Gone East, Back in 5: October 2005

Cows graze the pastures of Bangkok.

Meteorological doom.

Ulan Bataar, Mongolia

5 DAY FORECAST

Friday 2°C -12°C
Saturday 0°C -14°C
Sunday -2°C -12°C
Monday 0°C -10°C
Tuesday 0°C -11°C

Blogscotch.

And at this point, I have no other option than to direct you toward The Standard Line Delivery System, property of a quasi-friend.

It's a favour you owe yourself.

Ronin.

My friend Motobike and I are the fastest, the nimblest, the snakes that slither over ice. We duck and dive and weave and thread, hither and thither along the dust-sleeted, vendour-cluttered, pot-holed roads. People honk with tight violent clenched fists, unable to understand that slow is something foreign to us, alien like seatbelts and helmets and oppressive road rules. We feel the envy and it sickens us - it quickens us. We are in the future before it's heralded. We glide through time like swords through jelly. We are roadbound Concordes breaking Chiang Mai's insulting little sound barrier. Put your ear to the ground and feel the throttle, hear the hum, drink the broombroombroom. That is us, the infamous Moto and I, and you and your friends can't even begin to comprehend what movement we're capable of.

Sabai, sabai.

Dispatches from a Buddhist nation.

Midnight in a perfect world.

We are driving alongside the Burma-Thailand border, six of us sardined, over the looming mountains and through the gaping valleys under a cloud-stained sky. In four langorous hours we'll arrive in Chiang Mai, again, but we're all too exhausted to converse in the meantime. What we do do and cannot avoid doing, is thinking.

I am thinking of Chiang Mai's allure. The predominant catch phrase is sabi sabi - easy easy - and it couldn't be more befitting. The smiles around here absolutely besiege you, from across the placcid moat, beside you on the motobike, above you up the mountain, beneath you from the tame domesticated animals. The vibe is languid like a licorice river, an eternal Sunday, a community annulled of worry, the place we should all retire to. Oh, Chiang Mai Chiang Mai...

I am thinking of home, how it's so far away, of my friends and family and frisky cat Gus, of how I cannot wait to see them, but will do so patiently.

I am thinking of my first day in Chiang Mai, of the man who pillioned me to the mountains on a whim. His name was Ting, with a gravelly voice and leathery skin, who offed the engine as we rode the decline. The low sun cast funhouse shadows over the snaking road that day, and we could hear the intermittent buzz of faceless insects whirring by. I had no helmet and felt free. He took me to a local eatery nestled on the side of the road, offered me food and drink and a whirlwind explanation of his hometown's rich and intriguing history. I went to the toilet, squatted and laboured and knew I was in Asia. When I re-emerged, Ting was on the bike, engine revving. He'd footed the bill without even thinking. We cut our way through the brittle dusky air, but when I realised everything looked foreign, that my guest house was in the opposite direction to that which we were heading, I tapped Ting softly on the shoulder. He said we were going to the silver factory. I thought I had stipulated earlier that it was the mountains and food I was after, nothing more nor less nor else. He pulled over with a squealing skid. Turned to face me, fire in his eyes. He started accusing me of lying, of treachery, of indecency and impropriety. He said I had told him to go to the silver factory, and he was merely granting my wish. I had not said this, oh no. I fought my case with a collected demeanour, but Ting was resolute. He told me he had many, many friends from Australia, and they were all good people, not liers like me. He told me I could do what I want, live how I chose, but that my way was not the way of the Thai people, and that I was unwelcome here. He spat on the ground beside my dirty shoe, and took off. By the time I'd made my way back into town, I'd garnered a sunburnt palette and antsy psyche. The rest of the day I mourned for the disparity between cultures, our fracturing of communication. I wished we all spoke a common language and had a common God. I hoped I could mend the wound between Ting and I, but wasn't confident. I haven't seen him since.

I am thinking of the friends I have made, Steve and Olivier and Youcef and Offy and Lek and Fon and Paa and Wan and those whose names I was daft enough to forget. Their faces will remain forever with me. The late nights of thong-clad boogying on glass-sharded dancefloors. The impassioned debates on scabbing oriental tattoos and premature aging and right-wing fundamentalists' plots to assassinate venerated Venezuelan leaders. The Beer Chiang and urban myths mystifying it. The nights whittled away playing cards on the balcony, cheating rife as ever. The stories, oh the stories!, told with the gusto and vigour and expertise that comes only with much travelling, stories that we shared and relished like little vibrating flickers of gold. And the hearty laughs suffusing everything we did, always so unprecedented, whom once they started never ever stopped.

I am thinking of the all-too-vivid images seared into my memory: the orange-cloaked, bald-headed, bare-footed monks shuffling through town at daybreak, large wicker baskets in hand, collecting their daily meals from the generous faithfuls. The towering temples punctuating every street and soi and alleyway, their chimes tinkerbelling the night away like lullabies pilfered from the immortal world. The helpless writhing fish pinned to wooden flatboards, freezing with death when the knife sweeps down and beheads them. The homeless man's slow and painful bow and wry and subtle smile upon receiving our offer of discarded clothes, now his.

I am thinking of the drunken promise the three of us made, Steve and Wan and I, to return to Thailand next June with not so much as a bag, to sniff our way around its perimeter without looking backwards, in search of the laziest place and easiest people in Thailand. I, we, us- bide by our promises, no matter how drunken.

I am thinking of a friend called Poi, and am hoping she is thinking of me.

But most of all, I am thinking of a land that is a veritable world unto itself. Aswarm with yaks and gers and hills and deserts and fossils, wielding a lifestyle shirked long ago by the burgeoning modern world, arrowing-firing and faeces-burning and with streams so glazed they offer a perfect reflection of every shapely little nuance of the clouds above-

Seven days till Mongolia.

Outside, night has fallen with the gentle grace of a feather from a balcony. The full and flawless moon glows faintly mustard, appearing and disappearing and appearing again behind blackened mountains. The others in the car slouch in their seats, asleep, except the driver, who tears along at a breakneck pace, wild-eyed. I know he knows these roads better than anyone. I know we are safe. I am gazing out the window in a tired sort of trance, headphones in, and one particular song comes on: 'Midnight in a Perfect World.' It reaches the haunting middle bit where the strings sway into action, where the sound ripens into something robust, and the goosebumps rise in an instant. It is good. Magical. And just then, in the back-left seat of a rusting van snaking its way through the mountains toward Chiang Mai, I vow to record the moment, to throw it on the blog in the next internet cafe I come across, to share this with you, my friends, and to do so at the stroke of midnight in this here perfect world.

This little piggy.

So the horde of friends I'd been spending all my time with left for Laos today, leaving me suddenly alone and with time aplenty. The sun glared, the air heaved, the great outdoors was the place to be. So I lunged for the solace of an aqua-pastelled scooter and traced my way through the mountains spooning the northern perimeter of town, in search of nothing in particular, a whole lot of it. I should've realised doom was imminent.

If you can apprise me of why I didn't just steer clear of that big ominous pothole, please do. I'm as much in the dark as you.

But the eventual view; was it worth it?

Only a hundred times over.

The Bangkok Post.

The front page mimics that of home: CHECHAN MILITANTS STORM SOUTHERN RUSSIA.

A swathe of pages later, more pertinent news:

" DEAF MUTE STEALS PHONE TO FUND SEX
Phnom Penh - Cambodian police, baffled as to why a deaf mute man would steal a telephone, soon found their answer when a witness led them to the phone in a local pawnbroker's shop and they then found the culprit in a nearby brothel, authorities said yesterday.
Police chief for Toul Sangke commune in Phnom Penh, Khat Darasi, said victim Ear Bunnarith, 40, reported his mobile phone stolen on tuesday and had named the culprit as a profoundly deaf man known only as Bun, 27.
'But neither the police nor the victim could understand why Bun would steal a telephone as he could cannot speak or hear. He had been friends with Ear Bunnarith for many years without doing any wrong before.' Khat Darasi said.
'It was not until a motorbike taxi driver came forward and told us where he had taken Bun after the phone disappeared that we realised he might not be able to use a telephone, but he is human. He stole the phone to buy love.'
Khat Darasi said the victim had declined to press charges against Bun after the phone, which he had pawned for 410 baht, was returned, and Bun was realeased after promising to find more appropriate means to fund his love life in the future. "

" MONK PUTS LUCKY FACE ON WATCH
Bangkok - A Buddhist monk said yesterday he had launched a line of wrist watches, their faces emblazoned with his image and embedded with a powerful magic charm, to protect his follower's from the nation's increasingly chaotic traffic.
Venerable Keat Chanthuch said he had been motivated to create the designer watches after a series of fatal bus crashes on the busy road that links his municipality to the capital.
'The idea came about when some of my students told me they respected me so much that they would ike to wear watches blessed by me and with my picture on them. I obliged, and some of those students where subsequently involved in a bus crash from which they were the only survivors,' Keat Chantuch said. "

At 20 baht, fold-out, with the sheer impractical size of The Australian, The Bangkok Post is an essential read.

With lens-free glasses, I see.

Bangkok backyard; charming as a wart.

Bangkok all London-like.

Thai girls being Thai girls.

Withered trees abound

(reach for sky but fall to ground).

They who live in the mountains know not of bitumen, toothpaste, or telecommunication. They bathe with pail and hand, sing centuries old hymns by campfire at night, and graze their bristly rice fields the rest of the time. These days they welcome tourists from all over the globe into their lives, the Irish and Japanese and Canadian and me, with curious and open arms. The lifestyle they have known and cultivated for so achingly long looks, to me, sadly moribund.

Another sublime vista.

We trekked for three days and two nights through a squelchy brown-black mud, across makeshift bridges swarming with ants, up and down gently-graded Thai mountains, by sizable termite-hills and thundering waterfalls and ravines so deep they echoed, all the while encompassed by the subliminal hum of a chorus of crickets. Everywhere was pristine green splendour. But then, in one fleeting glance, I spotted a conspicuous glitch of red; this lonesome flower, a long way from home.

Thailand's national animal is the elephant. They maintain a prolific presence across the country's entire expanse - roaming the bustling streets of Bangkok with languid, lumbering steps; carrying ferang in pre-ordained loops within the lush green prairies of far northern provinces; posing for the blinding flash of new-age cameras in Phuket, trunks upheld. But every elephant I've seen thus far has been tethered to something, usually its merciless trainer. They may be lauded as a most sentient animal and revered as a staple of Thailand's unique cultural heritage, but the cold hard truth is that the elephants live a tough and miserable existence here, and it will only worsen. For them, I cry elephant tears.

Since Toni the Croatian muttered them nine short months ago in Vietnam, the words have transmuted into a mantra:

Flow like water. Flow like water. Flow like water...

In the middle of nowhere, words do not suffice.

Right here, right now.

There is a twenty-something woman sitting in the internet booth beside me right now, and she is wearing clothes a few sizes too small. Her headset is on, the live camera too, and she is laughing and laughing and laughing at all the right times in a sultry and smoky way. I sneak a peak at her monitor, on which sits the image a of a pasty guy in dire need of a shave. His pixels look deep into her eyes. The picture is glitchy, but their emotions are not. Cyber-sparks are flying right here, right now, Chiang Mai, Thailand. A city full of love.

The real thrust of this post is to inform you I'm going trekking at tomorrow's break of dawn.

I'll be back in 5.

Glimpses...

Penang teems with resorts, sure, and jet skis and fake Rolexes and

pink-haired Russians looking for sex massages. But beyond all that,

night in night out, is this.

Friends: Arif, Syam, Ali & Lockman.

Thanks for the book and candid conversation.

The nuts were very very tasty, if not a little dry.

A dare: when the monks aren't looking, jiggle the rods of each of the bells, closest to farthest. Then backtrack, flicking each of the little golden chimes up top. Spin quickly leftwards and see Bangkok consume your entire periphery, the bells and chimes chittering behind you. Then suck it all in.

Flags fluttering south, Bangkok.

Not a draft of wind, not a soul in sight; Bangkok Wat.

Alone in Bangkok, but not lonely.

I wouldn't say it was easy. I had to catch a rickety old public bus the entire stretch of Penang in order to catch another, much smaller bus across the border to Hat Yai, Thailand, in order to catch a huge and arrogant bus with televisions and toilets and VIP lounge downstairs, here. So suddenly I'm in Bangkok, surrounded by haze and horns and a wretched species of backpacker that ends each sentence with man or dude or bro, and is collectively scarce of a respectable adult hairdo*, and wears pants that flap like Mediterranean sails as the traffic gushes by.

I have declared Khao San Rd off limits. Patong and its depravity however beckons.

But so the guest house is a haven, at least. It is nestled amid the heart of a labyrinth of alleyways, alleyways so narrow I sidestep into dark and dank doorways to allow the merchants and schoolkids and stray mewing cats through. The edifice itself is a stark sky blue, which I find quite endearing, and is thus called The Bluehouse, ingeniously. There is a very real chance I'll be electrocuted in my humble enclave, itself a contemporary sort of cave with frazzled wires and peeling ceiling and dampness cloving each corner. The host is a shy 21-year-old, Chai, who's willing to wash clothes on cue and smile uncued, just like all good hosts. My room is padlocked and I have the key.

For amusement, I stroll, intentially lose my bearings. I try to make it to the hinterlands, but it's like I'm walking on a treadmill - the same stasis scenery over and over and over, markets and skyscrapers and molehills of rubbish.

And now, over there, my favourites: the grey-haired men. They wheel their vegiee-laden carts while grimacing and groaning through tortured countenance, one cart in front and another behind, a practised push and pull. They labour like I have never seen. They're old enough to be great-grandfathers. And yet by some uncanny function of biology, their skin is dry as an ember. They do not even bead with sweat. Beneath my own cascading sweat I am dumbfounded. For this, along with their unshakable work ethic and flawless tans and meticulously cultivated wisps of whiskers spilling from formidable brown moles, I revere the grey-haired men. What I yearn for is to age as gracefully as them.

But now: how the hunger sears my stomach, how the weariness abrades my mind. I need to devour some steaming streetside delicacy before sinking into my inch-high mattress with its skin so ratty, practice my Mandarin, distract my mind as to stave off the headspins this gargantuan burgeoning metropolis just won't cease giving me.

* Mean-spirited comments re: my hairdo are unoriginal, unfunny, and unwelcome.

Here is Ramadan.

In Malaysia, there is Taoism, Hindu, Christian, Buddhism, and tribal animists. But mostly there is Islam. And as of today, Ramadan is here.

I, a heathen, assail the lady at the internet cafe with questions about the annual fast, rain pelting outside. One purpose, she says, of Ramadan, is to infuse an empathy within Muslims for the world's underprivileged, for those with no choice but to fast, for those forever famished. This is the fast's magnaminous bend. The other purpose, she says, of Ramadan, is the big one, the lynchpin of all Islamic tenets. Her mouth hangs open, rain pelts down, the key that unlocks the crux of my Islamic education is swimming up her throat. I'm embarrassed, she says through a faint blush, but the main purpose of Ramadan I cannot remember right now. Sorry.

The internet lady has seven children, is plump with an eighth. She is of Phillipino descent, is married to a stocky Malaysian she calls A real joker, and is herself the most convivial person I have encountered in Malaysia. The reason she cannot remember the main purpose of Ramadan right now is due to her feeling a little scatterbrain, I infer. Her dazzling emerald eyes are glazed, though usually sharp and succinct. Her blinding red lipstick sits slightly asymmetrical, fuller on the left. It is 3pm and her blessed soul has not eaten nor drunk since 5am. And nor could she have smoked, if that habit was hers.

I gulp from my bottled water and am refreshed. But oh, I perhaps shouldn't have done that, not in full panoramic view of the internet lady. I'm not sacrilegious, but to gulp is brash. She is right there. I am right here. One is sated and the other is not. But nay, she did not see me drink, because she is asleep on her desk, flat like roadkill. I cannot hear her breathe.

The rain is pelting outside and Allah is posing a test to his disciples. He is teasing and tempting and outright hectoring them. But the street is empty, looks like a ghost town. The Muslims will not succumb. The Muslims are busy at the moment, fasting. And in one month's time, they will be sated in a whole other way, a way that I cannot even begin to comprehend.

The sea, under, afterwards.

My back is burnt, hair knotty, and memory submerged in water. Today was one spent snorkelling.

Doting father arranged a trip to the distant island sanctuary of Palau, and so it was. A smooth scenic bus trip. A ferry trip sullied by the poor old Japanese, themselves victimised by the merciless topsy-turvy of the sea. And us, by the thick-set windows, besieged by the stench of the Japanese's sick. The room was a hospital ward.

Debarked onto a massive pontoon, sturdy as land (merciful too, the Japanese thought) . Palau behind, ominously sloped and brimming with jungly mystique. Pristine aqua water between, looking very nectar of the Gods, surface ablaze with shimmering light. Geared up with the gaudy fluoro flippers and headset and snorkel, washed them out to be sure. Then in we went, under, into the domain of pulsating waterlife. First the silence-

Then everything came at once: schools of thimbly fish darting left right left right left right. Below: the slithering barracudas nervy and fleeing and get them away from me. Down: the solemn old fish like a horse's head but finned, a trail of ragtag minions hitching a lift. The bottom: dusky outlines of giant terraced beanbaggy clumps of coral, immutable, warming the ocean floor. This deep and its brooding abyss-like darkness. This deep and everything above a surfeit smear. This deep and I am cocooned.

Hours upon hours upon hours in the water; time enough for fairy-floss clouds to precipitate south and arc nautical north before outrunning eyesight. Eyes gone raw, ears gone numb, muscles fragile sacks of goo. The foghorn toot of the ferry, our cattle-call, aboard with the Japanese. We rode, counterparts in motion with the ocean, bobbing side to side ad infinitum. We thought it inevitable, we braced ourselves valiantly- but it didn't come; no lurch for the the empty plastic bag, no desperate lumber to the toilet with hands clamped over mouth. The Japanese and we had acquired the taste of the sea.

Afterwards, everything landbound seemed so rigid and fumbling and starkly unnatural in motion. This newfound adulation of the sea lingered, consumes me now as I type. It's like I've been possessed, even enlightened. Can you hear the benign rumbling roar of the surf just over the hills? Can you smell the tickly salty flavour of the very air itself? I need to cut this short, to meander down to the beach at street's end, to forget about my towel tucked in my bag further inland. That's what I need to do.

And do it I will.