Tropical Heat Tour: Thailand Part 11
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Bangkok, Thailand
I spent another day off in the rec room of the Nat 2 Guest House hanging out with a couple of my new buddies. One of them, who I haven’t mentioned yet, is named Rio from Hiroshima, Japan. He is really soft spoken and polite, and, with his shaved head, looks like he could be a Buddhist. Surprisingly, he’s actually an atheist who likes hip-hop and R&B, and wearing a bit of jewelry. We had some nice, long talks about the differences between American and Japanese people, language and culture. I taught him a bunch of English pronunciation–including the infamous L and R sounds that Japanese people struggle with because it’s not common in their language. He even recorded me reciting some hard-to-pronounce words and the whole Roman alphabet into his iPod.
I also had a ton of fun kicking back with Takuya Ando, who brandishes a mohawk and a love for nearly every kind of music under the sun. I turned him onto some more stone cold classic albums, mostly on the rock end of the spectrum, including the first Minor Threat and Butthole Surfers records, The Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy, some Krautrock, and a few Japanese bands he hadn’t heard of like High Rise, White Heaven and Shizuka. Around 3:00 am, he went to grab a taxi to the airport for an early flight home to Japan. Some other regulars also departed at various times in the night, amid a flurry of frantic smiles, laughs and goodbye waves out in the alley.
Roll over photos for captions.
Words and photos ©2012 Arcane Candy.
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