That's life.

“If you’re so clever, why aren’t’ you rich?” This is a question that has troubled me since my mother read it out of the newspaper sometime in the 90s. I think it was the name of a play or a book in the review section.

It’s a question that resonated with me as I reached adulthood. I’ve always thought I was clever, so I was naturally disappointed when I grew up and didn’t become rich. But lately the question has become “If you are so clever, why are you so skint all the time?” (Skint, for American readers can be translated to penniless).

This journey is amazing and I’m so grateful to be able to travel the world almost at will, but one drawback is that when I get places I feel inhibited to do anything that costs money because the more I spend, the more I shorten the life of the journey.

In my attempts at frugality I may have gone too far. Several times I have had ugly realisations that I am no longer living out an exciting adventure in which hardship is jovially endured, but I find myself drowned by the demoralising realisation that “This is my life.”

We dragged glider bags and suitcases on the Los Angeles MRT lines because we didn’t want to pay for a cab, stayed in the grimmest part of town risking drive-bys, strolled Compton’s streets for some cheap sightseeing, and the lowest moment recently was when we caught ourselves arranging our day around the free french-fries and champagne that the hostel doled out at 7pm each evening. That’s my life.

My beard trimmer has packed up after I overcharged it with the solar panels so I have a full on unruly beard. My jeans are stained from crawling under the bus fixing a leaking brake line yesterday, and to fight off the morning cold I pulled on the closest thing I could find, Chris’ paragliding sweatshirt, a size too small and wondered into a cafe for breakfast. In the glass door I saw a homeless guy in sandals and socks and for a second I steeled myself ready to fend off the request for a quarter from him, before realising it was my own reflection. That’s my life.

Chris is in the same boat, she was offered a free breakfast by volunteers at a homeless shelter on her way through town yesterday. Aside from our own, I’ve seen a lot of homelessness here. On a small piece of cardboard pithy pitches give you a life story and a reason to care. “Need money for dog food and a bigger piece of cardboard” says one. “I’m Michael, I served in Iraq. Every dollar you give reminds me why.” says another. Even the homeless, with all their woes, know the benefit of self promotion and effective sales communication. “Since 2009 [I’ve] been driving around the world in a truck that is made from and runs trash” begins the press release I type out in the cafe.

Next to me half a dozen beautician franchisees gather round the company founder for their annual meeting. It starts of cringingly enough as they dutifully laugh at inane stories the owner tells of the funny things her children said and did this week, but briskly moves into overdrive. For an hour she rattles through sales figures and targets like a machine gun. She refers to her underlings not by their names, but by the name of their franchise. “Santa Fe Ranchero, you’re up $10,000 on last year but a proportion of that has come from retail, none the less that’s good work, you can be pleased with that.” “San Diego South, your are only 51cents away from averaging $40 a sale, that’s amazing, but total volumes are down and you need to work hard to get back into the $2million turnover club. More focus on ORTs next quarter” There’s little time for any genuine emotion in her interactions. Every phrase is calculated to motivate and direct. Individual’s personalities are de-personalised by the sales-speak.

It’s exhausting to hear, even from 4 tables away. I head to the toilets where a sign says “Associates must wash their hands after using the toilet” Associates? What a lovely way to refer to a low paid coffee shop Mac-jobbers. Partners, Stakeholders, Franchisees. Sure enough a uniformed barista walks from the cubicle straight past me and the sink on his way back to work. As I return to the table the beauty queen is leaving in a sports car. She is clearly very rich. And from the complicated target driven way she knows how to motivate her franchisees, I’d guess she is also clever. I’m so glad that is not my life.

The beautician mogul has left me with an answer to my mother’s question. You not only have to be clever to be rich, you also have to be driven by money. All the corn in Nebraska couldn’t motivate me to be like that. At the risk of sounding all Buddhist, my truck has everything I need (apart from running water at the moment – the pump is still playing up) and while I wish I had €2000 for a tandem paragliding wing so I could fly with Chris and other people we meet on the journey, I’m happy to make do without it. That’s my life.

West Century Boulevard

“LA is a great big freeway” sang Dionne Warwick in the 1968 classic Do You Know the Way to San Jose.

The lyric has stood the test of time. Outside the motel/hostel is an 8 lane highway. It’s as long to cross as my street at home is to walk down. The planes lining up for the northern runway use West Century Boulevard to line up their approach, and from 6am there’s the regular rumble of 737 spraying the ground with atomised unburnt fuel and melting droplets of blue ice melting from the frozen leaks of their toilet plumbing.

Along West Century Blvd, a series of low rise retail outlets enliven the concrete express way and the cube units on either side with a plink of colourful signs, sized for the speeding motorist, advertising cheap motel rooms, muffler repairs and a range of food for under a dollar.

Nothing ever costs what the price tag says here. If it’s not the service charge it’s the sales tax. Everywhere else in the world has sales tax and it’s included in the price. It’s not such a difficult concept to grasp. Everywhere else you tip if the service is OK, not because you know the waitress is hardly being paid.

I saw a man on the sidewalk of West Century Blvd who was holding a sign to advertise a mobile phone shop. It had a curved bottom edge and his job was to rock it around in an unpredictable way that catches driver’s attention. How much can that job be worth? He’s wearing shades on a cold but sunny day and plugged into some headphones that no doubt the music helps with his sign gyrations, but prevents me from asking him about his wages.

The 117 bus runs down W. Century Blvd. The driver is chirpy, chatting incessantly to the passengers, making terrible jokes that the ladies in the front seats politely honour with a smiling groan or giggle. He wears surgical gloves and tells me if I don’t have enough change he won’t be mad at me. I get off at the Mall where I can print some documents I need at Staples. It’s an open air mall with units surrounding a big car park. Not like the enclosed air conditioned marble palaces of Asia, reverently attended for special occasions and visited with guests and family. You have to work hard to pick up the waft of corn starch food here. But sure enough it’s there, just outside the In-N-Out fast food restaurant. I’m hungry but I don’t go In-or-out. I’m craving a meal but the universal rule seems to be if it is advertised with a picture and the price, then it will be inedible and leave me feeling depressed.

I get excited when I see Radio Shack. I’ve never seen one before and bound in expecting it to be full of quirky cables and nerdy gadgets, CB radios and SWR meters. It’s not. Digital cameras and mobile phones with 2 year contracts line the shelves. Bland Mallism. A mirrored bottomed American Airlines plane flies overhead. Next door is Jumla’s Juices. There are no big pictures of their freshly squeezed orange juices or bold posters showing you what you can get for a dollar (“plus tax” in small print). They have real oranges piled up behind the counter. They look dirty and inappropriate for the mall setting. A machine turns them into juice.

Having taken the bus to the Mall I now realise its close enough to walk back. My sandals are not the mode of transport LA invites. The occasional other pedestrians glance over their shoulders suspiciously at each other if the separation gets too close. I accidentally creep back up behind a man that’s overtaken me earlier. He looks like he’s about to grab me and throw me over his shoulders in self defence. Another lady gives me a cheery “Well hello?” as I overtake her. Friendly as she sounds her body language is tottering sideways braced in case I’m minded to punch her and steal her bag.

The endless straightness of W. Century Blvd is disaffecting, dehumanising, grim, soulless, washed up and washed out but it’s also compelling exotic Americana at it’s best and most modern. It's ripe for romanticising. Cars turn right on a red, I almost get run over stepping out while looking the wrong way at the enormous pickups. Traffic grinds to a halt around my J-walking while neon signs invite me to cash checks or buy cheap pizza. I’m so excited about driving here I'd planned to hire a car tomorrow to use for the trip to the customs office. Except that when you add in the tax and insurance in it comes to over $90.

Today Dionne would sing “Put a hundred down and rent a car”. I’ll take the 232 bus down town to Long Beach instead. Things will be great when I’m down town.

Call of the Wild

A little out of date now but:

Surely I wasn’t the only one that was thinking it would be fun to go for a ride on the back of one of these massive Elephants. At the Elephant Nature Park, an hours drive from Chang Mai such thoughts can never be spoken. The park differs wildly from the other Elephant Tourist attractions in the neighbourhood, of which there are many, in that it is a retirement home for Elephants that have been used in the logging trade. Here the Elephants come first, and the visitors willingly take second place.

The focus is less about entertainment and more about how elephants, an animal that features on the Thai National Emblem, are treated in Thailand. Not well it turns out. Illegal loggers dope them with amphetamine, and work them to the point of injury, blindness, and in some cases literally til their bones break. Others are used as street entertainment, under fed and separated from their families. Traditional methods of training involve trapping young elephants in a wooden cage and torturing them into submission over a period of days, with metal hooks. It’s disturbing to watch, and it’s inevitably part of the process that makes an elephant rideable. As I learn all this, the desire to jump on their backs wanes.

Lek, the founder of the park, has a mouse like stature but an elephantine presence. She came from a family that worked elephants. Disturbed from an early age by the way they were treated, she embarked on a different path to provide a haven for the animals, which resulted in her being ostracised, beaten, receiving death threats, but eventually recognised, supported and now lauded. She is almost a household name in Thailand and the mention of the Elephant Nature Park brings nods of approval throughout the country. She’s developed a working relationships with loggers in Thailand and in Burma where poverty drives the dependence on animals and the problem of animal cruelty more acute and more violent. Instead of confronting she co-opted them into changing their behaviour. It’s a mammoth task but where she has been able to make inroads they have been impactful.

Just a few hours watching a herd coalesced around their youngest offspring is enough to convince that these animals are familial, affectionate and need to be in company. All the elephants introduced into the park have paired up, not as mating couples (only 3 of the 32 adults are males) but as spinster friends, promenading freely like retired sisters in their 50s majestically taking in the air. It’s hard not to anthropomorphise their outward demeanour, but their need for camaraderie is unmistakeable.

It’s impossible to know the exact age an elephant, often paperwork the previous owners provide is faked, or they have been rung like a second hand car after their predecessor meets an untimely end, but these trunked cut-and-shuts look like they’ve had a pretty hard life. One hobbles on an impossibly arduous broken hip, rocking up then down with each step, another’s eye is scratched out, and one limps on the stub of its leg blown off by a mine.

Their keepers (Kwan, in Thai) escort the elephants around the park, using only their body language and a bag of bananas to encourage the elephants. There are no hooked sticks here, the usual tool of the Kwan in Thailand. But there’s a hint that the Kwan are wrestling with this non-traditional approach. They aren’t the only ones. The idea of letting the elephants make the rules has to be balanced with the resources of the park, and the management of a herd of 34. In the evening they are penned, and the males are chained when they are in Musk to prevent the old boys doing themselves and injury. These animals have lived all their lives as domesticated animals. While the intention is to give them back their freedom, the elephants aren’t fully able to deal with it. It took one elephant two weeks to get used to not carrying a chain around its foot and had to be slowly weaned off it.

Lek is aware of this, and her goal is to provide a totally wild environment where human visitors don’t even get the chance to come second, and aren’t allowed at all. No habituation. It’s a model pioneered by Carol Buckley who is coincidentally also visiting the park while we are there. Carol bought an enormous plot of land in Tennessee, where the climate is similar to the subtropical environments that is a home for elephants in Asia and Africa, and then set free a load of rescue elephants from zoos and circus's in it. People, however, are not welcome.

It’s an uncompromising attitude that hasn’t won her many friends. In fact it’s probably at the heart of a spat with the directors of the Elephant Sanctuary charity she co-founded, which have now sacked her. The dismissal is an emotionally devastating wrench and she’s coy to discuss it, in part because it’s the subject of legal proceedings and maybe in part she’s a little indignant about her removal from her own project after a lifetime spent on it, despite her outward stoicism.

As a result of Carol’s Elephants-first approach, the charity received more donations than it could imagine spending and not allowing visitors became a position that was harder to justify. Being in such a unique position to fund an education programme through a visitors centre, it could be seen as remiss not to use those funds to create an infrastructure where visitors can learn about elephants in a “wild” environment. But the remit has always been about the elephants, and allowing people in removes the very wildness that makes the Elephant Sanctuary unique. Ironically as the pioneering site in Tennessee is being held up in Thailand as the gold standard, it may be on the verge of performing an about face.

Carol’s story is as fascinating and serpentine as Lek’s, the Elephant Nature Park and of the all the elephants that inhabit it. She bought an elephant from a tire store in California, the 1970’s when you could have an elephant in the parking lot just to get customers’ attention. For over a decade she toured with the circus and even developed an act where Tarra became the world’s only roller-skating elephant, something she is adamant Tarra loved to do.

There might have been an epiphany or perhaps just a seven-year-itch that made Carol want to hang up Tamara’s roller skates and leave the performing life. She talks animatedly about the whole story, but that part is a little vaguer than the rest. Nonetheless she has no shame about her circus days. As long as an elephant has room to roam, compatible friends and enough live vegetation Carol says it’s happy, even if it’s performing.

Her life has been tied to Tarra for over 30 years. At the start Tarra was her livelihood, but then as she looked for a suitable place to retire the elephant in 1996, she sank all her savings into a plot of land, which through her force of character and persistence with the neighbours grew to 2700 acres, big enough for the 14 elephants that now live there to roam and with a buffer big enough to keep visitors out.

Carol is touring Asia, funded by donations through paypal on her personal website (www.carolbuckley.com), visiting elephant conservation projects like the Elephant Nature Park, training the staff in elephant pedicures and the new born elephants with a positive reinforcement techniques, a rival to the savage caging method, which takes only a few minutes a day and doesn’t leave the elephant’s spirit crushed. The elephant is rewarded with treats when it lifts its leg or flaps its ears on command. The purpose is to teach elephants moves that vets will need them to perform during examinations.

Carol also wafts into new-age extremes, and hints at be able to communicate with Tarra through a kind of meditative telepathy. Yet she's so grounded in the reality of elephant care that none of this comes across as at all strange. In fact it would be odd if spending almost 40 years in the presence of an elephant didn't build bond of the senses.

There are two new born elephants in the park, and I’m confused why they encourage breeding when the little ones take up the resources which could be used to rescue another adult. Offspring draw the herd together, and several females will adopt the role of motherhood, not just the natural parent, but the real answer is less considered. Spading an elephant is a big impractical operation and keeping the males in check when driven by six tonnes of darwinian urges is an endless battle that the Kwan don't always win. On our final day at the Elephant Nature Park, a male that is segregated while he’s on Musk breaks his chain and rampages over to the females, sticking his trunk where a gentleman never would. On this occasion the Kwan manoeuvre the giants apart with deft skills without call to sticks or hooks, and this time the ladies honour is preserved.

Every animal, including humans has to work for a living, even elephants in the wild, and in the search for a fair way to treat elephants, Carol and Lek provide a master-class in managing the compromises that we all face in search for our utopias.

www.elephantnaturepark.org

The Price of Fish

I’m once again facing financial Armageddon as the cost of untying the truck from the container involves fees beyond all recognition.

It’s my welcome to America. A wake up call after the cheap living of Asia. $4 for a starter!? Are you nuts? I expect a 3 course meal and change from each of my dollar bills!

The price people have asked me for doing stuff along this journey has varied wildly along the trip. Often because some countries are just cheaper, but a bigger factor is the goodwill the truck and the journey engenders. Often people have generously based the price they charge me for things or for services based on what it costs them, just cos they like what I’m doing, want to help and feel like they don’t need to make a profit on this oddball project.

I think that in the US that feeling will be harder to engender. Having said that I’m waiting to hear back from a lovely contact at Michelin about some cost price tires.

From Christina’s description, her community in Ashland seems to function on a income of relatively low paid jobs which brings in enough money to get by, but then use a system of endless trades to make life taste sweet. She paid for part of her paraglider by editing the flying school’s website. Her best friend Allison swaps massages for other types of “body work”. Pot Luck dinner parties are the focus of the social life.

I’ve offered to unlash the truck myself to mitigate some of the costs. I have all the tools, all I need is a ramp, and undoubtedly they will say no for insurance reasons. Along with “security reasons”, “insurance reasons” are the most heart-breakingly stifling excuse people hide behind when disconnected from the people those reasons affect. Still I can’t complain. I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be lining up to sue the minute things go wrong.

Maybe I can give the warehouse workers and fork-lift drivers a Thai reflexology foot massage as a work trade? Hmmm, I’ll run it by the management.

Ironically cheaper countries are sometimes more expensive because people don't have the luxury to be generous with the truck.

The cost of an hour of anyone's time is nothing. Chinese factory workers might accept just a dollar or even less for that hour. But an American warehouse worker will expect a lot more. The warehouseman needs more because he lives in a country made more expensive by his compatriots all charging lots for each hour of their time. It's like a conspiracy of wealth, a catch22 or vicious circle that could collapse, along with a nation's economy if everyone decided their time probably isn't really worth that much.

Having seen the Asian boom it's hard to believe that an American hour is still worth more than a Malaysian one. Asia is circling up. America and Europe are spiralling down. It won't be long before Americans and Europeans release their grip on the value of their time.

I postulate this flow of global wealth as my tuna bake is cooling in front of me. It’s a cheap tuna bake from the cheap restaurant of the cheap hostel I’m staying in. I daren’t stray far from the hostel after dark. The kindly man at the airport desk that recommended this place told me this district, Inglewood, isn’t the safest part of LA by day or night. As I arrived here I was bum rushed by 6 LAPD officers charging in to the hostel to arrest one of the guests. As well as a police escort there are lots of other free things that come with the dorm bed; undrinkable coffee, vinegar flavoured cocktails, hour long bus transfers to the airport 2 miles up the road. This is the way of reducing costs that I'm familiar with. Roughing it.

Oh Ship!

Just last week Jimmy handled a big shipment for the US troops going to Afghanistan. The blue, ochre, green and white “boxes” (containers to you and me) surrounding him contain all the stuff we consume, on their way to and from being made and being used. Banal toothbrush holders and bed linen, cool digital cameras and iPads or quirky components who’s function is known only unto the consignee and a mystery to the common man. To Jimmy they are all just numbers, corresponding paperwork with locations and routings.

He’s the saviour of the day today. Most days the progress of the Biotruck requires a saviour. Yesterday it looked like the loading of the truck on to the container was going to cost $1500. That’s for me to drive it up a ramp onto a flat platform container (a Flatrack), and for 3 guys to strap it down with steel cable. You expect to get fleeced when you go through a port, but even by international standards of captive marketeering/racketeering, this was way high. Thanks to Jimmy from Taiwan working on the port operations team on a 4 year contract, who took a liking to the truck, and to us, I was able to get a price more commensurate with the standard level of arbitrary exorbitance associated with the phrase “port fees”. US$550.

I spent the morning following a very important customs officer around his office while he clutched my paperwork. Occasionally he would turn to me and gruffly bark “one minute” with a melt-your-heart smile, while he surveyed and signed triplicate copies agents deferentially begged his attention for. I knew he was important by the way officer and agents fawned at his passing, bowing deeply, and laughing excruciatingly hard at his jokes, most of which I assumed were at the expense of my height or at our inability to communicate. I’d been passed slowly up the chain of command from one officer to the next as each one admitted defeat at the confusion over the paperwork I had and how to dealt with it. I smiled a poor helpless man’s smile to help deflect their annoyance and expedite my file up the ranks. From the second floor, end of corridor I was passed to the first floor by the lifts, then just passed the toilets, and finally to the big glass office behind reception to the burly boss.

At each the of encounters, the men in charge called upon the women doing all the work around them to translate for me. I’ve been hopelessly in awe of women in Thailand. Not because of their drop-dead looks, uniform short skirts, silky legs and 6 inch stilettos. But because they are infinitely smarter than their wallflower demeanour implies to my western man’s mind. In fact they are infinitely smarter than my western man’s minds, full stop.

I listen in the hostel lobby to an American meathead jock, attempting to impress the stunningly attractive daughter of the owner about how cool travel is, and how he loves Thai culture, and meeting Thai people. She politely listens while smiling with sweet interest, slowly turning back to revising for her final year Pharmacy exams without giving any impression she is disinterested in the conversation. Desperate to make more of a mark on her, he changes tack and decides to show some interest in her curious little books. Over a series of questions he slides into the realisation that this little hottie is on a university scholarship at one of the most prestigious universities in Bangkok.
“How did you get that?” asks Meathead, intimidation starting to infuse his faux-charm, as he realises she’s not the bar girl he thought.
“I study for exams” She beams back, seemingly shrinking him to dwarf like stature.

Ann at Maersk is another example. Frighteningly competent, she takes on the job of co-ordinating every aspect of getting the truck, and me, on a boat to the US, and I realise how far from the day-to-day of Maersk’s business this project is. Containerisation was designed and took off in the 70s because it makes everything from doormats to paint dye to DVD players the same, standardised, and therefore easy to deal with. The Biotruck was built with the un-apologising side effect of being the complete opposite. Too wide, too tall and too long to fit in with the backstage props the movers of the world are used to. None-the-less Ann relentlessly tracks down solutions to problems before they appear on the horizon. Working in a non-native language she speaks, not just great English, but fluent office-speak too, a language that normally makes my skin crawl, but coming from her is poetry.

Not only am I adrift with Thai, but I can’t get the international language of shipping right either. I confuse “Stuffing”, with “Lashing”; the all important “Cut off” I keep referring to as “Clearing”; and I don’t know my “Cubes” or “High Cubes” from my “Platforms”, “Flatbeds” or “Flatracks”. Even though the truck in “in gauge”, all of my linguistic hesitancy slows progress but both Ann and Jimmy don’t flinch. I give up when the acronyms start around the table. “The WCRS is fine but I’m worried about the ISF”, Ann proclaims. I don’t know what ISF stands for but if Ann’s worried about it, I know it’s important. I wish Ann could organise every aspect of my life.

The fact that filling and emptying a container is referred to as “Stuffing” and “Unstuffing” doesn’t full me with confidence, but the confident manner with which the giant forklifts pick and stack cubes like momentous Lego blocks is reassuring. Their un-human scale requires a conscious effort to remember they are further away than you think.

Tomorrow morning, in the wake of the night out Jimmy is planning for us around Pattaya (gulp), the truck will be stuffed onto the flatrack, in time for the Saturday midday Cut Off. On Tuesday it sets sail for Honk Kong and a 3 day lay over. Assuming we’ve got the ISF sorted, it will then be Trans-shipped on another vessel (not ship or boat!) to Long Beach, Los Angeles, USA. Sadly I won’t be on the first leg of the journey as it’s not a Maersk vessel and the owners didn’t want some beardy eco-warrior on board. We’re waiting to hear back from the captain of the trans-pacific vessel that runs the 21 day route to America to find out if I can join the crew and avoid the massive flying leg. Choosing her words carefully Ann said she is “hopeful”. In that case, so am I.

This is my life

Incredibly I have managed to secure an early appointment to request a visa through the US embassy. Ironically the good news came with the bad; that it’s unlikely Maersk will be able to let me travel by container ship to the US because of “Security reasons” (my words, not theirs) surrounding US ports. A consequence of which is that I won’t need a visa after all.

After 4 months in South East Asia the constraints of security forces petrified of not doing enough with respect to safeguarding us had become a distant memory. The only reminder is the apologetic and pathetic searches of my bag when entering the MRT underground train stations in Bangkok. The security guards are caught between a need to be seen to do their job and the engulfing embarrassment of having to intrude into a stranger’s bag, a far cry from the uniformed Neanderthals at Heathrow airport, visibly high on the power to stop and search.

The visa issue is another up and down moment which the Biotruck expedition has provided numerous examples of so far. But I'm no longer removed from the expedition. It has become my full time experience. I’m so engrained in it that it is no longer a funny series of escapades endured on a finite tour. It’s now my reality and it feels endless. Just today as the shower ran out of water while I was all soaped up, I smiled to myself; Oh just another fun misadventure. Then the ugly realisation that this is my existence. I live in a world where the shower runs out mid wash, I shared the bus with a rat for 3 months, and I have to beg for fuel and suck it from people’s bins. This is who I am. It’s not a quirky game I’m playing as I journey around the world with my credit card loaded with get out of jail cash. It’s my life and irritatingly it’s regularly quite demeaning.

I had such promise once. Once upon a time I knew where I was going. When I was five I was going to be a fireman, then in my teens I was going to be a racing car designer, then an engineer, then a tour operator, then life stopped being driven by ambition and became about the next adventure. And it’s getting worse. I’m not sure where the future is leading. This journey is taking so long my aspirations have become totally blurred.

Today as we sat in the waiting room at the US Embassy trying desperately to find a way to get an appointment earlier than March the 9th, but resigned to the fact that there was nothing to do, I twigged to the distinct demographic sharing the room with us. Retirement aged American men, with a dishevelled demeanour, out of shape physique and a dress sense that belied their inability to look smart at any cost. I noticed a sense of entitlement amongst them too in the security line, indignantly made to wait with the Thais. The idea that a municipal building in your own country is somehow welcoming to members of the public is laughable, but when it’s your embassy, a home on foreign soil, there’s a sense that this is your place and inside are “your people”. Here surely you’ll be welcomed and come first. Of course embassy staff are just as dispassionate about the great unwashed, the plebs, (or members of the public as their training manual insists they be referred to) as any other front line civil servant. “Get in the line sir.”

But it was Christina that noticed the demographic first and had already put two and two together. These are Americas sex tourists. Their garish floral Hawaiian shirts, a uniform among the 50-plus born-again-studs popping Viagra for dear life in the hostess bars, was the biggest give-away. The redish complexion of alcoholism merely an unnecessary confirmation. Their presence in the embassy was either to plead for their Thai girlfriends request to visit the US, or to denounce their Thai ex-girlfriends for having made off with their passports and money. But once again in a moment when I should have been smirking at the absurdity of the situation this journey has thrown me into, I noticed that Christina was begging for my visa appointment with pleads that were as bouncing off the bullet proof glass of the counter just as apathetically as those of the randy grandpas begging for their bar girls. I stood engulfed by the sensation of having no more dignity than a bearded Thai mail order bride.

Without Prejudiced Eyes

I’ve just bought my first pair of cheap US$2 sunglasses and I’m over the moon about it, despite the fact they’ve effectively cost me $1500.

I’ve been recognising faint hints of bigotry in myself and some foreigners that live in South East Asia towards “the Locals”. At one of the schools I visited the English teachers talked about their diligent student with disdain, forgetting what delinquents they probably taught back in the UK.

At the BTS metro I witness a couple of foreign girls lose their temper with the gentle Thai clerk who can only dispense change, not a ticket, and tries patiently to explain this to them in his broken English. Not too long before, I’d done the same thing in frustration at not understanding how to buy a ticket.

I hear an American girl frustrated by staff at the internet cafe’s inability to repair an interruption with her connection mutters “I need someone white”.

Allegedly and tourism breaks barriers by bringing people together. But the evidence suggests it frustrates and confuses people by bringing them close enough to see they don’t understand the other, and that they don't have much in common.

But more than the language barrier, there’s a condescension from Westerners about these diminutive foreigners and their funny accents, which smacks of imperialism. And perhaps it’s mirrored in the Thai psyche, who seem to play along, affording much more respect to Western visitors that we deserve.

The Thai economy is trouncing the West’s, the levels of professional pride and competence are doing the same and so is the quality of life. I’m struggling to see what Westerners have to feel superior about. The balance has shifted since the 1940s. The big cities of Thailand and Malaysia are far from 3rd world.

Tom, a psychologist friend, says everyone harbours racist sentiments.

So wrestling with my own imperialist tendencies I decided there was no reason why I shouldn’t trust my precious eyesight to Thailand’s health professionals and I signed up for LASIK corrective eye surgery. I first thought about it 5 years ago in South Africa, but spent the money on a microlight pilot license instead. Then again I wanted to do it in Iran but didn’t have enough time. I was almost thwarted this time too as the Thai-ger economy growth here means that my hard currency is worth a third of what it was last year, so cheap medical treatments are correspondingly more expensive. However, by a stroke of luck I found a hospital doing a promotion for the month of February which meant I could afford it.

But the price was so cheap, I imagined some dingy backstreet one room clinic with a flickering neon sign over the door, and a cockroach scuttling across the reception desk.

I’ve never been to a private hospital before, so I’ve never known a level of care and thoroughness like it. Endless nurses bowing with praying hands, every surface spotlessly clean and leisurely consultations giving me time for every question and explanation. Even biscuits in reception. Yes, when it comes to trusting someone to slice you up, a few custard creams all it really takes to win me over. I can’t even begin to compare this with the “care” the NHS dispenses along with the faint scent of urine and infection.

Downloaded from a US medical association website, I started to ask the Doctor 50 questions to assess the clinics ability. By question five I was supposed to ask the Doctor if they were drug or alcohol dependent, how many malpractice suits they’d had filed against them, and if they were a convicted felon. I looked up from the list of questions at the impeccable professional demeanour of the Doctor, another 2 pages still to read in my hand, and smiled embarrassed “This all seems fine”. I folded the papers away.

“The lady’s done over 800 operations using this machine” I told Chris, realising that if she’d been a man I would have said “The Doctor’s done...”. Another example of my subconscious bigotry no doubt? Her reassuring manner mixed diligence with the confidence of experience. I instantly felt comfortable. Zap me I decided. I signed the waiver.

In Pre-op the nurse handed me a sealed envelope with the results of my compulsory HIV test. Before I could open it she told me they’d all read it assured me it was fine. Checking my heart rate and pulse on the monitor she announced with a grave smile “No Mor Blood Pressure”. It must have been the stress causing failure I assumed, I prepared to feel the life drain from my body.
“Is it bad?” I said weakly, with my last gasp.
“No.” She grinned confused “It’s Nor-mor”
“Normal!” I repeated a little too loud feeling my grip on life returning.

The day before, the doctor had explained everything she would do and how it would feel, then reminded me of it again before I went into theatre, and then talked me through it again as she performed each part of the operation. Following her instructions from the previous day I’d been practising staring at a spot. In essence this is all I really had to do while the laser guided missiles melted the surface of my cornea. I hadn’t been that good at it in training but thankfully my performance on the day was drug enhanced with a weighty Vallium slipped to me before kick off, by the nurses.

The first part of the operation involved the machine pushing down on my eye with the force of a Sherman tank in order to position the blade and slice my eye into Papaya salad strips. Next a laser from a 1970’s sci-fi movie performed a scatological light show to the smell of roasting flesh, and I just had stare back. “Excellent, you did really well” the doctor congratulated me as I slowly sat up from under the laser, surprised to discover that I’m better than the average person at staring at a spot while my shredded eye burns. The fact she undoubtedly says this to everyone did nothing to undermine the reassuring effect.

For the rest of the day and night I slept off the Vallium, waking every now and again to the sensation of having opened my eyes face down in a golf bunker. What have I done? What if it hasn’t worked? What need was there?

Before the operation the doctor explained the risks; 5% chance you get less than 20/20 vision and need to do it again, a 1% chance you might never grow back the nerves that stimulate tears. And 1 in 10,000 you get an infection and go blind. As I lay there listening to my anxieties wrestle with the diminishing level of tranquillisers in my body, I was more concerned that it might not work than the thought that I might go blind.

At one point I got up and stared out of the window at a skyscraper across the way. Through the cracks in my protective eye shields and the darkness of night I could see it clearly. The rooms, the balconies, even the air conditioning vents on the roof, surprised to discover that this laser thing might have worked. I held up my specs in front of my eyes. Holy crap! The world blurred into an indecipherable fug. Is that what I’ve needed to see straight?

I like my specs, I think I look better with them on, but I hate being totally dependent on these crappy bits of plastic. Every morning I have a full on panic attack if they aren’t exactly where I thought I’d put them. If they take a knock, a scratch or a dent I’m in a state of panic. Without them I can do nothing. I can’t even find my way to an optician to make a new pair. I resent the dependency I have on them for everything I see.

This morning however, the nurse peeled off the protective shields and the first thing I saw in glorious Technicolor was her beaming smile, the wrinkles in her forehead, the hue of her teeth, the creases in her lipstick, streaks of blusher on her cheeks. I looked out at from the clinic 18th storey window over the skyline of Bangkok, and I could see it all. Every last detail of this enormous city. Like an eagle. In the optometry room I easily read the line of numbers next to the label “20/20 vision” and could partially make out the line below. 3, 9, something, 4, 6. “20/16 vision” it said alongside the line. I don’t know what that means but that’s better than 20/20.

Back in the waiting room I was almost high-five-ing the cardiologist who’d gone under the knife just before me. The day before we’d both reappeared from surgery beaten and traumatised to our loved ones and hadn’t said a word. But today elated by sight we shared every nuance of the experience.

The doctor says I’m not allowed to wash my face for a week. For a soap dodger like me it just gets better. And now I can buy all the $2 sunglasses and I'm no longer petrified I might lose or damage them.

I’ve not been to a hospital as clean or as caring before. The professionalism of the staff goes beyond pushing the buttons on the laser. It was the reassuring psychology they used throughout, recognising my concerns before I did. On the way out they stuck a little heart-shaped badge on me to wish me good health. They’ve been calling me every day to check if I’m having any problems putting the eye drops in. I’ll be back later in the week to get my teeth done, and am trying to develop complexes about other body parts just so I can get them fixed too.

I have grown one healthy inferiority complex in Thailand. I’ve always believed that (although everyone in the world is equal, and all that), essentially Western European is the best race to be. We had The Greeks, Romans, and the Renaissance, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the best cars, the best looking and cleverest people, the tastiest food, and the best economy. Lately I’ve been having a big rethink, and although it’s too late for me now, I wish I was a bit more Asian. They have the best manner. I can see that quite clearly now.