Frivolous Universe

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The cry of the guitar / begins. / The wineglasses of dawn / are broken. / The cry of the guitar / begins. 

Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, wooden snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310

“La Guitarra” from Poem of the Deep Song, in its intuitive translation from the Spanish by Ralph Angel: “Cante jondo. Deep Song. A poem meant to be sung, not with a pretty voice but with a cry. A rustic form of flamenco. A poem by Federico García Lorca written in 1921 when he was only twenty-three and had but fifteen years left to live before the Franco regime murdered him in the hills of Granada.”

The world has prose enough. What we need is poetry, which, as Lorca averred, is cante jondo. Last week I picked up a guitar for the first time. As I fumbled through my new cords–G, C, D, and F–I discovered that through song I could find what I have been missing since I moved to Bangkok: equipoise. The stillness of a Confucian portrait, the momentary captivity enforced by light rain and slow shutter speeds:

 Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310

I have three more days at my current job. I have no idea what I will be doing next; what I do know is that writing ad copy for hoteliers has corroded my voice. Although my injuries are self-inflicted, I cannot allow them to progress. I have a voice that is meant to tell stories, and the songs are on my back.

It’s useless / to quiet it. / Impossible / to quiet it. / It cries on monotonously, / the way water cries, / the way wind / cries over a first snowfall. 

It amazes me what a flash of light can bring to the foreground: The dustless space of Chinese brush paintings. Dragon red. Jade green in the form of a plastic leg. The clipped calligraphy of a man’s shoe.

Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310

It’s useless / to quiet it. 

 Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, wooden snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310

It cries / for the distance. 

 Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, wooden snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310, man in black

For the sand of the incendiary South / that begs for white camellias. 

 Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, wooden snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310

It cries for an arrow without a target, / an afternoon without a morning, 

 Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, wooden snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310, red Chinese lantern

for the first bird / dead on the branch. 

 Kim Philley, Frivolous Universe, FU, Frivolous Universe.com, Chinatown Bangkok, Thailand, Southeast Asian fashion, street style, Cece suede ballet flat J.Crew, Bangkok guitar shops, Made in Hoi An, vintage leather clutch, Vietnamese tailoring, red dress, linen dresses, wooden snake bracelet, Yamaha acoustic guitars, Yamaha F310

Oh guitar! / Heart sorely wounded / by five swords.

linen dress: tailor-made by the talented Pin-Pin (Hoi An, Vietnam); Cece suede ballet flats: J.Crew; wooden snake bracelet: vintage Indonesia; 1970s leather clutch: In Retrospect (Boise, Idaho); black-and-white cotton scarf: Russian Market (Phnom Penh, Cambodia); guitar: Yamaha F310 (Made in Indonesia)

Photos and bilingual advice on buying a guitar in Chinatown by Tetoro

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All languages are welcome on Bangkok’s Khao San Road, including Drunkard. — Susan Orlean, “The Place to Disappear”

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market

They thought Khao San was horrible because it was so crowded and loud and the room in the guesthouse was so dingy, but it was brilliant, too, because it was so inexpensive, and there were free movies playing at all the bars, and because they’d already run into two friends from home.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market

It was as if the strangeness of where they were and what they were doing were absolutely ordinary: as if there were no large, smelly drunk sprawled in front of them, as if it were quite unexceptional to be three Scottish girls drinking Australian beer in Thailand on their way to Laos, and as if the world were the size of a peanut-something as compact as that, something that easy to pick up, shell, consume, as long as you were young and sturdy and brave.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market

peekaboo-shoulder dress: Terminal 21, Bangkok

navy leather wedge sandals: custom-made for my size-41 feet at mosstories, Terminal 21

If you spend any time on Khao San Road, you will come to believe that this is true. Finally, the hairdresser glanced at the man, who had not moved. “Hello, sir?” she said, leaning toward his ear. “Hello? Can you hear me? Can I ask you something important? Do you remember where you’re from?”

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market

jingle-jangle earrings: Lumphini street stall

dozen roses: some Khao San rando handed them to me

Thailand, the most pliant of places, has always accommodated even the rudest of visitors.

Thailand, the most pliant of places, has always accommodated even the rudest of visitors.

éléphant! Stop going up Pedro’s butt!

For hundreds of years, it was the junction between Chinese, Burmese, Indian, Khmer, and Vietnamese traders. Many Americans first came to know Bangkok as the comfort lounge for troops in Vietnam, and, later, as the capital of sex tourism. Starting in the early eighties, when foreigners started trekking to such places as Myanmar and Tibet and Vietnam, Thailand took on another hostessing job, because Bangkok was the safest, easiest, most Westernized place from which to launch a trip through Asia.
Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

Altogether, they have turned Khao San into a new sort of place-not really Thai anymore, barely Asian, overwhelmingly young, palpably transient, and anchored in the world by the Internet, where there is no actual time and no actual location.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

I have a persistent fantasy that involves Khao San. In it, a middle-aged middlebrow middle manager from Phoenix is deposited at the western end of the road, near the Chanasongkhran police booth. He is a shocking sight, dressed in a blue business suit and a red tie and a white Oxford shirt, carrying a Hartmann briefcase, and wearing a Timex. He wanders through the snarl of peddlers’ carts and trinket booths. First, he discards his suit for batik drawstring trousers and a hemp vest and a Che Guevara T-shirt, or knock-off Timberland cargo shorts and a Japanimation tank top, and he sells his Timex to a guy with a sign that says “We buy something/camera/tent/sleeping bag/walkman/backpack/Swiss knife.”

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

owl t-shirt: Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok

braided gold earrings & bracelet: mosstories, Terminal 21

gold-plated Hanuman amulet: Chinatown, Bangkok

He then gets a leather thong bracelet for one wrist and a silver cuff for the other, stops at Golden Lotus Tattoo for a few Chinese characters on his shoulder, gets his eyebrow pierced at Herbal House Healthy Center, has blond extensions braided into his hair, trades his briefcase for a Stssy backpack and a Hmong fabric waistpack, watches twenty minutes of “The Phantom Menace” or “The Blair Witch Project” at Buddy Beer, goes into Hello Internet Caf and registers as “zenmasterbob” on hotmail.com, falls in love with a Norwegian aromatherapist he meets in the communal shower at Joe Guest House, takes off with her on a trek through East Timor, and is never seen again.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

Something about Khao San Road makes you feel as though it could eat you alive. The junkies and the glue-sniffers lurking in the alleys are part of it, and so are the clean-cut kids with stiff, Ecstasy-fuelled grins dancing at the cafs; the aimlessness that pervades the place is both pleasantly spacey and a little scary when you glimpse an especially blank face. Travellers do vanish in all sorts of ways.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

The day begins at night on Khan San Road . . . . Around midnight, I ran into the South African English teacher from Taiwan who had been on her way back from massage school in northern Thailand the other time I’d met her. Seeing her again was both a shock and not a shock, because Khao San is so transitory a place that you imagine each encounter there to be singular, but then you realize that the world is small and this particular world of young adventurers is smaller yet, and that there is nothing extraordinary about seeing the same people, because their great adventures tend to take them to the same few places over and over again. Her name was Elizabeth, and she and I stopped at a street vender and bought corn on the cob and sat on a curb near My House Guest House to eat. This time she’d just come back from a full-moon party on the southern Thai island of Koh Phangan, a party of two thousand travellers, most of them high on Ecstasy or pot or psychedelics, painting a herd of oxen with Day-Glo colors and dancing for hours on the edge of the sea.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

I HEART BANGKOK canvas tote: Chatuchak Weekend Market

She now had a terrible headache, but she didn’t think it was from the drugs or the late hours. She blamed a Sikh psychic she’d met that morning on Khao San who had tricked her into paying him a hundred dollars so he wouldn’t curse her karma.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

Pedro, I told you that Tequila Sunrise would give me a hangover — gosh!

Hi-So Belgian sunglasses: Terminal 21

floral dress: Made in Hoi An, Vietnam, by Pin-Pin

wooden snake bracelet: Indonesian antique

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Pedro, Khoa San Road, Bangkok, street style, Thai fashion, Asia Street Style, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Terminal 21, mosstories, Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak Weekend Market, Susan Orlean, The New Yorker

 Whatev, Napoleon. Last night was HOT.

sleeveless t: Hey Pilgrim, Chatuchak

aviators: Rayban

earrings: Lumphini street stall

Burmese smelling salts: Burma. Duh.

 

Photos by Vanessa Boots, a.k.a. Pedro, and unmentionable Khao San randos

All text not in bold is excerpted from Susan Orlean’s essay for The New Yorker, “The Place to Disappear”  (January 7, 2000)


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Bangkok is a city of extremes. One day you’re hospitalized with an acute respiratory tract infection; 48-hours later you’re on top of the world.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

Literally. Sipping Brut because Vertigo’s Moët et Chandon is slightly outside your 20-baht-fashion price point and taking in the Moon Bar’s lightning rod’s-eye views.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

All this hat-trick requires is one melodramatic F’book status update and a friend who is gorgeous enough to hop the next available flight from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. During the Civil War the Army of the James had Clara Barton. I have Pedro. There are friends and then there are friends. Nobody dies on Pedro’s watch, and the sickbed service includes California Brut.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

Sexy Maitre d’: Brown Herringbone dress tailored by the talented Pin-Pin of Hoi An, Vietnam

Wide belt: COLOR, Phnom Penh’s first and only vintage clothing store

What can I say? I followed the Thai doctor’s orders. She gave me a bag of drugs and wrote two recommendations on my Rx: “change environment” and “fresh air.” I wish this blog could convey the sound of me laughing my ass off.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

Breathe the fresh air in Bangkok — doctor’s orders! And while you’re at it, enjoy a kosher cheeseburger! With so many impossibilities at my fingertips to restore me to hale and hearty, I barely knew where to begin.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

Like Smilla’s varieties of snow, Bangkok is a smorgasbord of air: putrid air, steam bath air, pungent-garbage-underfoot air, heavy-particulate-matter air, Freoned-within-an-inch-of-your-life air, hooker-just-blew-menthol-in-my-face air, but fresh air?

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

For such an ethereal commodity there’s only one thing to do. Scale Mount Meru or climb the sixty-odd floors to the Banyan Tree’s rooftop. Both are mythical places, but only one serves the bubbly.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

And while you’re up there, definitely check out the eye candy.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

Braided gold earrings & bracelet: mosstories, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Faux pearl friendship ring: Ciga Shop, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

 Lil’ Black Dress: COLOR, Phnom Penh’s new vintage store — check ’em out!

There’s nothing like a 2:00 A.M. bathroom photo shoot to bring out the minx in me. Take an Asian hemline and press it to my mantis gams and subtly slutty is what you get.

Belt: COLOR, Phnom Penh's first vintage clothing store

 Jingle-jangle earrings: Lumphini MRT street stall, Bangkok (for 20 baht, a.k.a. 65 cents)

Leather clutch: In Retrospect, Boise

Faux pearl friendship ring: Ciga Shop, Terminal 21, Bangkok

Yeah, I’m finally writing about the clothes.

Kim Philley, Vanessa Boots, Napoleon, Pedro, Frivolous Universe, http://http://www.frivolousuniverse.com/, Asian street style, Bangkok street style, Thai fashion, Vertigo bar, Banyan Tree Hotel, Bangkok

The best thing about taking the high road to recovery? At the end of the evening, the concierge at the Banyan Tree gave me — a Brut-swilling non-guest — a free bottle of fancy hotel water. “Water from my heart,” he said.

 

I HEART THAILAND

I HEART VANESSA BOOTS, A.K.A. PEDRO — thanks again for the epic pics and the eleventh hour rescue!

 

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