Road Warriors: Richard S. Ehrlich -- Warrior of Words

by Jim Algie

A man's house or apartment turns the contents of his psyche inside out, advertises the trophies of his career and sex life, and embellishes them with the souvenirs of his wanderings.

In the case of Richard S. Ehrlich's place, what you've got is a helter-skelter, Asian-style bazaar.

On one wall, there's a gasmask from Vietnam (once used by American troops to spray Agent Orange) with glass eyes in it, near a badge that reads "Manson for President" (that's Charles, not Marilyn) and a tribal mask from Africa with a cigarette in its mouth.

The figure is wearing a Soviet tank commander's helmet.

Richard picked up the helmet when he was covering the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It could've been plucked from a dead Russian's head by a member of the CIA-backed mujahideen.

In 1992, after they ousted the Russians, Richard saw one of them wearing the helmet in the Hotel Kabul.

"I pointed at it and said, 'That's really nice,' and he traded it to me for a bunch of cigarettes."

Crowning his music collection is a Bob Dylan live CD on top of a framed story he did on "Opium Tribes" in Laos, near a promotional card for a book of someone's memoirs called "I Was a Teenage Dominatrix", and a crucified, glow-in-the-dark Jesus purchased in the Philippines.

Hanging from Christ's legs is a Sailor Moon doll.

"She needs to be saved and redeemed," says Richard, snidely.

Above them is a poster of the Tamil Tigers' strictly female unit, and the rebels' totemic emblem.

The Tigers' keepsakes, for instance, reminds Richard of interviewing their leader at a safe house in Sri Lanka in 1987, and how each rebel wears a vial of cyanide in a leather necklace, "because if they're captured by the Sri Lankan authorities, they know they'll be tortured and forced to confess details and expose their operation.

"I wanted to check how much cyanide they use and if it was true, so I asked one of the rebels if I could take a capsule back to a laboratory in the West and get it analyzed. He said, 'No, no, no, each of us is only issued one of them.' Eventually, I found a really huge Tamil Tiger rebel and he had two of them hanging around his neck, but he said, 'No, I need two in case one isn't enough'."

For romantic intrigue, the walls are adorned with photos of his Thai girlfriend of 10 years -- who is a bank manager -- on their trips to Venice, Rome, Budapest and Prague.

Are they married?

"No, we're in love. We're madly in love."

Not the kind of steadfast romanticism you might expect from the guy who wrote, along with co-author Dave Walker, the infamous book "Hello My Big Big Honey!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews, listed on the back cover as "Travel, Prostitution, Women's Studies."

But as you probably would expect from a guy whose taste in interior decorating mixes the macabre with the outlandish, Richard has a pretty zany and cutting sense of humour.

Before leaving, I asked him to sign a copy of his book.

Afterwards, I looked at the funny inscription:

"Many thanks for letting us publish your love letter! You are truly a romantic poet! Cheers, Richard."



(The following is an email interview done with Richard a few days before I actually met him. Otherwise, I might've been more sardonic.)



UNTAMED TRAVEL: Why did you become a journalist in the first place?


EHRLICH: I was writing short stories, poetry and scripts for theater while living in San Francisco, and I saw an ad asking for reporters to review films for the San Francisco Phoenix, a radical newspaper that paid no money but promised free movie tickets.

That expanded to rock concerts, comedians' performances, museums and other bits of San Francisco's cultural revolution.

The high point was with William Burroughs, one of my earliest and strongest influences in writing, language, and the use of words in politics and culture, who explained very clearly the value of journals and how they could evolve into an "ism".


UNTAMED TRAVEL: Was there any particular catalyst which inspired you to become a foreign correspondent?


EHRLICH: Hunter Thompson.

The two Dylans, Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas.

Grace Slick.

I started backpacking across Asia when I was 19, and after some years it became obvious from the gruel in my dented aluminum bowl that money was needed.

So I wrote travel stories.

The first was "On the Road to Mandalay," in London's Daily Telegraph while I was squatting in the slums of Battersea, yellow-eyed by viral hepatitis from Kathmandu's Hungry Eye Restaurant.


UNTAMED TRAVEL: As a writer who's done one hell of a lot of hard-hitting stories in Asia -- like interviewing serial killer Charles Sobhraj in an Indian jail, and covering political flashpoints in Tibet -- what are some of the most memorable stories you've covered and why?


EHRLICH: Those two you mentioned are at the top for bizarre drama.

Sobhraj is the epitome of the debonair, suave, alleged murderer.

Gleaming with treacherous glee, Sobhraj also introduced me to his latest girlfriends -- an American and an Australian -- and revealed the way he hoped to exploit the Perth girl for cash while she was dazzled by some death-defying quest for love unleashed by a bookcover photo of Sobhraj which she saw back in Perth on a department store shelf.


(Editor: Richard's four-page feature about Sobhraj, including info about his recent arrest in Nepal, will be in the February issue of UNTAMED TRAVEL.)


EHRLICH: Totally different, Tibet is politically and psychologically challenging to everyone there.

Travelling in Tibet or interviewing the Dalai Lama is enlightening, but a horrific "sky funeral" where Tibetans chopped up four dead people into mince-meat only this far away [gestures across the living room] on a gigantic, outdoor stone slab next to Sera Monastery, and fed the dead people to vultures -- that was very extreme.


Afghanistan, though, is where too many memories are buried.

Starting with the Soviet invasion, I covered the failed Russian occupation of Afghanistan for 10 years from 1980 through to their 1989 withdrawal and -- does this sound familiar? -- the CIA-backed "mujahideen" victory in 1992 after the Americans emphasized to them how a violent "jihad" can cripple a superpower.

At that time, the superpower to be zapped was the "godless" infidel Soviet Union.

Years later, when some of these same generic "mujahideen" allegedly kamikazied the World Trade Center, those twists became unraveled, as we all now know, in a typical, same-same Frankenstein syndrome, where some wise guy creates a Frankenstein to do the executions but it breaks free and attacks them.

Throughout the world that pattern repeats, complete with pitchforks and burning torches on all sides.

So for memorable stories, I'd include the most terrible ones.

In bleak landscapes.

Where mobs rule.


UNTAMED TRAVEL: Could you give us just a brief synopsis of the book you've written?


EHRLICH: Oh sure.

I'm co-author of a non-fiction book of interviews, documentation and investigative journalism, titled:

"Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

It includes a collection of love letters written by awe-struck foreign men who fell in love with bar girls in Patpong, Nana and Soi Cowboy, and who then return alone to their foreign lands -- America, Europe, Australia etc -- but start writing passionate love letters to their sweethearts, pouring out their hearts and sending money, hundreds of dollars, even though they are no longer getting laid.

The book then goes into detailed interviews, question-and-answer format, with Bangkok bar girls in relationships with foreign men who are enthralled and in love with these women.

The book includes an interview with a fierce mama-san who helps control them in the bars.

All the interviews and letters are totally verbatim.

Very blunt quotes.

The interviews also ask the women about AIDS, sex tourism, exploitation, values, the differing needs of men and women, love and money, West meets East, and what all these people say to each other amid the coos.


Recently, we met a wonderful publisher in San Francisco who published the book worldwide, so we expanded it to 252 pages by interviewing three bar owners -- a Thai, an American and a Brit -- in lengthy, question-and-answer format about how they get girls to work in the bars, the relationships the women have with the customers, and all the difficulties and whacked-out stuff involved in such a business.

The Thai bar owner is normal and pragmatic, and talks about the mechanics of the bar, how he manages the girls, etc.

But the American and the British bar owners totally flip out when they reveal how their bars operate, how they view the sex industry and the foreign men who come into their bars, and the bar owners' eccentric personal lives.

These people are totally wild.

And this new, expanded edition also includes 25 color photos -- half shot by Walker, half shot by me -- displaying the streets and bars.


UNTAMED TRAVEL: What changes have you noticed between how the invasion of Iraq has been covered by the print and electronic media, as opposed to how earlier conflicts, like Vietnam or even the Gulf War were covered?


EHRLICH: Vietnam was often an echo.

Some atrocity would be committed there and it would take days or months or whatever to read about it, or the pieces would be immediate but so splintered that you had to rely on whatever the new-told lie was, and not be able to go beyond your TV screen or sanitized media to find out what it was like.

It wasn't until the book Dispatches by Michael Herr came out that people said, "Wow, Vietnam."

Today, with 24-hour TV, internet, blogs, zines, etc, we can dive much deeper into the world as much as we like, whenever.

We also have our own personal websites publishing everything.

Technology has empowered the military and media, obviously, but it has also empowered the individual.


UNTAMED TRAVEL: Are there any works of fiction or non-fiction about Southeast Asia that you always recommend to people?


EHRLICH: Funny you should ask because one of my best friends, John Hail, just published a political novel set in Thailand, titled "Bangkok A-Go-Go", and the action is hilarious, breathtaking and ruthless.


UNTAMED TRAVEL: If you could be remembered for just one story or book that you've written, which would it be and why?


EHRLICH: It would have to be "Hello My Big Big Honey!" because everything is in that one book: love, insanity, money, sex, dreams, devotion, betrayal, satire and, of course, hot kisses.