Sandy Does Southeast Asia

“I don’t enjoy the gender relations in this country.” I recently overheard this said with an ironic laugh by a young American woman who works for the Peace Corps in an outlying village. The laugh was thrown in to emphasize that she was vastly understating her case. Despite that, I admired her restraint.

If you really want to see a Western female get riled up, ask her about relationships between older Western men and Thai women. You won’t get too far into your question before eyes start rolling.

“Disgusting,” said my friend Caroline, dismissing an entire demographic in her typically pithy style.

“But why is it disgusting,” I asked. “Isn’t that a little strong?”

The most popular argument goes like this: it’s disgusting because these pretty young women can’t possibly be attracted to these unappealing older men. I’ve heard this from both Western women and young Western men.

I find this argument hypocritical at best, given how acceptable it is for young Western women to partner with older men. Take Caroline for instance – she is twenty-one and has a strong preference for dating men at least ten years her elder. So it’s okay for a twenty-something Western girl to date a forty-something Western man but disgusting if the girl happens to be Thai? ‘Yes,’ seems to be the answer.

I honestly don’t see what makes the dynamic of these cross-cultural couples so much different from the dynamic of your typical Western couple. The women are using the men for emotional stability, financial security and social status? The men are using the woman for companionship, sex and ego stroking? Wait, and how is that different?

Yesterday I was at the German bakery having a pastry and a coffee for breakfast. I was also writing in my journal. One of the regulars, a pale overweight American man of a certain age, made a joking comment to me about “the ubiquitous journal.” When he lumbered by again, he said that he hoped I was enjoying Nong Khai. I smiled and replied that yes I was, very much so, and thanked him. He seemed pleased. Pleased and also terribly eager to please. There was something so touching about it that I wanted to give him a hug and dote on him.

As I watched this man interacting with the young Thai women who work in the restaurant, I saw their flirtatious, attentive kindness toward him. I saw it and it made me very, very happy.

Could it be that young Westerners believe these men somehow don’t deserve the care and companionship of an attractive young woman because they haven’t properly earned it? They certainly aren’t bartering anything that we think of as having acceptable exchange value for an older man – wealth, fame, or power. They are not playing by the rules and that is always threatening. Some might even say it’s disgusting.

The front window of my house looks out onto a temple complex. Sitting at my desk, I can watch monks working in their yard. Right now, for example, one of them is using a hoe to turn over dirt and move it around. He is also engaging in one of the more popular pastimes in Southeast Asia – burning piles of stuff. He stops in the shade of a building and rests, leaning on the hoe. The scene is pure eye candy – blue smoke drifting across a backdrop of palm trees, iridescent roosters strutting in the dusty foreground, and in the middle of it all a saffron robed monk – perfectly composed to play into my Western conception of The Serene Spirituality of the East.

When my friend Jessica heard I was moving into this house she congratulated me, then said, “Just watch out for the monks.”

“Watch out for them how?” I asked.

“Oh, you know how they are. And that temple has an especially bad reputation.” Before I could tell her that no, I did not know how they are, she got distracted and we never had a chance to finish the conversation. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the word ‘especially.’ An especially bad reputation.

Thailand is reputed to be a very spiritual place. On the other hand, it is also hailed as a one-stop shop for sex and drug tourism. I have not seen either go-go bars or recreational drugs on the streets of Nong Khai but you would be hard-pressed to throw a rock on those same streets without hitting a monk. This would seem to make a case for the Spiritual Thailand side of the debate. You could take it further and say that maybe the sex and drugs are primarily for tourists while Thais themselves are devout, spiritual people.

You could say that but you’d be wrong. The fact is that monasteries in Thailand are something like bible camp in the States. Young men don’t go because they have any interest in spirituality. They are simply packed off to do their time so their families can feel pious and earn the approving nods of their neighbors. Luckily for the boys, they don’t have to stay for too long, a few months at the outside. Just long enough to say they’ve done it and then get back to their regularly scheduled program of clubbing, buying motorbikes and – since 95% of the sex industry is for domestic consumption and the average single Thai male avails himself on a surprisingly regular basis – visiting prostitutes.

“They won’t actually do anything,” said another long-time resident, reassuring me. Since the warning to watch out for the monks, I’d questioned every person I could, both about how the religious system works here and the potential dangers of living next to a monastery. “They’re not going to hurt you. They’ll just stare and maybe try to chat you up. It’s an annoyance more than anything. Don’t worry about it.”

The truth is, I wasn’t worried about it. I was more curious than anything else. I was curious about why Thailand has a reputation for being Spiritual with a capital S in the first place, when all signs so far have pointed to superstitious and status-conscious. In other words, it looks an awful lot like what we’d call plain old religious at home.

One day recently, I found myself swept up in a wave of expats fleeing our neighborhood just ahead of the mosquito extermination truck that sprays poison liberally over these streets every couple of months. It was a group I’ve never spent any time with – The Nong Khai New Agers. I don’t hang out with them not because I have anything against them but only because they are an exclusive clique, and try as I may I can’t seem to make inroads with them. There I was though, finally included in an outing.

As we sat and drank Thai iced teas, the two look-through-you-like-you-don’t-exist women sat on the opposite side of the table pretending I wasn’t there, while on my side of the table – with the man and the one woman I’ve managed to get on speaking terms with – the subject turned to my writing. I chatted about it a little and asked their advice in a friendly conversation way, since the man is an artist and the woman is very interested in literature, but the topic was soon exhausted.

I was also having some difficulty focusing since I’d noticed that the woman sitting directly across from me – the New Age Alpha Female of Nong Khai – had drawn in her eyebrows using a dark purple pencil. Now, I’d noticed before that she always wears head to toe purple including a particularly striking little turban but this…well, this was taking it a bit far. I was of course fascinated and began to really look at her. I saw how the blankly disinterested look beneath those purple eyebrows could easily be mistaken for calmness or even serenity. And then when I looked closer, it dawned on me that, exactly like one of the monks across the street from my house, when viewed with just the right lack of cultural information, one might automatically assume she was emanating a deep spirituality.

It strikes me that one of the real draws of foreign travel and even more, of living abroad, is that it is so much easier to see what you want to see, to be seen as you choose to see yourself, and to discard the rest. You can go about your daily life without all those messy details that can be so difficult to ignore at home, like ordained spiritual leaders who are more interested in sex than God. Even if you’re aware of them, it’s not your culture and therefore not your problem. You can create communities that reinforce your pet ideas about things like spirituality while vigorously insulating yourself from the reality of the culture in which you live. And that, I suspect, is the greatest luxury of being an expat.

Think you can make the best mix-tape of all time? Now’s your chance to prove it!

Entries will be judged on a purely subjective basis. There is no deadline except me sitting in my house drumming my fingers on my desk, waiting impatiently for something new to listen to. Cassette tapes only; no CDs please.

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Sandy O.
c/o Mut Mee Guesthouse
1111/4 Kaeworawut Road
Nong Khai 43000
Thailand

There comes a time in your life – if you have remained single past a certain age – when it becomes clear you have gone on being single for so long that there is no turning back. That you have officially become too weird to couple.

That time came for me at 3:15pm on Sunday December 3, 2006, when I thought this in all seriousness to myself: “I sure hope the monks enjoy my sing-a-long version of ‘Like a Virgin.'”

I stopped at that and really saw my life for the first time in a while. I saw my beautiful house that I am growing to love, with the silky yellow-green curtains billowing and fine threads of sandlewood incense burning and fairy lights strung up around all the doorways and flowers in various states of decay in jars. I saw the temple complex out my living room window, across a dusty concrete street.

I saw my new prized possession – a radio/cassette boombox that lights up with flashing red and yellow stars. And the small pile of tapes I’ve acquired: Britney Spears, ‘N Sync, and an 80s pop comp.

Just then there was a knock at the door. I switched off the music and opened the door to find Lee – who used to live in the house – stopping by to pick up some odds and ends he’d left in the back room. “Wow,” he laughed, “and then I heard the click and realized it was a tape. That’s something.” Yeah, something indeed. He walked in and looked around. “The house looks great,” he said. I thanked him, simultaneously noting how gracious it was of him not to mention the half-empty 40 sitting by the couch in the middle of the day.

When he left I pressed play again and flopped myself back down on the ‘couch’ (which is the Thai version of a couch, meaning a long flat cushion on the floor terminating in a triangular backrest) and wondered what the hell I’ve been doing the past 20 years because obviously none of it has had much of an impact on me. I mean, I drink a lot more than I did in 6th grade but otherwise…

To put it another way, am I going to be 55 and then possibly 75, and still be living in my own weird little world and dancing alone in my room to a Madonna cassette tape?

To be honest, all signs point to ‘yes.’

ps: 20 Baht cash prize to anyone who can place the above 80s song lyric without looking it up.

My friend Jacques called me out on something that I’ve been hoping no one would notice – that I keep introducing characters and then never mentioning them again. There is a good reason for that, I swear. Basically, these characters – oh okay, people, if you must – keep exiting stage left. Ben disappeared without saying goodbye (which to be fair, he had told me he would do), Justin and I are “getting some distance” from each other, and Caroline has been busy playing house with Lee so I rarely see either of them anymore.

I’m back to spending most of my time alone and that suits me just fine. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and a lot of writing. In fact, I wrote so much (and so intensely) last weekend that I sprained my thumb. I’m not kidding. It’s still bandaged up. So don’t worry – I may be struggling into adulthood but I’ll obviously never stop being a ridiculous little girl.

It’s strange how much I’ve started to think of people as characters. It’s actually a little unsettling because I worked so hard in my mid-20s to become ’empathetic’ and think of other people’s feelings and so forth. Basically, to understand that people have their own subjective reality and experiences. Then I had a long, miserable seven years. And now I’m coming back to seeing other people as existing only to be a part of my experience…and simultaneously I’m feeling much happier and more settled. I’ll spare you the long version but I think this has something to do with where we believe reality is being generated – outside of ourselves or inside ourselves. And by extension, who has the absolute power of creation: Self or Other.

Anyway, that’s why it doesn’t particularly bother me that people keep exiting stage left. It’s not like they’re carrying on with some experience that excludes me, since once they leave my line of sight they no longer exist. Right? Seriously, I’m either becoming an incredibly independent person or a sociopath. Only time will tell.

Either way, I think Nong Khai – the bizarrely cloistered, otherworldly atmosphere of this place – is encouraging these deep adjustments. I recently read this quote that sounded like it very well could have been written about this town:

“But I’ve been through it myself, and the plain fact is this: finding ourselves here with so much more time on our hands than we ever had in our lives, we get desperate. In a big city, if we’re bored, we simply look around for some diversion, and there are plenty of them. But here, there’s no alleviation or the possibility of it. We must either go under completely or decide to swim.”

(From “Diary of a Drug Fiend” by Aleister Crowley)

Mostly I don’t notice this stuff because I’m just used to how things are now, but today I’m thinking about it for some reason so here goes. These are the top 10 things that I miss living in Thailand…

1. hot showers
2. flush toilets
3. sleeping on a regular mattress
4. my CDs and records
5. watching movies
6. cooking at home (chut up John)
7. laying on the couch
8. talking on the phone
9. libraries
10. knowing where to buy things

To be fair, there are just as many things I really don’t miss, like…

1. working more than an hour a day
2. having to use an alarm clock
3. driving
4. feeling isolated in the middle of a big city
5. understanding what people are saying
6. advertising
7. cell phones
8. people who name drop
9. smog
10. aggression & impatience

“Go, yellow man!” said Simeon, as we sat watching Chinese opera at an outdoor theater. I – being the eminantly mature creature I am – giggled at the double entendre. What he meant, of course, was the character dressed in the yellow silk robe.

Julian describes Chinese opera as sounding like cats being strangled while dustbin lids are crashed together. That is an accurate description. It also sounds a little bit like death metal. Wait, hear me out…there’s this gutteral angry vocal thing they do that I guess is meant to balance the whiny, for-dogs-ears-only stuff. If you just listen to the emotional high points of this yelling you wouldn’t expect to look up and see a guy in pink and white makeup wearing a bright silk robe dripping in costume jewels. The juxtaposition is not unpleasant.

Simeon and I were sitting at the performance after running across the Chinese Dragon Festival on our walk home from dinner. The festival is pretty much your standard fun fair, complete with ferris wheel, but also with thick clouds of incense smoke and snack booths stocked with big piles of crickets and larvae. I would have tried some, thank you, but I was so full after our pizza dinner.

It was nice to get away for dinner and a chat. So much…well, just shit has happened since I last posted a blog. Thanksgiving was a debaucle. Apparently you can take the expats out of America but you can’t take America out of the expats. And it’s not a proper American family holiday unless something horribly awkward happens, someone abruptly leaves the table, and it all ends in tears for at least one person. Predictably, that person was me.

Things then proceeded, over the next 36 hours or so, to go from bad to much, much worse. I know I’m being vague and I apologize for that but I honestly can’t think of a way to openly talk about it. So let’s just say that by Saturday morning I’d realized that something has got to change in my life. That I have to start taking some responsibility for the shitty choices I make. That maybe I don’t actually want the things I think I want and I’d better start sorting that out before I go any further along the path I’m on.

Vague still. I know, I know. But I’ll be talking more about this later I’m sure. I’m still a little bit in shock from the intensity of how stupid everything got on Thursday & Friday.

The good news – and it is so nice to leave it on a high note, isn’t it? – is that I finished a short story yesterday that had been languishing for a few weeks. So I’m on track with my work if nothing else. The end. Love, Sandy

My eating rampage ended tragically, as these things so often do. Stomach troubles. All things considered though, I feel like I got off pretty lightly, with only a few hours of bathroom time Wednesday morning. I was worried for a while there about the implications of having to check out of the hotel and travel while not being within striking distance of a toilet but by the afternoon all that was left of the episode was a slight lingering weakness, and Ben and I were off to Nong Khai. The trip took less than two hours from point-to-point and each step followed smoothly after the other: tuk-tuk to the embassy, pick up visa, tuk-tuk to bus station, get on local bus for the 22 kilometers to the bridge, through Lao exit immigration, shuttle across bridge, through Thai entrance immigration, minivan to tuk-tuk area, tuk-tuk to Mut Mee. Easy peasy.

As soon as I got back, I picked up the key to my new house from my friend Lee. Yes, I have a house. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this before but I took over Lee’s lease until the end of April. My house is on the next soi over from Mut Mee. At the end of the street is the Mekong. You can see the river from my front porch. There used to be trees blocking the view, until the local authorities got it into their heads to cut down all the trees, lay a whole lot of concrete and build a baffling “100-yard two-lane superhighway,” as Lee calls it. Anyway.

My house is huge and completely empty except for a really hard bed. I have about three hundred rooms and absolutely nothing to put in them. And I have no hot water heater. I finally settled in last night after a day of shaky stomach and dusty travel. I came home around midnight to an empty, flourescent-lit house and a cold shower. Life felt very bleak indeed. Luckily, Caroline had grabbed a pillow and some sheets for me, and that was probably what kept me just on this side of tears. I was freezing cold all night and kept being woken up by strange sounds – dogs, roosters, the temple bell.

It was a relief when morning finally came. I walked out, exhausted and blurry eyed, into the main room and sat down on the floor. Yellow light poured in through the windows, warming everything. The walls are white, with red pillars and red-orange trim around the windows. I felt a burst of good energy. I saw and felt why everyone says this house has a good spirit – happy and peaceful. I thought about how Mik, who lived in this house for three years, smiled fondly and nodded when I said I was moving into it, and he said it was a very good house and that I would be happy there.

At the risk of sounding like a total new age weirdo, I really do believe that every point in space has a unique energy and that it is important to allow yourself to be guided to just the place that will protect and nurture you in the way you need. I thought about this while feeling the waves of well-being and decided that Mik was right. This house will be good for me. I will be happy here.

It is impossible to be hungry or sober in Vientiane. In fact, I double-triple dare you to even try. I haven’t been anywhere near either state in the past 24 hours.

Last night Ben and I had a plan to meet in our lobby for dinner at 5:15pm. I was there at 5:14 and he arrived at 5:14 and 30 seconds. We were obviously equally eager for our evening feeding time. I like that.

We went to Nazim’s for an Indian dinner with some enjoyable dishes complimented by garlic nan and saffron rice, and washed down with a couple of Beerlaos that soon became about 10 Beerlaos. Oh you know how it is. You keep ordering 22 ounce bottles of beer that cost about 40 cents each, as you talk and reveal too much and tell each other your best stories and secrets and help each other decide what to do with the rest of your lives, and before you know it the table is so full of bottles that you have to take your show on the road, which may or may not involve throwing darts at balloons, peering into the murky central fountain and contemplating its midnight swimming potential, and drunkenly pontificating on life and literature and the relative merits of various national holidays, until you’re outlasted even the local layabouts.

I woke up this morning relatively unscathed. That was a surprise. On second thought, I was probably still drunk but anyway, I had an egg, ham and egg bagel at JoMa before setting out to the Thai embassy to apply for the visa. The process went smoothly but if you’re planning on doing it, don’t forget to bring along a photocopy of your passport because if you have to get it there, you’ll get fleeced.

I walked back from the embassy so I could get a look at a little bit of Vientiane outside the traveller’s ghetto by the river. I stopped at the morning market and got lost for a while. While it was good to get out and explore, I was also happy to land at my new favorite cafe – Vista – where I sat in the small courtyard that is shaded by a striped awning and protected from the street by a lush row of potted palms, and had a hot chocolate and a pastry.

Embarassingly, I went straight from the cafe to lunch at La Cave des Chateaux (aka French Awesome Snotty French Guy Restaurant on the map my friend Justin drew for me of places to eat in Vientiane). It was a great splurge. Althought this being Southeast Asia, a splurge means a huge three-course meal including a gorgeous steak and enough wine to ward off any looming threat of hangover, for under $10.

I had to stop eating temporarily to meet Ben at 4:05pm back at our hotel so we could make the trek to the Monument (an imposingly squat concrete Arc de Triumph-like structure that takes up a lot of space but doesn’t really work on any level).

The plan was to have a leisurely walk out there, climb to the top, and be there just in time to watch the sunset. We got to the top with plenty of time to spare but unfortunately a man came around just before 5pm announcing, “Closing.” So we more saw the sun get quite close to the horizon rather than watching an actual sunset. Whatev. That just meant I could start eating and drinking sooner. Which we did at a fourth story bar overlooking the Mekong. On the walk back, we decided that gin and tonics were just the thing after the long hot day and the long hot walk, and Ben had just the place in mind. So in the end, we did get to watch the sunset but it was even better, since it involved a) sitting down, b) cocktails, and c) papaya salad.

And that brings you up to date with everything that I’ve been eating and drinking over the past 24 hours. It’s probably a good thing we’re leaving Vientiane tomorrow or else this could get ugly. It is possible, so I’ve heard, to actually get too much of a good thing.

There are many ways to judge a city: how many good restaurants it has, what type of architecture dominates, the quality of its art and culture. But for me there’s only one real criteria and that’s how comforting it would be in the face of hearbreak. And since heartbreak has become my natural state this is hardly a theoretical question.

I thought about this today as I walked down the crumbling streets of Vientiane. This city feels less like a capital than a forgotten colonial administrative post. If you ignore the Internet cafes and block out the light traffic, it becomes very difficult to place yourself in time here. Old leafy trees with twisted trunks lined the street I walked along. A fine layer of dust floated in the air and coated everything. Grand colonial villas lurked behind decaying walls. I decided this was a fine place to be heartbroken. Then I almost fell into one of the many cavernous holes that are scattered randomly in the sidewalks and realized that for sheer self-preservation I’d need a little less dreamy gazing around and a little more paying attention to where I was putting my feet.

Despite that near-death experience, my initial impressions of Vientiane are definitely favorable. Also, I’ve teamed up with a nice young American gentleman named Ben. We met up at the border and have combined our efforts in such adventures as Find the Cheap Bus Into Town and Find the Guesthouse. His plan is to eat often and well over the next few days and that coincides quite conveniently with my own plans. We’re off to dinner soon at an Indian place near our guesthouse.

I will be here until Wednesday or until I manage to obtain a Thai visa or until I fall into one of the sidewalk pits, whichever comes first.