Thailand: Chiang Mai, city life hill tribe elephant buddha

The farther you go

The farther you cut loose

The farther you run from love

The more you love them in return

The more you need them to love you back

 

When I began my journey out into the wilds of the world, I was not intending to run away from anything existing in my life. I have never really considered the path I have chosen to be particularly different than what I thought I should be doing as an almost-29-year-old female from Kentucky/Ohio.

 

Admittedly, I thought about the fact that I am diverting from the path of career, children and marriage that so many people my age pursue. For me not to have admitted this divergence to myself would have been socially retarded at best, downright troubling at best.

 

And yet, despite family and friends’ attestations to the contrary, I’ve always thought of myself as a somewhat normal North American Midwestern girl. Don’t we all long to escape the cornfields and bowling alleys and suburban sprawl and learn more about the jungles and the deserts and the oceans (even if we grew up landlocked) that separate us from the rest of the world?

 

Don’t we all long to peer into that proverbial heart of darkness and call it bullshit and turn around to face (and embrace?) the darkness in the system from whence we came  - bounding out in all our corn-fed, big-hipped, full-busted goodness? Ok, maybe not.

 

So, friends, only now, 5 months into this journey (I know it seems longer, but thanks for reading anyway), I have finally come to admit that I might be just a bit off from the average.

 

Months ago, no, years ago, I got tired of friends, family and acquaintances I met telling me that I was lucky to travel so much. We’re all lucky; I always thought to myself, we’ve just made different choices. I just chose to go spend time being an outsider who speaks at a 1^st grade level and tries to fit in to society wherever possible (former forays to Ecuadorian Spanish and Japanese in question).

 

This idea that I clung to that fate is created by us is, I’ve learned, a peculiarly American (U.S.) way of looking at things. We hang on to the belief that people always have some aspect of control over what happens to them in this life in order to make ourselves feel better about the inherent inequalities of the world. Fair enough, perhaps that’s just human nature’s way of protecting us from the harsh realities of intercontinental inequity.

 

In fact, here in Asia a mixed-up sense of fatalism keeps people riding around on their motorbikes without helmets because of the idea that whatever crap you did to screw up your karma in your last life will come back to get you whether or not you cover your head with a plastic shield: hence all the fatal head injuries from seemingly innocuous accidents; bad karma.

 

But what is my part in all this nonsense that is Asia?

 

I’ve never had fantasies of saving small children in foreign countries from impending doom, levitating on a sweet cloud of angelic and gentile womanliness to deliver goodness to the developing world, or sacrificing everything to help people who have no ties whatsoever to my people and my upbringing. Whatever, I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t so whatever.

 

And yet, here I find myself working to bring education to folks in rural Cambodia amid myriad cultural roadblocks that would see projects dead in the water. And why?

 

Well, because these kids need education too, I remind myself. Just as much as the girls in my Cincinnati Artworks group needed an artistic writing outlet to express the reality of seeing their brothers shot and bleeding out on the sidewalk in Cincinnati-gang-violence, these kids in Cambodia need to have books available to allow them to learn to read and to change the trajectory of their future and the future of their country.

 

And sometimes, their older brothers need to rip me off on a tuk-tuk ride as I try to make my way back to my dorm from the airport.

 

And why was she returning from the airport, you may ask?

 

Well… I am just back from a week long vacation in Chiang Mai, Thailand, visiting some lovely folks I hadn’t seen in 7 years since Kalamazoo college spit us all back out (fully formed) into the world. Of course we all looked exactly the same (minus a few fine smile lines) and some gained wisdom along the way.

 

My friends Amanda and Ben, whom I visited in CM, have been living there off and on for 10 years now. Wow. Both of them are doing great work for the future of Thailand and neighboring countries and loving their lives in that friendly and accessible city, so visiting them was a treat I won’t soon forget.

There are a few aspects of Thailand that I could go into in depth that would dilute the description of the great time I had there (for example the prostitution industry – including a particularly visible presence from my older western brethren) but I’ll take the higher ground and focus on the great experiences I had there – good friends, great hikes to see the hill tribes, elephant riding, Buddha chatting and some kick-ass Thai massage that left me happily loose and relaxed.

Thailand – and the Thai people – are very polite and smile a lot. They also have a much better sense of humor and are more open than most other Asians (in my lowly opinion).

Overall, I am having an amazing time in Southeast Asia.

Never-the-less, I am coming to the same conclusion I came to in Japan – from a western female perspective –if you’re used to feeling powerful, sexy, or otherwise beautiful because of your curves and free attitude – and unless you’re willing to pretty much cut yourself off from the healthy plethora of dating options you may have had in your home country – Asia may not be for you. 

However, if I were a white boy (or old man) in need of a scene change and looking to shirk that pesky womens’ rights movement that seems to have ruined all the inter-male/female relations over the last 50 years, I’d be here in a heartbeat. And that’s all that I’ll say about that right now. I’m sure I’ll get enough shit for that one statement alone (I know James, I know).

SO… ANYWAY… Thailand was amazing, friends are great. Cambodia continues to be challenging and yet rewarding.

6 more weeks here and then Nepal, India, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey (assuming the Turkish government deems me fit enough to grant me a work visa).

I recognize more, day after day, how much I love, miss and need my family and friends at home. Part of this is wistful longing and part is just reality sinking in.

Cambodia and Malaysia: Drinking from the fire hose

I do not know how

Drinking from this fire hose

To appease my thirst

To all who have been following my travels with any measure of interest: apologies for my latent post. I’ve been trying to put into words for weeks now my thoughts and ponderings here, but somehow words have failed me.

 

And so, this Sunday morning I drag myself out of bed and open my laptop to try to express the past few weeks in my head.

 

Before I begin into ramblings about our vacation in Malaysia over the Cambodian New Year, I will tell you a story about a new acquaintance.

 

My housemate and colleague Soe is a Chinese-descent immigrant from Burma (Myanmar). An internet wiz who studied in Singapore, he has ended up in Cambodia as a political refugee. He’s 23 years old and he can, effectively, never go home.

 

Over the past month, I’ve asked him about his story and listened hungrily in bits and pieces. His English is great, having lived in Singapore, but according to him interacting with Western people is a rather new phenomenon for him, so I hope he enjoys our 20-question sessions as much as I do.

 

It goes like this: I barrage him with questions about his situation, What happened? Which avenues through the UN have you tried to take? What did you do politically, exactly? That’s all? So it was non-violent, right? How do your parents feel about you living in Cambodia? Do you want to go home? Do you miss Burma? What that a rude question? Should I stop now? Can’t you apply for refugee status in Australia/ UK/ Canada/ U.S.? Can I try your tofu rice? You want some of these noodles? Do you think western women are strange? Etcetera, etcetera.

 

He replies, always smiling, ever emotionally evasive (as is the way) to my questions. I think the only question he has ever asked me about my life and travels amounts to: I’m going down to the noodle shop, have you eaten lunch yet?

 

When I began this journey, listening to others’ stories was one of the vehicles for learning that I was most excited about. Now, living and working in a house with folks from Cambodia, England, Colombia, Russia/Israel/Uzbekistan/Canada, Germany, the U.S. and Burma, I am constantly challenged and intellectually fulfilled by the stories I get to hear.

 

This, in tandem with the daily happenings: waking at 5 a.m. to teach/learn from my eager, respectful students or in the evenings passing by the woman who has laid her deformed child out naked on the street corner next to her tip jar or seeing the photos of the Pol Pot genocide post-torture photos while thinking only that these could have been the faces of my students Ratana or Sovanna or Phary just 30 years ago or getting ripped off everywhere with prices 4 times higher than normal and twice as much as many other places in Asia… this is what I have not yet found the words to write about.

 

The daily reminder to focus outward instead of inward and through the non-self ironically come to peace. The sheer audacity and hypocrisy of my being here to give and get… the potential inefficiencies of NGOs and the entitled mentality many Cambodian NGOs and tourists have fostered in the Khmer people. The widespread corruption and lawlessness of the Cambodian psyche and government. The mental struggle of long days of teaching and then, effectively working another office job that I thought I was escaping from in leaving the states, for free, and then the self-chastizing realizations of my own selfish desires and behavior. 

 

Again and again, challenged to re-think, to question the world and to recognize the impermanence, irrelevance and sheer audacity of not only the world at large, but also my life.

 

“These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.” – Yann Martel, “Life of Pi”

 

And an internal reminder, in the form of my mother’s voice, which tells me: go easy on yourself. Be gentle. Take a deep breath.

 

In the email from my father: I can’t tell whether you love it or hate it there, but you’re drinking from the open fire hose.

 

In encouragement from friends, family, colleagues: Keep going, we’ll be reading your next post, we miss you.

 

And so, on this note, I realize that this post has been more about my internal journey than any vacation to Malaysia.

 

Malaysia was: Indian, Malay, Chinese, Hindi, Islam, Animism, Buddhism, Petronas Oil Towers, shopping, tropical islands, PADI open water certification and roti canai bread. I’ve posted my photos below.

 

This post is about explaining how the water from the hose tastes, while still keeping my mouth open wide enough to hopelessly try to cool the fiery landscape of my heart. And I have no photos of my heart.

 

To all, with love and gratitude for reading.

Heartstrings snapped and frayed

Waving in the wind like grain

We are on our way