[LEMONS] 1.01.2003
Whither, Jason Knight?
"I'm tired of always apologizing for being from America. I'm tired of always explaining that we're from California and it's different.""Don't. From now on tell them we're from Wyoming and we have lots of guns."
Happy New Year!
We rung in the New Year in Chiang Mai, in Northern Thailand, the second largest city in Thailand. We've been here since the 22nd, and though there's loads to do here, we've been lounging for the most part. Which has been great. We've visited some Wats, and gone down the "Handicraft Highway" and gone shopping. Harper even took a Thai cooking class, and I continue to work on my Thai. But it's been the lying around that I've loved. If I do have a forte, it's laziness. And Chaing Mai is my place to shine.
It is however, a beautiful city. The old city is surrounded by a centuries-old wall and moat, and there's a Wat (Buddhist temple) every two feet or so. The traffic and pollution is still a bit much (as it is everywhere we've been in Asia), but I'm supremely accustomed to it at this point. After crossing the streets in Vietnam, the whizzing Tuk Tuks and automobiles, this seems like chumpsville to me.
Chiang Mai is also botique city. Tailors and silk shops and hill-tribe fabrics are everywhere. IF you want to come to Thailand to do some shopping (for something other than electronics, which are dirt cheap in Bangkok), this is the place to be. We've finally taken advantage of this (somewhat) and are mailing a bunch of stufff home from the Post Office tomorrow before we set off for Pai.
This is also a big healing industry town. The streets are littered with flyers for Yoga studios, massage places, tai chi seminars, and the like. Harp took a Yoga class here that was, she said, different from any she'd had before. I was going to take one too, but, you know, see the aforementioned laziness.
As you might expect, there are lots of expats and farang tourists here too.
It's all around a great city. Which is why we expected that the party we went to for New Year's Eve was going to be a blast. Well, that and because the the guy promoting it who told us about it said it was going to be great. Did I mention I'm gullable too?
The venue was fantastic. Right on the river, with a spectacular view of all the fireworks (and what fireworks! huge ones, from three different locations around the city). There were also thousands of Kratongs going up in the sky in lazy lines. These are baskets, of sorts, filled with sparkling fireworks. The heat (I assume) from the sparklets carries the baskets slowly up into the sky. It's beautiful (although we were alarmed at first sight, convinced that the alien invasion had indeed begun). I wish I could have gotten a decent photo.
Anyway.
San Francisco has spoiled me for DJs. Now, I'm not crazy about House music. I don't typically listen to it on the stereo unless I'm sitting at the computer. But I love seeing a good DJ spin, be it house, drum and bass, hip-hop, whatever.
Watching someone good work a crowd (and being worked yourself) is remarkable. But I take it completely for granted. I just assume that, when I go to a club or a house party, the DJ is going to be able to, you know, match beats and stuff.
That he isn't going to switch from a jungle track into an Aretha Franklin song. Or that if he does, it's going to work and be mind-blowing and I'm going be all "No way! That's Aretha Franklin! Crazy! I can't believe he just mixed in an Aretha Franklin track! Where's my bubble? I gotta call Jeffe, yo."
Such was not the case last night. The DJ literally couldn't even match the beats. Seriously. He couldn't. No, I'm not kidding. And it'd be Trance, Drum and Bass, Soul, Progressive House, Hip Hop, but not in any sort of way that made sense or kept the energy of the crowd going.
And then all the sudden the music would stop and some schmoe would say "Allright, party people, let's hear you make some noise, I want everyone to cheer for their favorite dancer." I kept on expecting wet T-shirts and weird blue shots in test tubes. It was like nickel beer night at The Holy Cow. Vallejo drinks free with picture ID.
We couldn't help thinking of San Francisco, and the email we'd gotten about the NYE Radience party where Jason Knight was spinning, and where doubtless lots of our friends would be. And then the DJ would follow "Think" up with a Chemical Brothers song and everyone on the floor would kind of stumble for a second and look around and try to find the beat.
We bailed.
We hopped in a Tuk Tuk at around one in the morning, going back to a bar we'd hung out at a few nights before. The music was better here, it was still DJ stuff, but without the bad DJ to screw it up. This was the same place, incidentally, where I walked in a few nights earlier to hear Mission of Burma playing. Hell yeah.
We met a couple of cool folks. A Britt named Paul who cleared landmines for a living. Something he got into in the Army and now does for the greater good in Laos and in various countries all over the world. We also met a Finn named Sammy who had been travelling for ten years. Sammy was sweet and nice, but a total brain fry. A walking advertisement for staying clean and sober. But he was nice and funny, if a little sad. All in all, we were having a blast.
And then, enter the Austrians...
This Austrian trio--stinking of body odor--sitting next to us decided that, since we were Americans, we must want to hear a lecture on how we were screwing up the world. Happy New Year to you too, pal.
Why is it everyone's job to tell me how screwed up The States is? Look. I'm a journalist. I'm a liberal. I'm a history major, dammit, and my focus was on European Colonialism. I hate Whitey and I don't wear Nike. I vote Green and bike everywhere and don't even own a car and I don't need some fuckwit who doesn't even read the newspaper, doesn't understand opinion polls, and has no sense of world affiars aside from what's politically fashionable, telling me how America is screwing up the whole world. I'm sick of it. Enough.
Hey, I know the USA has done a lot of fucked up bullshit in the latter half of the 20th century.
But it wasn't me, yo.
And when you judge an entire people--for any reason--that's the fascism of your fathers all over again.
But I don't play into it. I'm not rude back. I don't lose it. I don't give them the history lesson they badly need. I don't talk about colonialism or the Holocost or right wing parties and racism in today's Europe. Instead, I smile, and shrug and say "hey, I didn't vote for him. Most people didn't, in fact."
And what can you do? All of the good friends we've made on this trip have been from England and Germany and Australia and Belgium and Holland. I've really dug getting to know people from other countries. I wish people from other countries felt the same way about me.
Happy New Year.
- l i n k -
