The last twenty four hours in Bangkok have been horrific, with two opposing political factions refusing to back down from confrontation, one egged on by a leader sitting in a plush suite in Dubai. I’m not going to go into the political back and forth here, partially (and it’s a huge part) because I don’t understand Thai politics which are enormously complex, and I don’t want to mis-state things I don’t quite get. I always think that westerners who try and pretend they fully understand and who tout themselves as immersed and more Asian than the Asians are amongst the saddest people you find in this part of the world.

As I said when I posted a couple of weeks back, I spent some hours wandering and photographing the red crowds and it was a staunch but uplifting occasion, almost fair-like in its atmosphere. Indeed I was about to head down to the Chit Lom intersection yesterday when the government shut the BTS (Skytrain) and I doubted I’d find a cab to take me there so I canned the idea, much to Brigid’s relief.

Clearly, in the past few days that changed and it got ugly. That some of the protestors were using live bullets and grenades was awful and clearly speaks to a, I think, small, but heavily militant element which ramped things until it got out of control. And it was inevitable the government would have to say enough, that much was always clear.

I was especially upset for the kids. There were thousands of young people and children amongst the crowds I witnessed first hand, and I thought of families like this, who were so kind to me, and I hoped they were ok:

Late last night I began to to scurry through the international media to see what the coverage was like. This page, of incredible shots, stood out, as did this footage on Swedish TV, and this slideshow from Reuters, the last two both showing Khao San Rd, backpacker central, and the generator of vast amounts of revenue for the city, which last night became a war zone.

Google News indicated that the most recent story was being covered by over 6,000 outlets around the world, as one of the biggest stories on the planet:

So I thought, at about 6am New Zealand time, about 12 hours after the shit had hit the fan, if you will, and bodies had begun to fall in Bangkok, I’d see how the biggest news outlets in NZ were covering this. After all, it’s on our doorstep, we are in the same region, members of APEC, associate members of ASEAN, thousands of New Zealanders (far, far more than visit Poland yearly, or ever) have been here, many Thai live in New Zealand and we have a free trade agreement.

This is what I found:

NZ Herald

Stuff.co.nz

TVNZ News

A few days ago we Bangkok residents (and others in Thailand) received the most recent of the regular travel warnings we get via email. Despite the fact it was rather mild this time, it kinda irked me. They always do.

Whilst I understand that governments have a responsibility to keep their citizens safe, and given the current uneasy situation in BKK it’s likely wise this time around but the frequency and ease that a few Western nations issue these things for places like Thailand and Indonesia, when they seem reluctant to do so for nations such as the US despite the fact that, people like, you know, Bin Laden issue threats all the time, gets to me.

I can’t help feeling that doing so reflects two attitudes. Firstly, there is the failure to recognise that these funny Asian countries have mostly caught up, and indeed passed much of the the old world (meaning the old Western, white dominated world) in many ways. It’s a kind of odd paternalism, like the mental divide Churchill was famous for, when he talked of self-determination (he said it only applied to people in Europe), stuck in the middle to late 20th Century, and I think it’s mostly bred by simple ignorance from a world where for many people still civilization is narrowly defined by a fear of the unknown and reference points long gone – in the same way that India and Japan still don’t sit on the UNSC (if we must have it at all but it seems we do).

The other attitude it reflects, sadly, is a kind of muted official racism. Although I guess that’s gonna be a harder sell when seen from the west, but it’s much commented on by we guests in this part of the world, and is very much seen that way by the peoples and governments of the region.

Hell, NZ even has a travel advisory out for Singapore! Have those that issue these things ever been to that most safe of all sedate little lands? This just makes NZ look very backward and parochial as the first world torch moves east.

As I said on Twitter, NZ issuing a Travel Advisory for Thailand is like Gore issuing one for Auckland.

Seeing as how they’re almost exclusively western phenomena, how about NZ issuing a Travel Advisory for NZ warning of random alcohol fuelled violence and road rage?

With all that in mind, I decided to toss Wellington’s caution to the wind and visit the big demos down there by Democracy monument.

The fastest way in yesterday was via Klong Boat (the canal boat that takes me, with one change at Pratnum, from the top of my street to Wat Saket which just happens to be next to Red Shirt Central).

After the boat change I realised that I was one of only two people in the vessel without a red shirt on.

So it began.

After alighting I wandered in. There was – for as far as I could initially see – chanting, dancing, cheering, and some obviously rather important guy making a loud dramatic speech which, every now and then, enticed a huge roar and cacophonous shake of the thousands of rattles in the massive crowd (around 80-100,00 they said), so much so that the ground seemed to shake when I finally worked my way to front of the stage.

I wandered for two or three hours and was hugged, smiled hugely at, given a Mao cap by a concerned vendor who was worried about my head, and a bag of my very favourite deepfried bananas.

It was very much a carnival atmosphere and I know how these things can turn, but the common wisdom is that it takes an awful lot to turn a Thai to anger, and there was little sign of that (or much in the way of security forces or police – the only cops I saw were stationed next to the mass of portaloos – which seemed to be overflowing while the guys in charge of them panicked and the cops treated it as if this was some sort of  bad joke).

I might let the images talk:

And finally I found barbed wire  - in front of the Interior Ministry:

Guilt?

Never trust restaurant reviews. Never trust restaurant reviews. Never trust restaurant reviews.

Of course after a few glasses of house Chianti I usually get some perverse notion in my head that I should perhaps think about writing good restaurant reviews. This thought evaporates as the Chianti lulls me to sleep an hour or two later.

I’ve trusted restaurant reviews from time to time.

In Auckland, not once, but twice (tag: do not learn lessons easily) I’ve trusted reviews of the awful Soto, a sad overpriced excuse for a modern Japanese restaurant in St. Mary’s Bay. Both times I’ve been badly burnt by shitty service, unimaginative nu-Japanese fare that would only pass muster if the reviewer had never had the privilege of seeing modern Japanese done well..and even then would likely fall badly at the final test: the size of the bill when put next to the fare and appalling lack of anything approaching customer service. Don’t like. At All.

That it somehow wins awards underlines how little food reviewers are to be trusted.

In Bali I soon learned that restaurant reviews are largely bought there, and perhaps the very worst restaurant on the island (which is saying something in an island where good eateries..and there are some amazing places..are few and far between), the gruesome Telaga Naga, where the staff told us the chef had moved on years before, leaving a faded Chinese cook book that the local guy uses with bought in packet sauces, regularly gets the nod as best Chinese from rags like Hello Bali (yes 100% paid for, like all their reviews and that best lager in the world award that Steinlager got some years back too, ok?) despite the fact the island has some really good Chinese places.

We trusted reviews in NY and felt thoroughly scammed by the mediocrity of Freemans. I’d rather keep my rustic pricey pilgrims fare, washed down by pricey, average, new world wines, in those grueling feral British cottage cookery shows that I can turn off. Jug yer own hare elsewhere please. Urgh. Brigid said as we left, that if you were to try and make food like your mother did, at least track down a mother who can cook.

We went to Red here, this week. It gets good reviews. Seriously good reviews. It was fucking horrendous. Watery white sludge that looked like the sauce left over from my dad’s old tripe, loud James Blunt anthems played by the, might be a boy, receptionist; staff telling us what desert we wanted; vinyl table cloths; and, in a deserted three room restaurant, being placed next to the table of loud Germans who included the man with (Godwin be damned) a Hitler moustache in a white singlet.

And it was pricey.

No, fuck off Red.

It gets awards too.

Never trust restaurant reviews. Never trust restaurant reviews. Never trust restaurant reviews.

I trust friends. Grier recommended La Buca. He was right. We’ve taken his advice on dining a couple of times in Bangkok and it’s been pretty good, so the pointer towards an unnamed two storied building in Sukhumvit Soi 1 with home-style Italian was vague but worth the 70B taxi fare.

And it was worth getting dropped off at the beginning of the street just so we could walk up past the German sausage house (every city in Asia has a Germanic restaurant or two..the one in Sanur, Bali, had no windows, and was full vey pleasant, if loud, large German people smoking heavily away in your breathing space, and devouring kilometers of sausage and sauerkraut. Our German friends often asked to meet them there..we mostly, for reasons of health and taste, declined) down the road.

Was he a part of the decor..I don’t know..but there was a fat, unsmiling German man in full Prussian military regalia, cape included, sitting outside. It’s one of those odd Bangkok things. The city seems to attract the perverse, as well as the perverted. I tried to get a photo but thought better of rousing any Prussian military ire, given its history.

So, yes, La Buca, the Italian place was thoroughly wonderful, with great quaffing Italian house wines, pasta designed by the Italian chef / owner (who was as passionate about explaining each dish as only a Southern European can be..we spent a reasonable time dodging the wild gesticulations) that just pulled you through the door, and homebaked breads. We’re returning this week. Grier sent us in the direction of a hole in the wall Indian in Silom too, the sort of place that never makes the endless online or printed guide books, and for BKK there are as many unreliable eating out guides as their are puffed up, unreliable restaurants.

Of course there are the blogs.

And it was a recommendation, from a blog, that seemed reliable, that pointed us in the direction of Little Arabia, where 30 or 40 Middle Eastern places, some dodgy, most not, sit together. Falafels, lots of middle eastern tourists (or residents..I like the way Bangkok doesn’t want you to be Thai, it just asks that you be you..no “I’m a kiwi now, Charlie” faux multi-culturalism), Arab guys sipping beer out of a plain mug because it ain’t on the menu, while they suck on the endless hookahs and look at plates of perfectly made Tabbouleh and huge naan smothered in garlic paste.

Of course, there are dozens of blogs. There are hundreds of blogs. There are thousand of blogs. Everyone that sets foot in Asia starts a blog about it (mine predates moving here, ok…but without Asia..).

 Some send you off in the direction of places that serve things like, uhh, this:

The English think this is good food.

Which brings me to rule number two:

Never trust a restaurant review written by an Englishman. Never trust a restaurant review written by an Englishman. Never trust a restaurant review written by an Englishman.

The English have no understanding of food or the preparation of such whatsoever. Zip. Zero. Kosong. In my not unlimited experience even the pricey places in Londontown are mostly utter tosh, complete shite. No, the only food you’d want to eat in the UK is foreign, and not foreign created by English people. By Indians, French, Italians, Japanese and so on, but an English born hand should never be allowed near the preparation, ordering of ingredients or serving. The British may argue but there are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. One just has to see the fare that the celebrity UK chefs serve up on TV to underline this unbendable rule.

Adding (a little) evidence for the prosecution are large numbers of blogs written by English expats, like this one, written by some guy, who may well be a nice chap, but I’m not sure if I want to follow the culinary and social exploits of a bunch of expat aging Farangs stuck in the sleaze hellhole of Pattaya, with their add-on Asian girlfriends, their trips to go-go bars and the endless visits by the likes of Mr. Tony, and his girlfriend:

Once again: they may all be lovely chaps, but it also goes towards the case that there is a very odd side to many of this nation’s visitors. But, it does make for some sort of fascinating and voyeuristic reading, albeit briefly, although the blog seems endless. The question must be why? I just need to find the energy to care enough to ask it.

Of course, I’m perfectly normal. Must set up a restaurant review blog…

Brigid, our 14 year old, Bella, and I spent two hours on a local bus to Kanchanaburi today, to the North West of Bangkok, to visit the site of the famous River Kwai bridge, as mythologized, not altogether accurately in the 1957 movie.

For all the tackiness of the surroundings of the actual bridge, which sits amongst countless souvenir stalls, people with very sad looking tigers and leopards (100 Baht to sit next to them for a photo, poor bloody things), it is something humbling to see. The most bizarre part of it was a young, quite clearly Japanese, girl, selling “Death Railway” postcards. Odd.

In the centre of the town sits Kanchanaburi Cemetery, where many, just under 7,000, of those who died on the Death Railway are interred (or at least the Commonwealth dead…the graves of some 270,000 Asian forced labourers are mostly unknown).

And you wonder again, despite everything you have read and seen on screen and paper, when confronted with the awful reality of it all, about the horror and pointlessness of what humans, mostly men, do to each other, century after century.

Nothing I could write here could express more than the images below, and most especially some of the very sad and poignant messages from home on the grave markers: