Purchasing the Dragon.

Beer and Clothing in South Asia

Shopping in Bangkok is the closest any shopaholic will come to the feeling of having an orgasm on heroin in a Golden Fleece cloud held by care bears while sipping bubble tea and singing “kumbayah” in an air-conditioned room made from marshmallows and pixy burps on a long weekend in summer. A man tells you the price of a t-shirt you fancy, you quickly pull out your calculator and convert the sheep-noise currency to your native shrapnel and come up with 20 cents. “Half that” you say, “20c is ridiculous for this Versace shirt made of cotton more durable than the genuine article!” “No, no!” he says, “You pay my price that good price see nice shirt” Then you tell him he’s dreaming and walk off. “OK, OK, no problem!” and you have yourself a new 10 cent Versace shirt. Then you walk past a pad thai cart and the smell pulls you back like a dog leash tied to a tree, it smells like two coconuts had a baby with a spice factory and in the process got tangled in a web of noodles while having a fight with a cooked chicken. It is, to put it into one word, divine. Whoever invented this dish was a saucy individual in more ways than one.

After paying 30 Versace shirts worth of sheep cash for your mouthgasm you saunter toward a bar while your forehead drips like a leaky faucet made of sponge in heat that only ozone can defy. You sit, light a Marlborough light, and order a big Tiger. Tiger beer, as we discovered in Singapore later, was created by some thirsty gentlemen in South East Asia, one hundred thousand years ago, who convinced Heineken and F&N soft drinks to create a beer that not only got you drunk, but refreshed you, like water can for example. To this day the logo retains the “e” in the Heineken font as a tribute to its heritage, and the “i” is printed as a “1” to, well, say they are #1 I guess. I believe the “g” is also made to look like the lucky number 8 as well, but I could go on about beer all day, and I’m digressing. 1 Tiger, 2 ciggies and 3 touts later the guy across the street who I gave $100 baht deposit has returned with the copy of Windows XP Plus that I am currently using to write this to you, as we all know Windows Vista sucks badly, especially when your laptop sucks badly which makes Vista suck even more badly because the two implode on each other fighting over the resources neither of them have to offer.

Today was much like this, exactly like this to be more precise. The t-shirt selection in Bangkok is like someone went through all the t-shirts in the world, threw out the popped-collar salmon coloured ones first then all the other rubbish ones, then put the rest in Khao San Road, Bangkok. You pretty much laugh from one end of the street to the other. There is a really funny guy sitting in a dungeon somewhere in Thailand being fed fairy bread and marijuana cookies, alco-pop drinks and Vietnamese coffee (don’t get me started) with a pencil and five 4 foot tall men with fake Gucci underwear and AK-47s surrounding him, creating these diamonds. I’m positive of this. I have bought my friend one of Bruce Lee doing the thing he does before he is all over you like a spider monkey, with the caption “Fuck you round eyes”. It’s comically perfect. I’m also surprised my new copy of Microsoft Word has spelling-underlined “round eyes”, considering its source.

Tomorrow morning, Shorty and I leave for Siam Reap, Cambodia. We have not booked any tour busses or flights, we have decided to do it Pepsi Max style, and attempt one of the world’s trickiest (yet less violent of late) border crossings. Tonight will be packing, and planning.