The lights on Khao San Road make the trees look artificially deciduous. The streets are full of fish. Feral cats and dogs wander, searching for scraps left by the food vendors and lazy tourists.
I’m actually growing a taste for beer–or, at least, my physical aversion to it is waning and I now find some beer drinkable. Now it is Leo beer. All I know of it is that it’s light and the label is totally in Thai. While we drink, we watch American Dreamz on the restaurant television. It may or may not be pirated, but the odds are in favor of the former. Watching the people around us tends to be more interesting than the movie, which is a little on the silly side. Perfect choice though for the American tourist. An American movie that makes fun of the American way. It sort of feels like Khao San Road itself. Even the restaurant owners speak perfect English. It seems that English is the middle man language of tourists here. I heard a chinese woman saying something in English to the Thai pharmacists the other day. Germans, Greek, Russians, Ukrainian, Dutch, Norwegian, and French. They are all speaking English to the Thai natives. Aside from on Koh Samui, where many signs are in Thai, English and German, it seems English is everywhere and the only middle ground. It’s a convenient system for those who speak English natively, but I feel a little bad for all those who don’t. We’ve met several people from different countries and they always apologies for their English. I always reply with the same, “It’s better than my Czech”, or Dutch, or Norwegian or whatever it is the other person speaks.