Sorry, the tale is definitely tomorrow. I have been far too busy trying to buy tickets to Michael Bolton live in Bangkok. I'm going to get have a few drinks beforehand, sidle into the pavilion, and then sever his head from his body.

This is Nonsung. He is the way of the future, and the focus of tomorrow's tale. He sells Lamborghinis, knows a lot about mummified cannibalistic serial killers and is possibly a bodhisattva. Also, he's probably in jail by now. 

All the fish are dead. Lou Reed the prawn/ghost prawn is dead.

Qaddafi is not dead but M.I.A. Seriously. He just disappeared from the fish tank. The hordes of spawning fish are search for him, but alas...

Can someone post me some fish that like living in alarm clock/pen holders?

I've been busy. Tomorrow. Promise. Real promise this time.

Update tomorrow. The story i promised. I promise.

Sometimes I have to wait until it's just right to sneak my reportage past security.

Please enjoy these futuristic daguerreotypes. I'll tell you a story tomorrow.

I like this wall. This wall is near my apartment. It's a nice wall.

This is my local. If you listen closely you can hear a submariner using a jackhammer and a little girl staring at me for two hours, laughing uncontrollably. 

This is the door to my palatial compound. My neighbour is a kindly if rather anxious 69 year old Libyan man with a penchant for ludicrous sunglasses and staying alive.    

This is where I had breakfast because it had a sign that read 'PLEASE DO "DON'T" FEED THE CATS'.

This is a self-portrait of me as a wanker.

These are sandbagged ATMs right on the edge of Pier 10. The water is rising, the ATMs are sinking and that is a Buddhist nun extracting Baht from an automatic teller.

This is Jorge's joint. I live here. Him and I are compiling the largest collection of covers of the Stones' 'Satisfaction'. He gave me some bossa nova, I gave him Cat Powers. Jorge said "I don't understand what she is saying, but she is very attractive to me."

This is where I was mistaken for actor Stephen Curry whilst eating breakfast. I think this place is a house of ill repute at night. Someone told me it dates to the Vietnam era. I don't know. The breakfast outside was stellar, absolutely stellar. The only bad part was when the waitress threw up for a little while.

This is the T-shirt I bought because it makes a very good case for whatever it is talking about.

Mission Accomplished - Updates from the Lamborghini dealership to follow.

Pictured: The sweet smell of abject victory. This is the 'Executive Model'. 

I'm still here. Many know of this victory already. I have two tanks now. Four fish and one prawn that has its own ghost prawn. Collectively they are known as Loutallica. Look it up. It's the apocalypse. 


What's going down? The boys at the Lamborghini dealership taught me some dubious pre-modern Thai history. A bus killed a man forever and no one looked. ATMs are sinking into the Chao Praya river. Lou Reed's Take No Prisoners (live) is the only album you will ever need.


Gimme a minute.

I bought a brand of deodorant called 'The Great Gatsby'.

Pictured: Unhygienic soda pop 

Pictured: An excitable African woman in hijab inspects a photo taken of her with a wax model of Naomi Campbell outside Madame Tussauds, Bangkok. 

Pictured: When the rooster ruled the world.

Pictured: The moderately priced new monk's kit at Tesco Lotus Hyper Department Store.

The holy grail is not for sale.

Gather round, friends. This one's for the gibbering idiot in us all.

Pictured: The Holy Grail of commodity. I'm pretty sure Jean Baudrillard was buried with one. 

This here is a combination fishtank-clock radio-pen holder-reading lamp. Or, what we refer to in the business as the holy grail of pointless brilliance. 

Soak that up. Soak it up.

I asked the lady running the watch shop where she got it. She said she had them in stock before but no more. I asked where I could get one. She said she had no idea. I asked if there was any possibility if I could buy the one she possessed, tiny fish and all. She said something in Thai that I have reason to believe what a quite sophisticated insult that referred to me as a white, gold-spewing man-child with the flattened head of a rotting fish. 

At this point I complimented her on her fingernails. I was told by a Thai friend that this was how to haggle when the haggle was doomed. 

A tense, immeasurable period of silence passed between us. In such moments you realise it is nothing for the oceans to become deserts, that one day your teeth will divorce you and that death is just like walking into another room - another room where you're dead. 

The lady running the watch shop said take a photo. She also added that the photo was free. I took the photo. Then she said fuck off. 

I did.

But now a hunger beats inside me. And tonight, when the moon drips valium down into the light pollution of Bangkok, and I sleep to the harrowing sounds of stray kittens tearing each other apart on adjacent rooftops, I will be calm. I have my mission.

Why I don't blame this out of focus man for a one and a half hour taxi ride that covered 5.6 kilometres, slowing my progress out of the Lokanta hell between universes and making me late for happy hour at Jorge's taco cantina of infinite power and exquisiteness.

Pictured: A rogue traffic officer. His utter inability to manage 
Bangkok traffic is matched only by his defiant blurriness.

There are 456 hells according to the Theravada Buddhist cosmology. The upside? There are an infinite amount of universes in the Theravada cosmological outlook. Each universe has 456 hells. In conclusion, there are an infinite amounts of hells in the Theravada Buddhist cosmology.

So pack your bags: the hot is hot, the riverbeds are lined with knives and you're fucked.

Curiously enough, there is one hell - the Lokanta hell - that is actually located outside the universe(s) altogether. You have to climb up the sheer surface of a universe's exterior using nothing but your fingernails to get out of that one. In the Lokanta hell, one is infinitely hungry. The hunger obliterates your sanity with its finger-licking intensity.

What I am trying to say is that it was a Monday afternoon and I found myself in Lokanta hell. In a word plus two, I was hungry. When in the Lokanta hell, the only way to end your hunger is to eat a plate of Jorge's taquitos, right here. Check it up - it's all in the Traibumkatha.

Since I bite my nails like a subpar child, I decided to catch a taxi there.

Now I need you to look at this photo.

Pictured: The Luck Cat Inception paradox machine.

Before I hailed a pink taxi, I made the fatal mistake of taking this picture. This is the Luck Cat Inception paradox machine. It cursed my taxi ride. What the Luck Cat Inception paradox machine was doing in the Lokanta hell I have no idea. But by means of its very van-falling-backwards-off-a-bridge-for-45-minutes-with-Leonardo-DiCaprio-asleep-in-the-back-of-it animist voodoo, The Luck Cat Inception paradox machine made my five kilometre taxi ride take one and a half hours.

Some would say this accursed happening was due to the fact that it was 6 PM - smack-dab in the lockjaw of downtown Bangkok traffic. These people would also insist that my being hot, mildly intoxicated and too lazy to go to the nearby BTS skytrain station were also mitigating factors.

To these people - these myopic, deluded people - I will ask them one question. 

Did you LOOK at this picture?

Pictured: The Luck Cat Inception paradox machine. 

Now you might say 'you whinging asshole'. Correct. Yes, I was a man who had everything. Yes, I did just purchase from a very amicable Isaan man at MBK an umbrella hat and a Glock 18 semi-automatic pistol. Yes, I did not not pay the 7% VAT. 

But, please, hear me out. How many taxi rides have you taken where the taxi driver - let's call him Pasuk, because that's his name - managed to get twenty minutes sleep during the duration of your ride? 

Pictured: Pasuk's magical time machine. It eats time and pumps out smokin' Thai reverb pop. 

Not pictured: Pasuk asleep.

Why stop driving to sleep? Micro-sleep awareness is for jackanapes! You don't need Driver Revive stations in Bangkok. Crap coffee and green cordial are not essential motoring accessories here.

The ride was an extreme form of meditation. Valium and the International Herald Tribune played a part. I wanted to try on my umbrella hat while Pasuk was asleep, but I felt it was inappropriate behaviour. Instead, I cleared the chamber of my Glock 18 and inspected its complimentary clip.

Pictured: The Lord Buddha atop the dashboard, patience.

To look at the duration of the trip through the lens of Western empirical measurement, one would say that the trip took one and a half hours. This is not correct. At about the hour mark I asked Pasuk how long this trip would take. He said "Neung kalpa."


One aeon. 


Technically, a regular kalpa is about 16,798,000 years long. This is a very long time if you need to take a piss.

Pictured: One of the many terrifying visages one encounters on a kalpa length taxi ride out of a hell situated outside the universe(s). Note the bizarre, jazz-aerobics gyrations and accursed stare of the elongated suffering ghost that had somehow affixed itself to bus 40. 

The taxi ride cost 178 Baht. I arrived at Taco & Salsa.

Pictured: The sign on the roller at Taco & Salsa.

I stared at that for a while. The time was 7:35. It was not his fault. Something came up. He is ALWAYS open at 3pm. Trust me. I mean no slander. How could I?

I had a piss behind the guard post of a seven star hotel and bought a Leo longneck off a Thai women with leaking eyes who was oblivious to anything I could ever do or say.

It's too hot to finish this story.

Jorge opened the door. The food - as always - was exquisite. Jorge is a saint among braggarts and harlequins. Go there. Somehow.

Pictured: The skyline of Bangkok as seen from Jorge's restaurant.

On saturday night, freshly prepared all you can eat authentic Mexican fare costs 400 Baht. 

On a lighter note, Bangkok is a place where the veneer has been peeled back to reveal the innards of raw usury.

I recommend the shredded pork.

All that was promised today is coming tomorrow. This is BKK. But for now...

Pictured: The thirty-one domains that comprise the three planes of existence in Theravada Buddhism

Pictured: A Theravada Buddhist cosmological diagram depicting one of the eight major hells - Maha Avici, the great hell of unremitting suffering. Beings born in this realm suffer for one kalpa - sixteen million years.

Pictured: Where one waits to pass between the realms of Theravada Buddhism.

Tomorrow: Opening a portfolio on the Thai stock market, two Welsh men that strangle people and tacos.

Pictured: Not the home of the Thai stock market. 

Addendum: I passed this building in a taxi on my way home from Sala Daeng. To me, this place resembles one of those mournful, nebulous establishments where once inside you feel a sudden and overwhelming need to blow your brains out.

Later I had pork rice that was very good. The taxi cost 48 baht.  

'A New Career in a New Town' by David Bowie Vs. Dancing Android.

A New Career in a New Town - David Bowie / Low (1977) 

1. "An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time." - Celine.
2. "HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME." - T.S Eliot.
3. "He stands in the parking lot, turning in the sun/ He says to the restaurant, I'm closed/ and to the sunlight, Why don't you arrest me?" - Denis Johnson.
4. "Here's a little thing that's gonna please ya/ Just a little town down in Indonesia/ Bangkok/ Yeah Bangkok" - Alex Chilton.

Cue dancing android. 10 baht.

I saw that, now you saw that too.

Pizza Hut had some very competitive deals in their latest flyer. 

Si vis pacem, para bellum. I didn't see anyone reading De Re Militaria, though. There was a 7-11 next door that sold hot dog frankfurts wrapped in bacon. Although his name suggests otherwise, I very much doubt Vegetius was a vegetarian and therefore would have approved.

English Vince's bar, sans English Vince. He told me to stick my camera up my
"Puckerhole".

I like going to see English Vince at his bar. Every time I do he keeps telling me he’s not dead but I don’t believe him. English Vince owns a bar off Sukhumvit Soi 22. He is a miserable dead man with scant regard for human decency. I enjoy our meagre time together.

“Singha or Chang?” said English Vince.

“You’re dead.”

“If I was dead would I know that soon I'm fucked? That this place is going to just fucking explode and I'm fucked? If you hang around? - you're fucked. That guy over there - he's fucked and all.” 

“Maybe, maybe, maybe.” 

The heat slumped over us both. It made the glue in my books turn to yellow dust. The pages started falling out.  

“What beer do you want? Fuck, these seats are for customers.” 

“What’s it like being dead?”

“I’ve had worse jobs.” said English Vince, popping the top off the bottle of Singha.

It was the Queen's Birthday.

A simple yet comprehensive explanation of Bangkok.

NO DISCOUNT.

My front yard and its ubiquitous spirit house.

You need your own Fortress of Solitude amongst the carnage.

I'm back and not alone. BEHOLD, THE STYLE MASTER OF THAILAND.

My spirit guide. Your spirit guide. Our spirit guide.

There's not much I can add to this image. I may repost it over and over again. I will repost it over and over again. Speechless. Many an update today, but this man first. Who is this man you ask? Pleading, you ask who is this man? This man just is.

Tomorrow.

The greatest Mexican restaurant in Bangkok, and why my life's work is complete.

Denis Johnson visits Chulalongkorn University.

NEW pacemaker. One prev. owner. Roomy. 80 Baht. Disgraced second hand. Say no more. Works a charm.

- - - - - - - - -

If the simulacra bleeds, we can kill it.

If I had invented the Dewey decimal system, you'd get a lot more of this tragicomedy.

 Laugh or cry, you'll be bored soon.

Prepare my steed, I ride to Chula!

Rama V belt buckle, reveal yourself to me.

So it all starts on Monday, and not a moment too soon. Just need the ol' (strictly compulsory) Rama V belt buckle and we're whisky a go go.

In regards to the following topics:

• Wat Pariwat's golden David Beckham altar.
• The Lopburi medium who smokes three cigarettes at a time, has magical daubing paste, a hat the disturbs the navigation equipment of small aircraft and the ability to channel King Taksin the Great (1768-1782) for marital, financial and traffic advice.
• An extensive photo survey of Bangkok electrical wiring and why it we need to find shelter immediately.
• Yaa dom and you: will constantly sticking an inhaler up your nasal passage really cure every illness imaginable and then some?
• Obligatory blue pipe article.
• The 'Do not smite fish balls on sticks' lecture.
• Is Thai radio unable to locate the 'turn off reverb' button or is total reverb just too damn awesome?
• Why gambling and prostitution is illegal.
• 'Doing Well Security' and their wilful inability to do so.
• The Sniff Kiss is the Thai Eskimo kiss. 
• Thailand's greatest TLA (three letter acronym): TSD - 'Thai Style Democracy'.
• The topless guy with a gun high on ya ba down the road the other night.
• The fact that the guy had a full scale cabalistic khmer-yantra diagram tattoo that covered his entire back and could stop bullets.
• The fact that the guy was reportedly shot - quite effectively by all accounts - my a non-magical, police issue bullet.
• The reasons I am not getting a full scale cabalistic khmer-yantra diagram tattoo that covers my entire back and can stop bullets.

These will all be dealt with in due course. So join me as we pretend to avoid all public political demonstrations vow to never eat fried cobra again.

BKK hospital emergency room - come for the beer, stay for the miraculous lazarus hamster.

It's only natural to feel the need to irradiate oneself by means of those benevolent lobotomies that only a decent drink can provide. But suitable fun is hard to come by when you're an asshole. I have to be inventive.

Being an asshole, it's hard to find the right place to go Malcolm Lowry. The ubiquitous cloistered inferno of soi bars - where the walls sweat bored sleaze as the lights mutter vague, luminous things - are useless to me. I'm terrified of their boredom. How can the tender mercies of that fifth drink register whilst watching blank interchangeable men in smart casual attire teeter like somnambulists on fire amongst all those tiny women on tiny stools?

Not even across town is there respite for an asshole. A longneck is a wasted longneck when lambasted out the front of a Banglamphu 7-11 by a twenty-something ex-Israeli sniper who is convinced Che Guevara was part of the rhythm section of The Wailers.

Taxi over there. Something something something Irish pub. Nice toilets, jaded expats. Happiness is the loneliness number that you'll ever know. One is a warm gun. 

There was this Hungarian micro brewery where I just wanted to steal cashews. The place was filled with chrome vats and sozzled Korean businessmen doing pitch perfect impersonations of Dean Martin if Dean Martin was a total fuckwit. I thought I was having fun but I was just experiencing problems with depth perception.

The obligatory sinking of Singhas on a plastic stool on the putrid, glittering streets of Yaowarat. The 7 baht public bus took me somewhere. They kicked me off at a big building that shimmered with excitement. Streamers and flashing lights. 

So there I was in the waiting room of the emergency department of Bangkok hospital drinking beer. It was a pretty popular place with a number of very affable, deranged Thais. What air conditioning! I breathed it in, perfect like ice water. Stainless steel reflected everything in a dull malaise. Those drinks worked. I completely forgot there was something terrible waiting for me behind flimsy locked doors and the backs of mirrors. A young Thai guy with a head wound came in on a stretcher that kept collapsing. At first I thought he was crying, but I think he was just overjoyed to have made it to the party. The desk staff and RNs didn't pay for drinks and shimmied between paperwork. I made a rough count and there were more people drinking than having haemorrhages. Everyone had eleven aces to play. Sari - the vendor - gave the wounded young Thai a Leo beer. The young Thai skulled it. His skull was all busted up. He fell off the stretcher and they took him to away through double doors, probably to a more exclusive bar.

When the party subsided, Santi - a local of the fine medical/bar establishment - took us outside for the main show. He had a little towel and a guinea pig/furry breathing animal. It chirped and smiled and giggled and wished me great luck in my many endeavours. Santi winked, tickled the furry thing's belly and - Shazaam! - the hamster thing died instantly. Everyone applauded. It was brilliant, truly brilliant.

Then he brought it back to life. Everyone applauded. It was brilliant, truly brilliant. I asked him to kill it again so I could take a photo. Someone held my drink, Santi killed it again and I took the shot. Just look at that thing. I think it got up again.

Yeah, it did.

What a consummate professional the little bugger is/was/is/was/is.

I had another beer and went home. Taxi was 45 baht.

Tonight, I will reveal the results of my foray into the shady world of getting a full scale cabalistic khmer-yantra diagram tattoo. Said tattoo would be executed by a nine-fingered thera monk, cover my entire back and stop bullets. But first, a lobster eating a pepper in a martini glass.

Insert glib, sanctimonious comment here.

You just point and click.

Everything, everything, everything.

Not much of a smear campaign. They won.

Omnipresent hip youth is hip.

Serpico, a challenger emerges!

Happy Days is filmed before a live, yaba-fuelled studio audience.

The monks are there to be shot, the soldiers are there to pray.

A robust intellectual debate on Brother Number One rages in a Banglamphu toilet.