I think there’s a direct relationship between the amount of English

a foreign language absorbs, and the ability of that foreign culture to speak correct English. No country wants to speak English more than Thailand, no country absorbs and ‘localizes’ English more than Thailand, and ultimately no country speaks it worse. There’s got to be some causal connection, right? Certainly Thailand’s ‘fun, fun, fun’ attitude toward life creates obstacles for the serious study of any subject, including English. How can you learn anything if everything’s a joke? The average street vendor in Tijuana speaks better than the average Ph.D. in Thailand. Of course, they are at opposite ends of the linguistic spectrum, with only vague connections via the ancient Sanskrit-Greek relationship, yet still they rank lower (by their own measure) than ‘neighbor countries’, which include such basket cases as Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. They speak almost with envy of their neighbors who got lucky enough to be colonized by England or America, in the case of Philippines. They judge one another by how well that person speaks English, as if anyone were qualified to judge, and to fill a Thai sentence with English ‘buzz words’ is the ultimate in ‘cool’, whether by a politician, rock star, or TV personality, no matter whether anyone understands or not. It’s mind-boggling.

I love my wife, though I don’t mind being gone half the time.

That keeps it fresh. Hunger makes the food taste real good. If I’m there all the time then it degenerates into that husband-and-wife behind-the-scenes sort of fussing-and-fighting that they never showed on Ozzie and Harriet, tending to favor smiles and sighs and bedroom eyes, while the kids become rock stars in imitation of real life. In very few species does the dad actually hang around with the wife and kids after the consummation of the marriage, so I figure I’m way ahead of the curve. Thai women are more obsessed with security than they are with finding the ultimate soul mate anyway. So Thailand works for my sci-fi style of life. Stupid me, I had to learn the language. Big Mistake. Normal Farangs live with their Thai wives in a state of eternal bliss, speaking Pidgin Shit and drinking beer. Farangs are Westerners, white ones. The term is a Thai pronunciation of the name that started off as ‘Franks’ and dates back to the Crusades era, when all white men were known as ‘Franks’ in the Middle East and Byzantium. It seems we’re on a new crusade now, and Thailand is the Promised Land that needs rescuing. Older Western guys running short on erections get to spend their remaining days with a beautiful younger Thai woman, full of smiles and spice and everything nice. Japanese and other wealthy Asians opt for the same retirement plan, and more than a few Arabs, too. There’s something for everybody.

Tang makes supper in the kitchen,

mostly oblivious to my musings and misgivings, consciousness largely applied to a given task rather than set loose to run wild with imagination and self-reflection. Thailand is a womb warm welcome and waiting to soothe the frayed nerves of the semi-erect hominid westerner, ego bruised from the constant duals with self, reflected in an endless stream of strategically placed mirrors creating the illusion of reality for those in need of such. Thailand will survive where others fail because of her willingness to marry up, take the name of her new spouse, and enjoy the honeymoon of the future, should there indeed be one.

Now I just need a parallel reality,

and that never the twain meet. Half a world away, a full 180 degrees, lies another world ready and waiting, a tablet upon which to write, Peru, the flip side, the mirror image. Thailand is great for people with low self-esteem, but ultimately may be a dead end. Thais themselves tend to have low personal self-esteem for which they tend to over-compensate with a national superiority complex, notwithstanding their generally low ranking in many of the world’s important statistics, such as education, research, and development, etc. Peru seems to be the South American equivalent of Thailand, slightly bonkers, a relatively open society, and nice-looking women. Obviously I want both worlds, single and married, East and West. Maybe that’s one thing one can do in Thailand, as long as one defines the situation carefully. My ancestors followed cows across continents. So can I.

Thailand is the last resort for the Space Age tourist.

This is where you end up when the trip is drawing to a close. This is where you get those Social Security checks sent. I’m not ready for that. Actually, where I’d really like to go is Madagascar. The idea of Asian forebears on the African coast, speaking an Austronesian language without a clue as to why or wherefore, sounds pretty exotic to me. Maybe they’re the ones who brought the bananas that revolutionized African agriculture that allowed a Bantu expansion that ultimately passed them by and hemmed them in. They weren’t the only ones. The Dutch reached Southernmost Africa before the Bantu speakers, as did the Khoisan speakers, but were eventually overwhelmed by them. The Malagasy have had Bantu and Arab admixtures onto their racial origins, but without losing their traditional culture. On the contrary, from what may have been no more than a single maiden voyage, Malagasy culture has diversified into several distinct lineages and languages, while never losing its mutual inter-connections. It is also a laboratory for biology as well as culture, rivaling the Galapagos Islands for the uniqueness of its species.

Thailand is in a cultural drift toward neoteny.

The language is pretty, if vague, and some female TV personalities speak something close to baby talk to make it even prettier. Suffering fools gladly is a way of life here. English is the language of last resorts. Speak slowly and with multiple convictions. English is the language of aggression for use with outsiders. The use of Thai dictates a different level of politeness. Know that silly song you can’t get out of your head? Thais like that silly song, and can mouth most of the words along with the singer. They’ll even clap as the song starts rather than before the song ends to show their approval, since no respectable singer would change the song. Thais worship their kids, especially the males. Their mothers essentially work for them. It goes to their heads, of course, and many never really grow up. Thai male kids are spoiled rotten, indulged to the limit of a family’s resources. As long as the resources are limited, then they turn out okay. When a family’s lot improves and they just shower the extra on their kids, then the kids quickly become accustomed to the new standards and do their best to do as little as possible for most of their lives. Thailand is a nation held together by mutual fears and sticky rice. Fear of ghosts is common, so many Thais sleep with the light on. They are puppies in puppy love, sweet nothings without fire nor fiber, ready to marry up the food chain to further the cause of evolution. Blue-eyed lightning grounds itself in brown-eyed earth, and the rest is history.

Thais are marketing maniacs.

If you don’t believe me, go look in the psychology department of a local bookstore. You might find Tony Robbins or some erroneous zones, but certainly no Skinner, maybe something old but definitely nothing Jung, maybe some Farang named Floyd, but definitely not Freud. It’s all marketing. The local supermarket raises and lowers prices constantly, obviously not in response to changing costs, but to see at what price they max out their profit, or else just to catch some customers off guard buying a product out of habit without checking the price. Or so I assume. Otherwise they’re just berserk. Welcome to Thailand. Given the average Thai person’s math skills, you could certainly trick a few, for example, by charging more per unit of measurement for a large package than a smaller one, simply because people would expect the opposite. That’s why they require prices to be displayed per unit in America. Thais do it because it works. Invariably, the waiters in the local pizza chain will recommend an unadvertised ‘special’ with hastily blurted details that can’t be confirmed until it’s on your plate. Thais will order it every time. The Asian economic miracle, capitalist or communist, is built on the quiescence of its labor force. There are no strikes here, never have been and never will be. Hell of a miracle. If that’s a miracle, then I’m a prophet, complete with profit. Maybe they’re better off in this trickle-down system, or maybe not. They’re probably better off as long as they specialize in it. If everybody specialized in it, then the competitive advantage wouldn’t be so special, and maybe nobody would be getting ahead, though guys might be getting more of it. Asia is the future, like it or not, human beans in little I-pods. Western individualism is a relic of a bygone era, cowboys and Indians with eyeliner and purple sunsets with orange highlights.

Sell your face to the highest bidder.

It’s easier than working. Only that would explain why prominent singers and songwriters and playwrights would give it up to play bit roles in Hollywood movies. The only requirement is that you look, uh, interesting. Not all that many actors are really good, anyway, so there’s not much of a standard to meet, just show up. We’re all whores at heart, so it’s just a matter of price. Evolution drives us prettier by sexual selection. That’s where Thailand comes in, the breeding ground between East and West. About the time Western women were saying, “we don’t want to be sex objects any more,” Thai women were saying, “we do!” The rest, of course, is history. Every half-breed Thai is an experiment in genetics and anthropology, living proof that opposites attract.

Thai TV is terrible, comparable to Bollywood movies,

full of bad acting and totally lacking in motivation and imagination. Thai commercials are great, something about ‘short-attention-span theater’ I guess. Thai TV is like Chinatown, logos hanging from every possible angle in every possible scene. When the interviewer wants to do somebody outside, they drag the signs along and prop them up against a tree or something. It’s all quite annoying, but entertaining in the kitschy sense. The TV commercials themselves are quite good, however, better than the shows. Thais specialize in the quick thrill, the brief sensation, the sound bite, the short-term encounter. TV shows consist of insipid variety or too-soapy operas filled with over-acting and generally limp plots. Typically somebody does something bad, so something bad happens to him. This is the predominant theme in most Thai literature and is, in fact, the prime message of Thai Buddhism, the Law of Karma, for beginners, typically illustrated by cartoon to streamline the message. It’s important to note that the law of Karma is not a law of physics. Something bad will not happen in direct immediate reaction to a bad initial action, but will happen nevertheless, however long and deviant the path. This allows for the universality necessary in religion. I figure bad actions are their own punishment, but that may apply only to me. The memories carry weapons, remember. Of course, I also figure that nothingness is its own punishment. Tang figures that it’s its own reward.

Thai is the mother tongue; English is the father.

Thailand is pragmatic, hot molten pragma oozing from the pores of poster girls and wanna-be models. A million pragmatists walk the streets tonight, looking for succor from some sucker, sympathy for assorted devils. Millions of women are waiting there to smother you, love you to death, kill you with kisses. They smother you with the black hole of ignorance, so you stab them with a prick of your aggression. I think that maybe I’m sexually attracted to ignorance; I guess that’s Nature’s way of getting even. It all balances out. They’re a throwback to an earlier time when men were men and women were women and the twain only met undercover. The fruits of this labor might not even know the push and pull of history that led to such a consequence. They might not even care.