Sandy Does Southeast Asia

For what was to turn out to be my Very Last Sightseeing Expedition Of All Time, I had narrowed Chiang Mai’s attractions to two choices: the insect museum or the foreign cemetery. One charges admission, the other doesn’t. Decision made. It was the same cheapskate mentality that led me to walk there since it only looked to be about a mile and a half, tops.

Let’s just say that a mile and half through the midday heat (going at midday so I could get there & back before the afternoon downpour) and exhaust (if the PM wants to do something about the peoples’ happiness he should slap some vehicle emission regulations on them)…well, it felt more like one thousand and a half miles.

Just when I thought I was probably about to die (not a small irony, being a foreigner who dies on a walk to the foreign cemetery, right?), I stepped into a restaurant to ask how much further it was. No one spoke English. No problem. I pulled out the guidebook and showed them the Thai translation of the name. They conferred among themselves and waved in the direction I was already walking and then motioned to turn left. I nodded and smiled so they’d think they were being helpful, which they weren’t, because I already knew it was somewhere in the general direction I was walking and then to the left. What I needed to know was how much further.

First I tried the Western hand signal for ‘very far’, at which they nodded and smiled and repeated it. But of course our ‘very far’ hand signal is the same as their ‘that-a-way’ hand signal, so that was a dumb idea on my part. I tried again – first holding my hands apart very wide and then very close together, all the while making questioning noises. No good. We all looked at each other, a bit stuck.

Until I hit on it – I walked in place, very down-trodden and exhausted and trooping along like I’d been walking for ages, wiping the sweat from my brow. Whereupon they promptly all burst into laughter. Yes, I said laughing along with them, I am really funny aren’t I, especially with physical comedy? They nodded enthusiastically. It was fantastic.

But anyway, my charades worked. One of the men held up five fingers. I suspected it meant 5 minutes, which turned out to be the case.

The Chiang Mai Foreigners Cemetery, like most other things that sound interesting, wasn’t. I walked through the white gate, past the deserted caretaker’s house, and sort of stood in the middle of a small, green cemetery with my hands on my hips. This is it? Then I took a step forward and promptly tipped over at the sound of a feline scream coming from underfoot. You must be able to guess what comes next. Yes, I stepped on a cat…a black cat…in a cemetery. I am not making this up, I swear. (“Seven more years bad luck, you say? No problem, just add it to my tab!”)

Then I looked at some boring gravestones and a statue of Queen Victoria or someone sent as a gift from India, and then I walked all the way back through the nauseating heat and fumes, and got back to my guesthouse just as the first drops of rain started to fall. The end.

This is it. No more sightseeing after today. Not even if someone swears there is a troupe of monkeys in tuxedo outfits giving away free cold beers, and they’re only two blocks away. Not even then.

My morning began around 5am when my brain went from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds and spent the next two hours struggling with some of the themes of the book – life, death, fate, betrayal, yadda, yadda…until I was in tears at how big and overwhelming it all seems so I got out of bed, turned on the TV, and went into the bathroom to blow my nose…where I promptly got distracted by the sight of myself in the mirror – “oh my god my hair looks fantastic!” – and stood there looking at it and blowing my nose…this song on MTV is so catchy, I thought, and spent the next couple of minutes dancing around the bedroom and singing nonsense made-up Cantonese along with a slick Chinese boyband…and when the song was over I put on some clothes, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs for breakfast, where I sat writing and drinking coffee in the empty diner-esque restaurant with piano music playing that sounded for all the world like a lost Woody Allen soundtrack and suddenly I was in dreamy metropolitan America…except for looking up and seeing two young monks in bright orange robes climbing into a tuk-tuk…and then the restaurant started to fill up with young German couples talking quietly among themselves and I remembered that I haven’t exchanged more than two words with a Westerner in over a week, and that could be the explanation for an awful lot of what had transpired over the previous couple of hours.

So. Send me emails please because that’s the only conversation I get that doesn’t involve playing charades. And don’t be surprised if by the time I come home I am unable to talk to you without pantomiming everything I say.

The thing about being the sort of person who has no roots is that, paradoxically, you feel at home anywhere you go. Without safety and comfort waiting for you back in Whereversville, you are free to be safe and comfortable out in the world.

Also – and I’ve noticed this before but today I was impressed by the fact again – I feel no more out of place in Thailand among people speaking a completely incomprehensible language and behaving with cultural subtleties I can’t begin to understand, than I do in Los Angeles among people doing the same.

In fact, I feel far less out of place in Thailand (or Vietnam or Tahiti or Italy or wherever) than in Los Angeles because I don’t have the burden of feeling that I’m supposed to fit in here. I’m not supposed to be creating any sort of future for myself. I’m not supposed to be succeeding at anything other than finding food every day. And I’m not supposed to know what the hell is going on. I’m just as baffled (and often annoyed) as ever but that’s natural and to be expected since I’m in a foreign environment. So then – voila! – my internal response is suddenly appropriate to the external situation. And that, my friends, is why I love to travel.

Remember the part about how happy I was yesterday just wandering around eating food? And remember the part about how for the past five months life has acted like nothing more than a schoolyard bully, grabbing any small happiness right out of my hands and shoving me down on the ground? These two facts met explosively last night somewhere around 12:30am.

In between shaking, sweating and stumbling to the bathroom, I had plenty of opportunities for feverish self-pity. “Oh great, this is fun. Gee I’m really, really glad I left behind my miserable life in Los Angeles because this is soooo much better.” Aside from the sarcasm, there was a lot of, you know, oh poor me all alone in the world vomiting with no one to take care of her.

In retrospect, I should’ve seen this episode coming. I’ve broken almost every cardinal rule of Eating on the Road in the past few days – I’ve eaten salads and peeled fruits, and had drinks with ice in them. I know better than this, I really do. I was basically asking to have fluids spewing out both ends of my body (and yes, you’re welcome for the visual). Just goes to show that knowing what not to do doesn’t help much if you’re going to carry on and do it anyway.

My first instinct was to reach for the antibiotics my travel clinic sent me with in case of just such an emergency. But on second thought, if I’m going to be in-country for a long time, eating recklessly then grabbing for antibiotics at the first sign of trouble is not going to be a sustainable plan. Also, since I’m the sort of person who only learns lessons the hard way, I figured I should go all the way through this so that maybe I’ll think a little more carefully next time before ordering one of those lovely chicken salads with – gasp – lettuce. I decided that if the fever seemed to be getting too high or if this carried on for more than two days, then I would take the antibiotics, but otherwise, I was getting my just desserts.

It’s now about 17 hours later and although the very idea of eating is enough to double me over, I am semi-functional. Plus I got lots of noises made over me by the nice ladies downstairs when I went to get a couple of Sprites. A lesson learned and sympathy garnered – all’s well that ends well.

Since you’re probably dying of curiosity to know what I had for dinner after I left you hanging on that last entry, here’s the story…

I knew that eventually I’d have to visit the main night market, since it’s Chiang Mai’s biggest tourist draw. But since it involves two of my least favorite things in the world: sightseeing and shopping (more wandering around looking at things, ugh), I figured the only way I could lure myself there was with promises of food.

Markets usually have lots of food vendors so it was a sure thing. Unfortunately, I only lasted about half a block into the million block market before I got bored; so I turned off onto a soi (side street) and wandered down it until I came across a busy mosque with lots of restaurants around. I stopped to watch a Muslim street vendor preparing crepe-like snacks, and ordered one with chicken and chili sauce. I asked her twice what they were called and twice I couldn’t understand. We smiled a lot at each other instead.

Even with food in hand, I couldn’t bear going back to wandering around looking at stuff, so I started off back in the general direction of my guesthouse. As I wandered down the street, I felt that particular sense of well-being I get while strolling at night in an exotic city I am familiar enough with to usually know where I am in proximity to my hotel (it happens more rarely than one might imagine, which is why you should always carry a business card from them). The sky was cobalt blue, the lights of the street twinkling, and I was still hungry.

On the way back, I ran across Jerusalem Falafel, and in the interests of world peace, decided to make that the second act of dinner.

********

Expect to be hearing from me often since I have seemingly trick-or-treated my way into free Internet. It remains to be seen how long I can keep this up while avoiding accepting invitations to hang out. Although going on a date might be important cross-cultural research. We’ll see.

I take vitamin supplements every day while I’m at home but I never take them with me when I travel. That’s not because I hope to get worn down and eventually succumb to a tropical malady. If you know me even a little, you probably wouldn’t put it past me, but honestly that’s not why. I don’t take supplements while I’m travelling because that way I have to think more closely about what I eat. And since I hate sightseeing, there’s precious little for me to actually do while travelling (other than watching cable or staring into space of course) so I have plenty of time to think about nutrition. (Yes, smarty pants I know I could be writing, and as a matter of fact I did start working this morning – so there!)

When I say “think about nutrition”, I just mean I make sure that I get the best variety and balance of foods each day. I eat at regular intervals, I include fruit and/or vegetables in every meal, and I rarely if ever consume empty calories (like alcohol or soda). OK I seriously just realized that this is probably why I feel so much healthier and happier when I’m travelling. Anway.

The reason why I was thinking about this is because I love Chiang Mai. And the reason I love Chiang Mai is because it, like the best cities in the world, is totally obsessed with food. I have this theory that you can quickly judge the liveability of city by the emphasis it places on eating. San Francisco: VERY liveable. Los Angeles: don’t even bother, unless you plan on doing a lot of research, a lot of driving, and spending a lot of money.

Not only are there signs everywhere for cooking classes, but it’s pretty much impossible to throw a rock without hitting a good, cheap restaurant here. There is an incredible variety including all the foreigner standards (Greek, Italian, French, about three German hofbraus, English, etc…oh, and of course Mike’s Original hamburger/hot dog/chili place down the street). But even at my own guesthouse, they seem to take food very seriously. Today for lunch I had a green curry with chicken and vegetables over rice, with a papaya juice. I wasn’t expecting much but…I applauded at the end of the meal. I’m not kidding. I literally sat there clapping to myself.

Speaking of my guesthouse, I figured out that it’s not meant to be an American diner, it’s meant to be a French diner. Or bistro or whatever. In fact, the entire guesthouse is French themed. It took me a while to figure this out because I am nothing if not incredibly self-involved. What finally tipped me off was not the French name (Rendesvous), the huge aerial photo of Paris in the dining room, the Eiffel Tower shaped bottle of liquor in same, or even the fact that the Thai owner sits for hours working with his French tutor every afternoon…no, what finally tipped me off was sitting on my balcony looking at the little round gray granite-topped table with the elegant iron base. Hey, that looks quite French, I said to myself. Then I started looking around – oh wait, everything looks French in here. Admire the incredible powers of observation that allowed me to notice this after only two whole days. (Side note: In the spirit of things I have taken up reading Lettres d’un Voyageur by George Sand.)

OK must run – I’ve got to start planning what to have for dinner!

The new interim Prime Minister of Thailand was just sworn in. He made a statement saying during his administration (only until the election next October, in theory) that they would work on increasing the happiness of the people rather than the economic bottom line; basically that they would focus on well-being indicators rather than the GNP. That is brilliant, isn’t it?

This morning on the flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai I was thinking about how I’m feeling happier at the moment than I have in months. I think that maybe happiness is contagious. And I could be catching it from Thai people. It’s such a cliche about this being the land of smiles or what have you but there really is something special about the bearing of people here. When they smile at you it seems sincere, unlike many places in the world (e.g. Vietnam), where you sort of feel sorry for people when they smile at you because it is usually under duress and looks like they’re doing something vaguely painful. But here, people smile at you like, “Hey, you’re a person and I’m a person and we’re both right here. Isn’t that marvelous??” It gives you a warm, connected feeling.

So, in the general spirit of the new Prime Minister’s administration, here are some things that have made me happy today:

* Finding a guesthouse on a quiet, shady side street – $8 a night for a large, airy room with a balcony overlooking temples and trees, cable TV with 100 channels (including…wait for it…CNN Asia! Yes!!), a refrigerator, pretty blue tiles in the bathroom. It’s lovely. Chiang Mai vs. Bangkok (as experienced from my respective hotel rooms) is less traffic and construction sites, and more birds and bells and wind in the trees.

* Chatting with my new friend Korn who works next door to the guesthouse, at the place where I now use the Internet. He asked me about a festival in the United States that his friends told him about, which turned out to be Halloween, and we planned out how he was going to dress up and go trick-or-treating at the American Consulate (took a while to fully explain ‘trick or treat’ but he is now very fond of it, almost as much as ‘see you when you see me’, which I’ve picked up from him). Also, he pointed out that his name was an American rock band whereas my name (when he heard it, he raised his eyebrows and said, “Really?!”) is very lucky because in Thai it means something like ‘really super great’ (two words, one of which is like ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ and the other is a modifier meaning ‘one hundred thousand’). I really, really hope this is true.

* This climate simply agrees with me. I noticed it in Vietnam and it continues here. My skin looks all dewy and my hair is super shiny and wavy. Oh my god I’m so pretty pretty pretty! OK fine I’ll stop now. But I really am suited to this climate.

* Hanging out at the U.N. Irish Pub, which is a two-minute walk from my guesthouse, drinking a lasse and listening to Oasis. That made me very happy indeed.

* The restaurant of my guesthouse looks exactly like an American diner. It is so awesome. The booths are carved wood and red vinyl, and have granite table tops. How much will I be hanging out there drinking coffee and writing in the morning? The answer: A lot.

I think that every day I will start making lists of all the things that have made me really happy (don’t worry, I’ll spare you guys from now on), until maybe eventually they will crowd out all the sad, disappointing things that landed me here in the first place. Eventually I will forget. Right?

I knew I was starting to get comfortable in Bangkok when I interrupted a foreigner rifling through the pathetic stationery collection at 7-11 to ask if he was looking for a notebook, which he was. “Ah then,” I said, “go down the street to the right, around the curve and on the north side of the street next to the bus stop there’s a great little stationery store.”

And what was I doing in 7-11, you ask? Aside from the fact that there are three of them on every block and it’s practically impossible not to trip and fall into one, I thought for sure they’d have peanut butter. But after visiting progressively larger outlets, I was still empty-handed. Apparently 7-11 is enforcing some obscure international embargo on peanut butter, damn them. The happy ending to this story is that I was eventually pointed to a department store where, after a slightly desperate search, I grabbed a mini-jar of Skippy off the shelf like a diabetic grabs for the last vial of insulin.

And why was I desperately searching for peanut butter? Simply put, because I’m feeling a teensy bit out of sorts today. I’ll spare you the intricate details but suffice to say I’m struggling against turning an emotional corner that I’ve been trying to avoid for four months but is suddenly feeling imminent and inevitable. And what does a good little farang do when she’s feeling out of sorts? She sits in her hotel room watching satellite TV and eating peanut butter on Ritz crackers, of course.

Speaking of getting comfortable here… It’s been three days and I’m already a bit sick of Thailand. Fancy that, huh? Don’t get me wrong – the Thai people are marvelous (except for the woman at a guesthouse down the street who, when I asked her for one of the miniature plastic spoons they give away free with cinnamon rolls, practically made me swear on my grandmother’s grave that I would not return to ask for any more – “Just this. Not next time! Just this. Not next time!” – as though she’d created a plastic spoon junkie who would be turning up on an hourly basis begging disposable flatware off her). Aside from that one little incident, from what I’ve seen so far Thai people pretty much rule. Totally friendly and good humored, helpful, engaged. I’m a fan.

It’s not the residents that are the problem, it’s the tourists. I sort of guessed this would be an issue. Thailand has been majorly stereotyped as a theme park version of The Groovy Tropical Escape. Silly me didn’t realize the full impact of the fact that, like most stereotypes, this one would have its fair share of truth. I’m not sure if it’s just Bangkok (or even just this area of Bangkok) but most of the tourists appear to be parodies of themselves. And while this would definitely be entertaining at some other time, for right now I’m simply too vulnerable to endure chilllled out scruffy barefoot white guys wearing skirts. Sarongs, whatever.

The general idea was to go down to Koh Tao or some other smaller island right off before the peak season hits but now I am forced to concede that the Thailand beach scene is more likely to cause me to burst into tears of annoyance than anything else. And anyway, I feel most comfortable in cities, so I think for now I should stick to that. So I’m going north. I bought a plane ticket to Chiang Mai online from Asia Air for about half the price as it’s going for in travel agencies around here. Score one for the savvy traveller. Yes, so tomorrow morning I fly to Chiang Mai. And tonight I watch hour upon hour of BBC World and eat peanut butter. I’m feeling better already.

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.