The Story Train

BANGKOK - Two in the morning flights aren't good for my observational abilities, so it took another passenger on the express downtown bus to point out that the Thais were dressing strange this morning. The majority wore bright yellow shirts. Bureaucrats wore bright yellow Oxfords, college students bright yellow T-shirts with fashionable designs and the poor merchants wore bright yellow that looked second-hand.

The shirts invoke the sun and the Thailand's long-lasting minority, and its head, on the throne 61 years this month.

Welcome to Bangkok, Version 2007. The ubiquitous pictures of King Rama VI -- taking pictures, playing tennis -- are much more sinister than they were three years ago. Because although it's against the law to say so, I'm not sure I agree with the king's judgment. A military coup that he supported against the popular President Thaksin has been in charge for over a year now, and there's no real timetable for a return for democracy. So now I have to refer to the Land of Smiles as a popular tourism destination ruled by an autocratic kabal.

I treasure my memories of this city, where I started a lengthy backpacking trip around Asia. It was my first vacation that truly felt like an adventure. When we arrived and checked into a guesthouse with peeling lime green walls and a smell of mothballs I felt that I stepped out of teenage years and into the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Beach."

So when I read on the Associated Press newswire one afternoon in Kansas that the Thais ten year experiment with democracy had ended in failure, a cloud descended on those thoughts. I didn't want to believe my tourist dollars were going toward a crumbling government, and going back seemed out of the question.

But the almighty bucks beat my morals. When the travel agent in Kolkata told me it'd been $500 to Sri Lanka, $400 to Singapore or Kuala Lumpar but only $100 to Bangkok, I bought my ticket.

And really, how much does the political system matter on a beach vacation? What I really care about is how the backpacker strip, Kao San Road differs from my first visit. The place where I spent my premiere night in the country is now a pile of ruble; in six months a luxury hotel will replace where I spent a restless evening and my friend Jeremy got a couple dozen nasty bedbug bites.

Kao San Road is still a couple blocks of concrete that serves as the locus of Southeast Asian Travel. Here travelers arrive shell-shocked from London, Stockholm or Perth, drink a couple Beer Changs, down a pad thai on the street, buy a "Same Same But Different T-Shirt" and then buy a bus/boat combo ticket to the Full Moon Party on the southern island of Koh Phan Yang. At the end of their trips they return, tan, thinner and with stories to tell. Tonight I listened to a few.

James, half-Thai, is from Rochester, New York. He's interning for Morgan Stanley here in Bangkok. On weekends he comes to Kao San to meet foreigners, dance to a Filipino cover band at the Shamrock Bar and drink 80 baht Rum and Cokes. He has a Thai passport, but he's traveling on an American one, which necessities trips to the Burmese or Cambodian border every couple weeks. It's not far.

"If I drive 100, it's two and a half hours. There's no laws," he said. "It's Thailand."

Nick is here with James. They went to grade school together in a small upstate New York time, and now they share James' grandmother's apartment. James spent the summer working on a private island south of Phuket. The island had one resort, few customers, so he spent most of his time with the Thai staff, fishing and smoking copious amounts of marijuana.

An Australian with an ugly mullet promised a life-changing experience if we went to Sala, a town on the Chinese-Vietnamese border. He's been around the world "like six times" and this is favorite place.

Victoria, born in Vancouver but now living in Taiwan, told me how much she hates the way people in Beijing talk. Beijing Chinese tends to add an "r" sound to words. Fuyuan becomes fuyur, men ("gate") becomes mer. She thinks Beijing's clubs might be more happening than Taipei's, but she's too afraid of the Beijinger accent to make the trip over.

The political situation may be different than three years ago, but the military dictatorship is too dependent on tourists to stamp out the city's lively trade in interesting stories.