Warning – SEA travel may be hazardous to your brain
Karen – the young Dutch girl who is the newest Mut Mee receptionist – looked around to make sure no one was listening, then leaned in with a conspiratorial air and said in a low voice, “I think traveling here is making my brain go soft.”
This was in response to my own admission that I was bored half-dead by the thought of continuing on in mainland Southeast Asia. She explained that the lack of stimulating ideas and conversations was starting, after three months, to make her feel like her brain was not only going soft but actually shrinking. Holding up a novel by Iris Murdoch, she said that she has to read books in the more challenging English-language versions just to keep her brain functioning.
I don’t think this has much to do with Thai people. While it may be that karaoke is the pinnacle of contemporary Thai artistic expression, I think the bigger issue is with its reputation among young Westerners as being to the early 21st Century what Morocco and India were to the 60s and 70s. That is, an inexpensive and exotic place with lovely weather, where you can chill out and be liberated from all those pesky Western mores. Where you get to wear sandals and shapeless clothes every day and not brush your hair.
If your idea of intellectual stimulation is holding a beach down with your body, you won’t have an issue with long-term travel in SEA. In fact, you will be surrounded by many fun and fascinating activities and like-minded travelers. If, on the other hand, you are the sort of person who from time to time needs something more mentally challenging than not brushing your hair, you may be in for a rough time. I’ve heard that the brain is akin to a muscle in that it grows stronger and faster with continued use. If this is true, traveling in Thailand is the cerebral equivalent of laying on the couch watching daytime TV.
Don’t get me wrong, I like laying on the couch watching daytime TV. I like it a lot. But even I can’t do it all day, every day for months at a time. The time inevitably comes when I have to open a magazine or something – preferably a celebrity tabloid. And if someone who’s fascinated with daytime TV and celebrity tabloids finds a destination tediously understimulating, you know there’s a problem.
I am a person who finds everything interesting – circuses, Top 40 radio, pop physics, the Weather Channel – so I am surprised to have finally found something so entirely and utterly vacuous that it can’t hold my attention. I never thought the day would come.
Tags: Nong Khai, Thailand
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