A hot afternoon today and my poor old nose (i.e. a schnoze of the white/farang, ayran, caucasion, scandanavian, romanesque, Leslie Howard persuasion) was suffering from a foolish overdose of direct seaside sunlight yesterday. Like Rudolph, I needed no nightlight to lead the way to the Christmas Tree at 4AM.

This condition caused me to spend a lazy afternoon today trying to balance a teeny icepack on my nose (not easy), getting some photos organized, a little neglected email answering, a luxurious nap around 1PM, and a little movie watching courtesy of a lush new sofa, True Visions, and our fine big ass flat screen.

Searching through the movie channels I chanced upon a film entitled 'North of Chiang Mai'. Being an Asian movie buff (though not necessarily a Thai movie lover) I tend to be genetically programmed to stop at such gifts and try them out. It turned out not to be an Asian movie at all, but an Australian production with Americans as the Good and Bad guys and Thais playing all their worth as Local Colour.

True Visions kindly includes a small one or two paragraph synopsis of most movies, and this one read: "On a trip to Bangkok an American businessman finds himself out of his depth when he inadvertently crosses the border in(to) Vietnam". Sounds awful and it was . . . awful enough to watch it in it's entirety, transfixed by the cheesiness of the production, the embarrassing acting, and the wretched screenplay: 'Transfixed' as in not being quite able to believe that any director worth his salt would be agreeable to splashing his (real) name across the screen at The End.
The last time I felt this stupified notion to keep watching was during the last mesmerising and mascara-awash 'redemption' show from Jim and Tammy-Fae Bakker.

Anyway ... about that title, and about that synopsis: Do you recall one of the great title faux pas' of cinema history? Yes, I'm referring to the terrific fuck up known as 'Krakatoa: East of Java ' ... the multi-million dollar spectacular which couldn't get it's directions straight. Java is west of the great exploding island.
Never mind that it was as a bad a movie as 'North of Chiang Mai', it's entire claim to fame was that it became a laughing stock before the end of Opening Night.





So Vietnam is not 'north' of Thailand, much less Chiang Mai. Granted, the very far west tip of Vietnam could ~ in a strech ~ be considered almost north, but the huge majority of the country is clearly east and south east of the good old LOS. Even giving it up that there exists a Vietnamese tip nearly north, there's quite a good few hundred miles ~ of Laos ~ to get there: i.e. it's very difficult to cross the border "inadvertently" and get there, from here ... trundling north or not.

And that dear sirs, is what one does when one is down and out and feelin' poorly with a small hangover and a large sun-stroked probiscus.

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