T A B L E_T A L K Cramming before the big vacation? Weigh in on the value of learning the language in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Planning a trip to Thailand? Read all about it at barnesandnoble.com ___________________   R E C E N T L Y Hurricanes and hope in Honduras By Rachel Louise Snyder As the storm-battered Central American country rebuilds, dreams take root (01/26/99) A passion for Pelago By Tanya Shaffer An unlikely village hosts a Rainbow Gathering meets Burning Man meets rave music festival in Italy (01/25/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/22/99) Can this planet be saved? By Don George Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book about the human toll of global environmental devastation (01/21/99) "Earth Odyssey" By Mark Hertsgaard Excerpt: A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age (01/21/99) Browse the Wanderlust Postmark archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		BY ROGER BEAUMONT | To most expats in Bangkok, Washington Square is a cinema where movies can be seen in English, the billboard is usually spelled wrong and dogs of questionable character and motive sleep on the steps. I know, because one bit me. The anti-rabies injections cost 3,000 baht, the dog's still alive and worth about a dollar and lies waiting for me in a fake siesta by the abandoned popcorn stand. But there's another, extraordinary world here hidden among the cracked and faded concrete down the eastern side of the cinema. Spread over three nondescript bars called the Silver Dollar, Texas Lonestar and the Wild Country is an enclave of America that I always thought existed, but only in other people's imaginations. On the surface, this compact environment is a world of country-western, loud voices, bad vowels, the good, the bad and the facially challenged. It's frequented by an endless stream of oil workers on R&R, retirees who saw service in Korea and Vietnam and those who didn't see anything anywhere except Patpong in a crapulous haze at the height of the war, and stayed on for the next 20 years. There's endless banter recalling "home," as well as complaints about Bangkok and the alleged deviousness of the race they live among -- or rather, don't. Local reality seems to have escaped their notice and Thailand's another country somewhere else. They have no interest in the culture other than a lifestyle that offers available women, a little business and cheap rent in a decadent exile. While many have married Thai women, you never see them. Bars aren't for women -- well, certainly not your own, and certainly not here. It's a place where gossip is ripe and truth a fluid concept, where intelligence appears to hum along at a redneck pace slightly below room temperature. It's a bonfire of profanities. It brims with "large, bellicose men who know the price of everything and the value of nothing," as Oscar Wilde once said. To these men, Vivaldi is not a composer, he's a gay bartender in Patpong. This environment doesn't attract attention to itself, doesn't advertise, neither needs nor wants the tourist trade, is self-contained, self-righteous, fascinating and a fire escape to nowhere. And it became my home. I lived above the Texas Lonestar for over a year. I am English, and to compound this problem I'm also a musician and a teacher with lots of my own hair. When I checked in I felt about as popular as a vegetarian at a Dallas Bar-B-Q. "Hey hippie, whyderya grow ya hair so goddam long?" asked a bald, aging vet with a smirk. "Because I can," I replied with an innocent expression. N E X T+P A G E | A place of legends