Thai food and an Ugly American

            Alright, my plan initially was to just give a few details about the very tasty Thai food that I have quickly become accustomed to, unfortunately, I ran into a painful individual yesterday during my golf day; A person that I just can not go without mentioning. First, let me preface by saying, I myself am a humble tourist in this land and in no way am I better than a person that visits for a week nor am I any worse than a person that has lived here for 10 years. I do not want to come across as a person that somehow thinks they are more versed in culture or as some sort of seasoned traveler critiquing fellow travelers. No, if there is one thing that I hate as much as I hate those that disrespect their host, is a self important, patronizing, “Traveler”. Now that I have that out of the way, let me first start by saying that traveling, in my opinion, is not a ride at Disneyworld. A person does not just go from German town, get a corn dog, and then move onto Asia town. It is unfortunate that there are still a few people traveling that seem to believe that the world is just some small amusement park, where their language is spoken in each of the featured worlds and the customs of their culture are the same in all locations around this very large rock. A rock that we share with about 7 billion differing opinions, beliefs, loves, hates, fears, wants, and all the other nuances that are held unto our singular selves. It does constantly amaze me when I am in a non English speaking country and I hear a person say “I can’t believe these people don’t speak English”. Someone actually said these words when I was in Beijing China. It made me ponder how well this statement would go over in Texas. Can you see a Mexican national looking at the WalMart check out lady and snidely stating to his wife in Spanish “Why can’t these people speak Spanish?” This would be much funnier if it just were not so dame reprehensible. “Ok… ok, I get it, Jeff has a pet peeve here”, I can hear you saying, and yes you are correct in your supposition with this one. You know one of the worst things of all about these ungracious guests, is when they are discussing foreigners amongst themselves in their own countries. I am sure it has been said more than once, “these foreigners should learn the language or go home”. Oh my goodness the hypocrisy is making my body shudder in cascades of laughter and my face tighten with intermittent smiles stretching from cheek to cheek.

 Wow! My tangents are never ending, my apologies. To the story of the event that has so motivated me to climb up on this proverbial soap box; I am known to bring this little standing crate out from time to time. The day is Tuesday and it’s nine AM, the day is starting out gorgeous. The temperature is just at about 80 degrees; there are just a few low clouds drifting like languid climbers over the mountains surrounding a well manicured golf course. This is a golf course that I have wanted to play for a good while now and here I finally am. A buddy from my language school who goes by the name of Smiley asked if I wanted to play today. Here’s the run down leading to the tee box. First we pay our fees, check in with the starter, and then we pair up with our mandatory female caddies. My nerves are now tingling a bit from a few of the following external factors that I seem to always internalize. First, I have never played this course and it looks tough; there is water everywhere and oh man, so much sand. Bunkers are pretty much death traps for my golf game. Second, I am playing golf with someone I have never played with before. Now these factors in themselves are enough to throw my delicately balanced golf game and mental state out of whack, but then a cherry on top of this nerve inducing scenario is thrown my way. We our paired up with some loud guy from Jersey, who is wearing a bright tangerine colored shirt and who has some sort of gaudy looking leather golf bag with his name “Bob Mathews” sewn into the side and the poor little caddy lady is having to lug this huge ass thing around behind him. This bag looked like something Rodney Dangerfield would have been proud to have during a round in the movie Caddy Shack. Now, I have met plenty of great people from this little spot in the North East, that they call New Jersey, who are fine people to know but I wouldn’t say that the majority that I have met from this part of the country are people that I enjoy long conversations with. Still, here it is a beautiful day, I’m not at work, and I am just looking forward to playing a friendly game of hit the little white ball around the big field of grass. Ole Smiley and I introduced our selves to Bob; the first thing Bob say’s is “What kind of name is Smiley?” 

All of our tee shots were grouped together a good ways out in the fairway and we are in great position after teeing off from tee box number one. Bob is up first to hit; the guy just walks up and hits the ball, no pre-shot routine no time wasted. Personally, I feel that you do whatever you like with your golf swing, pre-shot routine and game, that’s your thing; we each play in our own way. Smiley plays considerably slower than Mr Bob and Bob is being pretty vocal about how slow smiley is playing. Man this guy, really, what the hell. Now I am thinking that I need to speed up my game, I do and my game begins to suffer for it. All the while as we are walking from hole to hole, this Bob guy is telling me how it is just a waste of time for Smiley and I to go to language school. He say’s “these people don’t care if you know their language or not, they'll fuck you over either way” and “you won’t get anything out of it”, yes, he said these people. He tells how he has lived here for 10 years, was married to a Thai women – he has that ugly desperate to find a wife on the internet look -, and goes on to say more disparaging things about the country, the people and the culture. Yes, this guy is just a load of good times. This dilemma that I now find myself stuck in, that is, being trapped with someone for an extended amount of time that says a bunch of raciest statements and that is the type of person that I would rather see never; is not something new. When I find myself in this situation I always I have to do a internal measure, will it be worth my breath to try to convince some mentally challenged, backwoods, banjo plucking, hardheaded, raciest fellow that he should change his raciest sentiments? Do I go along with him so as not to rock the boat, to keep the societal norm of non aggression in place? Or do what I do. Again I have been in this situation a few times and I find that I am always angry with myself later; upon reflection I wonder why I was unable to find the words to rebuke those of this person who is only emboldened by my silence. So in this case I made sure to smile as I simply told him that I disagreed with what he was saying. I didn’t get into a discussion with the blow hard; I just laughed at him and gave his words no credence. He did stop with the racist shit and just kept that big mouth of his focused on how slow Smiley was playing. It should be understood, that yes, Smiley was playing a little slow, but nothing out of the ordinary and Smiley is a pretty good golfer, so even if he was slow on taking his shot, there was no time wasted on re-hitting a lost ball, finding a ball, or re-hitting another ball as a muligan. What’s funny is that this Bob guy couldn’t hit the ball straight at all and would hit like three balls off the tee. Of course he blamed his poor play on the slow play of Smiley and then he would yell at his Thai caddie to do this or that. Well, then finally it all came to a head when on hole 8, Smiley did something that he had not done in his 30 years of playing this elusive and temperamental game of golf. He got a hole in one on a 174 yard par 3. Smiley was jumping up and down, I was patting him on the back, and the caddies were laughing and took a picture of him taking his ball from the cup. This hole in one thing is kind of a big deal for most golfers. Even this golf course makes a big deal out of it by putting up a plaque with the name of the golfer who made the hole in one, as well as put the ball in a small little clear encasement. Nope, Bob did not think that this was such a big deal and made it known that he had just made a hole in one just last week and didn’t think it was such a big deal, he was just upset with how the celebration was slowing him down. Hey and that’s cool Bob, but my friend Smiley thought it was a pretty big deal and should get his chance to bask in this rare feat. Hell, smiley is a 60 year old man, who I think enjoys marking things off of his bucket list. Anyway, Bob starts yelling about how this is all bullshit and how Smiley is just using junior golf tactics to mess up his game. Oh man, I just started laughing out loud; this did not help the situation. Bob made it clear that he would be playing the next nine holes on his own. The thing is that there were two groups in front of us, so Bob needed to skip the next two holes just so he wouldn’t have to play anymore slow golf with us. Ahhhhhhhhhh, what I sense of relief it is. Bob is like some sort of darkish malignant melanoma that, instead of needing to be cut away, just shriveled up and fell away of its own accord.

Needless to say, after Bob’s departure, Smiley and I had a great time. We chatted and laughed with our caddies at Bob’s expense, this thanks to our “useless” language course. It is just hard for me to believe that there are still people like this Bob guy still in the world. Not sure why these people are still around but maybe history has shown this sort of person since the beginning of territorial conquest. It seems to be a natural tendency to demonize or subjugate other cultures and populaces when ones own insecurity prevents assimilation. 

            Whatever, like a receptive sponge, I will capture it all and expunge those things that are of no benefit and retain what it is that will help me grow into a more whole individual. Ah, that’s just me though. Closed minded works for others, it’s just not the course I’m on at the moment.

This opinion of mine could be in someway contributed to by a book that I am currently reading called “A Passage to India” as well as another book I read a few years back called “Palace Walk” and a few other various books, documentaries and such. I wonder if I just took this opportunity to list books I have read, so that you as a reader would know that I have read some books. How very pretentious of me, my apologies

            I promise to talk about the food next time.