Elephant Nature Park | Chiang Mai, Thailand

This week reform is blossoming across the beautiful country of Burma. We remember the hushed whispers about then prisoned “The Lady.” Two years later that lady is free and this week claims victory to a historic election. Cautiously hopeful a new day is dawning in Burma, here are portraits of the gently resilient Burmese.

Parasol Makers | Inle Lake, Burma

Thanaka Baby | Bagan, Burma

Fisherman | Inle Lake, Burma

The Long Walk Home | Inle Lake, Burma

Cheroot, Burmese Cigar | Bagan, Burma

Boat Driver | Inle Lake, Burma

Giving of the Alms | Mandalay, Burma

Luongi Maker Hard at Work | Mandalay, Burma

Karen Woman | Inle Lake, Burma

Scenes from Inle Lake | Burma

Rush Hour | Yangon, Burma

Lady Shepherd | Bagan, Burma

Street Vendor | Yangon, Burma

Morning Commute | Mandalay, Burma

Baby on Board | Inle Lake, Burma

Disneyland or Xi'an, China? I can't really tell...

“I think if we were to visit the country China at Disneyworld’s Epcot Center, it would be eerily similar to the China we’re experiencing here,” remarked Laura in the final days of our visit. I could not agree more. It is no wonder that China limits visitors’ stays to 30 days. It seems that each day longer we stayed in China, we began to see past the pretty facades of hastily-erected new structures and started to notice the fissures. Even without China’s artificially advantageous exchange rate, everything seemed and felt cheap, and not in a good way.

Our introduction to China came in the form of Tibet’s euphemistically named “Friendship Highway” and the newly-completed and very impressive Lhasa-to-Beijing railroad. After discovering what the Chinese government had done to the ancient and historical Buddhist religious center of Tibet, we were not too surprised to see greater(?) development when we arrived to Xi’an, the midway point on our transcontinental trip. Xi’an is most widely known for the famous Terracotta Warriors, and dictated, in large part, our decision to visit this classic, walled city.

The Dallas Cowboys' "Jerryworld" can't compare to China's Terracotta Superdome

This theme of making a strong impression was evident all around the city of Xi’an. The city walls, ancient even by European standards, are an incredible sight to see. Tourists and locals are permitted to ride atop the extremely wide city walls and take in a bird’s-eye view of the city. All around us as we rode, we saw cranes knocking over the old and building the new. Only the new was meant to look old – that’s the weird part. Instead of protecting the original structures or working to refurbish them, the Chinese government seemed to have decided that it would be cheaper, easier and faster to tear down and build from scratch. So, as much as I was absolutely blown away by how advanced China’s infrastructure seemed to be, I couldn’t help but wonder how long it will last.

Riding bikes atop Xian's city walls in its circular park

In many ways, through my verbal and written critiques of the Chinese, I feel hypocritical. The first Americans did painfully little to preserve Native American art, cultures, traditions and worse yet – peoples. As a country we’ve done much to denigrate our environment. But, it’s because of these mistakes why I expect more from a developing country like China. Learn from our mistakes is what I’m asking.

I guess if our visit to China taught us one thing, it would be that one month is way too short to understand its past and too long for us to want to understand its future. The facades may fool you at first; they certainly did me. But stay long enough, and you’ll come away with more questions about China’s future than you had when you arrived.

Meet Beijing, where old greets new.

“Prepare yourself.”

These were the words we heard over and over again before touching down in Mumbai to begin our two-month journey through India. A brief pit stop in the airport loo introduced us to the infamous Asian squat toilets and the cantankerous ATM machine in Terminal 1 reminded us we weren’t in Kansas anymore. But it was the step outside, into the traffic-choked lanes of the sprawling metropolis where more than 20 million people call home, when we realized we could have never been fully prepared.

After all, we had arrived in India on the “holiest” of days, just in time for Holi Festival. Winding our way through the streets of Mumbai, India welcomed us in a riot of color as celebrants welcomed the arrival of spring. From the window of our yellow and black taxicab we clanked along the Indian roadways all the while enjoying a bouquet of dancing characters and colors. The smog-filled air was joined by clouds of pink, green and turquoise as pyramids of colorful powder was smeared on faces. Splashing, singing and dancing, these Mumbaikers shed all inhibition and differences, if only for one day, as we whizzed by in pure fascination.

Here are the faces of Holi.

After a few months in Asia we were both really craving a good, fresh salad. And along came Laos. Simple. Natural. Fresh. Laap (or laab), was a nightly ritual for us. Perhaps the most famous Laotian dish, laap is made from chopped or thinly sliced meat or fish that is mixed with lime juice, fish sauce, mint, coriander, spring onion, chili and uncooked rice grains that have been dry fried and crushed. It is usually accompanied by vegetables including eggplant, fresh chilies, mustard leaves and lettuce. It can be eaten with ordinary rice or sticky rice and is usually eaten with fish/meat soup depending on the main ingredient being used.

We enjoyed eating this and all the other Lao food so much we decided to take a cooking course. And I can assure you, it’s as good as it is easy to make.

Reason enough to visit Beijing (nee Peking) this traditional meal blew us away. Available at more places than you can shake a chopstick at, our host ensured that we would try this traditional Beijing dish at only the finest establishment.

Up on a terrace overlooking one of Beijing’s leafy parks (yes, they exist), bow-tied waiters brought out all the elements of the quintessential Peking duck feast. First, there is the duck – deboned and carved in a very specific manner. The meat is crispy on the outside but absolutely succulent on the inside with just the right amount of fat to flavor and crunch to please. Next are the accompaniments: doughy crepe, plum sauce, spring onion and thinly-sliced celery. They arrive to the table separately; it’s up to you to put the final product together. And it goes like this.

Take a crepe and place a few pieces of the duck inside. Add a few slices of the cucumber and spring onion. Finally, spoon a dollop of plum sauce on top. Wrap it up like a mini burrito (or mu shu pork) and enjoy! Oh man, enjoy. Just writing this now is killing me…quack quack.

Yeah, you read that correctly – I said spiced donkey. And not just any spiced donkey, we’re talking pre-packaged, vacuum-sealed spiced donkey. The type of spiced donkey that you’d only order on a dare from a passing cart vendor on a 36 hour train ride from Lhasa to Xi’an. That kind of spiced donkey.

It was only a matter of time. With a fun group, plenty of Budweiser and rice wine, nowhere to go, nothing else to do and a ridiculous (ridonculous?) amount of time on our hands, cheap entertainment was abound. Someone in our group noticed a label with the words “spiced donkey” on it and that was the end of it. It had to be ordered and had to be sampled by all within its stench.

Let’s talk about that stench. Once that vacuum-sealed pouch was broken the dining cart never smelt the same. Wretched, horrible, ill, disgusting – plug in any adjective describing something terrible and it will fit. I will, however, give credit where credit is due. The taste was not all that bad. The texture was a bit chewy, but the flavor and taste was, at least, palatable.

It was a sort of “breaking bread” experience for the group. After the train ride, we were all to go in different directions, but no one will ever be able to take this experience away from us, say we didn’t do it – this one special thing together. It is a part of us and we are a part of it. For that I say, “Thank you, Spiced Donkey.”

Not much to this one, folks. Another tasteless beer without competition, but I’m not sure what else one can expect in a place where dispensable income is very rare. The only redeeming quality would have to be the label. If you can’t make (or afford) the trek up to the world’s rooftop, then at least you can drink a beer named after it while taking in the ridiculous view of the 30,000 ft. tall mountain.

Bangkok always seemed to have a naughty ring to it, I thought, and now I know why. The city of six million is more than just the nation’s governmental capital; it’s also the sex tourism capital of Southeast Asia. People – Thai women, adolescent boys and girls and those that walk the increasingly precarious gender gap line – “ladyboys” and “toms” – are all for sale here in Bangkok.

Of course, it’s not just Bangkok. While there is certainly no comparison to the volume of hedonistic pleasures taking place in Thailand’s biggest city, other cities in Thailand’s north and south make their bid to claim a piece of the sex tourism pie. Our first stop in Thailand brought us to Chiang Mai, the cultural capital of Thailand and the biggest city in the country’s northern area. As such, it is also the place to be in the north for sex tourists.

The Oldest Profession in the World

Photo courtesy of Vitaly Shepelev.

On our night out in Thailand we were struck by the number of middle-aged, white, Western men who seemed to be travelling alone. Or so we thought. One bar after another, we were seeing Aussies, Americans, Canadians, Brits and a host of other fair-skinned fellows saddled up to the bar, only to be greeted warmly by a young, scantily-clad, dark-skinned and beautiful Thai woman.

Here’s how it works. The ladies (so far, they’re still just ladies), are “employees” at the bar. If a man would like to talk to one of these employees, it’s proper and assumed that he will buy himself and her drinks from the bar where she is employed. Sometimes, this is the extent of it – flirting over drinks while watching the latest Premiership football match on the tellie. But, if the discussion and flirting leads the man into wanting to take this bar employee home, well, then he has to ask permission from her boss to leave her work station. This requires some financial compensation to the bar-owner, usually in the range of 500 baht (between $15 and $20). Now that he and his new lady-friend have smoothed things over with the bar-owner, the night is their oyster (maybe not the best analogy here…). Remunerations for sexual acts can then be worked out between the man and woman with no intermediary.

This is where my guidebook explanation and personal experience (strictly visual, people) ends. But what Laura and I recognize early on in our Chiang Mai stay is that many of the men we see here are not just on holiday. They live here. Some have apartments, jobs (maybe they even own a bar?), etc. Others seem to visit several times a year and are familiar with the bar staff, café owners, masseuses and store clerks we see them talking to around town.

So, we see some men who are solo during the day and have girls at night. But others are walking around with their female partners during the day, grabbing lunch, getting pedicures (yep, the men, too), massages and even visiting the Tiger Kingdom to play with tiger cubs. This leads me to believe one of a few things. 1) Some guys think they are Richard Gere and are living out their Pretty Woman fantasies sans the polo matches. 2) What begins as a pay-for-sex relationship matriculates over time into a bona fide boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, where the man stops paying for sex and just buys her things for sex. No, my grandma reads this. That’s a joke.

Really, I don’t fully understand the specifics, but I could gather that such a partnership could (this is a huge could) be mutually beneficial. The young Thai woman who typically comes to Chiang Mai from smaller, farm towns nearby to make money and a better life for her and her family now has a dependent, semi-reliable source of income. And she no longer has to work. Or she’s always working, depending on how you view it. The man, stereotypically driven by sex, but often just lonely and looking for a partner, gets what he wants in the form of the beautiful, young girlfriend he now has on his arm. These relationships are so common and so sought after that we even saw books in Bangkok’s airport titled “How to Get (and Keep) a Thai Girlfriend.”

Lions and Tigers and….Ladyboys – Oh Chiang Mai!

Photo courtesy of Vitaly Shepelev.

Cue Lou Reed and his Warholian anthem to transvestites, Take a Walk on the Wild Side, and you have a pretty good intro to the other side of sex tourism visible in Thailand.

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the USA
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild side

Not all sex tourists coming to Thailand are looking for a lady. Some are looking for a man. And there are others who coming looking for a man dressed up as a lady – hence the “ladyboy.” A ladyboy, or Kathoey in Thai, is defined by Wikipedia as “a male-to-female transgender person or an effeminate gay male in Thailand.” (Now, if you’re bored at work or have a lot of time, look up kathoey on Wikipedia and the rest of your afternoon is shot. I promise you this is interesting stuff.)

The beautiful truth is that ladyboys are an integral part of Thai culture and are viewed and treated much better than transgendered people in any Western country. Many believe that due to Thailand’s strong Buddhist beliefs transgenders are accepted more. There are kathoey beauty contests all over Thailand and their presence in newspapers and magazines is quite common. In fact, many are used as models and a slew of books and films have been produced featuring kathoey subjects. While in Chiang Mai, we visited many bars with only ladyboy staff and rode with bus companies who had all-ladyboy service. It seemed almost chic to do so.

The hard reality is that life and law can still be cruel for transgenders in Thailand. Thai laws do not accommodate many of the ambiguities that go along with being transgendered; many jobs are unattainable or difficult to get due to employment discrimination and amenities given to Thai females are not available to kathoey women, even if they were to undergo sexual reassignment surgery.

Middlesex, Intersex and Tom-Dees

Photo courtesy of Vitaly Shepelev.

Every coin has two sides. Such is the case with transgender representation in Thailand. For every ladyboy bus attendant or waiter (waitress?) I spoke to, there was a “Tom”, or female-to-male transgender taxi driver or bouncer. Our first night in Thailand, we had a Tom that I likened to the Fonz from Happy Days. She was cool and tough in her leather jacket and cigarette hanging from her lips as she drove us around town. She had all the mannerisms of a male. If we were home, I’d probably ask her to come over on Sunday to drink beer and watch football.

I never saw women dressed as men accosting foreign men or women at bars, but I assume there is a market for this. What I do know is that in Thailand many relationships exist between said “toms” and “dees” – heterosexual women known for their diva-like tendencies. In these relationships, “toms” will act as the caretaker and breadwinner and carry out the common niceties we associate with chivalry: holding doors open, pulling out a woman’s chair at restaurants and even carrying their dee’s purse. This is not always a sexual relationship but can be. Often, the tom will “please” his dee sexually, for which he/she will receive nothing in recompense, nor is it expected.

Bangkok – The Big Apple

If the apple in New York’s sobriquet were to signify the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden, then perhaps Bangkok is the true Big Apple. For, temptation certainly abounds in the Thai capital. One is quick to realize how prevalent this temptation is even before they arrive to Bangkok. When booking a hotel online, our hotel made it very clear on its website that “sex tourists are not allowed.” When checking out several other hotels we encountered the same, signaling to us that this is a serious issue if it even has to be mentioned.

Other hotels take a more passive (or capitalistic) approach, keeping passports at the front desk and charging guests for “visitors.” As you can imagine there are also many “o’clock” hotels that charge per hour instead of by room.

Before visiting, the first Bangkok image that came to mind was of that super-creepy, weirdo bobble-head that alleged he had killed JonBenet Ramsey. I remember the footage of him in handcuffs being extradited back to the US and the media reports claiming that he had been living in Bangkok and preying on child sex slaves. This is something that one doesn’t easily forget.

That people, even today, are sold into slavery, many of whom are young children, is absolutely repulsive and extremely disheartening. Many are tricked into coming to the “big city” for some other type of work, where upon arriving they find that the job they’ve been promised never existed and are forced into a life of prostitution or slavery. Fortunately, this type of prostitution is not accepted, but sadly still exists. I don’t know much about this so I will defer to the laudable work being done by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and HumanTrafficking.org. Hopefully, you can learn more from the people who dedicate themselves to combating such injustices.

Sex tourism in Thailand comes in all shapes, sizes and genders. I left with more questions than I had when I started, but one thing is for certain: you’ll learn more about the birds and the bees and all the in-betweens when you visit this incredibly unique country.