Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Curious Incidents

When I was in Thailand some years ago on an island for tourists I encountered a curious number of racial incidents. Imagine that this is a v. remote island where anything goes. Most go to the island to take drugs, swim, and maybe hook up with a Thai prostitute. The bulk of visitors hail from the rich world, including Israel, which was the first time in my travels that I'd come into contact with a traveling Israeli entourage.

A few of these curiosities occurred in Malaysia. An Aussie, burly dude who like to dress in Malay attire, rather flippantly stated something about Jews/Israelis... "wherever they go, they never fail to fuck things up," he said.

I had been hanging out with an older man who had relocated to Thailand. I didn't know that he was Jewish till he mentioned something to some Aussie girls in the bus we were riding to the island. I think he has trying to get a rise out of them because he also went into great detail about older women's vaginae. This was during the time of the ballot controversy between Bush and Gore. When he wasn't doing CNN, he was doing this Malaysian woman in her mid 50s.

The man departed for his home base in Pattaiya, while I went onto the island with the girls. I remember one of the girls had a lot of blonde fuzz above her lip. I was without aim, just going to the island for an event that I was told was of epic proportion--The Full Moon Party. When I arrived a man (English) I'd met in Malaysia recognized me and escorted me by mini to a place deep in the jungle. I could have been snuffed and stuffed there, but a little jaunt through yet more dark wooks found me at the "reception desk" of a hut, which had a gun on a wooden table and a big poster of Bob Marley on the wall. I also noticed some crude caricatures of different "representative" peoples... the only ones I remember being the American cowboy and the African bushman, the latter being particularly unflattering to my mind. I had an advantage of speaking a modicum of Thai, so the tourists wouldn't really know what we were conversing about. The following evening I asked the Thai dude if he understood the meaning of Bob Marley, if he really understood. The next day the pics caricatures were removed.

I remember Canadians, Dutch, Japanese, Israelis, Scots, and Norse. The Norseman asked a group if they would like to play a game of "nigger", some card game, the name of which seemed to take the Canadians aback. I was the only black at the encampment of about 50 people.

The Israelis seemed mainly to stay among themselves at a mini post about 200 yards from home base. My hut lay about 200 yards beyond the Israeli encampment, so I had to walk past it. It was then when walking past "Israel" that I was greeted with untoward "affections." Though unendearing to say the least, I could only smile at what I generally regarded being charges out of left field.

My travels throughout Asia have been excursions into loneliness, with the exception of my trip to Indonesia. I have never been confused that at least part of this experience has to do with who and what I am. Indonesians being quite a bit more proximate treated me accordingly, proximately.

To get to Indo, one must take a ferry from Malaysia. On the Thai/Malaysia border I remember two things. An Israeli holding up progress and a guard saying Muhammad Ali to me. Israeli citizens aren't allowed into either Malaysia or Indonesia, so that's why the Israeli was holding up progress.

On the stay over in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia, I ended up leaving a Chinese establishment, because there were bedbugs, to find another. Everything in Georgetown is run by Chinese, as is everything in S. Thailand. I went to a local bar to find a bed, when a conversation between a local informant, a tall gay Chinese and the landlord ensued in Mandarin. The guy didn't want any Africans staying at his place. My informant friend told him that I was American and that was enough for him. I had a bed.

I have a Jewish associate from US who had done business in Indo. She is convinced that the anti-Jewishiness is very strong there. Her perception is what it is, though in my own observations the only racial hostilities that I noted with any regularity was directed toward Chinese, whom Indo Christians and Muslims both openly despise, sorta like Carolinians busting on Mexicans, I suppose, but for the fact that Chinese occupy a decidedly higher economic status anywhere in SE Asia.

In this disjointed narrative are the things that make the world go round. Whether I liked what I heard or experienced is of no consequence. It is. There are lots of things that I don't like but it doesn't make it go away. Some may argue that my perception is skewed. I would agree. I used to feel that the world's animus toward blacks stood above all. At least, now I feel that such thinking won't get me anywhere, as if I had someplace to go. In such light, what is the merit of being gung-hi or gung-ho about Israel, Tibet, Darfur, Detroit, Dakotas, or Denmark? No matter how much something may reek, it is simply what it is and my feelings about any of it will change nada, nyet. Furthermore, I am concerned about how much such "gunging" is a projection of my creation or worse still someone else's.