"When you're gone, stay gone. Or you be gone."

A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Delhi

2009-01-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

Or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love India"

I got up early this morning and left Chandigarh. Now that sounds easy enough, but trust me, it wasn't; turns out the bus station the rickshaw man took me to wasn't the right bus station (who knew?) But no big thing - I just asked around and found a local bus that'd take me to the correct bus station. And then I got on the next bus to Delhi.

I felt pretty good about myself and my ability to navigate the wackiness of India. It isn't hard - you just keep asking strangers if you're going the right way and sooner or later you wind up where you want to go. Which is what I was thinking while I was on the bus to Delhi - actually I felt pretty damn good about myself. I figured I was kind of a cool guy to have sorted myself out across the sub-continent, and I figured arriving in Delhi would be no big deal.

It wasn't until the conductor was tapping me on the shoulder, urgently spouting off in Hindi that I suspected I was wrong.

Turns out this bus doesn't stop at any bus terminal. Sue me for figuring the capital city of the most populous country on earth would have a terminal. All the other cities do. But what have we learned here? If you're expecting something in India you can fuck right off.

Anyway, some guys asked me where I was trying to go ("Paharganj," I said, naming the main backpacker area.) They nodded and told the driver to pull over for me.

No big thing right? Except that they dropped me off in the middle of a highway and left me there.

"Uhh.... What?" (None of the vehicles speeding by bothered to answer this question.)

Eventually a guy driving a rickshaw spotted me and picked me up, and actually the ride into town was pretty peace on the back of his bike cart.

Did I worry that I'd missed Delhi? No. And did it bother me that I suddenly found myself stranded on a highway outside of one of the biggest cities on earth? No it didn't. Why should it? India is great.

Mystical Experience

2009-01-14T21:48:00.000-08:00

NOTE: This post involves drug use.

...

Day 79 - Macleod Ganj - Jan. 13, 2009 -

I had a "mystical experience" today.

Because of the hash I smoked, because of being alone, because I've had my ass kicked across the continent the past 3 months. Because that's what it felt like and anyway what else am I supposed to call it?

Weed turned on me when I was 22. Smoking it now gets me down. Today was the same: I felt the same thick, coils of anxiety and self-doubt moving through me, felt my placid acceptance of "the world" (that is, my "normal outlook") falling away like the last dry leaves clinging to a branch; nothing was fine, nothing was alright, nothing made sense. I saw my world view (through the drug's haze) as nothing more than a product of deadened senses and an innate tendency towards complacency.

In other words, I was paranoid and high.

But I could still move and as I walked down the hill my eyes started fixating on the spaces between the pines, fixated on nothing, pale colours and dim, impressionistic shapes: bank, soil, earth, concrete. I fixated on the air between these shapes and myself.

"Nothing matters" - the thought formed as if it was written, but somehow it sounded hollow ("sounded" in the boundless plane of my mind), an echo of earlier reactions to similar stimulus.

"Nothing matters" - I'd thought it before and like one breath following another, unconsciously I thought it again.

A familiar thought pattern progresses like the mechanisms of entrenched bureaucracy, the grooves on vinyl that spin the same notes each time it's played, a string of ones and zeroes leading inexorably to the same command function.

But something reflected the thought back at me (what something? What is there on a blank page to generate words? In a boundless void there is nothing to reflect anything, but something reflected.) I heard the words "nothing matters" as if they were spoken by someone else. And they were: I didn't think these words. An earlier me did. It wasn't me saying it because I'm no longer the same person. I make his mistakes and I think his thoughts and I live in his flesh but we are not the same.

And so I thought:
"Nothing matters?"
My face creased in confusion.
"Nothing matters? Everything matters."

And that was as far as the new born thought went on its own. From there the chain reasserted itself - my old self - the string of repeated patterns realigned and the continuity of my consciousness returned, taking over the examination of this thought in the way I normally would. But because it was new and because it didn't stem from any previous thought (the familiar patterns beginning at a different central locus) the shape of my examination was necessarily changed.

So, I thought, "Everything matters, because everything is already signified by the word "matter."

Everything is matter.
Nothing is not matter.

I felt my thoughts born away like currents of air. They drifted and fastened from one distinct point of reality to another (the gritty pavement, the light falling on the moss edging a tree branch, the dead leaves scattered at the side of the road) and landing on each, they crystallized, exactly as freezing water vapor latches to particle after particle to form snow.

Everything matters.
Nothing is not here.

Everything I see and feel is matter (external or internal - thoughts and feelings only a matter of electro-chemical processes in a physical brain.) This thought did not originate with the hash, but rather inspite of it.

There was an odd blue bird crying from a stone ledge.
There was me walking on the road.

"I'm having a mystical experience."

I said the words out loud.

Day 80 - Macleod Ganj - Jan. 14, 2009 -

2009-01-14T03:56:00.000-08:00

I hiked for six hours today, over one set of mountains and along the ridge of another to a temple on the summit of a third. I wrote this while I was up there:

...

I'm sitting on the crumbling brick ledge surrounding the grounds of a deserted temple on top of a mountain in the Himalaya. A village is carved into the slope below me. The sounds of women arguing rise on the air, and cows braying, crows, a man hammering rock in the distance.

I haul air into my lungs, exhale quickly and haul again.

The sun burns cool through thin clouds, their edges fading to blue and yellow.

I sit on the ledge.
The women argue.
The man hammers.

The rest goes on without us.

Day 74 - Amritsar - Jan. 8, 2009 -

2009-01-08T19:42:00.000-08:00

It hits me when I look back at what I've written on the road that so much of it is dominated by worry and anxiety: "Will they let me into Thailand without a return ticket?" "Can I handle India?" "Will the train be late?" "How will I know when it's my stop?" "Is my bag going to be stolen?" "Will she leave me?" "Come back to me?" "Leave me again?"

And now that I'm sitting here in the future (in the late afternoon sunlight on the roof of my guest house in Amritsar) I look back on all of those worries and they seem incredibly hollow - even if things don't work out they're fine, and I've worried for nothing.

And now that I sit here in the present and think about tomorrow ("Will the bus be there when they said it's going to be?" "Will it be full?" "Can I get a ticket?" "Will I find a place to stay when I get there?") I try to tell myself that a future me will look back and see these worries as hollow too.

Even suffering is just a span of time, and death is only a moment.

RULE: You will go through everything that happens to you.

If I try to remember this maybe I can start to make some progress.

Night in the Blue City

2009-01-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

[I wrote this while I was in Jodhpur, Rajastan.]

I stood at one corner of the roof and listened to the sound of a half dozen different muezzins calling the faithful to prayer. In the sky, at the edge of the blue city, fireworks went off, slowly, one after another, as if they only had so many and didn't want to rush it. Red Christmas bulbs were strung along the fence beside me. The smoke from my bidi drifted past them, exactly like my breath had drifted, years ago, in winter, caught in the glare of a cab's tail lights.

P.S. I'm Not Crazy

2009-01-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

Amritsar, Punjab (The Turban Capital of the World)

Well honestly this place is a bit of a shithole. Except for the Golden Temple, which is, for lack of any other qualifiers, golden. Sitting down to a free meal of curry and fresh baked chapati with thousands of other people is a unique experience. Rich and poor, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Tourist, all eating together in a spirit of brotherhood and "hey, it's free so why the hell not?" But the city's cold, and it's also humid for some reason, and that's a bad combination.

Basically this post is just to send a shout out to everyone back home and around the world who's been reading this blog and getting a sense that I'm totally depressed and strung out in India.

That's only half true! Yes, I'm strung out, but other than that I'm doing great, and generally enjoying my time here. It's stressful traveling alone, and in India there's a tonne of really intense experiences to deal with, usually when you're already tired and totally fed up with it all. At least that's how it's been for me. And as a writer I find those moments and experiences the most interesting to narrate.

So don't worry - I'm doing fine. If I had the time and energy to blog more there'd be a lot of variety in the posts, but unfortunately I only ever get around to it when I've got something particularly nasty to relate.

Anyway, my next stop is Dharamsala, and the Himalaya.

P'ace!

Indian Idiosyncrasies

2009-01-02T02:18:00.000-08:00

So here's a tip: don't get sick in India.

Anyway, I figure I'd take the time to write about some of the weird shit I've noticed here. I don't want everyone to think that all I'm doing is wandering around with a head full of existential angst, raving about the crap conditions and generally being a bit of a bitch. Of course, all of that stuff is true. But it's not the ONLY truth.

So, here it is, a list of weird things in India:

i) Male friends walking down the street holding hands - this is true not only for small kids but also for full-grown men. It's not uncommon to see a couple dudes idly strolling in a park, one guy gently cradling the other guy's index finger. They also like walking with their arms around each others shoulders, sometimes in a group of 3 or more. As far as I've been told, this isn't homosexual behaviour, just boys being boys.

ii) Having to take your shoes off to walk along a ghat or go into a temple - I totally get this - shoes are dirty, and therefor disrespectful. But the same guys who get on my case for leaving my shoes on are the guys who're totally cool with cows wandering around shitting everywhere.

iii) Loudspeakers blaring music/angry rants - I was expecting the loud speakers at mosques calling the faithful to prayer, but I wasn't prepared for the Hindu temples to blast upbeat pop tracks at 5:00 AM or to have to listen to some angry cleric rant about God knows what. Probably Pakistan.

iv) Never send one guy to do one guy's job - this is probably more a result of overpopulation than anything else, but it's still weird to commission an autorickshaw driver and have his buddy/co-driver come along for the ride. This is also common in the construction industry, where you'll have a couple guys digging up the road and five or six just hanging out beside them. Apparently the government is even worse.

Well, there's more, but now that I've tried to catalogue them I can't remember. I'll get back to this later. In the meantime I thought I'll go cough in bed for awhile.

Day 62-63, Pushkar to Udaipur, or India: "Expecting Something? Fuck You."

2008-12-29T02:29:00.000-08:00

It was my last night in Pushkar and I felt like a mild kind of shit. Not the gungy, cow shit you see in the street, just the regular kind; I ached, and I was tired. I sat at the table at my guest house and quietly ate naan and dhal, trying to work out the Times of India word puzzle.

"You like word puzzles?" I asked the fat old white woman across from me. She'd been glancing in my direction off and on all night and I figured maybe she wanted to talk.

"Word... puzzles?" He brow creased, more in annoyance than confusion. "I don't understand?"

For some reason her annoyed confusion annoyed me.

"Do you speak English?" I asked, condescendingly.
"I speak a little... I am very exhausted."
"I'll leave you alone then."

She left shortly after.

It's funny but sometimes I have no choice but to be an asshole and at those times I don't even feel bad about it. Although when I got up to leave I left Hanuman, the under-caste serving boy, a fat tip, so maybe a part of me wanted to make up for it.

I walked to the bus stand and got on one bound for Ajmer. It stalled almost immediately, and two kids had to get out and push the thing before they got it going again. The driver waited at the intersection for around 10 minutes while they packed in as many people as they could; I ended up crammed between the window and an overweight mother cradling a sleeping toddler.

As soon as we left the bus stand bindi pop started blaring from the crusty sound system. They had this shit going, on repeat, over and over again, non-stop, all the way to Ajmer. After awhile, listening to the screeching Hindi lyrics was like having locusts crawling around inside my brain.

You can get settled somewhere pretty easy. All you need is a consistent place to sleep. I was "settled" in Pushkar, just like I'd been in Varanasi and Bodhgaya, and every time I uproot myself it's like doing it for the first time all over again. Suddenly I remember what it's like to carry everything I have on my back and nowhere in line to sleep. It's free, but it's stressful.

The mountains crawled by in the dark outside the window, low houses, men in dusty shawls squating next to open fires.

I got off the bus when everyone else did (you never know exactly when you're supposed to get off. You just watch the locals and do what they do.) But we weren't at the bus station I'd been expecting. Instead, we at some seemingly random intersection a block and a half from the bus station. Which made no sense, except that it seemed to to the Indians, so maybe it was me.

I walked to the station, past cows grazing on piles of garbage, toothless women selling bananas and cabbage, men sleeping in cabs. I hailed an autorickshaw and showed the driver the slip of paper the travel agent had given me.

"Can you take me there?" I asked.

He mumbled something in Hindi and we took off, making a short stop to pick up a father and son and drop them off at another random intersection for some reason. Finally he got me to the bus stand, which was just a couple buses parked at the side of a road.

This is what India is like:
"Expecting something? Fuck you."

I got out, paid the guy, and sat with a young chai wallah and his posse. They had a fire going, burning a couple pieces of old wood, carbdoard and any garbage they could find. We huddled around the coals, holding our faces back from the smoke.

I waited until my bus arrived, without warning, on the opposite side of the road. If I hadn't made a kind of peace with the tea boys then their dad wouldn't have been there to tell me that was my bus. So the lesson is it always pays to be good to the locals, even if it means getting smoke in your eyes.

I crossed the road, pissed in the dirt next to a car and got on the bus.

It was crammed with Indian families heading my way for who knows why and my "deluxe" berth turned out to be a capsule about the size of a luggage rack. ("Expecting something? FUCK YOU.")

I stuffed myself in and had to take my backpack apart to make enough room for it down at the end of the berth. So the lesson there is that all those hours I spent playing Tetris weren't a waste of time.

A Swedish girl got on and we made traveler's small-talk for awhile and then the bus got rolling.

Her name was TUULIKKI.

I know because I had her spell it out.

The bus rattled like it wanted to fly apart. (I thought wistfully of Star Trek VI: "She'll fly apart sir!" "Fly her apart then!) It veered wildly around slower transport trucks, sped madly over speed bumps and things that felt like sharp, furrowed patches on the highway, jolting every nerve and bone in my body.

The was no sleep but the wall on my left was all window and there were faded buildings, the tips of gray trees, a wide expanse of clear stars.

I thought "Now I'm on a bus in India lying back looking at the stars."

But there was no sleep all the way to Udaipur at five in the morning. I thought it'd be a good idea to share a rickshaw with Tuulikki but it turned out she's an adherent of the Gospel according to Lonely Planet and we had to wander around the dead streets for an hour trying to find a place it recommended.

Some temple was playing abrasive, Krishna mantras from loud speakers and as we went from one closed hotel to another I felt like murdering whoever it was that thought the streets need to be serenaded with that shit at five in the morning.

Finally, we found a place in the book that had a room. Of course, the "only room" they had was the most expensive one, a deluxe, honey-moon style suite.

"We need two rooms," I said.
"Only this room we have," said the guy.
"This is the only one."
"Yes."
"You only have one room in the whole hotel and it's the most expensive one."
"What? You don't believe me?"
"No."
Angered: "You think I'm lying?"
Flatly: "Yes."
"Fine! I am lying. You go find empty room! I give it you free if you find!"
"Look I'm not trying to offend you or nothing, but I know you've got other rooms."
"How you know? Huh? Huh?!"
"Because I saw all the extra locks and keys you've got hanging up in the lobby."
"No!"
"Fine." To Tuulikki: "You take this one. I'll find another. I'll see you, maybe, later."

I walked out. Like Pavel said: "The drama they go through for 100 Rs man."

Good guy, Pavel.

I walked the winding, cow-shit streets on my own. I thought maybe I'd lie by the lake and wait for the sun to come up before trying the hotels again, but when I went down to the water an invisible dog started barking at me and I left.

I walked back the way I came and some guy who looked like a middle-aged black man asked if I was coming or going.

"Just arrived," I said.
"You need room?"
"Yes."
"Rawla Guest House. Very good, and cheap."

He led the way.

It turned out to be one of the hotels Tuulikki and I had looked at earlier. But at that point the guy who answered the door said he only had one room, and now he was asking if I needed a single or a double.

It's fuckin bullshit like that man, all the time in this country.

I took a single and lied down on the bed and for awhile I couldn't even manage to take my clothes off. I just stared at the ceiling, half-consciously muttering religious epigrams:

"Jesus Mary and Joseph."
"Mary mother of God protect me."
"Dear Jesus watch over this poor sinner."

Finally I went to sleep.

Leaving Pushkar

2008-12-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

I've spent a week in Pushkar. It's really peace here, and probably my favourite of all the places I've been to so far. For one thing, there aren't any autorickshaw wallahs lounging around shouting at me ("Hello sir! Where you going sir? You need rickshaw sir?"), and for another it's fucking gorgeous here:

Originally I was going to head further into the Thar desert for a camel safari, but now that tensions between India and Pakistan are coming to a head I've changed my plans. Apparently the town of Jaisalmer (where I was going) is a main staging ground for the Indian military, making it less attractive as a tourist destination.

Which brings me to another topic: India and Pakistan are fucking ridiculous. I mean, this is just my opinion. What do I know? But ever since the Mumbai terrorist attack the Indian media has been working overtime to create the same type of hysteria we saw in America after 9/11. (They've gone as far as dubbing the attack "26/11" here, which is completely retarded, since they reversed the order of the day and month as they're arranged in "9/11" just so their own date would sound cool.) Every day the papers are full of editorials going on about how soft the Indian government is and how much more aggressive they should be in calling out Pakistan for its involvement in the attacks. I understand these feelings of anger and resentment, but more than anything else it seems like the media is just trying to whip-up public sentiment. And to what end? I hate to think it's for something as cynical as "selling more papers", so what are these editors really hoping to accomplish? War between nuclear-armed neighbours? I'm not sure what the rationale is. Maybe there isn't one.

Anyway, I'm going to stay well clear of all that shit, and in the meantime just keep on keeping on with a journey that feels less and less like a spiritual quest, and more and more like a sightseeing tour.

Ah well, sais la vie in 2008. But that's another post.

Spirituality

2008-12-25T22:44:00.000-08:00

They say India is a spiritual place, and it is. It's spiritual because it teems with life while death sits right in the open. It's also spiritual because a number of major religions were born here and they're all still practiced religiously. Finally, it's spiritual because thousands of people flock here to get a "deeper insight" into various spiritual practices and "New Age" beliefs, everything from clairvoyant intervention to Ayurvedic massage. They come here to smoke weed, grow facial hair, learn instruments, and wear loose-fitting clothes.

I know they're here because I've met them (and because I'm one of them.) These are people like 'Mamaji', a 60-something European woman all too happy to talk my ear off about the latest fad energy technique and assure me about how 'enlightened' she is. I've seen the neo-hippies sitting in cafes, dredded, dirty, sipping lassis, newly purchased tablas on the floor beside them. I've been to see a psychic husband and wife team, listened to their dry and practical advice. I've talked with the 'holy men' on the banks of the Ganges, waiting in vain for something they said to touch me, only to have them get down to business within minutes, demanding money. I've even met some truly great men, old sadhus who want nothing more than to sit, and smoke and worship in peace.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am in no position to judge. I'll only say this: spirituality is not something bought or sold. Enlightenment isn't claimed or taken. And it isn't popular. So what is it? I don't know. But maybe all mysticism can be reduced to this: you are alive, and one day you won't be; one state is contained in the other.

To know yourself know the moment: sitting in a net cafe in Pushkar, listening to the sounds of the street. When this changes, I am changed.

I contain the change, every subsequent movement, the issuance of all my future selves.

Posts? Stories? Output? Where?

2008-12-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

Sorry. I mean, this blog has been pretty boring for awhile. I haven't had a chance to really narrate a lot of the wacky shit that's been happening. This is to my great shame. Rest assured: India is fucking crazy and my ride here is equivalent to tooling around on the back of Mr. Toad's Kawasaki Ninja on a quart of liquid acid. While listening to a Prodigy mix CD.

Winding, labyrinthine streets strewn with cow-shit, dirt, straw, smashed clay cups and garbage. Monkeys leaping from one mis-aligned rooftop to another. Cows wandering around, glassy-eyed and caked in filth. Underfed and undersized children selling postcards, flowers and drugs by the banks of the Ganges. The smell of polluted mist in the morning (like diluted green algae); sitting on the patio and watching the fog roll in, cold and thick.

That's something like Varanasi.

I'm off to Jaipur, Rajastan tonight. The train ride should be at least 17 hours long. I think I'll use some of that time to write a narrative. I still need to talk about those Bhutanese guys.

Anyway, stay real beyond the real.

Bit by the Cobra

2008-12-16T00:33:00.000-08:00

So I was drinking a Cobra beer ("Extra Smooth Flavour") on the rooftop patio of my guest house last night, while watching Kill Bill in Hindi. The more I drank, the less "ok" I felt, until in the end I was doubled over my reeking, Indian toilet hauling up everything my stomach had to offer. And then some.

No sleep - I had to get up and puke over and over again throughout the night.

Rough.

This after having my best afternoon in India thus far. Varanasi is awesome. Especially wicked are the ghats along the Ganges. Great place, but the thing with India is it's terrifying highs and giddying lows. Usually at the same time.

Anyway, I have a lot better stuff to write about, specifically the Bhutanese ex-cons and alcoholics I was hanging with in Bodhgaya, but don't have the energy right now and this terminal sucks.

Will attempt later.

Suffering

2008-12-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

Human suffering - one thing is, it exists. And another: unless you dedicate your life to it, there's very little you can do about it. The best you can hope for is to press a small coin into the hand of a beggar and try to look them in the eye as you do it. Try to help them smile. That's a fleeting moment, but it's about all I'm good for. And if they hate me for not doing more I can't say I blame them.

Streets of Calcutta (3)

2008-12-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

Get up, reluctant to face the day in this city, imagining swarms of leprous beggars moaning for spare rupees, hordes of touts hawking everything from taxis to weed. Trying to imagine how a dead city comes alive.

I don't know how to describe the reality of it...

The streets moved, teeming, a fly buzz of human activity; young boys in faded school uniforms, fuscia and gray, running past a wizened old man crouching in front of a few ancient bottles of shoe varnish; dirt, cracked pavement, garbage piles stuffed into corners, the angle between walls and street; sunlight, smog, dented yellow cabs and skeletal men in dhotis hauling creaking rickshaws, stunted trees (a cow tied to one, chewing mindlessly); mounds of shit, flies buzzing constantly (a constant buzzing - cars and people, horns blaring, rickshaw bells tinkling, hawkers calling out); grime-smeared concrete walls coloured yellow, green, pink, blue, brown, the paint chipped and peeling; power lines snaking up walls and bunched in tight knots at the ends of poles; naked kids toddling from one scrap of blanket to another, their young-old mothers sitting nearby, prematurely gray and faded, cradling half-asleep (half-dead?) babies in dirty blankets and none of them asking for change; little brown boys squatting to piss, one of them - a black mark pressed to the center of his brow - chasing a woman along the street, leaving his unconcerned family behind to scrape an existence out of a garbage pile in the corner of a park, and just to the right the road is packed with cars, cars, cars, (a car without a horn is not a car), dozens of dented, rattling buses, taxis, motorcycles, autorickshaws, all of them speeding, honking, swerving (there are no lanes, only spaces and a lack of spaces); horns fired off like gun shots, abrasive and metallic (you can hear them from the roof of your hotel, just behind the lego maze of rooftops, the filthy walls and patchwork of windows); all of the lives stuffed into those buildings, on the streets, lives spent selling, buying, selling, eating in the gutter or lounging at chai stands, drinking steaming tea from clay cups you smash into the pavement when you're done with them, adding another pixel to the frame.

Streets of Calcutta (2)

2008-12-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

(I met a French Canadian couple named Dominique and J.P. in the airport in Thailand, as well as a Czech guy named Pavel. The four of us had never been in India before and we decided to take a cab together.)

We tried banging on the doors of shuttered guest houses in the dead streets but only one of them opened, and they didn't have room.

"No one open!" shouted the cab driver. "If you want hotel, I can arrange."

He arranged it, at the Hotel Majestic, drove us there and got out of the cab to knock at the gate. Eventually, a bleary-eyed man wearing a sweater and a scarf around his head shuffled over to unlock it. We went inside, and the manager brought out a list of prices. They were outrageous: 800 rupees for a single room with no air-conditioner. They also had a four bed room for 2500 rupees (custom designed to fit out needs.) Dominique and I went up to take a look at it. The somnmabulent porter came with us, falling asleep on his feet in the phone-booth sized elevator.

The elevator opened at an odd angle, halfway onto a stairwell and halfway into a hall. A man sleeping on the stairs in a pile of blankets started awake as we passed him, stared at us. The porter led the way out of the hotel and onto a roof overlooking the tops of grime-blackened buildings. He showed us our room, which was pretty nice (it didn't stink, had three beds - two singles and a double - and a plasma screen TV for some reason.) We took it.

The porter wanted to "help" us with our bags, and tried to tell us that the driver was demanding an additional 130 rupees for bringing us there. Sick of being scammed, we told him to fuck off and didn't tip him before he left.

"It's gonna be this every fuckin day man," said Pavel. "My friends told me, Pavel, you are too soft for India."

We all are.

Streets of Calcutta (1)

2008-12-07T22:40:00.000-08:00

You walk off the plane, not into a tunnel but onto the tarmac. The air is still, heavy, warm and hazy and burnished orange.

The airport looks like a relic from the 1970s, cracked formica countertops and water stains on the walls. It hits you in the bathroom, trying to step around the piss: this is their airport - what the hell does the rest of the city look like?

Outside, a crowd of people stand around waiting for passengers, a lot of them holding signs, all absolutely silent. A dry cough, the shuffling of feet. Four guys approach you.

'Taxi? Taxi?'

Two of them lead you to a car away from the entrance. You ask about the price and one of them takes out a crumpled sheet of paper, obviously printed off his home PC, emblazoned with clip art. There's a list of prices on it, based on distances. Yours is 660 rupees - obviously a huge scam. You try to argue, but he just laughs.

"No no, these are government prices! Government prices!"

There aren't any other drivers around to barter with so you get in the cab.

The ride is unbelievable. "Like a nightmare, only... you drink blood, you no wake up from nightmare."

The streets are lifeless, empty, fires burning unchecked on the sidewalk, the smoke or the pollution wreathing the air around fluorescent bulbs. Dirt, rubble, feral dogs, the road twisting at odd angles, past shacks and ruined trees. Potholed, pitted, gouged, the taxi swerving madly around obstacles, cancerous bumps in the pavement. Outside, the dead eyes of movie stars stare from smeared posters, behind hand painted signs hawking - what? What could you possibly buy here? What could be sold on streets like this?

Streets at the end of the world. Dry, dusty and abandoned.

"You like music?" asks the driver.

Bollywood bindi pop blares from the cab's outdated sound system, tinny, like you're hearing it through a wall.

Slowly, there are signs of life: hard-eyed cops with curry guts and thick moustaches eye you from a corner, a dump truck with thin-limbed men sitting on top of a pile of rubble, people sleeping in the gutter, under ragged tarps, on rickshaws.

"No one open this time," says the driver. "All closed."

Day 35 - Bangkok - Nov. 30, 2008 -

2008-12-05T23:59:00.000-08:00

Bangkok... Shit... I'm still in Bangkok...

10 hours on a bus gives you a lot of time to think. Unravel the threads of yourself and watch them tangle up again. Deconstruct and reconstruct, thought patterns repeating like lines of binary code: you are yourself; you are not yourself.

Get off the bus and onto a motorbike and try to describe it, the twisting amber light on the pavement, the rush of wind past your ears, tears leaking from the corner of your eyes to make wet snail tracks on your cheeks. The grit charcoil smell of car exhaust burning all the way to the back of your throat. Try and fail - those aren't the words. You say it's night and you're on the back of a bike in Bangkok and you hope it's enough. Because nothing else comes close.

There were other days in Chiang Mai, temples, a trip up the winding mountain roads north of the city to Doi Suthep, cheap beers on patios watching middle-aged men flaunt their inadequancies with rented Thai girls.

There was the one you should have got down on one knee for and proposed to on the spot, if only to see the expression on her soft-as-shit "boyfriend's" face. Because a woman like her, carrying herself with the the grace and dignity of royalty deserves a better life than selling herself. Not that you're the one to give it to her, but at least you could get her into Canada on a spousal visa. Which is more than the asshole sitting next to her can say.

and the lord provides...

2008-12-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was sitting at this internet terminal and a girl sat down at the computer beside me. I asked her if she was stranded too, and she is, EXACTLY like I am, trying to get to Calcutta via a flight she'd booked through Jet Airways. We agreed to go together this morning to Jet's office in downtown Bangkok. Turns out she'd been tripping in India for 6 months by herself, studying Buddhist meditation. Which is exactly what I wanted to do. So we had some good conversation on the bus out there and found out that the airlines are flying people out daily from U-Tapao airforce base.

So I'm going to pack my shit up tomorrow morning and get out to the base. Next stop: Calcutta.

Should be fucking crazy.

Buddhist Philosophy (Day 30 - Chiang Mai - Nov. 25, 2008 - )

2008-11-30T23:48:00.000-08:00

I left the gates of the old city and walked to Wat Sri Suphan to participate in a monk chat and introductory meditation session. There was some time to kill so I killed it at the temple's coffee shop. (The temple had its own coffee shop.)

After awhile a young monk sat down next to me and started into a conversation. He told me his name was Ra, he's from Cambodia, and that he's 27 years old.

At first I approached the discussion from the standpoint of an English teacher, keeping things simple and only asking questions I felt confident he'd be able to answer. I shouldn't have bothered - his English was excellent. Not only was he capable of expressing himself clearly, it was actually the finer points of Buddhist philosophy he most wanted to delve into.

He talked about impermanence as a central characteristic of reality. He said that the conventional truth about impermanence is that we are born, we age and we die, and that there are recognizable stages in our life: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age. However, the ultimate truth, he said, is that we are changing every moment of the day - our thoughts move, our hair grows, and our cells die. These are not changes we can see with our naked eye but they occur, undermining any conception in a permanent or determinable "self."

I sat at the stone table and watched him as he spoke. The orange glare of a cheap fluorescent bulb touched the side of his face and the back of his stubbled head. I felt my awareness of the moment as a thing I was living floating a millimeter above my skull. He was changing, I was, and we were both conscious of the process as it happened. I looked at him and it was like seeing an alternate version of myself; 27, seated at a stone table, talking metaphysics. Parallel lines drawn on opposite corners of the world.

Later, the group expanded. An old German lady with limited English came and imposed herself on the conversation. She told a fractured story about how, practicing yoga, she once saw a flash of light in the sky. She said that in this moment she understood that the light was inside of her, that she and it were one, and that she recognized the same light in everyone and all things.

"And I want ask," she said. "What is this light?"

(I tried to be generous in my thoughts to her but it was difficult. Why would you ask a question like that? Isn't it more than a little pretentious and self-centered? But what do I know? Maybe it sounds better in German. It's not like I'm any better, writing this.)

"I have an answer for you," said Ra mildly. "This light is not real. This only happened in your mind. You saw the light because you wanted to see it. It was an illusion."

The German woman didn't enjoy this answer, but I fucking loved it. Rather than humouring her, Ra chose to cut straight through this New Age bullshit and he managed to do it without sounding acrimonious or patronizing.

Throughout this, the German woman just kept shaking her head and mumbling "no, no, no." I turned to her and asked what she thought the light was.

"I do not know English." She wrote down a German word we guessed meant "enlightenment."

"For the Buddha this was his feeling every minute. But for me, just one minute," she said.

"No," Ra answered flatly. "This is not enlightenment. This was illusion."

Instead of trying to make a tourist feel happy and fulfilled by her self-motivated visit to his temple, Ra stuck to his own beliefs and the tenents of his religion. It was something (after seeing him live in concert in Toronto two years ago) I don't think the Dalai Lama would have done, and it underlines a stark contrast between the Buddhism that's become popular in the west and the Theravada tradition that's practiced here: enlightenment does not mean happiness.

Trapped!

2008-11-28T20:31:00.000-08:00

Well one thing's for sure: I'm not getting on a flight to Calcutta tomorrow.

No one seems to know what's going on or when the airport will be opened. I was just on their website though, and saw a number of flights listed as "scheduled" (whatever that means.) I'll have to try calling them again, see if I can get a straight answer.

We went and saw "Quantum of Solace" yesterday and James Bond was stuck in Austria with no money and no passport. No problem - in the next scene he's in Italy somehow.

I need to find out how he managed that...

Political Instability

2008-11-27T20:50:00.000-08:00

Well the Fear News is at it again.

Things here in Chiang Mai are markedly calmer than the reports of what's going on in Bangkok. Still, Im scheduled to fly to Calcutta on Sunday. As of now (Friday) the airport is still closed, and the military has said it might intervene if the government attempts to remove the protestors responsible for it. I might be in for a longer haul in Thailand than I'd hoped.

As well, people are obviously concerned about my intended destination, India. I'm telling myself that Calcutta is on the opposite side of the country, and that I'll be fine. However, I do think the universe gives signals and this might be one to me.

If I can get on the flight I paid for, I'll take it. If not, I won't, and I'll have to re-evaluate.

It's an interesting world isn't it?

NOTE: This is not a populist movement. In fact, the majority of those protesting are members of the urban, middle-class elite, avowed royalists and those in opposition to standard democratic principles. They believe that former Prime Minister Thaksin's populist approach to democracy is flawed, and challenge the notion that every individual has the right to vote, regardless of social/economic status or income.

The fact that it's (comparatively) rich, royalist Thais interrupting my spiritual journey makes me want to spit in their dumb faces.

ROYALTY: Fucking dumb, and more than just a little useless. In short, get the queen off our money. NOW.

End of rant.

Chiang Mai (round 1)

2008-11-25T21:02:00.000-08:00

We took a bus from Sukhottai (a ruined former capital where Jean Claude Van Damme filmed training scenes in kickboxer.)

Chiang Mai is a lot better than anywhere else I've been in Thailand. There are the requisite numbers of middle-aged white guys with their bored-stiff and bitter Thai "girlfriends", the cries of "Hey you! Where you going?" from the tuk tuk drivers, but on the whole it's a very chilled vibe. It reminds me of Kyoto.

Jenna and I went to see Muay Thai at the small stadium downtown. It was excellent. We sat next to a Dutch couple and bet beers on the results of different rounds. (All the early matches were between 15 year olds. I wasn't sure how I felt about watching kids kick the shit out of each other until they started kicking the shit out of each other; I felt great about it.)

The last match was between an Irish dude named Philip Mauythaisankha (not his real last name), and an incredibly skinny Thai guy. Philip won, but it was dirty - he caught the Thai in the junk with an errant kick. I didn't cheer. Much.

Thai Ghost Stories (Day 24 - Nov. 20, 2008)

2008-11-20T04:47:00.000-08:00

We took a boat from Koh Tao to Chumporn. I spent the time top side staring at the slate grey sea. I thought there must be some equation of fractal geometry to explain the pattern of spray and foam, the constant action-stutter-reaction of waves.

I watched birds skim the water, the sun seeping far-off yellow through metallic clouds. Fishing boats appeared in the distance, grew clear, drifted off. The ocean filled my head. Thinking: it's peaceful because it doesn't need me.

...

I couldn't sleep on the bus. Loose thoughts trailed into dense coils, a hundred small revelations that seemed important at the time and that I can't remember now. Every song on my iPod was a particular brand of nostalgia; it seemed to me that everything I used to be was realer than what I am. I thought: what's past is past is past is past but it's all wrapped up in now because it got me here. (Conclusion: THE PRESENT IS ONLY THE FINAL ACCUMULATION OF PAST CHOICES. IT'S WHAT'S LEFT AFTER THE EROSION OF ALL OTHER POSSIBLITIES.)

I watched trees, the branches and leaves pale grey in the half light of street lamps. Everything that passed passed like ghosts - the ghosts of trees, houses, power-lines, garbage piles. The ghost of a man squatting at the curb, sucking on the orange pin glow of a cigarette. The ghost of my reflection in the window - half a profile, the shadow of an eye-socket, my nose - rattling with the motion of the bus.

These things passed and fell away. They existed in a moment in time, pinned down by the force of my eyes.

...

(later:) I get deep! Obivously: chill the fuck out. Malaria meds are powerful drugs...

Bangkok: keepin it sketchy, 24/7.

Koh Tao

2008-11-16T00:25:00.000-08:00

We made it out of Bangkok and south to the island of Koh Tao. We took a night bus (I didn't sleep) and then got on a high speed katamaran. Within 15 minutes or so it was obvious I wasn't going to survive the journey without vomitting - the only question was if I could hold out long enough not to be the first to spew. I shouldn't have worried; the boat turned into a barf barge soon enough. I'd say 90% of people upchucked at some point. Jenna held out. It was an impressive feat. I was heaving my guts up, churning bile, grinding stomach muscles into a tight knot.

Not cool. In fact, very brutal. It was like spinning around in bed at 3:00 AM drunk as fuck and knowing there's nothing you can do about it except wait it out.

Wait it out I did. It was a blessing to step on land again. The island is small (21 square kilometers) and infested with white people, mostly australians. There's not much beach to speak of, but there are coral reefs not far offshore and the snorkeling is great. Jenna and I are mainly chilling. The internet is retardedly expensive though (most places 4 bucks an hour. We found one off the main drag that's 2 bucks. Still a rip off.)

Not very into Thailand. It's basically Disneyland except it's dirty and everyone is trying to rip you off. Obviously there are places that aren't so touristy, but who has the time or money to get there? All this bitternesss may just be the mefloquine talking as well.

I'm looking forward to the realness of India even as I'm dreading it.

Last night we watched "The Beach"... on the beach. Trippy.

Day 14 - Ayuttaya - Nov. 9, 2008

2008-11-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

I knew I'd feel better today and I do. Physical state = mental state to such a degree it's funny. Or funny and sad like in the Animatrix when the robots have that guy strung up and the back of his skull shaved off and, and they're tweezing different spots on his brain and he's laughing or crying, depending.

I was dead tired last night but my room was above the bar and they had the cheesy American rock blaring loud and late into the night. I didn't have the energy to do anything about it either, leave, go for a walk, get a drink. All I could do was just lie there and take it. Like one of the stray dogs baking in the sun, too tired to move.

...

Today was pretty peace. Got up early and switched rooms to an even cheaper one, 100 bhat, spent some time walking around. Wandered, you know, the usual, into whatever nook or cranny presented itself and looked promising. Found a really chill wat with a nice reclining Buddha stretched out in one of the rooms. Not the famous reclining Buddha. Just another one. Also 40 feet long and golden. But not that forty foot golden one. You know, a different one.

I rented a bike, which was a great call. Took a slow course through busy streets, threading needle-thin gaps in traffic. Pedaled around the ruins. The light was falling, the shadows heavier, the scorched bricks a deeper shade of orange, edging on red. Rode past a group of 10 very cute Japanese girls riding on the backs of 5 elephants. It was a bit surreal, but probably would have been weirder if I'd just gotten here, but since I've been here a week it just blended in with everything else, the stray dogs in the streets, the bright pink vinyl chairs in the internet cafes. The homeless guys sleeping off hang-overs in the shade of temples. Me, wandering through it, white-skinned and unemployed.

Day 13 - Ayuttaya - Nov. 8, 2008

2008-11-10T04:47:00.000-08:00

Tired. Depressed. Hung over. No motivation to do anything or go anywhere. Sketched out. Periodically freaking out.

But just freaking out internally. In a quiet way. In a way that's inside so anyone looking at me wouldn't be able to tell. And in that way you build a life.

Got picked off the street by a hilarious Danish dude named Mads Larsson. He brought me over to a table with two British girls who he'd apparently just sat down and started eating with. (He's better at traveling alone than I am.)

We played pool and then cards. Cards degenerated into strip poker. I lost, heavily, wound up sitting at the table in my boxers. I was the only one with their shirt off. Keep in mind this is happening on a bar's patio.

A German guy just walked by on crutches. He's missing his left leg. I noticed it when he bent down awkwardly to pet one of the stray dogs that's sleeping in a corner. The girl working the bar is wicked hot and she knows it - she's spent the last 15 minutes making minute adjustments to her hair in a hand mirror. And she has ice blue contacts that make her look like she just stepped off the set of a bad sci-fi movie.

Thailand. Weird.

Day 12 - Ayuttaya, Nov. 7, 2008

2008-11-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

It's hot as a crotch out here. Worked up a sweat just walking from the internet cafe. I need to remember to drink more water.

...

(Take a boat tour for 200 bhat. It'll be worth it, I swear.)

It was hot. Sweltering is a better word; it was sweltering, and humid. Breathing felt like drinking. It was like being in a sauna. I stripped and lied down on the bed under the fan and read and killed time. My skin felt like wax, those sticky things you buy in cereal boxes and throw against windows. Peeling my arm off my side to shift position was like that.

I met up with my boat tour. It was a big group, about 20 people in total and made up exclusively of couples except for me and one skinny German dude, the 3rd wheel on someone else's date. He and I had to sit together - the boat's seats were only wide enough for two. We were partners. Like on a school trip. We used the buddy system.

Half the boat was French and the other half was German. And there was a Dutch couple who heard me say that and were kind of offended.

The boat was long, thin and sunk low in the water. There was a plastic canopy. It moved fast, churning spray up front and along the sides. We ploughed through the coffee brown water, next to house boats, tugs hauling freight, houses on stilts, river-front restaurants, temples and little shrines garlanded with flowers, colourful as speckled candy.

People saw us from other boats or the shoreline and they waved. In front of one house a pair of sisters pulled their brother along the water in an inflatable wading pool - they waved too, and smiled, and suddenly it felt like all of it, the smiles and waves, and especially the wading pool was there for our benefit, like a post-card, a staged re-enactment of Thai friendliness. Just for a second it was like all these things, the well-fed, rosy-cheeked brother in the pool, the laughing sisters, the families on their house boats, everyone along the river was the recipient of a government kick-back, tourism grants, frunds from the T.A.T. And I thought, well, so what if it's staged? It's really happening, staged or not and it may as well be real - it's as good as real. And then we passed 3 boys, all shirtless, hanging like scrawny monkeys on some bamboo scaffolding, smiling, waving, leaping into the water and the moment broke. I thought about smiling and waving and it seemed easy: smile, make yourself seen, form an impression. An impression on what? On the outside world, the only impact these kids are ever likely to have outside their own borders. And that impact - the smile, the wave, the dream of a happy poor kid, Maddox left at home, un-rescued - that's the best message anyone can expect to send: the re-creation of our own happiness in another.

Day 11 - Ayuttaya - Nov. 6, 2008

2008-11-08T18:10:00.000-08:00

Got on a bus and went on nothing more than a whim and the sketched-out feeling I had all day yesterday in Bangkok.

The taxi to the bus station cost 200 bhat (I got ripped off) and the bus ticket 53.

The bus pulled out of the city and picked up and dropped people off at a series of seemingly random destinations. Note: many Thai girls don't shave their legs. Why? I'm not into it, but of course what I think doesn't matter. There are larger cultural forces at work.

I got to Ayuttaya and it took me awhile to find the place. When I did I thought it was too expensive - 300 bhat for a room - but then I saw it and changed my mind. I have my own bathroom, and furniture other than a bed. A desk, a little table. A chair.

I paid and wandered into a market. Picture a market in Asia and that's what it was - a place where Asians buy and sell in tight confines and low light. I ended up at a small noodle shop, pointed to what some guy was having and then pointed to myself. Said "Me too. Same." They understood.

I ate and did my best to enjoy the weird little sausage balls floating in the soup. The broth was great. It cost 25 bhat including a glass of ice they gave me for the water I brought with me.

I walked to the Ayuttaya historical park, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. I was tripping: this town has old-time ruins worked into the fabric of its living spaces, crumbling stupas rising behind rows of small houses, power lines. The park itself was amazing. I saw at least a half dozen wats, paid for one, hopped the fence at another, got taken by bicycle to view the rest.

The bicycle tour: the guy was rail thin. Heroin thin, thin like a starving man. Like a guy who hauls tourists around on a bike all day. His skin was a dark, muddy brown. He had missing teeth. He pedaled and I struggled not to feel guilty. I told myself if I didn't pay him to do this he wouldn't be able to afford food, but he probably worked off more than one meal doing it. The only way I could feel good about it was to think that I wasn't adding to the pollution by commissioning a tuk tuk.

He pedaled and I watched the muscles in his skinny back and stick calves working. We passed temples, dusty roads, highschool kids tooling around on small motorcycles, a pair of mangy dogs fucking. Buddha was seated, cased in gold, lounging on a dias, draped in saffron robes, headless and scorched. RUINS: I didn't know how into them I'd be until I was in them. I'm into them.

Ayuttaya is nice, a working city built around a dead one. I met a group of highschool guys in the park and traded poorly pronounced phrases with them, took pictures. Their leader, Jay, had a bad moustache and a way of moving like he might flip out and lose it at any moment. I gave him a Canada pin becuase he was the one who called me over. He pinned it to his collar and displayed it proudly, territorially, like he was daring his friends to fight him for it. Little fucker. I should have given it to someone else.

...

I was sitting at a nice table out front of my guest house ("P.U. Guest House") but the service is weird (I should say "extremely laid back") and I'm not sure if they serve dinner so I left and came here. They've got an Elvis mix CD playing on the speaker system. It's blowing my mind. ("I can't help falling in love with you" - with who? I'm here alone.)

There's a white guy here, probably German, with a massive, 4 pronged mohawk. Elvis and mohawks, and a pair of stray, half-feral dogs fight-fucking on the street in front of me.

Thailand. Weird.

Speaking of - it turns out the middle-aged Thai dude working at the guest house kitchen is Japanese. His name's Yamada san. Chillin dude. He's been in country 3 years, and speaks fairly good Thai. I had a pretty decent convo with him in Japanese. It felt familiar, like meeting someone on the road from your hometown.

Speaking of - an older couple (I should say "nice older couple") from Saskatchewan just sat down at the table next to me. We traded notes, but I left them alone quick; just because I'm alone and want to talk doesn't mean they want to be disturbed by a disturbed loner.

Despite that, I feel good. Probably the best I have so far. I'm doing it now, going for it, as they say. Things are nice here. This is a good idea.

"When you're gone, stay gone. Or you be gone." STAYGONEORBEGONE.COM.

They just threw on "Don't Worry Be Happy" and then there was a massive, block-wide power outtage. A sketchy Thai dude lounging near the bar instantly broke into a rendition of "Happy birthday to you."

Weird.

Day 10 - Bangkok - Nov. 5, 2008

2008-11-08T04:13:00.000-08:00

This fruit shake would easily cost 6 dollars in Toronto. I paid 1 and I probably still got ripped off.

Yesterday while I was reading a little girl in a white dress tried to sell me flowers. She sat down beside me, recited a few phrases in broken English she obviously couldn't understand, kissed my cheek. She was a cute kid. I said no thank you but it almost worked. What was fucked up was she got a phone call. A cell she has in her miniature hand bag starts going off and she interrupts her sales pitch to answer it. And I'm sitting there watching this little girl, who's no more than 3 years old at the most, talking to someone on a cell phone.

That was a new one.

Today I'm going to try my luck on the wandering circuit again. I go through phases of alternately being totally intimidated by everything and not giving a fuck. I'll have to book a return flight out of India. I'm thinking about making it a 3 month trip. Hope I don't live to regret that, but 2 seems maybe too short.

....

WHOAAAAAA..... kind of freaking out. KIND OF - it's not so bad but then it's not so great either. I had this revelation that this is all because of the malaria pill I took last night. Feeling sketched out and depressed and lonely. Found myself muttering "Pankot is not on the way to Delhi" under my breath, over and over again. I had to force myself to stop. It was like trying to rein in a facial tic.

...

The waittress here looks about ready to die or 3/4ths asleep or both. A somnambulent zombie, taking orders from the living.

I wandered. I'm good at it, carving routes on impulse, coodinating with whatever landmarks I pick out of the visual hum. I made the mistake of listening to a tuk tuk dude's spiel and then brushing him off. He got angry, called me stupid and kept saying something I think must have been "fuck" but might have been something else entirely. A passing gentleman assured me that this guy was a bad person and not all Thais are like that, "just some people." I told him Canada was the same.

Stumbled on some fairly random wats, under-renovation for the most part and no tourists in sight. Sat and gazed at the ornate, gilded golden chambers. I did my best to appear harmless and uninvasive.

I took pictures of the indolent and ragged temple cats. A mangy dog with an ugly red welt on his leg came out of nowhere to bark at me. I backed away and he growled the whole time.

There was a crazy homeless guy squatting, almost hidden behind the columns, mindlessly reciting mantras.

I headed over to the Golden Mount - a golden wat at the top of a crappy concrete hill. It was a good little hike (the term "a good little hike" - what is that, country?) Hidden speakers played pre-recorded chanting. Schoolgirls rang heavy iron bells, monks in saffron robes posed for pictures with French families. And there was me.

I walked, wandered, past armed guards, grandiose, florid archways framing pictures of the king, university kids eating at street-side stalls, crappy restaurants.

I turned a corner and came up against a change so fundamental it took a few seconds to register: no one was moving. There were people on the street, a tonne of them, but they were all standing back, pressed against walls, waiting quietly. Police stood at intersections, cordorning off traffic. A procession of cop cars and bikes drove by, followed by a cream-coloured luxury sedan. Whoever was inside - some prince or minor royal cousin - had the highschool girls next to me squeeling with delight. I asked them who it was but they didn't speak any English.

Day 9 - Bangkok - Nov. 4, 2008

2008-11-08T03:51:00.000-08:00

This has got to be one of the loudest rain storms I've ever heard, fat drops hitting the pavement and plastic roof like thrown rocks.

I came down to the side patio at the guest house because I'd literally been lying on my bed for more than an hour, reading the India LonelyPlanet and feeling powerless. This urge to DO SOMETHING, accomplish something, anything - take pictures, write, go out and get drunk at a dance party - maybe getting rid of that urge is what I came out here to do; nothing needs to be done, there's no transformative experience that needs to take place. I can lie on a bed and think. I can sit at this table and listen to the rain (and writing this, ruin it.)

Big rolling bursts of thunder thundering behind the clouds. People shouting to make themselves heard over the rain.

I just ordered a Coke - decadence! Anyway it doesn't look like I'm going to get anything done today. (Wasn't that the point?)

The Coke comes in a glass bottle like in the 50s.

It might not be a bad idea to burn 6 or 7 dollars on a fat novel. A purchase like that might pay dividends in the long run. Or I could spend two dollars on 1.5 hours in an air-conditioned internet room somewhere. Or something else, some other idea I don't know what it is yet.

This dude's girlfriend is sexy: strawberry blonde, chin-length hair, fat wooden hoop earrings, very nicely shaped thighs under a close-fitting sun dress. The dude looks like an older, more rugged and "bought-in" version of me. ("Bought-in" to the idea of bumming around popular developing world locations.) He's got half of what looks like a fairly cryptic tattoo showing in exactly the same spot on his arm as mine, and 3 times the prayer beads.

The waiter is young, thin like an underfed cat. He has a bad moustache that somehow suits him. He's wearing a sky blue t-shirt, a green apron, and some of the emo-est black skinny jeans I've ever seen.

...

Bought the novel - Underworld by Don DeLilo; I've spent a fair amount of money today. Over 20 dollars at last count. And I have new flip-flops and a novel and ate two meals (one a good approximation of a chicken sandwich and fries, the other a delicious black bean stir-fry.) And I bought a Coke, bottled water, a cinnamon bun. What else? A room for the night.

Not bad. The day wasn't bad either. I felt colonial, content just to sit at a wooden table and consume cheap food served by good-looking natives.

I'm happy on my own. Why? Because it frees up the eyes: observe and record. Move on.

They're playing Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" - ridiculous. I should probably go for a walk but I can't be bothered. Still, I've got 4 hours left to kill and reading the whole time might give me a headache.

Day 8 - continued

2008-11-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

If you finally find a place to sit in peace and for free then suddenly you open up whole new levels of chillage and the city doesn't seem so mean or nasty. This is in Santichaiprakan park on the side of the creamy brown Nan Chao river.

The sun is setting and a storm just passed. The sky is a watery-orange under faded grey. There's a little wind and for once I'm not sweating. I could easily kill a few hours here this week. 8 days of Bangkok on a tight budget. Can I do it? Will I want to?

Some idiot just wheeled out a pair of black speakers from somewhere, started blaring Thai synth pop. There's a pair of girls down the far end of the row of benches glancing over every once in awhile, when they think I'm not looking. Except that I am.

A young family just showed up, sat down next to me, the mother helping her baby stand on the ledge overlooking the river. The kid's excited by the water and doesn't seem to notice me. It's a nice change.

This is a park for young Thai couples on dates; the girls wear navy blue skirts past their knees and white dress shirts, the boys rock skinny black jeans and have feathered hair. I dig the style - 2nd world hipsters, the lot of them.

I left the park hoping the 6:00 PM meditation the lady doctor from Chang Mai told me about would be running. It wasn't, at least nowhere I could see. I'll have to ask at the tourist info center tomorrow.

TODAY: I got a fairly decent wander on, fueling it with a bottle of water and an apple strudle I bought for breakfast at 7/11. I walked, eating, avoiding eye-contact with the tuk tuk drivers. Walked around the royal palace and into some alleys and found myself in an odd, well-used parking lot beside a temple. A very nice lady saw me looking around and invited me inside.

Inside: a different world. Pristine white-washed walls, gold inlay over complicated faux-jewel work, long, blocky hallways stuffed with Golden Buddhas and bums stretched out sleeping in the shade. She took me into the temple's main chamber. A group of young monks was lounging amidst a jumbled array of sacred artifacts: statues, industrial strength fans, portraits of stern looking men I took to be royals. She showed me how to bow properly (three times, forehead to floor) and told me about where to go and what to see. I thought she was totally genuine until she startd going on about the tuk tuk ride she'd arrange for me; the small betrayal hurt a little because of the setting.

After that I lied down in my room and blanked out for awhile. I can safely say I didn't come here to party. Walked to the park and started this entry.

Later: I headed over to a small outdoor market near one of the piers and ate a real nice chicken/noodle dish and took some pictures of people eating, the lights reflecting off plastic tables shaded by beach umbrellas. I sat for awhile in a wide, official looking space and stared at the lights on a series of golden pagodas.

...

All these Thai people have to make a living somehow. I think about the cool looking kid with the ill hair manning the internet booth and I wonder if that's a great job here. It probably is, but he won't be doing it forever. Like me he'll eventually hit a wall (whether becasue he gets bored with it or because he winds up too old for the position.) He'll have to move on, and to what? Where does he go from here? Driving a tuk tuk? Seems as likely as anything else, and then it's 12 hour days preying on stupid tourists to feed your family.

Harsh realities. I'd rather be a monk.

Day 8 - At a riverside patio in Bangkok - 10:00 AM, Nov. 3, 2008

2008-11-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

I went to bed early. It was nice being in a room with air con but I was actually cold so I switched this morning to a room with just a fan and no window. It costs 190 bhat to the other room's 500. I was surprised and happy to see the fan was gigantic and powerful and that the room was clean. There's a small window into the hallway with a screen over it to allow air-flow. The room looks like a prison cell, but it's only costing me around 7 dollars. How much does it cost to keep a guy in prison one night?

This morning I left the Khao San area and got stopped in a matter of minutes by a pair of very nice men who seemed genuinely intersted in my travel plans and filling me in on what needs seeing in Bangkok. Their act was so good there was a moment where I honestly believed they weren't trying to sell me something. Then they offered to drive me around the major sites for 30 Bhat - Dave and my LonelyPlanet warmed me about this scam: 30 bhat is like a dollar, so the only way for them to make any real money is to drop me off at jewelers and massage parlours. I think they were pissed when I wasted their time and effort by walking off.

After that I just ignored anyone who tried to talk to me; there's a surprising number of good English speakers here. Much more than in Japan, and way more fluent. It's too bad their economy is so bad all they can do with it is try to rip off gullible tourists.

I walked by the royal palace, but only got to see the tops of what must be some really spectacular buildings; they were all blocked off from the road by heavy, stucco walls. I'm going to wait until Jenna gets here to tour the grounds. I passed a lot of government buildings on the major roads before heading into a few side-streets and alleys. I think my soul resides in a back alley somewhere; the sleeping drunks, old women in sun hats sorting chillis, the stench of rotting food and exhaust fumes - all of that is oddly resonant. Likely it's just a product of my middle-class upbringing. I identify with people who have less because I live comfortably enough to afford to.

I wandered in the back streets awhile, saw the ass-ends of businesses and restaurants, all the natives busy doing their own thing and none of them too concerned that I was there. Seemingly you can avoid hassle if you don't go where you're expected.

The river I'm sitting beside is the colour of the Royal Milk Tea they sell in Japanese vending machines: watery, mocha brown. Pint-sized boats with chugging motors haul massive black barges at a snail's pace. Larger tour boats skim by loaded with people, the tourists easily spotted in the crowd, pasty white faces flashing, holding cameras.

I don't like spending money and this trip is already more expensive than I hoped it would be. So I know going to places will be tight. Looks like I should bum around Bangkok by myself until Jenna gets here.

THE TRAVELLER'S DILEMMA: THERE ARE THINGS TO DO BUT THEY ALL COST MONEY; THERE ARE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY BUT THEN YOU AREN'T TRAVELLING.

Killing time staring at things is the only solution.

minus japan

2008-11-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

i'm going to leave out japan. that's all between nihon and me. you want to see what i think of japan check the last blog (http://www.livejournal.com/users/lifeisvegas) - my feelings haven't changed. the only difference is that i'm older, and japan isn't.

i spent a week there. it was a good time. i met some old friends and i generally enjoyed myself. kyoto is one of the greatest cities i've ever been to. i might go back to live there.

that's all on japan. next i went to thailand.

...

Day 7 - Bangkok - Nov. 2, 2008

WELLLLL..... You nutcase what've you done now? You sit at the patio at Baan Sabai guest house after a half-hearted wander in Khao san and they've got the Spice Girls playing on the sound system, which is somehow exactly appropriate.

I'm finding it all a bit much and my processing/linguistic centers are misfiring. I'll do my best to get it down:

It's pretty much exactly what I expected. Muggy, hot, crowded, a sticky amalgam of rickety neon wall-hangings and grimy pavement, an odd blend of shouted Thai and Western-European dialects. I keep seeing middle-aged white guys with Thai women who must be hookers - but how can those guys possibly stand themselves? It's one thing to hit up the red-light district but then to bring the girls back here and flaunt it in front of everyone? Too much man. That shit might fly in Dusseldorf but not in Toronto. We've got morals. Or a semblance of morality anyway.

There was this one aged hippie with a too-wild intensity in his eyes attempting to pick pieces of the universe out of the air and explain it to the bored Thai prostitute sitting across from him. Rule 1: When you find yourself believing she's into anything other than your money you've been here too long.

Grubby white folk everywhere - I'm one of them. Waxy-faced Thai dudes hanging around tuk-tuks trying to sell me on the idea of driving off to buy some girls. One guy laid a hand on me, trying to physically push me into the cart. I told him "no thank you" when I should have said "get your hand off me", but I look weak and deferential and pathetically eager to please so it's not like I blame him.

I ate phad thai across from an intense French dude named Guillame (he introduced himself as "Bill", said English people couldn't deal with Guillame.) He kind of reminded me of Joel Cunningham. The kind of guy who dealt drugs in highschool and who I would have been quietly scared of. I still felt a bit intimidated.

You can learn a lot from the Guillame's of the world: keep yourself to yourself, find work in Australian factories, lie about your name becuase you can't be bothered to explain it. (I envy the old Thai woman who just passed by because she can walk around and not be bothered by anyone. Like the book says, having nothing, no one wants anything from you.)

It smells alternately like exhaust fumes and a wet fart, but so far not both at the same time.

Mostly I'm hating this but I don't hate that I'm doing it. I need the chance to think. And I am thinking. That much seems obvious.

THIS IS A CRAZY ADVENTURE. MY GOAL TOMORROW IS NOT TO SPEND MORE THAN 500 BHAT. I SHOULD LOVE EVERY SECOND OF THIS SINCE IT'S GOING TO END TOO SOON. MANTRA: AT LEAST I'M NOT IN AN OFFICE.

keep it... real?

2008-11-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

i was wandering around and i figured i didn't have time or energy to blog . then the days started sort of dripping together and i wake up this morning and i've still got 4 nights until jenna gets here and nothing to do, and it's hot as satan's crotch outside and all the internet cafes are air-conditioned so i thought what the hell? i've been writing a lot, in a very nice, monogrammed leather notebook dave bought me, oh, years ago now, and it's getting very packed with ticket stubs and interesting receipts and scrawled reminiscences but i figure maybe some guy steals my camera bag and then that's me fucked, so i'd better get it on-line where it's safe. and i love that idea, of course, that it's safer on-line, more "real", in a sense, because it's there (wherever "there" - some massive hard-drive in palo alto maybe, or india), and it's not going anywhere. unlike a very nice leather notebook which can be stolen and lost forever.

but you can't paste ticket stubs into the blog. you pick and choose and hope for the best.

and with that said....