.

After we got ready at our hotel, the Royal Princess, Bobby and I went outside and a Thai guy was waiting for us.

“Hey, how are you? Where you going?” he asked.

“Um, Hard Rock Café Bangkok,” I replied.

“Oh, no, it's closed soon. Eleven o'clock.”

“It's only ten.”

“No, ten thirty. It take twenty, thirty minute to get there. You like massage?”

“I like...” Bobby said and made a stroking motion. The guy was waiting for

a cue like that, and didn't hesitate. He whipped out a card with pictures of naked girls. “Beautiful girls. Peep show now.”

We decided to go to Hard Rock and take our chances. We hailed a cab from the street and left the man. When we got to Hard Rock, we found out the restaurant closed at midnight and the bar at 1am. That’s Bangkok for you. That guy just wanted us to go to his friend’s place and spend money there.

There was a good live cover band playing while we ate and got drunk. After we left, some more Thai guys were waiting for us by the taxis. We wanted separate cabs--I was going to the Royal Princess, and Bobby was going to Kaosan Road. They kept asking if we wanted massages or girls. You can only say no so many times before you start to lose it.

We decided on a price for the taxi and headed for the hotel. My open-air cab driver kept asking if I liked fucking and I said, “Yes, with my girlfriend. At home.” I don’t want to go to some STD-ridden basement brothel hole-in-the-wall down some dark alleyway. I am not down. 

Anymore.

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There was definitely something about Thailand. It is an amazing and mysterious place. I saw some very beautiful and very ugly things. It was one of the most intense adventures I have ever been on, and I highly recommend the country to anyone.

As John Burdett pointed out in his novel, “Bangkok Tattoo,” Bangkok is not the real name of Thailand’s capital. The name is long, and begins with Krung Thep. In full, it means, “Great city of angels, the repository of divine gems, the great land unconquerable, the grand and prominent realm, the royal and delightful capital city full of nine noble gems, the highest royal dwelling and grand palace, the divine shelter and living place of reincarnated spirits.”