Bye Bye Bangkok

I have been in Bangkok for a grand total of five whole days which is the longest ever I have been able to stomach this city and I must have visited it seven times over the years. Usually I stay in Bangkok for two or three days max and then I have had enough and have to escape to the islands.

I have always blamed it on the craziness of the city. All the pissed up westerners stumbling around in their Beatles t-shirts and football tops and all the old white pervs with one hand on their walking stick and the other up a young Thai girls skirt, probably checking if there are any balls up there.
That is what bothers me the most, the sex and the prostitution.
I thought that it was Bangkok that chaotic and I just had to get out before I cracked up. But I have realised on this trip that it was me that was chaotic and two to three days of me anywhere in full Jacqueline tornado in teacup mode is enough to make anyone want to get out.
 I mean Bangkok is one hell of a crazy place but I realised that you don't have to jump in-to the boiling pot of sleaze, G&T's and disease, unless you really want to.

It is rainy season now so it is definitively quieter around Bangkok than at any other time I have been here but of course it is still full on and intense in a way that anyone that has been to Bangkok will know for them selves. But because I am not drinking and going to bars and coming home pissed every night and getting myself in-to trouble,  I feel totally chilled and peaceful.
I realise more than ever that whatever is going on on the outside, how ever noisy or chaotic or disturbing that you can be totally peaceful inside and that is the most significant lesson I learnt in India and I learnt that from hours of  meditation, prayer  and yoga.

I have been getting up every morning at 6am and going for a run around the city.
Bangkok is an interesting place at that time of the day, very interesting. Of course you see the streets so much quieter, the locals are starting to open their shops and put out their stalls still rubbing their eyes and yawning.
 The food stalls are open already for business selling noodle soup which most Thai people have for breakfast. It seems a strange thing to be able to stomach first thing in the morning bowls of noodles with spicy  red chilies floating in pungent lemongrass liquid and cuts of meat all pink in the middle,  but I guess they are used to it. I suppose if you handed a Thai person a piece of toast in the morning they would look at it and laugh and sling it at you.
 The monks are just starting to do their rounds collecting the alms. All wrapped up in their orange robes and un-like the Indian monks I saw in Dharamshala India with their mobile phones and Adidas trainers these monks are walking the streets barefoot, silently floating through the streets with their shaven heads and downcast eyes.
They wander around Bangkok with huge brass bowls collecting money and food and anything anyone will give them.  I watch the faithful kneeling on the pavement in front of them hands in prayer bending,  mumbling,  bending,  mumbling whilst the monks stand over them offering blessings in exchange for money and cakes and fruit.
It is nice to watch.
 I really don't care what religion people choose to follow,  it is all the same at the end of the day,  God is God but I do love to see people praying.  I think it is so good to be in the presence of people that have faith that give praise to whatever they have named their God.
If we all spent more time talking to God the world would be a more peaceful place for sure.

Not all things you see that time of the morning in Bangkok  is pleasant.
There are allot of homeless people in Bangkok like all big cities around the world. Every morning I see people, men mostly lying face down on the pavement in shop doorways, just lying there like rubbish, covered in dirt with black battered feet and sun scorched faces.

I see the same man everyday always in the same place outside the '7 eleven' supermarket on Rabuttri drive. He is burnt black by the sun, his skin looks like leather, old, worn out  leather.  His hair is matted dusty black and sticks out from his head like the fur on an angry cat. He is always asleep when I pass and it does not look like a peaceful sleep. It looks like a sleep full of nightmare's, full off demons and ghosts.  I notice that his feet are cut and look sore and his hands are filthy dirty and his nails are long and black and covered in what looks like dried blood. His head is always resting on a small bag,  his only possessions in the world I suppose and there is always empty bottles of beer close by. It's so sad, what a life to be trapped inside. What happens to these people that they end up like this?
He is not the only one of course the city is full with these homeless, sad, lost souls, drinking all day to stop the torture of their reality from sneaking  in the back door. So they drink and they do opium or heroin or sniff glue, whatever they can and what ever it takes to keep reality from sneaking in and they sleep in doorways curled up like dogs,  in doorways that stink of piss.

I worked with the homeless in Brighton for a while. I was only a volunteer so I only went One day a week, every Sunday.
The first time I went I was so nervous. St Patrick's in Hove was for men only, it was a night shelter so they could come in at 4pm, have a nice cooked meal a warm bed for the night and breakfast in the morning and then they had to leave at 10am, back out on-to the streets.
 I didn't want to draw attention to myself, which is kind of an impossible thing when you are the only woman in a room full of men but I pulled my hair in to a bun and didn't put a scrap of make up on and I wore the plainest librarian looking clothes I had.
 Of course they all stared at me. Some of them were cheeky they would be chatting me up all the time, telling me they were in love with me but it was all in good fun. Some men were loners would sit alone, eat alone and avoid any contact with me or anyone else but no one was ever rude towards me. There was only one young man that we had to have removed from the centre in the middle of the night by the police. He was high, had been injecting a mixture of speed and heroin straight in-to his veins in the toilets at St Pats. He had gone completely nuts,  he started throwing furniture around but apart from him that was the only violence I saw.

 I have to say that I grew to love those Sundays with the boys. I was shy at first but I didn't let it show I knew I had to be tough some of them could be a little argumentative sometimes so I had to stand my ground. But all in all they were lovely to me. I would help out in the kitchen while they sat and had tea and biscuits. Then we would serve dinner,  me and the other volunteers who were all men. The food was donated by Marks & Spencer's in  Brighton so it really was a great roast dinner. For the most part they were polite and even a little shy towards me. They reined in age from about 18 to 60 and all of them were alcoholics and the vast majority drug addicts and about 6 of them were HIV positive.
 The first day I cried all the way home, I cried as soon as I stepped outside the doors. I was gutted, completely heartbroken to see the lives that people were living or rather the lives that people were dying inside of.
I learnt a lot from my time I worked at St Pats with the boys. I learnt not to stick my nose in the air as I pass homeless people in the street or cross the road as if they are a piece of contaminated shit.  A nice hello and a smile costs you nothing and might be the only nice thing that anyone has said or done for them in weeks, maybe months maybe their whole sodding miserable life.
I also learnt how easy it is to slip from being happy and safe and warm and fed and loved to desperate and lost and cold and hungry and despised and feared.
For me also it was a big wake up call. I listened to teachers, doctors, a university student, professional people tell me how they started just drinking at weekends a few beers, then a few beers every day and then  a bottle of whisky every day and then 2 bottles and eventually loosing everything,  their jobs, their friends their families. And here they were in Brighton hundreds of miles from the people they loved,  who loved them,  lost,  lonely,  begging in the streets, pissed on by drunken lads having a laugh and set on fire by the corner of the sleeping bags just so a group of pricks could watch them scream and run on fire trying to escape the sleeping bag that they were trapped inside.
Another thing you see a lot of in Bangkok's early mornings is of course the prostitutes. Prostitution is just a part of life here. Some bars and restaurants are open 24hours a day and the girls and lady boys will work 24 hours a day if they have to.
I see the drunken western men sat at the tables outside the bars, so pissed up there is no way they could possibly get an erection so I don't know why they are bothering, maybe the girls choose these men because they know it will be over in minutes and they can get the hell out of there.  I watch them dribbling and slobbering all over some young painted face. A face painted 5 shades lighter than it actually is because in Asia the whiter you are the more attractive you are.
I watch the girls sitting with their skinny legs crossed trying to be sexy with scratches and bruises all over their knees and thighs and their cheep stiletto's shoes that have probably walked the width and breadth of this city and seen inside  hundred's hotel rooms.   I thank God,  thank God that I do not have to go back with that big fat drunken slobbering beast that will probably hurt her, beat her or just slobber all over her.

 The big fat slobbering westerner will probably be robbed.  When he finally rolls off her and snores his drunken beer breathe into the air she will open his wallet take the lot and be off.  Why not she earned it, God only knows what she had to endure for it.  It is a sad game a very sad game and I wish I could shoot every last one of those men in the balls.
The first time I came to Thailand I read a book called 'private Dancer' it explains all the tricks in the book, how these girls work how they manipulate and cheat.
There are so many different sides to the story and ways of looking at it. Some of these Thai girls are so greedy so calculated and sly. They are just looking for a white western man, a walking ATM machine  that they can sweet talk and pull them into their web of lies. Some western me of course fall for it. At home they have big fat wives with saggy boobs and droopy vagina's and here in Thailand they can have a young gorgeous slim girl with long black hair down to her pert bottom telling him she loves him  and wants to marry him and the daft pricks falls for it.

 I lived in south east Asia for a year in 2009 I saw it all and heard about every trick and tale they use.
 I knew a Cambodian prostitute she would come and eat were I worked and tell me all sorts of stories. She said she had 5 men from the west that were in love with her. They would send her an allowance and gifts from England and Germany were ever they were from. None of them knew about the others of course, they all believed she loved them and had stopped working and saved herself for their visit. That is what the allowance was for to get her off the streets.   When these men came to Cambodia and of course it had to be well planned so they did not come at the same time, they would take her to nice hotels and pay for all her food for the time they were together, her clothes, manicures, pedicures what ever she wanted. She said she never stole from their wallets that was only done by the bar girls the street girls and only from men that were too drunk to recognise them again. This was her life, the way she survived.

It is seen as a admirable thing to some people here in Asia to have a white boyfriend and if he marries you you automatically go straight to the top of the ladder. It means you can leave, get a visa, you can stop selling yourself on the streets and you will have money and if the white man stays in Asia he will be talked in-to buying a business and you will be sorted for life and so will your family.
I know their are exceptions, I have friends that have married Asian girls that are sweet and honest but there is a hell of a lot of them that just aren't.

There of course is the opposite side of the story. Thousands of girls are kidnapped every day from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Burma and sold in-to prostitution. Imported and exported across borders like cargo. Some as young as 5 and 6. Rich Asian men will pay a high price for a virgin and to insure the girl is a virgin the younger the better. It is a desperate situation. Some Asian men actually believe and I have gained this knowledge from my time in Asia and books I have read, autobiographies of child prostitutes,  that if a man has Aids and has sex with a virgin it will cure his Aids.
So that is one of the reasons there is such a high demand for young virgins and because they are just small children of course from being raped they tear and of course they too are highly likely to contract HIV.

A lot of girls are sold by their families or husbands directly to brothels to pay off a debt. They work for how ever long it takes to pay off the money that is owed and then once it is paid they are free, but by this point their spirit is broken, they are battered and bruised, addicted to drugs and have no where to go so they stay. Some have no choice, they are held prisoner, locked and chained like dogs.

I have just read the story of Somaly Mam, it was harrowing. She was sold by her Grandfather to a brothel were she was raped over and over, by the owner of the brothel, all his friends and then of course the clients.  She now runs a charity called AFESIP that helps to care for prostitutes, gives them free health care, condoms, birth control and shelter . AFESIP also supports prostitutes to enable them to  leave the brothels and train as seamstresses so they have occupation opportunities, they are also taught to read and write
.I could not believe the things she wrote about how she has rescued children as young as 5 that were chained naked to beds and kept in cages and woman that had had nails hammered in to their skulls when they tried to escape.
I have decided to send an email to this woman,  she lives in Phnom Penn in Cambodia her charity is based there. I want to do some voluntary work there so I will let you know whats happening there and if there is anything any of us can do to help. Her book is available on Amazon it is called 'The road of lost innocence' I guess just buying this book will help her plight to help stop sexual slavery.

What I have also realised is how judgmental I was. I would walk past these fat white perverts and their young Asian girls and look at them in disgust at the guy because if it wasn't for men like him then children would not be sold into this industry and at the girl for being a gold digger, but I feel differently now. I don't want to sit in judgement I just want to do something positive to help this terrible situation.

I also know that the majority of men that use prostitutes in Asia are Asian and the prostitutes would rather have a western customer because they pay more, take them to nice places, pay sometimes for 3 or 4 days or longer and they are not as Violante and hopefully a man will marry them and then they will never have to sell themselves again.

So in an hour I will be boarding my bus out of Bangkok. It has been a totally different experience for me this time. I have been sober, been running in the mornings, sunbathing by the pool on the roof of my hotel, done yoga at night and meditation in my room with my incense burning and my vanilla candle.

I even went on a date with a lovely hansom man from Chilli.  We met by the pool on the roof of my hotel. I was surprised when he came and started talking to me because he is sooo hansom and I am not one of these girls that looks good by the pool. I can't be arsed having my hair seductively cascading down my back because it is too bloody hot for all that so I slap it back in a greasy bun and my face is always covered with factor 50 which makes me look a bluie white colour like I'm  dead and unless I am lying completely flat on my back the stomach folds over like an old sack of spuds. But anyhow we sat chatting by the pool for hours, so long that I bloody burnt my face so I had to go on our date with a bright red face I was livid. We had a really nice time and laughed and talked.  He had a few beers but I was a good girl,  I stuck with the soda water I didn't trust myself to have a drink in the company of a such a gorgeous 28year old from Chilli with his dark smoldering sexiness.
 He doesn't realise what a lucky escape he had!

I have seen parts of Bangkok that I didn't know existed because I only ever went to the bars on Khao San road before. I walked for miles, down by the river, sat in the park, found a great veggie restaurant were I would sit and read and be quiet. I have really enjoyed it and I'm not bored at all.
When people decided to give up alcohol I think we all think 'Oh shit, I will be bored out of my mind, what will I do with myself,  but there is so much to do.  In fact there is more to do because you are not sitting on the bathroom floor with your head down the bog all day throwing the contents of your stomach into it.
I am aware of everything around me, I am living in every moment, all the carnage and chaos has gone and everything is clear and bright and I am happy really really happy.