The palmpilot is back online! Massive kudos to my pops for dealing with tons of possible solutions. The final one, the one that worked, involved sending computer connectors, CD-ROM, data disk, and maual to Bangkok, all of which I should've brought in the first place. An internet cafe let my install my email software via its computer, and here I am. (P.S. I'm retyping this on an internet cafe: for some reason Bangkok's IBM connexion is not PPP but SLIP, and the required script works all the way to giving me a local IP address but fails to send the go-ahead to start using the net... grrr. So it's more internet cafes for now!)
Oh, did I just completely forger the two days involved in passing the package through Thai customs? It's a good story and represents the modern culture so well, please humour me and let me tell it. For starters, I took a taxi the 25 congested kilometers below the forming monorail and expressway infrastructual sculptures (which remind me of my nose in scope and function (a thought that occurs to and is expressed by native Thai children in variants)), along the airport Uturn ramp, veering off into the air force base, around another Uturn, and to the second floor of a secluded airport office complex. There I acquired paper and warnings about customs touts, which I took to the cargo division of Thai airwats. Two days of haggling about the contents and worth of my box containing imported "computer" and extra film, supposedly for sale (who would possibly use these things personally?) and thus subject to 20% duty on value, freight and insurance plus 10% of this tax for extra duty, plus 10% of the value of the original plus all these taxes so far, coming to a grand total of 34.2% of the tenfold inflated worth of the stuff, then divided by 2 for my respectful, solemn and hopeful complaints, left my pocket lighter by 1800 baht, but I had in my possession the parperwork which would eventually grant me my box. The paperwork followed me and my guide along the bureaucratic maze through ten rooms, twenth-seven stamps, back and forth along one hallway eight times and back and forth anotherhallway six more times, through the relinquishment of my passport for a warehouse pass, through the taunting touch of the package I sought, taunting because more stamps required I abandon it to some official's office for a while. All this, without a word of English for moral support or enlightenment-the cargo hold is not traditionally a tourist destination.
Yup, that's Bangkok. The real action is best seen from the meagre shelter of the tuk-tuk, that three-wheelin' haggle-cab whose open sides and diminuitive size permit inhalation of the richly leaden exhausts of the buses, taxis, ubiquitous motorbikes, human lungs, and various other vehicles that share the inadequare road surface by spontaneously adding a lange or merge, and between which the driver weaves to minimize the time required to deposit you at your destination.
Bangkok: capital of Amazing Thailand 1998-9 the land of smiles, home of the postmodern mall and source of employment for countless failed marketing specialists, city of glorious skyscrapers deaulting for want of occupants to fill their vacant floors, happy home of the oldest profession and ping-pong ball shows, resting place of the 46-meter gold-gilded Reclining Buddha built for the spiritual benefit of the monks who must beg for everything.
The language is fabulous to hear; I am trying desperately to distinguish between the aspirated b, t, and k, and their respective unaspirated variants, to produce the 22 vowel sounds, and to emulate the five tones (low, middle, high, rising, falling), while trying to replace my relatively formed Bahasa Indonesia vocabulary with somehow more relevant Thai words. I'm able to stumblingly read short signs in their beautiful alphabet, which brings me great pleasure. People do like when you attempt to speak their language.
I am now en route to Wat Phra Tatsi Chom Tong in Chom Tong (phone (66)53-371-664 if anyone's interested (mom?)), 25km southwest of Chiang Mai which is the major city of Northern Thailand. I hope to keep quiet for two weeks for a meditation retreat, leavning the welcoming hospitality of Celia for the pleasure of a bowl of rice per mosquito-ridden day and no talking allowed-focus on breathing. Fun? Don't know yet. I'll see and tell.
Sawat dee krap,
-xaq