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UK TV

April 20th 2012 23:01
Donald Trump's hair

TV is a good way to get a handle on a culture. Here is a look at UK TV with a few comparisons with Japanese TV.

Surprisingly, the UK went digital before Japan. Also surprisingly, Japan went digital but offered very little extra value for the effort and money they demanded of the consumer. And by that I mean, extra channels. That’s what we want. More choice. OK sharper images and a free TV guide are nice, but the real advantage of digital is the possibility of getting tons of channels, not to mention compatibility with the internet.


The UK TV head had to invest ninety quid on a digital box but was rewarded by a slew of extra channels. The Japanese got nothing for free.

Are these new free channels in the UK worth watching? That’s a matter of opinion. They aren’t like the BBC, Channel 4 or ITV in the sense that they invest in making new content that might be perceived of having any value. Instead they put up lots of dumb (but sometimes entertaining) ‘reality shows’ often not made but bought. Cops in the States chasing criminals narrated by Vinnie Jones; fat camp; Get Me Out of Here I’m not Famous; Teenagers in Ibiza Spied on by their Parents; Essex Girls Study Quantum Mechanics; Britain's Got No Talent; Extreme Fishing; I Woke Up Gay and so on ad infinitum. Real people make cheap TV since they don’t command huge salaries. Indeed they are so desperate to be on the idiot box that they will work for free.


Don't Tell the Bride


A good one is called Don't Tell the Bride. This is a show where they find a young couple about to get married. They split the couple up and give the man money to secretly organize the wedding. Without exception all the boyfriends go about planning a wedding that they want – a Star Wars wedding, a nautical wedding, a bungee jump wedding, a football wedding. All these young grooms-to-be want to be original and they all labour under the illusion that their fiancée wants to go down the aisle looking like Princess Leia. The pleasure of this reality fiasco fest is enhanced by interviews with the ‘gals’ telling the camera how they want a traditional white wedding dress and a church ceremony. No, love, you don’t. You want vintage 1969 England strip and a ceremony at White Hart Lane.

Thankfully this unhealthy obsession with reality and documentary is balanced by some of the better shows from America that I’ve not seen before like Scrubs. There is also the brilliant Film Four that showed Che Parts 1 and 2 recently. Indeed, having been away from Blighted Blighty for several years there are loads of movies on TV that I’ve not seen. I rarely see a whole movie. Instead I discover it’s on after having watched 10 minutes of several other channels. This is because I still haven’t mastered how to work the controllers. There are always at least two with more buttons than a computer keyboard. Why is it so complicated to find out what’s on? My Japanese wife has no problems mastering any TV system. My 1 year old daughter is good at putting the subtitles on.

I’m half glad I can’t figure out the short cuts to TV control mastery. Instead I have to flick up and down. The ceiling seems to be music videos on demand and dozens of radio channels that surely nobody listens to. By going up and down I can study this thing called digital TV.

One of the things that made me laugh is the discovery of Yesterday TV. Yes, a whole channel based around the idea of showing yesterday’s TV. This has spawned imitators. There’s one channel that is one hour behind. When your temporal lobes have been befuddled by enriching weed you are thrown into puddles of self-doubt by one hour behind TV. You flick through the channels and find yourself watching the same movie you were watching 40 minutes ago only its right at the beginning again. Uh? Is this movie going backwards? Is time going backwards? Did something happen while I went to the toilet? Is this connected to one of those mystery buttons on the remote that seemingly did nothing when I pressed it a moment ago? Fuck this is good gear.

If only we could have Tomorrow TV with repeats later on in the week.

There’s also a community TV which is disappointingly nothing like Wayne’s World or Ali G. And I can’t figure out what community it is meant to represent.

The Antiques Roadshow is on Yesterday TV. It’s one of those naff programmes that never seems to go away like herpes. Now, however, it’s huge. The Antiques Roadshow sums up a sea change in British society. It is now a winning formula that is rehashed in the show called Flog It and probably other shows I’ve not yet discovered. It smacks of financial crisis to me. Previously, we had tons of programmes about doing up homes to improve their re-sale value. Here was a dream so many believed- you could buy and sell your way up the ladder to a property worth half a mill or more. All based on the premise that house prices must always go up.

You don’t see those shows anymore.

Instead the dream is now finding a teapot, watch, plate, picture – any old bit of bric-a-brac – and discovering that it’s in fact extremely rare and valuable. The dream of money for nothing has been downgraded but lives on.

British TV is far more predatory than Japanese TV. The Japanese have their share of dodgy companies advertising on the TV, especially beer companies that make boozing the healthiest, most attractive and even the most Japanese thing you could possibly do. It’s always barbies on the beach with beer, painting the house and beer, finishing a hard day down the factory and beer. The bottled and canned drink industry is massive in Japan and TV reflects that.

I thus suspect that online gambling is humongous in the UK. It could be our biggest growth industry – encouraging ourselves to get into super nova debt.

There are 2 maybe more channels at night time devoted to gambling. They have an announcer constantly reminding you the phone number to ring and the free 30 quid you receive to get you started. Then they spin the roulette wheel and shortly afterwards the list of winners starts shooting up the screen as the announcer goes back to explaining how to play.

It’s painful TV. No finesse, no pretense.

Slightly more subtle are the constant adverts for gambling on mobile phones. The ads show young people driving through futuristic cityscapes with billboards in oozingly attractive colours showing slot machines. Or it’s a devilishly hip young man going down stairs to an uber-exclusive club, passing mega glam birds to hit the tables. They are selling lifestyle and raping in the pounds.

A nice counterpoint to this are the late night shows on UK TV of American poker tournaments. These guys and gals are not hip or attractive. They are fat, wear sunglasses at night and baseball caps backward. I’m fascinated by how dull it is, and how little sense it makes to me. They are apparently risking thousands of dollars and the effect is like watching someone fish – mostly sitting around, casting off and ending up with nothing to show for the effort. I love it. The fact that they are trying to make poker out to be glamorous and jet-set but instead succeed in showing how the whole thing has loser written all over it is masterfully ironic.

Japanese TV


Japanese peak viewing is based around a dozen comedians, 2 boy bands and a few trite game show formulas. That’s it. They seem to have a script that is a single piece of paper. One show they have the pretty boys making pancakes, the next attempting to guess how much a restaurant dish costs. It’s called Downtown which must be ironic as cunnilingus is much more entertaining. Perhaps it’s a sex substitute – which would explain all the pseudo sado-masochistic references.

For the New Year special they get all the big name comedians such as Matsumoto together. These celebs are made to wonder around a deserted army compound. As they go from place to place random people appear and do lame things in front of them. Any comedian that laughs gets smacked on the backside. I presume the comedians laugh at how pitiful the attempts to make them laugh are. Also they are paid to laugh.



I must admit I’m not an expert on Japanese TV. I never bothered to study the language. Sadly enough that appeared to be no impediment to understanding Japanese humour. I also had to watch what my father-in-law wanted to see. This consisted of three things: baseball, travel shows and Japanese propaganda. I’m sure that last item didn’t slip under your radar. Yes, I think much early evening Japanese TV is unashamed nation building. It’s all about little old ladies farming and making noodles. About train journeys to rural areas where they farm and make noodles. It’s trying to convince the nation that what it is to be Japanese is to pursue wholesome activities and eat oh so delicious noodles and say ‘Delicious’ with your mouth full. This has produced generation after generation of dolts who think they are uniquely unique, and no foreigner could possibly understand.

Yes, we understand. We just don’t buy into it.

UK TV in contrast is more reflective. It shows us how we are. Idiots. Idiots who like gambling. Idiots who think margarine is good for us. Idiots who imagine their bride-to-be wants to read her wedding vows in Klingon. Idiots from Essex. Idiots who believe that their junk in the attic is worth a fortune. Idiots who need yesterday’s TV.

Before I lay this installment of my trippy televisual journeys to bed I want to mention one last UK TV experience I had recently. As usual it was late at night after everyone had gone to bed. I’m munching on amazing cheese, olives and French stick; and of course I’m flicking up and down the channels.

I come across an episode of the American Apprentice. I think that is the name of the show. It consists of weasely business wannabes trying to impress this master of the universe business guy. In the episode I saw the master of the universe was Donald Trump. I have no idea what was said as all my attention was focused on Donald’s hair. Is it real? If so it is worth scientific research. It is impossible to tell whether it is brushed forward or backward. It also seems to float and shimmer. And no matter how you squint, it is always out of focus. Like the Mona Lisa’s eyes it follows you around the room.

I stood in the kitchen gob open like a Japanese noodle muncher thinking “My god, those guys in Switzerland banging electrons together down a tube are well off the beaten track. Here surely, is the key to anti-matter, wave particle dispersion and possibly the big bang.”

That hair thing must be part of a larger object that is hidden by another dimension. It is not something of our 3 dimensions. It is not something that could have been created. It must hail from the very beginnings of the universe.

Or perhaps Donald’s head is host to an extraterrestrial that is fed up with TV on its own planet and has decided to grab a bit of the high life on Earth TV. After watching enough TV anything seems plausible.
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The Return of the Tramp

February 25th 2012 12:36

It’s been 10 years since I’ve lived in my own country. That country being England. The quote claims that the past is a foreign country, where they do things differently. I feel like I have come from the past to a foreign country. And yet it is all curiously familiar; like a bad case of déjà vu.

I have been living for just over 2 weeks in a small town in the Midlands. The wastelands as I always liked to call it. It’s just a few streets this town where I currently preside. It’s the usual collection of Georgian buildings interspersed with a supermarket and other ugly new efforts at architecture. Either the English are conditioned to only like old buildings, or we have failed to design anything beautiful to live in for over 100 years.

The high street is dominated by charity shops. On the news retailers have been complaining that charity shops are using their tax exempt status to unfairly compete with regular shops. That and charity shops are run by volunteers. It seems everything is being run by volunteers. The old lock system has been disbanded and now they are being run by volunteers. The time is coming surely when all public services will be run by nattering old dears with grey hair and rotund figures. The train system might improve with an injection of charitable volunteering culture. After all, plenty of people in the UK still have an absurd fascination with trains. Not as a way of reducing green house gas emissions, but just as a sad reminder of when the ‘Great’ in ‘Great Britain’ didn’t seem like a joke.

There are two things I’ve discovered that people in the UK agree upon. One is that bankers are wankers. Even the bankers don’t deny their wanker status. They have cunningly been cutting their own bonuses while at the same time increasing their salaries. For some odd reason only the bonus slashing has made it into the media. How do I know about the salary increases? Well I have my connections with wankerdom.

The second thing all folks from the sceptred isle agree upon is that the Olympics in London are a huge mistake. I was a little bit surprised about this. The Japanese, amongst whom I was sojourning for much of the last 10 years, would love to have the games. They could build lots more concrete carbuncles and the media would have a perfect excuse to avoid mentioning the news for a solid 6 months.

Us Brits view it otherwise. The lesson of the trains. It is universally acknowledged that we can’t organize anything. Already the government is stoking the flames of panic by telling Londoners that they should take a month off work to relieve the congestion on the underground. We also know that any type of public works costs a fortune. For the money we spent on building the new Wembley Stadium we could have given everyone in Africa a year’s supply of meat pies. We are in no doubt that the amount of money that we will throw at the Olympics will make the last bank bailout seem reasonable. Which it wasn’t.



The déjà vu aspect of coming back to the UK is to do with the staggering recession. I grew up under the bleak early Thatcher years of 3 million unemployed, house re-possessions every few seconds, Arthur Scargill pitting his comb-over against the Lady T.s bouffant miracle, and the YTS slave labour system. The outlook seemed bleak then: the country was divided between the arrogant chinless haves and the millions of have-nots. Nobody could understand how the Tories were universally hated but kept winning elections.

The same grimness and pessimism now hangs over the UK. Only it seems worse now because those with houses think they are rich. The housing boom over the last ten years means that any pile of bricks with a roof on top is worth over 100,000 nicker. When I was at university the same places would have cost £30,000. As we do in jolly blighty, we refuse to accept reality. House prices won’t go down. We are now a nation of potentially rich people if only we could sell our houses. Mean time we struggle to pay the bills, moan at the new tax hikes and hope we don’t lose the jobs that we openly despise.

While house prices defy gravity and reality the supermarkets have embraced the situation. At the end of every aisle there are huge signs saying ‘£1 only’. I quickly figured out that there is no saving – they just wrap up a few carrots and call it a quid, or they are offering 2 litre bottles of fizzy shitty pop for a quid. If you buy 3 packets of baby wipes you get 1 free. These are gimmicks designed to influence the moronic. Luckily for the supermarkets most people are morons. Why else get rid of fractions? In my day stuff cost proper amounts like £1.28.

The other thing I’ve noticed about supermarkets is that the tobacco counters have turned into furtive corners where old ladies avoid the queues at the cash outs. No longer are fags and baccy on display. There is a tiny printed menu discreetly placed in front of the till. For those brave enough to purchase the legal weed the cave doors open briefly revealing a wealth of cancerous products.

I’m happy about the righteous having their day with the tobacco counter, but I still haven’t forgiven the snotty middle class for taking over pubs. The la-di-da wannabes don’t even drink much. For this reason a pint costs a fortune. When I left the minimum wage was about £3. Now it’s over £6. That is enough to buy a round if you don’t have any friends. I’ve only been to one pub since coming back. What’s the point when you can’t smoke?

The pub I went to was strangely a pub but not a pub. It was in the countryside. In some place called Little Wick or Lower Piddle or Crumpet-on-the-sly. The place had a bar but it was full of restaurant style tables and chairs. Someone else paid so I ordered some food. You needed a qualification in French to understand the thing. Somehow cheese on toast had become croque monsieur. The food was served by saucy posh teenagers. Hard times when the children of the gentry can find no better job than waitressing in posh pubs.

It was déjà vu going into the countryside. The skeletal winter trees, the hedge rows, the sheep dumbly staring in the same direction, the Norman churches all re-kindled a connection. It reminded me what I had missed about my country of birth.

Coming from Japan I noticed the complete absence of drinks machines or even shops. We drove around places that had churches, schools, pubs, football pitches but not one shop. Those without cars presumably starved or lived off turnips they scavenged from the fields.

Just today we went to Birlington. It was a collection of about 10 houses and an old stone church. It was surrounded by graves and snowdrops. Inside solid stone held up a wooden roof. Donations were left on a tray. I had to stop myself pocketing the golden nuggets glistening among the copper.



While reading the gravestones a bloke in brown cords and wellies came up to us and offered us tea and cake in the old rectory. We accepted. He lived with his wife in a big house down the road.

The wife was a solid, no nonsense type. She had 3 cakes laid out and soon whisked up coffees and teas for us and toys for the baby. Shortly afterwards other invitees arrived. All respectably old. The wife cut massive wedges of cake for everyone and chatted blithely about walking paths and kingfishers. The husband kept himself well out of the way in the corner of the kitchen.

The thought struck me that the wife had the air of one of those army wives. Probably did a spot of time in India helping her husband keep the garrison in order, you know the odd hand job to any of the Sikhs that got uppity about the cow grease on the bullets. I tried not to imagine a no nonsense hand job. The cow grease might have come in useful.



For her part she must have taken a few sideways looks at me and my entourage. A hippy, an Asian woman, and a white one year old intent on bothering the old dog of the house. Maybe she pegged me for an exotic type of tinker, or perhaps one of those London types, or perhaps some type of dole bludger planning to have 10 kids and getting the state to pay. I definitely avoided appearing uppity for fear of being given the old fashioned treatment.

Oh class. Now there’s déjà vu.
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Thailand Prices 2011 Part 2

February 13th 2012 15:24


31/12/11

Cheeseburger chips and coke on Thong Nai Pan Yai 145 THB
Beers, buckets and sundries for New Year’s Eve Party 2,000 THB

Total = $72

While I’m not particularly bothered what I do on Christmas day, I do feel a twinge of disappointment if I don’t have a blast for New Year’s Eve. I hate spending a fortune to go and see an overrated DJ on New Year’s Eve. I also suspect I’m a sad bastard if I stay at home on NY. Makes you feel as if you have no mates, as if you are a misanthrope.

In Japan, outside of the big cities, the standard thing to do is to go to a temple and ring a bell. Each bong represents one of the sins of humanity. (For many of the Japanese I know their only sin is their lifelessness.) They then return home, have a hot drink and go to bed early for fear of catching a cold and being considered unwholesome. The following day they eat minging cold egg, watch tedious marathon races and drink sake. They might break up the excitement with a visit to a shrine where they will do nothing religious other than confirm their Japaneseness.

After several mediocre to crushingly poor New Year’s events in Japan, Thailand provided a memorable night. My brother and I met up with some other denizens of the beach as well as Cordless and wife and we all got lifts on the back of motorbikes to a friend’s bungalow.

There we started on the booze and surprisingly good sundries. It was a splash out, but not from my pocket. Rather from internet work already rendered. The stuff had the odd effect of making me feel hot (not in a Hollywood way, just a temperature way). The result was that I spent most of the evening randy, which I believe is man’s natural state.

At our pre-event soiree we were joined by some dive instructors and a couple of Fins. Not diving fins but the Scandinavian types. I can’t remember what we were talking about but the one Finnish girl who looked a bit flower power suddenly informed the gathering that ‘we’ (the Fins) lived in forests and that they were used to perpetual darkness. I didn’t press the point but I’m sure it was only her that lived in a forest without electricity. How she made it in the dark all the way to Thailand is a mystery.

Anyway, after an hour of banter we got back on bikes and headed down the road to the Funky Buddha in Thong Nai Pan Yai.

The bar was quiet. We got some good seating and proceeded to indulge, imbibe and blither like it was 1999. Eventually, the heating turned to buzzing, the DJ started up and a few other people wandered into the bar.

You can always tell it’s a good night when randomly people break off from the group and are found gyrating and hand bopping on the dance floor. It was vocal laden house-tech. Nothing too obvious and the few that had made it out were having a good time.

Time shot by. Buckets were ordered and downed. Lots of numbers rolled. My abilities in that department were letting me down. Before I knew it, 12 o’clock had vanished up the backside of 3 o’clock. We all decided to leave.

I persuaded a Thai friend to give me a lift on her bike. I was apparently complimenting her on her hair as I spilled beer down it. She took it all very well.

Before getting on the bike our final act at the club was another cheeky sundry. After that I have no totally clear recollection of what happened. Even the beer spilling on the bike episode was told to me later.

The only clear memory that I have after leaving the club was stripping down to my boxers on the beach at Noi and going for a swim with Cordless. Afterwards, we sat and watched the first sun of the New Year low on the horizon and talked bollocks.

It was by far the best New Year’s Eve I’ve had in possibly a decade, if not longer. And none of the pleasure was lost by having to stumble up the hill at the end of the beach session.

01/01/12

I didn’t spend any money on this day. My brother and I just ate the food in the house. I felt so hung over that at one point during the day I was cold and wearing a jacket.

I wrote drafts for some legal documents and did nothing else worthy of note. In the evening we watched District 9. My body felt like it was becoming alien to me.

02/01/12

Tobacco and skins 150 THB
Dinner at Better Than Sex followed by buckets 2,000 THB

Total = $72

Having had a day off from serious abuse and an early night we got up early the next day and started work. This time we started on the windows. When we designed the house ‘floor to ceiling windows’ seemed like a great selling point. We failed to consider the high maintenance aspect of this decision, or the fact that some of the windows at the back of the house were nigh on unreachable except with a tall step ladder. At one point I was on the burning tiles of the roof leaning precariously against the wall by the gutter trying to reach one particularly inaccessible window. I got to all the windows bar one. Another day.

Better Than Sex
Better Than Sex Restaurant


As a reward for my window cleaning I failed to get a confessional experience but I did get to knock off early. I headed down the beach where I find Cordless digging into his herbs on his wide veranda. After clearing my head, we went down to the ocean with the Frisbee and played an assortment of throwing games. On our second outing with the Frisbee we hit rare form and were flinging it respectable distances. Nearby was a French man raping in the money by hiring out his 2 jet skis. The other notable thing about the beach was the amount of children and adults with plum home county vowels and full enunciation. I used to blend into the ambience on the beach like a drunk at a Glaswegian city centre pub; I now stood out like a leper at a royal garden party. In my opinion it all went wrong when the wheelie suitcase was invented.

I went back up the hill as the sun started its dash for the mountains.

In the evening my brother and I went decided to eat out. We picked up Pong and rounded up Mr. and Mrs. Cordless and went to Better Than Sex for food. It had an eclectic menu – Thai, Burmese and Italian. The clientele were mostly European 30 somethings with cash to waste on red wine. I had a decent carbonara. My sibling went home and the rest of us hit Jip Shop.

We watched some footie and slurped buckets. Then the bird left and the two lads went to the Jungle Bar. It was empty except for 2 Thai lads who might have been working there or might just have been hanging out. The two things are blurred in Thailand. More buckets and herbs.

I walked backed wasted. I could tell I was wasted as my eyesight was worse than usual. After passing a bright spotlight the contrast put me totally in the dark. I said shit to myself and paused to consider my options. Fuck it: my legs will carry me home. I stumbled off in the darkness unsure whether my eyes were open or closed. Eventually the overhanging foliage cleared and I could see by the moon. On the right track rather than lost on a jungle path heading to the shack of a Japanese soldier still waiting for the Emperor to declare the great imperial victory.

03/01/12

Pen’s Bungalows burger and fries 100 THB
Water 10 THB
Internet 30 THB
Beers 200 THB
Tobacco 200 THB

Total = $18

It was another early and painful rise that was quickly cured by the marvels of local product.

The morning was spent going over several of the windows again. Many of the glass panes had paint smears. These were removed with turps by my brother and I followed with bucket, rag and newspaper.

Pens Bungalows
Pens Bungalows


For lunch we went over to Yai. Despite my awareness of the fact, I ordered burger and fries. I was generally more concerned with photographing the menus of restaurants. This meant that I had no time to read them before they were taken away. They always seem keen to take the menu away in Thailand, like their prices are a secret which they reluctantly divulge for just a few minutes – a taste of fact – before they whisk it away and leave you in the twilight of guessing values. Plus of course, burgers and fries is the perfect antidote for months of rice, miso soup and boiled Japanese radish. The Japanese live virtually forever on such a diet until the monotony of it drives them to killing themselves.

In the afternoon we took some photos and did some more weeding. Had dinner in and then went into the village to hang with the Cordless clan. Slightly to my disappointment, they were having a quiet one, as they wanted one final session on the beach before they left in the afternoon. The weather since New Year’s Eve had been bit hit and miss. The weather is all-important for British people as we are bought up to realize that sunny days are a gift from the divine powers that be like winning a tenner on a scratch card.

Instead I hung around Handsome’s and chatted to Mr. Dive while wincing at the bile poured out by the bitter ex-pats that popped in for a burger on their tabs. Why do ex-pats have ‘tabs’ anyway? It must be to speed up their financial ruin and the disintegration of their friendships. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

I ended up ditching the snideness and heading off on the back of Mr. Dive’s bike. We went to the 7-11 on Yai. A shining, not so septic harbinger of modernity; another bit of concrete on the beach. This 7-11 is very ‘Thong Nai Pan’ in being at least 10% more expensive than the other 7-11’s on the island. We bought a couple of beers and headed off to a bungalow. We watched YouTube song clips and smoked.

My mate nicely gave me a lift back to the house. His bike stalled three quarters of the way up the steep hill. He was lucky enough to get it started after several failed attempts. I walked the last 200 meters back to my bed.

04/01/12

Small water in Phuwadee an outrageous 20 THB
Muay Thai Boxing Restaurant 500 THB

Total = $17

I finished off the weeding. The land is 1,600 sq meters minus the 170 sq meters of the house leaves a hell of a big garden.

We also got the step ladder out and dug a hole in the hard ground at the back of the house in order to safely wedge it in the ground. I steadied the ladder as my brother went up to apply another coat of varnish to the wooden window frame and to clean the window. This was the one window we couldn’t get to before.

At lunch time I went down to the Phuwadee to say adios to Cordless and co. The weather had been kind on the final day and they got a good few hours of sun, sand and sea. Mr. Handsome himself showed up in the taxi to take them away from an imperfect beach to far more imperfect environment in Japan.

Phuwadee Resort and Spa
Phuwadee Resort and Spa


In the evening we hooked up with Mr. Dive and had some Thai food with Pong and Mrs. Dive. I made the mistake of not examining each mouthful and accidentally eating a chilly. The Thai girls found the firework display in my visage most amusing. Also my brother’s machine gun rhythm speaking Thai tickled their funny bones.

05/01/12

Beer 470 THB
Gear 1,000 THB

Total = $49

I was given a lesson in cleaning the wooden balustrade on the balcony. The secret was lots of water and, as is often the case, lots of elbow grease.

This task took me up to lunch time. We had some leftovers and then went down to the beach for our only swim together the entire holiday. It was good to finally finish off the tasks we had to do and just muck around in the waves. Like old times.

All was right with the world until we got back. I had locked myself out of my room. I felt really dumb. I had checked the key at the time in the lock but hadn’t made sure it turned the lock. All the keys looked identical. My brother took the news calmly and went about trying all the spare keys in the lock. None worked. Then he took apart the lock in the other downstairs bedroom to see how it worked. He then set about trying to ‘pop the lock’. That didn’t work. All other options were off until the next day.

It was getting late. I was wearing my swimming shorts and a t-shirt. I had no money, no tobacco and no book. Luckily we still had some green. That made me feel a little better, but not much. In the end I had a shower, took off my swimming shorts and smelly T-shirt and slipped into the bed naked. Not in my room, but the spare room.

While travelling I’ve been searched by police looking for my gear; I’ve been stranded in the dark hitch hiking in the winter in the UK; I’ve missed flights; I’ve over-stayed my visa in India; I’ve been locked up in a police station cell in London; I’ve been robbed twice (India and Argentina); I’ve been in downtown Johannesburg minutes away from being mugged; I’ve had horrendous bouts of diarrhea and vomiting; I’ve had heart palpitation attacks in China; I’ve lost my hotel. Lots of stuff that would seem worse than being locked out of your room; but, the psychological impact of being shorn of all my belongings (bar shorts and T-shirt) was harder than most, if not all, of the things I’ve just listed.

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

As I lay in bed I thought about just how much I, like the next man or woman, rely on their ‘stuff’ for their mental well being. Shorn of that stuff maybe liberating for the Hindu renunciant, but for me it was like pulling the carpet away from under my feet. I understood a little better what it must be like to be an orphan or homeless. These thoughts whirled around my head magnified by the green until the fuse burnt out and I fell asleep.

06/01/12

Dinner 1,000 THB
Beer singha 65 THB
Vegetables and fags 135 THB

Total = $40

As the cliché goes, tomorrow is a whole new day. I woke up. The sun was shining and after breakfast my brother went off to find another set of keys he had given to a mate for safe keeping, or for such a moment of foolishness as locking yourself out.

By 11am I was back in my room and feeling both much better and slightly silly for feeling anxiety the night before.

The rest of the day passed unremarkably. I did some more cleaning and went to the beach to take some more pictures. My brother made some curry for dinner – the edible kind not the death defying stuff the Thais mysteriously relished.

The only notable thing was that I went to see Mr. Massage concerning my toe that was going red. A sore had become infected. Any small nick in tropical weather can turn nasty if not attended to. I have done this before and not learned my lesson. More than likely I will do it again. I put myself in Mr. Massage’s capable hands. He took an antibiotic capsule and put some of the powder directly on the wound, and then applied a plaster. He gave me some more antibiotics and some cream. Rather than take masses of drugs orally just a small amount applied directly to the troubled spot works wonders.

07/01/12

Plasters, water, fags, rizla 145 THB
Phromcharoen Hotel 1,000 THB
Bike hire 200 THB
Petrol 140 THB
Curry pastes 110 THB
2 coconut oil bars of soap 150 THB
4 Singha & 1 Heineken in Café Uno 419 THB

Total = $72

In the morning we spent an hour doing some left over jobs on the house before heading off on the bike to Thongsala to catch the Seatran Ferry to Bang Rak in Koh Samui.

Neither my brother nor I like Koh Samui very much. However, the neighbouring island has several advantages: it has much better shops than Koh Phangan; it has an airport; and it has a host of things to do: shag a whore, go-karting, fight chavs, shag a whore, watch sea gypsies shin up bamboo poles, have your picture taken with a tiger, drink Guinness, go bowling, go to the cinema, and did I mention, shag a whore?

Sound Club Soi Green Mango
Sound Club Soi Green Mango


In our case we wanted to get some bits and bobs for the house. Pong wanted to go to the cinema, and I wanted to buy some bootleg software in Nathon.

Nathon
Nathon


The journey over was uneventful. We had free tickets that included a transfer to Chaweng. This was handy as Koh Samui taxi drivers wouldn’t give their grandmothers a free ride to the hospital. In Chaweng we found a hotel opposite Soi Green Mango, in the very heart of the town. It was a place my brother had used before. They had put up their prices 200 Thai Baht. Peak season I guess. We checked in and had a sneaky smoke. No stupid ‘no smoking’ signs in our rooms as is the case in most of Bangkok. Good to see the true laissez-faire attitude of Thailand still exists in the south. After blowing out the mental cobwebs, we went for a curry down the road at Noori India Restaurant 1. They’ve turned into a mini chain over the years, but they still do some fine curries.

My companions headed off to the cinema at Tesco Lotus. I was feeling sleepy from beer and smoke but I forced myself to do something useful. I went back to Phromcharoen Hotel and hired a scooter with no gears. The guy pulled one out the back. As usual the back break was very loose. Why do they all do this? Do they not know that the bad karma from causing a farang an accident could condemn them to a poor reincarnation next time around?

I headed off south. It is very confusing to find the main ring road, to get out of Chaweng. I never get it right. I eventually made it. Up and over the hill and I stop off at Coral Cove Bay to check out the beach and take a photo. Then over to Lamai to do the same. I slowly make my way around the island on the bike. Along the way I bought some presents for people back in Japan.

The road around Samui seems good so the temptation is to ignore the road and enjoy the scenery. The occasional near thing going over a pothole soon makes you change your mind. I also noticed that no one stops at the traffic lights in Koh Samui except for the one outside the police station at Nathon.

Finally, I make it to my destination Nathon. They have some odd one way system so I parked up and walked down the high street to the bootleg software shop. When I get there the woman has the programs I want on display but after rummaging around in the back room she discovers that she can’t help me rip off Adobe. Had the CIA got to her?

Disgruntled I head back to my bike and start the long journey back to Chaweng. It’s getting dark by the time I approach Samui’s premier tourist destination. I’m uncertain about the turning to take. I take one and then think better of it and turn around. I find myself near Big C and know I have overshot the mark. I ask directions off a girl in a restaurant. She nicely tells me to take a left at the first traffic lights. I do so and I’m back on the road I had just abandoned. It was shades of locking myself out all over again. It’s dark and the road seems to be heading off into pitch black emptiness. I’m encouraged by the site of other farangs on bikes heading up the same road. I follow them.

If there were any stars out I would have thanked them. I got back to the outskirts of Chaweng. I then started to recognize some of the place names by the side of the road. Then I realize I’ve gone too far, and fuck me (easily accomplished in Chaweng) it’s a one-way street. I’m very reluctant to get so close and then have to get lost in order to get back on the same road so I turn the bike around and go slowly up the road the wrong way hugging the curb. A few taxis beep their horn at me. They really are the complete bastard package. I’m very close to my anonymous looking hotel at one of the entrances to Soi Mango and I tink the back of a taxi with my bike. He starts shouting at me, I wah back at him. He lets it slide. I wish I could just get off the fucking bike and walk back to my stash. Instead I go up Soi Green Mango looking for the brothel I spotted from the front of the hotel earlier. Although Soi Green Mango is small it still took me 10 sweaty minutes to locate the knocking shop and the hotel just 20 meters away.

My brother and the scooter hire guy are waiting for me. The later is pissed off that I’m not seriously injured. He takes the bike away to look for microscopic scratches and comes back shortly afterwards with the look of a man who had got a subprime mortgage and had his house re-possessed by the bank. He gave me my passport back.

Over a beer and rizla wrapped jah I recounted my adventures to my brother back in my room, and then we got Pong and went out for a drink and something to eat.



As we walked down the road a taxi sporting a big bill board and loud speakers told us of the ‘world premier’ of a Thai boxing fight in the nearby stadium. Deceptively beautiful chicks with dicks invited us into the Moulin Rouge and masses of subprime youth overflowed from the bars already drunk. We found a bar that just sold drinks and ordered a couple of Singhas and a Spy. It was a fairly shit bar but at least the predators left us alone, not so the aural assault beckoning us to the best ever Muay Thai event.

Next we went down a side street and found a small Thai restaurant called Green Bird. It was packed, and we soon found out why. They served really good Thai food at just over a dollar a plate. We enjoyed a leisurely meal and went back to our rooms.

I thought I was stoned enough to sleep through anything by the time we said good night. Far from it: inside and out a legion of young twats shouted out a mangled form of English that competed with the noise of the bars playing Bon Jovi and other such 80s crowd pleasers. There was no 1am curfew. It went on all night. I dropped off as the sun came up.

Stay tuned for the final episode of Thailand Prices where I run into a bunch of foolmooners and have to gob an eighth.


Subtotal = $340

Running Total = $1,576 Again most of the money goes to the airpline
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Thailand Prices 2011

January 14th 2012 03:18
Sunrise Villa

I’ve been to Thailand more times than I can remember. Such are the vagaries of international travel that I always seem to return to Bangkok. I’ve done most of the tourist things in the city, and so the city is only of interest for shopping, for getting visas, and for getting transport to somewhere I want to go.

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Man in the Mask

December 10th 2011 07:25
man in mask

My name is Joey Nudd with two d’s: the final d is like a buffer protecting the inner core of ‘Nud’. Well my name is not really Joey Nudd but that is what I choose to be called. It’s complicated being me, and having the history I have. My mother called me Moses. I can’t be called Moses. Not here in Inglish Raj lan’: only Caribbean folk are called Moses. And another point is that Moses was such a loser. He did all the hard work getting his peeps out of Egypt, he was a spit away from taking the promised land and he commits minor infraction the big G gives the job over to this unheard of geezer. Nah, here in Inglish Raj I prefer to be Joey Nudd. It gives me space to breathe and think. I look weird as the proverbial fuck, but at least my name sounds Anglo, straight and non-minority. One less headache.

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Friendship Association

October 15th 2011 07:58
Friendship Association

It seems like a contradiction in terms: friendship is something profound. Blake said: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Association is something else. You get damned by associating with the wrong types. Association is a proximity born of necessity not a love of your fellow man or woman.

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Tripping on a Train

August 20th 2011 06:03
crossing tracks

“There are two types of men in the world,” In Arthur’s mind he was styling; his wife had irony fluttering around her full lips, “those men who have to unbuckle, unclip, unzip and make a huge deal about retrieving their little man when standing at a urinal, and those men who simply unzip, remove and piss.”

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Yellow Taxi

June 25th 2011 03:33
Tokyo Yellow Taxi


That was not Shnade’s finest moment, giving a blow job to the boss’s son for money. Shnade would try to keep this episode out of his biography. His mouth was full of Taka’s gloop. He went to the kitchen to spit it out. He drank some water as he boiled inside with shame and fury.
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Meeting the Chief

April 30th 2011 03:51
Meeting the Chief


‘Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts


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Candy and Shnade Make it Happen

March 5th 2011 07:51


Back at the capsule hotel Candy was quiet and sullen. Hiro tried to be solicitous but seemed to be failing in making a good impression. He wanted to ask her what the matter was but at the same time he sensed that if he did it would make matters worse. He was always been accused of asking dumb questions by the women in his acquaintance. Hiro didn’t want to make Candy more sullen and distant. He thought that he had some good news but her refusal to make eye contact in the kitchen as they waited for the kettle to boil made him reluctant to break the strained silence. He had a thought. Maybe I did something wrong or said something wrong. Maybe I should just tell her I love her and try and kiss her. No that was a bad move. Yet Hiro was pressed for time. He could only tarry in Tokyo for a couple more days and then he had to go home. He wanted to stay but he had promised his parents and he needed to save for the next University term


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