Journal Excerpts

This is a compilation of excerpts torn out of the journal I kept in Thailand.

10 May (Airplane from Chicago to Bangkok). Canada has a lot of really huge lakes. They gave us snacks made from soybeans, cashews, dried shrimp and peas. It was space food essentially - packed tight. There were so many shrimp that I didn't want to eat individually, so I shoved the entire bag in my mouth. The scene dad and I had at O'Hare was precious - he had to park the truck in the lot to avoid a ticket, and time was dwindling as I waited for him to return to say goodbye. I have a photograph in my mind of him coming towards me, seeing me, jumping into a run, and embracing me, saying how much he thought he'd just missed me. I cried slow tears down both my cheeks and didn't let go of him for a while. I told him to make sure he eats right.

13 May I was going to cut my hair, to Peter's dismay, but then Ray and Liesel at the office told me I was beautiful with long hair. I guess we'll never see me with really short hair until I'm a mom.

17 June Sunday mornings / afternoons at the orange coffee shop... The owner's name is Pookie so we call it "Pookie's." We come here all the time to eat American breakfasts and read and listen to the Beatles. I love the decorations, the miniature Christmas tree in the back corner, and the pictures on the side of the fridge - sort of showing off their lives in a cute, artistic way: Ferris wheels and beaches, hammocks and hats. Pookie and her sister pooled their money together to open this place - and it has a character so unique no wonder they are laughing in all of the pictures. They bought colorful dishes and coffee mugs of all shapes and sizes, painted the walls orange and wrote a menu in English.



2 July In a letter to my friend Caitlin, I wrote : "All of a sudden, with complete naturalness, I discovered home." This may have taken two months but it finally happened.

5 July Bird is my worst student. He is 6, very small for his age, with shortly cropped hair and long, drooping earlobes. He's so cute that I have a really hard time getting mad at him. He sneaks up to the whiteboard and copies the lesson into his notebook from there, drawing on it as he pleases. When I tell him to please sit down, he hops to his desk on one foot. Later, I'll find him in the back of the room on the floor, with his long socks dangling from his feet, tied together in a complicated knot. He normally stands on his chair while I'm teaching, waving his arms upwards and downwards to live up to his English nickname.




9 August Thailand is such an in-between country. I wonder what it feels like to be a citizen of a country so far behind in some ways that it struggles to mix in the Western cultural items and language uses, creating a jumbled, skitzophrenic being. For example, when answering their expensive, flashy cellphones, these people say "hallo" to their caller. This is actually examples one and two, because the extremities that people here buy in the category of electronics is unreal. Cellphones seem to replace soap, food, and fitting new clothing on some people's shopping lists. Next, we have the Mickey Mouse craze, along with Hello Kitty and many other cartoon characters, who are splattered over most T-shirts shorts, flip-flops, purses, and of course, cellphone satchels. Why? Do they know these things are childish? Or are they just thinking that there are English words on their belongings so they must be cool? Which brings me to another point : the use of English on T-shirts and store signs and whatnot. Things like, "I bring all the boys to the yard," or "Luckiest Kid" or "Bitch." I wonder whether half these people know what their clothing says or means. A lot of the time, the words are completely misspelled. They love the song "Zombie" by the Cranberries, 15 years after the fact, and they love KFC. I still don't know how I feel about it, though. Would I want to live in a culture so confused in some of the most basic pop-cultural goings-on, or in one that is completely traditional and lets in none of Western influence?


11 August (An excerpt from Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity.)
"This woman's English was seamless. Every one's was. I had sixty words of Spanish and my friend had maybe twice that in French, and that was it. How had this happened? Everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this I hated and then found hugely comforting."

20 September (An excerpt from Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics.)
"Whilst man is in one location, he thinks of another. Dancing with one woman, he can't help but long to see the quiet curve of another's nude shoulder; to never be satisfied, to never have the mind and body cheerfully stranded in a single location - this is the curse of the human race!"

18 October I waited at the breakfast table on our last morning here at the Old Phuket Hotel, drinking coffee and reading Lolita. I wanted to wait for the right moment to interrupt the foursome that has intrigued me throughout the trip. Alex, Betty, Rod, and Barb are ex patriots from the UK, who live in Canada and Pennsylvania, respectively. They're each about 75 years old, and for some reason, I have just needed to listen to them and chat with them. They seem so content with just sitting and chatting with one another, Barb and Betty a bit more, Alex and Rod sitting back and staring into space, complacent. They talk about the daintiest of things, like the taste of pineapple jam, or whether or not they'll go for a swim today. Things seem much simpler, slower paced - maybe that's what draws me towards them. The thought that they have lived through so much more than I have, the fact that I miss grandma, the prospect of a good conversation, that's what kept me waiting at breakfast. They ended up giving me a great recommendation for where to stay in Singapore, which I do want to talk Peter into going to with me. So cute, so thoughtful.

25 October On the Tuk-Tuk ride into Vientiane, I was nervous that Laos was going to be ultra-dirty, worse than Thailand. I said, "When we got to Thailand, America looked like a shining diamond. Now, we're in Laos and Thailand looks that way." But after a stroll around the finer parts of the city, Laos doesn't look to bad at all. We ate dinner at a place called "Le Petite Sushi" owned by a Japanese gentleman who speaks English, French, Thai, Lao, and Japanese. He waxed poetic about the Internet and gave us a helpful guidebook free of charge. We also had our first taste of BeerLao, which is excessively advertised here. Afterwards, we found a nice Scandinavian bakery next to a huge fountain, and discussed how much a Kip really is. (10,000 Kip = $1)

24 November Today is Loy Kratong, a Thai holiday that always falls on the full moon of November. In that way, it's sort of like Thanksgiving - and it feels good to have something to celebrate at this time of year, while everyone at home is celebrating, eating, shopping, getting together. Thanksgiving was two days ago - it was a little rough, just thinking about everyone getting together without me - yes! Life does go on whether I'm there or not!

5 December Happy Birthday King Rama!!! Peter and I are in our yellow king Polo's, drinking coffee and playing scrabble at Pookie's - the day is ours, as Thailand pays it's many respects and gives its all in celebrating this "Auspicious Occasion of His Majesty the King's 80th Birthday Anniversary Celebration!" I feel like the days leading up to this day were much more intense than the day itself - kind of like Christmas. Come to think of it, it may actually be the closest thing they get to Christmas, as the king is practically Jesus to them. Yesterday, we had a ceremony at school for him in lieu of the opening flag raising we usually stand through every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I felt really connected with the king, the school, the kids, I guess, standing with the teachers in front of all of the students, facing the massive portrait of the king. They sang many songs in his honor. I haven't gotten the chills in those situations for a couple of months now, but yesterday I definitely did. I can say now that having all of these yellow shirts and songs and wais is really starting to make sense. He's becoming dearer to me as the months pass.

4 January I have begun babysitting/teaching English to Sha-Sha, a 2 year old who lives with her family here in Chachoengsao. Yesterday, we talked about the Christmas tree, Rudolph, and the princesses from Disney movies. Today we played well - like old friends almost. We hung out with barbies first and then we headed over to her "pool" full of balls and stuffed animals (not water) in the middle of the living room. We fed the penguin and the hippo fake fruit and shared it with each other too. I let my imagination crawl out of it's dusty box in the back of my heart and felt completely comfortable. She was laughing - her mom was laughing - I kept thinking how amazing it is how quickly a child can fall in love. She asked her mom in Thai if I could stay longer. We ate apple slices to her mom's delight - she never eats them.

14 February Valentine's Day in Thailand = Giant Sticker Fest. Rather than giving one another box-fulls of Valentines like at my elementary school, Donges Bay, these primary school kids are parading around with scads of stickers attached to their faces and bodies. It's ridiculous. Even the most serious of teachers hand out and have stickers all over the place. Really silly, but what isn't here?

1 March (An excerpt from Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork)
"There is something about the life of a foreigner in Thailand that draws those who find themselves unwilling or unable to think about their 401(k)s; and in the leisure, freedom, and isolation that the Far East provides, these types swing inexorably toward the pendulum edges of their souls."

Peachy

Peter and I have become quite fond of getting massages for very cheap prices during this past year. I'm sure we've had upwards of a baker's dozen: Thai massages, oil massages, foot massages, sandy beach massages, and the latest- Vietnamese massages. They're always hit-or-miss, and I've become a great judge of what the next 60 minutes will be like upon the initial touch of these small Southeast Asian women's hands.

Tonight, after a long day exploring Hanoi on foot, and after a delicious meal had settled in our tummies, Peter and I headed for the nearest spa. The costs usually range between 3 and 9 US Dollars. This one was the equivalent of $6, and worth every Dong.

The tiny woman from Van Xuan Massage Parlour may have pushed and pulled and twisted every sinew of my neck,
she may have pounded, smashed, individually punched each of my vertibrae,
she may have mercilessly dug her tiny thumbs into each gap in my ribcage,
she may have chatted quietly to her friend and turned on Whitney Houston,
she may have spanked, stretched, and snakebited every inch of my skin,
she may have beaten and bruised me to the core,
but she left me writhing in the good kind of pain, her hands smelled like peaches, and I will never forget her.

Angkor Wat

St. Patrick's day will be spent on a bus to Phnom Penh, and then celebrating in a city I never knew existed pre-5 months ago. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The ride from Koh Chang to Siem Reap took upwards of 14 hours, beginning at the crack of dawn and ending with us passing out with the moon high above our heads. I got a turn on the dinky red plastic chair in the front of the aisle stuffed with backpacks and extended legs. The others fell asleep, their heads bobbing and jerking with the bumps on the road. I put on my ipod, not feeling at all sleepy, and set my eyes on the road ahead. Cambodia is much dustier than Thailand - a thin layer of covers every leaf, every roof, every shoulder. As we pulled out of the bustling mess of a border town, the horizon became farther away than the dusty sky. Few trees grew in this barren stretch, and those which did looked lonesome. Of the vehicles lumbering down the dusty red gravel roads, some motorcyces, one or two cars, most were large brown tarp-covered trucks carrying secrets - boxes of coconuts, guns, people? I had never been on a bus with open air windows, fleck-filled breezes, a cigarette hanging out the tired driver's lips... I was ecstatic with what was to come. Every ten or fifteen jolts, there was a big swerve. The road would detour slightly to the right in a half circle before returning to it's straight, endless path. It was on these small detours that I would clentch my teeth and my toes and my fists, fearing the bus would actually tip over. I imagined myself squashed at the bottom of a pile of strangers, in a town called Middleofnowhere, Cambodia. My music saved me from insanity.

Next morning, we found ourselves on rusty old bicycles without gears, gripping grandma-style handlebars and smiling toothily into the passing wind. Siem Reap contrasts its surrounding countryside like Vegas contrasts the desert that surroundxs it. Enormous, glamourous hotels run by Koreans, Vietnamese, and French owners, streets lined with cookie cutter sidewalks, cleancrisp fountains...a city out of it's place. We rode down a palm and ficus lined boulevard toward our long anticipated destination: Angkor Wat.

When we paid our $20 to get into the ancient city, (lines of sweat dripping down our backs), we parked our bikes in the shade and dove into the intense sunlight. We decided that none of our pictures of eachother could be normal. Robbi, Karin, Peter and I either had to be jumping, the photo of us caught in mid-air, or dancing. Wandering around the crumbling edifices, though, I found myself forgetting tht I even had a camera - stumbling around in the rubble and trying to feel what the places might have felt like 900 years ago in their heyday. Gold. White. Shining. Busy. Elegant. And now - brown, rustred, stony-lipped faces crumbled in half, empty, and smelling of basement air.