Ceasing Transmission

Sitting in an internet cafe in the mountains of northern Thailand fiddling with uploading pictures. Still working it out. Mastercard wrote and asked if I wanted my credit extended and I thought: that's a holiday. Walking along a beach in Phuket I realised that my whole self image had devolved into thinking that all the good times in my life were over, sad, sick and lonely, well chronically depressed actually, sick of work and sick of my life and longing for an escape, any escape.

It didn't work out that way. We've been in Pai a hundred and something k's north of Chiang Mai for quite a while now. For a time I never wanted to leave but it's time to go now. We've been everywhere and seen everything, watched the sunrises and sunsets in the mystical valleys; watched the hordes of tourists come and go. There's been a Thai documentary on Pai recently and there are massive numbers of what seem to me to be newly wealthy Thai tourists here; outnumbering the westerners. In the old days it was just westerners; and the relics are everywhere, in the cafes with chocolate cakes, the Mellow Yellow bar; the latter day hippies in the streets. The fashion looked daggy in its day and looks even more so now. And the wierd thing is they're all straight, sipping their ginger tea and talking about how Pai is one of the only places on earth where all the lai lines meet. There's no dope here, a military coup will do that I guess, and they're all just out drinking at night or recharging their crystals or whatever they get up to.

The hippies are known as being clanish and unfriendly; while the most entertaining company in the whole town has been Eddy the town drunk, who thinks I'm a great bloke because for some reason or other I keep lending him money. Most of the time it comes back. I sit swilling over-sweet orange juice and complaining that my liver means I can't drink, which is basically true, and sit with him smoking rough Pablo Burmese cigarettes and listening to the stories that pour from him in deluded torrents. He fell off his bike the other night, drunk as a skunk, blood all over him, and I was nearby and helped wash the blood off him and made sure he got home alright. He thinks the Thais were all very helpful to him after the accident, but in fact they were standing back askance. He broke his dentures in half and had to super-glue them back together. The last time that happened, he said, was when someone stuck a gun in my mouth. Yeh, I thought, and I bet you deserved it.

But it's been great to be somewhere else, outside of things, outside of routine and outside of the spiralling patterns of my life. Back to work a week from today. Sigh.

IRAQ WATCH:

ABC:

By CALVIN WOODWARD and LARRY MARGASAK
WASHINGTON Jan 27, 2007 (AP)— Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.
Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.
Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years.
"Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now.
The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances.