Babba Bazorq

The Rose and I have a code phrase for the rounded fellers--and by rounded I don't mean well versed in numerous arts and sciences--but the Thai holiday oil field trash who look like Butterball turkeys wearing hook-'em horn cowboy belt buckles and Peterbilt caps. You see these fellers waddling along places like Khao San Road with these size double zero chickadees, their rented companions during their stay in Bangkok. Babba Bazorq is Farsi for Grandfather. In Spanish I believe the phrase is Viejo Raho Verde. In American English, we simply call them cradle robbers.

Now Babba Bazorq has a secondary connotation. Me. I might possibly be getting too old to lug a sixty pound back pack through the tropics. The Rose, I must say, did just fine. As long as she was haggling in the open air markets trying to beat a sales person out of fifty cents on a two dollar skirt, she was having the time of her life. I'm proud of her.
The airport bus is heah. We're on our way back to Abu Dhabi.

Come Get Your Kicks on National Hwy 6

Not really ready to make a move, but we're running low on time, and I want to spend some time on a beach before we have to return to the island (of Abu Dhabi) where animal labor has been replaced by more cost efficient manual labor from Bangla Desh. We have arranged for a taxi to take us back to Toi-Let tomorrow morning and from there a micro bus will carry us to BKK. One night there then we "ride a mail train baby" to Hua Hin, where we hope to "buy a thrill".

Last night Mr. K and I hauled our guitars to the Dead Fish Cafe and made use of their sound system to amplify our twangy caterwauling, taking turns strumming and singing a loose alt country (whatever that is) and sixties hippy shit set.

Two old farts sang old farty music like Paint It Black" (that be me), "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"" (that be Mr. K), "I Shall Be Released" (me), "Day After Day"(K), "Dead Flowers" and Tecumseh Valley (me and me).

The drunker the audience got, the better we sounded; the louder the applause.

The Get Away 2007

Mina's Photo Album

Mina's Tonle Sap Lake and Siem Reap River Trip Photo Album

An Assortment of Photos:

Thailand Defeated

Ah. No blaring calls to prayer with the speaker volume set on eleven. No clatter of cats to feed at 5 AM. No post-future architects' chrome and glass wet dreams under construction. No Mercedes motor traffic rumbling. No thirty-minute pizza delivery kamikazi motor scooters.

This is the life this livin in a village of dog shit dusty road, shanty towns of thatched roofs, women coming back from the stanky river balancing bundles of laundry on their heads. The land of jungle law and monkey thieves.

Ah!

Or, as Gauguin once said, "To me, barbarism is a rejuvenation."

Or, as Ray Davies once said, "I wanna sail away to a distant shore, and live like an ape man."

It's a shopworn cliche in Siem Reap to gripe about tuk-tuk drivers who harass you coming and going, asking you if you want a ride in their motor bike rickshaws. I have more pressing pet peeves to obsess on, so I don't mind at all telling these fellers "No thank you," even though I might have to repeat this polite rejection of their services a hundred and eight times a day.

Odd though that today, I rented a bike yet, still, as I pedal past these tuk tuk peddlers, I get solicited, "You want tuk-tuk?" Say, huh?

For the past four months, I've spent no less than eight hours a week in the Abu Dhabi Health Club shedding some 15 kg.--btw, four of those hours per week have been devoted to extreme RPM spin classes, so I guarantee that I do not give off the vibe that I am some bedragled barang huffing and puffing along, ready to keel over in the soupy steamy streets--I bet my left bollock on it. So, I wonder, why do they persist in asking me if I want a fucking ride in their freaking tuk-tuks when I am meerily cycling my way around the old market? Obviously, they are on auto-pilot and they do not mind the rejection.

I attended the charity quiz night at the Funky Munkey a couple of nights back. (Yes, my team, courtesy of my bullshit engorged brain, won the NGO gimme t-shirts). The bartender-co-owner Trixie is a very sweet gal. She's good people as we say down south. I met here exactly one year ago for all of ten seconds through Mme. Liz (now of HK) and I'll be damned if Ms. Trixie didn't remember me.

Speaking of t-shirts, I have to pick up one that I saw on a Funky Munkey bar fly that sums up the whole hawkers and tout experience of SR. It read: No Tuk-tuk, No Temples, No Sunset, No Boom Boom. Yes. Read m lips. No goddamned tuk-tuk! Yes. No temples. I'm Angkor Watted out. Yes. Sunsets are dicey during monsoons anyway. And as for boom boom. Um. . .can I get back to you on that? (Is a massage with a happy ending a marital cheat?)

Anyway. Tonight it's dinner and Apsara hand dances at the Apsara Theatre across the street from the posh Angkor Village Resort. We'll problembly head back to Toi-Let on the Cambodia Thai border early next week then live out the rest of our vacation in the Land of 998 smiles. I've deducted two on account of the surly waitress and cook at the Thai Cozy Guest House.

Sub Genius

I know shit. My head is filled with it. You want me on your team on quiz night at the local pub. Surface knowledge and salient details are my Forté. Perhaps because my head is clogged with so many useless facts and figures, my thinking becomes strained on standardized IQ tests, and for this reason, I have always scored just below genius. On the other hand, the last few IQ tests I've taken were in in flight magazines, and I was probably a few rum and cokes into the flight when I took the tests.

Be that as it may, I'm an A minus sort of guy and proud of it. My safety school was my first choice. My foggy recollections of my high school years are always set in the evenings where I am not hunched over a heap of books.

I've never worn the pants in a relationship. I've avoided many clashes on where to lunch by always being in agreement on these sorts of things that my significant other du jour chooses.

My pets have always been mixed breeds. I rescue them off the streets.

I won't get into the highest realm of heaven nor will I be condemned to the lowest circle of hell.

If it's heaven, instead of 72 virgins, I'll spend my eternity with a quartet of late thirty-something Eastern European pros who will have bad backs and smoker hacks. If it's the other place I'll spend forever fighting off flu-like symptoms with hellmates that include politicians, panderers and frauds.

Trivia is fraudelent genius. That's why I love Wikipedia. I now have nearly instantaneous pseudo wisdom just by tapping a few letters on my keyboard and left clicking my mouse.