The Dumb Laowai

I love trying to determine the purpose of marketing efforts here. Any marketing has numerous variables, including product features, target audience, image, message medium, etc. On top of that you have cultural values and experiences, which are difficult for me to appreciate fully, as well as a lack of experience with capitalist activities. All of these combined can lead to very confusing ads and displays.

It’s something I’ve noticed and often been amused by, but haven’t really made note of. This morning’s eye-opener convinced me to pay more attention to this. I hope to have more examples for you in the near future. The eye-opener? A full counter rack display of “Strong Man” condoms, which someone had decided was a good place to also display home pregnancy tests. I realize that there are a lot of Chinese products that can not be relied on, but that was a little disturbing as well as humorous. Do doctors sell funeral packages? Do restaurants sell stomach pumps?

The resumption of classes has been a real challenge. After the sorting out of students, based on the final exam results, everyone was shuffled and teachers reassigned. Half of my class is elsewhere, gone back to either chapter 16 or 31, while students from other classes were added to ours.  We proceeded on, starting at chapter 46. It used to be that half the class would make me feel smart, but now I’m back to feeling stupid every day. Fortunately, almost everyone feels that way as well.

Our new teacher is a fanatic about speed; read fast, speak fast, write fast. Combined with her refusal to use any English, even for explanations, things are usually a bit of a blur. It’s quite common for her to explain a new word by using five or six other new words that we don’t understand either. Our new listening teacher is a real treat as well. I always hated these classes. Four hours per week of listening to poor quality tapes loaded with trick questions was all I thought I could take. Now I have a teacher whose speech makes the tapes sound clear. Imagine trying to understand a deep backwoods southerner with a mouthful of grits. It’s gotten so bad that it’s actually gotten better. I no longer attempt to follow her and use the time to practice my writing skills.

Thailand, or Phuket to be precise, was a perfect example of how not to plan a vacation. I have no problem with either complete plans or none at all. It’s incomplete, poorly researched plans that can get a little annoying. It started with the fact that late planning had left me facing an entire day of travel.

I left Hainan and flew into Guangzhou, considered by many to be the most polluted city in the world. Based on what I saw, or couldn’t see, they may be right. As far as I could tell, we landed in the middle of a grey cloud. I immediately abandoned my plan to leave the airport during the layover and headed to the ticketing counter. The flight in had been crowded and I knew that the flight to Bangkok would be even worse because of winter vacationers, so I wanted to look into an upgrade to business class. I knew that a bad morning followed by a three hour layover was going to leave me a little irritable on the five hour flight. Avoiding kids, screaming parents and chanting Buddhists was the least I could do for my sanity.

The upgrade was almost US$100, but the agent mentioned that I could then spend my layover in the business lounge. I could avail myself of free beer and food, English newspapers and smoking lounge. That sold me. The reality was that the beer was bad, the food was peanuts and crackers, and the smoking lounge was a café two hundred yards away, where I had to buy something to sit down. It was a long three hours. At least the flight was pleasant and I was able to sleep, something I’ve never really been able to do in coach.   

We got into Bangkok at sunset and I started trying to figure out where my pickup was going to be. The manager of my hotel had said that he would meet me. I had given him my flight number and arrival time, but he never got back to me to say that Bangkok wasn’t where I needed to be. I had started talking with an old Australian guy who looked like he had spent thirty years trying to sell Fosters beer to natives in mountain villages. There’s something about the accent that makes them seem friendly no matter what they say, but I still wanted to kill him when he told me that I needed to make another one hour flight to get to Phuket.

I got my bags and started slogging through the airport, looking for the domestic terminal when I encountered my first Thai hustler. He did his best to convince me that I should pay him a few hundred dollars to drive me to Phuket because there were no more flights that evening. He almost had me before I realized that we were still in the international terminal and that there was no way he could know about every little flight. I finally found the right terminal and got the last ticket on the next flight. The counter woman even held it for me while I scrambled to change enough money to pay her.

I finally get to Phuket, knowing that my ride would no longer be there. I bought a sim card for my phone so that I could call him. Of course, all of the directions for activating the card were in Thai. I gave up on the phone and went to the courtesy counter, where they specialize in hotel bookings. She made me realize that the hotel I had booked was miles from anywhere and that the name was almost identical to the one that had actually been recommended to me in Patong.  As I saw her do with two other people, she made arrangements for me to stay at one place that night and at another, better place for the rest of the week. Since it was already 9pm and I was still facing a 45 minute taxi ride, I agreed.

Patong was a bit of a shock. I didn’t truly realize it the first night, since all I could do after dumping my bags was stumble to the nearest restaurant for a meal and a beer. After switching hotels the next morning, I wandered around and was overwhelmed. Patong is designed to help you part with every dollar you own and the level of aggressiveness puts Chinese merchants to shame.

All tourist locales have T-shirts summing up your experience, but I have never seen one that did so quite so succinctly as the one most common in Patong. It simply said “No, I do not want a f***ing tuk-tuk, a suit or a massage!” You could walk for hours and be offered one of these at least twice a minute, often in combination. Sometimes a tuk-tuk (taxi) driver would offer to take you to a good tailor or massage parlor. I kept wondering if you could get a massage while they made your suit, but I didn’t find a place. General rules of thumb for Patong: All tuk-tuk drivers want outrageous fares, all tailors are Indian and all tourists are European, but not all of the women are women.

Patong has what seems like hundreds of hotels, full of Russians, Swedes, Englishman and the lot. A large percentage of these are married 50 year old couples and some are even families with small children. This is perfectly normal, but seeing them all checking out the thousands of working girls was a little strange. Seeing them line up to pay for the souvenir of a picture with a lady-boy was surreal. However, the boys did give the place a Carnivale-in-Rio kind of feel. Telling them apart was fairly easy once you got the hang of it. Dressed like Carmen Miranda? LadyBoy. Built like a linebacker? Ladyboy. Got an Adam’s apple like your weird uncle Phil? LadyBoy.

It’s not that the place is lacking girls by any means. Thousands upon thousands of girls will try to drag you somewhere, which often comes close to resulting in your extremities ending up in different bars. If you just want a shot and a beer, you’re almost forced to buy bottles and go back to your room. I eventually discovered that the easiest way to tour the area was to follow behind the strolling “Volunteer Tourist Police.” Everything was very calm and sedate within fifty feet of them. Of course, they started looking at me a little weird after a while, so I had to give that up.

The most popular activity in the bars, after buying drinks for the girls, is the nail game. Practically every bar has a three foot diameter, 12 inch thick tree section covered in nails. You and one of the girls each tap a nail into the wood to get it started and, at the count of three, you each swing away with a large hammer. The last person to completely drive their nail into the wood has to buy the next round of drinks. Suddenly I find myself walking a little unsteadily through a row of bars and every few feet drunken people are wildly swinging hammers. One more experience I doubt insurance companies will ever permit to be experienced in the states.

I found that Phuket is tourist central, but to do anything very interesting you have to go several hours out of town. Excursions are available for elephant safaris, diving and snorkeling at numerous islands, and several other activities. After my one side trip to ride ATVs through the jungle I decided that four hours of bus travel for two to three hours of group activity wasn’t really for me. However, I did get to see a condom plantation. Actually, he called it a latex plantation, but I still think of it as thousands of trees producing condoms.

Other than hotel rooms, Patong prices are great. I appreciated that since I had already been forced to buy a replacement camera. The only other real purchase was a couple of sports coats. I had thought of getting some but really wasn’t sold on the idea when I was literally dragged into a shop at 9am. I guess I hadn’t been walking fast enough. After trying to leave several times I ended up buying two tailor-made, cashmere wool sport coats for US$130. Now I just feel like an idiot for not having any shirts made.

All in all, Patong is not a bad place to kill three or four days. The weather was great, the beer cold and the food fantastic. The only bad part was having to return to freezing weather in Beijing.