Because capital brings order. It creates and deepens order, regularity, and homogeneity. Homogeneity is efficient. And capital loves efficiency. The U.S. is sadly now a landscape of unending sameness. Raleigh-Durham is really no different than Sacramento, California. The same house designs, the same commercial architecture, the same consumer ecology of chain stores, chain restaurants, chain consumer products, chain groceries. The vast majority of us are leading the same franchised lives.

And there’s the rub. At least part of it. Because there is something deep within us that calls out for the unique, for the local, for the authentic, for the that-which-is-of-a-place. It comes through in that deepest and most primal of connections with the consumer ecology, dining. Through our restaurant industry in America, which alone has proven remarkably resilient to chaining, we still experience and seek out a certain level of local and authentic. The dishes themselves bare witness to their place of origination: New England Lobster, New York Strip Steak, Texas Brisket, Omaha Steaks, St. Louis Ribs, Alaskan King Crab, Pacific Salmon. Thai Food, Chinese Food, Indian Food (though even then these restaurants reduce a country’s cuisine into a manageable and palatable middleground).

That which is unique and local is ironed out or transfigured into mass culture. The creases must be removed in the name of efficiency. In America there are no cottage industries. Nothing is locally grown or produced anymore, except for those of us with the means to purchase the local. The only people with any real access to the authentic space are the rich. It’s the rich that can afford the locally grown restaurants, the travel to (as-of-yet) unsullied countries. The very same rich who gained their wealth off the process of commodification and capitalization that turns the rest of the world into a wasteland, incidentally.

So too the New Orleans Chicken they sell at McDonald’s Japan (at least I think it was Japan), or the Memphis Bar-B-Cue they sell at Applebee’s, or the Spaghetti Marinara they serve at Olive Garden. These dishes, born in corporate test kitchens, made from ingredients that were shipped in from thousands of miles away, and share only the most tenuous relationship wth whatever the dish they are designed to parrot. Even the people look the same. Turn on the financial television news as I have done here in my room tonight (it’s the only English language channel) and you will find the talking heads talk and dress remarkably similar the world over.

When capital descends upon a place it becomes removed from reality, refracted by the lens into the idea of itself. It’s a metareality. Cabo San Lucas is no longer Cabo San Lucas, it’s the idea of Cabo, the brand of Cabo. So too Ao Nang, where I write this. It’s no longer Ao Nang, beachfront Thai village. Now it is the European idea of Ao Nang, Thai village. Whatever used to be here, it’s been erased, obliterated, replaced by the same curios and bootleg DVDs that you can buy throughout Thailand, or worse, replaced by a Starbucks, a Burger King, a Pizza King.

Even the Bangkok sex trade is not immune. Lonely Planet does such a perfect job of describing the Patpong neighborhood that I will not attempt to paraphase:

Bangkok’s most famous red-light district dates back to the beginning of the West’s fascination with Asian prostitutes. Patpong has become more of an all-purpose circus than a flesh market. A major diluter is the popular souvenir market on Soi Patpong 1, which draws in families and conservative couples.. The remaining go-go bars still put on erotica shows that are visited by gawkers for a good laugh rather than a hard-on.

Patpong rendered a Disneyland version of itself, complete with souvenier stalls. Bring the kids, honey!

One corollary of Eisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal is that the  act of observing a thing changes it.  So too in travel, the act of traveling to a thing changes it.  There is a clear and tragic progression from undiscovered countryside to overdone tourist hell.  It begins with the hardcore travelers, those salty dogs who just have to go somewhere off the beaten path.  Accomodation is rustic to say the least, with little in the way of services and restaurants to cater to them.   People being people, they tell others about what a great place they had.  Next come the backpackers – hairy, young, and sweaty souls from across Europe and the Americas – looking for a cheap good time that’s off the beaten path and away from the package tourists.  With a higher tolerance for risk than your family of four, they come next.  The local economy begins to cater to them, as the locals realize there is money to be made.  People being people, they talk about it, and at some point in time it ends up in the guidebooks.  From there it’s not long now until the resorts go up and the package tourists move in.  The locals move to full on extraction mode – both from the land and the tourists.  Developers clear cut rainforest to throw up “resorts” and strip malls.  Buildings move from more traditional construction practices that are relatively easy on the environment to the Western steel-and-concrete box.  Etc.

This is not theoretical.  The island of Koh Chang, where I was lucky enough to spend a few nights this last week, is right now in the middle of just such a transformation.  Everywhere on the island, which is 80 percent rainforest and ostensibly a protected national park, new buildings are going up.  The secret is most definitely out, and the oldtime falang set, by which I mean the bartenders and other former tourists that came here three or four years ago and carved out a life for themselves are flummoxed.  What happened to Paradise? This they mutter as the drinks they serve migrate from buckets of Sang Som (a rotgut Thai rum) and Coke to Mai Thais and wine.

This is an environment of flux and cataclysm, like Bangkok or the rest of Asia or 80s Atlanta or 60s Los Angeles, where growth happens so quickly that there isn’t really a metaphor for it.  My friend Kum, a thirty-three year old island native, has a vastly different childhood than her three kids will have.  Where she grew up in an agrarian economy that might have been a little above subsistence level, with limited information resources, her children will grow up in a place that is more European than Thai, where everyone is a stranger except for family, where they will not want for anything save a respite from the business of wanting and a place to call their home.

Home in this sense meaning not the place where they sleep, but a feeling that they may have had or maybe just imagine, a feeling of total security and love.  A feeling not unlike the very American nostalgia for small-town living.

So the trees are cut and the land will be cleared, and the little bungalow with the thatched roof hut where I whiled away the days on a hammock writing or reading and slept with the ocean in my ears will be a Pizza Hut or a McDonald’s soon.

It’s a telling-turn of phrase that we in the States called an unexplored region “virgin wilderness”.

And if this all seems a bit dark, it is.  But I’m certainly not above taking my responsibility  for it.  I spent my baht with Kum, I spoke English to her kids.  Hell, I did it with a smile on my face, even as I could hear the whine of the table saw and smell the burning trash.  It is inevitable, this flow of capital into the furthest and most precious reaches of the earth.  Post-industrial capitalism dictates it.

Capital is it’s own justification, it is a law and a reason for being unto itself and when it enters a place it will change the thing.  Capital brings its own reality.   From my hammock on Koh Chang at the furthest point along the chain you can experience capital viscerally, in your lungs and ears and eyes.  It’s quite an experience, because you know all that’s behind it, the gargantuan forces that have spanned the earth to bring that corrugated tin roof to the new snack bar just a few meters down the road.  Coming from the West we’re usually immune to the awe, living with it every day as we do, as it moves around us and through us at light speed through fiber optic cables.  But at the edge capital must necessarily slow down and attenuate to a more human speed.  And so you pay Kum in cash, just as she pays the delivery truck in cash, or the day laborers.

One thing that’s been surprising is how much the youth of Europe still respect the U.S.  I’ve talked to Finns, Swedes, Brits, a veritable gaggle of Euros and everyone still thinks of America has this beacon on the hill.  A shining example for the rest of the world.  The pinnacle of Democracy, etc.  When the subject of Bush and the last 8 years comes up they sort of look at Bush as like an aberration.  Or they just kind of overlook him and the eight years,  like US democracy collectively farted eight year ago and it’s still hanging around but everyone’s too polite or too bored with it to really acknowledge how much it stinks any more.

I just had dinner with the Finnish sound installation artist Ron Nordstrom.  He was kind.  He and his wife have a thousand squeezie toys.  Check their work here. 

www.mnbvcxz.net

So yeah Tokyo was a nice place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit there, at least not alone.  Way too hard and insular for a single person who doesn’t speak the language.  My travel tip? Bring a friend.  It’s difficult to make one there. 

Sorta.  Not really.  But people do seem to have a much different relationship with their waste here than in the US.  Like it’s just everywhere.  On Koh Samet, an island I was fortunate enough to leave this morning, the beaches were littered with plastic, glass, etc.  And it’s repeated over and over again here in the North, highways littered with plastic and inch thick like snow, dogs picking over fields of trash, the beach just east of Ban Phe totally covered in plastic - I’ve seen enough to call it a pattern.   

This country is in need of a strong civic campaign, with like, a big personified cartoon elephant to get people to take better care of things.  Think Smokey the Bear. 

East of Bangkok city center at the On Nut BTS station, My Brother’s Apartment is a surprisingly clean room with air conditioning nestled into a loud side street just off Th. Sumvit.  When you arrive in the city, the proprietor himself will come to the airport to pick you up in a borrowed shuttle van.  It’s quite nice.

The room itself is spartan, but does have a bed for My Brother, a floor-born futon mattress for guests, a television, DVD, and internet hookup.  The television has two English-speaking channels – BBC world service and a very poor HBO Asia which runs only certifiably terrible films like Ultraviolet and Jesse Brown (2x a day). But you aren’t there for television. 

Beware the local populace, as they can get quite rowdy at night.  You will find yourself awoken to the sounds of drunken shenanigans and romantic trysts late at night.  It’s best just to go with the flow in these situations – do not anger the local population as they can be quite aggressive when pushed.

Malaria should not be a problem, though there was a dengue fever outbreak reported in 1999.  It’s best to use your mozzie repellant.  More common is the dreaded Bangkok hangover, which should be treated by a professional bartender immediately.

Beware the onsite masseuse downstairs.   Though the price is quite reasonable at 150 baht, you will find yourself in such pain after the Thai massage that you will still be limping around Koh Samet beach days later.  In February 2008, the author began a one-man crusade to end the barbaric practice of Thai massage after suffering mightily at the hands of a Thai practictioner.

My last night in Tokyo I spent at the sunlite inn. it sucked.  but the shower was worth commenting upon because it was the first “tiny shower” i had access to.  enjoy this tour video below:

But it’s not as simple as the previous post would have it.  Because on the other hand there’s this incredible body of philosophic and spiritual thought that stands, perhaps not in opposition to the course of human affairs, but at least renders it fleeting and transitory and meaningless.  The march of progress, to the way of thinking captured or symbolized by something like Wat Pho, is really just an illusion.  Because in the end we’re all going to die. And against that horror what is the real use or efficacy of a few extra dollars in your pocket or a HD-DVD player or even something as transitory as the goodwill of your fellow doomed meat bags? 

The spiritual, in my mind, is that which attempts to answer that last question in a way allows us some reprieve from the finality of death and the bounds of the flesh.  Religion then is the codification and mass production of that answer for others.  The great faiths all seem to agree that the trappings of wealth and fortune – which is to say, trade and therefore progress – are fairly useless and in fact may be a hindrance to the pursuit of an answer to that most pressing of questions. 

Which is probably true.  You can’t take it with you.  It’s easier for a camel to pass through th eye of a needle than a rich man to pass into heaven.  Insert your favorite parable along these lines here.  You will die.  Bill Gates will die.  I will die.  We will all die.  All of us going down the long slide merrily. 

So then all the trade and progress and amassing of wealth is all just a means to enable the search, or the Search, as  it were.  A search that is expressed a million different beautiful ways.  Religious expression IS human expression, in that all of the arts were born in the spiritual.  The first stories were myths, which gave birth to novels, films, and videogames.  The first sculptures were shrines, the first paintings on the walls of shrines, and on and on.  And thus the smallest story or the most modest drawing is part of that timeless and inexpressible Search, against which all your money and wealth and fame and fortune is but a trifle. 

And so we’re back at the beginning the sacred trumps the profane which trumps the sacred which trumps the profane.  Thus the snake eats it’s tail and our end is our beginning. 

   

“This article is an outline and needs more content. It has a template, but there is not enough information present. Please plunge forward and help it grow!”

           -Actual text from wikitravel entry on Ikebukuro

If you leave the West side of Ikebukoro station, the side with Tobu on it, and follow the map that you dutifully printed out from the Kimi Ryokan website, you will arrive at your hotel. Stylish and quiet, you will be amazed at the value these traditional Japanese rooms represent. Let it remind you of that year you spent in the unheated and unairconditioned basement of a Washington DC townhome in an 8×8 room with no windows and blood red walls sleeping on a futon. In comparison, your room is luxuious. Be sure and spend a little time down in the lounge, where travelers from around the around the world can be found at any time of day. Drink a beer and enjoy a two-hour nap before heading out explore the neighborhood.

Ikebukoro, like most of Japan, is a model cityscape, combining residential space, office space, and a diverse commercial ecosystem in one highly concentrated area. Restaurants, Pachinko parlors and monolithic department stores as big as God light up the night with neon. Wander these streets wondering where you can find a bar, or if those few romanji signs that say “Restaurant Bar” really mean that you can just drink in there or if it’s just a bad translation or something. Follow a line of people into the Tobu department store, which on its lowest level has a tremendous selection of sumptious food stuffs – from French chocolates to individually wrapped apples that are so big and beautiful that they surely must be direct descendants of Eve’s folly.  Eye the “beers of the world” display before heading over to the sake area. Grab a cold can of sake, pay for it, and then trudge around the winter air of Ikebukoro choking it down.

Note: It may be legal or it may be not. I think I read somewhere that it was legal but damn, do you really want to find out? Just chug it.

Use the sake to strengthen your resolve and head for a bar. Make your way back through the streets and pedestrian malls back over to the area near your ryokan. Wonder at all the snowboarders heading for the train station – don’t these kids have to go to school or something? Chide yourself for being such an old man and then head back over near the hotel, where you will find The Hub. The Hub is an English pub right in the middle of Ikebukoro’s lively entertainment district. Inside you will be the only person remotely resembling and Englishmand. Order a couple pints, a vodka soda, and spend entirely too much time at the incredible digital jukebox, which has and English function as well. Order the fish and chips from the (kind-of) English speaking staff and eat it with chopsticks. Realize that these fish and chips are better than the fish and chips you can get in London. Remarkable. Also remarkable is the place’s uncanny accuracy at capturing a true English brew pub, except the little differences, like the sign over in the corner that says, Route 66 or the other one that says “Don’t Even Think of Parking Here”.

Imagine yourself opening up your own American bar in San Francisco that will actually be a copy of this Tokyo bars rip-off of the English brew pub.

Down another nameless street this time to the left of the Tobu department store, take a right at the Four Seasons Metropolitan Hotel. Follow the tiny road to the nearest 7-11, whose bright flourescence light will balm your weary soul. While inside, be sure to stock up on your cash at the international ATM machine, which is the only place you can get cash at this time of night. Stumble around the store after you withdraw 200,000 yen, marveling at the soft pornography that oozes from the magazine stand. Spend five minutes having a crisis of conscience at the ramen aisle before deciding that you will need to fight the coming hangover with something, and that a bit of ramen at the ryokan lounge will do you good in the morning. Eye the special edition Coke bottle at the counter with interest-it reminds you of your grandfather, who loves special edition Coke bottles and who fought the Japanese through some of World War II’s deadliest battles. It’s a miracle he’s alive really, and you too by extension. Imagine your triumphal return with that brightly colored box, laced with Kanji characters, the presentation to your grandfather whose eyes will absolutely light up at seeing it. It’s poetic really, the grandson returning from the conquered land with that most All-American of drinks, this time re-interpreted into Japanese. It should be clear by now that Coke bottle is of deep metaphysical interest to you and your grandfather and that you must have it.

Step up to the counter and mumble Hi at the attendant, who like most locals in the store will be wearing a look of some concern at the moment. As he rings up the ramen and Coke, reach for your wallet and turn to your right, where a line that you did not stand in but that will look, by the expressions on everyone’s face, like it has been there a while. Pull out your wallet and find that the 200,000 yen you just withdrew is not there. Put up your finger, the number 1, which will cause the attendant to place a little sign up that must say “Use other register” Check every pocket you have. Now do it again. Beat back the crushing fear that you have lost close to 200 dollars US at a 7-11 in Tokyo. Turn back to the right, where the long line of Japanese young people continues to stare at you as though you might be famous. Try to speak to the attendant about the money but even when sober your Japanese is nonexistent and realize that all you are doing is slurring english and adding the suffix u at the end of everything, like ATM becomes ATM-u, or “lost” becomes “lost-u”, and “yen” becomes “yen-u”. Stumble out of the store, realizing that you were so excited to make the ATM work that you forgot to get your money – all you got was the receipt and your card back.

Awaken at five AM, unable to leave the ryokan because of the curfew, and take pictures of yourself in your robe pretending to be a Tekken 6 villain. Resolve never to drink again.