Sandy Does Southeast Asia

Where: Southeast Asia, as you may have gathered from the title of this blog. More specifically, Thailand and Laos. I flew into Bangkok with the general plan being to go either north or south first. Planning has obviously not been a strong point this time around but I do definitely want to visit Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos.

What: My second solo trip to SEA. The first was a three-week stay in Vietnam this spring.

Why: This is the one I was dreading. In fact, I’ve been trying to eliminate this word from my vocabulary as I have a nasty habit of way overusing it. Regardless, the short story is that my life fell apart starting early this summer, with a devastating breakup, and sometimes when you sustain one big loss, it starts a process that will not stop until you have lost everything that seemed to be holding your life together. When that happens, people tend to hold on tighter and tighter to the things that are slipping through their fingers. I think – at least for me – the more sensible answer is to jettison whatever is left and go away. As sensible as it may be in the long run, for now I feel rather like Kit in The Sheltering Sky, dazed and with nothing left to lose after her husband’s death, wandering off alone into the desert.

Also, I have a novella that has been waiting patiently in the wings since this winter. I’ve known for a while now that eventually I would have to take some time to focus on expanding it into a novel. Not only because there is not a hope in Hades of getting a novella published but also because when I came back to it, it read like 90 pages of notes for a novel. Those pages are now sitting upstairs in my hotel room with a few notebooks piled on top of them, waiting to be filled.

How: I had been saving money for a while with the idea that I would be taking a long trip eventually. When eventually became imminently, I had the resources to do what needed to be done. So at least something worked out close to the way I’d planned.

When: Now, apparently. From now until…?? This trip is temporary but indefinite. A few people have asked me how long I am planning on travelling for. I have told them the truth: “Until I go home.”

I did something this morning that I usually avoid doing at all costs – I went sightseeing. In fact, on my personal Fun Scale, it rates right up there with cleaning toilets because the last thing I want to be doing on vacation is trudging through the heat with herds of other foreigners looking at stuff. Basically, you spend a bunch of time and pay an expensive entrance fee to look at something so you can say you looked at it. It’s so pointless.

So I thought I’d get some sightseeing out of the way right off the bat and then I could spend the rest of my time in Thailand doing the things I enjoy doing on vacation like drinking sugary iced coffee, eating weird food from street vendors, watching international news channels on satellite TV, and chasing monkeys. I chose to see the Grand Palace and the Wat Something Or Other that has the Emerald Buddha because they’re in the same complex, and then the Wat Pho that has the Reclining Buddha because it’s only a block away. I am nothing if not efficient.

I wandered around the Grand Palace complex feeling annoyed despite the big tacky gold thing (looks sort of like a big bell and they’re all over, no idea what they are) and a something like 30’x30′ outdoor sculpture that’s an exact replication of Angkor Wat (yay! now when people are like, “ooooh have you seen Angkor Wat?” I can confidently say yes without all the inconvenience of having to go Cambodia – strike another sightseeing debaucle off the list).

I was annoyed that is until I went into the building that houses the Emerald Buddha. Maybe the other foreigners thought I started weeping at the beauty of the hundreds of devotees kneeling in front of a monk giving a sermon (or whatever the Buddhist version is called), or the hushed spiritual atmosphere or something. But really, I wept because I have never seen a such a mind-blowingly glittery explosion of tackiness. It has to be the most spectacular example of High Gaudy ever created. It was like if Liberace converted to Buddhism and then was given an unlimited budget and manpower to create a cathedral-like shrine for this Emerald Buddha treasure. It was also a lot like my idea of heaven.

Then on to the Reclining Buddha, which is the biggest one in Thailand. And that means it’s really big. I forget how big exactly but it’s housed in this open building that’s the equivalent of about four stories and it takes up the whole space all the way to the ceiling. And it’s gold. How awesome is that? What it lacked in the whole Sea of Glittery Distraction element of the Emerald Buddha shrine it more than made up for in sheer mass of shiny-ness.

I am really pleased with my sightseeing choices. Conscience eased, personal aesthetic satisfied.

*******

Favorite random thing today: the sweetest, most innocent looking little 5-year-old Thai boy wearing a t-shirt that said, “F**k you, you f**kin’ f**k”.

Least favorite random thing today: sitting next to a couple in a cafe who I swear had to be from LA because who else blabs about their friend doing a spot on a TV show, seeing someone’s car in front of the studio, how Rob is a Taurus so of course once he gets an idea there’s no stopping him, and says “that’s huge” at regular intervals? It was horrible.

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