The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

I just read this article on Asia Times and was trying to absorb it all when I took a walk to the Asia Books branch in Silom. In my opinion, which may carry very little weight, this article is accurate of the current struggles in Thailand and makes some sense of what may happen in the future. However it is the lack of guidance and the surprises that I have a problem with in Thailand - u just never know what will happen next. They way Thailand is run sometimes must be similar to the experience I had at the bookstore today. I needed something new to read and was not having any luck in finding what I wanted so I decided to try looking for another book I had read to then see if they had other books by the same author. How silly am I.

The book I was looking for is Platform by Michel Houellebecq. A great read by the way and I knew that he had written other books but I had no idea what they were named. I had forgotten the author name so I figured I would look for Platform and take it from there. I looked in Fiction and it was not there. Okay. I looked in the hardbacks just to see if happened to be there. Nope. Okay. So then I looked over the same areas again and was about to give up when I saw it in the Thailand Book section. Alright some of the book is set in Thailand but it is not one of those “set in Thailand” type of books you usually see in the Thailand section. Whatever. I found it.

So I took it over to the counter and asked for other books by the same author. They looked it up and the computer showed 6 other books with only one being in stock. Cool. I said can I see that one? The girl said she would grab it and went over to the Thailand section to look for it. No dice. I said I don’t think any of his books should be in the Thailand section but she said she thought it was. So Platform was since it has a good portion of the book in Thailand but I knew his other books did not. Plus this book I was looking for was about H.P. Lovecraft which for sure had nothing to do with Thailand.

So now 2 girls and 1 guy are looking at the computer trying to figure out where in the store the book might be. So the next girl goes to the hardback section and said that since the book costs more than 600 baht it must be a hardback. Okay. Interesting. So 4 people are now scouring over the hardback section and they cannot find the book. The one manager girl comes back to me to declare they must not have the book since they can’t find it but I also here one guy mumbling about they must have it if it was on the computer. Fine group consensus.
2 other girls fan out and keep looking while the one guy goes back to the computer. The manager just pretends everything is cool and goes about her business. Good service. Now in America they would either know where the book was or at the very least probably offer to look for it, take my number and call when and if they found it. Not here. I browsed some magazines and decided to call it a night. I walked out and was cruising down the sidewalk when the guy from the bookstore walks up to me with the book. He said it was in the autobiography section. Makes perfect sense. Right.

So I walked back with him and bought it. It all seems so painful in the end but as I usually find in Thailand - things may be a little quirky but in the end it all just seems to fall together. I like to think this is how the country is being run right now. It looks a little sketchy, many times it seems confusing, and slightly irritating but what I am hoping is that in the end it will all work out. Much like my trip to the bookstore.

FYI. Spent the night at the pub the other night and I was on the motorcycle taxi going home at like 6 in the morning. I was actually a little chilly which was nice but what I found interesting was that there were still girls walking around Lumpini - and they weren’t selling the early edition of the newspaper. Amazing Thailand!