Wednesday, April 1, 2015
why are you honking at me?
I should take a moment to talk about Christmas vacation at Setse Beach. A wide, flat, peopleless expanse like its own little desert when the tide goes out, leaving broad puddles of algae in the dips, and plateaus covered in tiny spheres of sand arranged in starburst patterns around the burrows of crabs. Strange creatures darted in the rivulets, hidden by clouds of sand; only once revealed to be thin, white, featureless, electric tilapia fillets pumped with amphetamines and too fast to see clearly. To the North, near where the locals spun donuts in their pickup trucks and ATVs while blasting dance music and burning things, one man rode a pony past the restaurant where I ate every day. The waitress with sunscreen smeared on her cheeks and pigtails like twin fountains of oil spurting from her skull had eyes that became dark crescents when she smiled and served a squid curry that made me never want to leave.
On the other hand, the chief occupants of the motel (described as 'rustic' in the guidebook) were spiders, coating the high ceilings, getting fat in the light fixtures, lying in wait under the bed's canopy when I unrolled the mosquito net. Taken together with the LMFAO that pounded against the walls at night, the everpresent mosquitos, and the unceasing heat, they were more than enough reason to want to promptly make my exit.
A feat, given the remote location. I spoke to the man who seemed to be the motel's caretaker, an emaciated fellow of about my height, focusing on his good eye and not the one that appeared to be filled with milk when I spoke. I wanted a taxi to the bus station at 6 pm the next day. I could eat at my favorite restaurant and visit the hermit crabs reclining in the mud around the pagoda to the North, without having to stay an extra night in my own personal purgatory. He seemed to understand, and at 6 am, woke me to tell me the taxi was ready. We quickly worked out the misunderstanding and laughed about it. I went to sleep again, and then at 6 pm, walked to the office with my luggage to find it empty except for a local woman nursing. By full dark, I tracked down my contact, reminded him about the taxi, then followed him around the neighborhood as he recruited another local and tracked down a motorcycle. What he had meant by taxi, of course, was just that he would drive me there himself. The three of us packed onto his motorcycle and sped off away from the spiders and into the dark.
Now we come to the point of it all, I guess, which is a deeper understanding of what honking means in this part of the world, compared to back home. At home, when you honk at someone, you probably mean something like this:
"Hey, you're breaking the law!"
- or -
"Hey, you're in my way!"
- or maybe just -
"Hey, you're a jerk!"
It didn't take me too long to notice that, here, honking means this:
"Hey, I'm driving!"
This was an important step for me to cease being constantly offended as a pedestrian. The occasion doesn't matter, honking is just a thing people do to indicate they're in a car, or perhaps riding a bike. Is the honk directed at an object? Sometimes, maybe? It can be difficult to tell. Given the lack of enforced traffic laws, stop signs, lights, etc, it's only prudent, I suppose, to honk at every single person, animal, or plant that you see. And it was our little motorcycle trip that really drove this home for me.
The three of us zipped down the road at what must've been top speed, around blind curves through the darkness. Insects cut at my cheeks like hundreds of invisible razors. It occurred to me that our driver was clearly blind in one eye, and I imagined the first mosquito to light in his good one would send the three of us sailing off into the trees, bones cracking and popping out this way and that. For that matter, a single pothole in the darkness would turn the scooter into a catapult, and our headlight was almost useless. Worst of all, the road was thin, curving, and overgrown. In our haphazard path, we took up every part of it at all times. The first car or truck on a curve couldn't fail to turn out the contents of my skull across its windshield.
It was for this that our driver laid on his little horn for the entire trip into town, despite the empty road looking as if there might be no one to hear us for miles in any direction. It was simply his duty, or perhaps desire to avoid being mushed into a fine paste, that made him announce to the world, "I'm driving!" as he indeed drove, an act of intense presence and concentration, not to mention velocity.
Being who I am, I was quite surprised when we arrived at the bus station alive. I was feeling stressed, windblown, and crusty (the ocean had been my only shower for days), but quite thankful to have my bones safely contained in my skin.
Friday, December 26, 2014
a couple months in
People are friendly here. Though most of the unsolicited conversations I have go something like one of these:
Man: Hello!
Me: Hi.
Man: Where are you from?
Me: Uh, America.
Man: Obama!
Me: Yesyes, Obama.
-or-
Child: Hello!
Me: Hello.
Child: Helloo!
Me: Hi.
Child: Minguhlaba! [Hello]
Me: Yeah, hi.
Child: [Burmese]
Me: What?
Child: What?
Me: Yeah.
Child: Hello!
Me: Hello there.
Child: Hello, hello, hello!
Music is passing slowly by on the street, and it sounds like a haunted carnival. Various loudspeaker announcements, probably ads, echoing through the neighborhood are something I'm used to in Asia, but they still make me feel like I'm having some bizarre Orwellian hallucination. Or that I'm dreaming while asleep in a hospital bed.
The top of the pagoda is visible from the balcony outside my room, encased in bamboo scaffolding to touch up the gold paint. Below is the school playground with its newly laid brick walkway and rusted monkey bars, and an old bathtub filled with stagnant water and turtles. And the sandbox where the cats hide their business. Next is the main building, with walls that are not walls and the kitchen at the back, behind which the staff bathe from a concrete tub of water.
The ants march dauntless across the tile of my bathroom wall, while I sit on my bed under the mosquito net and type the weekend away. When night falls, the packs of dogs outside will set to howling.
On the long trip to Myanmar, panic lasted until I reached the international terminal at LAX. That's when that familiar feeling of being lost and homeless hit me, and I realized I'd been there before.
My first week was a blur of unbearable heat and mosquitoes. A fever wracked me at the start of the second. I lay in my bed in the heat from inside and out, and imagined I must be dying.
I took a field trip to Bagan at the end of the first week with the students. After an 11-hour drive filled with laughing, shouting children, we arrived at the motel at 4 am. There weren't enough rooms. I was stuck in a room with another teacher and two students, who invited their friends over. At 5 am, there was enough room for me to lay down on the bed. At 6 am, they called us for breakfast. We saw countless pagodas that day, each more impressive than the last. At the national museum, as a foreigner, I was asked to relinquish my phone to them before entering. I suppose because of the camera.
That night, there was enough space to move me to a room by myself, though it had no bathroom. What it did have was air-conditioning, which I had not experienced outside of the tour bus since arriving in the country. In addition, Bagan was cool and rainy compared to Yangon. The edge of Heaven, really.
I was invited to use an extra invitation to the Thai king's birthday party at the embassy. I showed up ready to go in my jeans and sneakers. "You're going like that?" asked the head of the Precollegiate Program. I was talked into wearing a longyi, the traditional Burmese dress, which I was incapable of tying by myself. "You won't see anyone there wearing jeans."
As happens anytime someone has said these words, within 5 seconds of entering, I had spotted 5 people wearing jeans.
Flowers from the other embassies lined the walkway. Corporate snack stands lined the courtyard, giving out free food. I made the rounds. I found an empty pocket of grass in which to sip my wine and watch the smooth jazz band on the stage.
"Which type of curry would you like, sir?"
"Just mix them all together."
Amidst the elegantly dressed ladies and diplomats.
All sorts of people were there, really. One fat, ginger kid strolled the crowds, and I wondered where he came from, wondered where everyone came from.
The band evaporated, still shots of a palace on the screen, a man in what I assumed would be the clothes of a farmer from several hundred years ago wandered out on stage, miming playing a pipe to a recorded track. Next, several ladies stepped out in slippered feet, golden cones on their heads, arms like drugged serpents; and several not-ladies, round-faced men dressed in identical clothes and makeup mixed among them. I called on the cultural relativist portions of my brain to keep the more judgemental parts in line.
It was hot. Boy, was it hot. But then again, it's always hot. I tugged at my collar and regretted the spicier foods I'd eaten.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Fast Forward To Rhodes
The sun is low enough over the ocean that it falls across the shaded terrace and over the bar, but still high above the castle walls of Old Town; the same walls which held off the fleets of Egypt and the Ottomans nearly 600 years ago, before the Knights of St. John finally gave in to Suleiman the Magnificent nearly a century later. To the Southwest is the bastion of England, where the wall was blown apart by gunpowder mines, and English and German knights clashed with Suleiman’s foot soldiers throughout the siege.
On a balcony across the street, a tanned and dark-haired Greek girl in her underwear takes down the laundry from her clothesline. She disappears inside, but the sun is still there, shining across the densely packed, ancient rooftops adorned with solar panels, while Van Morrison cries to himself on the radio, his tin guitar and wooden saxophone infecting me with a desire to spend the afternoon staring at clouds.
Minarets, Byzantine churches, and medieval castles crowd together with palm trees and peeling plaster, all of it ringed with the crow’s nests and radio towers of nearby ships. The heat of the cobbled streets is tempered by a sea breeze, and the only thing spoiling the moment is a moderate case of traveller’s diarrhea.
On a balcony across the street, a tanned and dark-haired Greek girl in her underwear takes down the laundry from her clothesline. She disappears inside, but the sun is still there, shining across the densely packed, ancient rooftops adorned with solar panels, while Van Morrison cries to himself on the radio, his tin guitar and wooden saxophone infecting me with a desire to spend the afternoon staring at clouds.
Minarets, Byzantine churches, and medieval castles crowd together with palm trees and peeling plaster, all of it ringed with the crow’s nests and radio towers of nearby ships. The heat of the cobbled streets is tempered by a sea breeze, and the only thing spoiling the moment is a moderate case of traveller’s diarrhea.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
random effluvia Istanbul
A tram flashed by, ringing its bell whenever pedestrians hopped in front of it to cross the street. On the sidewalk were two ragged bunnies, perhaps mother and child, set atop a wooden crate. A laminated sign on A4 paper said: “Rabbit will tell your fortune.” Their owner eyed me as I passed by.
The word ‘fly’ conjures images of soaring through the air with the sun and wind on my face and little fragments of damp cloud clinging to my hair, and a sense of complete freedom, power, and agency. Of course, the reality is the complete opposite. I pay hundreds of dollars to stand in queues and be felt up by surly, dead-eyed airport employees in between probing personal questions so I can be hurled into the air for 17 hours in a metal can packed with strangers, next to a long-elbowed old man with halitosis and severe respiratory problems. As consolation, there is a tiny window which I am commanded to keep open through which I can see a glimpse of what the world might look like if I really could fly. Now I remember why I wanted to take a 6-day train across Asia instead. It’s beginning to seem like all of my vacations will open with complaints about airports and airplanes. Here’s a tip: avoid layovers in China, because they will make you go through immigration, customs, and baggage claim, just to get back on the same flight. I must have gone through immigration 5 times in one trip.
One of the first things that struck me out of the airport, and seemed to fit some preconception of mine, were the exaggerated movements, the unabashed, almost lazy self-assurance of Turkish men. As he gathered his passengers, our driver leaned on the railing with his hips thrust forward and belly pushed out over his belt, his watch gleaming on a hairy wrist, looking as if he had never nor could ever care about anything. His younger assistant spoke to him in short, popping phrases, gesturing with his fingers together as if holding a very important grain of sand. Whatever he was saying, the driver waved his knuckles in disdain: “I don’t care about your sand!” There is something different in the way they move here from my time in Korea that speaks of a confidence of corporeal form.
Topkapi palace is sprawling. Even looking on a map, it engulfs a significant portion of the city. The rooms quickly become similar, but the grounds themselves are beautiful, and must have been so peaceful before tourism. Some of the trees outside the entrance are massive, and I wonder if they might be older than the palace itself, and what moments in history they have witnessed.
Aside from its many other treasures, the palace museum contains some suspiciously incredible things, all in a single room. The sword of David. The staff of Moses. Several personal effects of Muhammad, which have survived the ravages of time for 13,000 years in surprisingly good condition.
Walking through the Sultan’s old harem, I realized how much sense it made that only eunuchs were allowed to guard his concubines. There is a brutal and infantile efficiency to the problem-solving methods of tyrants that commands respect (at least from a distance). I find it fascinating, because as long as I live, I will never be able to understand those men through history who were content to dream and construct a morality to serve them. Much as I might find myself capable of analyzing the origins behind such thoughts, I can never replicate them in my own mind. Thus their otherness and consequent ability to transfix me; the flawless and frightening logic behind it:
‘Worried that my guards might consort with my women? --> Chop off their dicks in advance.’
Like a child’s math problem, it almost solves itself.
Solicitors can be subtle here. It starts as a seeming interest in you, in where you come from, what you do, and ends in a proposition. They are not persistent, like in East Asia. The moment I say no, I have simply vanished as far as they are concerned. Though one man outside the palace was subtle enough that I am still not sure. He seemed eager to practice English, said he was going to visit a friend in Toronto, but kept mentioning his family’s shop, which was near the Hippodrome. The conversation appeared to have no end or goal in sight, and as we walked toward the entrance, it became clear that he thought we should see the sights together. No particular mention of telling me about their history, like the others I’ve met. Was he a tour guide like them? Probably, but he certainly kept me guessing.
The word ‘fly’ conjures images of soaring through the air with the sun and wind on my face and little fragments of damp cloud clinging to my hair, and a sense of complete freedom, power, and agency. Of course, the reality is the complete opposite. I pay hundreds of dollars to stand in queues and be felt up by surly, dead-eyed airport employees in between probing personal questions so I can be hurled into the air for 17 hours in a metal can packed with strangers, next to a long-elbowed old man with halitosis and severe respiratory problems. As consolation, there is a tiny window which I am commanded to keep open through which I can see a glimpse of what the world might look like if I really could fly. Now I remember why I wanted to take a 6-day train across Asia instead. It’s beginning to seem like all of my vacations will open with complaints about airports and airplanes. Here’s a tip: avoid layovers in China, because they will make you go through immigration, customs, and baggage claim, just to get back on the same flight. I must have gone through immigration 5 times in one trip.
One of the first things that struck me out of the airport, and seemed to fit some preconception of mine, were the exaggerated movements, the unabashed, almost lazy self-assurance of Turkish men. As he gathered his passengers, our driver leaned on the railing with his hips thrust forward and belly pushed out over his belt, his watch gleaming on a hairy wrist, looking as if he had never nor could ever care about anything. His younger assistant spoke to him in short, popping phrases, gesturing with his fingers together as if holding a very important grain of sand. Whatever he was saying, the driver waved his knuckles in disdain: “I don’t care about your sand!” There is something different in the way they move here from my time in Korea that speaks of a confidence of corporeal form.
Topkapi palace is sprawling. Even looking on a map, it engulfs a significant portion of the city. The rooms quickly become similar, but the grounds themselves are beautiful, and must have been so peaceful before tourism. Some of the trees outside the entrance are massive, and I wonder if they might be older than the palace itself, and what moments in history they have witnessed.
Aside from its many other treasures, the palace museum contains some suspiciously incredible things, all in a single room. The sword of David. The staff of Moses. Several personal effects of Muhammad, which have survived the ravages of time for 13,000 years in surprisingly good condition.
Walking through the Sultan’s old harem, I realized how much sense it made that only eunuchs were allowed to guard his concubines. There is a brutal and infantile efficiency to the problem-solving methods of tyrants that commands respect (at least from a distance). I find it fascinating, because as long as I live, I will never be able to understand those men through history who were content to dream and construct a morality to serve them. Much as I might find myself capable of analyzing the origins behind such thoughts, I can never replicate them in my own mind. Thus their otherness and consequent ability to transfix me; the flawless and frightening logic behind it:
‘Worried that my guards might consort with my women? --> Chop off their dicks in advance.’
Like a child’s math problem, it almost solves itself.
Solicitors can be subtle here. It starts as a seeming interest in you, in where you come from, what you do, and ends in a proposition. They are not persistent, like in East Asia. The moment I say no, I have simply vanished as far as they are concerned. Though one man outside the palace was subtle enough that I am still not sure. He seemed eager to practice English, said he was going to visit a friend in Toronto, but kept mentioning his family’s shop, which was near the Hippodrome. The conversation appeared to have no end or goal in sight, and as we walked toward the entrance, it became clear that he thought we should see the sights together. No particular mention of telling me about their history, like the others I’ve met. Was he a tour guide like them? Probably, but he certainly kept me guessing.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
leaving again
I don’t know that my life in Korea has had anything in particular going for it, or even if I ever really clicked with this country. But after more than two years, it’s become comfortably familiar to me, the main result being that, on the eve of my departure, I now feel like I am leaving my home without planning to ever return.
Perhaps this is a sense that might be mitigated when I’ve finalized more of my travel plans, but as of now I have only one plane ticket to Istanbul to convince me that I’m not about to fall off the face of the Earth and into a black hole. My address and most of my possessions are passed on, and even my computer (the single possession which defines my living space for me) will be left behind (temporarily), as I drift across the landscape and cling tightly to my passport and credit card, probably with a lost look on my face.
It’s hardest when I think about my students, many of which have driven me to drink the week away on any Friday night, but some of which seem like incredible people to me; amazing me every day with their intelligence, humor, and even their maturity on occasion - even me, a curmudgeon who is so often disappointed with actual adults.
One of the great things about the modern age is that I never feel the need to say goodbye to anyone when we part. I’ll see them on the internet. Or in a year or two, maybe, in the case of most friends, since it’s so easy to stay in contact. The time doesn’t strike me as significant. Unless it’s forever, which it is for these kids. I could even come back in a year, and they’d be gone, or perhaps different people by then, since they change so fast at that age.
On my last day, one of my fourth graders, that I only taught for a few months (but one of the smartest kids I’ve had) cried quietly for most of class, and then afterwards hugged me and wouldn’t let go, and then she just started sobbing, while the other students crowded around and asked why she was crying, and I stood there feeling extremely guilty and unable to say anything.
A second grader made me a bracelet which I will wear when I travel. One second grade boy threw his note at me and ran away, which said inside: “I will never ever miss you,” but I think he meant the opposite judging by the rest of his note. Another girl made me a little book filled with drawings of basic English words, like Snack, Fruit, Street, Instrument, Kitchen, and Weather, as if she thought I might forget what they mean now that I’m not teaching. In the middle of the book, is her letter, part of which goes like this:
“If you go to U.S.A. I will miss you. and when you get on to airplane, It will be long, long time. If you are boring, please see my note. I feel very thank you to you. please don’t forget me. today is last day Friday I think Friday is Fry day :D I think you have to think you are very proud of your self.”
---
At times, I don't know what has compelled me to live like this, but I just remembered my vacation last year, when I lost my shoes somewhere on a beach, and spent several days walking across Southern Thailand barefoot. I wonder what this time will be like. And I wonder if I will go back to Korea.
Perhaps this is a sense that might be mitigated when I’ve finalized more of my travel plans, but as of now I have only one plane ticket to Istanbul to convince me that I’m not about to fall off the face of the Earth and into a black hole. My address and most of my possessions are passed on, and even my computer (the single possession which defines my living space for me) will be left behind (temporarily), as I drift across the landscape and cling tightly to my passport and credit card, probably with a lost look on my face.
It’s hardest when I think about my students, many of which have driven me to drink the week away on any Friday night, but some of which seem like incredible people to me; amazing me every day with their intelligence, humor, and even their maturity on occasion - even me, a curmudgeon who is so often disappointed with actual adults.
One of the great things about the modern age is that I never feel the need to say goodbye to anyone when we part. I’ll see them on the internet. Or in a year or two, maybe, in the case of most friends, since it’s so easy to stay in contact. The time doesn’t strike me as significant. Unless it’s forever, which it is for these kids. I could even come back in a year, and they’d be gone, or perhaps different people by then, since they change so fast at that age.
On my last day, one of my fourth graders, that I only taught for a few months (but one of the smartest kids I’ve had) cried quietly for most of class, and then afterwards hugged me and wouldn’t let go, and then she just started sobbing, while the other students crowded around and asked why she was crying, and I stood there feeling extremely guilty and unable to say anything.
A second grader made me a bracelet which I will wear when I travel. One second grade boy threw his note at me and ran away, which said inside: “I will never ever miss you,” but I think he meant the opposite judging by the rest of his note. Another girl made me a little book filled with drawings of basic English words, like Snack, Fruit, Street, Instrument, Kitchen, and Weather, as if she thought I might forget what they mean now that I’m not teaching. In the middle of the book, is her letter, part of which goes like this:
“If you go to U.S.A. I will miss you. and when you get on to airplane, It will be long, long time. If you are boring, please see my note. I feel very thank you to you. please don’t forget me. today is last day Friday I think Friday is Fry day :D I think you have to think you are very proud of your self.”
---
At times, I don't know what has compelled me to live like this, but I just remembered my vacation last year, when I lost my shoes somewhere on a beach, and spent several days walking across Southern Thailand barefoot. I wonder what this time will be like. And I wonder if I will go back to Korea.
Saturday, August 10, 2013
The morning is a unique experience. It’s not often that I see these first rays pierce the Officetels as if they could be made of something other than concrete. Till this point, they’ve reminded me of nothing more than the eventual tombstones of civilization. But today there’s something hopeful in the empty windows. The ultimate feeling, I suppose, is a sense of complete helplessness with regard to the monumental task of parsing reality -- frantically, hilariously overbearing reality -- into manageable morsels.
Uncharacteristic excitement precludes my usual curmudgeonly disposition towards all, and if I can attribute it to anything, it is only the alien weight choking my wrist, a reminder of the girl i had a non-conversation with before she promptly evaporated, leaving only her bracelet and an unhealthy fascination which is bound to be frustrated in the standard course of living.
There’s a deep golden light, and a healthy happy sort of drunk that only manifests after the second night. I can see the emerald mountains just framed by the infant sun, and its a sight which is exclusively available on rare and hallowed occasions. Would I could find myself awake and free at this time more often. Like all wonderful things, the feeling passes into obscurity, and might never have been but for these words.
Uncharacteristic excitement precludes my usual curmudgeonly disposition towards all, and if I can attribute it to anything, it is only the alien weight choking my wrist, a reminder of the girl i had a non-conversation with before she promptly evaporated, leaving only her bracelet and an unhealthy fascination which is bound to be frustrated in the standard course of living.
There’s a deep golden light, and a healthy happy sort of drunk that only manifests after the second night. I can see the emerald mountains just framed by the infant sun, and its a sight which is exclusively available on rare and hallowed occasions. Would I could find myself awake and free at this time more often. Like all wonderful things, the feeling passes into obscurity, and might never have been but for these words.
Monday, November 12, 2012
retrospecticus I
It's only my fourth day on the beach at Koh Phangan, but it feels much longer. I walked into town, to the 7-11, just to feel air conditioning for a few minutes.
The dogs are chasing a calf that has wandered onto the beach. Next door, locals are burning a pile of trash. Rain falls on the thatched roof sometimes, punctuated by the occasional coconut. This afternoon, the tide will go out, and children will string a huge net along the sandbar to catch crabs.
---
A week ago, I was still stuck in Bangkok, at a hotel I could never afford, listening to a jazz trio. The older gentleman at the next table has a fifth of Jack to himself, which he will finish by the end of the show. The trio is improvising to the changes of the M.A.S.H. theme song.
At intermission, I approach the pianist and ask if they take requests. "Well, that all depends, now doesn't it," he says. "On what the request is?"
I ask if they play any Mingus.
"Y'know, I never got into him myself, and half these people wouldn't understand that kinda shit. Some things are just out there. Why, I remember this one time, we'd had no rehearsal, and the band leader says to us: 'I don't wanna hear any chords tonight!'"
The pianist is from California. He appears to be in his 50s. "But I wouldn't go back there if my life depended on it! 12 years gone?! My crone of a mother would kill me! And the women here...so many gorgeous women here," he says.
At the next intermission, he disappears into the bathroom behind the bar, and I can faintly hear people shouting inside, a man yelling for them to get out. Is it him? What's the deal with that? Should I be leaving? There's a feeling in the air that something is wrong. I feel disoriented, but strangely like a beacon of stability, despite the sense that I will knock over the next glass I try to pick up, or trip over my own feet as soon as I stand. What goes on behind the scenes at places like this, where everything appears perfect on the surface?
By the time they are back on stage, there are only four of us left in the audience. "Boy, they really cleared out, didn't they?" he says. "Was it something I said? It must've been something I said, because it's aaalways Randy's fault." He paws at a few keys on the piano and turns back to the mic. "So whaddaya wanna hear? Huh?" The audience is silent. I imagine him flying into a rage if I try and tell him what to play next.
The drummer says, "Let's play Piano Man, Randy." They close with Piano Man.
Outside, the city is still writhing, in a friendly sort of way. An elevated crosswalk sports a filthy older woman and a baby on a mat, who I can only hope are not trying to sleep to the noises of the torrential traffic below. A gauntlet of at least twenty girls in miniskirts are sat on the curb when I cross the street, calling out to me. Further on, are the motorcycle taxi drivers, busy at a card game, until I approach. "Hey, you! Where you going?"
The next day, I take a boat up the river, to Taling Chan floating market. The boat is called a long tail, reminiscent of a gondola, but with a big noisy motor on the back in place of an oar. It could seat about twenty tourists, but it's only me and the driver. The ride takes over an hour, headed West of the city along a narrow canal lined with houses cobbled together from rotting wood and rusty metal sheets, the stilts at the base seeming ready to collapse at any moment.
We idle up to the market docks, and a large woman cackles in her tiny boat as she passes in front of us, narrowly avoiding a collision. The market itself isn't exactly floating, but the vendors are. They sidle up to the docks in their little boats filled with all sorts of food. Fat, fried fish on wooden skewers; a pot of adorable little turtles; the largest mixing bowl I've ever seen, filled with mountains of tiny shrimp being stirred with two paddles by a squat, wrinkly woman. Several mangy dogs wander the tables, wagging tails, panting, drooling at the food. A volunteer band playing all sorts of wooden instruments with no coordination, though somehow all in the same key. A girl feeds an entire school of fish at the dock, and I imagine I could catch hundreds of them with one scoop of a net.
I am paralyzed by all of the choices before me, and only twenty minutes before the boatman picks me up. I settle on something that looks vaguely like a taco, except that it is the greasiest thing ever conceived by Man.
That night, two overpriced beers with dinner convince me to hit the town. My little green notebook goes with me, and here's the resulting prose:
[I sit at a nearby bar, eat skewered crocodile, and watch two whole soccer games on the TV.] Do they have cheerleaders at soccer games? I've never seen any. It seems obvious, but where did the term 'shanghaied' come from? Cryptic text on the newscast about the soccer game: "Love man, love ghost!" "Man city, best!" "Man u champion alone!" Deep South Americans? No, Australian women floated in like blimps and began expelling various unintelligible noises with hearty twangs, the willowy Thai bartender's limbs quiver in fear of them. In the bathroom, a sign: "No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit." Thanks, green sign! I'm not certain what emotion it's meant to inspire... Met two girls from Cairo who seemed exactly like two girls from the US. Welcome to globalization. Big old Aussie women are dancing to Daft Punk. [The prose ends, but the night continued...]
Before my flight to the South islands, the cab driver takes a wrong turn and becomes lost in a warren of what appear to be abandoned factories, except for the occasional armed guard posted along a barbed wire fence. I brush off the driver's apologies with relief, as his confusion reassures me that I'm not being kidnapped, and also that the piles of rubble around me are not considered an airport. At the real airport, I eat two whole meals in succession, in an attempt to crush the hangover I acquired the night before, when I drifted in a haze of decidedly poor decisions.
---
In the present, the wind is picking up. The island of Ko Samui looms in the distance, its low mountains capped with rainclouds. The restaurant's skinny, shirtless waiter is sprawled on the floor in his sunglasses and jeans, his long limbs flung out in every direction. Presently, he jumps to his feet and paces back and forth, chanting: "Oohh. Fuck. Fuck...Oh Fuck." Sometimes, when I talk to him, he seems to be looking at something just beyond the back of my head, his eyes wide, and a toothy carefree smile on his face. I wonder what he's on. The question is answered for me later in the day, when an Englishman tries to order a Red Bull. The waiter says, "Hey, sorry man. All gone. I drink them all." Red Bull's a little different here than back home. It supposedly contains amphetamines. He sleeps half the day, and sprints the other half. Later, he explains that in the afternoon, he woke from a dream of a snake eating him.
This beach has instilled an unfamiliar brand of lethargy in me which I feel increasingly desperate to escape from. The air is filled with a disturbing lack of obligations, even to myself. I can understand why the dogs here rarely seem to move.
The dogs are chasing a calf that has wandered onto the beach. Next door, locals are burning a pile of trash. Rain falls on the thatched roof sometimes, punctuated by the occasional coconut. This afternoon, the tide will go out, and children will string a huge net along the sandbar to catch crabs.
---
A week ago, I was still stuck in Bangkok, at a hotel I could never afford, listening to a jazz trio. The older gentleman at the next table has a fifth of Jack to himself, which he will finish by the end of the show. The trio is improvising to the changes of the M.A.S.H. theme song.
At intermission, I approach the pianist and ask if they take requests. "Well, that all depends, now doesn't it," he says. "On what the request is?"
I ask if they play any Mingus.
"Y'know, I never got into him myself, and half these people wouldn't understand that kinda shit. Some things are just out there. Why, I remember this one time, we'd had no rehearsal, and the band leader says to us: 'I don't wanna hear any chords tonight!'"
The pianist is from California. He appears to be in his 50s. "But I wouldn't go back there if my life depended on it! 12 years gone?! My crone of a mother would kill me! And the women here...so many gorgeous women here," he says.
At the next intermission, he disappears into the bathroom behind the bar, and I can faintly hear people shouting inside, a man yelling for them to get out. Is it him? What's the deal with that? Should I be leaving? There's a feeling in the air that something is wrong. I feel disoriented, but strangely like a beacon of stability, despite the sense that I will knock over the next glass I try to pick up, or trip over my own feet as soon as I stand. What goes on behind the scenes at places like this, where everything appears perfect on the surface?
By the time they are back on stage, there are only four of us left in the audience. "Boy, they really cleared out, didn't they?" he says. "Was it something I said? It must've been something I said, because it's aaalways Randy's fault." He paws at a few keys on the piano and turns back to the mic. "So whaddaya wanna hear? Huh?" The audience is silent. I imagine him flying into a rage if I try and tell him what to play next.
The drummer says, "Let's play Piano Man, Randy." They close with Piano Man.
Outside, the city is still writhing, in a friendly sort of way. An elevated crosswalk sports a filthy older woman and a baby on a mat, who I can only hope are not trying to sleep to the noises of the torrential traffic below. A gauntlet of at least twenty girls in miniskirts are sat on the curb when I cross the street, calling out to me. Further on, are the motorcycle taxi drivers, busy at a card game, until I approach. "Hey, you! Where you going?"
The next day, I take a boat up the river, to Taling Chan floating market. The boat is called a long tail, reminiscent of a gondola, but with a big noisy motor on the back in place of an oar. It could seat about twenty tourists, but it's only me and the driver. The ride takes over an hour, headed West of the city along a narrow canal lined with houses cobbled together from rotting wood and rusty metal sheets, the stilts at the base seeming ready to collapse at any moment.
We idle up to the market docks, and a large woman cackles in her tiny boat as she passes in front of us, narrowly avoiding a collision. The market itself isn't exactly floating, but the vendors are. They sidle up to the docks in their little boats filled with all sorts of food. Fat, fried fish on wooden skewers; a pot of adorable little turtles; the largest mixing bowl I've ever seen, filled with mountains of tiny shrimp being stirred with two paddles by a squat, wrinkly woman. Several mangy dogs wander the tables, wagging tails, panting, drooling at the food. A volunteer band playing all sorts of wooden instruments with no coordination, though somehow all in the same key. A girl feeds an entire school of fish at the dock, and I imagine I could catch hundreds of them with one scoop of a net.
I am paralyzed by all of the choices before me, and only twenty minutes before the boatman picks me up. I settle on something that looks vaguely like a taco, except that it is the greasiest thing ever conceived by Man.
That night, two overpriced beers with dinner convince me to hit the town. My little green notebook goes with me, and here's the resulting prose:
[I sit at a nearby bar, eat skewered crocodile, and watch two whole soccer games on the TV.] Do they have cheerleaders at soccer games? I've never seen any. It seems obvious, but where did the term 'shanghaied' come from? Cryptic text on the newscast about the soccer game: "Love man, love ghost!" "Man city, best!" "Man u champion alone!" Deep South Americans? No, Australian women floated in like blimps and began expelling various unintelligible noises with hearty twangs, the willowy Thai bartender's limbs quiver in fear of them. In the bathroom, a sign: "No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit." Thanks, green sign! I'm not certain what emotion it's meant to inspire... Met two girls from Cairo who seemed exactly like two girls from the US. Welcome to globalization. Big old Aussie women are dancing to Daft Punk. [The prose ends, but the night continued...]
Before my flight to the South islands, the cab driver takes a wrong turn and becomes lost in a warren of what appear to be abandoned factories, except for the occasional armed guard posted along a barbed wire fence. I brush off the driver's apologies with relief, as his confusion reassures me that I'm not being kidnapped, and also that the piles of rubble around me are not considered an airport. At the real airport, I eat two whole meals in succession, in an attempt to crush the hangover I acquired the night before, when I drifted in a haze of decidedly poor decisions.
---
In the present, the wind is picking up. The island of Ko Samui looms in the distance, its low mountains capped with rainclouds. The restaurant's skinny, shirtless waiter is sprawled on the floor in his sunglasses and jeans, his long limbs flung out in every direction. Presently, he jumps to his feet and paces back and forth, chanting: "Oohh. Fuck. Fuck...Oh Fuck." Sometimes, when I talk to him, he seems to be looking at something just beyond the back of my head, his eyes wide, and a toothy carefree smile on his face. I wonder what he's on. The question is answered for me later in the day, when an Englishman tries to order a Red Bull. The waiter says, "Hey, sorry man. All gone. I drink them all." Red Bull's a little different here than back home. It supposedly contains amphetamines. He sleeps half the day, and sprints the other half. Later, he explains that in the afternoon, he woke from a dream of a snake eating him.
This beach has instilled an unfamiliar brand of lethargy in me which I feel increasingly desperate to escape from. The air is filled with a disturbing lack of obligations, even to myself. I can understand why the dogs here rarely seem to move.
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