Detour

“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”  -Kurt Vonnegut

Farm life ended yesterday afternoon and I wondered briefly when I would next have the opportunity to shovel chicken shit.  And hoped that it might be soon.  The next morning at 5am I rode back into Chiang Mai on a local bus along with another departing WWOOFer, at which time I allowed myself to be persuaded that an hour in an herbal steam sauna was a luxury I could not afford to pass up.   That being settled, the conversation turned to my travel plans, which it turns out are painfully vague, aside from my intention to leave Thailand before my visa expires on April 6^th.  My companion spoke of a contact, a gentleman from Alaska of unknown occupation who lives in a tiny village five hours to the North, and asked if I’d like to spend a few days off the beaten track.   The offer was so mysterious and unexpected that it demanded my immediate acceptance.

My plans seem to become less clear with each passing day.  The creep of time is shocking to me. I am trying to figure out how a month in Thailand, once an unimaginable surplus of time, has become a troublesome constraint.  My detour north opens the door to crossing into Laos, but Cambodia, in spite of being in the opposite direction, is the more prudent choice, allowing a logical line to be drawn from its theoretically beautiful southern beaches, through Vietnam, then Laos, and finally China.  Indonesia, particularly Bali, has also come into the picture, another peculiar suggestion from a WWOOFer that I find I can't just leave on it's page in my notebook.         

It’s evening now and I’m freshly steamed, herbed, scrubbed and shaved.  This town has been good to me yet again and there is a flickering temptation to stick to the known quantities and follow the dotted line of tourist hubs to the Cambodian border with plenty of time to spare.  But despite feeling the unpleasant weight of my visa expiration pressing closer, I think I’ve successfully convinced myself that there’s still time for this impulsive detour before I leave the country.   Plans change.  A new friend makes a suggestion and…well…I’m slowly learning to embrace this kind of thing.  

Thank God I'm A Country Boy

Life on the farm is kind of laid back. The air is clean, the food is fresh from the garden or the chicken coop, and the labor is the honest, dirty, purifying kind that makes me feel as though my meals and bed have been fully earned, and without that unwelcome feeling, occasionally known to present itself in these types of situations, that it's not worth it.  I've shoveled chicken shit for compost, made bricks from mud and straw, harvested a field of tomatoes, and built a greenhouse out of bamboo.  My hands are developing calouses that I wish had been there for my embarassing turn at the corn grinder in Samibhanjyang.  My feet are tatooed with a layer of dirt that does not come off in the shower.  I'm tired in a variety of interesting muscle groups that I wasn't fully aware existed. But still, I'm pleasantly at ease, looking forward to the next day's labor.  The people I've met here have been predictably cool, full of good travel advice and interesting stories.  The time is passing without my notice and at the moment I find myself in a state of amused disbelief, having discovered that I've already been here nine days and sensing that this amount of time should feel different; perhaps longer, more like the grind of days that comes before a sheduled vacation where one ticks off the days in agony, slowing them down when you wish they'd pass faster.  But this doesn't feel like that. I'm not concerned about when the end of my labors should arive, and that surprises me a little. 

Off The Grid

Chiang Mai was good to me last night.  I ate some great food for cheap, made a few friends of the French and Canadian varieties, then drank and danced until the bar closed at 4am. Tomorrow I'm headed to my first WWOOFing experience which should be interesting.  It's unlikely that I'll have access to the internet.  I'll try to post something in a week or so.

Anywhere I Lay My Head

The only way I could think of to adequately share The Overstay Experience was to shoot a video, then add a Tom Waits track.   

Six Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Seven Dollars and Fifty-Six Cents

Day One in BKK hurt.  12 USD on the taxi from the airport, 10 USD for my bus ticket north, and about four  beers too many added up to 38 USD.  After exactly three months, I’ve officially spent my first thousand dollars.  I’ve already found ways to make it cheaper in the future, but 10 USD per day will be a difficult goal in Thailand. 

There’s something strange going on here.  I’ve been in Bangkok for about twenty-four hours, staying in a shithole, taking the bus everywhere, eating at food carts and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, but somehow I keep being impressed by the luxury of the place, the unimaginable wealth of the country.  In Nepal the lights stay on for only eight to twelve hours a day unless you have a generator.  Here they’ve practically never heard of load shedding.   I’m shocked when I’m brought a cup of ice with my water.  “Wow!  Ice! And they’re just giving it away!”  There is very little garbage in the streets and consequently no cows and dogs eating from enormous heaps of trash.  The taxis all seem to be fully functioning cars, not liable to fall apart if you shut the door too hard.  I have visited Thailand before and remember seeing it as a poor place, an impoverished country.  In Nepal I was inclined toward the mentality that, although it is a developing country, everyplace seems poor compared to The States and Dubai.   After a day in Bangkok, I felt compelled to look it up.  As it turns out, no matter which source you prefer, (IMF, World Bank, CIA World Factbook) when you rank countries by per capita GDP, Nepal is about 100 spots lower than Thailand.   At the moment this gap is starkly evident to me.  The States, as expected, enjoys a spot 50 to 80 places above Thailand.  I’m finding it a little hard to remember what that kind of wealth feels like.            

One Night In Bangkok (Makes a hard man humble....)

I'm in Bangkok now and I'm not really feeling it.

After one last beer on the Silver Home balcony I caught a ninety minute flight to Delhi, waited eight hours during which a fellow traveler and I told each other our life stories, then flew the final 4 1/2 hours to Bangkok (I found the in-flight entertainment, Where The Wild Things Are, oddly affecting) arriving at 7am.

I got out of the taxi at the right location (always a minor victory) and woke up the young woman sleeping on the bar that serves as a lobby for The Overstay.  "I have a booking...?"

"Fourth Floor."  She managed, and laid back down.

I walked through several hallways and empty rooms decorated with strange slogans and hippie paintings and found the fourth floor to be filled with sleeping travelers.  No bed appeared vacant.  I asked a departing westerner and he told me to grab a mattress, currently lying on the dusty floor and take a bunk.  I looked with skepticism at the door tacked to a plywood frame that served as the only free "bunk", tested the climb, and curled up on the floor instead.

After a few hours of sleeping off my jet lag, I ate a fantastic breakfast, took the wrong bus and ended up on the far side of town, took another bus, eventually found Khaosan Road where I quickly located a travel agent and booked a night tourist-bus north for Chiang Mai, leaving tomorrow.  This town is nice sometimes, but I'm not in the mood at the moment.

Wives and Horses

Michel and I are swerving through the streets again.  Tonight is his last night in town.  Tomorrow is mine. 

We met on the balcony this evening, drank whiskey offered by my departing Israeli dorm-mate, and waited for a poker game that never materialized.  As the bottles emptied the conversation wandered into the dangerous territory of our respective romantic failures.  He told a painful story of an alcoholic lover in Mexico who tried, at his request, to give up drinking mescal, at least in the morning.  I shared a history of my own guilt and sadness, tracing the old scars of young love, disillusionment, and divorce.   We opened another bottle and the discussion slipped from the safety of ancient history into the dizzying uncertainty of our current entanglements.   Michel stopped us just before we crashed into unmitigated nostalgia and proposed a toast, an old French saying that he translated as, “To our wives, to our horses, and to the health of the ones who ride them.”  We both took another drink and laughed.

Now it’s hours later and we’re wandering, looking for food and an ATM.  Michel is intrigued by one of the many billboards advertising dancing girls and this being his last night in town, he decides it can’t hurt us to take a look.  Soon we’re sitting in a dark club watching fully clothed Nepali men and women take turns performing on a stage.  Girls join us at our table and ask us to buy them expensive drinks.  I opt out, content with my ridiculously overpriced beer, but Michel buys his girl a glass of champagne which causes her to get more affectionate, whispering in his ear, caressing his thigh.  My girl leaves after it becomes clear that I’m not interested in paying for her company so Michel explains to his confused companion that I’m gay.  A minute later we’re joined by a flirtatious, tight-shirted Nepali boy, but he doesn’t stay long.

 

Michel tells me he that he’s of two minds.  On one hand he’s opposed to paying for sex.  He never has before and he feels that this is a good thing.  On the other hand, he feels that one can never truly decide a thing like that until one has tried it and, well, this evening has left him with a longing for the warmth of female companionship.   I tell him I can’t condone it in this case and that while I respect a woman’s right to become a professional sex worker in The West and do not have a problem with the men who engage their services, it is unlikely that the girls in question here have much of a choice.  He lets the question rest for the moment and we leave the club, grab a rickshaw and tell the man to take us somewhere that sells whiskey.   As we negotiate for a few bottles the question arises again, this time prompted by a pimp who joins us at the counter.  Michel plays along but he’s not really trying, bargaining the man from 50 USD down to 12 USD, then saying he’ll only do it if the girl stays for eight hours.  The pimp tells him this is impossible so we jump back in the rickshaw and open our bottles, practicing our Nepali phrases as an old man pedals us around the empty streets.   Michel asks the rickshaw driver if he can bring us each four women who will stay for eight hours.  The driver seems unsure if he’s joking, but laughs anyway.  We laugh along, toasting the wives and horses again, and tell the driver to take us back to Silver Home.    

Silver Home, Again

Back in Kathmandu, I felt every bit the proud veteran.  I guided some Peace Corps workers on the ten minute walk to Thamel from the bus stop, avoiding the taxi hustle that catches everyone the first time.  I navigated the labyrinth, found the muddy alley that leads to my favorite guest house, and greeted the staff of The Hotel Silver Home in Nepali.  I was told that in spite of the fact that I had failed to make a reservation I would be taken care of; they would make space for me.  Dorm-mates again became my instant friends, one of them telling amazing stories of cycling here from Europe through Iran, Pakistan, and India, another just off the plane from Holland, 18 years-old, ready to start the adventure and eager to know everything.  The night finished as it always seems to here, with beer and hash on the balcony overlooking the neighborhood, listening to a loud Nepali band offer their nightly butchering of Smells Like Teen Spirit to the empty bar next door. 

Last night a friend showed up; “Michel”, a Frenchman who I keep running into; first at Silver Home during the first days of both of our journeys, then in Pokhara where we drank ourselves silly with Holi paint covering our faces, and today, well, look who’s here again.  Michel is a radical and a drinker, a proponent of the extinction of the human race and a collector of baby shoes.  He seems to make friends easily and somehow managed to manufacture enough interest in a poker game amongst the diverse international crowd so that by 10pm we were passing a bottle of whiskey and a joint while playing 100 Rupee buy-in, No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em.  He is a man I am happy to know.

My cards were good and the competition was drunk and inexperienced so by 1am I had made a small killing.  A game of “I Never”, that classic drinking game involving shocking personal revelations, followed.  By 2:30 we were all roaring drunk, stumbling through the streets, ignoring the insistent overtures of pimps and drug dealers, looking for vendors selling egg sandwiches, Michel returning home to jump on his sleeping roommate’s bed (who surprisingly did not choose to beat him to death), play guitar and shout American rock songs.  It’s good to be back at Silver Home.  

Holi

Yesterday was the festival of Holi.  I had never heard of this before and as of this writing I have only vague clues as to its meaning.  All that I know is that on Holi, in Pokhara, every man, woman and child, whether tourist or local, carries a couple of packets of colored powder when they go out into the street.  Some of them carry a bottle or bucket of water into which they pour the powder.   When we meet a friend or stranger on the street we call out “Happy Holi!!!” and proceed to splash or smear the powder or water onto their faces, hair or clothes.  I spent the bulk of the morning hours dodging teenagers carrying buckets of colored water or paint, then sitting with friends on a step outside a popular bar while drinking warm beer and whiskey, our faces covered in bright blues and pinks and muddy browns.    Children and young men approached us periodically and spread a new color onto our cheeks, keeping our appearances in a constant state of flux.  Everyone was laughing constantly and looking around for anyone who was "too clean".  You could hardly tell tourists from locals after a few splashes of color.  I love this festival.