Some of you have asked if the cyclone hit here at all. The remnants of it touched northern Thailand, but in Bangkok it's been nothing but hot and sunny. Burma has been devastated, as you know, with very great loss of life. The junta is cruel and stupid, but not so cruel and stupid that it has refused entry to international relief groups. Alhough, the country was such a wreck to begin with that the helpers surely will have a hard time knowing where to begin.
Joe is especially concerned about a Chin village where he spent a night on his last trek. A steep hillside had been cleared for planting. Joe asked his guide if landslides might result during the monsoons. The guide said yes, but the villagers---who lived at the bottom of the hill---didn't understand that.
The regime still plans on holding its sham constitutional referendum on Saturday. It is madness.
Today is our last full day in Thailand. We spent the first part of it slogging around Bangkok in the heat scouting locations for scenes in the tenth Strachey book. I'm on chapter 11, out of about 25. It might be titled "Not How Anybody Wants to Die." Is that lurid enough? (Consumer note: "Death Vows", the ninth Strachey book, about a gay marriage gone wrong, will be out in September.)
Our plan for The Last Supper tonight is tom kah gai, fried morning glory vines in spicy sauce, and duck red curry. Does this represent a failure of imagination?
This is the end of this blog but not the end of Dick and Joe's Endless Cycle of Travel Death and Travel Rebirth. There will be no Travel Nirvana for the likes of us, ho ho.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Pattaya
It's a Cancun-like Gulf of Thailand seaside-resort city that got going in the Vietnam era---a U.S. base was not far from here---and took off in the age of Southeast Asian industrial tourism that followed. Pattaya has a reputation. Some Thais in Bangkok were surprised, even disgusted, that we were planning to visit here. This reputation has been earned. Some years ago a foreign writer injured high-level Thai sensibilities by describing the country as "as a brothel with temples." In Pattaya, they forgot the temples.
While much of Pattaya is indeed squalid, some of it is bright, clean and more or less wholesome. The distinctions between unwholesome and more or less wholesome Pattaya are sometimes clear and sometimes blurred. They are clearest in Somtien Beach, south of the city, where Fritz, Leonard and Num live. They are the reason we came here.
Fritz Blank is Barbara Wheaton's old foodie buddy from Philadelphia. For a couple of decades, he ran Deux Chiminees, considered by many the city's finest restaurant. (Fritz also has degrees in dairy science and microbiology.) Barbara and Fritz see each other most years at the Oxford Food Symposium and otherwise exchange erudite and marvelously witty e-mails, some of which Joe and I have had a peek at.
Last year, Fritz moved to Thailand full time to be with his boyfriend since the early '70s, who had settled here several years earlier. Leonard Bucki is a former Philadelphia trial lawyer who Fritz says "never lost a case" and retired happily at age 51. Now they live in Somtien Beach, Fritz in a flower-draped hillside townhouse of his own, Len in a gorgeous modern beach house with his Thai boyfriend Num. Fritz also has a Thai friend with whom he seems to be---in the parlance of the '50s---going steady.
Fritz and Len are two warm, bright and delightful men, and we are grateful that we have been able to have breakfast with them every day and dinner on a couple of nights. We also spent a day at the gay beach with Fritz, who is a well-liked fixture there.
It was at this beach where Len met Num seven years ago when he was 23. Num is a lovely man, and Fritz told a lovely story about him. The three men travel together and once spent Christmas in Philadelphia. Num was reluctant to accompany Fritz to an open rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth. Len---who has educated this former farm-boy-then-beach-boy-masseur---talked Num into tagging along, and said he could always leave during a break in the rehearsals. At the break, Fritz asked Num if he preferred to duck out. Said Num: "Oh no! I stay. It make me feel all funny inside." I've never heard it summed up better.
Joe and I are staying in town at a place called the Hotel Ambiance, and it's got plenty of that.
Tomorrow we return to Bangkok, where Joe will receive a final onceover by his surgeon and physical therapist. The shoulder is doing well, although Joe's metal-slinging activities will be restricted for a couple of months, an inconvenience.
Wednesday we fly to Delhi, then on Thursday toward Newark and on to Boston, landing at Logan Friday morning. We will be happy to be back with our family and friends and our good lives in the Berkshires. And within days, our Great Shlep of 2008 will likely feel as if it never actually happened. But luckily, it did.
While much of Pattaya is indeed squalid, some of it is bright, clean and more or less wholesome. The distinctions between unwholesome and more or less wholesome Pattaya are sometimes clear and sometimes blurred. They are clearest in Somtien Beach, south of the city, where Fritz, Leonard and Num live. They are the reason we came here.
Fritz Blank is Barbara Wheaton's old foodie buddy from Philadelphia. For a couple of decades, he ran Deux Chiminees, considered by many the city's finest restaurant. (Fritz also has degrees in dairy science and microbiology.) Barbara and Fritz see each other most years at the Oxford Food Symposium and otherwise exchange erudite and marvelously witty e-mails, some of which Joe and I have had a peek at.
Last year, Fritz moved to Thailand full time to be with his boyfriend since the early '70s, who had settled here several years earlier. Leonard Bucki is a former Philadelphia trial lawyer who Fritz says "never lost a case" and retired happily at age 51. Now they live in Somtien Beach, Fritz in a flower-draped hillside townhouse of his own, Len in a gorgeous modern beach house with his Thai boyfriend Num. Fritz also has a Thai friend with whom he seems to be---in the parlance of the '50s---going steady.
Fritz and Len are two warm, bright and delightful men, and we are grateful that we have been able to have breakfast with them every day and dinner on a couple of nights. We also spent a day at the gay beach with Fritz, who is a well-liked fixture there.
It was at this beach where Len met Num seven years ago when he was 23. Num is a lovely man, and Fritz told a lovely story about him. The three men travel together and once spent Christmas in Philadelphia. Num was reluctant to accompany Fritz to an open rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth. Len---who has educated this former farm-boy-then-beach-boy-masseur---talked Num into tagging along, and said he could always leave during a break in the rehearsals. At the break, Fritz asked Num if he preferred to duck out. Said Num: "Oh no! I stay. It make me feel all funny inside." I've never heard it summed up better.
Joe and I are staying in town at a place called the Hotel Ambiance, and it's got plenty of that.
Tomorrow we return to Bangkok, where Joe will receive a final onceover by his surgeon and physical therapist. The shoulder is doing well, although Joe's metal-slinging activities will be restricted for a couple of months, an inconvenience.
Wednesday we fly to Delhi, then on Thursday toward Newark and on to Boston, landing at Logan Friday morning. We will be happy to be back with our family and friends and our good lives in the Berkshires. And within days, our Great Shlep of 2008 will likely feel as if it never actually happened. But luckily, it did.
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