Sign in Narita airport departure lounge; smoking section located “in the depths”. Don your scuba gear to smoke!

Scissor Sisters - Return To Oz

In honor of my own return to Oz - almost as traumatic and disorienting as this one…hahahaha!

How did this:

Go to this:

I took a bus straight from the airport to Melbourne’s billowing, futuristic new train station. It was a shock, and not only because it was only 6 degrees. The station was hung all over with huge, fluttering banners urging bi-polar people to call the government’s new manic-depressive toll-free hotline. It was just the beginning.

 In subway stations, posters screamed at passers-by to have regular sexual health checkups and notices in trains showed activities you could do with your children  if they turned out to be deaf.

Worthy though each of these causes is, there comes a point where it makes you think “let people just  take care of themselves!”.  When did Australia  - a rugged frontier culture that celebrated self-reliance and sardonic humor - turn into such a paranoid nanny state? Everything is micro-managed , and over-regulated. I tried to sign up for a 30 dollars a month mobile phone plan and was informed that since I am currently unemployed it would actually be illegal to sell me anything on credit. Even to work in a sandwich shop here, you have to have the right certificate, to show you have completed your food safety course or whatever. Coming from stern, stoic, self-reliant Japan (and freewheeling anything-you-want-no-prescription-necessary Thailand) it all seemed like such…overkill.

I mean, I’m being a bit hypocriticalabout it. I’ll gladly take the government’s unemployment benefits (I’m even considering  one of their heavily subsidized 250 dollars-for-unemployed-people-computers) . And in my younger days I actually ran a government funded “self esteem group for gay men”. But it makes me think…c’mon people! Take some responsibility for yourselves…the government can’t do everything!

It was the first little shock of being back in Melbourne.

 The second was that everyone seemed so young! All around me,  on the streets, or in shops, or on public transport , everyone seemed to be about 20 years old. I eavesdropped, and all they talked about was skipped  university lectures and parties they “raged at” over the weekend (to use the quaint Australian expression). Is Japan really ageing that rapidly that the sight of young people everywhere unnerves me?

The third shock was that my neighborhood, in the space of the last year, has turned Indian. Located right near a university campus, the area has always had a strong Southeast Asian/Chinese presence . This is because of foreign fee-paying students ( Australian universities lead the world in this field - a full 30% of the higher education budget comes from exorbitantly-priced overseas student places).

But suddenly, it seems the university’s recruitment policies have changed because there are Indians everywhere - three new Indian supermarkets (one of them huge), several Indian restaurants, a Bollywood video shop, and signs up on phone poles for an Indian Independence Day party in the carpark of Coles supermarket.  OK.

It was interesting to see all of these changes, and wonder if they really were as sudden as they now seemed. Being back in Melbourne - so soon after my Southeast Asia trip - had a slightly disorienting effect on me. I didnt feel a real connection anymore, I didn’t feel like I was “home”. It was more like, just another city ; Bangkok, Tokyo, Saigon, Melbourne…..

But then as I took a walk through the brisk evening to my old university, and looked up at all the pretty old Vicrtorian buildings, I started to feel the rhythm of the city, and get my old connection back. And then I saw the sky - I had forgotten the beautiful Australian sky - so much clearer and bluer and bigger than it seems in other countries - and I felt like I was back home

Saigon

A Caoi Dai funeral hearse, street scenes in Ho Chi Minh

Bangkok

Pink taxis in rush hour, grafitti art and the Arab street, new friends at  salsa night

Melbourne, midwinter

For those of you who have never been to Melbourne: this is what it looks like. It is actually quite a pretty city. Old and new buildings are mixed together in an interesting way - much of the city still dates from its glory days of the 19th Century, when it boomed on a Gold Rush to become the 4th city of the British Empire (after London, Manchester and Bombay). Today, its still the best-preserved Victorian-era city  in the world, but the grand old buildings are complemented with some funky new skyscapers built over the last 10 years, as the economy has boomed. ( One thousand new people are currently moving into the city every week, meaning that in 30 years it could overtake Sydney to become Australia’s biggest city again).

Lydia- So Lonely

Lydia, Thai pop star, rumored girlfriend of ex-president Thaksin and actress, with the English version of her song “So Lonely”. The cute girl I met in Bangkok at the salsa club is the back-up dancer in purple!

…. but the adventure (I hope) goes on. As I type this at Narita Airport, I want to thank all the people I shared such wonderful times with in Japan. Its hard for me - impossible actually - to imagine what my life would have been like without Tokyo, but it would certainly have been much  poorer. I’ve learnt, and seen, and done, so much here and even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could shake its influence. Its weird, and kind of unreal, to be saying goodbye. And its sad and strange to say goodbye (if only for now) to the wonderful husband-to-be whose arms I’m leaving . Last night I was wondering why Im going, but I do know why. Its time to go. So, upwards (literally)  and onwards. Australia - what have you got in store for me…?

Kylie Minogue - The One

…as delivered by Kylie Minogue:
“The One”.

ปาล์มมี่ - ปล่อย (Palmy- Ploy)

One of my favorite random moments in Bangkok: a chance encounter in a restaurant with my favorite Thai pop star: Thai-Australian hippy-chick, Palmy! She is also one of the country’s best known entertainers, with her sweetly melodic pop rock songs and 70s throwback stoner fashions.

So imagine my surprise, when on my second night in the country,I spotted her sitting a few tables away at an Ibiza-style chill-out restaurant/bar near Khao San Road. Was it..? Could it be…?

I was too shy, but Daisuke marched over and asked her “excuse me, are you Palmy?”

But come to think of it - where better for a Westernized counterculture girl to hang out, than here with her global peers, in a place she is unlikely to be recognised or hassled (um…except by me) ?

She was lovely - very gracious and with a total Aussie accent and attitude.

My plane was leaving back to Tokyo at 4am. So, that afternoon I took a four hour “disco nap” and decided to get up for dinner, and one last long walk around Bangkok at night.

Dinner was at  “Cabbages and Condoms”, a Thai restaurant run as a money-and-awareness- raising project for the country’s (highly successful) population control bureau. It is located in the grounds of the Asian Centre for Population Control, on the edge of Bangkok’s Koreatown, down an alleyway of hangul signs and Korean supermarkets (and next to a recruiting office for the University of Melbourne!)

Inside, the tables stand around a courtyard of  banyan trees, in airy tents. Jets spray mist into the gardens around, and colorful little lamps made of condoms shine down, along with strings of golden fairy lights. Dinner is Thai food, followed by complimentary condoms, and photo opportunites with mannequins wearing woven-condom jackets and suits of armor studded with contraceptive pills. It is a bright, happy place with a sense of playfulness that I couldn’t easily imagine anywhere except Bangok.

Afterwards, I decided to continue, going for a walk. As I pushed up the crowded pavements , I noticed for the first time that many of the sellers here - vendors of  fake brandname goods,  cute little home knicknacks, or Tshirts in appalling taste - were deaf . It was as if a deaf mafia had muscled in and claimed this “patch” as their own. A deaf town next to a Korean town next to a population control restaurant.

As I walked by the sellers chatted among themselves in lively sign language.

 Next was a row of Indian tailor shops, a group of middleaged Sikh men deep in a group-hug, then the Arab district at Sukhumvit Soi 3 .  The road had flooded, and Middle Eastern tourists (almost all in sandals) skipped gingerly through the puddles, talking amongst themselves in Arabic, Farsi and African languages. Above, were swirling neon signs in fluid script.  The crowds jostled by , laughing and chatting and occassionally  getting splashed as cars drove through the puddles -intensifying the sense of playful chaos.

I love this street. That night, men sat on terraces, sucking on shishas and watching video clips. On the screen, surprisingly sexy singers from Lebanon and Egypt pouted and showed off their cleavage (or did “wild”, “liberated” things like going bowling - using a lemon as the ball and champagne flutes as the pins!)

Spruikers were shouting out their restaurants’ praises (and pointing out the prominent “halal” signs), beggars wailed, chubby children waddled by with their black-veiled mothers. Groups of women haggled  in bazaaar-like arcades - some were darkclad and faceless, with not even their eyes showing, while others were unveiled with Drag-queen-like makeup and bouffant hair. Groups of men laughed and chatted. Pairs of girls strolled past arm in arm, or applied industrial strength mascara, and handsome boys conspicuously eyed Thai working girls.

A baby elephant passed uproariously, led by the gangly teenagers who sell overpriced bananas to feed them. And through it all was the pungent smell of smoke, Lebanese and Thai cooking,  and Thai street vendors circulating with trays of  gimmicky toys - fake noses, kites, battery-activated fluffy cats, glowing helicopters and flashing Satan horns. 

 In a shop window I saw a Thai woman try on a shimmery, layered head scarf and smile at herself in a mirror , while next door a 10 year old MIddle Eastern boy was getting his hair cut at the barber, into a mohawk.

In a discreet sidestreet, a veiled woman in full black hijab was chilling at a little cafe with a Corona (!!!!) and on the crowded sidewalks Islamic women were literally rubbing shoulders with transexual Thai hookers in barely-there hotpants, and strolling past gay clubs.  Arab men and Thai girls chatted (negotiated?) outside icecream parlors. A car cruised past, splashing everyone. It bore a prominent sign “Embassy of the UAE”, (as if that was alright then), causing one feisty Arab chick to shout out in English “Just back up already!”

I passed an internet cafe called “Harlem”, entirely full of African men (I thought they were Nigerians, but as they were speaking French, I guess not). One of them was barking into his phone in heavily accented English. He actually said: “You are not here to fuck around, you are here to buy heroin!”

In the middle of the street a middle aged American in a white shirt was standing, arm in the air, proclaiming in a  loud voice “There is no God but Jesus! Jesus is your saviour!” over and over again, as a bemused crowd gathered to look on. I shared a smirk with the Arab bystanders (in an almost entirely non-Christian country, why choose this street? Are Muslims less Christian than Buddhists?) Then a hefty African woman ran out and started wailing “Jeeeeesus! Jeeesus!” with emphatic gestures; I thought she was making fun of him until it dawned on me she was entirely serious. An Iranian man took a photo.

This was a city that was hard not to love. But I had to go back to my hostel to pack for the flight. I walked back  to “Suk 11″, 5 minutes away, but couldnt bring myself to go up to my sterile little room, so I just sat in the lobby and waited for something to happen.

It did.

I fell into a conversation with the two cute Thai girls working there. One of them, it turns out, is also a back-up dancer who appears in videos for Thailand’s R&B star Lydia (who I have reported on previously, on this blog). The girls were finishing their shift and going out, to a Latin club just up the street…so I ended up, at 2 am on a Wednesday night in a packed-full club, underneath giant white mushroom installations suspended from the ceiling, dancing to Cuban music.  Also joining us were a Thai-French boy (who turned out to be a salsa dancing machine),a nice German guy who had just finished a year in Australia, and a crowd of Bangkok’s dressed-up, glamorous party people, models and wannabes. A photographer came by and snapped our picture, promising we could see it the next day online on a website called “Last night in Bangkok”. I smiled. It was the last night in Bangkok for me in both senses, and what a night… and what a city…. charming restaurants brightly lit with condoms, elephants on the streets, Arab people, transsexual people, deaf people, Cuban music, fun, quaint wooden hotels and dancing and laughing with international strangers in strobe-lit Latin clubs.

Goodbye Bangkok.  I hope I will be back again soon.

The last few days I have been back in Bangkok, chilling out after my trip and just enjoying the “buzz” of one of the world’s liveilest and most openminded cities. I have been staying in the new part of town, around Sukhumvit, the closest thing this splrawling city has to a main street.

Sukhumvit starts with an explosion of gleaming shopping malls, and follows the Skytrain monorail down through the sidewalks of Nana, crowded with peddlers of tatty souvenirs,  past dolled-up bargirls and delicious streetfood stalls, before continuing out into the suburbs and eventually, all the way to the Cambodian border.

This part of the city is almost a world away from the gently decaying 1920s apartments of Chinatown, and the exotic riverside. Its short on Oriental charm. Instead, it is an eternal construction site, where huge buildings are constantly going up and down, Skytrains whizz by,  and footpaths are torn up and replaced just as haphazardly as before. Jackhammers are always drilling, between vast sparkling malls, new-looking and already derelict buildings, endless hotels and  empty lots covered in  grass and wild palm trees.

It may not have theambience of Bangkok’s “old” side by the river,  but still this side of town does boast its own attractions. There is fine shopping (even the malls here are fun, rather than being soulless comsumer vortexes ) , great restaurants and most of all,  a pulsating 24 hour energy that draws in visitors from every part of the world. It is here that Bangkok is at its most cosmopolitan, and carnivalesque.

My base in this part of the city was the famous “Suk 11″ guesthouse  -tucked just behind the permanently thronged main street of Sukhumvit in a little alley. Its on the same street as an  Advocates-style open air street bar, a tapas restaurant and an STD clinic (very Sukhumvit).

Its a funky hostel, built to resemble a wooden Thai farmhouse with shady little verandahs hidden behind walls of tropical creepers and potplants, cats playing, rickety footbridges crossing the street and covered in vines, and inside, dim corridors all lined in wood and designed to feel like little “gang planks”. In the rustic lounge areas, travellers from all over the world chat and hang out, and write multilingual messages of love and goodwill on all the walls. It is all very sociable.

A chilled, and unexpected little place, tucked away in the centre of the Sukhumvit circus.