Mind Boggling Thailand

Part 1: First Adventures
What time is it? Where am I? Do I dare open my eyes? It seems that time zones and geographical locales carry little meaning and even less consequence in the dream world. Still, I should wake up and face the day, one eyelid at a time. Ah yes, back home- The hidden dangers of lady boys, smog induced respiratory infections, mystery meats and scamming tuk-tuk drivers are all but fading memories, forced to take a back seat to Britney Spears news stories, capitalism and unduly amounts of fast food chains.

Let me explain: Two months of hovering my cursor over the “book now” button before closing my browser in a sudden panic were no match for a few too many beers to force a twitch of my index finger. I haven’t been bungee jumping, nor have I rafted the Grand Canyon in a kayak. Still, booking a ticket to my first third-world country filled my adrenal glands with hormones and sent me into an invigorating state of euphoria. In other words, I was scared shitless.
Heart thumping and wide-eyed, I crawled into my over-cramped economy class airplane seat and wished myself luck. The sexy china-doll flight attendants made for a nice transition between the norm and the unknown. Every time they said thank you- “Shie Shie”, my eyes got bigger and my head spun with excitement. Eighteen hours later, I found myself cross-legged, cramped, crabby and beyond exhaustion.

Words seem to fail me; or maybe, I fail the words. How can I describe the feeling of overwhelming excitement mixed with intense doubt in an otherwise ordinary airport? The way the dominating tonal chatters of Thai dialect seemed to rumble off the sweaty concrete walls and mix with the underlying hints of chaotic traffic outside. It was terror dancing in a romantic waltz with exhilaration. How can I make it sound beautiful without shattering the intense insinuations of over-stimulation? The first glance of traffic driving on the wrong (rather, the other) side of the road in an anarchic fashion, the first breaths of intense Bangkok pollution overtaking my lungs, the first taxi gang to surround me with the obvious intent to scam the newbie- How do I make the first ten minutes as intense, as picturesque, as eye-opening as they were in reality?

Dramatic? Yes, intentionally. I stood, overlooking a massive city that spoke another language and knew nothing of Christian values. I was, for all intensive purposes, out of my element. I was lost somewhere between the city lights and the melting pot of smells ranging between rancid sewer and fried chicken feet. Dramatic, in this case, is justified. The billboards, the sounds, the women, the smells, the faces. Focusing on something particular was impossible. Like a bear cub climbing out of its den to meet a new world for the first time, my brain met everything with unabashed curiosity.

Finding a taxi and a hotel wasn’t a problem in the slightest. Baht, the Thai currency, was foreign to me and as a result I was willing to pay any price to anyone to go anywhere. After a thirty minute, 1,500 baht ($47) cab ride, I find myself checked into a shady, overpriced hotel room. I wasn’t tired, sleepy, drowsy or lethargic. I was in Thailand. The thought sank in slow and hard. I sat on the seedy sheets draped over sharp springed mattress and tried to focus. 2am, noon back home. Without hesitation, I untrustingly hid my passport and iPod deep in the depths of my pack and went to the downstairs hotel bar.

The humid air soaked through my once dry tank top as I trudged slowly towards the bar, tail tucked between shaky legs. The crude florescent light made my colorless skin glow. Ernie, the short twenty something bartender, broke the silence: “My friend. You sit here. I give you beer.” His broken English was a welcomed relief. His small stature and bright smile were consistent to what I had found in Thailand in my first few hours. He stared at me with fascination, as if he had never seen a white person before. Admittedly, he had probably never seen a man with such pale skin as to appear radioactive.

Countless small lizards crawled the concrete ceiling in search of insects above my head. Thai remixes of old Mariah Carey songs blared from a 12-inch television shoved in a corner of the bar. Four other young Thai men migrated towards my table, each in hotel uniforms, each staring intently. As long as I kept an overpriced beer in their hands, I had a captive audience. We rarely understood one another; yet, we enjoyed each other’s company until the sun began to rise.

A new day. I slammed three more gigantic Singha beers and sucked down countless bummed cigarettes. Near the end of the long driveway leading to the main street, a woman gathered vegetables from a swampy riverbed. She kneeled down and rested her weight on her knees in a squatting position. I stumbled towards her, my new friends in tow. Her skin was rough, leathered from countless years of working in unforgiving sunlight. I asked Ernie to tell her “hello” and that I wanted to try whatever vegetables she was gathering. He stood behind me silently. Maybe he knew something I did not, or maybe he was simply tired of dealing with the new tourist goggling over his people like they were a museum exhibit. She stood, put her greens in a straw basket and smiled at me. Her grey, flowing hair confirmed her age but her smile was youthful and bright. She had nothing; yet, she was content. A moment I will not soon forget.

Ernie grabbed the back of my shirt, “more beea for you”. I suddenly found my surroundings invigorating- the sunlight ebbing into the deep musky water, the rumble of early morning traffic, the Buddhist statue covered in scattered ashes. “Ernie, are there fish in this water?”. He smiled and asked if I wanted to see fish. “I want to see a fish, or a snake, or a giant gecko or… something… show me something”. He spoke Thai to his coworkers through abrupt laughter. His hand still on my shoulder, “come now, I show you fish”.

Out of the comforts of the hotel driveway, I stepped into a different world- one filled with a sea of Thai people and one 6’3” white guy. We weaved through countless vendors- a blur of colors and smells. My focus, however, couldn’t be on the local cuisine. I struggled to keep up with the small, young Thai men effortlessly zigzagging in and out of crowds of people. Losing them would have meant losing my hotel, my backpack, my Ipod, my passport.

I stepped off the sidewalk and onto the edge of the busy street. Ernie waved to me from the other side. A cross walk- I took three steps before getting my knee pummeled by a passing motorbike. “Fuck!” Suddenly all euphoria was gone. Passing through chaotic, unrelenting traffic while drunk and hobbling isn’t exactly what I had in mind. I staggered and shambled to the other side of the street as if being chased by a rabid dog. My friend Ernie had led me astray. With a suddenly sober state, I walked back towards the hotel. I did not want my first adventure in the heart of Bangkok to be my last. I would sleep for a few hours and try again. Fate, as it turned out, had different plans.

Dogs are everywhere in Bangkok- stray dogs. Three sweet looking, even if scrawny, dogs took the place of the gentle older woman on the path to my hotel. I confidently hobbled towards the band of strays as if I owned the kennel. Without warning the dogs began to attack. “Shit!” I jumped into the shallows of the polluted swamp and hoped to God they didn’t feel like getting drenched so early in the morning. The last thing I needed was to get rabies, or die. I just wanted a semi-nice mattress and an alarm clock.

I didn’t get eaten, nor did I feel the fangs of an unsuspecting swamp snake. I lived. The dogs trotted back to their concrete beds and I made my way back to my hotel room. The hotel receptionist looked at me with pity in her eyes. I felt the same pity for myself. Still, my first day was as I wanted, unique. It took me out of my element and into someone else’s. Perfect.

Part 2: Thai Cuisine
Two hours later, I woke to a new day. I took an ice cold, twenty-second shower, grabbed my gear and checked out. After saying goodbye to Ernie, I got in a pricey cab and made my way to the other side of Bangkok. All I knew about the local cuisine is what I had read in travel books. As it fortunately turns out, they were wrong. A tourist can spend months in Thailand eating at extravagant, decorative restaurants, hell-bent on pleasing their taste buds with the Asian food of home and have little to say about the real Thai cuisine, the nitty-gritty, down and dirty version of Thai chow. I had no intentions of exploring the, seemingly, dirty and liquid shit inducing, vendors charging less than two dollars per meal.

Fai was a twenty-something native Thai with a bright smile and an infectious laugh. She, through a travelers website, was nice enough to take me under her wing. Hung-over, still shaken from my hotel experience and ready to pass out at any moment, I told her with a sarcastic, yet curious look that I wanted try something “different”. I unwittingly gave her a green light to torture. The always constant question was met with an equally consistent answer: “what am I about to eat?”, “you try first”. Ah yes, how funny it must be to watch a stalky, tall white man squirm in his seat with every bite. Her sick sense of humor kept my taste buds askew. Something can be said for taking away the reliance of knowing what one’s about to eat. As a result, the liquid bowel movements, in which Lonely Planet warned me about, were a constant and habitual reminder to not eat things in which you are unsure of.

The helpless look on my face as I registered what I was eating met with unabashed laughter from Fai. The discontenting, slippery feel of pig’s ass clinging to the back of my throat was shamefully delicious. The old joke that the Asian people will eat anything and everything inadvertently illustrates what’s best about them. They set aside the common stigmas associated with swine anus, chicken feet, cow stomach and crickets. The good stuff. Fish heads are a delicacy in which westerners know nothing. Fried Tarantula with a side of Octopus legs. I’ll take two.

At no other point in my life have I felt the need to be so relentlessly cruel to my body. Damn the health-codes, their officers and bleached counter-tops. Give me the real deal- street side vendors cooking up fried big brains with one hand and picking their nose with the other. It’s economical. It’s dirty. It promises to be a cheap laxative. It’s deliciously appealing. Like a father warning his daughter not to date the tattooed bad-guy across the street, I threw caution to the wind and did what pleased me most. I ate as the Romans ate.

I later found what would come to be my favorite Asian dish. It always starts the same as it ends. Capsaicin released from the lethal peppers fill the air as if someone had just shot off a fog of bear-spray. Plates of uncooked mystery meats, outlandish looking vegetables and an array of rice are thrown into a melting pot of oil. The melting pot of odors made my mouth water while the toxic fumes of pepper spray compelled my nose and eyes to do the same. We sat on overturned five-gallon buckets while the food was set on a grimy wooden table in front of us. Fai sat with an all too familiar evil grin while I took my first bite. The texture is always random- measuring somewhere between clingy snot and metal scraps. The taste always has one unvarying trait- it’s delicious. I start cautiously- one bite taking five minutes to reach the back of my throat. I end recklessly- brow sweating profusely and mouth ready to combust into flames.

Part 3: Countdown to Embarrassment
It came seemingly from nowhere. There was no warning; there was no pause. My body lost all foreshadowing ability. As I walked down a random crowed street, it hit. Its as if my bowels were screaming, “OH MY GOD!” All appreciation for my beautiful and intense surroundings was lost. A squat box, a western toilet or simply a dark back alley is all that was important. I had to shit!
Pushing people aside, I awkwardly ran. Like a frog in an arcade game, I braved the traffic to get to a hotel on the other side of an overcrowded street. I was a man on a mission. My bowel countdown began. “Five minutes till launch”. Kicking open a stall, I was face to face with more that I could ever handle. The squatter had an inch thick covering of feces on the OUTSIDE of the bowl. I would rather have soiled myself than sink my flip-flops into other people’s luke warm pooh.

By now I was holding my cheeks together and praying for good fortune. “Two minutes till launch”. Running through hoards of people, I imagine I looked bizarrely out of place- a big tall sweaty, panicky white guy running for his life, all the while holding his ass as if he were just shot by a BB gun at close range. Any bouts I had with the trots before this unfortunate event was like a fart in a hurricane. There is no comparison.

The next stall seemed much more promising. I pulled my shorts down around my ankles, sat down and began to relax. “SHIT!” No toilet paper. Contemplating the likelihood of shitting my pants, I figured it was a very distinct possibility but that I would make it. I knew there was a hostel about a half a block down the street. My mind went into a kind of fucked up survival mode where it couldn’t think but of two things. The fastest way to pay dirt and how much the copious amounts of chili peppers I had ingested two hours earlier wanted out. Oh, it would hurt. “Twenty seconds till launch”. I zipped past the hostels greeting area and internet room, into the kitchen and past the waitress. Pushing the wooden swinging door that came right out of an old John Wayne movie, I sat and released. I couldn’t care less if I was loud or pungent; I was content with my toilet paper and my clean lid. All I wanted was the sign that simply read “Toilet”. The best things in life really are free.

Part 4: Going Home
Six weeks of dubious adventures, exotic foods and bowel problems was exactly why I clicked the “buy now” button. I needed out of my comfort zone and to open my eyes to another world. Gone are the Eminems and the McDonalds. In their place are thoughts of the starving, crippled men crawling along busy tourist filled streets and the heavenly smell of curry mixing with a low tide’s breeze.

After a sleepless night of drinking beer and listening to the endless hustles and bustles of Bangkok, I hopped in a cab and made my way to the airport. Trying not to pass out or puke all over the nice cab driver’s twenty some pictures of the Thai King, I looked out the window and absorbed Bangkok one last time. The women working in small, scummy ponds, slowly and methodically grabbed the mystery plant, shook the water off, cut the stock, reached behind themselves and dropped what was left in their straw baskets. Grab, shake, cut, reach, drop, grab, shake, cut, reach, drop. They all were had a content look on their face. They knew a secret that I was on to. Their simple life is wonderful. They get up, they put on their hats, grab their baskets, wade through the marsh until they find what they want. They get a few bushels, sell it to a local market or restaurant, go home, take off their hats and enjoy time with their families. They worry little about wars, prada bags, the price of gas or, thank Christ, what Britney Spears is up to. The simple life.

Joking with the cab driver through broken English, he told me about his life. After getting paid extraordinary amounts of money from the United States to kill Vietnamese, he moved his family to Thailand and bought a taxi. His smile left as he mumbled that something about killing people is not worth a cab and a new start. He perked up again as we approached the gigantic Suvarnabhumi Bangkok International Airport. He laughed at hordes of Thai teenagers taking pictures with the giant snowmen and Christmas trees before tapping on one of his King’s pictures as if to say “look how happy your people are”. I thought to myself, “The land of smiles is right”.

I grabbed my backpack and sighed as I stepped out of the humid, tropical air and into the air-conditioned airport. Checking in, eating an overpriced diluted curry soup, exchanging my baht for U.S. Dollars, with every task completed I sighed and swore in silent protest. Succumbing to the fact I was out of money, I slowly made my way towards my gate.

My experiences, though odd, are not uncommon. Travelers everywhere find themselves in an array of quirky adventures. Thailand marked the beginning of, God willing, a long life of bizarre stories. I sat in my seat, two young American women sitting in front of me. They screeched at the top of their lungs and joked crudely about everything they had experienced on the overcrowded beaches. They no doubt left unchanged. They sunbathed, drank too much and swam with the chiseled chests of men from the world over. I shook my head at how they could so blind. Shaking my head, I stayed true to form. I ordered a Bloody Mary to nurse my hangover, pressed play on my ipod and thought about where my next adventure would be. The beginning of a traveler’s life. I was proud. I kept my mind occupied for the rest of the trip about where I would go next.