HOLY SHIT.

Actually, last night I was at a street bar in Bangkok and had no idea any of this was happening. Some drunk guy named Martin came in and told me that there were tanks in the streets but I just sort of ignored him. I think that this really says it all:

The United States, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand condemned as undemocratic Thailand's first coup in 15 years but its 18th since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

18th?

Other than there being soldiers in the streets (and not that many of them) there is no evidence that Thailand is under martial law.


More to come...

Oh, details to come about Sonya. Man, did we have FIGHT last night. "I not young girl Josh! You like young girls!" POUT POUT POUT POUT

Oh, did I mention I was dating a Thai woman?

God, I've been bad about this. Ok, NOT teaching now. Decided against it due to airline woes and money woes and etc...So, I've been in Bangkok now for about a week. I came back and hung out with my friend Justin who I knew in Nong Khai again and we went out and went to this bar where we bought an entire bottle of whiskey for us and all the girls that worked there. I woke up at my hotel the next morning with no idea how I got there and I called Justin and he said, "Um, well, I didn't wake up alone." but there was no more discussion on that and he headed back to Nong Khai. I've been here in Bangkok just sort of hanging out not doing too much. I mean, really not doing too much. Right now just in the midst of figuring out getting back home which will hopefully be around Sept 28th. So, what am I doing? Mostly just kind of wandering around Bangkok. I met a Thai woman named Sonja that I've been hanging out with who works doing some sort of thing at the Bangkok stock market that I don't really understand. She's very bizarre actually. I asked her what was the last book she read and she got all suspicious and asked why I wanted to know. Then she started talking about how she owns 425 pairs of shoes and her father knows police captains and so on but when I asked what he did for a living she said "It's a secret.". So, that's certainly interesting. I realized that being mysterious is really easy if you just say a bunch of things and then don't elaborate on it in any way.

Awww. Thanks for the comments!

However, remember when I was in Nong Khai about a month ago and was offered a job and I turned it down? Well, I came back to Nong Khai because it's cheap and I have a few friends here and I was trying to figure out what the fuck to do with my life for the next few weeks, and lo and behold, I was here one day and someone said to me "Want to teach English for five weeks here? Pays 10,000 baht." so I guess that's what I'm going to do. So, it looks like I'll be coming back a little later than I thought but still in enough time for Halloween I hope. Due to all my tickets and so on coming home will be an adventure in sucking. Bangkok-Doha-Moscow-Zurich-train to Frankfurt-New York. This will happen all at once. No stopping. Fun! Lesson learned. Don't buy your tickets beforehand.

Message to Sterling: I'm finally reading Lord of the Rings and this time enjoying it.

Due to some bullshit about "money" or something like that I'm coming home early. How early hasn't been decided but it's looking like October.

Hey, I'm not dead. The gang members didn't kill me. In fact, they were nice guys. I finished up writing about them last week and hopefully it will get published but you never know I guess. Also, a lot of what you would have read here is in what I wrote. Regardless, it was great to be traveling with a purpose rather than just my own self direction which can be lacking at times. It's interesting since on the last day of the yoga course we had to do this thing where we pick out a word from a pot and that is the word/thing that we need to focus or meditate on. My word was "purpose" and despite the total hippie dippieness of the whole thing it was absolutely right. Now, purposeless once again, I'm finding myself thinking that maybe going to see "My Super Hero Ex-Girlfriend" here in Bangkok isn't such a bad idea.

I have a long thing I want to write about Phnom Penh and where I stayed and the people there complete with pictures but give me a few days to get that up. There's some interesting things going on there. I don't think I got a picture of my friend the motorbike driver, Day. Day was a good man. He would take me all over to eat and hang out at these different Cambodian restaurants and bars where I was definitely the only foreigner. Day spoke English pretty well as well as Thai and Chinese passably but couldn't get a job so he was a moto driver.

I went to Siem Reap and saw Angkor Wat but unfortunately the day I got there I got pretty sick so I did see Angkor Wat but I was feverish the whole time so the whole experience was kind of muted. Still, it was pretty fucking impressive. Yet, like many many things it doesn't take you three or four days to see the whole thing. You can really do it in one.

Oh yeah, and my camera (well, Harry and Amy's camera) got stolen. So, no more pictures other than the ones I haven't posted yet.

Lack of posting has been due to not all that much going on and just general "the blahs" but will pick up.

I'm in Bangkok now waiting to get my teeth looked at before I head off to Russia. I have to wait until Monday to see the specialist and then it will be four or five days after that before I can get the permanent crown. Bangkok as a city is ok but I've been here for a week before when I lost my bank card so I've kind of done the tourist route. So, now I'm looking around for some other things to do. Like I said, self direction not my strength sometimes.

I headed down to Sihoukaville last week for a few days in the fun and sun. Unforutnately, it being the rainy season and all, the roads were very flooded and it took quite awhile to get down there and at one point I had to get my bag from the bottom of the bus because the water was so high it would have seeped in and soaked it. We finally made it and the guy I was sitting next to owned a guest house so I stayed with him at the "Same Same...but Different" guesthouse. Now, if you have ever been to SE Asia you will know that this is the most annoying thing you can name your business. That is because these shirts that say "Same Same" on the front and "But Different" are fucking EVERYWHERE. Of course, I'd like to have a shirt that says "Same Same" then on the back "Same" but I may be the only one. Anyway, I stayed there and it was right on the beach which would have been a lot better if it hadn't stormed for most of the time I was there. I didn't do much except one night I went walking around town, which was pretty dark by the way, and saw a karaoke place. A guy in there motioned me in and got me a beer and, I swear to god, he was the Cambodian Samuel L. Jackson. I mean, it was totally unreal. Anyway, I sang Unchained Melody which has a middle part I can never remember at all but thankfully everyone else in the place did. There was a nice Sihoukaville policeman in there who kept cheers-ing me and after I had drunk more beer than was probably wise he decided to give me a ride back to my guesthouse on his motorbike. He was drunk drunk drunk. Mind you, this is with no helmets or anything either. So we set off and he's going in the wrong direction and he speaks NO English. I yell and point in the opposite direction but to no avail. Finally, I just point to a hotel on the side of the road and he lets me off there. I get off, shake his hand, and he sets off to do more karaoke I guess. I decide that one more wasn't a bad idea. (Sidenote here: There is Angkor beer and there is Anchor beer. Anchor is pronounced An-chor with the "ch" like the "ch" in channel. Very weird especially since there is a picture of an anchor on the can. How this all came to be is a mystery. I mean, I understand that this is a confusing name thing but why would you name your beer with a homonym?) I meat two Australian guys there, and god knows how this came up,one of them brought up that he owned "The Golden Spike" that was used in the ceremony when they finished the transcontinental railroad. He had gotten it from someone in a casino for 1000 dollars. I was convinced last night that this artifact was, in fact, lost and that he had it was an enormous find for the historical community. So much so that I told him that he was a fool not to get straight down to the US embassy and tell them. My whole understanding of this piece of history is,unsurprisingly, totally wrong.

Phnom Penh. Ok, I can't be sure that the five year olds I saw were sniffing glue or not. I shot an AK-47 and a .45 at the shooting range that the army runs and, as I expected, it was really fun. I had not expected the crazy "there is something in my hand that is exploding" feeling but I don't know what I did expect. Contrary to the guide book which said that shooting animals was a myth, within about 3 minutes of me being there the guy said "Shoot chicken?" but I declined.

I also went and checked out Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields. There really isn't anything I can add.

On a happier note: I met a really great guy named Antonio in line at the airport and then again by chance at a bar. We talked for awhile and then he said, "Hey do yo watch TV?" and I told him I did. And then he asked if I wateched "Project Runway"and I told him that I had. So then he says, "I'm Santino's brother". We talked about that for awhile and then I went with him and his friends to eat a "happy pizza" which caused me to be stoned out of my motherfucking mind way past getting up the next morning.