John Stupart.com

A gentle snow storm in Hokkaido.

After returning from an awesome trip to South East Asia with sibling and friends, the now-fully winterized Hokkaido was a stark reminder as to the rather different weather we experience here. On speaking with several JET folks both in Hokkaido and further afield on the mainland, it seems the January post-holiday blues are in full effect. Nonetheless, myself and my neighbouring colleague Chris had long-ago planned to do as much skiing (Chris) and snowboarding (me) as possible in order to avoid said depressions! And let me now say, it’s freaking awesome!

Ok, to be fair, the first day is a bastard. I don’t think I have ever fallen over as much in such a small timeframe in my life. Oddly, I was reminded of when I started to learn golf and experienced a similar level of frustration and humiliation. Nothing says ‘you suck’ quite like falling down a slope like a ragdoll while eight year old Japanese kids zoom past me laughing their asses off at the gaijin strugglging to get back onto his feet and down the hill. It’s a pain, and it’s difficult, and my body doesn’t know how to lean right against the board without catching the edge and falling over like a clown. And there‘s the physical pain as well. Ice hurts. It reaaaally hurts. On one particularly bad wipeout I could’ve sworn I’d broken my bum. Twisted knee, stiff and sore muscles and being perpetually cold and wet and covered in snow from head to toe. The first day, much like the Normandy invasion, was tricky. Needless to say, I slept well that night!

The second time, however, is when snowboarding becomes fun. I don’t quite know how I did it, but at some point your body pretty much gets sick and tired of you falling down like an ass and kinda switches into ‘boarding mode’. Once this physiological switch turned on, I found myself carving back an forth down the slope in utter childish glee. Whereas before I had absolutely no control over my descent, I found myself heading for the lumpy bits of snow that aren’t ploughed at breakneck speed, creating a fountain of powder behind me. Truly snowboarding is fantastically enjoyable once the basics sink in and some balance is achieved. Not to mention what great exercise it is. Even now, 2 days later, my legs are stiff from the exertion. If anything, snowboarding has reminded me how important sport is to me and how much I enjoy it. This is the first time in 15 years that I haven’t played hockey for a club or team, and I think I’d actually forgotten what fun it is to play sport! SO! If you live in a winter snowland and find yourself getting cabin fever, go rent a board and play outside. It’ll do you the world of good!

Aside from snowboarding, the past week or so has been spent reacclimatizing to Japan, enjoying the comforts of home but missing the enjoyment of an overseas holiday, and seeing sea lions! Yes indeed, near Wakkanai there is a small dock that plays host to a gaggle (herd?) of sea lions, who seem to think the -15 degree weather up north is preferable to wherever the hell it is they come from. Their fat and lazy demeanor was quite hilarious, and watching them ‘playing’ in the frigid ocean water was amusing right up until I lost all feeling in my face thanks to the cold and opted to retreat back into the car. It also turns out Wakkanai has the world’s most depressing aquarium which, after the bitter-sweet experience of Cambodia, should be a blast in the coming weeks!

Sea lions!

So, in summary:
#1 Snowboarding breaks your bum and associated ligaments
#2 Snowboarding is AWESOME!
#3 Skiers are annoying, with their poles and lame thin instruments and dorky pants
#4 Sea lions are as funny as they look.

It’s been a while since my last entry, but I’ve been trying in absolute vain to describe the experiences of the Killing Fields in Cambodia, as well as the ‘torture museum’. It’s difficult to describe not because I have forgotten or cannot recall what they were about, or that they were too shocking for my sensibilities, but rather that I feel I should try and describe precisely what it is I felt on that rather depressing day in Phnom Penh.

The Killing Fields are small. Much smaller than I’d expected. One would think killing about 100 people a day for five years would have required a lot more space and equipment, but the Khmer Rouge were surprisingly Spartan in their savage practices. About the size of two soccer fields, half of which is submerged in swampy water, the grassy meadow that remains is a bit deceptive. You’d almost be forgiven for thinking that the fields were simply a poorly-tilled farmland once upon a time. The genocide occurred several decades ago, so there is obviously a lot of growth and natural encroachment, resulting in depressions that are covered in grass and little flowers. It’s almost a pleasant picnic spot in the rather brown and harsh rural area that so characterizes Cambodia.

Except, of course, for the 20m high charnel filled with human skulls. That tower serves as the most obvious reminder of the sheer brutality of the maoist-inspired communist ‘reform’, resulting in anyone with even a smidgen of education or money being led to the field and smacked in the head with a pickaxe, bamboo, or anything at hand. The methods of the killing were simple but effective. Khmer cadres would ship bus loads of ‘bourgeois’ enemies of the state to this field and others, blindfolded and restrained, lead them up to a pit/grave, and then execute them. To make sure all were dead, a cadre would work amongst the dead and dying in the pit and slit their throats. Delightful stuff. This went on for years…

… But the Killing Fields doesn’t elicit a great amount of sorrow in me, or even sadness. I had expected these feelings above all else to surface when we set out that day, but they played a distinct second fiddle to the profound anger I felt. The bodies are either still buried in the marsh or neatly stacked in the charnel tower, and the shallow graves are all green with swarms of brightly-coloured butterflies fluttering about, so it’s a bit difficult to get ‘sad’ about it. Sure there are some traces, like clothes still stuck in the ground and some bones and teeth laying about, but it’s generally viewed with a detachment that disturbed even me, someone who has raised callousness to a new level! So I was angry instead. But angry at what, exactly? The human being in me felt a bit of hostility to the people who did this. Those folks with the pickaxes and clubs who had to build a detention camp because they couldn’t kill all the innocents in one day’s work. But mostly I was just angry at the absurdity of it all.

The Cambodian genocide was a tragedy, no doubt, but I think what really got me is that this happened again, and again, and again throughout the world, irrespective of race, culture and religion. Genocide truly is a major argument as to how people are the same all over the world. Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Albania, Nazi Germany and Communist China, all have committed horrendous acts that overshadow the relatively paltry number killed in Cambodia’s purge. But you’d think people would learn? Not the animals who commit these atrocities, but the rest of the ‘civilised’ world who are supposed to stop these things. Each and every time genocide has broken out the modern world steps back and feigns ignorance until the killing is over, and then floods the world with apologies and rice bags for the survivors, resulting in a flood of new books on the shelves from UN generals and priests in rural Rwanda telling of how they were powerless to stop the bloodshed. This, quite simply, is bullshit.

Even now there is little doubt that genocide is occurring in Darfur, and what is happening? Paltry peacekeeping forces sponsored by the UN that are so toothless and constrained by the rules in which they must operate as to render them ineffectual, political leaders playing down the violence and Human Rights NGO’s that are so consumed by their own self-righteousness that they would prefer to sit on a panel and whine for two years instead of actually doing something about it. When the Human Rights Council in Geneva takes six months just to decide on a timetable and agenda for their next session, you know something is truly wrong at the top of the organizations who are designed to combat these kinds of acts.

Now I am a realist in political terms, so I can understand how states outside of these affected regions really don’t care unless there’s something in it for them. Likewise I doubt the frothy-mouthed civilians in America would dare let their military embark on another tough military operation, regardless of what the objective is, but that doesn’t make it right. Self-centered global politics doesn’t condone genocide, nor should it ever. And yet it does, time and time again.

Now it sounds like a political rant, but these are the exact kind of thoughts I experienced whilst at the Killing Fields and staring at the still-bloodstained floors of the torture halls in the city. I can only be so angry against the thousands of brainwashed Khmer Rouge communists who committed these acts, but I reserve my utmost hatred for all the things that allows genocide to happen, again and again and again. For the Khmer Rouge (now ‘reformed’ of course) who are still in government positions to the Chinese foreign policy that would actively sell AK47’s to the Sudanese in exchange for oil rights to the many IGO’s that sit for endless months and years in coference halls swilling expensive mineral water and wine while they feign some kind of half-hearted ‘concern’ about human rights abuses in these countries. It’s all bullshit, and it will all happen again, guaranteed. Nothing has changed in the past 40 years since the Cambodian genocide, and nothing will change in the next 40 which will somehow convince the world that preventing genocide is something to be encouraged.

And that is what I think I was really angry at when I was looking at the grassy undulations that were once the scene of daily atrocities; the absolute and sheer futility of it all. I was angry because I knew that for all our ‘development’ as a human race we still treat each other like animals, fit for nothing but labour and slaughter. This fundamental hasn’t changed so far in our history, and I doubt it will for the foreseeable future. I hate that genocide happens, but above all I hate that we’re not disturbed enough about it to the point where it doesn’t happen again.

A more cheerful entry soon! John has been learning to snowboard! More details soon!!! – John

After several days spent in Bangkok enjoying Khao San road and the local museums, galleries and Grand Palace (an entire day trip of splendour in itself) the time was right to head to the beach. In the pamphlets and brochures, Pattaya is a glorious stretch of white sandy beaches and azure ocean, replete with smiling locals and finely-bronzed tourists enjoying the wide open oceanside. Much like the rest of Thailand, really, Pattaya is not what it looks like. Nothing, in fact, could have prepared me for the sights that awaited me the moment I stepped off the shuttle bus.

Vegas Dave

Once off the shuttle, we were promptly told by our now-paid transport service that they cannot take us as far as Jomtien Lodge, the place where I had hoped we could locate easily and quickly. Leaving the money-grubbing tourist agency behind, we boarded the nearest beach taxi vehicle. The Pattaya beach taxis are essentially bakkie’s rigged with a canopied back, replete with padded seating for 8-12 passengers. Upon boarding, I was seated opposite a thin-looking American flanked by two of his fine escorts. Once off down the road, the American enquired as my nationality. After replying, he remarked “so you speak English, right?”. What then followed was a rather one-sided dialogue between myself and this man, who swiftly introduced himself as ‘Vegas Dave’ and that he was a famous dude back in the states. Jolly good. Then Vegas Dave exclaimed “Man I could sure use some blow right now.” The taxi’s engine was loud, so I figured I’d maybe misheard this good fellow. Surely he wasn’t talking about a hankering for some fine Bolivian Marching Powder? Alas, Vegas Dave then beamed “actually, I think I have some with me! Do you want some?” as he ruffled through his baggy shorts for his packet of cocaine. I declined, being not particularly partial to habitual drug use and all that. This was Pattaya after 5 minutes.

It turned out Vegas Dave was a 46 year-old American who had been staying in Pattaya for about two weeks, rutting with anything and everything, snorting coke and generally having a grand old time. He’d invited me to come play at his house – the sky lounge in a 5 star hotel on the beach – but I suffer from vertigo, so I politely declined, whilst trying not to appear disturbed that this drug-addled sex-fiend was my new best friend. My last sight of Vegas Dave was of his pale bum stumbling out of the taxi while his two Thai prostitutes tried in desperation to pull his pants up. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what Pattaya is about…

The beachfront is inhabited by a fair mix of English, German, Russian, Portuguese and other european geriatrics, the majority of whome are accompanied by seriously underaged Thai escorts, all clambering for their patron’s money. The beach was a crowded morass of beach chairs, jetskis and shady-looking pimps trying to sell you anything from hookers to speedboat rides. Pot-bellied Germanics dressed in nothing but a speedo is an image that will stay with me to my dying days. The bars and restuarants are full of these people, all with the same purpose. The malls and fast-food chains are packed with horrid little chav children, scoffing Burger King and generally acting like little savages while their parents run off on some lewd adventure. If I ever have children, and they wear gold neck chains and gaudy rings, so help me god I will put them up for adoption!

I realise many Europeans like to travel to the beach for a holiday in the sun and surf, but I honestly had no idea that there were places in this world where they fly halfway around the world in order to hire a Thai girl a third of their age and prance about in speedos, swigging beer and letting their filthy offspring run around like feral cats.
At first I was a bit shocked, to be sure. Vegas Dave was interesting, but I’d foolishly assumed it was a minor, albeit colourful, experience. But Vegas Dave, if anything, is the lord of his kingdom, rather than a minor anomaly. For the first time in a long, long while, I found myself offended. Well and truly offended. As long as I live I think I shall hold Pattaya as the bastion of vice and sin that I shall never, ever condone or accept. The level of depravity contained in that 2km stretch of beach represents to me the ultimate corruption of Thailand by the tourist industry. The place is completely ruined by tourism, and yet it thrives only because of the voracious appetites of the European pensioners. During the Vietnam War Pattaya was the only airforce base in Thailand that could host B52 bombers, thus making it a large port of call for US forces, and therefore creating a burgeoning tourist industry. Much like Bangkok, the US presence ignited the fires of tourism that have ultimately overtaken Thailand and has begun corrupting it indefinitely.

Pattaya is the epitome of this corruption. Certainly in the South of Thailand the coast has been regulated somewhat more responsibly, and I cannot draw too general a picture. But ultimately I have to wonder what other once-wonderful locations have been utterly spoiled by the developed world’s hunger for sex, sun and surf.