The Bird Taxi

Our task was not a simple one: to somehow fill a small, energy efficient taxi with my landforms of suitcases--the various odds and ends and knick-knacks and tchotchkies and treasures and essentials from my two years in Thailand. Four huge suitcases, plus two small ones, plus Peter, plus me. It was like a problem-solving puzzle--shoving different suitcases into different places at different angles, deciding that a given solution wouldn't work, and pulling them back out again while the taxi bobbed under the weight like an exhausted beast of burden. These suitcases seemed to struggle and resist like stubborn livestock, and I found myself doing a guarded dance around them lest one of them decide to make a break for it. After thirty minutes of pushing and pulling and huffing and puffing, all of the suitcases plus two passengers plus a driver piled into the taxi. Its belly let out a rusty shudder before we proceeded out of the parking garage and down the fickle strip of Sukhumvit Road--its neckline jeweled in traffic lights and brake lights--bound for the hotel.

For a few minutes we all caught our breath, and I fashioned my body into a makeshift prop for the suitcase that was shoved against the door and threatening to topple over and crush both Peter and me. Once our collective heart rates had dropped below that of a drunk hummingbird, I began to look out the window and visually consume Sukhumvit road in sips and nibbles in the small blank space of window that was not covered by the monolith of luggage next to me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the driver fiddling with what I thought was the radio, until I saw the radio regurgitate a surprisingly large screen. The driver gingerly inserted a DVD while keeping divided attention (albeit not fairly divided) on the traffic in front of us. I was expecting Bollywood videos, or an instructional DVD for learning English, or even (this being Bangkok and all) porn. What popped up on the screen instead was a documentary about the birds of Papua, New Guinea. The narrator droned on in a soft, flute-y voice about mating habits and feathers and fruit preferences, and how these birds play a vital role in many of the cultural practices of a particular group in New Guinea.

It was absolutely the last thing in the world that I would have expected to see pop up as traffic entertainment, but the driver was completely (and much to my chagrin) transfixed.

I turned to Peter. "This would never happen anywhere else. Never. HOLY CRAP, it's stuff like this that I'm going to miss." He was apparently equally transfixed, as he shot me a quieting glance as the driver turned up the volume to block out my yapping.

One last gift of complete, total, and surprising randomness. Thailand maintained its mystery, its intrigue, its bottomless well of sights and experiences up until the very end. Nothing was ever boring or mundane. My eyes never suffered from want of fascinating things. Even taxi rides were an adventure. For that, Thailand will always be special to me--a topsy-turvy wonderland of nonsensical chaos coating a warm, creamy core of calm.

My next adventure? Maybe New Guinea......

The Road to Halong Bay

The poetry of this landscape, the unfathomable simplicity, the blinding green of the rice paddies set in front of a backdrop of jagged, misty hills. Conical hats bobbing up and down, punctuating the air with a perfect symmetry. Thin slices of arms bearing stalks of rice, bearing baskets. Bicycles slipping slowly down dirt roads speckled with generous shadows of banana leaves. Cows etching out an emaciated silhouette, jaws contemplating, ribs sanding down the air with their heaving. The people small in the distance, like phantoms, laboring elegantly under my tourist gaze. I don't want to tokenize this scene, to romanticize it, but it is impossible not to. A speck of a conical hat surrounded by the nourishing lake of the rice paddy is art, a somehow classical archetype, a thing so much more intricate and pristine and filled with back-breaking struggle than a mere tourist snapshot. It is life--unfair, uneven, exquisitely whole and simple life, moving and growing and working and also static and traditional and authentic. Buildings reach above fields like nimble fingers, constrained in width by money rather than space, keeping watch over the paddies like candy-coated sentinels. The fields are freckled with gravestones, the dead enriching the soil, bringing blessings as the workers wind their way slowly around them. Never hurrying. The rice won't tolerate hurry. The digestive system won't tolerate a crop that's been plucked by stressed, impatient hands. And the green just washes over everything until the brain no longer has space to contemplate anything else. It is passive and pervasive, fully present, consuming. The hats mark out a means of navigating this visual ocean like buoys bobbing in the struggle against being swallowed by a vast, vast color.

Excerpt from a relationship

Setting: Bangkok, Thailand, on the Chao Phraya River

Me: You see all of that green stuff that's floating on top of the river? One of Rama V's wives had it imported after a visit to Indonesia. It's called water hyacinth. It somehow got into the main river system and is now essentially a gigantic weed. People use its stems to weave rugs and furniture, as you can see that the stems are rather thick.

Peter: Cool!

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THE NEXT DAY

Peter: Hey, what's that green stuff floating on top of the river?

Me: It's called water hyacinth. It was imported by one of Rama V's wives. It's basically a gigantic weed, but people use it to make rugs and furniture, as its stems are thick and sturdy.

Peter: Neat!

*********************************
THE NEXT DAY

Me: When I was walking back to the hotel from the temple I passed a store selling water hyacinth furniture. It looked really cool--kinda like wicker!

Peter: Wait.....people make FURNITURE out of water hyacinth?

Me: .........
..............
...........
I'm pretty much gonna have to kick your ass now.

*******************************

Silly misunderstandings aside, we are having a phenomenal time in Vietnam, doing things like buying silk runners for our bed (OUR bed!!!) and absorbing so much natural beauty. We return to Thailand tomorrow, and neither of us wants to leave Vietnam. It is truly like nowhere else.

I am incredibly exhausted. More later!!!

Temple of the Golden Buddha

Well, I did it, I'm done, I completed my two year contract in Thailand. My last day of work did not exactly go as I had hoped--namely, it entailed my boss screaming at me for not a terribly good or logical reason (I mean, really, is there ever a terribly good reason to scream?) and me bursting into tears when my calming breaths ceased working--but then the next day we hugged and mended fences, so no bridges were burned (a mixed metaphor, that).

I'm really excited about the various programs that I built from scratch, and I am very happy with the work that I'm leaving behind. There were many moments where the job was pure bliss, and I really feel like I did something productive and worthwhile. But as a whole, it was a gut-wrenching experience that took several years off of my life, and I would never voluntarily put myself through something that emotionally trying again. That said, I will never throw the baby out with the bathwater. I learned a lot, more than I would have if my work experience had been smooth from start to finish, and I'm so grateful for that.

I'm currently writing this from Vietnam. Peter and I arrived in Hanoi last night and we are headed to Halong Bay in about an hour. I'm so excited--I've had many dreams about Halong Bay, and I'm really looking forward to finally seeing it. I've spent the past four days in a hotel in Bangkok, being a tourist in the city where I've lived and worked for the past two years. I've loved exploring without having to worry about time limits, and I've absorbed every fascinating detail of this city.

I visited Wat Traimit--a.k.a. Temple of the Golden Buddha--and I wrote this while I was in there:

There is something about sitting in a temple in Asia that is unlike any other space. The aesthetics of prayer, and the thick, tactile nature of the wishes and desires are different from those uttered within the angled walls of churches. Devotees sit on the ground, waiing, prostrating, feet pointed away from the kind eyes of the Buddha--the Buddha, this gigantic screen, absorbing projections and bearing secrets, smirking in its joyful knowledge. I often find churches to be like secret clubhouses, where only the anointed, the repentant, the devoted, the judgmental can access the deep wells of calm and quiet and knowing within the jeweled glass of its speech, its dogma, its bearded truths. But temples--temples have aromatic breezes, fluid gasps of incense, and it houses an organic flow of pray-ers and visitors and beliefs, its chambers pumping in welcome like an open human heart. Monks and devotees look at me strangely as they watch me wai three times--once for the Buddha, once for the dharma, once for the monks--my blond head bobbing up and down, and then they smile, offer blessings, ask the standard question: "Where you come from?" Peaceful eyes, peaceful hearts. Bells twinkling blessings in a white hot breeze, candles carrying prayers skyward, eyebrows furrowed in fervent hope, lips mouthing questions and gratitude and requests. I received a blessing from a monk today--water sprinkled from a bundle of straw, a simple white string around my wrist, and two simple words: Good luck. This is where I come to feel empty, free, devoid of worry and self-congratulations and criticism and judgment and even passion. This is the color of bliss, of knowing without computing and analyzing, this is having a heart like a breeze, a mind like a bell, a soul within a soul within a soul, a simple white string connecting the purple throbbing veins of humanity's fibrous mosaic. Incense induces tears and garlands thicken the air with offerings. There is the flavor of silence in the back of my throat and my chest fills with presence. I don't want to leave.