Drift Reality

In one of the temples we visited, I deposited a coin into a small fortune telling apparatus. I’m one of the least superstitious people you will ever meet, but the veracity of the message startled me: “Just like a dying tree in a dry land, suddenly refreshed and soaked with rain, reviving back to life. Strengthening and brightening up required. In order to achieve common targets, compromise and discussions recommended. Patient recovering. Lost persons will be found. Mismatch is likely. A good luck coming your way.”

After experiencing the congestion of some of the markets in Seoul, I was more or less prepared to deal with the Bangkok streets. The footage is shot in Bangkok.

This section begins with a farewell letter and then jolts into the highways surrounding Bangkok, where I experienced moments of vivid horror at the taxi driver’s driving. The footage is shot at the International Airport in Dubai and the highways surrounding Bangkok.

After lying around the hotel for several hours in odd purgatory that was a fusion of jet lag, excitement, exhaustion, and relaxation from the massage, I headed to the Hard Rock Café in Siam Square for a beer. After an uneventful drink, I wandered around the area for a bit until I stumbled upon the Zoo Bar, a trendy Manhattan-wannabe bar. I ordered a gin and tonic and watched as the bartender nudged the hostess in my direction. She came over and we began to chat. I found out that she was a freshman at a University in Bangkok. She worked as a hostess at the bar during the evening. Before I left, she wrote her number on a napkin and told me to call her the next day and she would show me around Bangkok.

I left the Zoo Bar and wandered over to a club at a nearby hotel where some GIs were milling around outside.

“Hey! Is this place any good?” I asked.

“Nah,” a lanky fellow with short hair and thick glasses answered. “We’re heading to another place nearby.”

“What other place?” I prodded.

“It’s just a bar that one of our friends told us about. You in the military?” He asked.

“No, just traveling through,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, turning to one of his companions. “What is the name of that place?”

“Blue Hawaii,” he answered back. The GI turned to me and repeated: “Blue Hawaii.”

“Thanks,” I answered and hailed a taxi.

I stepped inside the cab and asked him to take me to the Blue Hawaii. I was a bit surprised when he responded by saying, “You don’t want to go there. Dirty girls there. I take you to good place with nice girls.”

“Sure,” I responded and sat back in my seat.

We ended up at some seedy club near my hotel, which I was delighted to find had a karaoke machine. Not surprisingly, there was a group of Korean men in the place, singing songs.

In the far corner of the bar was a large window, behind which sat about ten or eleven Thai girls wearing ridiculously ostentatious shiny dresses that made me feel as though I was in some twisted Asian version of Disney Land.

A middle-aged woman behind the bar asked me in broken English if I liked any of the girls. I pointed to the girl who had the best smile and said, “That one.” She brought her over and attempted to make conversation with her but soon found out that she didn’t speak a lick of English. Turning towards the universal language of music, I attempted to coerce her into humming along while I sang “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and “La Bamba,” but she just sat there looking a bit confused. I bid her adieu and headed home.

I arrived in Bangkok at around 12:00 in the afternoon and immediately felt a thudding sort of anger as a group of four Indians who were standing in front of me in the immigration line multiplied like gremlins into a group of about twelve.

After the taxi ride in which I experienced very genuine moments of absolute terror as the taxi driver zoomed around the Bangkok highways, while responding to my questions with cackling laughter, I finally made it to my hotel, where I slumped onto the bed and promptly ordered a two-hour massage.

Feeling absolutely refreshed about an hour later, I strolled into the cafeteria, where I exchanged stories with an Italian airline steward who initially seemed a bit perturbed when I mistook him for a Frenchman, which I really couldn’t blame him for. It turned out that he had been stranded in Bangkok on his way back to Milan. His airline vouchers only worked if there were vacancies on the flight and he had gone three straight days without finding a flight with open seats.

To make matters worse, he had been conned by a hotel representative who had promised him a bedroom in a luxury hotel at the airport when he flew in. After a short taxi ride to the so called “luxury hotel,” he found himself in the lobby of a rundown shanty. He immediately returned to the airport and demanded his money back. When the deceitful salesman refused, he began to loudly proclaim that the man was a cheat to anyone in ear shot until the salesperson agreed to return his money.

That same night, he had ventured out on the town only to mistakenly strike upon the area of Bangkok populated by transsexual prostitutes. He advised me to watch where I was going and gave me a map in which he had circled certain “safe” areas of Bangkok.

After thanking him, I headed into the oppressive Bangkok air and towards a nearby shopping mall.