KHUN PHU GOES TO BANGKOK

One month ago Khun Phu went to Pattaya and got confused, extremely confused.
Then after some soul searching he thought to have cleared a bit of his confusion… he thought so, at least.

And now, in these days Khun Phu is in Krung Thep and, once again, he is a very confused Khun Phu and for the very same reasons as in Pattaya
This simply means his soul searching was surely not good enough.

Let’s proceed step by step, Pen Youm Youm as we say in Thailand.

1) Pattaya:

The brothel city of Thailand, a town that lives and prosper entirely and only on the sex business.
I travelled there with my wife to meet someone so please do not have any bad thinking.
We reached the city at about 4 a.m. and it was as crowded and busy as any Swiss city on Christmas Eve, I could not believe my eyes.
There were two main animals races around; young, tiny and, mostly, beautiful girls and old, fat, and mostly ugly men (of course Falang).
In those early morning hours I did discover with horror that still I am an extremely judgemental man, I did realise that my belief of having erased those old patterns after 2 years of Asia and a rather serious approach to Buddhism was just… another illusion.

It did scare me a lot do discover that still I was having inside myself all those rooted deeply Catholic concepts such as sin, sinner, guilt and so on.

It took a good breakfast, discussing the matter with my wife and observing all those old men happily chatting with their young friends to overcome those feelings.
At the end of the breakfast I understood that I shall accept life as it comes, that everyone has the right to have fun in his own way and that basically my judgement just mean that I unconsciously think to be better than the others… which is totally not true I assure you, as I am surely no better than anyone.

So I left Pattaya feeling much better and, surprisingly for me, even liking the place.

2) Bangkok:

I am in the capital city waiting for my passport and tickets for India and Nepal.
My wife is unfortunately sick so this time I am here all alone.
Is actually the first time I am going around Thailand alone and, honestly, in the beginning I was really feeling like a poor Issarn farmer for the first time in the big city.
Then once I started going around easily I really enjoyed being here.
Actually I love Bangkok and actually I hate Bangkok and for the same reasons… too much traffic, too many people, too much noise… but is alive, for a man grown up in a small village in Switzerland and now living in a rural village of Issarn, sometimes is good to see life pulsating at his best and at his worst.
Bangkok is just like life, it there is some very good things and some very bad ones.

But my old ghosts came back again one evening while I was quietly drinking a Guinness in a bar where a group of young Thai was playing loud rock music covers from Green Day, Simple Plan, Santana, RHCP to Cranberries.
I did fall again in the judgement trap when I saw some men well past their 40`s acting like dumb teenagers, dancing totally out of tune in front of some drunken young girls.
I found myself once again pointing my fingers at those men, without even knowing their stories and, maybe, their sorrows just judging them from what I could see on the surface.

Surely a funny and interesting thing was that the few young men in the bar (me included ah ah ah) were sitting quietly chatting and absolutely not being interested in doing the fools like their potential fathers were doing.

Again I felt really confuse, lot of question sprang in my mind such the meaning of dignity, self respect, respect to other people and who has the right to define everyone’s behaviour.

While sipping my beer I then decided to put a definitive stop to all those kind of useless and presumptuous thoughts:
After all “Who the fuck am I to judge and to question other people’s behaviour, let them enjoy their life as they like, let them have their “Sanook””?.

So I started enjoying even more my beer having fun watching those men dancing with less grace and posture than any elephant in the Surin’s Yearly festival.

I did just allow myself one more thought on the way back to the hotel, walking the narrow sidewalks of Sukhmvit Road, full of food stalls and people sitting on the ground selling everything possible and more.

I could not help but watching all those odd couples I was passing by, walking hand in hand like long time sweet hearts. Honestly I was not judging anymore but it was like my eyes were seeing a different image.

It was like the girl was actually walking holding the man’s dick in her hand, like a collar to a dog. I could figure out how she was actually dominating him, turning him into submission and exploiting his too obvious weakness.
Well, I like to think in such a way as some kind of revenge for those girls who may have been forced into prostitution by poverty or other forces but not for their own will.
Holding those old men’s dick, squeezing money out of them is probably their only way, their only weapon of revenge towards a world, towards a society who did turn them into just “meat for grabs”.

So let it be, let them fool all those falangs, let this be some kind of justice for them. They will probably not be able to escape their fate but at least they will sink with their oppressor.

Am I being judgemental again? Nope, this is just my opinion.

Krung Thep, November 20, 2548

C – COPYRIGHT / Claudio Romano