Greetings From Bangkok: This is the first edition of a semi-sporadic newsletter / travelogue of Chris and Maureen's year in Bangkok (while Mo researches "men from the rural / poor northeast who migrate to Bangkok to drive taxi cabs). We've been here about 7 weeks now and are getting settled in. ON THE STREET: We are living in the Starry Place on the 6th floor a corner apartment-several cats sleep on the roof below us. There is a security guard in the front of the building that during the day is a young man yet once night falls he seems to age 30 years and then in the morning "de-age." I have yet to catch him in his transformation, but hope to soon. We live off of the Street Rang Nam. It is a busy street, but there are lots of trees and both sides are filled with the usual street level activities of Bangkok, eating and drinking. Want steamed corn, ice cold pineapple, noodle soup, deep fried grasshoppers, Fanta in a plastic bag? The other day I saw two guys on a bicycle riding down the street with a full on smoking hibachi charcoal grill covered with chicken in the basket on the front of the bike. The day before there was an elephant walking down the street. HERBAL WHISKEY! There is also the friendly neighborhood herbal whiskey stand. Herbal Whiskey is cheap rice whiskey that has all kinds of herbs soaked in it. For 10B (25 cents), they'll ladle you shot glass full out of a big jar murky with floating herbs. I believe if you supply your own empty red bull bottle they will fill one up for "takeaway" business. When I approached the stand, several motorcycle taxi drivers in their orange coded vests gathered around to see if I would drink it. I asked which one tasted the best and the whiskey seller wearing a "pharmacist" jackets pointed to the middle one of the three jars. He then took me aside, Maureen was with me, and using his index finger he demonstrated the "effects" of the formula by straightened his finger upwards and then he began to laugh. I understood at once. Ordered the #2 and knocked it right back. It had a fiery herbal pepper taste that had a thick numb effect on the mouth. Not so much a taste as a sensation. I will have to return to try the other "formulas." BANGKOK OPEN mic NIGHT Last week I went to the Bangkok Poetry Open mic (English language) at the Goethe Institute. Though the usual open mic stereotypes showed up in fine form (glamorous 50 something woman dressed in black with big jewelry with very short hair read a "poem" that didn't "rhyme" about "meditation, a grizzled 50 something man in striped oxford shirt and lenscrafter's second pair free glasses read several long ballads on topics ranging from "dark eyed Lek the farmer girl who loved a man as well as she could" as she became a bar girl and met a "tragic end" to a story about a "farrang" Thai word for "foreigner" who was thrown out of a window) the thing that was mind blowing was the "international jett-sett vibe to the audience ­ very trendy and as Maureen noted there must be $10,000 dollars worth of designer eyewear in this room. The highlight of the reading was a narrative by Martin called "The time I met the Buddha but not the one you think." about working on a pig farm in southern England for a summer job. Buddha was the fat bastard owner (everyone called him that). Anyway, he had a plan to paint a version of Matisse's the dance but with pigs on the white fence that surrounded the farm (even had the Buddha's permission) but the Buddha fell under some kind of Pig Farming investigation and the work had to be scrapped. Some Sound at (featuring the all night party chickens of Chaing Mai! + Monks from the Grand Palace). http://www.pisor-industries.org/bkk/Thail_SC_1.mp3 That's all for now. Please send questions & queries with the subject: "Dear Chief" to the email address supplied above.