Playing Poker Without Money...

There's a cafe here in Chiang Mai where I go for breakfast sometimes. They have a guest house upstairs and get a lot of alt travelers - many of them Europeans traversing great distances across Asia or up from Oz, riding massive, off-road style motorcycles.
A very friendly and attractive 30ish German couple called Franz and Marie were in town for a couple days. They were open and matter-of-fact about the purpose of their journey - to expand Marie's sexual horizons by soliciting the services of European beach boys hanging around the fleshpots of south Thailand. Why they didn't just fly there is a mystery but maybe the anticipation was part of the thrill -  or perhaps they'd been getting her serviced all the way across Asia - that was never made clear.
Anyway, I was sitting nearby and caught a few of their Skype interviews with prospective service providers. One of them was a clean and healthy looking young guy who sounded Eastern European. He'd sent them a full CV with stills and videos. This Marie woman was loud and enthusiastic about meeting him. Her husband, Franz, smiled and nodded indulgently. He was the videographer for their project and was even now taping her conversation with the young dude on the hotseat. She giggled and said she wanted to see his package, both at rest and while in heat - but not right that moment - later, when they were in private. Michael Houellebecq would be proud.
Word has it the Eastern European kid is part of a growing trend of white beach boys who have migrated to southeast Asia's hotspots cuz that's where the affluent female sex tourist is going these days. These young studs supposedly don't do men, which is a major selling point on the STD front.
But these two Germans, with their cheery and well-adjusted outlook, they were fucking depressing. While talking to her prospective sex toy, the wife was so happily forthright about her exact demands you'd have thought she was hiring a decorator. She and her husband seemed desperate for the whole world to know just how cutting edge they really are. Man, it had to be one of the squarest acts I've seen in ages - an e-bay driven cock-on-demand vacation full of orgasmic awakenings.
A couple days later they were gone, riding their big BMW south toward Phuket and environs, itinerary already planned to a tee - equipment required, candidates to be test-driven, positions to be tried, all culminating in a four-on-one smorgasbord, the whole deal videoed and professionally edited then posted on some swingers site or other. Want to see our holiday slideshow?
Hey, more power to them if that's how they roll and in a way I'm kind of envious. I'm too old to get up the suspension of disbelief needed for that sort of healthy, holistic, arms-length sport-fucking. It's become tough to stay interested if it's not an emotionally convoluted personal involvement that might really fuck up our lives whether we're careful or not. Without that - it's like playing poker without money.

Of Hoistings + Petards

Being here in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, has been nothing but good for me. I showed up last fall pretty much a ruin, physically and otherwise and despite being cynical about holistic treatments, some friends encouraged me to try them out. As one colleague said; Hey, how bad can it be?

Of course all the treatments worked wonders; Acupuncture, Reki, essential oils, acupressure and all the rest. I thought I was unique but I’ve run across a lot of burned out White folks who’ve undergone the Thailand miracle. You come here, groove on the goodness of the place and things become pretty damn peachy. Tough to feel down on a nice sunny day in Chiang Mai.

But one area that’s definitely a minefield is the whole White Dude/Thai Woman formula. Usually it’s a recipe for disaster – or at least hubris.

When I first arrived, I met some Europeans who’d been in Thailand for decades and had made it their home, settling here and raising children. One of these guys, very successful in finance, began to tell me about the infamous Thai Trap.

“Okay, you have your Older White guy from the UK, Oz, Canada, wherever – The West. With an average pension and his other assets he’s nobody back home, an old fool. He’s also sick to death of loud, pushy, demanding White women – the kind that become his boss and turn his life to shit. So he comes here and the value of his money turns into ten times what it is back in the old country. He finds a ‘nice’ Thai female – usually a few decades younger than him. She’ll be traditional and a good girl and have sex with him whenever he wants. The guy’s in heaven, right?  Well… not so fast… She’s got a big family behind her and they start tapping into our stupid White friend, demanding he pay for all kinds. Many of them refuse to pay up and get into trouble with the Thai wife’s relatives. He ends up shocked and bitter he could have been used so easily and runs back to where he came from...”

This Euro guy who was warning me about this trap stopped suddenly and grinned. “It happened to me too,” he confided. “I was here twenty years and always thought; 'Me and a Thai woman? Never. They just don’t do it for me.' But I guess I had to know what all the fuss was about and got myself a Thai girlfriend. Everything I told you that’d happen to the stupid White Dude? Me too. I fell for the same trap – and with both eyes open.”

My new pal paused and shook his head as if to recall a very narrow escape. “My wife wasn’t too impressed with me pulling this mid-life crisis shit and fucking up our marriage. I cut off the Thai girlfriend and just managed to get in the backdoor before my wife called the lawyers. Stupid of me? Oh yes. I’m the stupidest old White Dude of them all but I still had to know what the big deal is." He stopped in mid drink and looked at me. "You want to know what the big deal is: There isn’t one. The Thai wife becomes like every other wife once she’s used to you. No big mystery. Just life going on. It’s basically a racist kind of thing and I thought I was smarter than that.” He pours me another big shot and himself a bigger one. “I guess I’m not as smart as I thought.”