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Sawadi to all of you! I write this second installment in my travel journal to you from the city of Chang Mai in northern Thailand. It is 100 degrees here, the air is thick with tuk-tuk exhaust, and I write with mixed emotions as I prepare to leave this country and head off to more untamed lands. The last time I wrote to you I was back in Bangkok after a wonderful stay on the southern island of Koh Tao. As I recall, my email was full of references to island paradise and the exotic sights of the city (Bangkok). Judging by some of the responses I got from you, I must have really sounded like I was having a grand 'ole time! However, just to balance out the seeming bliss of it all, let me add this: though it is the "land of smiles", travel in Thailand is not all Singha and Orchids. Example one. Literally moments after I wrote to you, I experienced the first of a few unfortunate incidents of the past two weeks. That is, somewhere between the boat ride from Koh Tao, the overnight train back to Bangkok, and the lobby of my guesthouse, my entire collection of compact discs was stolen from my backpack. If it were only a bunch of ordinary CDs that one could buy at a local record store I may not have been bothered so much. However, half of my collection was CDs which I had burned from other people's unusual collections, ones which I would be unlikely to see again without a pretty extensive search. Countless hours I spent on the floor of my friend Terry's house in Alaska this summer burning almost the entire Tom Waits collection, thinking to myself how happy I would be to listen to them when I was all alone at night in a strange place, in need of a reminder of home. And several of my CDs were made for me by other people, and therefore held greater, sentimental value. Also, there were two CDs from my band in the mix, and I am both bothered and mildly amused by the idea of some Thai/German/who-knows what band trying to make these songs their own. It was literally the first time that I had left my collection unattended for a brief time in the whole 2 1/2 weeks of travel in Thailand, but apparently that was enough for someone's watchful eye to notice, giving them an opportunity to swoop in and release me from my material attachments. Maybe it was the island sun that made me let my guard down, or maybe just a weary traveler's mush brain, but either way, I learned a great lesson about trust. Don't.
The second blow came when I found out that my boyfriend, Tim, would not be able to join me here in May as hoped. I realized that this was a possibility, but it's much more difficult to take news of this kind after an initial setback like the theft, and it left me rather somber for a week or so. It's already difficult to travel alone anywhere, much more a third world region, and even more so when expecting company that never comes. So I am left to forge out a path on my own, and pay the consequences for whatever good or bad decisions I make along the way. And believe me, I have. So after the brief stay in Bangkok, I hopped an overnight bus to Chang Mai. These buses sound more cozy than they are...the pictures in the travel agencies show the seats reclining all the way back, with plenty of room all around. Truth is, they literally pack us in like Siamese sardines and then accost us with terrible 70s American sci-fi on the video monitor. I'm not kidding, the name of one of the movies was something like "Robot Jock", about a burly soldier whose sperm is used to insure a better race for a futuristic utopia, though I can't be entirely sure as I was trying to ignore it. Not able to sleep upright, I decided two hours into the journey to lay my blanket down on the floor in the aisle of the bus and stretch out a bit, not particularly caring about the dirt. Two other bus riders soon followed suit, and about six in the morning we arrived on the outskirts of the city and checked into a guest house called "The Paradise". Indeed, this was a nice place, with cool rooms, private baths with hot water, a swimming pool, all for about $3 a night. So far this was the best bargain and the coziest place I'd stayed. Thailand can be even cheaper, but not sharing rooms makes it double the price. The next day I wondered around the city, looking into Thai Massage schools here. As I have enjoyed countless massages in this country, I figured the only respectable thing to do was to learn how to do them myself so that I could bring this ancient jewel to those of you at home. Two days later, I began studying at a reputable school in the NW corner of the city. Known to western travelers and Thai alike, school here begins the same way each morning, with one hour of yoga to ready the body for all the strange positions one will twist one's self into for the rest of the day. My first yoga session was quite amusing. As everyone in the class yogaed in unison while listening to the recorded voice of our teacher, a Thai man with much experience and respect in the field, we got to a point in the session where we were being told to roll our forearms across the tops of our thigh muscles while in a sitting position. With this, our teacher's voice says, "now woll and wock, or wock and woll... many times". For some reason it took nearly all of my mental strength not to openly cackle while standing and dancing wildly amidst the all too self-consciously sedate students, rocking and rolling in unison. Anyway, during the three days I spent here, I was introduced to many of the exotic and harrowing positions of Thai massage. Much like yoga played out on a Twister mat, our lessons were both difficult to perform and amusing to ponder. One of the more painful sounding series of movements begins with a step called the "open groin", followed shortly after by the "lock leg", which ultimately leads to a move that is colorfully named the "nutcracker". Now, if your mind works anything like mine, this description may lead you to think that the massage is more of a sado-masochistic experience than a relaxing one. The image is almost too much to ponder! I made an under-the-breath joke about the names of these moves to two of the instructors as they demonstrated them to me. The female Italian instructor didn't seem to get it, or perhaps thought it in poor taste and chose not to respond. The male Australian teacher did laugh, but quickly attempted to stop his chuckling. I don't know why these people don't have a better sense of humor about this stuff. It's weird and awkward, so why deny it? On the afternoon of my third day of class, I shared an open-air tuk-tuk with one of my classmates (who happened to live in Oregon, one of about four people I've met already from the Portland area) across town. Although I had been informed by Thais and read about it in my travel guide book, I was not prepared for the early onset of the Thai New Year festivities which we encountered on our ride. The guide book states that this festival, called Songkran, is a water throwing festival that lasts for about four days, the water being a symbol of purification and utilized to cleanse the old year and baptize the new one. I figured this meant that people would carry around mini water guns, nonchalantly squirting people in the streets. Man was I wrong. The main downtown portion of Chang Mai is enclosed by the remains of an old fortress, where ancient red bricks in various levels of decay line a moat full of water. As we drove past said moat, I quickly realized that we were encountering the beginnings of this water festival, as hundreds of young Thais were lined up along the road next to the moat, holding huge buckets full of moat water, drenching passersby with bucket after bucket full of dirty, hot, stinky, muddy, moat guts. As we were stuck in slow moving traffic, we were perfect targets for these "festivities", and time and again were "baptized" by the putrific sludge. I happened to be carrying all my valuables in my backpack (camera, money, massage book, state tax forms) and so I tried to hold it out of harm's way. But these people take their New Year VERY seriously and seemed to read this as yet another reason to douse me endlessly and ruthlessly (the others, I think, being that I am a westerner and that I happen to be passing by), as I clearly didn't get the point that no one is safe from the water. By the time I returned to my guesthouse I was completely drenched, and the next morning discovered that the clothes I had been wearing the day before smelled curiously like a cross between dead mammals and rotten poo. At this, I decided it was time to leave the city of Chang Mai for a few days while this whole crazy water thing blew over. Four hours northwest of the city lies a beautiful, slow, jungle of a town named "Pai". It is small, rural, populated by Thais, ethnic hill tribe people, and even some Muslims. Called "Pai in the sky" by the locals, appropriately enough, it was the perfect getaway from the madness of Songkran in the city. The ride to Pai was a very slow, windy climb up the mountainside, where I was able to experience my first incidence of "travel sickness". The smelly squatter toilets at our rest stop assisted with the execution of this nausea in a way I hope not to repeat in this lifetime. Anyway, only a few miles outside of Pai we came across a motorbike accident that must have occurred only moments earlier. As we pulled over, we saw two people, a man and woman, lying on the side of the road near a broken motorbike, and appearing unconscious at least, or even dead. It was one of the many accidents that Thailand experiences during this holiday, where drinking large amounts of alcohol, hopping on dangerous scooters without helmets and buzzing around while having water thrown in one's face is the norm. As is turns out, the couple was all right after a few minutes, and even tried to drive away on the bike as we waited for the ambulance. Luckily it arrived pretty quickly (which came as a bit of a surprise to me) and took them away. Apparently, accidents like this kill many people at Songkran—this year more than 500 died, up from last year despite police presence, and almost half of them were under 15 years old, drunk, and driving illegally to begin with. Sad, but drunk driving is pretty common here.
There is so much to say about Pai that I don't feel it would do it justice to describe it here. A few things to briefly mention, though, follow. My guesthouse was absolutely picturesque--everything I could imagine the mountains of Thailand to be. One in a small village of huts made of bamboo and huge leaves (elephant ears, we call them at home), my hut was a stone's throw away from a babbling river, and surrounded by forested mountains and wandering cattle. At night, the sounds of geckos (which make the most fascinating sound, as if they are saying "GECK-o!"), owls and countless other types of birds, roosters, frogs, cicadas, grasshoppers, cows, etc. lulled me to sleep in my little $3/night bungalow. Activities in the Pai area include waterfall swimming, hot spring soaking, bamboo rafting, mountain trekking, elephant rides through the jungle, and lounging around town at any one of a number of laid-back eating establishments. I did take a short elephant ride, despite my anxiety about using elephants this way, and it turned out to be quite an experience, as our elephants went "swimming" with us and literally catapulted us in the river when they shook their backs the way a dog might when trying to shake off water. Pai was truly a magnificent place. In fact, I liked it so much that I spent an extra day in the area and went 80 miles or so west of Pai to spend the night in an even more remote place, where I hiked inside a cathedral-sized cave filled with 60,000 bats. The smell of that much bat poo will forever be etched in my nasal memory, I can assure you. So for now, I'm back in Chang Mai for another day. Tomorrow I am taking a Thai cooking class where I am excited to learn how to make several dishes and study the art of vegetable carving. The day after, I will take a bus to the border of Laos, where I hope to merrily float down the Mekong River for a few days as I head south back toward the Thailand border. Though Laos was not in my original travel plan, I have heard over and over how wonderful it is there, so I am making a side trip for a couple of weeks as I wait on my plane ticket to Nepal. It is all too easy to go on and on here but I know that this is already such a novel that half of you might not read this far. For those of you who do, I wonder, should I tell you about the great kindness, flirtatiousness and patience of the Thai people? Or about the many amazing conversations I've had with other travelers? Would you care to know what it's like to travel during a war, when many conversations start over the politics of it (and where being an American is not so comfortable) and everyone I've met from every country of every age is opposed to it? Would it interest you to know that I am so sick of eating Thai food that I have rice coming out of my ears, have dreams of sleeping in rice fields, and seek out the expensive western style food (despite how shameful this may seem) whenever possible, but that when I do find the western food, it always ends up being Thai-ified with honey and sugar, making lasagna more like tomato and noodle cake? Or that I am constantly reminded of my bigness when I shop, as the Thai people always see me and say "We have big! Big!" and that I wear a size XXL in EVERYTHING? Is it as funny to hear as it is to live? I wonder. From the land of motorbikes and moonshining mayhem, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." M. Gandhi Special notes at the bottom of the page:A great traveler's website is the Lonely Planet online. There is a page on it where travelers all over the world ask each other questions and share stories about their current, past, and future travels. If you're curious about anyplace, someone has written about it there. Go to Chapter Three |
The hard part about having something like this stolen while traveling is that I don't know who to blame. I have no outlet for my anger, so it's tempting to wander around with suspicious eyes, resentful of everyone I see, wondering if they are the criminal-at-large. I actually wandered around the streets of Bangkok, where innumerable burned CD booths sell cheap copies of Celine Dion and Frank Sinatra, looking for some evidence of my CDs being sold. I figured I would find that one rare CD of mine that would be a giveaway, providing clear evidence of the theft, and I'd manage to recover all of the discs back unharmed. Well, though my persistence was remarkable, I was ultimately unsuccessful, though I did manage to figure out how to avoid the aggressive sales tactics of the street vendors. It's amazing what a great defense system an angry exterior proves to be. They left me alone for the first time with a simple recognition of my one-mindedness. So, I am left to rebuild by collection starting with the meager offerings of Kao San Road, and forced to contemplate the lessons of material grasping once again. Just wish I had one more night to be washed away into slumber by Wings' "Maybe I'm Amazed"...
Which leads naturally (and unfortunately) to my next story. While in Pai, I rented a motorbike to have a look around. Not wanting to drive it myself and not wishing to figure out the map, I hired a guy at the shop to take me around for the day. As it was, after all, the New Year, my guide pulled over only about an hour into our journey at a roadside restaurant/open air bar and began engaging in one of the most evident aspects of Songkran, that of kicking back shot after shot after shot of moonshine whiskey. As I sat impatiently and in disbelief, I watched him drink to the point where he was hardly able to keep his eyes open, while saying to me over and over "Just 15 more minutes, OK? Plenty of time." Eventually I managed to pull him away, but needless to say, I learned how to drive a motorbike that day.