The Neighborhood and New Orleans

Well we have been here for two weeks now and the whole world outside of Bangkok seems to be going to hell in a handbasket set on overdrive.

In the south of Thailand there is a low level war going on, in which between 10 and 20 people are killed per week. Jerro and I have been watching with fascinated repulsion images of New Orleans and constantly surprised by the agonized observation of American and British commentators that this is happening in an American City. As though shit is something that happens elsewhere than America. Over here in Thailand the newspapers have been filled with a sort of resigned satisfaction that shit does happen anywhere and if America is not immune to it then it makes the shit that happens here seem a little less brutal and tragic.

So in keeping with the theory that shit happens, Jerro decided it might be fun to photograph the neighborhood between the hotel and the internet cafe where he publishes this blog, before it is levelled by a hurricane flooded by a Tsunami or devastated by a car bomb. I have tried telling him that cannot happen, but he has decided to err on the side of paranoia just in cas.