Bangkok vice: buddhas, boxers and bar girls

From one of my favourite on-line magazines, Slate -

In the beginning there was Jon Stewart irony, and it was good. And then there was Steven Colbert meta-irony, and it was better. But then I discovered meta-meta-irony, and it scared me straight. In a tiny bookstore on Khao San Road, Thailand, with a bottle of duty-free Jack Daniel's in one hand and a copy of Alex Garland's The Beach (with Leo DiCaprio on the cover) in the other, I was looking through the window at the most dense, most multiethnic, most unwashed group of truth-seeking wanderers I'd ever encountered in one locale ... If this is where peace, love, and understanding lead, then let's give war a chance ... One of the most important concepts in Thai is jai yen (cool heart), which gives you some indication of how frustrating the country can be
http://www.slate.com/id/2163104/entry/2163105/

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

"So a Marine, a fisherman, and a writer walk into a pingpong show."

"I found myself sitting next to a lovely young woman from Cambridge and her Scottish boyfriendтАФsurprisingly enough, half the audience was farang women."

" My personal theory is that if your country's major source of revenue is tourism, and sexual tourism is a significant portion of that, then you'd want to offer every item on the menu. The latest trend is Japanese women and Thai go-go boys." :cyclopsani: :cyclopsani: :cyclopsani:

I'm afraid The Lad's in denial - The Second Noble Truth