The big Amer­i­can guy with a back­pack at the South­ern Bus Ter­mi­nal asked me if I was lost.

We can’t have tourists get­ting lost

I’m not a tourist I responded curtly.

What non­sense. Of course I’m still a tourist.

I could spend the rest of my life here and would still be a bloody tourist. And happily.

After almost six years in Indone­sia I was still a tourist there. I could speak the lan­guage of sorts, I had a bet­ter under­stand­ing of parts of the col­laps­ing road­ing sys­tem and the local geog­ra­phy than many local born Indone­sians in many of the regions I spent time in.

But I was still a tourist to the Indone­sians. I was still a tourist men­tally. Every bule I’ve ever met in Indone­sia is a tourist, and most espe­cially the ones who like to think they are not..the sad ones in Bali who adopt local dress and local names and wan­der around in some never never land. Eat, Pray, Dream on…

I’m not sure how one stops being a tourist — or if one ever can. My child, if born in Indone­sia, might have bet­ter claim, but it’s worth remem­ber­ing that the Dutch, many of whom came from fam­i­lies who had been there 300 years, were given two weeks to leave in 1949.

But, impor­tantly, the most Dutch never went from being fairly unpleas­ant colo­nial mas­ters to equals with the indige­nous peo­ples they exploited — or wanted to.

Three hun­dred years of exploita­tion, sup­pres­sion, oppres­sion, mas­sacre and worse does leave scars. I’m not sure Indone­sia will ever get over Holland’s rule.

Try men­tion­ing the Opium Wars in China and watch the reac­tion. The next gen­er­a­tion, and the gen­er­a­tions there­after, of Viet­namese are the ones who will raise the spec­tre of Hue and other bat­tles again. Asia rarely forgets.

I know West­ern­ers that carry Indone­sia pass­ports, born else­where — they are still tourists. ¹

Thai­land, never hav­ing had an extended period of West­ern exploita­tion, is slightly more ambiva­lent about for­eign­ers than its big­ger, more con­fused, south­ern neighbour.

But I’m still a tourist.

And yes­ter­day I was a tourist in effect. We were going to Ratchaburi.

I’ve resisted Ratch­aburi. Mostly because of the end­less offers to take me to the Float­ing Mar­kets, the main one of which is in that west­ern town, not far from Myan­mar (the town is about 1% Karen tribes-people) from the numer­ous dodgy taxi dri­vers tout­ing if I have the very rare mis­for­tune to find myself around Nana or the lower end of Sukhumvit ²(yes, within the bound­aries of BKK’s own tourist hell. I’m not/am a tourist).

How­ever this was work and, yes, thanks for offer­ing to help, but I do know my way around the fast, silly-cheap, mod­ern and con­ve­nient Thai bus inter­city sys­tem. It was about $2 each way, for a two hour trip and the price included a bot­tle of min­eral water.

Chur.

After pass­ing what seemed like a dozen or more Tesco/Lotus-hemmed mega malls, we crossed the bridge into the main Ratch­aburi drag and were tossed out at the cen­tral bus stop. Nobody tried to sell us any­thing. Nobody paid any atten­tion to us, we were just two farang arriv­ing on a bus.

On first impres­sions I liked the town. It was small, clean and tidy with the fast flow­ing Mae Klong River, brown and muddy, flow­ing through at some speed, drag­ging and deposit­ing green­ery on the banks and bridge pylons.

There was a float­ing beer gar­den but the walk­way had col­lapsed it. I hoped no-one was drink­ing on the thing or, worse, try­ing to stag­ger off, when the walk­way fell in. The Mae Klong River was not the sort of river I’d want to be in, sober or leg­less. And in Thai­land peo­ple do get legless.

Mostly I liked it because a day trip any­where is always an adven­ture. And a day trip any­where in Asia is an even big­ger adventure.

As much as I love the coun­try I was bought up, it’s pre­dictable. One of the joys of New Zealand is turn­ing a cor­ner and know­ing exactly what is around it. One of the joys of Asia is turn­ing a cor­ner and never know­ing what is around it. Even if you’ve turned that cor­ner a hun­dred times.

I’m ram­bling.

We had a map. The fac­tory in this lit­tle ceram­ics town ³ had given us a map. It was sim­ple. It showed the river, the rail­way, the cen­tral police sta­tion and the mall. How­ever maps are like cor­ners in Asia. You never quite know what you should expect from them. It looked like a few metres — a hun­dred at most. I showed a Tuk Tuk cab at the bus stop. He laughed and said jed sip baht. I drove him down to ha sip baht but still felt that while B50 was an improve­ment over B70, it was still far too much for a short drag up the main street.

What the hell.

We got in.

I’ve always won­dered why these almost excu­sively tourist traps, which is what tuk-tuks effec­tively are, are so bloody hard to get into if you hap­pen to stand over five feet tall. I twisted and pulled about 80% of my body in before the thing did a u-turn into oncom­ing traf­fic with my leg still hang­ing out, swing­ing per­ilously near to Honda vans we seemed close to nudg­ing. As we tipped around a cor­ner into a long-ish straight road of hard­ware and Plasma TV stores, bal­loon sell­ers and half-a-dozen mas­sive stuffed toy empo­ri­ums, I man­aged to get it fully in.

We are going exactly the wrong way I thought, map focused in mind. I thought I’d shut up. A one way sys­tem per­haps — like London’s — or Denpasar’s — where the best way to get to the desired point B is to go in exactly the oppo­site direction.

As we moved across the fairly neat town, past the big hos­pi­tal, then what looked like a uni­ver­sity but I soon worked out from the signs ⁴was one of those mas­sive evan­gel­i­cal stick-your-self-righteous-nose-in insti­tu­tions that wack-de-wacko Amer­i­can cre­ation­ists plonk all over the planet, I realised that Rat­ach­aburi has two main roads, both with rivers, rail­ways and police sta­tions (actu­ally the same river and railway).

We rat­tled and bumped along for half an hour before we found our­selves plonked on the edge of a six lane high­way just out­side the city lim­its. The show­room was down an orderly dri­ve­way. The man in the tuk-tuk pointed inwards and then quickly reversed out, leav­ing us to walk hope­fully into an expand­ing groomed but trop­i­cal expanse.

There was no-one there. The only build­ings were a pad­locked office and spot­less stand­alone loo block. We found our­selves wan­der­ing amongst sev­eral acres of highly and brightly coloured large pots and ceramic sculp­tures set in the grass, the streams and the over­grown trop­i­cal foliage. Kinda like a minia­ture ver­sion of Laos’ Plain of Jars on acid and with­out the US bombloads ⁵ and their awful heritage.

Even­tu­ally some­one found us wan­der­ing amongst the jars and invited us into a large build­ing amongst the bush. It looked like a Nis­sen hut in the jungle.

Brigid placed an order. I took photos.

If I ever need to find a new busi­ness, dial-a-tuk-tuk in Rat­ach­aburi seems like an oppor­tu­nity beg­ging. Because you can’t.

You have to reply on store­men from the fac­tory to  squeeze you into the front of their cramped Toy­ota and then gen­er­ously deliver you back the bus stop so you can wan­der off to the river and drink per­haps the most deli­cious cof­fee in the world (thick, slowly strained into con­densed milk) in a small retro-ish cafe the likes of which you only seem to find in Thai­land, com­plete with pedal-car Mini-Coopers from the 1960s (in Ital­ian Job plumage) and a huge selec­tion of Life mag­a­zines from the same era.  But, yes, the cof­fee was fab­u­lous and really bad for me. I like but don’t crave espresso any­more. I’m no longer the cof­fee snob that left Auck­land in 2005. Instead I tend to crave the var­i­ous kopis of Asia, mostly Kopi Bali. Hell, we travel with Indone­sian cof­fee. We take it to Amer­ica. We take it to New Zealand.

Still ram­bling.

But back to the ques­tion at hand. Am I a tourist?

Yes.

How­ever, I’ve become a tourist every­where. I’m a tourist in Thai­land. I’m a tourist in Indone­sia. I’m a tourist in China. I’m a tourist in New York City.

And the one thing I came away from New Zealand a few weeks back with, was that, regard­less of my birth and per­sonal her­itage, I’ve really become a tourist in New Zealand too.

I’m not sure it’s home any­more. I would not have said that a year ago but the six weeks spent in Auck­land and down-country this mid-year have let me feel­ing like an alien. A com­fort­able alien to be sure, but an alien nevertheless.

I felt no sense of attach­ment when the earth­quake struck Can­ter­bury. It was awful and I felt sym­pa­thy, but attach­ment? No. I felt some guilt about that. I felt more attach­ment to the red­shirts in Ratchapra­song. The voices on New Zealand’s TV chan­nels sound as odd as the voices on TV in Guangzhou. The accents were surreal.

I get ner­vous at the empti­ness of it all, even the much touted Auck­land traf­fic seems oddly sparse. Really sparse.

New Zealand pol­i­tics have become a mys­tery to me (although I was thor­oughly pleased when John Banks got trounced in the Auck­land may­oral race, not because I liked the other guy more — I know absolutely noth­ing about him — but because Banks is a turd).

Nope, I’m a tourist. State­less albeit with a pass­port that tells me I’m not.

And I’m not sure I mind.

Some­times a good dose of head scratch­ing does not go amiss. Every day I have sev­eral “what the….” moments.

I had one yes­ter­day when I came across this story about US sol­diers hand­ing out coins implanted with the Lord’s gospel in Fal­lu­jah of all places. This being a week or so after another sol­dier was using the Koran for tar­get practice.

Update: it seems said Marine has had his hand smacked, but for (whichever) god’s sake, half a decade on, don’t they explain these things in some detail before they get there. I guess not.

Then there is the truly bizarre Rachael Ray / Dunkin Donuts story. I’ve always assumed that Michelle Malkin is a very smart woman who has fig­ured out there is money to be made by exploit­ing the prej­u­dices of sim­ple­tons. As Rupert Mur­doch knows, it’s a lucra­tive indus­try state­side. But even Rupert has bowed to the inevitable it seems, and now wants to meet Obama. After all the vile­ness that Rupert has foisted on the world in recent years, not least of which was play­ing his part in the deaths of how­ever many in the Mid­dle East, one would hope that Obama would refuse his hand­shake and tell him to fuck off. But I’m guess­ing that polit­i­cal expe­di­ency being what it is, he’ll just bite his lip.

And I scratched my head when I watched John McCain last night on one of the net­work news chan­nels. He looks so very old, very puffy and quite unhealthy. Much worse than he did only two or three months back. The most pos­i­tive thing I could say about his pos­ture and demeanour is that if I was an Amer­i­can voter, I’d be very ner­vous about putting this man into the White House. At least Rea­gan had some style and zest before his first term.

And I scratch my head when I drive around this once beau­ti­ful island of Bali, at the bill­boards and rub­bish that swamp every traf­fic inter­sec­tion, the grue­some square res­i­den­tial blocks that are ris­ing in Kuta, at the per­mit­ted visual pol­lu­tion every­where. But I guess, if there is no profit to made per­son­ally by some “offi­cial” then this is the future.

And that’s before I men­tion the Dream­land devel­op­ment. You look at that and you can almost breathe the bad karma that it exudes. This island will bite back there and it won’t be pleas­ant. I’m not nat­u­rally a sus­pi­cious per­son, but I’m think­ing (actu­ally, not think­ing, more feel­ing) that you invest there at your own risk, some­thing much com­mented on by the Bali­nese I know.

As a pos­i­tive aside, I love the Quiet Vil­lage Pod­cast over at Res­i­dent Advi­sor. The site’s pod­casts have been fairly tech­noid over the years, which may not suit some (although I love them…banging, snarling, noisy techno makes me feel like my youth is still not lost I guess, and then I go all soft around the edges when the same genre gets moody). How­ever, it’s been hell of a source of audio amuse­ment for me over that time, and I like the way the reg­u­lar pod­casts are get­ting nicely eclectic.

Noth­ing to scratch ones head about there….

Two weeks in Auck­land town..thoughts from an expat….

1. “I find it hard to say, because when I was there it seemed to be shut.”

That’s how Sir Clement Freud saw Auck­land rather famously some thirty years back. In the interim Auck­lan­ders love to feel their city has grown up some­what. And indeed it has in many ways. There is noth­ing as breath­tak­ing as sit­ting in a café in one of the city’s many beach side cafes look­ing out on the world’s most glo­ri­ous har­bour (Syd­ney eat yer heart out..you don’t even come close) on a sunny day. Although that breath may be some­what tem­pered by a) the inflated price one is charged for the priv­i­lege; and, b) the fact that the food served is more likely than not, shock­ing in places that have such views, or sit in other exulted inner city eat­ing sub­urbs. To be hon­est, in my expe­ri­ence, good food is increas­ingly very hard to find in Auck­land (four thumb­nail sized, very chewy prawn cakes at Mag­num for $10 any­one?) how­ever the qual­ity of the wine on offer rather tends to dull that dis­ap­point­ment, albeit once again at a silly price. And yet with all that, when Auck­land does do eat­ing well, it does it excep­tion­ally well. Like Il Buco’s pizza in Pon­sonby Road, or the lovely Rich­mond Road Café. Or the wealth of hole in wall places a long way from the har­bour or Pon­sonby that get my pre­ferred custom.

Or the music and par­ties like Turnaround.

Yep, much has changed but in 2008 sad to say there is a lot that hasn’t. Auck­land is still closed. One tends to for­get when you’ve been away for a while how much New Zealand is still at the end of the world..indeed, at the end of the known uni­verse. That’s nailed home by the rotat­ing DHL world map in Kuala Lumpur’s Air­port which omits New Zealand. Or by the glar­ing absence of the swathes of lux­ury brand stores, the Ama­nis and the Guc­cis and the like, which fill the malls around the world, for bet­ter or worse. Or their mid priced equiv­a­lents like Top Shop. None have both­ered. NZ gets Postie Plus instead. Or per­haps it’s because Auck­land is still, three decades on, more or less, shut. I went shop­ping a cou­ple of days after I arrived..looking for less trop­i­cal wear than I’d bought, and it took a moment or two before it hit me..everything was shut­tered up. It was 6.30 on a Wednes­day evening..a glo­ri­ous one at that..and every­thing in Auck­land was shut for the day. I’d for­got­ten, I really had, that in this wee coun­try at the bot­tom of the world, every­thing shuts at 5.30 on the dot. So much so that I was told it was clos­ing time and I had to leave a few days later as I browsed for a mag­a­zine. Sorry….

In any city of a sim­i­lar size, or aspir­ingly cos­mopoli­tan as AK, any­where else on this earth, a shop­ping precinct like New­mar­ket or Pon­sonby or Par­nell would be hap­pily open to 9 or 10, seven days a week. But not in Auckland….nope, as you fin­ish work, we close! And then we have the mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar upgrade to Queen Street, which despite the whing­ing, is a clear and much needed improve­ment. But what the hell is the point if the place is closed. Queen Street should be open until 9 every night. The tourists must walk up and down there in absolute bemuse­ment. Unless you want a plas­tic tiki, its shut.

2. Some­one needs to tell the good men folk of inner city Auck­land that facial hair, aside from a well groomed goa­tee, is never ever cool. The whole ‘mo-vember’ thing was a wor­thy thing but that’s all it was. Can we please say good­bye to the upper lip fuzz now. Mos are not and never have been attractive.

3. I’m con­tin­u­ally amazed at how few Auck­lan­ders, and I guess it’s even more pro­nounced once you leave the trav­el­ling big smoke (s) as their idea of OE is usu­ally get­ting drunk in Earls Court and a bus trip around Europe, have any real knowl­edge of the world past Syd­ney or the Gold Coast, and even less of Asia. Seri­ously when the worldly TV chan­nel owner asked me if life was good in Thai­land….ahh, I live in Bali…isn’t that in Thailand?.…are you over the tsunami yet..and so on, I’d had enough. And such was repeated over and over again over the past two weeks.

4. Both Brigid and I reeled from the dra­mas. How can such a lit­tle town have so many per­sonal dra­mas, and, to be frank, totally messed up people..people who should, and have known bet­ter. It’s ter­ri­fy­ing. At every turn you find peo­ple, often old friends, at each other, and oth­ers stag­ger­ing from drama to drama, or worse, com­pletely fried. And, over­whelm­ingly fucked up or recov­er­ing from being fucked up from exces­sive drug use (both legal and illegal…it’s not just the scourge of meth, the booze imbibed daily is both shock­ing and appalling and we both found our­selves slip­ping into it again). Once again, you have a false sense of nos­tal­gia, soon shat­tered, and you for­get, you really do, when you are away. The con­sump­tion gives the world a dark grey sheen that many seem to live under. Maybe its my age.

I leave Auck­land this time really quite scared for a lot of peo­ple I care a lot for.

And just to, per­haps, lighten things a lit­tle again.…found in KL