Bangkok Bizarre

bi·zarre : –markedly unusual in appearance, style, or general character and often involving incongruous or unexpected elements; outrageously or whimsically strange; odd: bizarre clothing; bizarre behavior.

Somewhere on this planet...it must exist!

Bangkok K'night

'Soaking' in Islamabad

Soaking: the act of absorbing, imbibing and taking it all in. Slang = Chillin'

I am currently ‘soaking’ in Islamabad after arriving here last night. After the chaos, bedlam and tumult of Peshawar it is a relief finally to be somewhere with a semblance of orderliness. The streets here are huge freeways lined with trees and flowers and relatively civilised driving (thanks to the tough traffic police who keep an eye out on maniac drivers). It didn't start too well though: as I alighted from my bus from the 'Pir Whadi bus terminal', I was immediatey accosted by a vulture like taxi driver. Red eyed, and a bit wan and rough looking. The fare to my hotel seemed reasonable so I got into his decrepit beaten up taxi. His constant questioning (when all I wanted to do was switch off) was taxing my patience: Where are you from? Where are you staying? How much do you earn? Are you married? 'Do you have an English girlfriend?' and more worryingly 'why don't you let me take you to a nice hotel I know?' - as if! At one point we went down a narrow alley and I grabbed hold of my bag, ready to jump out, lest he attempt to rob me - but it was Ok. He was only doing a short cut and me being a tad paranoid. My nerves we're a little frayed though from my time in Peshawar and my stomach a little worst for wear.

I checked into one of the nicer hotels (Wi-Fi in my bedroom anyone?!) and went out for a meal in the evening to one of the more salubrious shopping areas called ‘Jinnah Super-Market’ - thronged with Levi’s, Hush Puppy boots outlets, Apple Computer stores, an array of designer shops and some extremely plush looking restaurants. I had a hard time choosing where to eat and finally settled for a pretentious eatery called ‘The American Steak House’. But first I had to get by airport-style ‘security’ – the armed guard outside performed a quick mandatory frisk with a metal detector before I was led in. It took me a while to adjust to the lighting or lack thereof. It seems that the more expensive the restaurant the darker the ambience. This place was pretty dark. I seated myself at a comfortable corner table where I could see outside onto the large lighted square below – where men and their wives and children were beginning to congregate to break their Ramzan fast. There was a Pakora sellers stall below doing a brisk trade and queues of people outside the fresh juice outlet. Well I say queues but people in Pakistan don't actualy 'queue' as such. They just barge in and the worst thing is they don't even realise it! It's fucking annoying and it always drives me nuts. But I try and suppress my wrath by convincing myself that the act of queing is unnatural to the human species. So in Pakistan they're just acting au natural. Does it work? Does it make me feel better? No!

Anyway, the restaurant itself was nicely decorated with a huge dollop of class. The chairs were comfortable. The tables brown teak. The napkins we’re crimson velvety and soft and you weren’t sure whether they were for decorative purposes or for wiping your mouth with! I ordered a T-Bone Steak with Pepper Jus with all the trappings washed down with a strawberry smoothie. The staff were attentive. Sometimes too attentive. It wasn’t busy so they had the unnerving habit of hanging around your table fidgeting. But it was ok. There was a large plasma television on the far wall showing a cricket match or something and the music was uber-americano. They asked me whether I was fasting to which I replied ‘yes’ (liar liar bum on fire) – this confirmed, to them atleast, that I was a Muslim which they weren’t sure of initially from my enigmatic and cool accent – and after that they seemed to relax a little. I was one of them! For breaking the fast they provided a complimentary platter that included the usual dates, fruit and some fried savourites. I took a little nibble at these but only a nibble lest I ruin my appetite.

In between waiting for my food I read: The Last Mughal by Darymple or sometimes just looked out through the window at the chorus of people below eating in the square in groups. And the food? Well it was ok. A bit pricey considering what I got (Rs 1,200 when you can get a better meal somewhere less pretentious for Rs 120), but as always it’s really about the atmosphere in these sorts of places, and the feeling of being somewhere comfortable and reassuringly Western!

The shopping area itself was busy in the evening with the upper crust elite of Pakistan strolling through the arcades and squares. It being Ramadhan and too hot during the day, people tend to come out mainly in the evenings and the shops cater by being open till way past midnight. I felt more at home here. The people seemed better educated. The women were decked in dupatta-less outfits, the latest western trends, and were walking around comfortably and confidently in female only troupes. One of the major problems for women in Pakistan, being a male dominated society, is the constant ogling that goes on by men of less ‘sophisticated ilk’ (pardon my haughtiness!). I was wondering why the men here we’re better behaved here, when lo and behold, I spotted a policeman whacking a group of men with a stick for misbehaving. Apparently the shopping area has its own ‘chowkedars’ or ‘crowd controllers’, huge lumbering mustachioed Pathans who keep a constant visual for undesirables lurking in the cracks and being a general nuisance. I found this ironic. The majority of Pakistani's belong to, what I lovingly call, 'The Mob'. These are the boorish, mannerless, crass, un-cultivated, philistines you see everywhere. However, there 'masters'; the bourgeois, educated, elite classes who shop in malls in the evenings, have nothing but contempt for them! The very people whose support they need. I think the middle-class in Pakistan lives in constant fear of being usurped by the tsunami of the barbarian mob.

I did a little shopping too by the way. Popped into a Levi’s store and purchased a t-shirt costing the equivalent of a weeks stay in Northern Pakistan! I also paid a visit to ‘The Saeed Book Bank’ – the largest bookshop in the whole of Pakistan. What a delight it was to stroll through the endless aisles perusing what they stocked and what they didn’t. They had all the English classics and naturally quite a substantial collection on the Indian Subcontinent. They even had a few titles by that staunch atheist Richard Dawkins – but I didn’t see a copy of the God Delusions…Perhaps they we’re out of stock?! They had a large collection of Lonely Planet guides, so seeing my opportunity, I purchased one for Thailand and Laos and a book by Hanif Kureishi. I’ve just realised that I’m going to have to carry these with me everywhere I go. So I’m not sure whether that was smart thinking! Oh well.

See you in Thailand. Inshallah.

Current coordinates: Peshawar & the Smugglers Bazaar (North West Frontier Province)

Peshawar has a tendency to conjure up images of lawlessness, guns, intrigue, treachery and romance. It is the ultimate in archetypal frontier towns and lies at the foot of the Khyber Pass, near the border with Afghanistan. It's been in the news recently as it is the battleground between the Pakistani Taliban and the Government; who have always traditionally held a tenuous grip on the fiercly independent Pasthtun population. Peshawar is all about atmosphere. It literally wallows in it. The old city a warren of bazaars - if you walk down these endless mazes you will be led into a Dickensian painting: bearded merchants bargaining hard and stroking their fabulous beards, tea-boys to-ing and fro-ing between the morass, in the evenings kebab fumes belching from street braziers, a gaggle of beggars, lepers, stray pariah dogs knibbling on garbage heaps, filthy boggy-smelling open sewers, butcher stalls decorated with fly-blown carcasses (haggled over by greedy old men with piercing eyes) and it is all men. Not a women in sight. If any women dare brave it; she will instantly be stripped and oogled by the stares. This is what all cities used to be like in the past. This is what the past used to smell like. This is the true face and stink of humanity: not the anaesthesised antiseptic cities of the modern West. If you stray off the bazaar you stumble into comely courtyards, twinkling gardens, shady boulevards and muddy dwellings: washing on lines, pots and pans being dried in the blistering sun and children playing.

On the fringes of Peshawar lies the 'Smugglers Bazaar' - a mighty thorn in the Pakistani economy. It is littered with goods imported through Pakistan for Afghanistan and then smuggled back into Pakistan to avoid paying excise duty. Everything is available here from the latest electronics to tampons. Foreigners are banned from entering the far end of the bazaar (though I managed to get through!) where guns and drugs are sold openly. This is where things get dark. Opiates and Cannabis are freely available - bags of the stuff literally hang from the shop fronts and behind these in the shadows, squalid addicts, misty eyed and beady-nosed, openly smoke the opiate. The vendors are smiling: opiate prices have increased due to lower production in Afghanistan this year and the prices of AK47's have gone through the roof with the recent tribal insurgency in Pakistan. Are they smiling or are they 'high' on their own produce? I can't tell anymore. Pakistan is a mass of contradictions. A bona fide enigma. Will try and sort this jumble of inexplicability out once I leave. Tourism or voyeurisn (call it what you will) doesn't come much darker then this.

Friday I'm off to Islamabad to catch a flight out of here. Next stop Thailand and the seedy night-life of Bangkok - perfect buzzing territory for The Fly. BeLIEve.

'caprice is a travellers best friend'



Love...you shine like a burning star
falling from sky
Tonight

Remember: Every artist is a cannibal
Every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration
And sing about their grief

BeLIEve.

The Adventures of Super-Fly 3D Sonic (an alter-ego)

Re-entry

The space craft slammed through the atmosphere with as much grace as a fat man diving into a swimming pool: a mighty heave-o, a huge splash, plop! and then utter silence. There was no tedious mucking about with atmospherics, angles of entry, rudder control or even contacting flight-control. The radio telescope at Joddrel Bank that was engaged in the SETI programme (search for extra-terrestrial inteligence) was asleep - which was kinda surprising because this was exactly the sort of momentous world changing event it had been looking out for for the last 50 years. The radars at the American Institute for National Airspace Security didn't even blink - which is kinda strange because this was precisely the sort of event they had been set up for. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, were too busy conducting statutory audits and charging excessive fees - which is exactly the sort of thing you would expect them to do. So apart from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, everybody else was not doing their job properly.

The space craft was about 50 feet in length and resembled, to an earth person anyway, a huge hair dryer. It is a well know fact that aerodynamics is a nonce concept in Space - for there being no 'air' in Space for aerodynamics to take a firm foothold. The practical upshot of this being that space craft can take on whatever physical form they like, with only the imagination as limiter. This however does not explain, nor does it justify, why the owner of this particular craft would want it to take the form of a hair dryer. Hair dryers are cool. I mean, I'm all up for hair dryers. I think they're great devices and very useful, but as inspiration for spaceship design? Most space craft are sleek shiny pointy things. They don't actually need to be sleek shiny pointy things, but it is a well known fact that chicks really dig guys in sleek shiny pointy things. So you have a clear evolutionary pressure selecting for this just like the Peacocks plumage for example. The Peacock doesn't actually need an extravagant plumage, but Peacock chicks really dig male Peacocks with huge plumage's, so ergo...

It is clear that the guy in the flying 'hair-dryer' either has grossly undeveloped aesthetic sensibilities or doesn't care what chicks think - which is quite admirable if you ask me. Chicks, (is it alright if I call them chicks?), well chicks hate guys that don't play by the rules; whether deliberately or not. They find them irritating, pompous, arrogant, thorny, annoying, and totally and utterly irresistible. This is the story of one of those guys. Probably the most successful ever at the art of annoying chicks. But not an 'Earth' guy, oh no. Earth guys are too pliant, lovey-dovey, and spineless with sugar-treacle smiles when it comes to chicks. Not this guy though. This is someone who has never before set foot on the Earth - until now. Someone from the constellation of Ursa Minor - 50 million light years away. A guy who works for that fantastic publication 'The Lonely Galaxy' - the ultimate guide for itinerant professional slackers. This is the story of 'Super-Fly 3D Sonic'; who is currently at this moment grappling with his life (like one grapples with a slippery bar of soap) by fighting with the flight controls of his lumbering space craft, to stop it from falling from the sky tonight and crash landing somewhere in the southern deserts of Pakistan...

Love...it shines like a
Burning star
Falling from the sky
Tonight

Coming soon...The Adventures of Super-Fly 3D Sonic (an alter-ego)

There's only one Fly
There's only one Legend

Theatre - Pakistani style!

Just outside the entrance to the ‘Madina Guest House’, 20 yards to the right on the main road, is a little gulley. If you walk pass this gulley in the evening's you’ll notice a motley queue of men. The gulley is not particularly big so the queues frequently spill onto the pavement and sometimes flood the road itself. So one day, I asked Mr Lal Mohammed, the redoubtable and affable proprietor of the Madina Guest House, what the queues were about. Is it for a cinema? Or a show? Coquettish dancing girl’s perhaps? Or even for the pleasures of prostitutes? This is not unlikely, for though Pakistan is a Muslim country, there are not many women about in the Northern Areas(contact with men being strictly forbidden), so prostitution is common. In fact it becomes a ‘social necessity’; a channel or ‘narlee’ draining away the stresses and problems of the masses and the mob – less they should explode in revolutionary fervour.

"Actually" Mr Lal Mohammed said (with something of a mischievous glint in his eye), "the queues are for a theatre play. A play in which all the actors are male and they are all dressed as women".So the next evening I paid the Rs100 entrance fee and paid a visit to this establishment to see what all the fuss was about.

Now, for those of you familiar with London’s theatre land, please leave your experiences and expectations at home. This is as far away from theatre land as it is possible to get - and I don’t just mean geographically. London theatre land is proudly middle class, polite, reserved, ‘yes please’ and ‘thank you very much’ the order of the day. Not so here. The ‘theatre’ here is (for want of a better description) like a medieval cattle market. After obtaining my ticket from the disinterested morose booth attendant I walked up to my allotted seat and much to my humour (because I expected nothing less) found someone already sitting in it. I made a fine show of affected surprise; looking repeatedly at my ticket stub and then at my seat all for the benefit of the man sitting in my seat hoping he would get the message. In response, the man rather impishly yanked out his ticket stub and showed me his seat number, pointing at it with his stubby finger – it was the same as mine. Thus satisfied he settled back smugly into his seat and promptly ignored me.

It’s very simple. In Pakistan for every seat they sell two tickets. It’s a ‘first come first served’ system. If you’re not ‘first’ you stand at the back or sit on the aisles. I refused to do either and sat on another empty seat. If I had known better I would have purchased the ‘VIP Tickets’ (for Rs200) for then you are guaranteed a seat – though you pay double for it. Theatre Seating is a very complex business here in Pakistan and one can quite easily write a thesis or book on the subject. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself. So having secured ‘a’ seat – alas one with a different seat number to the one on my ticket, I made myself comfortable, but not too much. For I knew that someone (with the correct ticket) was bound to turn up any minute now and throw me off. Unluckily someone did show up, but luckily finding me in the seat, they left me alone. Obviously they’d assumed that I had the correct ticket and had simply got there first. Smart move on my part – Wasim Uno Point! – ‘when in Rome do as the Roman’s do’

Now, one of the first things’ you notice in Pakistan when you’re in an enclosed space with people in it (like a theatre hall for example) is the stink: a heady mixture of week-old sweat mingling with noxious cigarette fumes jostling with hair oil and cheapo after-shave. Fart and burp fumes are also prevalent in the miasma enveloping you but they prefer to lurk in the background and never come centre stage – unless you’re sitting next to someone with gastro-enteritis – which luckily I wasn’t. Anyway, looking around the hall it was clearly evident that this was not a ‘family show’. The men (and it was all men) we’re all pretty seedy looking creatures; haggard, un-shaved, half-baked complexions and wearing dirty salwar kameez’s (aren’t you supposed to make an effort for the theatre?!)

The show began in earnest to a chorus of much whistling and jeering…which never really ceased. The troop of male actors walked on-stage sporting tight women’s dress, outrageous wigs, and exceptionally large breasts. At these the man sitting to my right was getting seriously excited (more on this creature later). It is truly amazing what a wig, fake breasts and staccato female voice can do to the Neanderthal male brain. The troop of male actors then began flouncing about; exaggeratedly playing with their curls, tossing their hips and wriggling and even touching their fake breasts – all to a fury of wolf whistles from the audience. Yes, my early description of cattle market was apt. Now, I have absolutely no idea what the play was about, but it never really mattered and I don’t think anybody really cared. There was a scene when one of the actors smacked the other on the back-side and the entire theatre erupted. I began to wonder who these people were.

Then there was a scene of infatuated whispers where the protagonist actor professes his (or her) love for another actor (also female) – this had more then just a hint of lesbianism to it and it was the only time the theatre was relatively quiet. I don’t know what words we’re exchanged in that heartfelt lament of love; but it seemed to work and ended with the two actors cavorting on stage in a pseudo lezbian romp. It was at that moment that I began to pay more attention to the man seated to my right. I hadn’t really noticed him before because it was dark, but something had caught my attention. As my eyes adjusted to him I could see what he was doing and I had to do a double-take to confirm my suspicions. To put it bluntly it seems that the pseudo-lesbian love scene had got him rather agitated and he was erm (how can I put it politely? well you can’t actually!), he was wanking. Yes, the man sitting to my right, in a theatre hall full of dirty, sweaty, seedy, lecherous men, was unabashedly masturbating to a lesbian scene involving two men dressed as women.

Was I shocked? Of course! I mean, they weren’t even real women! If it had been a real lesbian scene involving real women I could (just about) have understood – but this was make-believe of the highest order and in all honesty they weren’t particularly pretty looking men dressed as women either! One of them even had stubble. Ugh Yuk!

Alarmed at the horror I had just witnessed I looked around to see if anyone else was also as outraged as I was. But no. Nobody seemed perturbed. All I could see we’re the whites of their eyes fixed firmly on the stage. No one even glanced at me.

You know if I didn’t know any better I’d say at least half the theatre audience was at that moment engaged in some sort of lewd act of personnel gratification. Like zombies. Then the realisation hit me: I was in a theatre full of serial wankers. This is what this was! I had stumbled upon a veritable wank show.

I suddenly found myself getting up and leaving. Taking particular care not to brush against the man to my right less I disturb his rhythm. I left him and the others fidgeting with themselves and walked into the fresh blackness of the night, refusing to look back. It was a relief to be outside in fresh air. My emotions were a brew of shock, puzzlement and humour. Yes it was funny in a way but also disturbing. As I walked further on and gathered my thoughts together, they congealed into anger. Anger that man has created a society where this is tolerated. But more crucially, that man has created a society that creates the conditions for this (call it what you will) this ‘serial wanking club’ to flourish!

But perhaps I’m being a tad culturally insensitive here? Where’s my cultural relativism gone? Perhaps I need to leave my Western cultural norms behind and take a look at the events with fresh, unbiased eyes? What do I see?

I see. Well I see a theatre full of dirty, sweaty, men wanking to male actors dressed as lesbians. That’s what I see! Man in microcosm. Man captured on Kodak film. Man caught doing what he is – a wanker!

I'm Going One Way - Your Way - Such A Long Way

Planet Dulux®

What do you see through those starburst eyes?
can you see the pixels jump out alive?
a chromatic - w i d e s c r e e n - technicolor life
a ready made Dulux® World
for us to find

Hunza Watercolour

The sing-song laughter of children reaches your ears high up in the valley; a happy-go-lucky impish chorus carried on the backs of a tender breeze. You smile because it reminds you of your nieces. As you sift through the delicate valley sounds with your fingertips you notice the constant hum of the Hunza River - a never ceasing torrent at the bottom of the valley floor. It’s Friday. The Mullah in the mosque is in full swing and you can hear his sermon through the loud speakers on the opposite side of the valley. His pleading harrying voice surges forever upwards; imploring God to forgive our sins. Below you a troop of women squat quietly in a knee-deep ocean of grass not talking but listening in deference to the Mullah. You watch them thrash and cut the sun-dried grass with metal sabres and then dump it in pyramidal mounds as animal fodder for the winter months.

Your attention caught by a cackling armada of birds as they perform a fly-by across your veranda; large confident black things with brilliant-white wings and purple tails that swoosh and swoon on thermals. The flies continue to hassle you. Why won’t they leave you alone? In the distance the mountains heave to the heavens; their tips wrapped in chunky wads of icing sugar. The Mullah has finally stopped his sermon and suddenly the women become more animated and chatter in the fields; laughing and giggling and bobbing their heads mischievously like corks. You notice there features: oriental looking, light skinned and blue-eyed. Headily beautiful - Yes. These are Hunza women. Perhaps the most beautiful women in the world. Your heart is light and your mind fresh and so is the air; not thick and miry like the unpleasant miasma of Lahore.

You spot apple trees and cherry trees and apricots and squashes and walnuts growing in abundance all around you like a Garden of Eden. The apricot trees scatter their produce all over the ground covering it in a sludgy - orangey mire. You tramp over it and watch it ooze into your soles – like apricot jam. You grab an apple hanging from a tree and take a tentative bite at it - it’s soft and sugary and delicious. The sunflowers are swarming with a bumblebee invasion, their deep yellow petals screaming out for attention from the arid forlorn rocky crags in the background.

The valley really comes alive in the early evenings when the sun hovers low; carving long deep shadows across it. It’s now that the tips of the mountains take on that warm golden cast that you love so much. The colours of the valley suddenly jump out at you as if mounted on spring coils that have been wound during the day. Green suddenly says ‘Hi!’ and jumps into the valley making everything appear greener. The dusty hills suddenly look more interesting with their ridges and contours a differing shades of brown – details that you never noticed before. The apricots in the apricot trees now positively glowing like lit bulbs and the sunflowers dressed in a drunken yellow rage with brown splodges.

The cackling birds with their flashy white wings glimmer as the sun bounces off them all under a sky streaked with green and purple crayons. The children ever louder. The women in the fields ever more animated and eager to go home and cook the evening family meal. You know dinner time has arrived when twirls of smoke start scrambling heavenwards from the chimneys. The smell of burning wood and a thousand meals fills the valley and attacks your nostrils. You wish you we’re in one of those homes sitting around a cosy wood fire watching the family at play. Just watching and drinking tea.

The sun finally disappears and the valley now a milkyway of a million light-bulbs. But the river continues humming, lulling you to sleep in the veranda. But not before you’ve had your evening meal. In your bedroom. Alone!