so, the tour of burma consisted of a circuit, beginning in yangoon, heading north to inle lake (which is filled with fisherman who stand on one leg at the front of their canoe, and then hold an oar and row with the other leg, freeing their hands for fishing), then west to mandaly (home of the worst food consumed anywhere in the world by civilized humans. no shit. You can buy 5 dead baby sparrows, threaded onto a bamboo stick, and burnt almost beyond recognition for about a nickel.), south to bagan (land of awe-inspiring ancient temples, and the worlds most gifted sales-children.) and finally the rest of the way south back to yangoon. Being completely naive as to the language, money, and etiquette of burma, we felt it would be wise to hire a driver for the first portion of the trip, and if we found him to ba an asset, we could hire him for the remainder. a friend reccomended a good guide, who was currently busy entertaining some swiss tourists, but he assured us that his brother and law, "Aung" could provide us with unparalleled services. (i interpreted "unparalleled" as a word being interchangeable with "excellent", or maybe "indispensable" but, as it turns out, "unparalleled" isn't an absolutely positive term. it's just another way of saying "unique") Our first disappointment with aung was discovering that he didn't speak english, and that communication as we know it would revert back from a spoken language, to a creative, game-like system involving hand gestures, animal noises, and improvised drawings. ....and we were off...
The first on our agenda was food. Fortunately, there are hand gestures for "eat" which are trans-cultural. Unfortunately, it was about 11 o'clock at night, and our selection of restaurants which were open at that hour was very limited. or maybe Aung, as it turns out, has a sense of humor. after a short ride, we pulled up in front of "EMPEROR" a chinese karaoke restaurant. now, if you're picturing "EMPEROR" in a nice font, paying homage to an era when a small country flourished under a beloved monarch, you have the wrong impression.more accurately, it was "EMPEROR" ,written in giant, jagged, neon-green and dripping with blood, death-metal scythe font. once through the door, we were led into a large, dimly lit room by a troop of about 5 eager waiters. it was dark, and had high ceilings, in the middle of which hung one dusty, yet determined disco ball. the walls were illuminated by black-light alone, and scrawled with neon paintings of cross-eyed tigers, epileptic butterflies, and limping dragons. Imagine shel-silverstein was hired to decorate a death-metal roller-rink, and that's where our trusty guide led us to dine. Upon being seated at one of the 50 tables, we instantly captured the drunken gazes of all 3 customers. Soon, the entertainment value of the tattooed round-eyes was superceded by that of the 15ish year-old girl on stage who was pouring her little heart out to a burmese cover of a quiet-riot song that i haven't known the name of since 7th grade. We were serenaded throughout our meal by a repertoire which included, but certainly wasn't limited to, burmese versions of bon jovi, debbie gibson, and julio iglesias. Abruptly, the power in that part of the city went out, signaling the end of the night's entertainment. our waiter stood guard at our table with a lighter in hand, illuminating our last few bites, and making sure we had no troubles reading the bill. As i tried to figure out the denominations of each bill, the other 3 patrons managed to lift themselves out of their chairs, and were shuffling towards the door. I could hear them finishing the last few versus of "cherry pie" in burmese, as they, all three of them, piled on to one little honda scooter and rode off. After settling the check, i asked Aung if it was customary to tip in burma. "tip?"....he stared at me with a practiced look of bewilderment. "yeah, you know, dinner, two-dollars, but sometimes leave a little extra for the waiter"...."oh!, yes...understand" he then calls the waiter over and asks him if he would like us to leave him some extra money. that was the last time i turned to our guide for financial advice.
i'll write more later, there's eatin' to be done...
love as always,
scott
so....i apologize for not writing sooner.... i'm finally back in thailand after the burmese escapades....it was amazing. we landed in yangon late in the afternoon, so we didn't get to see much outside of the hotel the first day, but that in itself was pretty interesting. the cab dropped us off at the newpark, or newday hotel, something like that. the door was opend for us by a little elderly burmese man. after seeing that we made it safely through the threshold, he returned to his ratty little lawn chair, and an almost complete state of dormancy. he sat and stared out the window with a blank look on his face, which still managed to depict a certain sense of purpose. we stood in the lobby for a moment, which was completely silent, save for the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. the fluorescent lights gave everything a greenish tint, and that, alternated with shafts of orange light coming in the windows from the streetlights, made it nearly impossible to tell what color anything in the room really was. it felt like i was inside of a television, and someone was rubbing a giant magnet on the screen. finally a little boy with yellow circles painted on his cheeks came running into the room, paused, smiled, and then ran out of the room, yelling something in burmese about the white-folk in the lobby with tattoos all over 'em. soon thereafter, his smiling mother came in and asked if we would like to see the rooms. she said she had rooms with air-con and hot water for 15, or rooms wth only a fan, and no hot water for $10. then she led us upstairs and opened up a nice room, with 2 beds, a window, air-con, and hot water. i told her it was very nice, but we would like to see the cheaper room, because we were on a budget. she nodded and smiled....and stood there. i told her that we didn't mind cold water, and that since we were leaving the next day, a fan would do just fine, we would like to see the cheaper room. she nodded and smiled...and stood there.getting frustrated, i took out $10 and showed it to her "$10 only...OK?" ..."nothing problem" she said, "this room $10. You no use hot water and air-con, OK?" i asked her how much it would be if we promised not to look out the window, but she didn't get it.
Yangon turned out to be the south east asian equivalent to Havana. All of the large buildings, save the buddhist temples of course, are beautiful british-colonial buildings, painted in an irrationally pastel palate, and then neglected for 30 years. The building across the street from our hotel is 4 stories of beautiful stone masonry, covered in teak-wood windows and ornament, topped by an amazing clock-tower. The entryway was framed by 4 corinthian columns, which extended up to the 3rd floor, behind which hung n amazing brass oil-lamp chandelier. now picture that building painted mint green, sprawling with black varicose veins of mold, and ferns sprouting out of the walls at will. all the vehicles in the city are either british cars, trucks, and busses from the 40's 50's and 60's , or they are late 80's toyota corollas. that's it. apparently the importation of anyhing requires government approval, which entails some heavy-duty greasing of the palms.
The government of myanmar is one of the most corrupt in the world. Even more so than Louisiana. Everything is run by the military, and the generals go to great lengths to ensure that it stays that way. All communication and media is government censored. Even the internet is for the most part, illegal. There is only one server for the entire country, and of course it is expensive, and government run. This means you can only access web-sites which the government deems "appropriate", which are few and far between. (yes, the burmese public has been kept from the wonders of scottcampbelltattoo.com for all these years) any e-mail transmission that is not monitored by the government is illegal. ( hotmail, yahoo, etc....) I did have one oppourtunity to check my e-mail during the trip, when we stumbled upon a black-market internet connection while changing money.
legally, you are only allowed to change foreign currency into kyat (pronounced "chet" ...how they came up with k-y-a-t as the english spelling i have no idea) with the myanmar national bank, so that no one can profit from the exchange other than the gov., but you can get a much better rate by changing money with a black-market money-changer. usually if you go to any of the more popular tea-houses in town, they'll find you. one of them tells us "i take you e-mail nothing problem, you pay, ok?" so we agree, and follow him a few blocks down the road, through the back of a candy-store, into someone's living room. he directs us to the sofa, where we sit. he leaves, and we're there, with no idea where the hell we are, watching someone's bratty little indian kids fighting over a vhs tape. After about 5 minutes, a fat indian man with no shirt, a lime green sarong, and the biggest gold pinky-ring i've ever seen leads us into the room with the computer. We sit down at the desk as a little asian secretarial version of farrah fawcett turns on the screen and proudly unveils hotmail before our very eyes. the connection was incredibly slow, so i just skimmed over the messages which looked important, and tried to finish as quickly as possible. while waiting for each page to load i noticed that the traffic coming in and out of the room was a bit odd. not only in a david lynch sort of way, but in a fucked up circus sideshow sort of way also. at one point, sitting on the sofa across the room, were 2 teenagers, one pretty clean-cut and well groomed, the other looked like his face was presently in the process of melting away. Imagine you left a burmese toddler next to the heater for too long, and then he grew up to be a burmese mafia lackey, and that's the guy. We all exchanged the occasional nervous glance, them, marveling at my tattoos, and me, marveling at the giant bricks of cash that they were stuffing into plastic shopping bags.
so, like i said i apologize for not writing sooner, i'll tell you about the rest soon...
-scott
hey there,
well, we're in bangkok now, suffering the hordes of euro-hippies, armed with day-old dreadlock hair extensions, and a seemingly bottomless quiver of stupid "whoa-dude, check out your tats" comments. Everyone feels the need to tell me that i have a lot of tattoos, as if their presence could somehow have escaped my attention prior to their un-solicited expose. Singapore was good. work there was bountiful, and my skills were well-recieved. Everyone there was pretty blown away by my fancy american colors. it felt a bit like i was an american pioneer demonstrating to a bunch of indians the power of my mighty "boom-stick". "that's right, ladies and gentlemen, come out of the darkness, and step into a world where i can turn your tanned, asian skin into a veritable rainbow of colors! ...for a nominal fee of course." i felt like a cross between a rock-star and a witch-doctor. the chinese lunar-new-year was the 25th, after which pretty much everything is closed for a few days. anna arrived on the 26th, so for lack of stimulus in the abandoned city, we hopped a ferry to an indonesian beach resort for a couple of days. it was a bit too civilized for my tastes, but i suppose it served as a good buffer for anna between arctic-new york, and sweltering burmese jungle. we rented a 2-storey, 4 bedroom "bungalo" with our own private swimming pool and maid for about $150 US per person for all 3 days. the beach was nice, and it felt good to go swimming, much against the resorts' "stining jellyfish advisory". no one payed much mind, until one of the guys staying next to us got stung, and then everyone freaked out. everyone on the beach crowded around, examined the little area of slight irritation, and offered gestures of sympathy in a dozen different languages. eventually, everyone went on about their business, and looked cautoisly at the water for a good minute or 2 before returning to the water. in spite of the ever-present pampering, and dissapointingly western feeling the whole experience had, i managed to get into a little bit of mischief. During one of my morning walks along the beach, i was looking out across the water and noticed, between waves, a little black head snaking across the water. it would duck below when a wave went by, only to pop back up moments after it had passed. so of course, it being a reptile of lesser weight than myself,, i was obligated to capture, inspect, and inform it of the dominance which my cranium and opposable-thumbs provided me. so, after keeping one eye on the little bobbing head, and the other searching for just the right stick, i found the perfect one, with a little branch at the end, forming a hook. i scooped him up, and flung him in the beach's direction, and after a few tosses, had him on the sand. it was a docile little banded sea-snake, which although highly venomous, turned out to be pretty docile. i w2as pretty happy with myself, but of course, what good is such a prize without the gratification of gloating. i coaxed him into an empty water bottle, and went back to the "bungalo" to try and redeem myself in annas eyes for ending up in the hospital the last time i tried to catch such a trophy. she's learnd to become nervous when i approach her grinning, and she can't see both of my hands. she closed her book, and forbid me to come any closer until i showed her what i had behind my back. she sighed, rolled her eyes, went back to her book and told me she wouldn't smuggle me burritos into the ICU again. ( she just says that to sound tough, she probably would) the other guys at the house were thouroughly impressed, and i claimed my status as a singaporean folk hero that afternoon. it's amazing the unwanted influence i have over those guys. i'm thinking about trying to get sponsorships from shoe companies over there. i arrived in singapore wearing a red, yarn-snow-cap (thw likes of which are entirely too warm to wear in such a tropical climate) primarily because i was in desparate need of a hair-cut, and it's incessant bouncing and eye-poking was more bothersome than the added warmth. anyhow, after being there for a week, i noticed 2 of the shop lackies showed up wearing similarly colored knit hats, accomanied by little sweat-beaded brows. don't ask me where they hell they found them in singapore, but they were certain they were the cat's meow. so, once i took all of their funny little monopoly money, i sent them all back to work, and made a bunch of appointments for march, when i return to singapore from the jungle portion of this venture. anyhow, i'm going to go track down some food, but i will e-mail you once i get to myanmar....
love as always,
scott
the tattoo shop here in singapore is on the 2nd floor, and directly across the street on the 2nd level is a strange little chinatown gay bar, with a home-made spray-painted rainbow flag out front. against the back wall of the bar is a floor to ceiling, life size poster that creeps the fuck out of me every time i look out the window. it has an adult asian guy wearing short cut-off shorts sitting, with impecable posture, sitting on a foot-stool. then, standing in front of him somewhat between his knees is a teenage boy, also in cut-off shorts. the picture is taken from slightly below them, so behind their heads, you just see blue sky and clouds. they have strange nazi-esque intent gazes, looking upward and away, with chests slightly inflated....save for the costumes, it looks like some weird heroic pedophile flash gordon.....sucks about the whole cold thing you've got over there...i can't even imagine what snow feels like right now....it's hot here, but not too bad, it certainly hasn't got shit on houston.....i'm figuring out the food thing here, trying to map out where the nearest restraunts are that are palatable....the local food here in chinatown is definitely out....i stuck it out for a bit just to do as romans do, but they fucking eat the most horrible food in china. everything is fried or so drenched in oil that you feel dirty and used afterwards...also, and i really can't figure this one out,....they only eat the worst parts of an animal....like pork....what the fuck is wrong with the chops?.....or a thigh...there's good meat there...no, they fucking talk me into eating pork knucke, and every where you go you see fried porkskin and pigsfeet,,, and of course chicken feet and wings are everywhere....don't ask me what the fuck they do with all the drumsticks and breasts, because i haven't seen any...if you took them to a taqueria, they'd probably buy a burrito, and then only eat the foil wrapper...anyway, it goes on and on....fish head soup, turtle feet soup, (have you ever looked at a turtles feet and thought to yourself, damn....look at all that meat? of course not..)...pork stomach, chicken livers.....shit looks like fishing bait not food.....anyhow, that's my birch...other than that, loving life as usual...
yours,
scott
yesterday a customer came in the shop looking to get tattooed. He was a scrawny indian guy, maybe late 20's, early 30's....old enough to know better, fair skinned, and vibrating with impatience. he was donned in an imitation polo button up, tucked into khaki shorts, but only in the front, and hot pink flip flops. the conversation went as follows:
him: yes, hello, are you have pentagram?
me: yeah, i can probably rustle one up for you somewhere, how big do you want it?
him: (takes off shirt to reveal giand goat-head tattoo on back) yes, to fit above tattoo here, going onto my neck.
me: ok, let me draw something up for you....
him: (3 seconds after i sit down and start drawing) excuse me can you make some bloody red there also, i want to make it ultimate evil.
me: sure pal, no problem. why, back home the usually call me scott "the ultimate evil" campbell
him: in new york you are much evil?
me: no, i think they just say that because i don't shower very often.
him: i don't understand.
me: yeah, me neither.
(fifteen minutes later while i'm tattooing him)
me: so, you're into this whole satan thing, huh?
him: satan?...yes i am worshiping satan
me: cool.... how's that working out for you?..
him: very fun, much evil
me: did satan tell you to wear those shoes?...
him: no, my wife buy these in chinatown....
me: i think that maybe satan and your wife are just messing with you......
him: i think you are messing with me.
me: hey man, don't kill the messenger....
him: "the messenger"...i see this movie...american movie, very good...
me: yeah, ....it was an allright movie....i think milla jojovich is a pretty horrible actress....
him: i think more pretty with long hair.....in the movie she is cutting her hair short, very ugly...
me: yeah, i don't know why she did that, i think satan told her to do it.....
him: i like very much satan....
me: of course you do....
hey folks,
work was good yesterday, i think i'm not going to work every single day, but it seems that there are as many people wanting tattoos as i want...it's all custom of course, so much homework, but it feels good because i don't have anything to do but draw pictures.....i did a really nice jap demon thing yesterday from this guys knee to ankle.....sort of hanya thing with a shroud and a skull and windy maple leaf stuff around....i told niccku to set the prices, because he knows the money better than i, ....so after he handed me $600 bucks and said he doesn't want a %, he just wants me to help him with some technical stuff while i'm here..finally someone who appreciates me for more than just my good looks....i had to show him how to use his own thermofax machine, which he's been feeding the paper into upside down for the past 2 years.....last night at about midnight he took me out to some crazy discotec ...i asked for a vodka soda there and i think they just poured a glass of soda water and then rubbed it against the bottle of vodka, it was a pretty lousy excuse for liquor....the place was pretty obnoxious, but it was really fun, in the same way that going to the zoo is fun.....there were a few round-eyes there, which were a painful reminder of how genetically doomed we are to inheirit a lineage of bad dancers.....anyhow, it's sunday so we're going to the beach.....(which will be fun for everyone else there, in the same way that going to the zoo is fun)....
all my love...
scott
apparently, i gave niccku, my host the wrong date for my flight, so he wasn't expecting me i until the next day....so there i was at the airport...no one was there to meet me, and i had no sing (singapore dollars) with which to take a cab or pay for a hotel. i spent the night on the floor of what is boasted as being the nicest airport in the world....( it really is nice....it had a swimming pool)...anyhow, at 6am i finally got some sing in my pocket, but i couldn't get to the address or phone number of niccku until the internet place opened at 10am, so i opted to wander chinatown in the meantime....with a barrage of little singaporeans trying to sell me an ocean of useless crap, i'm amazed i head the little woman pushing her way through the crowd yelling "new york! new york!" at me. she finally made it over to me and grabbed my arm and wouldn't let go...she turned out to be niccku's grandmother, and she didn't let go of me until i was released into niccku's custody...small world when you're a 6 foot tattooed guy in singapore.....
so, to combat the jet lag, i got up this morning, and ran my ass off.....it felt good to be exhausted after 2 frustrating days of somehow being tired and restless at the same time. Then niccku took me to breakfast. we sat in an open-air cafeteria fashioned after an airport parking garage,i'm still not sure what i ate. noodles sprinkled with little tiny crunchy fish and the hottest of hot sauces, accompanied by a half-cooked egg in a bowl, which you're supposed to pour this almost black brown syrup onto, mix together into a dark brown yolky slime, and drink....it's niccku's favorite....we differ in opinions on many things....
then we went to the beach, where i swam like the dickens and farted into the south china sea.
now i'm back at the shop, finished my drawing, and am waiting for my first client to show up...
i feel like a rock-star here....yesterday niccku took me around to all the other tattoo shops in town to play show and tell with his very own american tattooer....i still haven't paid for anything, they won't let me....anyhow, my guy just showed up, but more to come....
yours,
scott