New Beginnings

It's been a hectic few weeks since my last posting on this space. Lots of major happenings here in Thailand, holiday festivities and end of the year blow-out bacchanalias. And literally "blow-outs", as I'm sure you've all heard, Bangkok being the most recent staging area for Thailand's increasingly proactive coterie of militant separatists. Fucking assholes. There's some speculation that the bombings were directed at the inept and, as some see it, illegitimate undertakings of Thailand's post-coup government, but public opinion is pretty staunch on the supposition that this has nothing to do with the coup at all. Most people blame the Bangkok bombings on the same Muslim extremists that blew up 20 banks in southern Thailand back in August. Civil unrest in the southern provinces is at an all time high right now, as this predominantly Muslim region (largely ethnic Malays) push for independence or to be ceded to the Malaysian government. The Thai government for its part has been predictably obdurate on the issue. Southern Thailand is responsible for billions of dollars in tourism-based revenue every year, money that fuels the growth of one of the most robust economies in all of Southeast Asia. Which is precisely the problem. The last thing that these traditional Muslim communities want is to be infiltrated and whored out by throngs of "Westerners" whose interests (buying stuff, fancy hotels, girls, loud music, booze, etc.) are completely at odds with their own cultural values. I am extremely sympathetic to their cause. (See my first post.) These people should have every right to cultural preservation and should not be forced to convert to the religion of capitalism. Sincerely. But what the fuck? People and their goddamn bombs. It just doesn't make any sense to me. 2 days after X-mas I had to take a bus down to the Malaysia-Thai border in order to renew my visa. The bus driver ended up getting lost in Satun, a small province that borders Malaysia, and we spent at least 2 hours driving in circles along random city streets only a few miles from our destination. And why didn't our Thai driver just stop the minivan and ask someone for directions, saving us all a lot of time and grief? Because he was afraid. And we all were. One peek out the van's window revealed a street corner bristling with army-fatigued, booted, beret capped, and Argus-eyed soldiers, all of them cradling very large automatic weapons and standing their posts with grave purpose. Burqa clad women streaked across the vista in ghostly blurs. Young men congregated around benches and under the tarp canopies of street-side food stalls, returning the soldiers watchfulness with their own penetrating glares. No laughing or playful banter, just the slow, silent compression of resent. And there we were in the middle of it, driving around like a pack of idiots, our fear strung up like laundry across the wires of distrust going one way and disaffection going the other. But for the surrounding jungle landscape, I swear we could've been driving through the streets of Mosul. I urge any would be travelers to stay away from the southern tip of Thailand. Not sweet.
(The corresponding image was taken from Google images. I wouldn't dare take out my camera in that place.)

In additional sad, though decidedly less serious news, my traveling companion of 6 months, Ryan Donnelly, turned in his wandering boots on Dec. 19th and headed back stateside. As I told Ryan a few days ago, traveling without him has made me feel a bit deflated, like I'm walking around with just one shoe on. Traveling with a single person for 6 months is a loaded experience. I imagine it's something like matrimony, without certain obvious benefits of course. Adapting to another's quirks and exposing your own usually hidden self can be a strenuous undertaking and it's virtually impossible to avoid moments of irritation, exhaustion, and confrontation. But over time you learn to deal with each other's faults, ignore the annoyances, and strike a mutually agreeable balance between personal space and companionship. I can say without equivocation that Ryan was a model travel companion, always willing to compromise, tolerant of my impulsiveness, indulgent of my tiresome wont for petty debate, and generally compatible on every level. He is missed.

And such is the circle of life: a man dies, a child is born, and blah, blah, blah. It so happened that as Ryan was on his way out, I was able to forge a similar dynamic with 2 equally agreeable fellow travelers – Adam Smith, a friend from the way-back machine who'll henceforth be exclusively referred to as not Adam, but maybe Ace, or Ace-man, or Ace Bomb, or A-Sizzle and no Steak, or Atom Bomb, or Atomic Hot Sauce, or any variant thereof, and Fergus James Miller, a proper London bloke chalk full of the disarming charisma for which his part of the world is so well known. Since our triumvirate left Bangkok on Dec. 21 (A tragic thing, really, the news of our departure hurling the women into hopeless depression. I am still haunted by the image of their desperate waves from the curbside, goading us back to their open embrace as we pulled away in the taxi, a flood of their tears washing over their bare ankles and emptying with the rest of the filth into the gutters of Patpong.), we've been hanging out in and around the southern Thai enclave of Krabi. Adam and I spent the majority of our time on the tiny beach of Ton-Sai. As it happens, Ton-Sai is a mecca for rock-climbers. Thousand foot limestone crags jut from the surrounding turquoise waters like massive fangs. Unlike the granite peaks of Yosemite, which are famous for their sustained cracks and eminently flat faces, Krabi's limestone scarps are characterized by deep pockets, massive jugs (nope, not those kind), and severe overhangs. Whereas on the former type of rock the climbing is cerebral, methodical, and highly technical, climbing in Krabi is basically just an exercise in brute strength. Agility and balance become more and more crucial as the level of climbing becomes more difficult, but a day of climbing in Krabi is essentially a day of continual pull-ups (which facially must sound horribly meat-headish and dull, but trust me, is as enjoyable as any recreational activity around). Of our 8 days on the beach, Adam and I climbed 5 of them. We had the implausibly good fortune of running into one of my friends from Laos who himself just began working as a climbing guide on Ton-Sai and who was gracious enough to not only guide us for free but let us rent equipment at ridiculously low prices. As some of you may know, since a 3-day beginner's course that I took in Laos, I've cultivated something of a passion for rock-climbing, and you can expect climbing to be a recurring theme in this space. In fact, rock-climbing may turn out to be a unifying theme for the remainder of my travels. Consider yourselves warned.

After enduring some serious physical and psychological punishment (rock-climbing can sometimes be like a crucible, especially the higher up you go and the farther you have to fall), by the time New Year's Eve rolled around, Ace, Fergus, and I, along with our climbing buddy from Laos, Mr. Noi, decided a night of indiscreet partying was the reasonable thing to do. Around 7pm on the 31st, the 4 of us took a long-tail boat from Ton-Sai to the more upscale shores of Ao Nang. By 9:30 we were all retarded drunks. Soon afterward I time traveled to 2007. One minute I was drinking whiskey in Ao Nang, the next minute I was rubbing sleep from my eyes on Ton-Sai beach, surrounded by palm trees, the sun dawning just inches above some nearby cliffs, all things quiet and serene. Remember in Contact when Jodie Foster goes in the time machine and wakes up on that island? New Year's morning was something like that. "They should've sent a poet." I really don't remember a damn thing about N.Y's eve but here are some pictures to prove that I was indeed there. Your guess is as good as mine.

After a day of recovery on Ton-Sai, the 3 of us convened for a meeting of the minds in which we laid out an itinerary for the next 2 weeks. Having each blown a Thai fortune on reckless spending during the holidays, we made budgeting the order of the day. Our goal is to get to Bangkok on the 16th of Jan. having spent around $200 apiece. What this means is that we'll be avoiding all major tourist destinations or anywhere else we're likely to encounter inflated prices – hitting up the hinterlands, the backwater boondocks, easy-living farm life, that sort of thing. We'll be traveling strictly by local bus, eating at local haunts, staying at budget hotels, and most importantly, keeping the boozing to a minimum. I predict a lot of nights sitting around drinking beers and playing poker without any feminine distractions (sort of like college). The plan lacks glamour but certainly has its appealing aspects. For one, this will be an opportunity to see the "real" Thailand (I hate that phrase as much as you do), cities where tourists rarely travel, where day to day life is driven by internal mechanisms, and where we'll be perceived not as a commodity but just as an oddity. Our encounter with the locals are also likely to be in stark contrast to our dealings with Thai people elsewhere. Not that the Thais in the heavily touristed areas are dicks or something, but the nature of our relationships going forward are bound to take on a softer edge, less pragmatic and more personal perhaps, or at least held aloft by the strangeness of the occurrence. And even though between the 3 of us we can only speak a lick of Thai, we should be able to meet plenty of people and have a pretty good time. Then again, foreigners in search of the "real" California would likely end up in places like San Bernadino or Fresno, so this whole thing might to turn out to be a total disaster. I'll be reporting from the road. Until next time, mahalo.