Reality Checks

Plus ca change.....I always got photos for passport/work permit and other official documents from the nifty Silver digital store on the 2nd floor of MBK. A mere 150 baht got me six photos and a personal session with the PhotoShop assistant who retouched away the most haggard and baggy aspects of my eyes, mouth, neck etc.

I recently went to Silver for a photo to accompany the five-year Thai driving license that replaces my temporary one-year permit. Alas, Silver no long offers personalized PhotoShopping. A very unpersonalized sales assistant said I could either put my face in the hands of some back room photo editor or take my business elsewhere.

How badly could they screw up a teensy one-inch square photo, I reckoned. And even if they did, the Land & Transport Department isn't the US State Department and nobody there would notice or care. "Make me look young, but not too young," I requested and wandered off into the mall during my 30-minute rejuvenation process.

Without my assistance, the "me" in their PhotoShopped version ended up looking as authentic as Madonna in her '4 Minutes' video with Justin Timberlake. I couldn't tell whether the retoucher left my sagging eye folds as to honor the "not too young" part of my request or because he ran out of time. Either way, this Jennifer was unrecognizable.

Of course this being Thailand, none of this mattered because the list of required documents for changing a temporary to a permanent license I picked up at the beginning of the month was incorrect. Ever since the remodeling of the licensing department last year, applicants are now photographed on the spot. Illuminated by brilliant white lights against a harsh blue background, the me in their "real" photo looks as unreal as the Silver shop's "fake" one.

Who am I anyhow?

Breathe In, Breathe Out. You're Fine!

Early in July 2007 I applied for a Thai driving license. Never in a zillion years would I ever consider driving here, but you need one to be eligible for an international license which I wanted in order to rent a car in California (where I went in January).

Of course only at the very end of the insanely arduous and hilarious multi-visit process did I discover that all I'd earned myself was a one-year temporary Thai permit which didn't make me eligible for an international license. Fortunately there's often a back door procedure for doing things in Thailand, and I ultimately obtained one from a different source. Since nobody at the San Francisco Airport branch of Avis read Thai they accepted my gobbledygook temporary permit and "ahem" international license and cheerfully rented me a car for a month.

Just before the temporary Thai permit expired a couple of weeks ago, I returned to the chaotic Bangkok version of the California DMV only to learn that I couldn't apply for anything permanent until AFTER the permit expired While I now have a year (!!!!) to trade it in for the five-year model, I really wanted to put this ongoing process behind me. To do so I need copies of every document vaguely relating to my existence in Thailand plus a health certificate.

Now I could present myself at to one of the many western-style Bangkok hospitals where for around 500 baht and a cursory exam by whichever doctor happened to be on call, I'd end up with the requisite certificate. OR, as happened this morning, I could stop in at an anonymous neighborhood clinic where the doctor's most pressing concern was deciphering my passport so she could correctly fill out her form. GAMPELL is my not my first name, I told her helpfully.

Having completed her primary task, the doctor took out a stethoscope and asked me to turn away from her. She put the scope on my back, had me breathe in and out three times and sent me back out to the waiting room. Two minutes and 80 baht later, I had my certificate of healthiness and was back out in the This Could Only Happen in Thailand world!

What a Pisser!

If I were a social anthropologist, perhaps I'd write my dissertation on Kuala Lumpur toilets and call it Squatting or Sitting: Tradition vs. Modernity in Downtown KL. I'd discuss toilet styles and accoutrements as a metaphor for ongoing religious, social and ethnic conflicts in the contemporary Malaysian capital. I’m no anthropologist but I do have some piddling comments after spending two days in KL recently.

Like Thailand, squatting toilets in Malaysia have been giving way to globalized western “sitters.” Squatters in circa 2008 Thailand are as passé as the plastic toilet paper containers that once doubled as napkin holders in Thai restaurants. The traditional Malaysian squatter, however, lives on in various unexpectedly contemporary venues.

To wit, fancy shopping malls. Even though my return KL-Bangkok flight departed at 10:30 pm, I checked out of the hotel in the early a.m. to avoid the afternoon rush hour traffic to KL Sentral (where you catch the airport buses). The bright and airy central station boasts a convenient left luggage counter (take note Thailand) and I assumed its loos would be equally modern and highly functional. Not! Its toilets were vintage squatters with no toilet paper in sight!

I chose to spend the rest of the day in Bangsar, a once-terminally-cool and now fading-around-the-edges neighborhood located one LRT stop away from KL Sentral. Before meeting friends for lunch and afternoon coffee, I was checking emails at the local internet café when nature called. I headed for the tony Bangsar Village shopping complex located across the street from the dingy internet shop. (Living in Asia for 16 years broaden one’s toilet cleanliness criteria, nonetheless if there’s a choice I’ll opt for a shopping mall loo over an internet pisseria).

Surprise surprise. Bangsar Village II offered squatters —albeit fancy ones like in the picture—in every stall except for the wheelchair access one! (From which very young and ambulatory woman emerged as I entered the bathroom.) Is squatting a Muslim-related predilection?

Other points someone more toilet-trained than I could explore:

1. Malaysian toilet paper is quite thick and from my brief survey, it definitely clogs the “sitters.” So where should I dispose of it? I never saw any small wastebaskets like those provided in most Thai women’s toilets. The only receptacles were those blue sanitary napkin units (like in the photo) and these often overflowed with used TP as well as you-know-what. YUCK!

2. What's up with Malaysian butt spraying technology? Whenever I travel outside of Thailand I miss its handy hoses with the pressurized spray nozzles that you often find hanging adjacent to the toilets. Westerners usually cringe when I describe this modern interpretation of the traditional water bucket and plastic bowl private-part cleaner. Actually it's extremely sanitary, especially when combined with a final TP wipe-off. Those nozzle-less Malaysian hose pipes dangling uselessly near the "squatters" just aren't up to the task!

To Max Wherever/Whoever You Are

You sat across the aisle from me on the flght from Kuching to KL on Monday evening. I saw you reading the newspaper with the headline about the police roadblocking downtown KL to prevent the Anwar rally. I'm always interested in Anwar-related articles, but your close cropped salt and pepper beard and hair set off against your black T-shirt, jeans, and sockless loafers were way more compelling.

"Are you an artist or something?" I asked lamely. Hoping to start up a conversation and establish my credentials, I described my June trip to KL to research an article on the alternative arts scene. "You seem like a creative type," I said trying to flatter. You laughed and said you had a day job in the hotel industry and also wrote criticism, which I thought was pretty cool since few Malaysians dare criticize much of anything in print. (They're even shyer about it than Thais.)

You write a weekly online column in Malaysia Today under the pseudonym "Max" you told me, adding that the Anwar rally was a complete fabrication by government designed to stir up anti-Anwar sentiment.

"Were you in Kuching for the Rainforest Music Festival?" I probed to keep the conversation alive. "It's a good cover for meeting certain people without drawing attention to yourself," you answered, seriously ratcheting up your enigmatic/exotic standing in my books.

I smiled at you as we waited for our bags. Sexy, smart, articulate and probably massively full of yourself, you disappeared into the crowd at the domestic LCCT terminal as soon as you hoisted your slim black leather bag on your shoulder. Yesterday I looked for you on Malaysia Today but have no idea which of the many columnists you might be.

Today they've rearrested Anwar in a move so reminiscent of 10 years ago that most people I've talked to in KL say they're too burned out to get very worked up about it."He's as hungry for for power as Mahathir and Badawi," said one former activist a few minutes after we heard the news. "He just represents another side of the same coin."

Since the arrest Malaysia Today is reachable only by proxy server. Max, if indeed that's your pseudonym, I wonder what you'd have to say about all this.

Big Noodles

The taxi driver who took me back from Sunday night movies at Bob's didn't fit the classic driver profile. He dressed well in clean khaki slacks and a neat T-shirt that showed off his slightly muscled arms. He didn't barrage me with the standard littany of questions about where I come from, how many kids I have, what do I do blah blah. His affect seemed deferential without being subservient.

"You haven't always driven taxi, have you?" I asked. No, he first drove one of the small passenger vans that offer better-then-a-public-bus and worse-than-a-private-car transportation options to the thousands of people who commute from the outer Bangkok burbs. After that he chauffeured several rich Thai businessmen around until he got tired of being treated like a piece of dirt. (Moneyed Thais typically regard their staff as subhuman gofers.)

"So why do you drive taxi?" I wondered. Turns out his wife just had a baby and had to give up her cashier's job at Tesco/Lotus (9 hr/day, 6 days/wk for 5,800 baht/month!) and he had no "sen sai" to get a better job. "What's sen sai?" I asked. Most taxi drivers can't find other words to define their expressions, especially to someone with such limited vocabulary as mine. But this one managed just fine.

Sen sai means connections, he explained. And being poor and under educated, he didn't have any. Of course he was more than smart enough to discuss Thai nepotism in all it's myriad and horribly unfair guises but that doesn't count for anything in Thailand. As he said, it's not what you know, but who you know and how important they are. (Of course after 15 years here I know that, but hadn't ever learned the term for it.)

Apparently important movers and shakers get classified like noodles--lek (thin) or yai (thick). A top of the line nepotistic connection is a sen kuay chap, named after very wide rectangular rice noodles. Could this be why I've always hated the Chinese-inspired Thai dishes that feature these flaccid creations?

A Taxi Driver for Life

The only time I listen to Thai radio is in taxis. Which means almost every night on the way home and very occasionally during the day. After hundreds of rides I've come to realize how shocked most drivers are by the strange farang woman who plonks herself down in the left front seat and tells them precisely what route to take to her destination and exactly how fast or slow they'd better drive getting there. I've also discovered that by initiating a discussion about their favorite music station I can usually nip any "who is this demanding bitch anyhow?" reactions in the bud.

As soon as a farang enters the vehicle, taxi drivers usually turn to one of the horrible western music stations. Perhaps a few actually enjoy the dismal circa 1970 playlists, but mainly they're just trying to be accommodating. "You LIKE Thai music?" they ask incredulously when I ask them to switch 88.5 or 95 FM, the two luk thung (Isaan country music) stations. Most Thais believe we farangs are from Mars and would never eat, speak, or listen to anything remotely Thai.

Actually I love luk thung, especially the pre-synthesizer numbers from the 1970s and 80s. I understand enough of the words to know they're all about heartbreak, unrequited love, economic woes and assorted other Life Sucks Bigtime topics. Such gloom and doom validates my own depressive tendencies. All over the dial, however, these soulful ditties have ceded their place to overproduced high-decibel modern versions of luk thung screamed out by young stars who obviously never suffered their predecessors' deprivations.

Even more than luk thung, I love pleng phua cheewit (Songs for Life). This folk and protest music popularized by the iconic Caravan band during the 1970s democracy crackdowns is now terminally out of synch with current Thai pop trends. Very occasionally a late-night luk thung DJ will play a few PCC tracks, but never one by the heartfelt crooners from that long-gone less amplified era.

Which is why I was ecstatic after climbing into a taxi yesterday and encountering a sweet gem of a driver in the midst of listening to an MP3 compilation of early PCC ballads by Caravan and the more mainstream 1980s group Carabao. "Where did you buy this?" I asked him. "I really really want a copy." Alas, the driver said a friend had given it to him and the disc wasn't commercially available.

"Can I buy it off you, oh please please please!" I begged. In these times of rising fuel prices and meter rates unchanged for over 10 years I assumed 200 baht would be more than enough to persuade him to part with his disc. But no, he enjoyed the 200 songs he said were on it and most uncharacteristically wasn't ready to make a quick baht.

"Wait. I have an idea. Can you loan it to me for a few minutes so the friend I'm going to visit can make a copy on his computer?" I proposed. I said I'd pay him the regular fare and then he could reset his meter for however long it took to copy his disc. Plus I promised him another 100 baht for his kindness. The driver agreed and I rang ahead so my friend could prepare his computer.

In the end the disc was too scratched and beat up to be copied. I brought it out to the driver who was cleaning his bright pink backseat upholstery while he waited. I paid the second fare and held out the 100 baht but he refused it saying it wasn't fair since I hadn't ended up with anything. I made him take it anyhow because his kind generosity and good intentions meant way more to me than 200 old songs.

A Booti-ful Friend

OK so in previous post I trashed Thais for being untrustworthy friends. Fortunately I also noted that nothing lasts forever in Thailand which lets me backpedal from that uniformly negative pronouncement. Phew! I can therefore bestow a much deserved Good Housekeeping Seal of Stellar Friendship upon Ran, longtime purveyor of second-hand footwear at Chatuchak Weekend market (JJ).

In mid May I asked Ran if he had any red cowboy boots. "Come back next week and I'll have them for you," he promised. When I finally returned two Sundays ago, he showed me a fabulous pair from Mexico that he'd rummaged through 56 huge bags of boots to find. Then he categorically refused to let me pay for them. "Money goes out, money comes in," he pronounced, grinning broadly. In a decade of second-hand shopping at JJ, no one has ever given me anything for free!

Since my teens I've dressed myself from flea markets, garage sales, thrift and charity stores. I first discovered the second-hand stores at JJ in the mid 1990s and came upon Ran during my Doc Martens phase (which friends say lasted way too long). The permanently ebullient and slightly paunchy Thai-Indian with long curly orange locks always had an endless supply of Docs in various states of wearability. Whenever I stopped by, Ran miraculously extricated an interesting size 38 pair from amidst the dusty boots, sneakers and Birkenstocks crowded onto shelves and piled on the floor of his dingy three-stall shop. Leopard spots on brown leather, pink flowers on pale blue or basic black...Ran usually managed to find something I'd like.

Initially I focused on apparel more than footwear. Pickings were spectacular before the 1997 baht crisis, partly because most Thais never went near used garments for fear of taking on the previous owner's karma. That left me with plenty of well made and stylish European castoffs for under 200 baht. Prices started climbing once Thai women started second handing, but for a while there were enough interesting French and Italian labels to go round.

Only thanks to Ran, do I understand any of the arcane workings of the second-hand world at JJ. No other vendor would divulge anything about the origins of their stuff or why the quality and quantity of their stocks kept declining over the years. Surely after a decade of selling to me they could have figured out I wasn't a corporate spy! But no, it was their information and they weren't sharing it!

According to Ran, buyers from richer countries like Japan realized the vast commercial potential of the second-hand fad. Instead of sourcing at JJ, they started going directly to the wholesale entrepot at Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodian border. Japanese dealers could afford to pay more than the baht-ravaged Thai merchants and thus got first choice. For end users like myself, this translated into fewer European garments at JJ and ridiculously high prices like 600 baht for a single item!

"You're taking the 'thrift' out of thrift shopping," I railed at the vendors. They just smiled their Buddha-like Thai smiles. Like anyone serious addict, I'd yell and scream for a while and eventually pay whatever it took to score my 'drug.' When European stuff virtually disappeared, I changed my dress style to incorporate the somewhat interesting Korean and Hong Kong gear. Then they too vanished. Recently favorite shops have either closed, downsized or offer abysmally style-free Chinese crap at insanely high prices. Finding one remotely Jennifer-worthy or affordable outfit has become the exception, not the rule.

Until a few months ago, second-hand footwear seemed impervious to the downturn that decimated the apparel trade. Fickle fashionista that I am, I pretty much abandoned Ran and his great deals a couple of years ago in favor of two vendors who offered Camper, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu and serviceable no-name brands for around 1,000 baht. Then their shoes prices started rising as the clothes once had. Earlier this year I actually paid 3,000 baht for a pair of barely worn LV sandals!

Now great shoes at JJ have gone the way of great clothes, i.e. out of Thailand. And I've gone back to Ran who, rather than wondering where I'd been the past couple of years, welcomed me back warmly. All the other JJ vendors are grousing about no stock, no customers no money. Ran says business has never been better. He's even invited me to come along on one of his monthly trips to a second-hand wholesale market in a country I'm keeping to myself for now. He says I'm gonna absolutely adore it. Watch this space!