T A B L E_T A L K What is it about Paris that makes is so je ne sais quoi? Theorize and romanticize in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y I got it online, part 2 By Jenn Shreve Comparing the pros and cons of four Internet travel services (02/02/98) I got it online, part 1 By Jenn Shreve There really are advantages to making your travel plans on the Web (01/30/98) America, grow up! By David Downie The French and Italians decry the Clinton brouhaha (01/29/98) Passages By Ralph McCarthy Four views of the expat's life in Japan (01/28/98) Paradise found By Tracy Johnston An unspoiled oasis in the Egyptian desert (01/27/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Road warrior archives		__________f e a r ,__D r u g s _________________a n d__s o c c e r__i n__A s i a FROM A THAI BEACH TO A NEPALESE SPORTS FIELD, A REPORTER IMMERSES HIMSELF IN THE HEDONISTIC EXPAT SCENE. __________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - __________BY KARL TARO GREENFELD Gulf of Siam, 1993 I lean the motorcycle on its kickstand, the weight of the 150cc Honda settling onto the spring-loaded metal with a slow groan. It is mid-day on a coastal macadam road on a small island somewhere in the Gulf of Siam. The sun is bright, and I am sweating through a Singha tank top, the black dye from the shirt running down my cut-off army pants and mingling with the rivulets of blood that now stream from my calf. I have been in a motorcycle wreck. A mile back, on an elbow of dirt road, where the rocks and sand seemed to open up beneath the front tire of my Honda and sent me sprawling. For a moment I was suspended in air, surprised to be viewing my handlebars from above, and then I was skidding along the hard dirt, ripping up my calf and mingling a streak of dirt, dust and pebbles with the blood that immediately bubbled up around the strips of dislodged flesh. I remembered the motorcycle wheel, the clutch still engaged, spinning inches from my ear, an evil, buzzing sound like a surgeon's saw cutting through rib cage. I had been on heroin when I crashed, having sniffed a small dose of whitish powder, plentiful and cheap here in Thailand. I now do not recall how I righted the motorcycle and climbed on for the mile ride to the cluster of bungalows beside the road. I only remember resting the motorcycle on its stand and sitting in the shade, shooing flies away from my wound, while a Thai waiter set down an orange soda in front of me. The air smelled like a combination of chicken shit, dust and body odor, an earthy smell that implies by its rancidness the infectious agents borne aloft on this hot breeze. Gingerly rising from the bamboo stool, I stumble over a stone divider and make my way to the deserted beach, where a few French women are sunbathing and reading 2-month-old, waterlogged copies of Paris Match. As I collapse in the sand, I realize I have lost my sunglasses at the scene of the accident. Even through my closed eyes, I can see an outline of the hot ball of sun. I turn over onto my side, my bloody calf pushing painfully into the sand, and I begin to shiver. I have been out here for years, traveling and partying throughout the Far East. Now I feel this has all gone wrong. The drugs. This trip. Now this accident. "Karl?" A woman's voice asks. I open my eyes. Dina stands above me, her face backlit by the sun. She wears a tie-dye bikini top, black sarong and man's Rolex Daytona. "You've got the shakes, eh?" She speaks in a British accent, her voice a soothing, warm reminder of a good place, a home -- someone's home -- far away. Someplace I have never been. Then she sees my leg. "Bloody hell, what have you done to yourself?" My eyes adjust to the light and I can make out her small mouth, her pert nose, her almost Chinese eyes. "Motorcycle accident." "Get up. Let's scrub that out. It's gonna turn septic on you." I keep my eyes closed. I am still shivering. "Jesus, Dina, I'm so fucking scared." She doesn't say anything for a moment, and I can hear the waves breaking and what sounds like wind shimmying through palm fronds and the thwacking sound of someone chopping pineapple on a wooden plank. "Your fears," she says, "they're like a person you keep seeing over and over again. They follow you until you find a way not to be afraid anymore. Now let's get you cleaned up." Kathmandu, 1996 I was stuck in Kathmandu. Waiting for my story to arrive. And hoping that my story would arrive before I found myself standing drunk in one of Tamil's loosely regulated pharmacies, telling the stubbled, turbaned pharmacist that I would like 60 of those blue 10-milligram Valiums, 60 of those Roussel Darvons and, oh, how about 100 of those big, thick, white morphine sulphate tablets. This was my first story in Asia since I had stopped drinking and drugging, my first sober foray back to the fleshpots of Asia, site of so many of my most debilitating and crippling debauches. I had sworn off the sauce and mood-altering substances, and so was facing life for the first time unfiltered. I was making a clean start here at the roof of the world; in Nepalese smog and on Kathmandu turf, this was my new beginning. I had long ago lost the ability to regulate my intake of intoxicants. If I slipped again, up here in the Himalayas, it would be a long, long way down. After six weeks in rehab and a year spent putting my life back together -- restoring my family's trust, rebuilding my marriage, relearning how to write, I was, in a sense, making a comeback. I was in Kathmandu writing a story for Condé Nast Traveler. But the story that had begun in Tokyo and gathered momentum in Bangkok was now gasping here in Nepal. I was covering a crowd of kids who lived on what I had come to call The Circuit. They wandered, as I had done for years, between Asian boomtowns and beaches, earning a living as they went and carving out a hedonist, decadent lifestyle. But the last time I had seen Dina and the crew of trendy American and British travelers who personified this sort of cutting-edge, Commes Des Garcons and Gucci-clad new Asian hand, they were lying in their Koh Tao hammocks smoking joints and typing e-mails on their notebook computers. I had tired of their ecstasy-driven, ravey island decadence and, fearing for my always tentative sobriety, I headed back to Bangkok, making sure I arranged with this stoned gang of Toshiba Tecra-toting, Hang Sang Index-analyzing vagabonds to rendezvous here in Kathmandu. I had been here a week and my fellow travelers were nowhere to be seen. I now wondered who or what they had been e-mailing, because I had been sending them e-mails repeatedly for the last five days without response. Visible through thick, orange billows of Kathmandu smog, between snow-capped Himalayan gorges, the orange sun cast dim rays that barely broke through the haze. Dotting the foothills around Kathmandu were sprawling villages made up of mud huts and handkerchief-sized vegetable farms. Occasionally, when the wind from the hills blew the smog back up the valleys away from the city, one caught a whiff of manure and nightsoil, earthy smells of the family farms surrounding the city. The odor struck me as obscenely organic in its bouquet, as if nature herself had let out some great, sphincter-relaxing fart. Wiping the dust from my eyes, I stepped into the crowded Tamil street, hailing a tuk-tuk that would take me to Turihil, the gated military parade ground where in the afternoon a few local college students played soccer with some European expatriates and a dozen other Westerners who, like me, for one reason or another, were stranded in Kathmandu. In almost every city in the world, there are easy-to-access pick-up soccer games. I travel with cleats in damp, rainy Europe and turf shoes in dry, dusty Asia. Unlike other travelers, who worry about hotel fitness club hours, tennis court reservations and golf course tee times, my sport requires nothing more than a swath of grass -- or dirt, pavement or mud -- a ball and a half dozen or more players. I have played in pick-up games around the world: Bangkok's Lumpini Park, Amsterdam's Vondelpark, Berlin's Reichstag lawn, Barcelona's Ramblas, Tokyo's Yoyogi Park, Paris' Bois de Bologne. I have come to view soccer not only as a way to get to know locals, make friends and stay fit but also as a vehicle to discovering a culture and its people. A day spent playing futball with Moroccans, Chinese or Italians will tell you more about national character than any number of guidebooks, language courses or sightseeing excursions. Beware, though: You will fall pray to ethnic stereotyping based on how frequently an Arab player passes the ball or how a Mexican plays defense. You will judge a German's character by how he reacts after allowing a goal and a Japanese man's emotional maturity by his post-goal-scoring celebration. You will quickly realize the fellow American you befriended last night at the bar is actually a selfish, thoughtless ball-hog who would rather lose the ball on the dribble than pass it. And you discover the quiet, balding Greek who you dismissed as a sociopath is actually a kind soul, one who would sacrifice an easy, ingenuous shot to attempt an ingenious crossing pass. The game reveals character and intellect and provides a brief glimpse into your soul. If you are frightened -- of this new strange city, of returning home, of never returning home or of slipping back into drug addiction -- then it will show on the pitch, will be made apparent by the awkwardness of how you handle a ball. But if you are at peace, resting up from the last journey and readying for the next, then the game will be the pleasant diversion it was meant to be. Your exhaustive, relentless running, sidestepping and back-peddling will be spontaneously choreographed steps subsumed in some massive, 10- or 20-man dance in which you feel integral. Playing with Nepalese and Thais, Egyptians and Germans, if the game is good and the players are generous and you are at your best, you come to believe you are a part of some spiritus mundi of manly good feeling that transcends borders, ethnic groups, religions and GNPs. You play the game. They play the game. You belong. N E X T+P A G E+| A refuge in Soccer Land ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN COPELAND