First entry continued

I was talking about the food and then went off to eat some. We just had lunch at Poe and Simon's house south of town. It's a gorgeous Bauhaus job, open and airy, with tropical trees and flowers climbing in and out of its many openings. More on them later.
Back to Bangkok: Joe will talk a lot about food, so I'll just say that the culinary highlights so far have been the deep-fried watercress and the luscious soups---including tom kah gai (coconut and lime chicken soup) made with actual fresh galanga root that is unavailable in the US. Oddest delicious dish: fried morning glory vines. Worst culinary idea we've heard about but haven't tried yet: bird saliva soup.
Politics: We're trying to decipher this. The September military coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was popular at the time---he's a crook, apparently---though the new year's eve bombings in Bangkok that killed two and injured dozens have caused a loss of confidence in the new military-backed government. Shinawatra supporters are believed to be behind the attacks. Today's Bangkok Post reports on a poll that says 64 percent of Thais are "furious" with the bombers. Two political certainties: the king, on the throne for 60 years, is revered; the crown prince is not. Stay tuned.
About you-may-be-wondering: Yes, Bangkok is the sex tourism capital of the world. It's quite a spectacle. While Thais apparently employ sexual intercourse for purposes of procreation, sex here is mainly one of the higher forms of play. And Thais love play---"sanuk." The poor pope would fall over dead. This sounds and is refreshing, but the resulting commercial aspects of unfraught sexuality are unnerving. Child prostitution is rare here and severely punished, but at 18 and over it's anything goes. We visited the renowned Patpong district of Bangkok, where bar girls fire ping pong balls from between their legs at cheering audiences and are readily available for hire after the show. Joe and I chose, however, a venue called Dream Boys and took in what the Thais, with customary elegant simplicity, call a "fuck show." Let me just say that in the annals of gay low spectacle---Provincetown, eat your heart out!---this "choreographed" multi-actor performance achieved a kind of hilarious majesty I had not dreamed possible. And Andrew Lloyd Webber's music has finally found the venue for which I believe it has long been destined.