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Yesterday was quite the day. Early in the morning I received a call from my friend Aek (see picture on the right) who runs a major cowboy store, plays in a bluegrass band, and is an overall friendly and good guy. He called to postpone our trip to Bak Choong, the Wyoming of Thailand, for a few hours because of the rain. He called me back a few hours later, we showered, dressed in cowboy/cowgirl dress, and went on our way, listening to bluegrass along the way. We drove an hour or so and then met Aek at a gas pump. His truck was impossible to miss --- the horseshoes glued to the car along with ample cowboy stickers made it pretty easy to
identify which car was his. We followed him to run a few errands and then onto a store that his family owns that sells American, Eastern Europe, and Asian antiques. Aek has pretty much been a cowboy his whole life. His dad was also a cowboy. (as you can see in the family portrait below). The store was really impressive, full of antiques from Russia, Czech, America, and Asia. The store had some really nice antiques. Not to mention the fact that this store was in a smaller town called Saraburi, about two hours away from Bangkok, bordering the Nakhorn Rachasima province (where I served as a greenie). We stayed in the store for a few minutes, filming and meeting his family and then moved on to a cow farm where we were able to film a Thai cowboy couple milking cows. The farms were up in the mountains, yet, the cowboys had adapted a western cowboy lifestyle. They watch John Wayne films, listen to Willie Nelson, and subscribed to "Thai Cowboy" magazine. The couple was very kind and willing to interview with us, and allow us to film them doing their daily cowboy activities (I'm the round one on the right).


After filming at their place for a few hours, we left and traveled up a series of windy roads, slowly climbing up the mountains to the cowboy horse ranch where we met an extremely charismatic cowboy named Phiched. He was the real deal. He has been a cowboy his entire life, established the first rodeo in Thai history, and spends his day as a cowboy, training visitors to ride horses. We were able to talk to him for a little over an hour and took some great interview footage as we discussed Thai cowboys, what cowboys can teach society, and what it is about cowboy culture that attracts so many young men and women. Do I need to remind you that this was in the middle of nowhere, high up in the mountains of Bak Choong? Next we headed to a bizarre cowboy city resort, a convention center/resort that was built to look like an old timey western town. We were taken on a short tour in a golf course through the town, passing a large stage with an even larger confederate flag mural :) We left the cowboy town, ate some food, and ended the trip by traveling to a grape vineyard, perched on a mountain that overlooked a series of mountain ranges that stretched out as far as the eye can see. It was dusk, and we could only see the shadows of mountains. Lightning periodically struck in the distance, illuminating the sky with a beautiful orange color. We left the grape vineyard and headed home, thanking our hosts numerous times for taking their whole day out to take us around and share a piece of cowboy culture with us. Being a documentarian is a blast. I've come to understand what Hitchcock was getting at with Rear Window. Being a voyeur is a lot of fun :) Having a camera allows you to participate in cultures you wouldn't otherwise participate in, simultaneously allowing you to pry and poke around in a way that is unique to filmmaking. You can ask any question when the camera is rolling.