Sean's Travelogues

[greg]

I have to agree with Sean... there's nothing wrong about saying you don't like certain aspects of a culture, as long as you don't go overboard with it (which could lead to obvious stuff which is bad), especially given how critical he is of his own culture.
Making my way through slowly but surely...

[MishaK]

I have to agree with Sean... there's nothing wrong about saying you don't like certain aspects of a culture, as long as you don't go overboard with it (which could lead to obvious stuff which is bad), especially given how critical he is of his own culture.
Making my way through slowly but surely...

No, nothing wrong with being critical. But don't criticize things for not being something they aren't tyrying to be and you don't have to use a priori disparaging language to express mere difference.

[greg]

As I read more and more, it seemed to be a little bit too much on the negative side. I really would like to hear more positive things about the experience there- or is it really that bad? 
(or is it that bad wherever Sean goes?  )

I'm curious- have you written anything like this on Japan?

Although there's too much to comment on right now, I find one theory interesting, and I thought of it myself before reading this- the whole bad driving thing being an outlet for suppressed anger under a highly conformist society. Every culture has its own ways with having some sort of outlet, and this may be one of them.

[Sean]

No, nothing wrong with being critical. But don't criticize things for not being something they aren't tyrying to be...

Mmm, but S.Korea is trying to Westernize or at least modernize, and it produces wild incongruities in the society that are obvious to the Western visitor.

[MishaK]

Mmm, but S.Korea is trying to Westernize or at least modernize, and it produces wild incongruities in the society that are obvious to the Western visitor.

That applies to just about every society on earth, the "West" included. It's your patronizing attitude that's the problem.

[Josquin des Prez]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

Be careful on whom you wish to patronize.

[Sean]

Thanks for the link Josquin (by the way, Josquin has been dead nearly 500 years, so you're not him- why pick such a name?)

O Mensch- try this http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=160072&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=d829110a83e195388422f73deec4873f

[MishaK]

Thanks, Sean, but no thanks. It's enough having to deal with you in *one* forum.

[flyingdutchman]

As I read more and more, it seemed to be a little bit too much on the negative side. I really would like to hear more positive things about the experience there- or is it really that bad? 
(or is it that bad wherever Sean goes?  )

I'm curious- have you written anything like this on Japan?

Although there's too much to comment on right now, I find one theory interesting, and I thought of it myself before reading this- the whole bad driving thing being an outlet for suppressed anger under a highly conformist society. Every culture has its own ways with having some sort of outlet, and this may be one of them.

If he had or would, I would refute virtually everything his would say.  Honestly, this man's views towards other cultures are ridiculous.

[Sydney Grew]

We read this through from beginning to end with great and growing interest, and we envy Member Sean's tremendous fortune. Just one point for now:

. . . the boys’ extreme shyness and repression they’re under making lessons unworkable. . . .

This is how boys should be is it not? - shy and as polite obedient and obliging as can be. As an "old hand" in the Orient we believe they are like that all over Asia. And prior to 1914 the behaviour of youths in the Anglo-Saxon world too was thus was it not (read for instance A.C. Benson's descriptions of the art of teaching). It is we in Europe and Northern America who have now got so lamentably out of step in education, not the Orientals. Without doubt a similar phenomenon may be traced in the ancient Roman empire before its final collapse.

[greg]

This is how boys should be is it not? - shy and as polite obedient and obliging as can be. As an "old hand" in the Orient we believe they are like that all over Asia. And prior to 1914 the behaviour of youths in the Anglo-Saxon world too was thus was it not (read for instance A.C. Benson's descriptions of the art of teaching). It is we in Europe and Northern America who have now got so lamentably out of step in education, not the Orientals. Without doubt a similar phenomenon may be traced in the ancient Roman empire before its final collapse.

Close. Boys shouldn't be shy and repressed (unless they want to become transsexuals when they grow up), but they should at least have an eager mind willing to learn, instead of only willing to get into trouble.

[greg]

If he had or would, I would refute virtually everything his would say.  Honestly, this man's views towards other cultures are ridiculous.

I'd still love to read it. Even if I didn't like his opinions, I'd love all the info and his observations.

[Sean]

Cheers folks. Actually the essay could do with a further proof read, but it's already been a nuisance getting it up to that semi-readable level and it brings me down somewhat to have to think about Korea in the process. Sydney you make good points about discipline and decadence, and keeping the boys on track wasn't a problem where I was working, but it's a great effort for them to be self-expressive in any language and that's just not how human beings are supposed to be.

[greg]

So I take it you have no essay on Japan?

[Sean]

Japan has a dual focus of thought, an outward social harmony with collective work values achieving ends through an active and interesting level of cooperation, plus an inward rationality and individual concern for getting one's own contribution in order. The split attention however jars and unsettles, providing bad aesthetics in many scenes and activities- the culture has tension, contrivance, great conceit and as with China and Korea a basic characterlessness; certainly the Kyoto Japanese Art Museum's eclectic if imaginative junk has little aesthetic merit. The economic success is impressive with futuristic cities and a high proportion of the people wealthy and sophisticated, living in a comfortable if rather cushioned and squeaky clean environment; they're good lateral thinkers, pragmatically and efficiently providing for needs but making the society bandaged, sanitized and clinical, an unrealistic cotton wool experience with everything very easy, well oiled and anaesthetized.

As in the US and Germany Japanese culture gets people on board with good shared ideals and sense of all being basically alike while also encouraging individual but rational thought in means to ends activity serving the ideals. In shops for instance you can see them working as a proud, quietly confident team: if there's only one customer one assistant might help the other, whereas in some Western countries there might be a reluctance in feeling they're imposing on another's work or an indignation in thinking the other ought to do their job themselves. In neighbouring countries the communality becomes a less efficient conformism more imposed from without, downgrading the individual contribution. The one-sided materialism likely also reflects the Japanese language having fewer sounds and colours than other major languages, whereas the city streets' low noise levels reflects its quiet sound; it has honorifics and an eliminable 'I' but an efficient brevity.

Everyone is independently and well dressed yet lack distinctiveness in demeanour, for instance all walking at a similar fast pace, going somewhere and focussedly doing something: it might even seem they have a higher average rational intelligence. There's no sense of public transport being lower class, with metro stations opening directly into designer department stores; queuing is orderly, even forming lines on platforms where train doors will be then marching forward through them. Japanese are also conscious of each other in terms of how they're positioned, all spaced out with keen self-awareness and respect, minimizing congestion in the land's high population density.

Unlike in some developed cities, spending a lot of money isn't so necessary- there are capsule hotels with private bunk beds for $35 including communal bathing and sauna, and numerous cheap small bar-serving style restaurants; between the towns are some beautiful and picturesque landscapes including rice fields and fur tree or cloud covered hills. Japanese are indeed a little different in their thinking, with islanders' suppressed contempt for foreigners connecting with the material success and organization: they're very helpful, patient and keen on personal service, for example once even getting a local train to wait for me to buy the ticket, but the twinkle in their eye may be as condescending as knowing. There's more to human endeavour than luxury piled up on top of luxury, ever more accoutrements and women preciously decking themselves out with an infinite variety of expensive and insecure high fashion; traditional kimono dresses though are also seen.

[greg]

Thanks.

[Sean]

Despite Myanmar's borders closed to foreigners if not locals as well with all five of its neighbours, you can cross to several towns near the Lao border area from Thailand without a visa. There's a scattering of foreigners at the two border towns and the process is straightforward with helpful officials and no corruption, costing £10 for a travel permit; the articulate sounding Myanmar language is spoken immediately once you're across.

Mae Sai thrives with Thai industriousness but Taichileik in Myanmar is pleasantly subdued and cautious, if even safer and with some good English speakers around; Prices are lower and many men wear longes instead of trousers, a kind of straight long skirt, also found in parts of Bangladesh to the west. It's peaceful here if a little gaunt, similar to other parts of the country I went to a few years ago, and beautiful weather- warm but not too hot at least when its cloudy, and perfect conditions for sleeping with no cover; locals of course can tolerate much higher temperatures still and happily wear sweaters and coats or sleep under blankets in stifling tropical heat that could kill Caucasions.
 
I join a bus full of locals in the morning to Kengtung a few hours away to the north; there's only a couple of buses a day it seems and I buy a ticket back here tomorrow morning, as per my schedule to get my flight out of Bangkok. Much hilly terrain, small thatched buildings, orange earth, parched forests, all very remote and undeveloped; the bus makes slow progress with the hills and bends: the vehicles are poor and the housing simple but everything clean and beautiful. The bus stops a couple of times at checkpoints for the police and military to search it, but they don't bother opening any luggage, only have a quick look and even self-conscious look in the hold, and aren't so thorough with checking identification- all rather perfunctory.
 
Five hours later Kengtung is nothing that special but has a nice lake and attitudes without too much materialism- like Laos people give you local prices without bargaining, quite touching in fact. The place is very low-rise and with poor back street families but completely clean and safe, and indeed cleansing to the mind to walk around. At a hilltop Buddha statue a curator opens up a small museum for me to walk around its old costumes and musical instruments, and never asked for money even after doing me a little guiding around.
 
There are many temples in town and many buildings with this tremendous rich timber work and deep browns everywhere with balustrades on staggered levels, typical of Myanmar; the roads wind off into the misty distance. Myanmar is Buddhist and culturally closer to Thailand than India or China but begins to show more of India 's brooding brand of inwardness and richness. There's same beautiful intelligent women I remember, walking and riding knowingly around on scooters- well dressed and alluring, watching your eyes; to my surprise some of the people also have light Caucasian type skin. No other Westerners in town as far as I can see.
 
My travel permit gets passed around a lot- from bus company to local police to hotel to whoever else, generating a wad of stupid paper detailing my activity. I'd have gone to Mong La, the other of the three main towns the permit allows on the Chinese border but don't have enough time and I get the 8am bus back south. The bus staff have to check everyone on board has handed them their ID cards- just for catching this local bus to the next town: must feel sorry for the control these people are under, and most of the regular officials carrying it out I'm sure don't much believe in what's going on either. At checkpoints passengers seem to be randomly selected for questioning by officials and called over to offices for a few minutes. The locals' embarrassment about it all is easy to see, their trying to put the best foot forward in these compromising circumstances in their own country. Very hot in the midday hours today and make it back to the border at 1.40pm: though fed up of Thailand, nice to come back to its couldn't-carelessness and fine sense of being materially in the world but still not of it.

[Sean]

I took a flight from Trichy in southern India to the airport north of Colombo, on the south western Sri Lankan coast. No guidebook as yet but ignoring the taxi touts and low life on arrival got a free shuttle to the nearby town then a bus to Colombo to the cheap YMCA, finding this thanks to directions from the numerous police guarding and blocking presidential area streets- a heavy military presence but nothing that makes things seem especially unsafe. Plenty of green down the streets, giving some uncertain dark shadows at night though, and more mellow people than many of the Indian groups, even if Sri Lankans are of Indian stock with similar features and skin colour. People seem pleased to see Westerners in their country, there being few around; it's a little more developed with less obvious poverty but also there's not so much to see in Sri Lanka, contrasting with India's much richer history and culture, and its impressive continental scale feel.

Sri Lanka doesn't have India's foolish population problems and everything is a degree easier and happier, with only 21 million people; Colombo gets quieter at night than Indian cities and fewer creeps approach. I went six weeks without a drink in India but decided to have some beer at a nice bar here, still very cheap. The restaurants look clean and like they might have some nutritious food you could eat, rather than India's ubiquitous oily brown sludge; locals still eat with their hand though, for reasons mysterious to me.

The Sri Lankans have a slightly more Western mental profile, which you can hear in their laughing and responses to things; like the southern Indian languages Sinhalese is more articulated and clearer than Hindi across northern India with its nasty indistinct slurring. There's some tension in the air and lack of repose though with the Tamil insurgency in the northeast and risks of attacks at whatever official and religious places. You still get the misplaced, skewed out answers to direct questions found in many non-Western cultures that don't prioritize focused thought, as based on principle or detail, and instead of suspending the whole set of possibilities in order to get something done, they respond to questions like 'Where is the train station?' with gibberish such as 'Do you want to catch a train?' or 'Where are you going?'.

However when I asked 'Is there any internet here?' for the first time in many weeks the reply was 'I don't know': people in developing countries rarely say this and will always invent an fake answer or just gesture further down the street. Saying 'I don't know' is too specific and negative for societies with little structure and predictability- everything is just exists in an interconnected indeterminate haze where there are no definites and only constant change, and questions like 'Is there x here?' are not so simple and in fact relate to societies that have established greater levels of order- out here it's just a chaotic environment that nobody understands, or would suggest could be understood.

People can't rely on others having internalized much regularity in behaviour or understanding about the world they live in: nobody knows what's going on and endless numbers of things just haven't been systemized: Westerners are tempted to ask questions that assume more background order in the environment than there is: the locals are bemused at this, particularly as the question usually assumes they should know the answer, as they would in the West, and just hesitantly match the dumb question with a dumb answer. The information you want often just isn't in existence and you have to find out what's going on at that particular moment as best you can.

In a similar way vehicles use horns all the time on the street, not being ready to assume that perhaps the traffic in front has slowed because of an obstacle it can do nothing about, or that it just has to give way. It's simply a harsh, every man for himself society with few rules or standards: their contract with society and what it does for them is limited. Got a train to Kandy, a couple of hours inland, in the bouncy observation carriage at the back of the train with these large windows at the end and sides: rice fields, plains, jungle and cows are seen, and the track becomes single to pass through many tunnels and nice thick foliage in the hills.

Went to a botanical gardens place by Kandy, though hardly worth it really with its unimpressive collection of flora, considering this is a tropical country. As in India couples walk around making a show of romance and sitting very affectedly under trees together, after the paintings of the gods Rama and Sita. Attitudes are very Victorian and repressive, socialized and controlled- they sit pious and respectable with heads tipped together, all behaving in the same way and equally spaced out on lawns; it seems very put-upon, though perhaps a system that works for the entirely programmable kind of person. In India there may be fewer births outside of marriage but the mores totally fail to control population, and they need some draconian leadership on this matter or before long, with just a blip in the supply chain, there'll be famine in India on a scale the world's never seen: the infrastructure is only just coping and they don't see it.

Called by this elaborate looking Hindu temple but got extremely angry at the staff there for wanting to charge tourists for entering, and walked off: I've been asked for donations but never seen this even in India- unspeakable to blatantly make money out of your God. Tried a Pizza Hut place and though the food was served hot enough, as I'd requested, it wasn't clean: developing countries consistently cannot run fast food restaurants, being imported products of a foreign culture from the other side of the world- they just do not have the necessary conceptions of attention to detail, particularity of cleanliness or the rational directed thinking that goes to making the food reliable and the place work. People just go to the market and cook their own food at home, and restaurants of any kind indeed can cause them trouble: good practices drown in Dionysian imprecision and brainlessness.

One give-away is always the way the waiter puts stuff on your table- very cautiously, hesitantly and slowly, and getting very concerned about how to position it and when and how to leave the table again and leave you alone. Hotel staff are similar and only very gingerly and cluelessly slope off once you've got from them whatever it is you want- they just don't have the principles in the background to guide them with what they're doing. Got a bus to Kurunegela west of Kandy and walked by the lake with the same wretched couples about, still very hot but fresher cooler air in the evenings; was going to get a bus that night to the coast but couldn't get on any as were all too full, so had to stay the night. You could get on one at a station before it fills up but this isn't practical as it's only cool enough, if at all, for Caucasians when it moves and the air is passing through- but if it doesn't move until it's jammed. Getting on a bus with the sun hitting the metal roof and people's bodies sending the temperature way up would make you seriously ill; you can likewise see some trains so packed people are hanging out of the doors Indian style- all very dangerous.

Asians though understand none of this of course. Sweat pours from you in the midday hours but aircon on buses even if you can get it is hardly good enough even when taking your shirt off, and whenever the door opens the heat surges in. The locals scarcely sweat and don't actually need aircon- it's just a casual luxury for them not a matter of life and death as it can be at times for Caucasians, and they look at me either like I'm some dubious crazy character, or I'm sick: it's stressful but you have to make certain you're putting your needs first if you're going to survive.

In hotel rooms without aircon though, ceiling fans are to be used with greatest caution- they wobble furiously and if detached themselves would cause serious or fatal injury: they're almost universally inadequately installed, there being no building regulations to speak of. If you can't use it you can take showers through the night and let the water evaporate off you to cool you a bit; the cold water from the taps though indeed can be almost too hot to touch, being heated in tanks and pipes all day. Had a night at a small place called Wariyapola- no entry in the guidebook but a lovely quiet hotel down a lane just out of town; then a bus to Chilaw on the coast to walk around for a while, and south to Negombo, the town near the airport. The sea here is brown and unclean with pollutants and has some angry looking waves- a few people were in it including a few Westerners though.

[Sean]

Finishing a one year contract in South Korea I wanted to do some travel before heading back to England: I'd been planning to take a short flight north to Russia, get the train to Moscow then south to a couple of central Asian countries, but despite a visit to the Seoul Russian embassy with my alien card onward Russian tourist visas aren't available outside your home country, and indeed many of the other former Soviet countries have similar discouraging requirements, application times and costs. These places would have been new to me but the visas need sorting in advance not en route and instead I took an eleven week six country trip that includes three I've been to before, though heading for new locations in them. GMG has had five travelogues plus Korea- the India one to come.

I get a train to Seoul and an airport bus from there: there's a great place to sleep at the airport, small rooms available within a spa with saunas and hot and cold baths, Japanese style without clothes. At Bangkok the currency strengthens and prices rise and it's hard to find a budget hotel on Sukhumvit road with the nightlife; exotic scents fill the sultry hot air complemented by light but richly complex colours, including pink-purples and greens. It remains an inscrutable, luxuriously intoxicating place, a blizzard of possibilities and emotional complication reflecting Buddhist relativity and endless movement and change: it needs grounding in truth though not just rising above in a state of negativity, leaving the culture vulnerable to hostile influences- Thailand is Westernizing and stratifying and the outward tone has changed.

I try a massage a few side streets down with the usual sensuous extras- these places are nowhere near the experience they once were when you could expect entirely reciprocal relations with excited skilled masseurs. The atmosphere was very different, places better organized and relaxed and tips more up to you; before you might talk to a girl first but now they don't expect you to bother. Indeed with foreign repressive cultural expectations in mind the authorities have targeted some of the classiest and most intelligently run places, dragging the whole tone down: over the last 15 years the culture's surface has changed from an inner depth and humanity to Western lit up glitter and phony materialism.

I applied for an Indian visa at its one-week service place and bought a second hand travel guide to go see some of southern Thailand. Also went to the Myanmar embassy to check there are no land borders open other than the two or three border areas to visit from Thailand; once flown in you can apparently apply for a Chinese exit permit but the border with India where I'd like to cross has been closed to foreigners for decades, the main crossing also being into restive Manipur state, almost impossible to get travel permits for even from within India. I might be able to make a trek over to the post but it seems there's no way I'd be let through just with the visas. Also checked up on flight prices from Myanmar to India- much more expensive than a longer flight from Bangkok as they go via China; India has poor relations and border disputes with China and Myanmar is a seen as a vassal state.

Did another oil massage place with a mirrored room though the magic is gone- you can see her softening but the barriers are greater. Called at Nana plaza and Soi Cowboy bars in the evening, Cowboy a busy blaze of neon lights and looks like is being retained as a tourist site as much as anything. Baccara's former atmosphere of enormous electricity and edge with just four devastating marriageable girls on the upper glass dance floor, who would scarcely look at the men, expect everything from them and to prove themselves, everything being 'up to you', has changed to numerous girls and more selling of themselves for short time.

Bus it two hours down the coast to Pattaya and get a very nice mid-range hotel for a night, hoping to find a good girl. For years the town's raison d'etre was the fantastic pick-up bars with some of the world's most beautiful and alluring women but decisions have been made to develop it increasingly into a regular resort town. There are more shopping malls, businesses, top end hotels and first-rate displays of modern architecture- it's getting like an upmarket corner of Bangkok and losing its relaxed seafront air. The intention is to bring in the widest tourist market by catering for Western thought and expectations and the average lack of genuine interest or ability to cope with other cultures and angles on life. It's an understandable economic imperative and the numbers of visitors constantly increase but the immense richness and interest here ultimately don't need to fold to the West: the culture's outward tone is sliding to postmodern uniformity, its variety and transcendence of Western thought submerged under the anodyne and streamlined.

Thai receptivity has been hijacked by its application to narrowness as part of the systematic deletion from the world of conditions for relating to perspectives beyond Western pop culture. The thick, humid, glinting gauze across everything, the sophisticated relations and normalized levels of femininity are disappearing, replaced by democratic culture's normative depthlessness as directly expressive of the horde's limitations. Walking street even has a huge idiot video screen over its entrance- drivel to watch in place of life's involving intensity and inwardness of thought about whatever you're doing.

It looks like the go-go bars will be gone altogether soon, all crowded out by imported trash: those newly visiting what's left of them and the shows have no idea what they were previously like and what they're missing. Regular Western tourists are decorously entertained by completely toned down and stupefied dance routines and the odd unusual erotic sight for them- it's horrendous. Sexualized shows that provided the most powerful of experiences have been sanitized: before the girls, transsexuals and boys had the utmost relish and keenness in the opportunity for self-expression and bringing out of their inner personalities. They could really mean what they were doing but now under disgustingly respectable, repressive Western terms are jaded, unsure and even under a sense that they're being watched exploitatively: the psychotic West embraces sex only in part as though it's not central to life and hence for the most part wrong or embarrassing. Moreover whereas before almost all girls were available now there are offensively upright bars and restaurants with staff you can't barfine, idiotic bland articulation displacing more integrated emotional life.

I called in at Supergirl to see a girl I previously travelled with, the dancers here demure and composed to perfection despite the bar's recent wrongheaded alterations and Americanizations; a man next to me asked for a short time room upstairs, efficiently organized but another sign of decline. I took a girl instead from Superbaby, Happy having lost its quality: I made the mistake though of returning here having previously taken another girl but without the intention of seeing her again and indeed she was there, making it difficult for her. I went over to my girl to single her out as they like and as ever treated her well, going for food, a bar and show but she wasn't so easy to relate to, probably the shiest girl I ever slept with and not in touch with her sexuality, if very beautiful. In the past girls you had little in common with would provide a parallel experience to those you connected with strongly but now their minds are differently aligned and harder to win over: a culture's situating of personal development seems to go in the opposite direction to that of its material development.

Got a 17 hour train south to Hat Yai, third class- simple seats, cramped and rugged but nicely realistic away from the cotton wool with real Thais, a respectful atmosphere and noise to a minimum; many Muslims around with headscarves and intermittently praying facing west, returning to the Islamic towns towards the Malaysian border. From the window are fantastic and varied views of lush exotic jungle with exquisite farm buildings in perfectly clean settings, alongside occasional curious rock and volcanic formations. The countryside's beauty is continuous with the women's living there while the proximity to such a natural environment reflects the natural sexual immediacy, sexuality in urban Thailand having declined in parallel with its loss of foliage. There's the same beautiful lightness to the sunlight here in the south, reflected in the language and the modest peaceful people; Thai is rounded, coloured and blissful like few other languages in the world, and suited to polite low volumes.

I get a motorbike to the bus station and minibus to smaller Songkhla not far away on the hot east coast: the bus gets hit by a car on the way, causing minor damage and a lengthy delay. Sleeping sitting up causes the feet and hands to swell a touch and I walk to a cheap hotel for some rest; I lean a little on the washbasin and it detaches and smashes on the floor, narrowly missing my foot- I chose not to say anything as it wasn't my fault and didn't want to chance an argument. The town has small hills around covered in jungle, one with the usual hilltop temple and naga snake staircase to walk up. Locals are somewhat surprised to see me, a good sign: few foreigners make it down here with the separatism and tension. The Foreign Office website though is the usual garbage advising against all but essential travel to Songkhla and Pattani, normal towns bar the sandbag and barbed wire police roadblocks and young armed men looking like they really don't want to be there.

Get a minibus back to Hat Yai and another still on well paved roads to Pattani for a walk around in light rain; another hour or so spent at Narathiwat where I strolled down a beautiful residential road with jungle and palm trees before being picked up by an unimpressed police patrol car, taking me back to the station for the short trip to Songai Kolok on the Malaysian border. This is a scruffy mysterious border town though still with little sense of danger and a few good stores around- get a cheap hotel and refuse an offer for a girl; no Westerners. I'm a bit annoyed I chose to leave my passport as requested at the Indian embassy when I could have kept it and gone briefly over the border here.

Waiting for my 21 hour Bangkok train I drink coffee, each time served with a pot of Chinese tea for some reason; military with automatic rifles walk the station and there's the usual fascination from rural locals with your appearance and activity, and perhaps the fact that you're travelling for leisure. Blinking hot again on the train even though departing well after the midday heat. Check into a cheap hostel place, get my passport back and buy an inevitably populist India guidebook, produced today for those funnelling all through their own background lens. I have some food and drink with a girl from previous visits who's doing different jobs but none of them particularly good: she has a sister married in Europe but was the far more alluring girl and maybe she didn't play her cards so well.

I get another cheap train this time to the far north for the Myanmar region you're permitted to visit without a visa; much drier conditions and less green but some hilly areas covered in forests. Increasing costs are making Thailand no longer an inexpensive country and its rising standards now attract the novice and less confident traveller looking for an exotic experience only up to a point, rather as in south America; a tour leader I met on the train said the same thing. Bus it to Chiang Mai on a quality vehicle but with poor driving, not keeping to his lane, overtaking dangerously and using his mobile phone, an immediate prosecution in the West.

Walked around the nightlife area, dull, unexciting and full of the same rudderless foreign youth culture lacking much self-possession, cushioned by the environment's safe regularity. I head north to Chiang Rai and again to the border town Mae Sai for a couple of days in Myanmar; the train back is again so hot I have to give up my seat to stand nearer the windows- left 9am arriving midnight, sticky and disgusting conditions despite using the lightest clothes. Just time before my east India flight to visit Shebas bar on Soi Cowboy- some beautiful nude dancers but the atmosphere fake with people trying too hard.

[Siedler]

I agree that English has been good to be the open foundations!Thanks for sharing.



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