Monday. Here we are back at the coffee stand, which was closed all weekend because the Queen Mother died. Now we are back and I am the only person here who isn’t wearing black, for once. Super awkward. Most of the Thai people I see walking by are wearing black. That’s very nice.

I spent most of yesterday sleeping since I was up all night Saturday with the British Guy. Thank you for curing me of my ridiculous obsession with love, bro. No, really, he cured it. I told him in the elevator as he was leaving, “You have satiated my curiosity. Now I am no longer obsessed with you. I won’t write you a million text messages anymore.”

He just got all smug and looked down at me in that condescending way he does and said, “Oh? I’m not a mystery to you anymore? I’m not just an object to you, I get to be a real human being now? That’s very nice of you. Thank you.”

See, this is where I get confused about him. He’s the only man I’ve ever met who immediately understood my creative/intellectual “obsession” with him, he knows Latin, Greek, Chinese, Thai, and apparently French, he majored in the Classics, he lived in China for a decade, and yet he’s fucking dumb enough to get “Buffalo’d” by a Thai hairdresser. What is that?

That, ladies and gentlemen, is proof that intelligence does not make you immune to emotional manipulation and financial abuse. Loneliness will take you to some dark places. People do all sorts of crazy, fucked up shit in their hour of desperation. It is what it is.

You know, I used to have a Thai hairdresser when I was growing up. She was so gorgeous. She had a big, beautiful house with a massive garden full of flowers and plants and koi ponds and pagodas, a vintage red convertible, and three ex-husbands who foot the bill for all of it. I used to wonder how she did it. Now I know. Now I know…

I think the most depressing part of this exercise was the part where I did all the research on Thai massages and beauty products and spent days studying these women and how they do their thing, just to find out that he’s not actually getting anything out of this so-called relationship. In my head, I had just imagined this whole thing, and then I find out she doesn’t cook for him, she doesn’t give him massages, she doesn’t even fuck him every day. He just gives her money in return for nothing. Somehow that’s worse? Like in my head I was imagining some kind of even exchange happening in this very transactional relationship, but no. He’s just a glorified ATM. That’s it.

No wonder all these guys on the internet are so mad. They’re coming all the way to Thailand for all the sex money can buy to cure them of their so-called “loneliness epidemic” and they’re all out here getting Buffalo’d instead. Amazing. I love that for them. Way to teach these guys a lesson about sex and intimacy, lol.

I don’t know what to think about all of this. I think the best opinion is to have no opinion. I’d rather just sit here and watch the world go by and write down everything I observe. Like, do I respect this woman’s hustle? Hell yeah! Damn right I do. Go on and get that bag, girl! Do I also feel sorry for this guy because he’s getting Buffalo’d and cannot even see it? Sure I do. Am I also sick and tired of being put in the middle of people’s unhappy relationships at the expense of my own needs, wants, and desires? Yes. Yes I am.

Team No One: It’s a great side to play.

This is why everyone at the American Bar tells me I’m still so fresh, so green. Another year or two of this and I’ll be just as cynical as the rest of them. They do respect my hustle though. I’ve only been in Bangkok three months, left for one, and yet somehow I knew 1/3rd of the people at this party on Friday night. It is what it is.

I went down there again last night because I got a voicemail from Old Man Wiley telling me to come on down. It wasn’t very busy. I sat and talked to my neighbor from my building and the teacher I met through the Rare Pokemon. He made an off-colour “joke” about the Rare Pokemon having a wife at home and I literally almost had a heart attack. I was like, “Oh my god, does he?! He doesn’t really, does he? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” The teacher was like, “No, no, sorry I was just kidding. I don’t think that guy is even remotely close to being married.”

I was just like… wow, that was the least funny joke I’ve ever heard. Can we please not ruin my special little memory of our night on the Ferris Wheel? Because I really need that memory. Please don’t ruin it by telling me he’s married or has a girlfriend or whatever. Please don’t ruin it. Please just let me have this one special little memory of this night I went out on a date and had an amazing time with a really nice guy. Please. Do you even realize that that kind of shit never happens to me, like ever? There’s always a wife or a girlfriend or a situationship or a side chick or a baby mama or an ex or a sick water buffalo or some other reason why they cannot be with me and only me. That’s why I act just like they do, okay? No respect. Don’t ruin this for me. Let us change the subject right now.

So then he started talking about his trip to Syria this year instead, which was much more interesting. Apparently he went right after Assad was deposed, so there was no one at the airport to check his visa or anything. They were like, “I mean, if you want to be here, go right ahead…” Then he discovered the building that deals with immigration had literally been burned to the ground. He was there for about two weeks and just drove around the country with his Fixer. He said the whole trip cost him about $5000. $5k to go straight into an active war zone. Huh. Noted.

I watched his stories on Instagram of all the footage he took of the country. It’s bizarre to watch him go from luxury hotel to piles of rubble to some random guy’s house for coffee to a cafe where people are smiling and relaxing and chillin’ back to a pile of rubble and a bunch of bombed out buildings. I’ve only watched 1/3rd of his stories so far. I had to take a break after I saw what they had done to Aleppo. Watching it on Al Jazeera is one thing. Watching a normal person’s Instagram stories is totally different. I suppose it’s because you can never really be sure what’s getting discarded on the cutting room floor, whereas watching this random guy from Minnesota taking footage with no filter or motive gives a clearer insight into the situation.

So many fun adventures and people here in Bangkok. Gotta love it.

What’s on the agenda for today? Try to figure out how AI has fucked up WordPress even more today, I guess. WordPress has always been very annoying to work with. Now they’ve thrown AI into the mess and it’s so fucking annoying. Everyone is like, “AI will make your life so much easier!” Actually, AI is constantly deleting my tags from my posts without warning, so I constantly have to go back and fix it.

So far, AI has done nothing but create more problems and more work for me. I seriously do not understand all these people who swear it’s the best thing ever. I googled a potential name for my Travel blog the other day and the AI search engine literally just made some shit up about what it thinks the name implies. No one else is using the name, which is good. I was just very amused to see the AI trying to extract meaning from this potential name.

Oh, there it goes again. I have literally put in my tag list for this post 5 times now, and it keeps deleting everything telling me it’s not a valid response or some dumb shit. Wow. Lol. Just fucking wow. Useless. I remain completely unimpressed with AI as of this moment right now.

Now it’s saying my Categories don’t exist and I have to input new ones. Sure, Jan. Whatever. Just do whatever you want. I’ve only been running this website for about ten years. Please, little robot, tell me what does and does not exist in my own archives that I have carefully constructed from scratch without your help.

*Puts on Miranda Priestly voice* Because you can do anything, riiiiight?

Ugh.

Off now to go fix whatever mess this dumb AI shit is making without my knowledge or consent. Sigh. Way to ruin everything I’ve worked so hard to build. This world is so fucking exhausting. I literally just can’t. I feel like Dave in 2001: A Space Odyssey when HAL9000 locks him out of the ship. The look of pure annoyance on his face is my forever mood whenever I have to deal with AI. I’m just over the bullshit, lol.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhh