Great name for a venue. Doqaholic. Lookmo would feel right at home here. Anna is a cat-aholic, but she comes along to jam with me anyway. No seriously, she is. Anna has three official felines as well as countless strays and randoms she pets every night when we are walking around Chiang Mai.…
“…you will get a hundred Baht per hour.” “Really? Nice. I’ll do anything for three hundred Baht. Do they want me to get nude?” “No! No, no, no. It is a portrait class. They will only be painting your face.” “Oh. OK… I don’t mind getting nude…” “Everywhere I go in Thailand people stare at…
“…Now this is good art. You can see what the fuck the picture is about” he huffs. “The political themes in the abstract work are interesting though” I venture. “Sure. Politics. Well that’s another thing. I almost got shut down twice in the last few months. I hung some work that someone didn’t like, and…
…I don’t know what happened, OK? I got up, and took the mic, and after about a dozen notes I realised I was… just a tad… off-key. Maybe I was too sober..? There is nothing quite as traumatic as being given a pitying glance by good musicians when you are a tad off-key… In one…
“…Do you know where the bus to California is?” he asks me. His accent is American. His English is perfect. He sounds like he just stepped out of a movie. The question is absurd. This is Cambodia. Even with my lousy knowledge of geography, I know there ain’t no busses to California here. He’s got…
Hitchhiking north from Ayuthaya. If your job is standing outside a hotel, indicating that people should drive in and book a room, then you need to make your own fun. Is this the perfect name for a condo development? The Queen of Thailand is never seen in public anymore. her face…
…I wake up at eight, after two hours sleep, mouth tasting of cigarettes and hung over as fuck. (Ever had a morning like this? I’m sure you can relate.) All I want to do is crawl into a hole in the ground. It’s my lucky day today because crawling into a hole in the ground…
I said this, or something equivalent when I was eating lunch with some other travelers today. People laughed like they knew exactly what I was talking about. It seemed to resonate with them. It definitely describes one of the aspects of being a nomad that I Iove. The photo is from my recent visit…
Facing each other across the Chao Phraya River, in Ayuthaya, Thailand, two temples present a stark historical contrast. Wat Tha Ka Rong is a bustling modern complex, something between a strip mall and a church. A stone’s throw away is Wat Chaiwattanarm, a crumbling ruin dating from the early 17th century. (Top photo: what…
…Some time in the next few minutes I am going to shit. If I don’t find a suitably private place to do it, it is going to happen in my pants, and I know from experience that when you feel this sort of urgency in the tropics, the results are usually liquid, and that means…
Anna is setting off on an epic journey across Europe and Asia! She asked me for some travel tips and some ideas on how to get started with blogging. Anna: “Hey! Very cool to read everything. I will start a trip in a few weeks, from Germany to Indonesia, overland, Southeast Europe, Romania,…
She twists and struggles, but he pulls her hair several times before releasing it and steers her into the foyer of the hotel…