“Horrible place, Perth. Bangkok’s where you find your youth again.”
I said that I hadn’t found mine.
“You’re not sixty yet. Come back when you’re sixty.”
“I won’t be coming here when I’m sixty.”
“There are worse places in which to be sixty.”

What Bangkok offered to the ageing human was a culture of complete physicality. It was tactile, humans pressed against each other in healing heat: the massage, the bath, the foot therapy, the handjob, you name it. The physical isolation and sterility of Western life, its physical boredom, was unimaginable.

“There’s a reason we’re so neurotic and violent and unhappy. Especially as we get on a bit, no one ever touches us.”

From Bangkok Days, by Lawrence Osborne

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