More Living Thai Ways Part III
By Michael Keller
Published by Bangkok Books, 2006

My review for The Nation, published on January 20.

Is it just me or is same book being continuously passed around? Or does Bangkok Books just keep adjusting the title? No, that can’t be right. I’d have remembered the clunkers in this one.

Michael Keller can be amusing and he can be fairly insightful as well, but there’s a disorienting lurch back and forth in the essays in this collection. The book chugs along on two forms of fuel – silliness and misinformed pedantry – or perhaps they’re the same thing.

Once past the cover – which has a photo of a monkey drinking Singha beer beneath the title “Living Thai Ways” – the collection opens, as it closes, with a less-than-edifying observation on the tsunami. It then trundles through the same old 50-satang tour: sanook, katoeys, stray dogs and “the infamous Thai toilet”, plus some actual tourist recommendations, including “The Patpong” (sic).

Much of the content involves “do’s and don’ts for farang” that would be better described as “do’s and don’ts for farang who just got off the boat and believe Thais are something like pet ponies”.

“Common sense”, Keller calls these nuggets; “Visiting Thailand for Dummies” is more like it, with the stress on “visiting”.

Incredibly, having urged his readers to join a volunteer group that helps the soi dogs, Keller reveals his secret for killing a jingjok.

In a chapter that begins with the sentence “Ever hear of a Gekko?”, he says if jingjok make you squeamish or you’re afraid one might fall from the ceiling into your soup, all you need to do is blast it with an aerosol roach spray.

Then, when it drops from its perch or “slithers in a dead faint down the wall … take your handy fly swatter and give it a good smack. The tail may fall off and thrash about in a solitary frenzy, but just calmly sweep up the remains in a dustpan, properly dispose of your victim and happily go back to sipping your soup.”

TEXT BITE: “If you are an expat currently living in Thailand, do you yearn for a graham cracker? Forget it. You will have to settle for Mother’s Animal Crackers imported from America and crispy saltine crackers from South Korea. Thus far, a thorough search of the Kingdom has not produced a single graham-flour cracker.”