Resuming My Quest for Samosa

Although my last post mentions closing the door on my travels in Southeast Asia, it turns out I will be starting another chapter in this journey. In 48 hours I will be heading off to the airport to return to a land where time stands still. I am both excited and frightened by the prospect of another 3 months in the land of smiles, a million of elephants and the rest of the domino playing field. As I said to my lovely niece, I’m sure once I sit down for a big bowl of Tom Ka Gai at Panee Restaurant, I’m certain my nervousness will yield to self-reliance and the thrill of a different perspective.

In my preparations for this trip, I often questioned my choice of destination. Why return to a place which I have already been? Are there no other destinations which pique my interest? What happened to Tibet and Argentina and Hungary and Tanzania? Am I so embedded in one thought that I have no room for another? It’s a mixed bag – as are all choices in life – that I carry. In short, my decision to return to Southeast Asia, and more specifically, Laos, is based on my pursuit of a novel (and some other writing endeavors) which takes place there. That is the practical side of it. However, on a more philosophical level, my return to Asia is peppered with a thought which has returned to mind again and again over the past months.

People ask me ‘Where (or what) is Samosa?’ Samosa is the snow leopard looking down from its perch on the tiny village and Shangri La with Atlantis and Lemuria off in the distance. Samosa is the flavour of childhood beckoning from the back of our tongue to be re-tasted both familiar and queer. Samosa is both place and sound and touch and thought and emotion. Samosa is the fountain of satisfaction – the satisfaction of facing your demons and recognizing one’s achievements with absolute detachment. In this context, my return to Southeast Asia is a pursuit of something which only exists in my heart and fantasies. And therefore, it really does not matter where I go. Again, it is not so much that we start in the “right” place, but that we start at all.

Conquering my biggest fear – the fear of never trying – seems to be well on its way. Resisting my second biggest fear – submitting my application to Dunder Mifflin – is too far in the distance to worry about today. And so, with limited funding, a few ideas and a passion beyond all imagination I cast myself back into the fray.

What to Pack for Southeast Asia

Before I close the door on my travels in Southeast Asia, I have one pragmatic entry. This I wrote on my last day in Bangkok and while it may be like a Tarantino movie where they do things in backwards order, I think it is worth submitting.

So, you’re going to Southeast Asia. What should you bring? Nothing! It is very true that you can go to Thailand with only a passport, an ATM card and the clothes you are wearing. Although that would be a bit extreme, lean towards this truism while you pack. You can live without much more than you think. Even the electric toothbrush is unnecessary.

Do not bring anything like this (or at least make sure you really want to carry it around with you):

• A wool cardigan sweater
• Long pants
• Designer Jeans
• An ash tray
• Your favorite incense
• An 800 page hardcover novel
• An electric toothbrush charger (for the toothbrush you’re not bringing)
• A long sleeve shirt
• A mosquito net - Many people will disagree here, but for me, a mosquito net is a luxury. Trade your mosquito net for the ability to speak one sentence such as “I am hungry”. You can’t eat a mosquito net. Besides, there’s this stuff called mosquito repellant and other stuff called doxycycline …
• A big plush Garfield beach towel!
• A big box of embossed linen stationary
• A big anything. No. Big. No. No. No. Small is good.
• Shoes – dancing shoes, combat boots, platform shoes, anything called a shoe. I wore $0.80 flip-flops for nearly 3 months. On travel days I wore $6 trekking sandals. Once I became a better flip-flop’er, I tossed the trekking sandals.
• A micro cassette recorder with a wireless microphone.
• Water bottle. In Asia each water purchase comes with a free bottle.

Finally, even more important than the cardigan, only under very unusual circumstances should you bring a Barbie doll. This is called “bringing sand to the beach”. I suggest having a long talk with your Barbie to explain why she would be much happier at home. If you are foolish (or foolish in love), you may find yourself run ragged in a Bangkok mall looking for super-petites, annoyed the whole time because you got a $30 ticket for snuffing a cigarette on the sidewalk. (Bangkok is a filthy city, but you can, and will, be fined for throwing cigarette butts out in certain areas. To be safe, always always always use an ash tray.)

Now, let’s get to what you should bring. These first 3 items are essential:

A map. A good current map. Hardly anyone in Thailand can read a map (in Laos, most people can), but it draws lots of attention and is a great conversation starter.

A bilingual dictionary. You are traveling in a foreign land, carry a dictionary. Carry it until you can speak the language. Consider this... If someone were to come into your day-to-day life and repeat the exact same incomprehensible phrase over and over, becoming louder and more frustrated with each iteration, wouldn't you eventually think to hand them a translation dictionary? They're bi-directional you know.

A small compass. Get a very inexpensive one (approx. $1USD). Attach this to the outside of your bag.

Here’s the rub… The compass, the map and the dictionary all work together. It’s sort of like pretending you’re exploring a place you’ve never been before.

Other things you might consider bringing.

A GSM cell phone (unlocked) A SIM card in Laos or Thailand costs about $10USD. Calling home from a local SIM card is only slightly higher than using the internet cafe phones. (My other option was to let Cingular GOUGE me at the insulting rate of $0.79/min - Hey, Cingular! Stop ripping off your customers, we don't all spend the whole year in Kansas).

So... Why have a cell phone in Southeast Asia? Here is some very smart advice, especially for the solo traveler. Arrange with a reliable friend or family member back home that you will text message them each time you change locations. This way if you disappear and you have been chopped into little bits in the jungle, someone has a way of knowing where to start looking for you.

It pains me to write this… consider bringing a guide book. A guidebook tells you a million things. Over 900,000 of those things are superfluous and/or outdated. To pass through a country, especially in SEA, you only need the names of towns, a map of the country and towns along the way and border crossing information. Having some suggestions for guesthouses is sometimes good, but I stopped reading them because they are riddled with inaccuracies. After that, you can figure it out.

Here is my advice on guidebooks. Get a compilation guidebook (Southeast Asia on a Shoestring, for example). Cut out the pages you need, bring them to a binder and have them soft cover spiral bound. All of a sudden, that two inch thick, space-gobbling, anchor of a book is now one centimeter thick. Whatever you are missing from your self-abridged guidebook, you can look up in any of the numerous bookshelves you will encounter.

More things you should bring…

Rubber bands. How do I sing thee praise, oh rubber-band.

Ziplock bags. Soap, passport, cell phone, receipts... (separate bags, right?)

Medium-sized, nylon, drawstring sacks to hold: toiletries in one and clothes in another (ok, I use one for shirts, one for underwear) If you can't stand the though of your dirty clothes fraternizing with your clean clothes, get another bag for the dirties. Make sure you have the kind of drawstring witha plastic clamp so you can cinch it down and secure it.

Smaller drawstring bags. Mesh is good because you can see through it. Sometimes, mesh is bad because you can see through it.

A flashlight … or a torch … or whatever else it’s called. Whatever your nomenclature, I suggest you bring a thingamajig which makes a bright light in the dark so you can find your way. (Favourite feature on my Thai cell phone… a flashlight)

Dental Floss. I kissed a pack of dental floss once. Do not underestimate the power of this lightweight travel and hygiene esssential.

Toothpaste. I specify "paste" and not "gel". If you prefer gel, or don't care, skip this part. Otherwise, know that there is no paste in Southeast Asia. You may find children's bubblegum flavoured past, but no mint paste except I did find some "night time" toothpaste where the label clearly explains how it is to be used... in Thai.

One pair of shorts.

Another pair of shorts. - Unless you can figure out how to get the first pair of shorts washed and still get around with causing a scandal, you will need the second pair.
However… A note on men’s shorts (which may apply to women too, but I don’t wear women’s clothing when I travel). I have a pair of mountain climbing type pants where there is a mesh lining, like a bathing suit liner. They have zip-off legs which are ideal for showing respect at wats (temples). When you roll up the legs they’re the size of a cigar and easy to store. The shorts dry really fast so you can feasibly wash them before bed and they will be dry when you wake up. Why do I not wear these shorts all the time? The mesh built-in underwear thing irritates my bum. Otherwise, this could solve the one short / two short problem and reduce the underwear quotient.

T-shirts. Yes, you can get t-shirts in Asia. DO NOT BRING YOUR FAVOURITE t-shirt, it will be ruined. Also, don't bring thick t-shirts; they're too bulky and take too long to dry. The thinner the material the better.

iPod/mp3 player. This could be your link to sanity on some endurance travel routes where the piece de resistance at the end of a 10 hour bus journey is a 45 minute long song on the karaoke TV where an effeminate redheaded man in a yellow jumpsuit sings (whines, actually) in a falsetto voice in a language you will never understand. Naturally, your seat mate will be singing along. I am not exaggerating - this happens more often than you would think. ... or you could leave the iPod at home and remove your ears en route with a carrot peeler.

Camera. I could nix the camera but my brother asked me to take lots of pictures. Personally, I prefer to look at things for as long as it takes to remember them.

USB Flash card. Forget about carrying blank CD's. Flash cards are more durable (they meay even survive the washing machine) and they are far more compact than CD's. One card is good for off-loading your photos from your camera (so figure 1gb to 2gb). Use another one to store scans of your passport, credit cards, driver's license, etc (250mb will more than suffice) NOTE: make sure you zip and password protect the second one. Use a password with a combination of numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and do not use words found in the dictionary. Make sure the password is at least 12 characters long. The longer the better.
The price of these cards is very reasonable. I just picked up a 1GB card for $10USD. You can also pick them up in Bangkok, but don't expect them to be sold in Vieng Vang.

Single US dollar bills. These are extremely handy anywhere in the world. I never travel without a wad of singles. Don't expect a favorable exchange when you hand the customs officer two US twenties and he's stuffing kip or baht back through the window. Bind your singles in stacks of $20 (rubber bands?). Spread the bound stacks of bills 4 separate money envelopes and conceal them in different parts of your bag (bottom of a tightly cinched dirty underwear sack?). If you have some sort of dementia, bring a magic marker and you can keep a running balance on each envelope, using special color coded rubber bands to indicate which packet is less than $20.

INCLUDING everything listed, there are things you should not buy for your trip. If you already have them, bring them along. But if you don’t, you can get it when you need it:

• Mosquito Repellant
• Passport photos (wildly popular at border crossings and nightclubs).
• Re-hydration powder (the stuff in Laos tastes terrible so stock up in Thailand before crossing the Mekong)

Are you starting to get the idea?
Passport, ATM card, the clothes you are wearing. That’s it!

Maybe this helps someone out. Maybe it is dismissed. I dismissed a similar article not long ago and paid dearly for it with a torn shoulder ligament. Assuming you read this and think I am some crackpot with a 500 cubic inch pack of smelly clothes and you decide to ignore my advice, I have one more piece of practical information.

When you discover you are stuck in Asia with all the stuff I told you not to bring, and you also added a guitar, a rabbit skin beret, a three piece suit, extra socks, scuba diving equipment, Barbie’s dream beach house, a big bottle of mouthwash, a case of 35mm film, your own complete set of golf clubs, blank CD’s, a practice amp for the guitar and a curling iron, here is how to handle the situation.

Mailing these lovely possessions home or anywhere else will cost more than a month of expenses. Forget the idea of mailing anything other than a postcard or a letter. Get to Bangkok (or whatever city is your final departure) and store it at your guesthouse. Even with the additional travel expenses, this is still a fraction of the cost of mailing. Buy a smaller bag to hold what is absolutely necessary. Be prepared to carry this bag on your lap for 10 hours (remember the guy in the yellow jumpsuit?) You won’t always need to do so, but if you can, you have the option to never let your possessions out of your site.

“Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.”
– John Ruskin

Sweetened Condensed Southeast Asia

Why did I not go right? Sure, there were some logistical issues, such as a closed border crossing, but that’s not really why I took a left and headed for Chang Mai. It was not the promise of trekking in the wet mountains of Pai. It was not the need for deodorant or medicine or any of the other frivolous items available in Thailand but not Laos. Nor was it the ticking clock of a two week visa. No, it was my travel companions that I picked up along the way that influenced my course.

I went through countless unpronounceable places, Mai’s and Xi’s and Chang’s and Aya’s. A mental map has checkmarks along a route of boats and buses and tuk tuk’s and riverside balconies strewn with empty beer bottles in the morning heat. There were wats and waterfalls and markets and riverboats where tracks of my footsteps have been stepped over a thousand times. When was that? I don’t know. Was it a week or a day or some other lifetime altogether? Does it matter? It simply was and all that matters, all that makes a lasting impression, is not the ground upon which I stood but the people who stood next to me. Their words and thoughts and actions reverberate inside my soul and I am a richer man for it. I have been to places of untold wealth and beauty; beautiful and cherished because of the souls who touched my heart in one way or another.

I’ve been tossed in a tube where waterside bars stick out bamboo poles and laugh at frightened and brave farang belly flopping from a wire into the river. I met cocky Americans who elude the question ‘Where are you from?’ because they are tired of hearing the opinions. I recall the color of my knuckles on a bus to Maung Noi as I swallowed hard the urge to yell, ‘Stop!’ – I need the children of this village; their laughter is my drink. I need the old woman of this town crouched over a fire; her experience is my bread. I walked in red clay squishing over the edges of 80 cent flipflops; it reminded me of the clay of childhood in Virginia. I’ve crouched down to smell it, does it smell the same as Fairfax before it was paved over? I thought of a friend from that time ; he health is in trouble now. My tears flood the mud while I pray to an imaginary god and hope I am terribly wrong because he is too young to die and his family is too kind to cry.

And then I made a left to Chang Mai because I could not make a right to Hanoi. For days I made my way, undeterred, sitting on boats and buses; sleeping with bed bugs, scratching my balls. In Pai, I sprayed them (my balls) with Deet which no one should ever do. The itching went away but the shock of the lesson is indelible.

From Chang Mai, I went south back to Bangkok where I got busted by police for making out between the train cars. I stumbled in the street and cut my toes trying to numb my feelings for the girl on the train. I got spit on by a whore and smiled until she went away. Asia can teach the westerner alternatives to rage and finer points of diplomacy.

Drunk or hung over or somewhere in between, I had to get out of Bangkok so I headed east to get away from the tourists and the playskol expeditions and to find a place where Ronald McDonald doesn’t wei, where English is not prolific, where white is unusual. I thought I would make it to Cambodia or Vietnam, but confusing Mukdahhan with Savannaket landed me back in Laos.

A hundred thousand scribbled words, a million laughs and many bottles of Johnny Walker later, I eventually found myself wearing long pants and shoes in the San Francisco airport thrilled with the fact I could speak English to every single person I saw. I chatted with baggage handlers. I chatted with a first time flyer. I chatted with a sandwich lady. I chatted with airport security (they didn’t want to chat at all). I chatted with nearly everyone I could find. Another quick flight and I was soaking in the dry desert heat, hugging my parents and trying not to ramble on too much about my adventures outside the shire.

Where to start?

When I last posted, I was battling ants in a red-clay village with only a hint of what lay ahead. My plan, as sketchy as it was, would have me head north and take a right into Vietnam. Well, in short, I never took that right. The times that followed were of absolute bliss and thoughts and words and lessons flowed through and around me like a long overdue bath of life. I regret that I have not shared those epiphanies here as they came to me and I struggle with a question; I ask myself, ‘How do I provide continuum or at least some coverage of the past 6 months, if I failed to post regularly?” or in more simple terms, “Where do I start?”

Before dealing with the June to December subject, let me first tell a story. I call this story “Where to Start?”

Sometime between university and career, I had a job as a pie baker for a gourmet ice cream store in Brooklyn. The process for making the pies was very simple. For each pie, use two frozen pie shells. Put filling in one, leave the other empty. Put a tray of empty shells and a tray of full shells in the convection oven for a few minutes then take them out. Place an empty pie shell over a full pie shell, pop off the top aluminum foil and then pinch the edges of the top and bottom shell together to give it a homemade look. Return the pies to the oven to bake. You see, this is a very simple process to produce a dozen or so pies in 45 minutes.

One day, I was baking pies when a parade of about 65 Jehovah’s Witnesses came in to each order a single scoop of vanilla ice cream in a sugar cone. This was not an unusual event at the ice cream shop. They were good customers, always polite and orderly and nearly always exact change, however it was a huge amount of work which the one person working the front of the store could not handle alone.

I had just taken the pie shells from the oven and flipped them all and was ready to pinch two trays of pies when the counter girl (in the industry known as “the scooper”) asked me to help out with the onslaught of customers. So I turned to Carl, a bit of an idiot savant but a great ice cream maker, and asked him to pinch the pies while I helped out the scooper. Then I dove into the strenuous process of scooping endless vanilla ice cream cones.

In between cones, I happened to look back into the kitchen and saw Carl hovering over the two trays of pies, his fingers poised to pinch at his chest level. He was not pinching, only hovering. Odd, I thought and dove back into the case to scoop another cone. Handing the cone over the counter to the delighted mendicant, I looked back to the kitchen again; still hovering, still not pinching. I put my scoop in the water and walked back to the kitchen.

“Hey, Carl,” I asked him, the pie shells cooling in front of him “what’s the problem, Carl?”

Carl squinted back at me, his fingers still in a pre-pinch mid-air posture and motioned to the dozen round pies before him. “I don’t know where to start,” he said, genuinely confused but also astoundingly astute of the conundrum. Carl had seen what I had never noticed. All the pies were circles, there was no beginning point from which to commence pinching and therefore, no pinching could occur.

“Anywhere,” I blurted, aware there was an army of customers still wanting my attention.

“Yes, but where?” he protested and moved his fingers closer to the pies, but still circling directionless like a blind hawk over an ocean of prey.

I knew Carl. I knew this conversation would last for hours if I could not tell him a direct point, so I did what any rational person would do. I put a pinch in a pie to get him started. Any pie. Any degree on the circle. It didn’t matter because where to start is not really important. What is important is that you must, absolutely, start.

That is the story of Where to Start. Now, let’s deal with what happened to June to December. It would ridiculous to postdate all the entries during that time frame, so instead, over the next few days, I will recap what occurred, submit of few of the “gems” that are worth transcribing and then we will be back up to speed on my journey to Samosa. I intend to then be a bit more diligent in documenting what happens from here.

Bugs, ants, geckos and other friends

Are tiny brown ants bad for laptops? My desk is teeming with them. They crawl along the iPod wire and they race around the edges of the laptop screen and they dart underneath the keys. I chase them, my fingers smack the keys. It spells nothing. They are a bit distracting but it’s nice to have some company. They don’t care if I wear a shirt.
My clothing is fully alive, nearly self-realized. The least odorous dries on the balcony rail. The others are downstairs with a pair of shorts, rubbing around inside a machine. This is their first machine ride in a month. I wonder if they are giggling. Are my t-shirts ticklish? Are my shorts stoic?

I’ve developed a certain bond with other creatures of the world. There are very silly geckos who dash for the ceiling or behind anything when you walk into a bathroom, or down a hall at night or, well, just about anywhere I guess. There’s a sort of humor when, standing up from a massage on the beach, I see my electrolyte beverage is now covered with ants, lots of them. When the waterbug makes his nightly appearance, it’s always a fresh new show, very fast and exciting for everyone. I don’t think to kill any of them. I’m heavily outnumbered.

There’s a guy from Calgary who doesn’t mind any of the insects or reptiles, but moths send him into hysterics. His girlfriend thinks it’s cute. She’s afraid of spiders.

Back to my friends the ants. They have overstayed their welcome. I may be about to make a big mistake, but it needs to be done. I’ve sprayed insect repellent on nearly everything else, why not the laptop? … Deet can stain some parts of a laptop. It now looks like I was frying bacon next to the touch pad. Otherwise, all is well. Unless, of course, you’re an ant who once decided it was a good idea to climb all over a laptop in Laos.

Border Pretzel

Get me to a border crossing, any border crossing is fine. Expired visa. Already too far for Malaysia. Is Vietnam easy to get to? Must I go through Cambodia? Will I backtrack? How much to fly? I say easy ten times to the woman. She sits next to the counter where I got my Thai SIM card. I trust them. I say easy again. She parrots, Easy? and declares my next destination, Laos. I’ve heard good things. How soon can I get out of Khao San hell? Tonight. I spend the day lost, wandering the streets of Bangkok. I get funny looks sometimes, but not many.

There is a certain enjoyment in folding myself into various positions on a bus. Once I’ve achieved one of these fancy yogic postures, I “sleep”. Sometimes I don’t even recline the seatbacks, just to see if I can do it. Overnight, there is nothing anyone wants to see. The driver barrels down on motorcycles and compact cars, they whisper close secrets fender to bumper over a dotted white line and no one is the least bit phased. So we sleep and don’t look.

A single border crossing can have many signs. Some say $30, others say $31, others say 8am others say 9am, others say Saturday and Sunday, others still say other things that make absolutely no sense at all. Sometimes there are conversations about it which make even less sense, if that’s possible. Each window wants something from my pocket. I want to leave two days late, my pocket. I would like to enter your country, my pocket. No, really, I’d like to come in today before 9am, my pocket. No, I don’t happen to have a 3x4 photo of myself, my pocket. I want to walk over there where the bus is, my pocket. I’m not sure why I’m giving you this dollar but you have a booth and a uniform and I don’t think it would be any cheaper at this point to turn around and go back, my pocket. They smile and explain that it’s three because today is a holiday. I don’t ask which one but I expect it’s the famous reach-in-your-pocket holiday. Quite enjoyable actually.

Philosophical questions stroll beside the pedestrian events of my day.

Whiling away the days on Koh Phangan, it’s easy to loose track of time. An hour can be a day. A day can be two or three. A moment can be a lifetime. I watch the tide go out and my day unfolds. I watch the tide come in and another cycle begins. On the other side of the world I hear good news, I hear bad news, I hear no news. Life goes easy and hard at the exact same moment and I contemplate humility. I smile because it makes more sense than anything else I’ve tried.

My pedestrian day. The attendant dispenses another 40 baht into the motorbike tank. A guide on a longtail boat smiles more than any person I’ve ever seen, he is a champion at poi but will never mention it to anyone – that was a different time. Iodine, alcohol, gauze, bandages, tape help to doctor a pretty girl’s toe torn open on a dance floor beach. A thousand lost pairs of sandals sunbathe in the morning; their owners will come to retrieve them and they will never be found. Another dejected thousand un-paired flip-flops and birkenstocks gawk at the couples, their own mate has staggered off for breakfast, for sex, for drink, for fun, for a ferry back to another place – the moon begins to wane. Life carries on.

Boxed up long pants and sweaters are sent on a three week journey home for the cost of twenty nights in a bungalow. Mysterious rashes were never the cause of ant work but instead too little water. Smelly t-shirts remind me of varsity letters earned years ago in high school. Mastery of contortionism with two seats on the top floor of an overnight bus gets interrupted by a night market pit stop, time enough for a piss, mystery food, a smoke and another conversation. The ride ends. Find shelter for the night in Bangkok. I could strap the bag to my back, but there’s pavement and sidewalks and ramps and it is hot and I am hot and I use the wheels and I feel smart because I’m lazy. I still don’t have dredlocks. I can shave without a mirror.

What do you do?

Initech seems far away now. It’s nearly capable of being romanticized. It seems a long time ago, but that is just the experience fattening that silly goose, time. The jarred nerves from corporate life are rebuilding. Gradually that little kid is starting to show up a little more often. I notice small changes in me. Changes from being further removed from the captains of modern business or changes from being closer to something else, I don’t know. And, yet, as far as I may be from making pushpin designs in the soft fabric walls of a cubicle, it returns to me each day, an undeniable piece of my personal history.

People love to ask questions and want lovable answers. They want to know, it helps them. Helps them identify. Helps them talk. Talk helps them feel there somehow, alive somehow. ‘What do you do?’ They love the ring, the tone, the sound, the rhythm of the words as they bubble out of their mouths, ‘What do you do?’

What do I do when? Now? Then? Next? I want to ignore the question. Pretend I never heard it. Act like I have no intention of answering. It means nothing, really, what do I do? But it’s important for one reason or another and I know I will answer. I want to say ‘I’m an escort.’, ‘I’m a hand model.’, ‘I work for the witness protection program as a location scout.’, ‘I’m in the witness protection program’. But these are not the truths and in my own pursuit of the truth or something that feels a little honest, I am compelled to give the straight answer. And I am lost for words.

How do you say I did all these things and each one has a title but I never really was any one of those things and I really don’t do any of that anymore I hope? How do you give them enough so that the innocuous conversation starter what do you do doesn’t turn to seed-pulp in an instant. Some words have bad effects; corporate, technology, information technology, sales, education programs, nausea, glaze-over, All the words have their shortcomings, so I tell them honestly of my jack of all trade nature with the best title I can muster. ‘I’m the Prime Minister of the United States living in exile in Canada.’

They chuckle. They want to talk politics. I refuse. They forget about what I do because for now, I make funny. They want to talk politics – politics are funny. I refuse. They want to talk about the US and Americans and dirty little things. I refuse. They remember and ask ‘What do you do?’

Are we not the culmination of our experiences? Our lives are shaped each day by what we do, our actions. Once they occur they become what we’ve done. We hand people things and ring them up at cash registers. We make fittings that will be examined by experts. We write emails that make something happen which causes a little more or a little less stress. We screw up, we sit in meetings, we work weekends, we show up late, we win awards. Things we’ve done. In polite conversation they turn to what we do. But in polite conversation we don’t want to know what someone has done. We don’t want to know the details of a TPS report. We want to have some way to move the conversation along, share something interesting for a change. We want to meet escorts and drug dealers and witness protection program scouts and presidents and kings and prime ministers.

What do I do? For now, I hope. I hope for sun and more rain to cool it off. I hope to never experience dehydration again. I hope my flip-flops don’t blow out. I hope if my flip flops do blow out I wont hum Margaritaville while I hobble over the hill. I hope to meet more interesting people who after a day we will hug and be comfortable with our shared honesty. I hope for another text message to make me feel like the luckiest person alive. I hope someday the notes and the watching will come together into something interesting that helps someone making pushpin designs in a cubicle somewhere live a slightly better or happier or sillier life. That’s what I do. I hope.

thoughts from a tiny island

On this tiny dive island in the Gulf of Thailand, motorbikes race up and down the streets of the main town. Other than that, there is no sign of hurry. Expats control the way and their eyes watch with detachment the silly antics of the newly arrived tourists. They are lucky, some might remember, that even though they are tourists, they are mostly here to dive. Diving tourists are more sensitive to the reefs both under water and those on land. Unlike many locations not far from here, there are no busloads of frantics anxious to rush by art and edifice, pausing only to snap a photo or buy a trinket. They are lucky, but that does not minimize their slightly superior pose. It exists everywhere, I suppose; dominant coffee house buzzards in Greenwich Village, self-righteous non-smokers on the patios of La Jolla, style commanders draining perfect martinis in the air conditioned safety of South Beach. And here, amidst simple bungalows dotting palm covered cliffs, it is hard to take it too far or too seriously. It is beautiful and easy and friendly. It’s sad to think that in ten years it may be prostituted to Burger Kink and Starbucks. The Hyatt’s will bring their exclusivity and profit margins will be analyzed against other resorts and quality control will be enforced by policies dreamt up in an industrial park in Horsham, Pennsylvania.
I am too new to say how the Thai’s fit in here. Perhaps it is only to provide an example of how to smile and let it all happen, no matter what it is. It would take a few months, maybe a year, maybe a lifetime to peel back the layers to see how the pieces connect. There is no purpose in that, though. Better to come, enjoy, take a little, give a little, and hope someone in my footsteps may take an afternoon to listen to the breeze or watch the ballet of butterflies in a slightly imperfect garden while waiting for the rain to cool off this dot of sand.

and a few more shots from the Royal Palace

Pretty girls abound in Thailand - especially the ones who have been dipped in gold.

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nope, I'm not meditating, just got zapped by the flash. On the other side of the doors behind me is the Emerald Buddha, one of the most holy items in all of Thailand.