Bangkok's intercourt apartments, and the pride of England

AUGUST 25, 2008: We've moved into a short-stay apartment out in the suburbs in a complex named "Intercourt" apartments. Ha ha. Apparently they don't rent them by the hour though, only by the month, rendering it a disappointing misnomer. Photos

I was surprised by what we got for the price, about $120 a month. It's on the fifth floor of a tower surrounded by high-walled mansion compounds. On our street each high wall links up with the next, giving it the appearance of a back-alley, thought it's actually quite the opposite: the cars and motorbikes absolutely hoon. It's about 10 minutes walk to the nearest food outlets, about 5 minutes of which involves walking on the side of this road. I wonder how many Thai drivers actually speed up when they see a foreigner trapped between the two high walls, flirting with the idea of rampage.

Really, i can barely stand being here in a country where i know so little of the language, and where foreigners are disliked by a large number of people with good reason.

For one thing, besides being the destination of choice for sex and child-sex tourists, the quality of expats I've met here is artificially low. Such characters include the one-eared northern teacher, pictured above, with a penchant for frothy-mouthed, vein-popping, table slamming apoplexy about Hitler and the Japs between the hours of 3 and 4am in response to a group of buttersoft Australians suggesting Australia was not invadable - i'm gonna upload it soon, trust me, check back for when the link works, you won't regret it. In the meanitime, this is 'im:


An this iz 'ow 'e sez "FOOK":


Or how about the toothless wonder (do all scum-dozen poms have some body part missing?) recently released from Indonesian prison and looking for . . . yep, teaching work. Thailand is basically the woven reed vessel of choice for the rich world's basket cases, and i think the locals know it.

The multiple daily food runs down the tunnel leads to some rather interesting awkwardni (that's pronounced "awkward-nai") concerning eye contact and acknowledging people in the street. Now, of course on a crowded city sidewalk it's easy to simply stare ahead or look around. And when you're passing 1 person every 5 minutes you'll probably acknowledge them. But along this tunnel-like road with high walls on both sides you pass roughly 1 person or group per minute and the passing manoeuvre's temperature depends a lot on age. In general you get a scowls and shiftily averted gazes from 'the youth', while a broad beam will often break out on an old person's face in response to a simple nod. Actually, our 55 year-old driver, Mr Patrick, the other day told us solemnly how he knew about Obama and that he thought that hi running for president was "ok, but i prefer the white man."

Of course the sidewalks China are the opposite - there's rarely any awkwardness for me. I know everyone's staring at me so i can openly stare at almost anyone or anything i want. My theory is a lot of China expats get addicted to that. Even if the quality of Thailand's foreigners isn't significantly worse than China's, which i think it is, it's not exactly surprising that they don't get the China treatment: the people in China have been instructed that foreigners help the economy and are therefore good for China. This appears to be taken at face value, and sometimes even reduced to "foreigners good".

A sample of the local scenery: