Sandy Does Southeast Asia

Maybe it’s the wind, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the wind blowing night and day, and living in a wooden house and drinking absurd amounts of coffee and this pleasure at being alone with my over-caffeinated thoughts. Whatever it is, it’s been making me think a lot about San Francisco recently.

I’m not missing my life in San Francisco but the city itself. In other words, this homesick feeling that has been rising in me is not for anything that belongs to a time, only to a place. I may have had some very dark days in the eight years I lived there but at the base of it all, I trusted San Francisco. I still trust that city like one might trust family. It protected and comforted me, and never once betrayed me, turned its back on me, or shut me out like Los Angeles did.

Thinking about how San Francisco offers unconditional love to the weird, the lost and the generally maladjusted has made me think – for obvious reasons – about Nong Khai. This town has some strong similarities to San Francisco – they are both pretty, small cities on the edge of the country, and they are both the last stop for people who haven’t quite managed to follow through with the life they were expected to lead. Both cities are outposts for outcasts.

John – the grad student who’s studying the retirement community in this area – said that one of the most pointed comments he’s heard about Udon Thani and by extension Nong Khai was on an Internet message board. It was a piece of advice that went something like: go spend a few years in Pattaya or Phuket and have fun, then come to Udon to die.

It makes me wonder what it is about the spirit of a place that draws people there to die, either literally or metaphorically (as in: dying into the next phase of one’s life). I also wonder if this is why I’ve had a freaked out paranoid panic a few times here – admittedly while drunk and under extreme emotional duress – that everyone in this town is already dead and that it is not a town but Purgatory.

Flashbacks aside, there’s definitely a feeling here that is sometimes horrible and sometimes fascinating, that everyone in this place is trying desperately to figure out or find something very important so they can move on to the next level, mostly without consciously knowing that’s what they’re doing. Interestingly, I felt the same thing many times in San Francisco but never in Los Angeles. People in Los Angeles did seem to be searching on an unconscious/soul level but in a useless, frustrated way that did not allow for growth; it felt like millions of people simultaneously looking for the right thing in the wrong place.

I think I am growing to trust Nong Khai. Not only have there been more frequent stretches of feeling content to just be, like how I felt when I lived in San Francisco, but also I’ve found myself relying more on the place itself than the people in it. Most telling, I do not feel lonely or shut out when I am alone. I feel like I am happy to keep company with the city itself, much like how I felt in San Francisco, that it is a dear friend. So yeah, it could just be the wind making me feel this way, but somehow I doubt it.

ps: ok, ok – an email from Mr J Ringhoff of California, USA reminded me of the real reason I miss San Francisco…”i have eaten nothing in the past 24 hours but burritos. beautiful northern california taqueria style burritos with lettuce, steamed tortillas and all the deliciousness imaginable. the last one i ate was in SF on valencia and i believe 18th st. sooooo good. and all the places i’ve got them have had the best tortilla chips on the side and that kick ass green sauce of magic.” Sigh. Green sauce of magic.

I think I missed that sign on the way into town but I’ve found out quickly enough. Honestly, I was just spoiled by Bankok & Chiang Mai. Now that I’m in a city where there are few (if any? I haven’t seen any) Westerns, it’s a whole different situation.

This morning’s quest was to figure out how to get out of here. Sounds relatively straightforward doesn’t it? Well it wasn’t. Because I couldn’t find either a tour agency or anyone who spoke enough English to ask about how to get over to Nong Khai (on the Lao border). I know I can’t take the train there so that means it’s gotta be bus. Unfortunately, Lonely Planet is proving to be a frustrating mixture of obscure and downright incorrect information so I could hardly use it to get me to the bus station.

And when I say I tried to find someone who spoke English, I mean I really tried. I tried at the train station, I tried the front desk of every hotel I could find, I tried Western-style restaurants, I tried an airline ticketing office I eventually stumbled across. Nothing. Not a word of English spoken anywhere. I hope I don’t sound like a cultural imperalist because I hardly think that everyone should speak MY language so that MY life will be more convenient for ME. But. English has for better or worse become the international language of the tourism industry and I am lucky enough to speak it (at least I think I still can speak it but that’s yet to be proven), so I’ve gotten used to the fact that people who work regularly with tourists speak at least a little bit of English.

Finally I found a girl in a restaurant who didn’t speak any English (even though the menu was in English and it’s supposed to cater to the non-existent Westerners of Phitsanulok) but she had a photocopied map put out by TAT (Thailand’s tourist authority, which is where I should’ve gone in the first place) that sort of clarified LP’s contradictory and vague explanation. Even better it had everything listed in English and Thai. Soooo I found the bus stop and got on city bus #1 and was able to point to the long-distance bus station, which they were able to read. Everyone was very curious that I was on the bus and were extra solicitous about making sure that I got where I needed to go. “The silly white girl must get to the bus station!!” is what I think they were saying in Thai.

I’d already decided at this point to stop being hot and frustrated because obviously it was impossible that I would get stuck in Phitsanulok and never be able to find a way out. Which is what I was thinking when my search for a tour agency devolved into my search to find an English speaker devolved to my search for anyone who might be able to help me Get The Hell Out Of Here.

So I got to the bus station where I found out that I can’t get a bus to Nong Khai. I can get a bus to Udon Thani and then a bus to Nong Khai. Here is a brief transcript:

Me: Nong Khai?
Bus station worker (shaking head vigorously): Udon Thani
Me: Um. Not Nong Khai?
Bus station worker (shaking head again and pointing to ticket window with Udon Thani listed): Udon Thani (making hand gesture that seemed to mean “then”) Nong Khai.
Me: OK!

I will say I am appreciating the patience being shown me for my incredible lack of Thai language skills. I’m trying in small ways to make up for it, like when a Japanese man stopped me in a cafe yesterday (when I was still looking for Internet) to ask me about a word on his English-language resume, so I sat down with him and spent twenty minutes helping him correct and rewrite the whole thing. If all I have at my disposal is the ability to speak English, I may as well use it for good as well as evil. The follow-up to this little story is that when I was wandering around this morning, hot and frustrated as hell at the tender hour of 8:30am, I heard someone call out to me. Oh great! I thought. This would be the point when I start getting pestered by aggressive tuk-tuk drivers or something. But when I looked over it was my Japanese friend. We waved and smiled enthusiastically. Yeah, I know people in Phitsanulok.

Back to our main story…the bus to Udon Thani is a 6-hour trip but at least I only have to pay $5.50 for the ticket since I’m taking a public bus rather than a private one chartered by a tour agency. The first bus leaves at 9:30 tomorrow morning. And hopefully I will be on it.

That's where I'm staying in Phitsanulok. It's supposed to be Guest House but I quite like it the way it is. I also like the large flaming man at the front desk who doesn't speak much English but bounces ... [Continue reading this entry]