Matt's Missives

I spent Christmas Eve at a sex worker's union in Bangkok, where my friend Jo volunteers, seeing a side of Bangkok that very few white men, for all their knowledge of the sex industry, get to see -- the human one. I spent Christmas day drinking beer on the back of a pickup truck on an unpaved, dusty, potholed road making my way towards the greatest complex of temples in the world. I spent the next few days exploring them, thinking that there are, indeed, a few things in this world that are constructed by humanity and, simultaneously, completely unfathomable to us. I spent New Year's Eve dancing in the sand in Beach Nation--that little piece of euroamerica that we tourists seek out wherever we are because, for some reason, we associate it with some sort of Edenic existence that transcends our mundane existence. In actual fact it breeds only sexual tension and hangovers. I am now in Bangkok, and find myself repeatedly drawn to Bangkok's Black Hole--Khao San Rd. To some it's backpacker heaven, cheap beer, cheap goods, a gateway to Thailand. To others it's backpacker hell, where you see yuorself mirrored back at you in ways you would rather ignore, the epitome of "spoiled" in a culture that searches for the "untouched," yet seems incapable of seeking it without the ever-present Lonely Planet guidebook (the irony of a name). But the Black Hole draws everyone in, regardless, and so I find it fascinating, and I probably return there this evening, to sit and write and watch. And in 3 days I will find myself somewhere over the Pacific, winging my way back to my beloved west coast, for 5hours in Vancouver's airport, and from there I'll find myself tossed back into the cold cold snow. Ah well, something kind of romantic about the idea of cold, when you spend 24 hours a day sweating.