HE MIGHT CLAIM TO KNOW LITTLE about Oscar Wilde, but Joe Cummings certainly subscribes to Wildean philosophy. A Canadian poet who plays host to rock royalty at his adopted home in Bangkok, he was one of the first writers to set foot on Southeast Asian soil for the Lonely Planet travel guides and is the author of Southeast Asia On A Shoestring, the third most-shoplifted book Down Under, according to Australia Bookseller and Publisher magazine (behind only Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and Junkie, by William Burroughs). Here’s what he had to say to The Advisor ahead of his appearance at the Oscar Wilde night:
Let’s start with the screamingly obvious: you’ve famously spent several days showing Mick Jagger a good time in Bangkok – you lucky, lucky bastard!
[Laughs] If you think that’s good, guess who I met a few weeks ago.
If it’s Keith Richards, I may actually have a seizure.
I wish! I wish! No. Steven Tyler. I took Steven Tyler around Bangkok for four nights.
Damn. Where do I sign up for these gigs?
They just call me up! Tyler was interesting because he and Jagger are pretty close in age; one’s American, one’s British. But their styles of hanging out were very, very different. Tyler was very boisterous, ready to be recognised and loving being recognised. He wanted to be out on the scene, but at the same time didn’t want anybody to bother him, so had his bodyguards to keep a perimeter. Jagger, on the other hand, was just obsessed with preserving his anonymity as much as he could. He took a lot of pain to make sure he wasn’t recognised, although he was a couple of times. He wore a disguise. He wanted to go unnoticed.
Jagger in disguise? Talk us through it. Who’s his chosen cosplay character?
We were having dinner one night and then when the limousine came around to pick us up, in the back of the limo he put on a real baggy sweater with holes in it; almost like something a homeless person would be wearing. Then he put on a floppy hat and some sunglasses.
What did you and Tyler get up to? Where exactly does one take someone like Aerosmith’s frontman to show him a good time in Bangkok?
Some of the normal sites, of course, but I always like to give people something they might have seen in tourist brochures and stuff. On the first day I took him on a boat trip deep into the canals: that’s where some of the so-called normal sites, like the floating villages, are. I took him into this little artists’ community, where some artists have squatted in an old wooden homestead built into the canal itself. He really liked that because he got to meet all these crazy artists. Then at night, like I said, he wanted to be seen. I think in his mind he wants people the world over to know that he’s still out partying.
It’s not enough that he’s doing concerts; he wants to be seen as a party guy. I took him to this new absinthe bar: we called in advance to arrange it and we didn’t rope it off, but we arranged the chairs so that it was harder to get into his corner. He was fully visible to everyone at this absinthe lounge, but it would have been awkward for someone to come up to him – although people did try. He’d also rented the entire 11th floor of the hotel Poseidon. Everyone knows about the more famous, sleazy red-light districts, like Padpong, where all the tourists and sexpats go, but there’s also a very large street that has a giant entertainment centre. They’ve got everything from massage parlours to karaoke, it’s mainly an upscale Asian market plus a few farangs who are connoisseurs of that sort of things. It’s got 12 storeys and an emporium of sensual delights for your well-heeled men. He rented the 11th floor, with a private dining hall, a private karaoke theatre and five bedrooms – and it had 11 models on staff that night.
Did anyone check for ladyboys?
Yeah! I suggested that: I was thinking about Dude Looks Like A Lady [Laughs], which is very androgynous itself. So yes, I asked if he’d like to go see some ladyboys and he said he would, so I took him to a small but well-known ladyboy bar called Temptations. It didn’t really turn him on much. He was there for about 20 minutes and then he was, like, ‘Okay. Let’s move on.’
So, Stephen Tyler didn’t fall for the whole ladyboy thing. That’s reassuring.
Yeah, I kind of expected he would. His personal assistant, a 27-year-old girl, did, though. We also had dinner at the rooftop bar/restaurant of the Sala Ratanakosin, overlooking the Chao Phraya River, Wat Arun and Wat Phra Kaew.
Far too civilised. Where’s the hurling of electrical appliances through hotel windows?!
I was waiting for that. He’s 65, doesn’t drink or do drugs, but he’s as energetic as a seven-year-old boy. Dallying with 11 Thai models seemed decadent enough, all in the same hot tub. Those are the only true rock stars I’ve toured with, but I do get a lot of musicians calling for private tours. Last night I was with Robi of Navicula, a mega-popular Indonesian metal band. He wanted to hear local music and meet other musos. Nice guy. Mick was great because he’s actually quite intelligent, well read, and solicitous of those around him. Most of my friends are more rock ‘n’ roll than these guys.
Tell me about being part of the first wave at Lonely Planet.
It was really cool in the beginning because it was a new paradigm for guidebooks. Publishing guides to places no one had ever covered before. Researching the first edition of LP Thailand, I was writing about places no one had written on before, basically. So it all felt very ‘trailblazing’ at the time. After 10 years it started to change as LP started becoming more market-driven and more worried about liability and such.
What were your first impressions of the region when you arrived?
I first came to Bangkok in 1977 and it was more or less in a similar state of development as 2013 Phnom Penh, minus Internet: no air-con taxis, no airc-on buses. Highest building then was 25 storeys. It was never very charming in Bangkok other than the historical attractions, I’d say. It felt pretty Blade Runner even then.
I remember taking a trip to Khon Kaen with a couple of friends. We got rooms in a cheap hotel, the Roma I think, which is still there but very rundown. We’d heard that KK had the best weed in Thailand, known to expats then as ‘Khon Kaen Crippler’. After scoring some from a trishaw driver we started walking back to the hotel. While we were walking, a torrential monsoon rain flooded the streets. We were wading in hip-deep water by the time we got back to the hotel. The power of course had gone off. We walked the stairs, fired up on the balcony of one of the rooms and as the rain stopped and hundreds of bullfrogs started croaking, like Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, I knew I’d be staying on – and not for the dope.
What’s been the high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – of your journey so far?
Meeting Mick Jagger was definitely one. We’re still in touch, actually. Aside from that there have really been so many; I’ve had a great time almost every step of the way. In 2002 I won a writing award in Mexico and the Mexican president presented the trophy to me in a public ceremony attended by thousands. That was cool. Travelling in Burma in the late ’80s and early ’90s I had some great times as well: the most amazing country in Southeast Asia still.
Were you there for the uprisings?
Yes, I was there in the week of 8-8-88: the big one. I was in Mandalay when the demos began and was supposed to go down to Rangoon, but as news of the violence came I waited until a day or two after the crackdown. I went to see a Burmese friend who worked at the US embassy to find out more about what had happened. She showed me videotapes shot from the embassy windows of the final student-police confrontation. It was pretty disturbing stuff.
At the same time I could also see, from the videos and from eyewitness accounts from Burmese friends, that the blood frenzy manifested itself as much among the protesters as it did among the police and military. Students were disembowelling other students suspected of being informers on the spot, in the street, using rebar. Rebar filed into sharp points. I’d never seen such brutality. I wrote enough about it in the Lonely Planet guide to Burma that it got me blacklisted in 1998.
I had been planning to study intensive Burmese at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Rangoon and my sponsor called me, while I was back in Thailand, to say that my application for the institute had been refused and that he was told I could never get a visa again, for any reason. I didn’t believe him but when I next applied for a visa at the Bangkok embassy, I was taken into a windowless room in the back.
Windowless rooms out the back are never good.
That’s for sure! There the chief consul paced the room, looking very serious, and finally handed me my passport, saying: ‘I know you love my country, but my government has put you on the blacklist so there’s nothing I can do.’ November 2012 I got an email from the Ministry of Tourism in Myanmar saying my name had been taken off the blacklist. Around the same time, I was giving a lecture on Burma at Oxford University in the UK and British students were picketing my lecture because I dared to support travel to Burma!
Have you been back since?
Yes, the week I got the news from the MOT I went down to the embassy to get a visa. When I came to pick it up, a little old man with thinning hair and wire-rim glasses handed me my passport with a smile. ‘Here is your passport and visa, Joe,’ he said. As I turned to walk away, he said: ‘Don’t you remember me?’ I came back to the window and peered at his face more closely. It was the same guy who told me I had been blacklisted back in 1998! He had aged soooo much in that time, but he clearly felt good about giving me a visa. In fact, he seemed a lot more emotional about it than me.