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    Your Best Guide to Bangkok

    A review of 'Comrade Aeon's Field Guide to Bangkok'
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    There are plenty of guidebooks to Bangkok; I’ve even written one myself--Top Ten Bangkok, published by Dorling Kindersley (DK) Books. The problem is, they’ve all become obsolete since the arrival of Covid, for several reasons.
     
    Firstly, there’s no demand for guidebooks as nobody’s travelling. Secondly, they’re out-of-date because most of the hotels, restaurants and attractions that they recommend have closed during the pandemic. And thirdly, researchers can’t travel to update their guides. 
     
    Yet fear not, for a recently published novel tells you all you need to know about Bangkok. Perhaps it’s fitting that in this topsy-turvy, ‘new normal’ world, we should eschew works of non-fiction and look to the world of fiction for insight into the Big Mango.
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    More stories from the Seventies

    Set in Venezuela, California and Thailand
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    Image by Thomas Oxford on Unsplash

    I’ve now posted the remaining stories from my collection titled In Transit, presented as part requirement for a Master’s in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University back in 1983.
     
    Two stories are set in Venezuela (sadly much changed since those days) and another in California. I’ve also added one more, set in North Thailand, which was not part of the original collection but seems to ‘explore the responses of various characters to fundamental changes in their personal world’ as the abstract for these stories claims.
     
    Happy reading—I’m eager for your comments.
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    In Transit

    Personal Publishing Social Issues Writing
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    A collection of short stories
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    Back in the 1980s, I studied an M.A in English (Emphasis: Creative Writing) at San Francisco State University. As part of the requirement for the degree, I wrote a collection of short stories called In Transit. 
     
    I recently pulled out a copy of this long-forgotten work, dusted off its yellowing pages, and have decided to share these stories on my website. They are mostly based on my own experiences and observations in Africa, South America and the USA, mixed with a heavy dose of imagination to be able to call it fiction. You’ll find these stories in a new section of my website called Short Stories, which I’ll be adding to as I dictate/transcribe the stories. I have begun with four stories, all set in Africa, and below is the first one--Beyond the End of the Road. I’ll be glad of any feedback that you would care to give. Happy reading!
                             
                Lost and found in the Sahara
     
    I stood, literally, at the end of the road. The fresh tarmac ended in a neat ledge above the golden sand, and a clear blue sky pressed down on all horizons. From here, tyre tracks fanned out southwards into the vastness of the Sahara. It was only mid-morning, but already the sand burned my toes, which stuck out of my sandals. I pulled my pack under the sparse shade of a tree beside the last petrol station for 400 kilometres. All was silent, except for the rustle of leaves in a limp breeze.
     
    Every journey has its point of no return and this had to be mine. I had followed the thin vein of my dream, a red line on a Michelin map of Africa, to where the road ended and the dust began. Beyond lay mystery—the infinite spaces of the Central Sahara, the biggest sandpit in the world and ghost of lush forests in former ages.
     
    I had arrived the night before at In Salah just in time to see the bus pull out for Tamanrasset, the next stop on my route. The official told me the next bus was not for ten days. I wandered around the oasis. Mosquitoes droned above a stagnant pond surrounded by crumbling mudhuts and sagging palms. I walked out into the desert before lying down to sleep on my mat. In Salah—if God wills it. If God wills it, I will get a ride out of here tomorrow. If He wills not, then I will not either.
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    That Blissful Smile

    Buddhism Personal Photography
    Enigmatic expressions on faces at the Bayon hint at a long-lost knowledge.
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    I was sorting through my images recently, looking for some good shots of Angkor to upload to image banks, when I was struck yet again by that blissful smile on the faces that gaze down from the towers of the Bayon, the centrepiece of Angkor Thom in Cambodia.
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    Originally over fifty towers featured four faces looking in the cardinal directions. Now only 37 towers remain, yet wherever you wander in the Bayon, these faces are looking at you.
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    The Sudanese Shuffle

    Personal Writing
    Dancing in the desert
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    Image by Alan J. Hendry (Unsplash)

    Way back in 1975, I embarked on a life of adventure. My first move was to leave my native England and take a job as a volunteer teacher in Sudan. I was part of a group of 50 native English speakers who were hired by the Sudanese government to improve the level of English in high schools throughout the country. I was assigned to teach in Sennar, a town on the Blue Nile to the south of Khartoum.
     
    I was supposed to spend a few days in Khartoum for orientation before taking a train to Sennar, but what with attempted coups and a heavy rain season, I had to spend a month in the capital before any trains started running. When I eventually got on the train and set out on my big adventure, I had plenty of time to write, so I got out my pen and began to scrawl the following words.
     
    The Sudanese Shuffle
     
    we were waiting for the train
    which was waiting for us
    until the train had waited for us
    and perhaps 
    we had been waiting for the train
    for some days now
    when we started.
     
    we were starting in the train
    when we stopped and waited
    and went again
    and when we went
    we hardly went at all
    while the wheels rolled around
    at the onset.
     
    after the onset we set out
    to the desert and all its dreams,
    while the wheels would roll round
    and then stop, and then sound 
    like they’d never be starting again.
    just as slow now as slowness can get
    and we still haven’t quite got there yet.