You're my butterfly Paleface

In the middle of a dark room, Milosh who is apparently not German but Czech, switches on a bright reading lamp. At first it's pretty tough to keep my eyes on the white spot and I have to fight the maddening urge to shut my eyes. A little longer and I realise that if I focus on my breathing my eyes don't hurt so much. Off goes the light. The room is black again, but not totally black; not INKY black or an infinity of dark space etc. Just, you know... pretty dark. Kind of like someone wanted to print a dark room on a laserjet printer which is running low on black ink.

"Can you see your soul?"

"No I don't think so, but there's an awfully bright yellow spot where the light used to be.."

"That'd be it"

"Hmm."

I finally think I have some answers. After cleansing my aura and apologizing to the apparently not inconsiderable multitudes of people I've killed in past lives, Milosh, a Swedish novelist called Benji and myself sat down outside M's house for a bit of a chat. There was no tea.

Toothpaste is quite nice. I cant say anything bad about it. There is literally nothing bad about toothpaste; it keeps my mouth relatively fresh, it's more hi-tech than ketchup and it's never been anything but kind to me. I particularly like the kinds which are predominantly white but have those red and blue lines going through them; I remember using those a lot before the 'translucent blue toothpaste' fad hit, literally rocking no-one's world. Translucent blue is okay, but it seems vaguely detergentish and lavatorial.

Now I suppose the question is this: would I like to have red and blue streaks running through me? I'm not sure. But some people would, apparently.

"It's tribal memory you see" Milosh explains "that makes them want to be white".

"Trade skin with me" says a very frightening 16 year old female gang member, circling me in a completely unrelated swimming pool "I want to be falang".

"Please don't take my skin" I respond with literally no braveness.

"A long time ago when the silk route from China was being established, white races brought prosperity to the land and so, on a collective consciousness level, they associate white skin with good things. With wealth, liberation, adventure and so on..." (That was Milosh by the way).

They called those white people aria-thom, and for the life of me I've used up all my memory for names and dates; but I do know that aria-thom is supposed to be transliteratable as arian-dom, as in christendom or kingdom. It's a great idea, but I'm not sure about toothpastedom. If my toothpase were black, would I wish I were more brown sugar and less white rice?

So... you want my skin, but I'm using it. Where do we go from here?


So you want to be a falang superstar? Then you’ll probably need to know a thing or two about butterflies. The Thais, not unsurprisingly have a word for ‘butterfly’, but sadly I haven’t the faintest idea what that word is. It’s probably ‘nakbing’ or ‘lemonwhale’ so for the sake of discussion lets just say ‘mariahcarey’. After all, she had an album called ‘Butterfly’... though on second thoughts it might have been called ‘Rainbow’ or ‘Kitten’ or ‘A little bit overworked and prone to prescription drug abuse’ (or something like that). Now, in Thai culture a mariahcarey is someone who goes from partner to partner without ever settling down. I suppose the Americans would call such a person a ‘skank’ or in the case of a man a ‘player’, but the Thais, being quite concerned about etiquette and indirectness, have more subtle euphemisms. One particularly sweet example of this is that transsexuals are called ‘katoey’ which simply means ‘different’... isn’t that quite nice?

“Me butterfly like my mum” says frightening lady gang member, her tattoos glistening in the over-chlorinated pool water.

“How wonderful!” I say slowly edging away in terror.

“I have new kik, he’s twenty-eight”.

“Kik?” I say preparing to go under and free willy myself to safety.


Kik: friend with benefits.


“I love Thailand and I know its history and its culture better than most Thais” says Milosh in a completely unrelated front yard “and I can appreciate what’s great about it, and I can see what’s not so great.”

Benji, the Swedish novelist asks a question. I’m sure it’s a good one but I’m distracted by what appears to be a mosquito Lufwaffe air patrol squadron preparing for a quick Blitz attack on my pale Viking skin.

“The average mental age of a Thai man is twelve years old. They love to have fun and to joke around... but many of them are very immature”.

Ironically, Milosh believes that it is this same immaturity that creates the conditions for the huge sex trade in Thailand, something which has fascinated me for some time. A few years ago one of the leading newspapers in Chiang Mai reported on a study where students at all Chiang Mai’s primary school were asked what they would like to be when they grew up. The number one response was

‘a prostitute... like my sister’.

Ah the glamour of a paleface boyfriend, the money, the trips abroad, the relative luxury and prestige. Its not just about the cash, though it has a lot to do with it; there’s also the partying and drinking and mixing with white people with the ultimate goal of settling down with one of your (I believe the American word is) Johns. This is Thai glam-rock, this is Thai counterculture and ultimately this is probably a very sad story about false glitz and dirty tinsel.

“Walk into the jungle here, and half the things you see are edible” says M. “Historically, whenever the Northern Thais were attacked they would abandon everything and run into the mountains and survive off what they could find in the forests and jungles... they never knew famine. Not real, long term famine... that made them relatively comfortable. Lazy. They often do the minimum that they can to live... If a tuk-tuk driver has a good morning, he won’t work in the afternoon”

Is there something deeply unethical about saying that a culture is historically predisposed to laziness? Maybe and maybe not. But given that this place is as bonkers to me now as the first time I set foot in Bangkok, I’m willing to roll with it. So, Thai lady...

“How can they use the word lady!” observes B, whose cultural understanding of what a ‘Lady’ is comes under close fire in the land of Lady-bars, Lady-boys and “Boom Boom Thai Lady?!”

So, to sum up: Thai ladies, rather than work in a field for not-much, prefer to fly off to Koh Samui and sleep with lovely white men with lots of cash, and go to parties, drink vodka and wear glamorous western clothes. In short, they would rather be butterflies than earthworms. In the meanwhile lots of falang come here and have their hearts dashed when they find out that their precious Thai butterfly is servicing more than just his flower. Other falang men come here and are positively thrilled with the flower patch activity and are quite happy to sit on a stool and wait to be landed on. And whilst all this is going on the Thai men are also getting their kiks like the falang men, only with less success, or they’re playing marbles instead of working on ‘The Johnson File’ at the bank where they work in Mergers and Acquisitions.