A First Update; or, Thai Toilet Protocol: An Episstemology Gap (w/ endnotes!)

One month in Thailand without an update constitutes criminal blogging negligence, so to the tens of semi-avid readers who have been, if not exactly starved for news, at least amenable to a light news nosh, I proffer this post in hopes that it'll take the edge off your mild hunger. Hopefully this post represents the beginning of a flurry of mental note transcription.

Actually I think my silence thus far has been for the best, since it’s spared you the reader from the idiotic incredulity with which I’ve greeted even my most banal discoveries, eg. “Ew they eat scorpions here that’s so gross!” or “OMG you guys none of the toilets here are outfitted with T.P. but instead they have this kind of powerful hygienic hose that not only cleans and massages your ass but also buffs it to a gleaming waxy shine and isn’t that crazy?!?!!!” (1)

Detailing the many small and mundane ways in which life in Thailand differs from life in those United States isn’t very interesting (endnoted toilet protocol excepted, of course), and I’ll try to avoid the trap of the quotidian.

Facts of daily life in Thailand on display in this picture include: a) occasional elephants; b) Forrest Gumpian haircuts, where the barber makes this sort of swooping gesture in query and you're too cowardly and language-impaired to do anything but fearfully nod consent to The Swoop, and the next thing you know your carefully cultivated sideburns and, indeed, any and all hairs that had once resided below your ears are drifting to the floor and you look like a cross between a Franciscan monk and a 1950's teenager and goddammit.

Such avoidance is made easier by the fact that I’m steadily going native (2), to wit: I hold the lease to a fully furnished apartment; I boast a steadily burgeoning repertoire of Thai phrases, including but by no means limited to my address (3), “How much for a Singha? (4),” and, “Ba mee giaow mu dang! (5)”; and, like most Thais, I do 97% of my shopping at 7-11. In sum, I may still (and always) be a tourist, but I like to think I bear a stronger resemblance to Bill Murray in Lost in Translation – wry, observational, and fitting in as well as stature/caucasianness allow – than, say, Clark Griswold in Europe.

That said, my transformation from stumbling, uncouth ex-marine to sure-footed, assimilated Na’vi tribesman has scarcely begun: my skin has maybe taken on a bluish tinge (6), but I’m a long way from acquiring ponytail genitalia (7). It’s fitting, then, that my first true post (8) deals with a bald-faced bit of touristic cavorting: my first Thai camping trip, to a place called Phu Kradueng National Park.

Coming Soon! (9)

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Endnotes

1) Although, come to think of it, that may not be the best example, since the bathroom rigmarole here is truly arcane and may well remain so for my entire year in Thailand. The thing is: most public toilet stalls contain not only the bowls so recognizable to Western posteriors, but adjacent to the bowls this sort of large stone basin built into floor/wall and filled with water of dubious, unfit-for-piscine-life hue, and when you’re finished doing your business I think you’re supposed to release some kind of lever or turn a faucet that somehow empties the water level in the toilet bowl (which bowl, by the way, is usually set into the floor at about ankle height, making for a splayed and uncomfy affair for any person long of hypothetical leg) and correspondingly raises the level in the basin, thereby “flushing” the toilet after a fashion; except, upon faucet’s turning, the water levels only fluctuate about 2/3 of the time, making me wonder whether flush-by-faucet is proper procedure at all; and further murking the already (literally & figuratively) murky waters of the situation is the occasional presence of other esoteric paraphernalia in certain bathrooms, like for example plastic buckets floating aimlessly in the cloudy malodorous basin water, making me (yet again) wonder whether I am in fact supposed to fill these buckets from the basin and empty them into the toilet, thereby washing down or at least diluting my emissions; and basically the entire operation is completely opaque and frustrating to the extent that several times I have risked ruptured bladder/colon by holding it in until such time as I can reach a restroom which I knows contains a familiar Western-style toilet instead of attempting, and likely botching, what should be a really fucking routine maneuver.

2) Some of my Thai friends have taken to calling me Jake Sully, after Avatar’s Stranger in a Strange Land protagonist.

3) Pracha Uithd, Soy Sam Sip (sic??)

4) Singha being my favorite ubiquitous Thai beer; other common brews are Leo (tolerable) and Chang, employed to dual use as a paint thinner.

5) My favorite cafeteria dish, a soup of rice noodles (ba mee), wontons (giaow), and BBQed pork (mu dang by default).

6) Possibly due to excessive consumption of suspect mu dang.

7) If you haven’t yet seen Avatar, this analogy admittedly makes no sense and is probably more than a little disturbing.

8) Still pending – this entry is more of an advertisement for future updates than an update in and of itself; though I maintain that the prior description of toilet situation represents a piece of serious and useful information for prospective travelers

9) -ish.