"The nature of all phenomena is impermenance..."

12/22/06
Bangkok

Several weeks ago we took an overnight bus over the southern mountains and down to the Andman Sea. In the morning we found ourselves in Ranong, a multi-cultural fishing town across the straits from Mynamar. In the market you can easily take in dark-skinned sea gypsies, malay women in headscarfs, and burmese women with yellow painted faces. Fish plant workers stump around in rubber boots. For some reason it reminded me of Kodiak Island, in Alaska. But then maybe all fishing towns have the same stink. It was still early, with the air perfumed with the smell of drying fish.

We were planning on returning to Koh Payam , a sleepy backwater Island down the coast. We had visited Koh Payam a month before the tsunami struck, and so we were curious to see if there were, if any, changes.

It is always a joy to leave a tropical fishing town. Typically mud flats and mangroves extend in all directions while a narrow channel threads its way
through the detritus of civilization. Before long we past a little boy, paddeling on a styrofoam raft, and then we were out to sea. I drank a couple of beers and collapsed on the deck in the sun. Finally it felt like our vacation had begun.

From the beginnig Koh Payam felt the same, even busier. Ex-pats and locals gathered around the few small eateries close to the pier, eating noodle soup and drinking beer. It is quite a relaxed scene. But we wanted to return to Kow Kwai Hill, a small resort an hour walk away on the far side of the island, so we gathered up our gear and began the walk.

Koh Payam is biscected by a couple of concrete scooter roads, and numerous dirt paths, but there aren't any cars. That is part of its charm. Before long we were walking along a red dirt path through a grove of flowering cashew trees. Cicadas shrilled somewhere in the distance and the air was heavy. I had a feeling of forboding... we were arriving unannounced; who knows what we would find?

Several dogs greeted us at Kow Kwai Hill and after their cries died out the shriek of the cicadas returned. The grounds were unkept and covered with leaves. Seemingly there was no one around. "Hello?" I shouted, "Is there anybody here?"

A thai women approaced us from a ramshackle hut. In the hammock I could see a white guy lying motionless, sleeping perhaps. At any rate, he didn't even bother getting up. Yes, she said, they were open for business, but the owner wasn't there. She didn't really know what to say. I looked in a couple of bungalows and they all seemed abandoned. Wasps had made their home in some, in others the leaves had blown in through the open doors and filled the broken toilets with black water. It looked grim.

But by the time I had finished my inspection Y. had spoken with the owner and talked him down to 150 bhat per day for the one available bungalow. The kitchen was closed, so basicly we were on our own.

Really, it wans't so bad. We were saving alot of money, and with a year trip still ahead us that was good. We ate once a day, that is, when we walked into town. We were planning on loosing weight anyway. When we tired of shell collecting on the beach we walked... sometimes from one end of the island to the other.

One day we decided to reach a hidden beach on the nothern end of the island. We followed the concrete path until it became dirt, then the jungle closed in around us.
The air was hot and fragrant and giant butterflies crossed and re-crossed the trail ahead of us. We followed a smaller trail over a hill, and in the distance we could hear the surf. We were getting close!

By then the trail had died, and we were confronted with enormous bushes, as big as a giant bamboo groove, seemingly clad in whorls of two inch long spines. It was like razor wire! I was dripping with sweat and bleeding from wounds all over my hands and legs. Y. had slid down a hill and to save herself had grapped one of the razor wires. She had one spine sticking entirely through the fleshy part of her arm, just like one of the hindu penitents in Indonesia. "Lets stop and take a picture!" she cried. All I wanted to do was get out of there.

Back on the trail, we met a pair of women on a scooter who gave us directions to the beach. Fifeteen minutes later we standing on the sand, washing our feet in the surf, and eyeing a small fishing boat thrown onto the rocks above us. Actually, I couldn't tell if it had gone aground and they had pulled it up there to save it from sinking, or if the waves themselves had hurled it up. Two men had it sitting amongst the rocks on log rollers that they had cut from the jungle. The side of the boat was crudely patched and it was plain that soon they intended to have it pulled off the rocks. In our minds our troubles subsided compared to theirs. we bowed before them and wished them luck. Then we fled back up the trail.

However, before too long our own stay in Koh Payam came to a close. It had been a wet fall, and on a daily basis hordes of biting insects descended on us. One night, some sort of bug with a bite like a chain saw got inside my pants. I could stand that once, but after it happened a second time we decided to leave. It was a long two days back to Bangkok, with me franticly scratching my groin while trying to appear nonchalant about it...

I guess in the end we could have gone to a more expensive resort, and had a better time, but who can say? An angry bug can find you anywhere, even in the most antiseptic environment. The only way to have your expectations met is to pay for it, and even then your not always going to be satisfied.

"The pleasure of the three realms is as fleeting as a dewdrop on the tip of a blade of grass, vanishing in a single moment" - the Thirty Seven Bodhisattva Practices.

Bangkok, 12/10/06

How hard it must be for the saffron robed monks walking in a line down the crowded sidewalk to remember this. Bangkok. Bigger, dirty, noiser, more expensive than several years ago. How could it not be? With fifty percent of the world's population living in urban areas today, and with a predicted seventy five percent by 2050, the prognosis for the future is not particularly good. How much energy do these urban areas consume? Supposedly by 2050 the world's energy consumption will double. How can that be?

Our arrival here was a bit of a let down. We had so many hoops to jump thru before we could leave the states, and our expectations were accordingly great. Now, sleeping restlessly in a sweat soaked bed, with traffic roaring 24/7 in the street
below one wonders if it was all worth it. Certainly it feels like an end of an era.
Perhaps the days of cheap, unencumbered travel is over. Really, in a global economy who has time for it?

Bangkok has been for some time before our arrival in a state of continual excitement. First the coup, then the King's 80'th birthday. Then the King's 60'th anniversery of coronation. Tomorrow will be Constitution Day. Virtually every thai, man and woman, is wearing a yellow shirt -with the king's seal - to commemorate these wonderful events. Just a block away from our guest house is the Chao Phraya River, the commercial and emotional lifeline of Bangkok. You can sit in a park along the river's edge and watch rafts of floating hyacinth, longtail boats, tugs and barges and ferries moving up and down the muddy brown flow. Yesterday, from a small white washed fort that had guarded the river from French and English incursions in the 19th century we could see viewing stands erected on the far side of the river. Accompanied by ear-splitting popular music, teams of dragon boats were training for a race. Popular all over asia, these dragon boats are a tremendous elongate canoe with up to fifty paddlers, the pointed bow and stern, festooned with ribbons and streamers dipped almost to the water. But the screaming! The race announcers, screaming in a staccato tag-team frenzy, was something out of a bad movie. We thought it better to leave Bangkok for awhile so tonght we depart on an overnight bus for a backwater island on the Thai/Burmese border. Two weeks of sun and sand and navel gazing should prepare us for the asian adventures of the future.