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Date: July 01, 2003
I'm standing outside McDonald's near a smog choked, double-decker
intersection lined with mega and mini malls. It looks like Anywhere,
Planet Earth. Due to a colossal mistake (which is beside the point
and too embarrassing to explain) my life had come to a grinding
halt here, nowhere in particular, except that I happened to be passing
when a bunch of conflicting thoughts collided. I have been pacing
back and forth for forty-five minutes unable to decide a course
of action. I fish a hefty, ten-baht coin out of my pocket and prepare
a toss. "If I can't decide, the coin will decide for me."
The whistling and clapping of a man distract me. "Tuk-tuk?"
He is asking me if I want to hire his motor rickshaw.
"No, thanks."
"Where you go?"
"Where are you going?" which implies, "What are
you doing?" is the most popular question in the world. I've
been asked this everyday for two years in dozens of countries. I've
been asked this by people who have never seen a newspaper, television
or a foreigner. I often wonder what is the quality in the human
spirit that inspires everyone to spontaneously ask the same question.
And, why isn't the most popular question: Who are you? Where do
you come from? Or, what are you doing here and now? Instead, everyone
wants to know what is my goal in life.
"Nowhere," I respond and glumly mumble to myself, "I'm
not going anywhere, not in any sense."
"Okay, two-hundred baht." The tuk-tuk driver says.
"What? You're going to take me nowhere for two-hundred baht!"
My anguish melts away with a hearty laugh.
"Okay," he concedes, mistaking my laugh for contempt,
"half price. One-hundred baht. We go nowhere."
"Isn't this nowhere?"
"No, this MBK."
"How long does it take to get nowhere?"
"One hour."
"Do you know how to get there?"
"Yes." He shows me a smutty picture of two Thai women
in Patpong, Thailand's infamous and self-dubbed Sex Capitol of the
World. He points to one girl, "No,"and then points to
the other girl, "and Where. "No. Where. Nowhere. Nowhere,"
He smiles.
"That's very funny."
"You no like?" He furrows his brow. "What you want?"
"I want to go nowhere. Do you know how to get nowhere?"
"Nowhere? Please write." I write it down for him in block
letters and he recites, "N. O. W. H. E. R. E. Nowhere."
He consults a few other drivers in Thai and then says to me, "Yes.
Nowhere is on Petchiburi Road."
"Really," I say amused, "Okay, Let me get an ice
cream cone first. I don't think there are ice cream cones where
we're going."
We board the tuk-tuk, a bird cage on three wheels, and roar off
in a puff of blue smoke. We both grimace as we pass a gruesome accident
where a motorcyclist slammed into the side of a car. I remember
reading that Bangkok has nearly 2,000 unclaimed bodies from road
accidents per year. "Two thousand people going nowhere,"
I think.
My driver is not deterred and we speed towards nowhere down the
wrong side of the road, across sidewalks and through parking garages.
My driver looks at me in his mirror, smiles the famous all-purpose
Thai smile and asks, "Why you go nowhere?"
"Why?" This is the second most popular question in the
world. In other words: What is your motivation? What is the meaning
of your life? Why don't you just curl up and die? I believe, consciously
or not, everyone is taking inventory of their lives and asking themselves
the same questions.
"I've heard a lot about this place. I want to see where it
is?"
"Just looking?"
"Yes, just to look."
"Where you from?" he asks? This is the third most popular
question in the world. I believe people are searching for clues
to my motivation and the means to my goal.
"America."
"Ah. U.S.A."
This is the part of the conversation that can go sour but we have
arrived somewhere which preempts him from regurgitating liberal
(socialist) media propaganda. Photos of glamorous women frame the
entrance. "This is nowhere?" I ask.
"Yes. Nowhere. You go look."
I enter the ritzy parlor with a long bar, plenty of mirrors and
the glamorous women promised by the advertisement peppered throughout
the seats. "Hello," they all chime. A man in an expensive
silk suit approaches. There is no flicker of the all-purpose Thai
smile.
Trying not to laugh, I ask, "Is this Nowhere?"
"Please, come this way." He leads me to a stool in front
of a large window. Behind the glass are seated approximately fifty
women painted like mannequins each wearing a number. They suddenly
come to life as if my host has pushed a button under the table.
Smiling, waiving, blowing kisses, winking, cooing: all the women
have a trademark motion or sound byte.
"Where are we?"
"Pick one?" he says.
"They all look the same to me."
"You no like?"
"Really, I can't tell them apart. Is this nowhere?"
"No, this is Cupid's Massage." He points to a neon sign
on the wall decorated with hearts and cherubs.
"Oh a massage parlor, of course." My curiosity sidetracks
me, "How much is a massage?"
"4500 baht."
"That's a bit expensive."
"How much you pay?"
"You tell me?"
"No, you tell me?"
"No, you tell me?"
"No, you tell me?"
I try a different angle, knowing the average daily wage is 100
baht. "How many hours a day do they work?"
"Eight."
"How long for a massage?"
"Two hours."
"So they earn 18,000 baht per day?"
"No, only one man per day?"
"Really, that sounds like an easy job?"
"No, not easy. How would you like to __ and __?"
"Well, how about a beer? How much is one beer?" I'm thinking
of buying my driver a beer so we can sit around have some more laughs.
"1000 baht?"
"Wow, are you serious? That's 25 dollars."
"Yes."
"What's the real price?"
"That is the real price."
"Do I get any extras?"
"No."
"Well, I'm late, anyway."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going nowhere. Do you know where it is?"
"Where do you want to go?"
"Nowhere."
"Nowhere?"
"That's right."
"Why?" he asks.
"I can't see the world and not go nowhere, can I?" I
giggle, warming to my little joke and making my own head spin.
"Just looking?"
"Yes, just to look."
Presumably he gives my driver directions in Thai to nowhere and
soon we are speeding down the wrong side of the road again. The
driver turns to me and asks, "You want to go to Manhattan?"
"Is it on the way to nowhere?"
"Yes. Just looking."
I agree and in moments we pull into the Manhattan House of Silk
and I am being coaxed into trying on silk shirts. They are very
tempting and only cost as much as one beer at Cupid's Massage Parlor.
But, it is a lot of money in Thailand and I don't know anything
about silk. I decline his further offers of visiting more massage
parlors and jewelery stores and the tour comes to an abrupt end
back where we started. We arrive sixteen minutes ahead of schedule.
I'm disappointed. Obviously, we've gone nowhere but I don't feel
as if I've actually been to Nowhere.
Just now, I realize I have lost my sunglasses.
"This figures. To get nowhere, you drive in big circle, end
where you started with less than you had. Damn't I have been doing
this for two years. I knew I was getting nowhere all along.... Okay.
Okay. Relax. Think. Where are your sunglasses?" I tell the
driver to turn around. "My sunglasses. I left them in Manhattan."
"What?"
"Manhattan. Hurry."
The driver turns the tuk-tuk into a maze of one-way roads and embeds
us in a traffic jam. "Dammit! Now I have somewhere to go and
I'm going nowhere fast. Is he doing this on purpose to raise the
meter?" I grumble and stomp my foot while the driver revs his
engine enveloping us in a cloud of smoke. I can hardly breathe and
my eyes are watering. I keep rocking the tuk-tuk by leaning out
one side and then the other to analyze the traffic. The driver,
probably fearing I will swamp the boat, tells me to get out and
walk. He gives my directions and I run through the middle of the
belching traffic. I make a couple of turns and stop. Manhattan is
nowhere to be seen. There appears to be nothing but moldy shambles
in every direction. I reflexively gripe from my long litany, "Dammit!
The bastard left me in the middle of nowhere! Now what the heck...."
Then I realize what I am saying and where I am. My world of self-induced
troubles, which seemed frozen and gray, suddenly melts into bright
colors and beautiful sounds. I laugh a 1000-baht laugh.
In the end, I find my sunglasses and my driver. He deposits me
back where I started again. I walk back to my hotel past the que
of tuk-tuk drivers. Each one, as if the others are nonexistent,
asks, "Where you go?"
"Do you know where Crazy is?"
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