letters to thailand - part 13

letters to thailand - part 13

To the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
C/o the honourable chairperson BeeBee,
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang,
81000 Krabi, Thailand

White man walking

Last week I was visiting a friend who had just received an e-mail from his wife.
She was hunting for cheap silver jewelry; it was her first time in Thailand yet she completely forgot to talk about the reason that had brought her there in the first place. In stead she was mostly going on about the toilets in the trains…I shall spare you the details, it’s much more fun to run your imagination.

The story brought me back to a very special bus trip in India.
From a place called Hampi I was on my way to Goa. Suffering the old Delhi Belly I had scored a nice ball of opium from one of the Sadhu’s who’d let me stay in their cave. The bus was full of course but, after he told me to put my bag on the roof, the driver let me crawl my way in through a window in the back.
We’d been bumping along for a couple of hours when I realized I had not taken enough opium. Other than sigarets, some cash and a passport I had nothing else on me…contraband stayed in the bag and that bag was now sitting on the roof, hugged by scores of other bags, sacks with rice, baskets with chicken, two scooters, a bicycle and the harvest of some 10 acres of coffeebeans; before Goa I would never get to my ball of medicin. Just in time I made the driver understand that we were dealing with an extreme case … we had to stop … NOW!
Outside the bus I panicked…not one bush or tree. With a million eyes in my back I walked, only to return some thirty minutes later. Inside the bus there was complete silence.

Most Indians are born with Delhi-belly, they are prepared… and fast, in and out the bus in thirty seconds. Goa was at least another twelve hours away…I wanted to die. An old man must have seen my bewildered eyes. Reading the total despair he smiled, handed me an old loincloth and gestured I should rap it around my waist. To be completely prepared I unbuckled my belt…trousers fell spontaneously to the floor. I had gotten to be so skinny, when I stucked out my tongue I looked like a goddamn zipper.
As I made my way to the front of the bus I realized I was on the verge of writing history. The driver wasn’t convinced: "If you walk distance I leave your behind" , he shouted as I left the bus. Outside I took exactly one step. Close to the left front tier I squatted and lifted my makeshift skirt. In no-time I was cleaning my ass with water from a soda-bottle. I got up, washed my left hand with the remaining water and got back on board. The whole operation had taken not more than forty seconds. For a moment, ever so briefly, there was that same eerie silence until suddenly everybody clapped their hands wildly. There were screams and whistles. The driver slapped my shoulders hard, smiled broadly and said: "Now you’re an Indian."

My cabin in Goa, like the bus that had brought me there, lacked a toilet.
"Outside", my landlady yelled from her porch, "that white cabin overthere, between the coconut trees."
Inside there was a concrete block measuring about half a cubic metre. At one side there was something that looked like a little slide. It ended downneath the wall in which there was a rough hole. I didn’t have much time to think about that…climbing the rock I squatted, carefully manouvering my behind over the slide.
Sheer horror! Without any warning something wet and hairy was stuck up my ass…it felt like a dishwashing brush. I jumped up and outside where I found myself eye to eye with a band of pigs…one of them had shit around his bristly nose.

For the rest of my stay I would dump into the Indian Ocean. The fish were having field days.

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2
letters to thailand - part 3
letters to thailand - part 4
letters to thailand - part 5
letters to thailand - part 6
letters to thailand - part 7
letters to thailand - part 8
letters to thailand - part 9
letters to thailand - part 10
letters to thailand - part 11
letters to thailand - part 12

letters to thailand - part 12

To the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
C/o the honourable chairperson BeeBee,
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang, Krabi

"If the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. And I do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things.
What I fear," he said, "is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise."
(The man who got lost in the dreams of a city - World’s End)

"Watch out for the HUMAN."
(Morpheus to Constantine, in Preludes & Nocturnes)

the sandman

The mayor of The Hague took a mouthfull of sand and spoke.
"You are the eyes and ears for the police and for the community. Reliable information is indispensable. To know and be known; giving back public space to ouselves. Skills and agreements are a must, I am proud that you were all willing to follow this special training."
His cheeks glowing with satisfaction the mayor rubbed his hands, in pose and gesture resembling our lovable chairperson when he stands in the doorway of his hotel as another bus- load of white skin shuffles towards the entrance.

A small band of freshly graduated neighbourhood- watchers looked up at their leader in expectation…I’d never seen them before, yet, after a last exame by the thought-police, they were now certified to watch over me while I am roaming my private realm of dreams.

Tens of thousands of security camera’s, neighbourhood web-cam systems and the worlds most extensive mobile phone tracing system couldn't bring back that comfy feel of safety, missing ever since special warnings about left- luggage and people wearing funny hats appeared on national television.

For many years some have stockpiled heavy armoury…living behind barricaded doors they might throw the occasional handgranate when the police comes knocking to ask if all is well.
It didn’t work.

Now there’s a new broom on the block and it shall wipe our streets clean again…see all the scum riding their rats to safety already.
In all there are sixteen of those brooms in my hood. Together they are well over 900 years old; this bundle of experience is armed to the teeth with torches and mobile phones with extra large buttons.
They drive re-enforced mobility scooters with a built-in, 'art of the state', GPS and extra oxygen tanks; some even carry reanimation units.

Talk of the day is a soon to evolve 'Clash of the Titans'… challenging authority, angry pensioners stray ever further from their designated hang-outs.
Both sides are busy charging their batteries to the max.
The local Chinese is taking bets.

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2
letters to thailand - part 3
letters to thailand - part 4
letters to thailand - part 5
letters to thailand - part 6
letters to thailand - part 7
letters to thailand - part 8
letters to thailand - part 9
letters to thailand - part 10
letters to thailand - part 11

letters to thailand - part 11

To the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
C/o The honourable chairperson BeeBee,
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang, Krabi

They say Idi Amin had a white sister

As you all know, my dear gay bunch, I’ve never been so wary of any decision in my life as when I decided to move my ass back to the Netherlands.
The more I went on about premonition, this jewel in the crown of super-consciousness, the more you all insisted I ‘d been living far too long in the land of rumour and superstition… where men dress as women for fear of being eaten alive by a vengeful ghost with an appetite for unfaithful husbands.

Well, in case my letters didn’t convince all of you that life overhere at times can be spooky, to say the least, allow me to invite you infidels to a realm where no-one has ever before dared to set foot…rumours say it exists only in the imagination of the happy few, the chosen.
If so…fine by me, along with them I’ve taken my precautions, such as changing my name into ‘De Wit’, a real Dutch name to cover my ass in case descendants of French Huguenots get their call.

Up to now there are some 127 boys missing in The Netherlands, they vanished from a shelter for refugees. Nothing to worry really, them just being from India; would they have been from a decent country, where people are properly white and all, it might have been been somewhat different, but in this case nobody takes even the slightest bit of notice to the rumour that is buzzing through the streets ever more loudly by the day…a rumour that wants us to believe that a government minister keeps the neatly chopped corpses of those missing guys in her fridge.

‘Verdonkeremaand’ is the Dutch word for ‘Embezzle’…a new dictionary will probably explain that, besides money, one can embezzle boys just as easy.
One thing though, ‘Verdonk’ being the name of the government person who some believe to be a sister of Idi Amin is one thing…I will for ever fail to see what that’s got to do with cosmic poetry (read: coincedence).

Chaos ruling as ever, the latest news is that some of the missing boys ended up in Teheran while others insist it is just the first bunch of gays that has been sent back to where they came from; they’ve apparently been told they’re safe as long as they don’t show off their homosexuality…lest they’re willing to go around in a burqa, cross-dressing is a definite no-no.
Some of those boys now feel the heat and ask themselves if really all there is for them to choose would be the gallows in Teheran or the fridge of Amin’s little sister.
Can you believe that?

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2
letters to thailand - part 3
letters to thailand - part 4
letters to thailand - part 5
letters to thailand - part 6
letters to thailand - part 7
letters to thailand - part 8
letters to thailand - part 9
letters to thailand - part 10

letters to thailand - part 10

To the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
C/o the honourable chairperson BeeBee,
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang, Krabi

SON OF CHAINSAW HAS GRANDPARENTS TOO

Clog-country, these former wood lands, is going through its darkest days of terror…my friends, stay where you are, for grave danger is awaiting you.
The going rate for heavy body armour triples by the hour, you can spot the bravest amongst us bang clang rattling by…a take out of a new episode of Robin Hood.
The fear in their eyes remains unseen, they keep their visors closed, cautiously on the look out for the latter day frighteners…crazed seniors.

Left to look after themselves for too long these took to the streets, directing their scootmobiles and motorized chairs towards the major shopping malls. They didn’t exactly bring their ATM-cards to get their daily needs, in stead they follow people, hurtling abuse, scolding them for filling their carts with unneeded garbage they holler and howl, threatening those poor innocent shoppers with hell and eternal doom.

Insane grannies have been seen steering their vehicles after desperate mothers with screaming kids, clinging with their nails to mama’s neck, as they dashed head over stiletto heels for the parking lot.
Many stories remain untold… most victims are ashamed, as if they were taken up the ass by a bishop of the most catholic of sorts.

Taken by surprise city councils all over the country are looking to create hang-outs for the elderly…a desperate call to counter a problem that is now threatening to disturb the very mechanism that would otherwise, ever so smoothly, flatten any sparkling ripple on the surface of this once glamorous society…drowning in a puddle of fear.

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2
letters to thailand - part 3
letters to thailand - part 4
letters to thailand - part 5
letters to thailand - part 6
letters to thailand - part 7
letters to thailand - part 8
letters to thailand - part 9

letters to thailand - part 9

To the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
C/o the honourable chairperson BeeBee,
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang, Krabi

THREE WOMEN

My last bowl of noodle soup on Thai soil I had in Bangkok at a food stall underneath the Phetburi road overpass.
It was more than a food stall; at night some extra canvas created a shelter that Lek stubbornly called “our house”.
The husband of this courageous lady died of aids, leaving her behind to take care of their five wonderful daughters. He left her two more things…the HIV virus and an enormeous debt created during his numerous visits to brothels. Scattered all over town, Lek eventually managed to make the rounds to all of them, paying off the money her beloved husband owed.

Lek very much reminded me of another brave woman I’d met in the deep south of India, her name is Amba… never shall I lose her face from the vault where I keep the fondest of memories.
‘Untouchable’ yet raped for a fee a million times over she lived at the outskirts of Pondicherri, a former French colony still populair with confused souls from the west as it is the base of just another sect, the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo. As I know most of you followed the old hippie trail from Kathmandu over Goa to Bangkok and Denpassar, I trust you all know the type, dressed as a native, tikka dot and all, I found in front of Amba’s house, shaped somewhat like an igloo it was created out of sun-dried manure… the house, not the type.

Hailing from Maastricht, a town in the deep south of the Netherlands she thought the igloo “sooo cute, sooo picturesque” and I…I couldn’t think of anything else but inviting her to collect her own crap and build a fucking igloo on the steps of one of those famous churches in her hometown, where you are expected to pay a handfull of silver before you can go in and reboot your karma. In tears she went back to the compound of mama’s ashram.

This week I was in Maastricht; as I walked along the banks of the river Meuse I came across a a spot where the ground was strewn with syringes, inside many of them brightly coloured blood was glistening…still.
Overhead there was this ancient tower connected to a wall…there was a hole in the wall…I stuck my nosy head in and stared. It was as if I was looking inside a cave…at the far end I could just make out the candle lit face of a woman…it bore no expression.
After I crawled my way in we first just sat there and watched eachother, sometimes boldly staring, then studying the medieval walls, pretending not to be there…catlike. Suddenly she spoke: “We’ve met before yet it cannot be said that you realize…I see it in your eyes.”

In India, at the time, heroine was cheap. Once slipped out of Mothers arms, back in her hometown Katya quickly found that not only would she have to pay a hell of a lot more, she couldn’t even make the money by selling noodle soup…to get a license is harder than connecting with your local dealer.

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2
letters to thailand - part 3
letters to thailand - part 4
letters to thailand - part 5
letters to thailand - part 6
letters to thailand - part 7
letters to thailand - part 8

letters to thailand - part 8

to the boys and girls of the LEO CLUB
C/o the honourable chairperson BeeBee,
The Construction View Hotel Ao Nang, Krabi

DANTE’S WORLD

If ever there is a period, my dear band of gypsies, that reminds me why it is that the more sane amongst us do not wish to be involved in politics, it’s that mind-boggling event called election time. Sure enough we’ve all had a good laugh when one of the clowns in the Thai Parliament took out a few hundred amulets from underneath his shirt and rattled them in the face of an adversary…more often than not the bastards accused eachother of murder, mayhem and corruption and they all had it right.

While most of the dutch candidates in this month’s elections, probably cannot be put into one and the same league with those criminal murderers, they sure enough make a good laugh, wearing silly hats that actually suit them, as they shout obscene language in bars while the stoutest women of them all indulge in wet T-shirt contests.
Whatever their handicap, they have one more thing in common…no one ever uses words like PEACE… ART… BEAUTY… let alone the word LOVE.

My birthday being March 11, it is aspecially the word LOVE that springs to mind when I think of that courageous mother, who lost her son in one of the explosions in Madrid, that wiped away the lives of 191 people on that very date in 2004. Nine months after this woman by the name of Pilar Marjón speeched for over one hour in the Spanish Congress, wiping the floor with all those cowards…shameless politicians who, in the face of upcoming elections (just three days after yet another doomsday) rushed to the scene to point their fingers in that one direction…the other way.

Up to this day Pilar, who unintentionally became the voice of all the people who had lost their children, their parents, loved ones, friends, is being bothered by Spanish Flies working in his Majesty’s Secret Service. As we all know, flies have shit for brains…even with multi-facetted eyes they cannot make out the pain, still radiating from those who actually lived through that day in hell.

ps Filmmaker Ramon Gieling and composer Paul van Brugge, both from the Netherlands, worked together in the documentary ‘The garden of absentees’ (original title: de tuin der afwezigen). In this chilling movie one is confronted with the faces of those who where actually there during the blasts…as they listen to Van Brugge’s music they seem to return to Dante’s World.

letters to thailand - part 1
letters to thailand - part 2
letters to thailand - part 3
letters to thailand - part 4
letters to thailand - part 5
letters to thailand - part 6
letters to thailand - part 7