T A B L E_T A L K Winter in Prague? Share the pluses and minuses in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The rabbis of Bangkok By Douglas A. Konecky A traveling Jewish band from California meets a trio of Hasidic Jews in the teeming city of Live Sex Shows and Thai Full Body Massage (11/23/98) This week in travel A new U.S. passport, a fictitious country in the South Pacific and a buyout of Reno Air (11/20/98) Body talk By Dawn MacKeen Sometimes what our gestures say is not what we mean. International business traveler Roger Axtell has learned that the hard way (11/19/98) On the road with the Smokejumpers: Part Three By The King Teen Sold out in San Diego, boffo in Bakersfield -- the band's odyssey ends on an up note (11/18/98) Orchid ice cream By Eric Hansen An aficionado journeys to Turkey to discover the birthplace of this aphrodisiac treat (11/17/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		T h e_..r a b b i s_..o f_.Bangkok [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p a r t_.t w o ] A LIVE SEX SHOW REVEALS MORE THAN FLESH TO AN AMERICAN MUSICIAN IN THAILAND. . . . . . . . . [ GET PART ONE ] BY DOUGLAS A. KONECKY | It's Thursday night. We've been out to the Floating Market in a little rowboat, we've seen a cobra fight a mongoose in a cage, we've seen the Emerald Buddha, the People's Buddha and the Royal Buddha, and we've had at least 500 offers to see the Thai Full Body Massage and/or Live Sex Show but have avoided them both so far. Yosi and I have played together for 10 years, but tonight is our first gig ever on the continent of Asia. We're excited, nervous and sweltering, heading down Sukhamvit 22 in a tiny taxi searching for SamSoiThamNip 3, the street where Rabbi Karpas' synagogue, kosher food store and new kindergarten are located. Steam sizzles off the fender as the driver bangs a pothole and turns right. It has been trying to rain all day, but it can't, because God and Rabbi Karpas won't allow it. Rabbi Karpas took care of the weather last night, as he and Rabbi Chrane and Yosi and I huddled under an overhanging archway trying to avoid the thundering deluge that was causing rain to knife down in blinding sheets, fountains of spray to shoot three feet in the air, dirt streets to turn into lagoons of mud. This was the same rain that had been forecast without letup for the next two weeks and was already causing monsoon flooding on the Yangtze River, not that many miles north of here. No matter. Rabbi Karpas stuck his hat and head out into the downpour, turned to the heavens and shouted: "It will not!! rain tomorrow night!" Satisfied, he then ducked back under the overhang and said: "OK, it's settled. God will protect us." So far today he has been technically correct. It's not raining, but it's that last sodden step before rain, the humidity is 99.999 percent, the streets are like a steam bath where the steam is engine vapor and it's hard to breathe without a straw. I unstuff myself and my synthesizer case from the back seat of the Hyundai, joining Yosi and his guitar case on the hard-packed earth sidewalk in front of several white buildings partially hidden behind a six-foot white stucco wall. If you peer over the wall you can see a mosaic Star of David in the front window of the front building, but you have to look closely to see it. This is the synagogue itself. In the rear buildings are housed the Bangkok Chabad Community's brand-new kindergarten and store, for whose formal dedication tonight we have been hired to play. Carrying our instruments, we pass into the backyard along the lush grass at the side of the building and see the Thai sound company waiting for us -- the finest in Bangkok, Rabbi Karpas has assured us. "Hi," we say, but they don't answer. We have noticed that young Thais do not like to be addressed in English. "Suwatdee," I try, which is "hello" in Thai. One of the two sullen 16-year-old boys in tank tops, who make up the entire sound company, hears me trying to communicate with him and cocks one eye, almost perceptibly. We spot our rented equipment: two speakers that look as if they've been salvaged from a shipwreck, a mixing console with lots of buttons (scary -- the more buttons the more likely they don't work) and a sea of cables patched with electrical tape that are strung out all over the concrete patio in the back of the synagogue. In a little more than an hour guests will be mingling, eating and tripping over these cables as they try to dance. No English. We'll have to do this by hand signals. But we've done it before, and we've seen a lot worse gear. I unlock my British travel case and bring out my Japanese synth and American reverb unit as Yosi sets up his Spanish guitar, then we go through the usual hectic connection nightmares that occur when the power of the country is 220 volts, which will burn your instruments to black, plasticky ash in two seconds flat if you don't make sure every cable has a 115-volt transformer between it and the power source. It is amazingly hot and humid. The sweat is gushing off my face. I might feel sorry for myself if I weren't feeling so sorry for the weather, because it really, really wants to rain but can't because God won't let it. If it should start to shower while we are playing we will probably be electrocuted when the transformers malfunction, but I think it won't rain. If it isn't raining right now it just plain can't rain. N E X T+P A G E | Unlikely, improbable, impossible