We are in Ko Tao, somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. The sun and sand are like a narcotic. Tomorrow we will snorkel the coral reefs, part of a three hour cruise. For reasons unknown our daughter will be taking with her a large collection of very fashionable clothing. There is a scientist here who will be making the trip, along with a very wealthy couple. The captain of the vessel, just a small sampan, is very overweight. We became friends right away. He refers to me as his little buddy.

This article on RT.com is about a couple of Americans who are building an email system free of NSA snooping. It sounds plausible – even if FBI marches in and demands access, it will be blocked by private encryption. Their only option will be to shut the operation down in total. They might inquire with the Chinese on the technical aspects of that. I think you just bust in the front door with some thugs in helmets and carrying automatic weapons and close it down.

It is worth noting here that there is no terrorism of any note going on in the US except that done by CIA and other domestic agencies. This is for the purpose of keeping us in a state of fear. The TV is the prime method of spreading that fear. It controls us just like telescreens in Orwell’s 1984. There is no evidence of terrorism. If you follow any story to its source, you find either nothing or domestic agents at work. But it only need be mentioned on TV, and it is effective. If it is on TV, it is real.

Think about it: Airport security. They check your person, your bags, your identity. There is no purpose to that, as anyone wanting to blow us up only has to go to the queue where people are waiting to be scanned to set off a bomb. It does not happen. (Don’t give CIA or FBI ideas, however.) There are no terrorists about.

However, by means of airport security government monitors our movements and can stop us from flying anytime. That is the objective – control of the domestic population.

Likewise, domestic spying on our computers and social networks has nothing to do with the nonexistent terrorists, but rather with internal dissent. That is the prime concern of any oppressive government – its own people, the “domestic enemy” as Chomsky calls it.

I don’t know what Occupy Wall Street was in its real purpose. The urgency with which Obama clamped down in it indicates some concern high up. But I do know that even if it was a real groundswell, government can mine such operations to identify domestic activists. So it would make sense that OWS was a PSYOP for that purpose, to expose them. But I do not know that.

The remedy, of course, is to stop being afraid, stop believing news, stop watching the TV for anything more than weather and sports. But our population is so deeply thought-controlled that this is nothing more than a pipe dream.

We are in Bangkok, Thailand, somewhere. It’s a very hot, muggy city. It’s very busy, the freeways jammed with newer vehicles. Most people that we see are well-dressed, though it’s a very young sample. There are street vendors, cabs and tuk-tuks, dogs and cats, but no cows wandering about.

It is still called the Kingdom of Thailand, and at various times (as recently as 1949) the Kingdom of Siam. We took a long taxicab ride today to King’s Royal Park, a very large open area with exhibits and tributes to royalty. Either royalty admires itself very much or is very much admired.

We also went to the corner shopping mall – maybe nine stories of shops, most selling clothing for young people. There are two floors of restaurants dedicated to San Francisco, and one large area for electronics. I was hoping to perhaps score a cheap IPad, but Apple is way too smart to allow its customers to play arbitrage. It’s $600 here, $529 in the US.

It seems a blended western/Asian culture, prosperous and busy. There are few who speak English, so we are in difficulties at times, but hand gestures get us through. We could not get across to our cab driver where we wanted to go after king’s Royal Park (Key Bangkok Hotel) but I handed him our room key, and he found the address on the back.

But we are only here to meet out daughter, after which we head south to Ko Tao, an island off the southern part of the country in the Gulf of Thailand. There we plan to do nothing, or at least have a week of nothing planned.

It’s very hot, I’m very white.

We are leaving Nepal today, off to Bangkok. Can’t get out soon enough. These past four days have been spent in luxury as poverty surrounds us. It’s a veritable wellspring of liberal guilt.

My wife is reading a book by Isabella Bird, who toured this region on horseback in the late 19th century. Even then she spoke of the obsequious nature of the (Tibetan) people. She ascribed it to past abuses and conquests. Our guide and porter on our trip were manly men, but the others we meet in our compounds are hunched, walk with short steps, and hover.

Last night we went out to dinner. When we returned someone had entered the room, spruced up and turned the bed down. During dinner I dropped a fork – I bent down to pick it up (5 second rule) but there was pitter-patter of shiny black shoes and a new fork before I could put the old one down.

Every door is opened for us, every bag carried. When we left the compound in Pokhara, we were toting our own bags. A maid stopped us in our tracks, made us stand there while she summoned porters.

Every one we meet folds hands in a prayer gesture and slightly bows to us, which we return. The usual greeting is “Namaste.” We joke between ourselves as we get on elevators and such, turning to each other, bowing and saying “Eat shit.” I hope that is what they are thinking as they bow to us.

There is an international convention for domestic workers making the rounds. It sets minimum standards for hours and age, and wages I assume though do not know. It has been adopted in most of Latin America, but in this part of the world, only the Philippines.

We are back in Pokhara after a grueling five-day trek in the Annapurna’s in Nepal. Even as the trip was rated “easy to moderate” we found it extremely taxing. We climbed perhaps 12,000 feet throughout, up and down and up and then down again. On the second day, we trekked up 4,600 feet from Hille to Ghorepani, a very long day and the most we have ever climbed in one day. That day included 3,300 stone steps at the beginning. I imagine younger kids might take them two at a time. We were at low altitudes, never going higher than 10,500 and also at Miami-like latitude, so it was not like climbing a North American mountain where oxygen is sparse. But each evening found us exhausted, knees sore and body drained.

And worth it. The mountains are spectacular, of course. The one pictured above is called Machapuchre, translated to mean “Fish Tail.” It is 22,943 feet and is regarded as a sacred place in the Gurung culture, the place where Lord Shiva resides. It has never been climbed. What I think is that the east face rivals the north face of Eiger (“Ogre”) and is a challenge for those crazy fools who do that sort of thing.

The people are amazing, every bit as smart as people anywhere of course, but it is a third-world country. They walk the trails and steps, porters carry upwards of forty kilos routinely. They wear sneakers, sometimes mere sandals of the type that do not strap behind the heels. Their legs are muscular and sleek, possessing amazing strength. They are friendly and warm – we are tourists, of course, so we will see that face, but there is genuine warmth and spirit among them.

The food is quite a change for us, and I limited myself to those that were hot enough to kill bacteria that the locals are immune to. We also ate very little, not by choice, but because we were not very hungry. My daily diet was porridge and lemon tea for breakfast, noodle soup (think “Ramen”) for lunch, and the same with Gurung bread for dinner. I never felt hungry or low on energy. Water is a problem, and we had to drink either treated or bottled. A young Siberian couple we met refilled their water bottles from a big blue jug like we have in our offices that said “safe water” and were very sick for two days.

We met delightful people throughout, including the Siberian couple, Natalia and Dmitri, who emigrated to Sydney, Australia. I asked them about the difficulties in doing so, and she said there were none. You just fill out papers and get on a plane. They were not escaping repression or anything like that, she said. Siberia is a cold dark place with long, long nights. They had enough, and had enough education to take their skills elsewhere.

There’s poverty, not so bad in the mountains as in Katmandu. Young men aspire to become guides and porters for tourists. They also join the army, for there they receive good pay, medical care and three squares. Americans join the military for the very same reasons.

Education is universal, but they are missing a spark, some civil engineering and a hydroelectric project to get them moving. One or two of our cruise missiles would buy maybe a hundred thousand flush toilets and some sewage treatment? These are tough resilient people in need of development, and like so many others in Asia, once it takes hold they will take off.

But right now the poverty is brutal even as the people are delightful. It is a wonderful place.

Pokhara, Nepal. IPad does not zoom, so these do not translate. These mountains are amazing to behold. We are off today on the trek. Rained as we got here yesterday, two inches at least with hail. Eight hour bus trip, two flats, felt every bump. Wife maintained stiff upper lip, I was not as tranquil. Adapting to less luxuriant lifestyle, instant coffee, hard boiled eggs, oatmeal, dahl baht. Beer rare to find, but I am persistent. Namaste.

Other than being a three-syllable word that Bob Seger needed to make a song, Katmandu is one big mass of dirty streets and dogs sleeping on pavement, just endless poverty. This street scene is one of the better ones. Most side streets are potholed, and there are empty doorways and vacant garage storefronts with graffiti all over them.

I was reading Wiki last night about this place, wondering what would create such a mass of poverty. I don’t understand it at all. Was it colonialism? India was set back a century in its development by the benevolent Brits. South America is developing now only in spite of the overlord to the north. China hovers nearby and is mindful of its borders, as are all countries. Those so unfortunate as to be border states often get caught in crossfire.

Nepal I has gone through monarchies and repression, and now has some form of democratic rule, but most of what I see for commerce is tourism. Our waiter last night has a bachelor’s degree from Great Britain, and wants someone to sponsor him so that he an pursue a masters in the US. That sort of thing, knowing that he’s back in Katmandu waiting tables, is disheartening. Young people need hope, and I’m just an idealist, but I don’t see a lot of hope here. I just don’t understand things well enough. They valley is lush. Once there were tribes and farmers and what had to be a wonderful way of life. How does this happen? It’s just a wickedly poor and dirty Asian city.

But there are people here who want that to change – doctors and teachers and dedicated public servants. The infrastructure is very complex, so much so that one doctor I read suggest that they merely move the city and shut this part down. It would be cheaper to build a new one than to rebuild the old one.

My sleep clock is messed up, and I’m waking up at 2:30 fully rested, trying to hang on at night so that I sleep later in the morning. Feeling very much like an American here, in a hotel with a guard at the entrance. Food is very spicy, much rice and chicken. Beer is surprisingly good, and with the Trekkers and Sherpas on the bottle is obviously made with tourists in mind. We are worried about picking up a bug, and the most likely source would be food, and not water, so we cannot sample street vendors though the food is probably very good. Had a cold shower yesterday and again just now. They ask us to preserve water, and it must take ten minutes for hot water to arrive. I haven’t waited that long. Just bit the bullet. Man, these Nepalese are tough!

People are friendly, and even the motorcycles and drivers constantly honking at one another are not short-tempered. That’s just how they drive over here, using short blasts to warn one another that they are there. If a blast lasts longer than an instant, someone might be mad. Haven’t yet encountered any of that American-style road rage.

I am not a world traveler, never even having been to Texas or the south, much less foreign countries, so this is very exciting for me. It’s all so new and different.

We re headed for Katmandu today, and after that hiking the Annapurna route. Delhi is amazing as I have seen it, but only a tiny slice. It’s chaotic. Traffic is wild, driving lanes only a suggestion, constant honking to warn others of your maneuvers, pedestrians and bicyclists fair game. People are mostly very thin, as if undernourished, or maybe I am over-nourished. There’s heavy military presence. Very friendly, however, English spoken everywhere, signs all bilingual. British influence pervasive. No cathedrals – not their style. Some very old mosque-type buildings. Dominoes Pizza one block away.