The Durian Apocalypse

Boy, am I ever thrilled that I ended up flying out of Bangkok. I love Penang, and I like KL pretty all right. But Thailand…Thailand is just the best (as this latest, briefest visit served to yet again remind). They call Thailand “The Land Of Smiles”, but as I’ve argued many a time previously, Land Of Weird And Surreal would be an epithet every bit as appropriate.

Take this goddam place I visited the other day, for example – Papaya Vintage Shop, up there at Lat Phrao. Oh, first of all, take this goddam 22-hour rail passage from Hat Yai, which lolled into Hua Lamphong a full six hours behind schedule – making it, I think, both the longest and furthest-behind-schedule train ride in all of my Thai rail experiences. A little fact-checking may be in order, here.

Economical – Yes, it is that, in spades. Seven bucks for the passage, including the overnight “accommodation”. Prices like those are impossible to resist.

Safe – In my experience, it is that, too; though I have on occasion read in the Post of trains having jumped their tracks.

Fast – Um…ah…er…I think…not.

Comfort – Ha ha.  At least in the Economical classes frequented by yours truly, comfort is about the thing it’s furthest from.

But, actually, the sign misses the best part of the third-class rail-ridin’ experience, viz., poking one’s head out the window, feeling the rush of the wind upon the face, listening to the clickety-clackety clickety-clack drone on for endless hundreds of kilmotres, and gogging at the beautiful Thai countryside rolling by. Nothing but nothing beats that! It’d be a bargain at ten times the price.

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Anyways, back to this goddam Papaya Shop joint. Stopped by there on the way to attend the Muay Thai, and stayed so long I ended up arriving late for the Muay Thai. What it is, it’s a freakin’ temple o’ kitsch. Three huge floors covered right up to the gills in bric-a-brac.

Factually, it’s not so different from the House Of Museums, which I visited three years ago — though Papaya, unlike the latter, is shockingly free of dust, cobwebs, and ankle-loving mosquitoes (all features so common to Southeast Asian museums one would think they were mandated by the contract). The music of choice, though, at the House Of Museums was old-thyme Thai traditionals, while at Papaya, it’s all Sinatra all day long. But also, whereas the former seems more ad hoc, the latter is a monument to OCD. Imagine a series of Jar Jar Binkses next to a wall of clocks, next to a room full of furniture arrangements, next to a mountain of suitcases, next to…next to…next to… But all of it very lovingly and carefully arranged, see?

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My favourite was the collection of old typewriters and adding machines…

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And there were plenty of other crazy shit besides. Here is a very small scratching of the surface. Yo, if there’s anybody can tell me what this “SMASH!” thing is for, I’d sure like to know. (And in re the nekkid mannequin: There were dozens, maybe even scores, of nekkid mannequins throughout the grounds. I don’t think I ever spied a one with its clothes on.)

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The oddnesses continued next afternoon, after I’d said my tearful adieus to the Good People of the one/only De Talak Hostel (centre of all that is righteous in humankind – though they were not the ones doing the crying, let me assure you), gathered up my luggage, and popped the subway to Bangkok’s tallest skyscrapah — the Baiyoke Sky Hotel — to meet up with my Thai sister-from-another-mister and to sample of the hotel’s fruit buffet, which had been recommended to me a few weeks before by arch-fruitarian, world-class athlete, and all around beacon of awesome, Mr. Grant Campbell.

No sooner had we filled up our plates, sat our dimpled asses down, and smelled the first whiffs of the Durian which the staff had parsimoniously doled out from behind the wizzzard’s curtain…that in walks arch-fruitarian, world-class athlete, and all around beacon of awesome, Mr. Grant Campbell – with his bags (and his cool/mellow son, name of Damien) in tow!  I’d known that we were to be flying out of BKK on the same night, but had not guessed I’d be seeing him here. Well…fuck it: Fruit party every body!

But, huhn, that’s not even the trippy part yet. Which, there we were having ourselves a gay old time scorfing down the restaurant’s Papayas and Pineapples and Grapes and Coconuts and Mangos and Longkongs (the Longkongs were very delish) and Dragonfruits and Honeydew and just you-fuckin’-name-it, and then we noticed, being projected in a video-loop upon the wall behind us, an interview being conducted with the very ringleader of the Durionic Hordes, the all-time Durian obsessive, the Queen Of The Thorns, Lindsay from the Year Of The Durian blog.

We barely even had time to wonder How-in-the-fuck? before, in scenes from a Thai Durian Orchard, comes bounding onscreen everybody’s favourite human, the God of Chanthaburi fruit-hunting, Mr. Nong von Nongster.

And then finally, the coupe de god damn fuckin’ schweirdness, up on thee screen come footage of none other but arch-fruitarian, world-class athlete, and all around beacon of awesome, Mr. Grant Campbell himself (!). Right while he was watching, too! That’s some weird crazy shit gone down over there in Bangkok town. And for those who don’t subscribe to the primacy of coincidence, well…you tell me what it all means?

I et my last pieces of Durian – Boo! Sob! – and, as nobody else’d ponied up the extra Baht to check out the O-Deck, shuffled up there by meself. I was serenaded, in the lift, by a three-piece band heading up to the top-floor restaurant to perform – and, ho hum, each member rocking a crazy-assed haircut. Then, the stairwell up to the revolving outdoor viewing stand smelt permanently of fart, was painted up in some kind of sci-fi narrative, and had a dude in a orange monkey suit walking around. Fuckin’…Thailand Weirdland! Who-could-ever-want-to-leave-this-place?-land.

After all that had gone, the view was frankly pretty anticlimactic. But, here it is, Bangkok from the top.

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Grant and Damien had waited for me downstairs, so the three of us hopped the link train out to Suvarnabhumi. My flight was just getting ready to check in when we arrived, and theirs was still some hours forthcoming. So, I bid them a fond farewell – Grant is going to be running in some damned-fool twenty-four-plus-hour marathon all the way across the United Kingdom in just a few days’ time – and made my way into the bowels of the airport.

There were a few tense minutes at Passport Control – three different personnel took it in turns to screw their faces up into confused-looking contortions when cross-checking my hard-copy with their computer’ screens’ records. When she finally did deign to administer the ever-precious “chop” (as the Malays delight in terming the applying of the stamp – if you ever travel in a van with Malays, you had better be prepared to discuss at great length your “chop” experience, or you ain’t gonna be discussing anything at all), I asked the clerk if there had been any problem. “No problem,” she merrily replied, “I check your data!” O-kay, do-kay.

I arrived to the gate with just about exactly enough time to listen to the new Sleater-Kinney rekkid before the boarding call, and that was that. Thailand Weirdland; that’s-a the place for me-land. Save some Durian for when I return, if you would be so kind. (By thee way, all of my pics from this year’s Thai Rodeo are shimmering themselves silly over at Flickrside.)

Oh, before I forget: One last pix, from Cambodia, which I’d (wrongfully) neglected until now to share. How cute is that shit?

I’ll see ya tomorrow.

Walking along Kampot’s riverfront promenade, one could easily get the feeling that it’s among the most beautiful locations in all of Southeast Asia – and when the afternoon breeze kicks in, so much the better. Hop up onto that little seawall pictured in the foreground here and peer down to water’s edge, however, and…

And these images are really quite tame examples of the situation throughout Cambodia – but I was too crestfallen looking at it all to want to get any more photos. It’s even worse along other stretches of the river, as well as around town; and it’s much worse in the countryside. A Cambodian inter-city bus trip, or a bicycle ride through the rural areas, is as depressing an experience as it’s possible for a living being to undergo. In addition to this unsightliness is the waft: The odor of burning plastic which, in the evening, becomes nearly inescapable.

If this all sounds like your idea of a good fun time, then, by all means, do pay a visit. There are lots of expats, lodging is shockingly inexpensive, the locals are friendly, the scenery (when viewed from carefully selected angles) is mouth-dropping gorgeous, the vibe is laid-back, and the city’s Coconuts — as well as its birds — are much too phenomenal.

Besides, all the foregoing having been said, Kampot’s ills still are not as shocking as are the situations in India and Indonesia. Moreover, truth be told Cambodia is, by various measures, quite close to the very bottom of the list of ecological scofflaws. (Though the residents do seem to take an especial glee in the act of littering. In Kampot, for example, I watched two teens walking down the path suddenly veer over to the river, throw in their plastic drinking cups, and then walk back over toward the street, right past a garbage bin, and purchase yet more liquid served inside yet more plastic containers.)

Which brings us to our driving point, here. I’ve written about the untold mountains of plastic before now – here, here, and here, for example – and I’m not sure I’ve anything to add to what I’d written before. I’m well aware that nobody wants to read about my fucking existential angst – and why on Earth should they? I’ve nothing worthwhile or insightful to say…unless you consider uber-morose hippie blubbering to be of interest.

Instead, go have a look at the greatest/most important blog post my eyes have ever seen, penned a few years ago now by the incomparable Dmitry Orlov. In it, he covers the effects of plastic in the environment, the fate of the species, and other topics worthy of our attentions.

And then? Please, please, pretty fuckin’ please with a cherry: Don’t buy anything that comes wrapped in plastic and/or styrofoam packaging. That shit is truly satanic.

By way of postscript, flipping through a copy of the ticket agency’s Cambodia guidebook while waiting for a bus in Kampot, I did chance to read the following, a desription of the scene here as it was some nine hundred years in the past. O, but the more they stay the same, ain’t it?

Angkor was the epicentre of an incredible empire that held sway over much of the Mekong region, but like all empires, the sun was to eventually set.

A number of scholars have argued that decline was already on the hori­zon at the time Angkor Wat was built, when the Angkorian empire was at the height of its remarkable productivity. There are indications that the irrigation network was overworked and slowly starting to silt up due to the massive deforestation that had taken place in the heavily populated areas to the north and east of Angkor. Massive construction projects such as Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom no doubt put an enormous strain on the royal coffers and on thousands of slaves and common people who subsidised them in hard labour and taxes. Following the reign of Jayavarman VII, temple construction effectively ground to a halt, in large part because Jayavarman VII’s public works quarried local sandstone into oblivion and had left the population exhausted.

One might be tempted to dismiss Koh Kong, Cambodia as simply another same-same dusty-border-town™ astride that long and lonesome trail and, when passing through, therefore hole it up inside of one’s hotel room all the day long in a bid to escape the overwhelmingly oppressive heat. Better had watch where you point that thing, though, ‘cause Koh Kong’s denizens are stone-cold, down-right, lock-it-up, ass-bumpin’ cool. They’re the kind of cool that don’t know they’re cool, don’t have a clue in the world what cool even is, and wouldn’t give a flyin’ fuck if you explained it to them. In other words, they’re the badass kind of cool. (Or perhaps there is no other kind?)

Maybe it’s the proximity to the frontier, allowing enough of the Thais’ too-weird-for-words voodoo to admix with the inherent Cambodian laid-back disposition to create just that perfect, syncretistic, the-fuck-you-lookin’-at? blend. Koh Kong: The goddam swirl cone of Southeast Asia. Mostly, the cool people are riding bicycles.

It’s reminiscent, in that way, of Bhairawa, Nepal — another favoured-by-me dusty border town whose bicycle-ridin’ inhabitants elevate it to near legendary memory-bank status. (And indeed, much as does Thailand’s in Koh Kong, the influence of Nepal’s inescapable southern neighbour in Bhairawa is surely most palpable — yet in the end cannot, thank the maker, be said to completely overwhelm the indigenous Nepali vibe.)

See below a few hastily cobbled photographic examples. But in case the evidence makes it appear that I’m overstating the case, please know that it’s near impossible to get good best shots of the coolest scenes – even with camera at the ready, by the time you realise that you’re in the presence of cool, the moment has already passed.

I humbly and ashamedly do report that I missed one of the very, very best all-time photo opportunities – an eight- or nine-year-old boy ferrying Durians to the family’s Market stall in a rickety wooden cart. ‘twas not (as fate would have it) in this instance the case that it all played out too quickly to capture on film; but rather that my hands were full of produce, and it would’ve made retrieving camera from pocket such a pain in the asshole. (Guess that’s the difference between myself and a real artist: The latter would be willing to suffer any indignity, to take on any burden — even if it meant rustling their bags of fruit to and fro’ – to reel in the shot they wanted.)

Oddly enough, the Kong also appears (to top it off) to be some sort of furniture hub. Walk around town, and every five minutes or so, you’ll see somebody transporting a massive piece of same from shoppe to home —  atop their motorcycle, no less. From the Buddha’s arse to my lips, I promise you’ll get a giggle out of it. Heh, there’s even a local cafe whose sign boasts of its prowess in dealing “every kind of furniture” in addition to its culinary offerings.

So Koh Kong deserves a day or two of your attentions, sez I. If you stay at 99 Guesthouse, you can even score a free bicycle to go and check out the local surrounds – or, simply to ride around town pretending that you’re a goddam citizen of the Kong, secure in the knowledge that this fact alone makes you one of the coolest peeps now-or-ever alive on this-here planet of the Earths. (Just don’t arrive on the fucking king’s birthday, or you’ll be shit-out-of-luck attempting to suss out an inexpensive bed for the evening…)