Southeast Asian Adventures Parts 1 and 2 (added new)

The Journey

Though a series of flight complications in Shanghai left me with an unexpected midnight tour of the city, the flight from New York to China was relatively painless. It was only within an hour of landing when the captain informed us that we would not be landing in the Shanghai international airport as expected. Apparently the poor air quality had left the city covered in a thick smog that the pilot did not feel safe penetrating. Lovely. But I suppose seeing the runway is necessary for a comfortable landing...

Instead, we landed about thirty miles away at a small domestic airport which left everyone with a connection to Thailand or elsewhere in a hybrid state of annoyance and panic. Customs was a mess because their facilities were not equipped to handle a large number of international jet passengers from the late night arrivals. Hundreds of people in the wrong airport, poor English, midnight, few with visas to enter China, and lots of yelling. I swear at one point the ladies behind the counter escaped to the back room to avoid the belligerent passengers because they really had no idea what to do with everyone. 

Driven by sleep deprivation, I let out a really loud laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation and the many suitcase lugging zombies around me stared in dead-eyed confusion. Somehow I found a small group of Americans destined for Thailand and we managed to get a group bus to the other airport and on the next flight bound for Bangkok. We said a quick hello to the strangely empty streets of Shanghai, but everyone was relieved when we finally took off. 

This description of the flight journey is unnecessarily lengthy, but as a last point, our connecting flight to Bangkok had the strangest snacks. I tried something that I though was chocolate and it turned out to be beef jerky bits. I bit into a cookie and it tasted like cheesy chicken noodle soup and then I ate a roll with exactly one raisin in it. In the poor lighting, I was just glad it wasn't a bug. Oh China. Looking forward to a more official visit in the future!

Welcome to Thailand!

My experience after landing in Thailand was remarkably more pleasant. Contrary to the many online forums that warned of sketchy taxis, the driver did not rip me off, and the hour long journey to the hostel cost the equivalent of $12. Yay!

I spent the first four days in Bangkok, which is the largest city in the country. It felt like New York City on steroids with the congested streets and hoards of people playing squirrel with one another on the mangled sidewalks. Bangkok is extremely modern in that all the comforts of home are available in sophisticated mega malls and the sky train probably breaks down less frequently than the subways of New York or Boston. Yet there are visible differences as you venture down the haphazard maze of smaller streets. These streets are where the bits of unique city culture emerge and the strange (sometimes quite foul) smells begin to accumulate. 

One thing I found slightly alarming was the mess of power lines strung about, truly an electricians nightmare. But I guess it is a necessary evil for everyone to have access to power. I'm unclear if there is a city planning and zoning department because most of the streets are under construction by barefoot Thais in casual clothing. Someone told me that all the businesses pay their electric bills to the 7-Eleven chain stores on each block. I really hope that's not true, but the fact that I bought a train ticket through 7-Eleven made the idea seem plausible. Walking beneath the web of chords made me wonder if there were ever accidental electrical explosions and subsequent fires from the open flames of the street vendors stir-flying below, but the street food is pretty great and it's how some lower income families make a living here so I'll stuff those catastrophic thoughts under some cranial blankets and think about how hilarious it is when I try to speak Thai.

People cast some strange looks when I take pictures of wires on the street so I don't yet have any better photos of the strangling vine-like electrical coils. But don't worry, I'll put one up soon!

I stayed at a hostel called Lub D, on Decho road in the Silom, Bangrak region. Great location, close to street food and fancy bars, but also within a twenty minute walk of the central park, night market, Sky Train, and the infamous Chao Phraya River. Lub D gets five stars in my book, but no one could tell me what the name meant, must be an inside joke!

If you are staying in Bangkok the only greenery that you'll see outside of the occasional city tree planted in a storm drain or water catchment is at Lumphini Park. It's pretty small, maybe a couple hundred acres, but has a central pond and some walking trails with lots of flowers.

As an environmental scientist with a strange knowledge accumulation of invasive species and water pollution, the pond was, for lack of a better word, disgusting. The German girl that I met must have thought I was crazy naming all the giant carp and talking about cyanobacteria in this more-or-less stormwater retention basin, blooming so thick with algae that you could barely see the Asian water monitors lurking with their noses above the surface. Yes, giant lizards! The first one I saw really made me jump. Growing to ten feet, the Varanus salvator is the closest relative of the deadly Komodo dragons of Indonesia. These resident animals are pretty tame and very used to flocks of people out for their morning jog, but it is still a bit unnerving to be steps away from a group of six-foot long lizards. Because I anthropomorphize all plants and animals, I thought they were cute. You might disagree. 

Also in the park, you can see a number of holy Buddhist shines with burning candles and incense. It is traditional to burn three incense sticks while you pray. Some people place miniature statues in front of the life-sized golden Buddha within the shine; maybe for luck? I'm not sure who manages these but the shines are very common and frequently found on street corners throughout the city. I'm really looking forward to exploring the meanings behind more Buddhist traditions during my stay here. The atheistic Theravada branch of the religion is intriguing in it's selfless and peaceful nature and over 90% of the population in Thailand practices this form of Buddhism. 

I think my favorite part of Bangkok is the Chao Phraya River. If you couldn't tell by the insane boating traffic, the severe pollution would demonstrate that the river is a major way of transportation in the city. To avoid the sweltering smoggy streets that are cluttered by motorbikes and taxis, most pedestrians opt to hop on the river ferries that act more of a bus system. Every 20 or so minutes, a rotating ferry whisks up to your stop at a terrifying speed. The rubber tires along the dock compress to absorb the shock of the incoming 80ft boat as the dock rocks up and down so much you need some serious sea legs not to topple over. A loud whistle signals that it is time to board and you carefully mind the gap of shifting proportions. No safety measures here folks! 

The muddy river is splattered with plastic bags and Styrofoam chunks, and there is absolutely no natural river shoreline. Houses are built up on stilts on the bank and I had a hard time stifling the thoughts of catastrophic flooding during the rainy season. The many collapsing corrugated buildings and docks suggest that flooding is a true problem that has yet to be addressed, though if you take the power lines to be an indicator of city planning there is no hope for the river. When I go back to Bangkok towards the end of my trip, I want to look into environmental groups that might be working towards a cleaner future for the Chao Phraya.

I took an overnight train from Bangkok to Khon Kaen. The train was designed for a good night’s sleep, but between the excitement of heading to the Project, and the nerves that I might sleep through my 4AM stop, I didn’t get more than a couple hours rest. The remote rail tracks traveled through the middle of Thailand which provided a unique window into the lives of the people living in the rural parts of the country. We passed by open houses in little villages, the lights of their televisions illuminating the cement floor dwellings. The train crossed dirt roads with sleeping dogs that seemed unusually peaceful and barely disturbed by the thunderous rumble of the passing cars.

When I finally got off, I decided that the dark and empty train platform was not the optimal place to sit around, so I took a taxi the nearest hotel to wait for my bus at 9AM. But in true backpacker style, I politely asked to wait in their lobby instead of getting a room. The young Thai man behind the counter was sufficiently confused and the extreme language barrier did not help. Either way, they let me stay, and I broke the ice with purchasing the breakfast for the equivalent of $6. A coffee and a plateful of delicious noodles from a four-star hotel were a strange twist to my trip, but I welcomed the solace of a comfortable place to catch up on some reading before I tried to find to the bus station.

This bus station is where I first felt the full effects of being a single white girl in a bustling hub of Thai natives. Khon Kaen is not a tourist city. There are very few foreigners and even fewer Thai’s that speak English. A Thai women came up and took my photo, smiled, and walked away. Despite her innocent gesture, she heightened my anxious awareness of the many eyes that curiously followed me to bus 14. Everyone was pointing me in different directions because they wanted to help but couldn’t understand my pronunciation of the destination! Thankfully though, I had worked out directions and knew which bus to take to get to the Mindfulness Project.

The bus dropped me off at a long side street and I began my half hour walk to the Mindfulness Project’s Forest Monastery. The dirt road was clearly a residential neighborhood with many grassy side streets. The simple homes had corrugated tin roofs and with simple cement foundations. Chickens scratched at the debris in the gullies and lazy dogs lifted their heads to check me out. Again, I received much attention from the little children and grandparents sitting outside. So many smiles and excited waves. One family give me a big hug and offer me food when I told them I was heading to Wat Pho, the Forest Monastery. At first my mind was filled with apprehension, but the local people gave me no reason to hold on to these feelings bred by stereotypes. It was definitely a new environment, yet the locals are a million times friendlier and more welcoming than I had expected.

On arrival to the Project, my new home for the next two weeks, I received a string of warm embraces and introduced myself to so many people that I thought I could never remember everyone’s names. Lucky for me I came right after breakfast and everyone was just starting the morning work… Laugh if you will, but ten minutes after putting my pack down I jumped into a mud hole and put my feet to work making bricks for an Earthen building project that the community is building for the farmer next door. The Project has an incredible relationship to the local Thai farmers. We exchange volunteer work and manual labor for fresh food, and the neighbors do everything they can to give us a ride down to the main road if we want to hitch into the city, which is actually the only way any of us get around here. On multiple occasions we’ve hitch hiked in groups as large as ten in the back of pickup trucks (which is a totally normal mode of transportation by Thai standards) and people always seem to go above and beyond to make sure that we get where we need to go.

This rural part of Thailand is full of the most compassionate and helpful people I’ve ever met. It’s really opened my eyes to how closed off and stoic much of American society is. One could argue that many of the small town farmers in the States are equally kind, but I really think that the harmonious Thai nature has roots in their peaceful and spiritual society. When I say spiritual, I don’t mean that everyone is religious. As I mentioned before, the commonly practiced form of Buddhism is actually an atheistic religion. Instead I mean that people are thankful for what they have, loving to strangers, and tend towards a strong connection to nature. Yea, the cities are still dirty and garbage pollution is a problem in most areas of the country, but despite immense poverty in the rural communities, Thai people manage give and give and give.

Last night we stayed overnight in the main Khon Kaen monastery. We woke up at 4AM for morning meditation and our teacher gave us an in depth etiquette guide to interacting with the monks. In Thailand, feet are a big taboo and you are expected to never have the soles of your feet pointing towards the Buddha shine or the monks. We attended the morning ‘Buddha day’ chanting with a crowd of local Thais and the director of our Project, who once served as a monk, provided some English translations. Usually I feel strange listening to mindlessly repetitive chanting, but after hearing the translations, I became a bit more accepting. Instead of pledging allegiance to a God, most of the prayers are actually giving thanks to nature and wishing happiness and love to all living beings. “May all living beings be full of loving kindness, may all living beings be free of physical pain, may all living beings be calm, happy, and truly free.” It felt strange to watch a crowd of people nearly kissing the ground during the regular bowing, but it is practiced as a way of lowering one’s ego. The act seemed to parallel the beauty of the temple’s shrines and mosaics.