Rail Travel – Part 3 Bangkok to Aranya Prathet 15.04.10

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

I Hate it When She's Right 11.04.10

On traveling days sometimes timing is everything. Well, let’s admit it, in life timing is everything. I was SO SURE that I knew which ferry we were supposed to get on this morning. The whole ordeal had, as usual, begun roughly. We were packed and ready on schedule, waiting for the 10 am taxi to the port town on Koh Phanang. Except, ooops!, they had canceled the 10am taxi. We didn’t understand that ‘10 AM Daily Taxi – wait here’ carried an option. So I quickly sprung into action (that is like bre’r wolf pullin’ on the old tar baby in my current energy state – you could hear the gears grind). Miraculously, within a few minutes I had secured a ride from a local for less than the Hotel taxi (yay!). Meanwhile Soph – by not lifting a toe, had arranged a cheaper ride yet from one of the staff (boo!). But I had actually contracted mine so up the road we staggered to meet it – full packs 35 degree heat, 100% humidity (boo!). The truck was air conditioned (yay!) but she was doing a laundry run and pulled into a few places to pick up or drop off – threatening to make us miss the ferry through lateness. (boo!)

When we got to the ferry dock there was no signage, no information about which ferry and where among a few wharfs, one was to meet it. There were about 150 tourists milling about. A large ferry slid into the next wharf and unloaded its manifest but no one moved from our little pen of people so I ASSUMED (that’s called a setup) that it was not ours. Sophie wanted me to check but I swept my arm around, ‘Do you think everyone here is wrong?’ You’ll have guessed the punchline. Several minutes later they raised the huge iron door and were just casting off when a lady I showed my ticket to pointed to the boat, now spewing gouts of black smoke and revving its engines, churning up the harbour surface. ‘Run fast!’ she urged. I whistled, shouted and waved my scrawny white arms,probably looking, from those lofty decks like some pallid insect scuttling across the wharf. There was an exchange of shouts – In Thai of course – I couldn’t tell if they were saying ‘Hurry up, get going. they’re almost here!’ or ‘Wait for the stupid Farang,’ A stevedore smiled benignly at us, nodding, and the Friendly Giant drawbridge dropped to receive us (yay! We win!)

Disaster narrowly averted but Sophie is staring at me through sceptical eyes, critical that I didn’t heed her suggestion. And, the really hard part; she’s right, dammit.

Of course the real punchline is ‘Be careful what you wish for’, because one thing always leads to another, and so the next 24 hours were less amusing than gruelling.

Sign Language 15.04.10

Touring in Asia is much more challenging than Europe I think. Probably the most significant factor is language. I’ve said previously that tone-based languages are very tough for me. The alphabet is different in every country and I can only usually understand a few character sounds. Different too are the expressions and nuance of body language. There are facial and body signs that I am certain I am misinterpreting (or waitresses are particularly stony here). Some cultures here use ‘face’ to create visual red-herrings. So trying to get enhanced understanding by watching for signs is problematic.

One activity we have tried to engage in is watching live performance. Folk Dance and Classical Dance are popular here – especially in Cambodia and Thailand. During Songkram celebrations – the Thai New Year – we watched an elaborate and complicated staging of the Ramayana Epic (We think it was that anyway). Many gilt and glitter-encrusted actors appeared stage left, sang, wooed or duelled and then departed stage right. Lacking language and any meaningful understanding of the saga we were left without context, swimming in a spectacle of, what seemed to us, highly repetitious action and stage-craft. As soon as one cluster of lover/sibling/parent/enemy/wrathful God Creature left the stage another would appear from the left. After an hour or so of watching the theatrical equivalent of a Flintstone interior with Fred chasing Barney around (lamp, door, window, lamp, door, window etc.) we retired, not much the wiser but enriched somewhat. Later, in Siem Reap we attended an Apsara performance. Apsaras are those angelic dancing figures that are to be found everywhere on Khmer structures in ancient Angkor. They employ very formalized hand, arm, neck, head, foot and leg (torso?) to narrate and express the content of their dances. Most dances are apparently expressions of thanks, praise, courtship and fealty. To our eyes it is beautiful and evokes thoughts of ancient times and circumstance. We can enjoy the artistry and elegance but it lacks much emotionality because we have no comprehension of the significance or the meaning of the gestures which to the Cambodians have such profound resonance and familiarity.

These thoughts crystallized as I was visiting a silk manufacturer in Siem Reap. I entered a quiet workspace where young adults were engaged in various phases of hand-painting on silk. They seemed to be working with deliberation and focus. Then I saw two of the artisans sign to each other. I looked up and there was a Thai chart for sign language correlating hand gestures with alphabetical characters. I realized suddenly that conversations were in fact happening all around and this was a training center for deaf artists. Lacking the skill or language I was unable to participate or comprehend the conversation but ‘words’ were silently flying all around me.

We blunder through the world using sound as our primary medium of communication. Yet there is much more abundant information available to us in subtle conscious and unconscious forms. The vocabulary of facial and gestural nuance is often cultural though there are many universal expressions. I remember reading that a New Guinea aboriginal people perceived a forced smile as a sign of aggression. So they summarily killed all the first Westerners who showed up. Higher primates flex their eyebrows when they meet another ape they recognize. I often smile when I catch myself arching my eyebrows when I encounter someone familiar – that is hardwiring my friend! We raise our hand in greeting – historically, we are told, we did this to show we carried no weapon. Scratch the surface.

But anger, frustration, insult, nervousness might be expressed differently in the countries we are visiting. There are enough ambiguities and mismatches that it generates a wariness when engaging the local people. What is lost, mangled and perverted by our mutual inabilities to communicate fluidly with each other? What fantastic things might be gained if we could break Babel and truly connect?

The one thing I am certain of: when two strangers meet - regardless of age, gender, culture, nationality or religion – a sincere smile, with crinkled eyes and a gentle opening of spirit, sent across space means ‘I see you, namaste’. And that means everything.

Rail Travel - Part 2 13.04.10

Travelling by train in many countries is, for me, a slightly embarrassing experience. The discomfiture is a sort of sympathetic reaction to the indignity that one is witness to. It seems that most people focus their attention, when presenting a public face – property-wise that is, on the front of their dwellings. So rail lines, which often proceed through the backs of properties and in the tangled and neglected public marginalia that most people don’t spend time or imagination upon, give us visual access to the arse end of things. To put it crudely, it’s like inadvertently glimpsing someone’s soiled underpants. At once one wants to turn away but the damage is done.

As we travel from Surat Thani, winner of the 2004 Homeliest City in Thailand Dingy Award (see Facebook entry soon to be published) , we pass countless rural and urban properties. There is a kind of sameness and a kind of uniqueness to each one. The cast of props includes but is not exclusively: very large jars which are cisterns used for holding potable (?) water – they are of Scheherezadian proportions; each one would hold about 15 thieves and a donkey or an Aladdin. There are usually four to six of these at the front or side of the house . There is a clump of fruit bearing trees either at the side or back – commonly coconuts or bananas but we have seen mangoes and tamarind (I think). There will be laundry on a line or frame somewhere, a bench, a smoking fire – perhaps a steel drum barbecue or a rusted metal box. The house might be mean – woven thatch or coco leaf walls on 8 foot poles of stripped tree or they might be fancier – stuccoed block or brick with bright green or pink walls and white trim. Dogs will be lying in the precious shade, often in clusters – they seem to like each other’s company – and who doesn’t? We will roll on past these iterations of domesticity.

There are an extraordinary number of people in Asia. This will sound absolutely banal to some of you but I am constantly struck by the number of people. Everywhere. People and people and people. There are incredible numbers of kids. Babies in hammocks, infrants sandwiched in between parents on motorscooters. toddlers squatting in the dirt and babes hanging on to mom or dad or grandmom. children by fires, youngsters by cisterns, kids chopping sticks with machetes, kids kicking dust at other kids. Kids on their way to school and on their way home. Kids trying to flog some useless book or set of postcards or trinket. Kids begging. The population of Asia is frighteningly huge. All along the rail lines we see families at their homely chores. It looks like some kind of Playmobile fiction or overpopulated Richard Scarry storybook it is all such a set piece. You might drive along a highway for an hour and not find a stretch of road longer than 300m that has no house on it. Usually houses are quite close to one another, not more than 50 feet, often less.

If you look carefully you will see people in almost every house. People sitting, reading, mending or tinkering, people resting, sleeping or pacing. Are the houses much more transparent? Yes, in a way because they are often open to the street. One can see into homes that are like little theatres where countless dramas are being played out every day, hour by hour. Perhaps it is not polite to look into a home but I have been doing so. I am fascinated by life here. Babies and men and women in their senescence and everything in between. The scenes are so human. Instead of saran-wrapped life in tight houses life flows out and around and spreads everywhere. I have hundreds of photos of people taken from tuk-tuks and buses, motorcycles and walking. I don’t know why I take them. I am trying to solve this feeling. Perhaps more about that in a later blog.

As we roll from rural to exurban to urban along the steel ribbon we begin to make more stops. It is still early day and people are lined up at crossings, waiting on their scooters and bikes and on foot. We begin to pass stations with large platforms filled with food stalls or selling other goods, each vendor offering pretty much the same as his or her neighbour. We see happiness and joy on faces but also fatigue and pain. It’s life, but nothing like ours in Canada.

Soon shanties and crude houses crowd right up to the track in places. Corrugated galvanized sheets are feathered together to make a shelter. We are moving along at reduced speed so for a split second you see a frame of people’s lives. They are often less than twelve feet away so there is a quality of intimacy despite the fact that their image is riffling by like playing cards. Snapshot Intimacy . A mnemonic token of retinal persistence. Dark and disorder is everywhere. Families are sitting at a simple breakfast, an old woman is stirring a black iron pot over a charcoal brazier. You smell food and coalsmoke hanging in the air. The smells flicker by too. Garlic, oil, lime, meat, smoke and spice.

The walls are scabbed together wood, plastic sheeting, vinyl signs with torn images of politicians? Actors? Smiling babies. Proclaiming something. Selling something sometime in the past, now providing shelter from sun, rain, wind, dust. Glass windows are uncommon; as often as not they are broken shards of glass in reclaimed windows kluged into the chaotic walls. These people live with trains in their lives. In waking, sleeping, argument, celebration, illness and childbirth there are trains clacking, squeaking, thundering by at intervals possibly known to them in body memory. The western mind (mine) thinks: germs, spoiled and rotten food, flies, disease.

Blaring light and what seems like silence in comparison to the fierce aural reflection of the shanties. Space suddenly leaps open and we are 30 metres from newish concrete block buildings. Leprous jigsaw sheaths of gaudy laundry, antennae, dead plants, piles of plastic bottles, junk. Dead vines hang like discarded fisherman’s nets from the crazy musical staff of electrical wires stretched approximately from pole to pole. We return to a shanty town but this one has been mauled by something. All the houses adjacent to the track are levelled, or nearly all, somehow some residents have resisted the bulldozers for now. They cook or launder, sweep the rubble from here to there for God’s sake - or idle in their half-ruined homes as if nothing unusual had happened. We see rebar and wood forms, they are building some aerial pathway here – will it be another Skytrain or another Rama superhighway? Bangkok has horrible traffic problems but they are fighting to modernize, trying to peg lengths of highway into the old matrix. Curiously, though the dwellings are demolished the ubiquitous temples - the votives house that grace every dwelling no matter how humble, where each family offers gifts of fruit, juice, sugar, candy, flowers or incense - are still standing, so amid the rubble and wrack there is a golden, red, green or white pagoda, resplendent by comparison. What do the Gods make of this desecration? Is it superstition, custom or respect that prevents the wreckers from demolishing these proxy houses?

Slowly grinding into the Bangkok Train Terminal. It is right out of the Leninist Russia – once noble or at least with a conceit of grandeur it too has rusted and carbonized and looks kind of lethal – tetanus and trench mouth. Gotta get out of this town. The redshirts are rioting we are told (mostly by our relatives). In fact its pretty quiet here but we want out. Out to the other side, to Cambodia, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. It seems logical to book a train passage rather than try to go a klick or two to the bus station in morning rush hour. Next instalment: Don’t Take the Train to the Cambodia Border.

Rail Travel 12.04.10

We are travelling, in two sprints, along the rail lines in Thailand, on our trip from Surat Thani to Bangkok at night and thence to Aranya Prathet which sits on the Thai-Cambodia border. The first train we booked was a sleeper, second-class, which we were told by many travellers, was a very satisfactory experience. While it was significantly better than the Vietnamese variety it was somewhat less than luxe. The linens were clean and the car quite well maintained so I should have nothing to complain about. But then I wouldn’t be me would I? The coaches seem to date back to the sixties; white-grey arborite tables and vinyl tile on the floors, square chrome legs and supports custom-designed to bark the sturdiest shin. Surfaces have been scoured, cleaned and re-cleaned until the black substrate is revealed – so while they are clean they appear quite dirty.

The night was reasonably uneventful. I took the smaller, upper bunk, hoping to be mistaken for a mensch and looking to earn brownie points or Karma. There are stiff rubberized canvas curtains that shield each occupant from the thirty or so others that share the coach in common. Please God let it be Sophie who snores loudly tonight. Note to self: upper berth’s curtains don’t go all the way up to the ceiling to block the light from the 6000 watt fluorescent fixtures, so are ideal if one likes bagging z’s on tanning tables, otherwise just a tad too bright. I am not one of your seasoned railway sleeper specialists so, just an aside to others who probably know better, when sleepers are arranged with human head to toe aligned with the length of the coach the rocking motion of the train is much more intense than when they are arranged perpendicular to the rails. I only mention this because I had noted the vertical straps attached from ceiling to bases of bed to prevent one’s rolling out during the night and smacking down a good 6 or 7 feet later onto hard floor. At the time I thought it highly unlikely that those straps would be necessary but a night at sea on the sleeper convinced me otherwise. Not recommended to those with stomach motility issues.

In the morning we woke around 6 or so and felt restless, we’d been in bunk since about 9 the night before. Soph suggested that we walk up to the dining car. Again, several people we have met in our travels said they food weas good and cheap. We had visions, or at least I did, of cutlery and china, maybe not Spode, but, you know, plates and such.

The trek was like changing channels near the mystery/horror/sci-fi region of cableville. Each car had a different and surprising appearance. We first went through first-class sleeper, which appeared to have more linen though I couldn’t really see much difference. It felt brighter and cooler in that car – I froze my ass off in ours so no points scored. Those lazy first classers were barely stirring - upper class twits to a man I say. Rubbing their eyes and making big yawning noises, blinking at the interlopers who should have had more sense and climbed alongside the outside of the car rather than disturbing them. Picture them with colourful sleeping masks with cute animals stitched into them.

We crossed the treacherous funhouse threshold to the next car, straight into a roaring, clattering Sahara. The air was stiflingly hot even though the windows were open – I forgot to check if the glass was tempered to be able to resist the blast-furnace heat. The chairs were arranged airplane style, in rows facing backwards at the rear end, then reversing to forward. The occupants had spent the entire night sitting (basting) in naugahyde recliners, no drip-pans Richard. They looked absolutely spent; with a febrile sheen to their skin - it felt like walking into a cholera ward. Many wore sunglasses because it was so bright – there were no curtains nor berths to block the blaring morning sun that shone horizontally through the car like some infinitely long explosion – which I guess it is in fact. Some clients looked at us curiously; probably few farang venture this far into the heart of darkness.

When we arrived at the dining car it initially seemed like a cruel joke. The passage seemed blocked by a wall, but it was the kitchen taking the lion’s share of the car, a narrow corridor led around a blind corner to our Eden. Well, not precisely the Biblical description; a couple of sweat-stained officers are sitting, smoking cheroots or Marlboros. One is talking in a voice so loud it would shake the windows if they weren’t already banging back and forth from the rough rails. The aforementioned arborite tables are fastened to one wall. The walls are that horrendous green that is the universal symbol for vomit. It’s the green one sometimes sees just before blacking out. We modified our imaginary order of steaming porridge or noodle soup to coffee served in mismatched chipped mugs. Still, Marj would call that an adventure.

And so we returned to our sleeper car for a few more hours before Bangkok. The early morning mists were long ago burnt off and the fields were grey and dry though everywhere the trees bore verdant foliage: palms and banana trees, jackfruit, mango and many deciduous types that seem to be cultivated in vast tracts, pin-straight and limbless for perhaps 25 feet, they stand, ordered like soldiers – a dense clump of green rests like a bearskin cap at their crests. Rainy season is still a month or so off I believe so this is the driest season and the general appearance can be summed up in one word, dusty.

Sanctuary 05.04.10

If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.

Tao te Ching – Chapter 36

On the left hand corner of the modest beach in Haad Thien, on the south-eastern corner of Koh Phangnan there is a cozy little spa nestled into the age-softened boulders and coconut palms. It is chocolate-brown with a thatched roof and its rooms are open to the sea and sky. At first it seems a perfect idyll. From the various levels of the cool restaurant/bar one looks out into a lovely horseshoe bay with steep headlands of charcoal-grey rock. The trees are full of the electrical, buzzing whitenoise burr of cicadas and sharp, sometimes screechy, sometimes melodic birdsong. Occasionally you hear the moop-moop of macaques that forage invisibly in the treetops. There are many kinds of tall trees and the gardens are dense with flowers – hibiscus, amaryllis and many species I can’t name. The beach slopes comfortably to the sapphire sea as benign rollers crush themselves on the shore with a steady, soothing rhythm. The beach is mostly made of crumbly coral fragments; twigs and chunks of white coral bits – walking on it feels like it would if you walked on Lucky Charms cereal ( a LOT of the cereal). You can mould the coral duff nicely to make a meditation cushion for a bit of silent contemplation of the perfect view. The air is deliciously warm with a nice feathery breeze wafting in. Perfect. Eden.

I am reminded from time to time that my blogging has swung often to the critical side of my experience. Mea culpa. I suppose that, like the evening news, the notable, uncomfortable, remarkable things in life get the most attention. So, in an attempt at balance I will state that Thailand is simply beautiful. This won’t come as a surprise to most. But its geography and climate, its natural endowment of heart-tugging beauty and the incredible work of its people especially notable in its religious and state buildings and artistry are profoundly moving to experience. The weather has been excellent – usually a hot but not torrid 25 – 30 C and though a bit of rain might have been nice (I would love to see Bangkok during monsoon – makes me throb just to imagine it) who can complain about such perfect conditions? (besides me of course).

Sure there have been a few nasty moments along the road but that’s just pepper for the dish right? Gotta have spice to accentuate the sweet. We have met some kind and gentle souls along the way. Travel makes many people more open and sharing – of experience, consideration and advice.

In The Sanctuary, a place that offers yoga, meditation, cleanse-diets, even colonic irrigation for Pete’s sake, I anticipated a sort of Erewhon experience of good nature, openness, you know, granola gentility. Instead, from the moment we made landfall I have detected a palpable chill from the clients. Almost everyone averts the gaze as if we are all spectres sharing the same space but not the same time. It’s almost a shock I feel as the ‘cut direct’ is repeated wherever we go. (the management, a lovely German couple with a sweet, earthy little girl, are very nice). In Eden, it seems, the serpent has started to whisper. We start to theorize about this. There is negative energy here – the vibe is wrong. For one thing the layout is weird, the paths aren’t intuitively laid out and one keeps finding oneself turned around or in the wrong place. The bungalows don’t relate well to each other – they’re sort of higgledy-piggledy and face in the wrong directions. Could that be it or is it just strange chemistry. The world shows up as a mirror, perhaps we have arrived with the wrong energy. In any case, after a few days nothing changes, so it’s time to move on.

There were some nice moments at Haad Thien. We walked up to some bungalows managed by a gentle fellow. He had a tiny monkey that fastened himself to Sophie, wanting nothing at all to do with me. The owner said he only likes women. He protested with screams when he was finally pried off Sophie’s shoulder. There was a beautiful, tame hornbill that perched calmly atop structures nearby, one of the residents tossed fruit up maybe 20 feet to the bird which elegantly caught it in its long, narrow bill – a lovely ballet of sympathetic action. I created a few illustrations in coral on the beach. I am a bit starved for creative expression. The photography experience, or photo-ops as Soph calls them, is nice but I really miss my guitar and playing with friends. Live music is altogether missing here except for a strange night of Thai Blues back in Chiang Mai.

Back by Longtail to Haad Rin, the scene of Bacchanalia under the full moon, back up the serpentine coastal highway to Thong Sala in search of something that fits the soul. We don’t have a destination, just a desire for a better groove. In the taxi we meet Aly, a British woman who has spent the last three months in Haad Thien getting her yoga certification. She says that she got the same feeling about The Sanctuary; never felt comfortable there. There were a group of nice people who left, like monarch butterflies. for Bali a few days earlier and the spirit of the place sort of soured after that. So our sentiments are confirmed but not explained. She recommends a beach on the northeast corner called Haad Mae Haad - thither we go.

The beach is more generous there. Talcum powder soft. There is a coral reef that is easily accessed by a narrow isthmus that connects the village to a tiny island, Ko Mah, just 300 metres or so offshore. We splurge($30/day) on a beachfront bungalow and immediately connect with a couple who have rented the next cabin. Laughter and interesting stories form the soundtrack of a shared dinner at a delicious little eatery nearby.

So it goes. It is so difficult to know if it’s one’s personal energy or the invisible working of the Tao that flows effortlessly or not at all with an infinite array of influences. Both are one.

I am finally, after many weeks of trying, able to connect with my mom on Skype. I’ve missed her daily phone calls mightily since I left Toronto and I suspect she feels the same. Balance, loving sentiments and ease are restored. Hi mom.

Bus to Surat Thani 04.04.10

She who is centered in the Tao
can go where she wishes, without danger.
She perceives the universal harmony,
even amid great pain,
because she has found peace in her heart.

Music or the smell of good cooking
may make people stop and enjoy.
But words that point to the Tao
seem monotonous and without flavour.
When you look for it there is nothing to see.
When you listen for it there is nothing to hear.
When you use it, it is inexhaustible.

Tao te Ching - Chapter 35

Live and learn. We read in guides that many tourist agencies that arrange for bus trips in these countries are often overpromising and underdelivering. And so it was with our bus trip from Bangkok to Surat Thani on the east coast of southern Thailand. We had arranged a VIP bus which typically means comfortable chairs, air conditioning and an on-board WC. The vehicle had wheels and windows but aside from that it failed to measure up to all other specs – it had a WC but the plumbing seemed to be running the wrong direction. A sleepless, smelly, hot and stuffy bus ride may not rival the discomforts of travel in the 19th or earlier centuries but we spoiled westerners are not accustomed to really tortuous treatment. Perhaps that is overstating it a bit but, combined with the customary games of chicken that these vehicle drivers love to engage in, experiencing 12 or so hours of these privations can make one a bit testy. I wasted several hours in the wee hours plotting revenge on the travel agents who stuck us on the Beelzebub Express. I should have slept. For who profited from my anger and blame? Not I.

But, paying heed to the Tao, I am reminded to be more equanimous (this is several days after the trip so I can afford to take the long view). Small miseries make the achieved goal much sweeter I think. One wants to feel one is moving toward a special experience. This flies in the face of Buddhist teachings which tell us that living for the future or dwelling in the past are sources of suffering - one of the most difficult things to keep in balance when one is on the road, in search of adventure and meaning (and comfort), is being in the present.

When I pull up some positive memories from the ride: we passed some incredible things in the night – a tremendously large Wat loomed above us on a hillside. In the middle of the night a towering golden Buddha statue rose like some miraculous vision, high above, surrounded by inky black. A gibbous moon rose and hung over the wrinkled sea, casting down its pearly path while we sped past market stalls with intense fluorescents displaying beautiful mangoes, papayas, bananas, fish and raw meat (contrast). We passed a truck full of cattle - a few young men rode in the back of the van, swinging in hammocks or clambering up and down ladders while the truck hurtled along – probably an age-old vision here but quite striking to my eyes. Dawn found us in a flyblown bus terminal, with nothing edible on offer, at the margin of a brackish canal. There were the requisite flea-bitten dogs with running sores and spotty noses knocking each other about in the cool(er) grey-blue air. The locals were surly and not one of them could answer my hostile questions about whether our bus was a VIP one (they all lost their ability to understand English when I cornered them). For all this it was picturesque in a sort of Old West kind of way. One can choose to see character or homeliness – it’s just a state of mind. Can I perceive the universal harmony?

The day continued to go badly; after about an hour we were bundled back on to the bus and we drove for another hour and a half back up the highway to a ferry wharf. We waited there in the now-smouldering sun for another hour until a few more tourist buses showed up. This was not part of the charter we had agreed to. Positive experiences were: watching three dolphins, two of them albino, swim calmly about, hunting fish, only a few yards from the wharf. Dark, lean men cast heavy nets off the wharf to catch who knows what because the nets always came up empty. A couple of older fellows were pulling crabs out of traps, disentangling them from the webbing carefully – the moment they were free the slow-deliberate action turned into a sort of keystone cops dance as the liberated crab used all its strategies to bounce and skitter away. Fishermen 2, Crabs 0.

On the ferry at last and into the beautiful white-blue Sea of Thailand heading for Koh Samui and then our island, Koh Phangnan. The boat is crowded with 20-something kids, feckless and spoiled-looking. Ohmigod, is the island going to be crawling with such as these? I don’t dislike young’uns but these were hardcore party types, you could smell the depleted whisky/redbull fumes on their breaths. A couple of rows forward a two American-psycho lads with modern-day mullets with white Rasta dreads woven in (truly a fashion faux-pas) were showing their latest loot. One had bought a taser in Bangkok and fired it off to the great delight of their entourage – an incredibly loud, intense clicketing sound. Scary as shit. The other pulls a bowie knife with a 10 inch blade, one of those carbon-steel jobs that looks like it could skin you from a few feet away. Please God let them get off on Samui. (prayer answered).

And finally Phangnan. Pretty little island – as usual the port town ‘has character’ and we get out as soon as we scarf down some oily fried rice – first meal we’ve had in about 16 hours. We bicker with a Sangthaew driver to take us down to the tip of the island, famous for full moon parties. We have chosen to be here in the dead time but we are told that 5 to 10 thousand kids show up to the monthly vice-fest to get drunk, stoned, insane, copulated and whatever your imagination might fill in. The beach is maybe 500 meters long and the tide is high. The sea, we are told is full of horny, drunk rockers consuming vast quantities of booze from their ‘fuck-buckets’ (check Facebook for the Koh Phangnan 1 installment) and shitting and screwing in the shallow waters. Yum.

From there – and at this you might be asking yourself ‘Why? Can’t you read the signs?’ we run into the Longtail Mafia – a consortium of angry gangsta-types who will ferry you out to resorts and bungalows that are not accessible by road. They charge any price they want to perform the service and they demand what in this country is a ridiculous price. I ask a few different ones but the fix is in. Same price all around. I ask, jokingly/testily what happened to good old free-market. Unsurprisingly, no answer. In for a penny as they say. We get dropped up the island a mile or so at a bay called Haad Thien. It is lush, tropical, bohemian – sort of – and we stagger up the beach and drop our bags on the sand and our butts into a seat where we must consume our reward. Thank Buddha for fermentation and refrigeration.

Probably as good a time as any to stop this blog. I will write a few thoughts about this strange community tomorrow. It was my brother’s 60th birthday this day. I failed to connect with him but some part of him will know that I was thinking often about him. Good thoughts.