Fame or integrity: which is more important?
Money or happiness: which is more valuable?
Success or failure: which is more destructive?
If you look to others for fulfillment
you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself.
Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
Tao te Ching, Chapter 44
We decided to take a train from Bangkok to the Cambodia border. It was a broiling hot morning already. I have no doubt that many Thais were already frying eggs on the sidewalks as we sidled around the antique Terminal. I looked around the cavernous hall for signs of dreaded redshirts but aside from some red hot chilli pepper Hawaiian-variety shirts there were a statistically puzzling absence of red shirts. I suspect that people generally didn’t want to be mistaken for the troublemakers but I am guessing.
With a few hours to kill before getting on the train Soph and I decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood to check out the local scene. There is a law written somewhere about environs adjacent to train terminals in developing nations. The ambience is generally of a downmarket variety if you catch my drift. There was a paucity of anything remotely like a restaurant or store that one would want to look into but we went offroad as it were into some sketchy looking alleys and lanes. There is rich life there, people cooking; eating at rough looking food stalls, Butchers chopping meat in the fly-riddled heat, men tinkering with small motors, women laundering and many people languishing in the brutal oven of Bangkok in April. The omnipresent funk of charcoal and rotten vegetables; a strange admixture of delicious meat and spice and the noxious fug of septic lines.
Then we headed off to a nearby temple to pay a visit to the Golden Buddha Temple. Goldie is an especially revered one and he resides in a lovely confection of white marble a few blocks from the station. This large-ish fellow has a generous beak, much more birdlike than most Buddhas we’ve visited. He confers great luck on those who pray to him and his temple was packed with busloads of Thais and foreigners trying to snag a piece of kismet by stuffing money into all available donation boxes, firing up clutches of joss sticks and placing garlands of exquisitely rich lilies-of-the valley on the alters.
There is something perversely thrilling about the prospect of taking one’s sandals off in the blaring sun on shiny black marble floors. Bets are on whether the soles of your bare feet stay stuck to the stone after a quick sauté sans lubrication. One is tempted to feel positively yogi-like after stoically waltzing over the surface betraying no distress despite the searing pain.
Back at the station and I had bought a couple of tickets for the border. I was pleased that they were only $3 per but my Scottish DNA had clearly interfered with my logic center – that’s just too little to pay for a train ride. It turns out that there is only one train to Aranya Prathet and that is a 3rd Class coach. We got to the platform with about 15 minutes to spare; there is no reserve seating and we wanted to be in a good spot in queue so we had our choice of seat. Queue? What a maroon! What a gullibull! The platform was filling but there were no queues, just a maelstrom of Thais anxious to return to their home villages to celebrate Songkran, their New Year. Soph and I were labouring with our heavy backpacks and other bags and we were easily pushed back by the mob that was growing exponentially by the minute. We were bounced to and fro like Brazillian beach volleyballs. Child’s play. As hard as we pushed we were like asthenic salmon migrating in turbulent water. We made negative progress for about ten minutes and were last to board except for an elderly blind crippled gentleman who I neatly sideswiped with my backpack. Have at you! I learned years ago in St.Peter’s square on Good Friday that short people have great advantage in crowds, they somehow squeeze in and under the elbows no matter how viciously you whack at them. Those satanic nuns were the worst – killer penguins who nearly crushed me into a spot of ointment on the Vatican grounds. Those robes conceal great rippling sinews of ropelike muscle. The eldest are surely the cruellest – they would put most Australian Rules Football players in hospital in minutes. I had fantasies of returning the next year with Ben-Hur chariot wheel blades fixed into knee guards to get them as good as they give.
When the dust settled Soph and I were standing in the aisle of (another) poachingly hot coach. The train sat on the tracks for half an hour before it crept forward in a cruel, teasing game of psychological terror. After a sweltering hour and a half of travel a woman got off and graciously offered Sophie her seat, For a little more than 3 hours I stood, balancing on the grimiest hand-ring that you could possibly imagine. There were faint traces of its former whiteness but you had to use imagination. All was good though – I know now and so do a few unfortunate strangers that my sweat glands are all in perfect working order and I have a lovely Popeye lower arm muscle from dangling on the swaying train. We purchased some ice coffee from a vendor on one of the stations along the way – of course it was a milk run, stopping at every cluster of houses from Bangkok to the border – after I gulped my icy brew down (I was falling asleep holding on to the ring and was concerned about collapsing on one of my neighbours) I suddenly awoke to the fact that the ice used was most certainly not sterile. Ah, the prospect of a nuclear gut on a washroomless train – enticing?
The ride was actually a great experience: I played peek-a-boo for about half an hour with a little Thai child who must have thought I was the strangest creature she had ever seen and we had a very simple conversation with a young woman and her boyfriend who was...of course, a redshirt. Actually a nice enough guy. There are shit-disturbers and militants in the organization but I also think there are young people who somehow believe that, (speaking of Tenshin(?)) ‘he’s bad but not really bad’ and that his being elected represents their only prospect for the rural poor getting some much needed money. They are more than willing to overlook the fact that he siphoned off billions of Baht when he was Finance Minister.I am told that he controls all the media because of his wealth so all the new reports are favourable to the ‘plight of the redshirts’ but the people we talked to were not buying what he is selling. We felt we had had a great exposure to the common Thais – something that won’t happen on Khaosan Road or in an Airport Terminal.
The countryside was quite beautiful heading east to the border. There are distant rounded mountains that look like bodies hiding under a green blanket. There are extensive tree and bamboo plantations and the fields seem to be impatiently waiting for rainfall. The land levels to table-flat along the way, with brick-red soil seamed by occasional canals, many with very low water levels. The train chugged on, lessening its load until it got to the border where the last few dozen got off. We descended into a melee of tuk-tuk drivers all shouting to draw attention. It would have been like falling into the mosh of the TSE trading pits in days of yore.
We were told that the Thai/Cambodia border is a tough go. One has to be alert to touts who pretend to be customs people or travel agents who provide bus service to Siem Reap, but will just take your money and disappear. We were too late to get across the border that night so we rented a tuk-tuk and sailed into the charming little town of Aranya Prathet. I have written a blog called Sign Language that describes what we witnessed that night at their Songkram celebration.
There is perhaps one thing worse than trusting everyone in this world and that would be trusting no one. She who is centered in the Tao can go wherever she wants without danger
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