Thai Lite 2: The Refill
By S Tsow
Published by Bangkok Book House, 2005
Reviewed by Paul Dorsey

The essence of S Tsow

More irreverent balderdash from the ‘Nation’ columnist who is proudly not the kind of foreigner the Thai government would prefer to have around.

The Nation
Published on January 22, 2006
I thought people who read S Tsow’s twice-a-month humour column in The Nation’s Weekend magazine or in the Phuket Gazette deserved to know a little bit more about him than his new book “Thai Lite 2” reveals, so I e-mailed him for some details, and discovered that the gap between the New Englander lurking in the background and his Chinese alter ego who hoards the title page seems to be getting wider.
This is not necessarily cause for alarm, but I can’t be sure.
From what I could gather in his flurry of replies, there’s a struggle for supremacy going on between the original entity and his pseudonym, and the much younger S Tsow may be winning. S Tsow urged me not to reveal the real name of the “crusty old” Haverhill, Massachusetts, native who’s approaching his 20th anniversary in Thailand. Then S Tsow’s creator channelled his assent to do so. Then S Tsow regained control and appealed once more for anonymity.
On one thing they’re agreed: Sweibyan Tsow is a nickname bestowed on a young American GI by pedicab drivers in Taiwan. The author spent eight of the 1960s there, in fatigues and then teaching English at Taipei American School. The fact that, pronounced and written a certain way, the name is rude, hints at the reason it became a nom de plume wielded with a tight grip and a certain defensive flair.
“Sweibyan” itself apparently means “free and easy”, and that describes the rein on life its inheritor has allowed himself. Years in uniform notwithstanding, as a civilian he went tramping around Asia – Pakistan, India, Nepal, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and later still China and Tibet, as well as Thailand, where he settled down in 1986 to teach English again, this time at Thammasat University.
Tsow says his backpacking days are over, though he still casts an occasional forlorn glance toward Mongolia. His first book, a 1995 collection of serious short stories with religious themes called “The Nirvana Experiments and Other Tales of Asia”, failed to raise either consciousness or cash for White Lotus, and S Tsow has ventured nothing serious since.
Asia Books fared much better with “Thai Lite” in 2000, which has sold a respectable 4,000 copies, but the bookstore chain demanded more respect than that, and let the sequel fall into the hands of Bangkok Book House, run by young Austrian entrepreneur George Gensbichler out of a shop in Nana Square.
It will probably prove to be a happy partnership for both the author and his new publisher. Tsow told me that Gensbichler advised him books about sex sell best in Thailand (a fact I’m sure “Ess” knew full well already), and Tsow isn’t shy about including sex among his topics. “There are some pious, upright people who know me as [real name deleted] who might be shocked at some of the stuff,” he says by way of asking that his real name be deleted. “They would be appalled, for instance, to find out I know so much about the bar scene.”
The sex is never raunchy, as readers of his column have seen, but there are frequent allusions to Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza. These are rendered innocuous in the columns and the books by the jumble of observations about life Mangoside beyond those scurrilous playgrounds. “Thai Lite 2” has no-frills airlines, shampoo commercials, management gurus, the public buses, spas, the Thailand Elite Card, that sort of thing.
He’s always amusing, with an impish, sophomoric humour that drops to high-school level when his “Editor” inserts a snide comment, but it’s hard not to snigger when he concocts names like “Spermsak Bongkalot”. Tsow’s cheeky spin on existence is a dependable commodity that’s as rigid as his anal fixation.
He could do more, though. Bernard Trink told him so, he tells himself so, and now I’m telling him so.
Trink, still missed by many among the pages of the Bangkok Post, said in his review of “Thai Lite” that Tsow should be more strenuous in separating his wheat from his chaff. In “Thai Lite 2”, Tsow flaunts the motto “Forging new paradigms in meaningless”, and mentions a friend’s warning that “people would have to want to read” his writing, to which Tsow replies: “This was a new idea for me.”
There’s an engaging chapter in the new book on “language dyslexia” that sounds like a winner but fails to launch. There’s a very funny chapter called “Adventures in English”, but in the end it sputters back to earth. “Introducing Elegant English” is a rather tedious affair, but it’s got a terrific closer!
The overall impression is of a kennel full of whimsical time-wasters that ought to have been given more rein to bite. Maybe his editors should loosen his deadlines so his clever ideas have more time to ferment but, to be sure, even if S Tsow has no chance of being named a National Artist, he’s a Nation artist, and we’re keeping him. Concepts like “crematourism” are way too funny to let go.