What I Learned in Thailand – A Victory Monument

I learned that the Thai national anthem is awesome.

I learned the value of taking pictures. My brain can only remember so much, and most of my memories have either escaped me completely, become harder to summon, or confused themselves with dreams. Pictures serve as a sort of cloud storage, making it less of a tragedy that I’m unable to recall most of the things I love most, something that I can only imagine getting worse as I age. Yeah, I know, I’m late to the party.

I learned that I like Thai street dogs more than American pet dogs.

I learned a lot about the things that I identify as – a black male of modest means. What those traits mean to me – and how I prioritize them – is very different for me than it is for others, and that’s both a good and bad thing.

I learned that the life of a human is no more resilient or promised than the life of an ant. If we want it to have meaning and value, then we have to give it meaning and value.

I learned that Khmer regimes never mastered the flying buttress.

I learned that the world is a small and incredible place.

I learned how to make friends like a child does, without judgment or prejudice, without searching for a reason to disqualify someone from friendship. I’ve made real friends on this trip, true friends, people whose minds I value and whose values I don’t mind. I’ve had conversations that were more invasive and lovely than I’d had in years.

I learned how to effectively negotiate the price of a painting of a lady playing a harp to an angry tiger.

I learned that the bland, soulless pop songs that I – in my irrational musical snobbery – so despise are beloved around the world and serve as a great way to bring people together who don’t share much else.

I learned that I’m not, in fact, able to defeat an elephant in single combat.

I learned that I love Cambodian women.

I learned about lifestyles of a writer that I hadn’t previously known or even imagined.

I learned, truly, that my history is not everyone else’s. The absolutes that I take for granted are not only ignored by many people, but considered entirely false by many more people.

I learned that being middle class in Thailand is vastly superior to being middle class in America.

I learned that nearly everything everyone told me about Thailand and it’s people  – and nearly everything I have previously said in this blog – was wrong. Thailand is a huge, diverse place. Most statements that generalize anything about this country (other than this one…?) are oversimplifications. In the same way that someone who had only been to Texas couldn’t really use that experience as a foundation to talk about Americans as a whole, my Thailand experience has been limited in a number of ways. To anyone reading this blog who is planning to come to Thailand – ignore anything else you’ve read in this blog about Thailand.

I learned that kids are actually pretty cool. Bleh…never thought I’d say that.

I learned a number of effective ways to hit another human being to cause as much damage as possible while keeping myself safe from retaliation.

I learned that the internet is the most powerful invention in the history of my lifetime, even more powerful than the cordless phone.

I learned some new ways to look at love.

I learned that there are 14 year-old children on this earth who, despite my significant reach, size, strength and “athleticism” advantage, would give me a serious, Rodney Kingian beating if I ever attempted to box them.

I learned that the Thai palette aligns perfectly with mine. In America, I’d always been baffled as to how people don’t eat sweets everyday and how every other store isn’t a dessert stand or candy shop. In Thailand, I’m about a Snickers away from Type-II diabetes.

My sister once asked me a question: Is there anything that, if you could accomplish it, would make you feel like anything is possible?

The usual things – running a marathon, winning a chess tournament, competing in the Olympics, learning another language, etc – were out of the running immediately. I overrate myself both physically and mentally, so I don’t imagine any of those things being so difficult for me that they would make me feel like there was nothing I couldn’t do.

Instead, I thought it’d be something socio-economic. Maybe brokering a deal with a bunch of older, wealthy men without feeling out of place or inferior. Turns out that wasn’t the right answer either.

Coming to Thailand has made me realize that anything is possible, and not because it was difficult. Other than the adjustment to having a toilet and shower head in the same space, much of Thai culture and life didn’t really ripple my comfort zone. Nonetheless, the things that I have seen, the things I’ve done, the people I’ve met – Lord, the people I’ve met! – and the lessons I’ve learned have taught me not only that I can do anything, but that I’ve always been able to do anything.

We all can. No matter how we were born or what we were or what we are, none of it restricts what we can be; that’s the beauty, the inevitable victory, of being human.

Back to ‘Murica. See yall soon.

Moses

Victory Monument

The Things in the North – Part II: Rai Mai Shoe

We left Pang Mapha the next morning to head to Chiang Rai, taking a van back through Chiang Mai to do so. We arrived in the evening, were joined by Jenna, slept in our wonderful and cheap lakefront hotel, then set off the next morning to check out the White Temple and the Black Temple (which we later learned is called “Black House”). The White Temple:

BEHOLD.

The most elaborate “No Smoking” sign in the world, I imagine/hope.

There were a few of these on the temple grounds, and for a dollar, you could add a little silver plaquething with your name onto one of these trees. A beautiful guestbook.

…was insane. The interior, which had a “no photos allowed” policy was stunning in every sense of the world. The artist who designed the entire temple (and continues to design it, with hand selected students. The project is supposed to take 90 years, continuing after his death) portrayed images of suffering and peace – with the former as a road to the latter – in incredible fashion, combining religious mythological imagery (demons, fire and brimstone, Buddhas, etc) with contemporary mythological and political imagery (everything from Hello Kitty to Batman to Harry Potter, the Twin Towers, etc) in a provocative and, for me, disturbing scene.

A tiny fragment of the interior photo that I found online. You can see Bumblebee from Transformers and Jigsaw from Saw on the left side.

From there, we went to the Black House, which didn’t have the immediate visual splendor of the White Temple, but was definitely a treat in its own right. As opposed to having a single primary attraction, the Black House was more of a temple compound, with a dozenish buildings containing various works of art, wood-crafted furnitures, and animals skins to convey an earthy, primal mood that was a stark contrast to the White Temple’s divinity.

The foresty grounds of the Black House.

White buildings in the center. Very striking given the deep green forest and other black buildings.

A nicely carved door.

One of the bizarre interior dining scenes in an art gallery, complete with horned furniture and animal bones.

From the black temple, we took a taxi out of Chiang Rai and over to Pu Chi Fa. A google image search of Pu Chi Fa makes it clear why it was on our destination list – visitors get an unreal view from the mountaintop, complete with crisp sunrise and a low fog layer that makes it look like you’re living on Olympus. Unfortunately, the weather was unkind to us and we didn’t get the thick, lush clouds beneath us that we’d hoped for. Still, we did get to play a great soccer game with the local kids (we won, don’t worry. U-S-A! U-S-A!) and enjoy a beautiful, though not magical, sunrise from the top of the mountain.

Layers of beauty.

I call this piece: A sign, a sun and the ladies.

The village shirt I mentioned in the last post. Holding on to my beanie so I don’t have to jump off the mountain after it if it blows away.

We left Chiang Rai that morning (after the sunrise) and headed back to Chiang Mai for the final and most anticipated leg of our northern adventure: Songkran. Songkran is the celebration of the Thai New Year. It takes place during the hottest days of the year and is a water festival where the Thai people blah blah honor gods blah blah peace and love.

Songkran is a three day water war and it the best holiday in the world.

The first of three weapons I would go through.

Songkran parade.

Nothing is so fearsome as a squad of teenage boys with water guns.

Glimpse: Songkran Chiang Mai 2013, the World’s Largest Water Fight

^ That’s just a glimpse and doesn’t even begin to capture the full insanity of what happens when an entire nation decides to revert to grade school warfare. I couldn’t really take pictures as I didn’t want my phone wrecked, and there’s no point in trying to describe it: There are no words, my friends.

It was the perfect end to a perfect vacation during the perfect six months in the perfect country. The only downside was saying goodbye to some truly incredible people that have done a wonderful number on how I think, how I feel about myself and others, and how I treat each day I have for the rest of my life.

Five days and 1 blog post away from home.

Moses

What I’m Reading: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

What I’m Writing: The Lincoln Lions (novel) – 42%

What I’m Listening To: The 20/20 Experience by Justin Timberlake

The Things in the North – Part I

So I finished my summer teaching…:

Don’t let the smiles fool you; these kids are monsters. Wonderful monsters, but monsters nonetheless.

The newest class at Phanom Adun. Only got to know them for a few weeks, but they had chutzpah.

Then left my town for ten days of adventure in northern Thailand. As an exercise in understatements, I will say that this last one and a half week period was one of the most fun and fulfilling endeavors of my short, beautiful life.

The adventures begin with several hours and methods of travel. A flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai with Jordan, then a van from Chiang Mai to Pai, where we met up with Shannon. After a few hours hanging out in Pai, we took a paid car to Pang Mapha. Pang Mapha is in Mae Hong Son – Thailand’s northernmost province – and is famous for its hundreds of underground caves. It makes sense, then, that the first thing we did the next morning was to go out and see some of those caves.

One of the many treks from cave to cave.

From left to right: Chaya, Lyndsey and Foued. Some great fellow cavers.

We left all of our things outside each cave so I didn’t get any pictures of the interior, but it was so dark that my measly phone camera wouldn’t have done anything anyway. We went through three caves, and while each one was unique (one was essentially an underground river path where we were crawling on our bellies in a stream for a few hundred feet, and another was full of loose, brittle rock – which gave me a nice gash when a chunk of wall that I was holding on to fell off), they each offered the same feelings of being under tons and tons of earth and being in a place so dark that, with our lights off, it was literally impossible to see one’s hand in front of one’s face. Awesome experience.

The next morning, we hitched a ride over to a local village to hang out with hilltribes. They turned out to be pretty much just regular people (we expected neckrings and cockroach teeth; they had both regular length necks and cockroach-free teeth) that were really good at weaving. I bought a shirt (picture forthcoming), whilst Jordan and Shannon got some scarves.

Once one lady saw us and set down her scarves for display, the entire village came out to sell their wares.

Village lady getting her weave on.

A wall painted by the students of the village school. Vegetables, mustaches, a turtle, Despicable Me, and Happy. “Five of these things are not like the others…”

Leaving the village, we set out back to the guest house for what was supposed to be a relaxing, two hour trek through the woods. We had been told to simply “follow the river.” After walking for about forty minutes, though, we got to a point where there was no riverbank, only river and dense forest. Lost, we then turned back and followed the road, a winding 6 miles of uphill and downhill exhaustion. At one point, we stopped in the middle of the road and sat to regain our breath, check out remaining water supply and bury those who had died of dysentery. When we finally made it back to the guesthouse and asked why the gods had forsaken us, we were again told that we were supposed to follow the river. Literally. As in, get in the river and float back. Heh…city folk. We don’t know anything/think of swimming as recreational rather than viable transportation.

City Folk Pictionary: Family hike.

Shout out to Cave Lodge for leading amazing tours (Uncle Wat, our tour guide, was a 60 year old man. Impressive and emasculating) and being the friendliest, most accommodating guest house I’ve stayed at here in Thailand.

Check out The Things in the North: Part II for the riveting conclusions of our journey.

Moses

Catching Up, Facing Changes (Sooo many pictures)

It’s been a while since my last post, so I’ll do a quick fast forward through some things that have happened over the last three or so weeks-ish.

Cambodia:

I’m not one for sentimental stuff and I always kinda roll my eyes at people that go to a town for one or two days then spend the rest of their life saying that they “fell in love” with the place or whatever, but… (ah, the golden “but”)…I kinda, maybe, really liked Cambodia. Angkor Wat was pretty much as mind-blowing as I expected, even for someone with my very poor understanding of architectural wonders (luckily, Kelsey was there to serve as our tour guide and explain how ancient Khmer regimes never mastered the flying buttress). I said it at one point during the trip, but it’s worth repeating that the building had a sort of …gravity as we approached it. I felt like it was pulling me towards it. Really incredible. And we watched the sun rise over Angkor Wat at sunrise, which was all the majesty of the intro to The Lion King wrapped into a single image.

NAAAAAAAA SIMENYAAAAA BABAQUICHEINABAH!!

We also visited Ta Prohm (the temple from Tomb Raider. Really fun) and the Angkor Thom temple complex (which was actually more impressive than Angkor Wat in a lot of ways), along with a flooded village (awesome), Asia’s largest lake (or something. I wasn’t paying attention when someone explained it to me) and the Siem Reap nightlife. I won’t go into exhaustive detail as I want to finish this post, but the Cambodia I experience in my time there was my kind of country. Not only because Cambodian women are gifts from the heavens, but also because Cambodian women are super, really, almost ridiculously good looking. Also, haggling is more fun in Cambodia and the one club/bar/lounge we went to was outstanding. And the women…

Perchin in Ta Prohm.

Major temple in Angkor Thom (I forget the name).

They build the houses up several stories because the entire town floods during the rainy season and they have to take boats/jetpacks to school

Krabi:

This last weekend, I went to Krabi. I’d initially planned to go with people, but then changed my mind and decided to fly solo (read: everyone ditched me #sadface). This was both good and bad for a few different reasons: This was good because I only really wanted to go down there to read books, play guitar and climb rocks. When you travel with other people, though, you gotta play nice and also do some things that they wanna do. This was bad because it was the first time I’d ever traveled alone and I’d gotten used to the experience of doing it with others.

The first day I was there was kind of a bummer.  With no one to prod me into being social and being energetic when I got tired, I didn’t really do much other than eat, play guitar and read. The second day, though, I realized that I was getting to do EXACTLY what I wanted. I didn’t really want to go out at night or even make any fulfilling social connections. Realistically, I was only being deprived of about 10 minutes of conversation that I could’ve used, but it was a small price to pay for having complete autonomy and free time. So the second day, I went to climb some rocks, play some guitars, and read some books and it was awesome. Funny story: I finished my climbing day with a 30 meter climb. About 25 meters up, my face was sweaty and my brand new glasses slid off and fell. At the time, I thought they’d only fallen to a rocky outcropping a few feet beneath me, but I later found out they’d fallen aaaaaall the way back to the earth. And they completely survived! Pretty sure I used up all my karma, though.

“When life gets tough and things get tragic, have a splife it’s ****in MAGIC!” This man was responsible for my safety.

Climbin

Krabi is a good lookin’ place.

If you look closely, you can see part of the smoke monster.

End of school:

Last week marked the end of the fall…or spring…or whatever semester of school, which means it was the last time I got to see many of my students. Sad times, yo. On the plus side, I’ll be teaching summer classes the next few weeks so I’ll get to see some of my students a few more times (including one of my favorite classes) and will also get a fresh new batch of seventh graders to destr- …er…teach.

The Phanom Adun glee club. New Directions ain’t got nothin on us. The guy on my right is my Finn and the girl on my left is my Rachel Berry. No, they can’t sing. None of them can sing even a little bit.

My favorite kids from my favorite class. Yes, I absolutely have favorites.

“Father and son,” my coordinator said as she took this pic. This kid alone was worth six months in Thailand.

The three girls in front of me are budding musicians. One of my girls presented me with a rose towards the end of class. I was touched.

EP2 (Eighth grade)! I get two more weeks of these crazies.

That’s enough of that, I imagine. Adam, Amy and Emily have all left Phanomsarakham, so I’m the last bastion of American freedom left in town. I’ll spend the next month teaching, writing, reading, fighting and struggling to learn a bit of Thai before I leave. Talk to yall soon!

Moses

What I’m Reading: A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson / The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

What I’m Writing: Various songs and The Lincoln Lions (novel) – 40%

What I’m Listening To: The Very Best of Prince by Prince

Weekend in Phanom

Hey all,

Long time no talk. So instead of getting my travel on, I stayed in town this weekend. There isn’t much to do in my little paradise of Phanomsarakham, but there’s at least enough for a few days and there are always books to read, so yay. Here’s a recap:

Friday – 9:13am: While teaching my M1s (7th grade) about sports, they name a few popular Thai sports, including Sepak Takraw. Sepak Takraw, which roughly translates to “ninja volleyball,” is a popular Southeast Asian sport that is similar to volleyball, except that…you have to be a ninja to play. Seriously, look:

Anyway, one kid raises a Sepak Takaw ball into the air, which I assume is the formal way to challenge someone, so I have some of the desks moved and ITS ON! About thirty seconds later, I’ve accidentally kicked the ball out of the second story window and the game is over.

Friday – 10:15am: On to my next class of M1s, where I’m also teaching sports. This time, no one has any sporting equipment, so I assume I’m safe. And I am, until I ask for a volunteer to demonstrate a sport. The students assume that I’m asking for a volunteer to, instead, fight with. Their choice of combat? Sumo. So the room harasses the class fat kid (there’s one in almost every class and it doesn’t seem to be a particularly shameful title) until he agrees to sumo the teacher. We sumo, he wins (I only kinda let him. Kids be strong, yo) and the class seems a little disappointed that I didn’t use my farang strength and launch him from the second story window. Life isn’t fair kids.

Friday – 8:09pm: Me, Adam, Amy and Emily went out to our town bar, Tam Tams. It’s a pretty cool spot and there’s live music every night, courtesy of the bar owner (who used to be one of our coordinator’s students) and his band. We had a good deal of fun and discussed a lot of important issues, such as Kurt Cobain’s street fight record. At one point, Emily accidentally proclaimed that Kanye West and Kobe Brant are the same person, just in different fields and I had to inform her that Kanye West is the voice of a generation, something Kobe is most assuredly not. Also, Adam proclaimed his love for our waitress for the evening, only to be turned down with a smile (because, Thailand). Turns out that her name, Ice, was also a descriptor of how cold her romantic sensibilities were. Life isn’t fair, indeed.

If it were fair, Beyonce woulda won. Just sayin’. U mad T-Swift?

So that ends Friday. Earlier in the week, our instructor offered to take us foreigners to the local floating market in Bang Khla. The plan was to meet up at school on Saturday morning at 10:30am.

Saturday – 11:00am: Our instructor arrives and we head off to the floating market. I’d forgotten that I’d actually been there a few weeks earlier, but it was a different experience this time, especially with a Thai person to explain things. We started off with a several course lunch, then hopped on a small boat for a nice river cruise. From far away, we saw the massive statue of Ganesh and the gold covered temple, and stopped at a different temple that I don’t know the name of but assume that it must be called “The Bat Cave.”

Bats on bats on bats

Ajarn Sompit (our coordinator) explained that the bats only stay on the temple grounds. There are the same types of trees right outside the temple, but the bats don’t perch in them. Strange stuff.

That’s our fearless leader, Ajarn Sompit, in the life jacket. It’s more to protect the river from her than to protect her from the river.

A really nice river mansion.

Thus ends Saturday.

Sunday, I met up with Pee Nut (my Muay Thai trainer. Pee is a title that means elder brother. We’re not related and, yes, I call him Peanut) in the afternoon. All semester, the rumor mill had been churning that there was a muay thai gym in Phanom, but we hadn’t found anyone that had any further info on it, other than that it may have possibly existed in town at any point during the last fifteen years. Well, after some top level sleuthing, I managed to get a lead. We hopped in Pee’s truck and drove about fifteen minutes away from town central and into the jungle. Lemme tell you, we were pumped. All this private training was good and dandy, but I wanted to get to a gym with other folk and do some damage (read: get knocked out by a Thai teenager six weight classes below me)! After stopping to ask directions a few times, we found it. Not only did it definitely exist, but it was still in use!

Unfortunately (read: fortunately), all of the fighters except one were asleep and the awake one couldn’t train on account of a broken rib. Still, I got to do a bit of bagwork and took their info so that I can go back, which I fully intend to do once I’ve done some serious cardio training. I was panting like Spongebob after about 20 minutes of bagwork.

SQUAREpanting, that is! Ba-dum-tsssshhhhh!

After practice, I went home and ate all kinds of delicious, unhealthy stuff. I’ll start my cardio tomorrow or something.

Till next time!

Moses

What I’m Reading: Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee and After Dark by Haruki Murakami

What I’m Writing: Short Story and Flash Fiction revisions

What I’m Listening To: Ivy League: Kick Back by CyHi The Prynce

How I Spend My Free Thaim

See what I did there with the title?

Anyway, I figured I’d make an entry that could actually be helpful to the people of the future who want to teach and live in Thailand, even though we’ll have teleporters by then so they could live in their home country and still work in Thailand. The most pressing question is typically “What is your day to day like?” Honestly, I only teach three or four hours a day and am done with the school day by 3:30pm, so I end up with a lot of the day to myself?

“What do you do with all that free thaim?” you ask, spelling “time” the same way I did in the title, you clever devil. Read on!:

1. Hobbies

This guy knows what’s up.

Those that know me know that I love myself some hobbies. In fact, I think I have enough hobbies that having hobbies is my hobby. Hobby hobby hobby. It’s a funny word.

One benefit of living in a country that has both a weak currency and an inexpensive standard of living is that you can have as many hobbies as you want and not be considered financially irresponsible. Buy an instrument, take a class, learn the language. It’s basically free and you’ll be getting better at something.

Among other things, I’ve been doing archery every other weekend in Bangkok. Ramkamhaeng University has free archery lessons for beginners every Saturday morning from 10-11am and the only fee (other than travel) is a 300 baht (10 dollars) yearly membership fee to their massive sports complex that would allow you to do everything from archery to rockclimbing to Afghan goat carcass polo, I presume. I took up archery because it’s something I’ve always wanted to be good at and doing it in the States can be pretty expensive. In Thailand, I take a two hour van to Bangkok, a mass transit (airport rail link) to the university area, then a cab to the campus. I do the opposite to get back home. All in all, the trip costs me about 350 baht (about 12 dollars). In the states, that wouldn’t even cover the gas it would cost me to drive one way to the nearest archery club, much less the monthly classes fee or equipment rental.

2. Lifestyle/Spirituality/Etc.

If your yoga teacher hasn’t taught you this yet, go get your money back.

For religious people, I’d recommend finding a place to worship. It’ll give you a bit of familiarity to relax you and minimize homesickness, and it’ll also give you a community here in Thailand to support you. Thailand is a pretty diverse and international country, so I’m sure you could find something, depending on where you live; as long as you’re not a Scientologist, which I’m going to assume doesn’t exist in the future anyway.

Other than religion, there are plenty of options for spirituality, reflection, meditation, etc. My spiritual activity of choice is martial arts, so I’ve taken up Muay Thai lessons from a teacher in my town. Muay Thai actually has a number of cadet branches based on the region of Thailand they developed in, so mine is more specifically called Muay Chaiya. My instructor is part Pillsbury Doughboy, part Tony Jaa, so the lessons are pretty enjoyable. And he doesn’t charge me, so there’s that. While it helps physically, I think anyone who has studied a martial art for any length of time will tell you that it affects how you think and how you interact with people around you and how you sleep at night as much as it affects your muscles and balance and killing ability.

3. Media

This is a big one for lazy people (I guess. I wouldn’t know). There are days when you don’t want to go anywhere or do anything physical or social, and it’s important to have things to do at home. Books, movies, music, newspapers, holograms, and virtual pets will all make your life easier. I’m a caveman, so I brought a number of books with me instead of getting an E-reader, but you shouldn’t be like me. And for the 3 of you who don’t steal music and movies, I guess you can stock up on those too.

Additionally, video games. I’ve gone back to playing Rome: Total War and I’m a better, cleaner person because of it.

4. Travel

Some people don’t like to travel, and I definitely understand that. If you’re not the type, then replace this with “being social.” I grow weary of interacting with people, but I use every other weekend to travel with my fellow teachers to different exotic locales. It’s always fun and educational, and it’s good to remind myself that there are other people in Thailand that are just as inept at speaking Thai as I am.

Bangkok is the central hub of travel for all of central Thailand and it’s almost always easiest to go through Bangkok (Mo Chit bus station for long trips and vans at Victory Monument for places near Bangkok) to get to where you’re going. Any of the islands (Ko Samet, Ko Chang, Ko Konut, etc) are worth a visit, as well as Chiang Mai in the north, the various national parks and really every single square inch of Thailand. There’s a lot to see.

5. Preparing For the Future

You’re gonna need a lot of preparation…

Ah, yes.

No matter how much you’re enjoying yourself in Thailand, most of us will leave this paradise to go back to our underwhelming lives in whatever terrible first world country gave us citizenship. Because of that, you should always be working, at least a little bit, on the life you’ll lead when this is over. Filling out job applications or updating your resume or what have you. Call your mother every now and then, so you have somewhere to live when you go back penniless. If you’re an artist, work on your art. If you’re a normal person, try to find volunteer activities or workshops in your field that will look great on that resume you should’ve updated three sentences ago.

You may not enjoy it since there are always more fun things to do in Thailand than worry about home, but you’ll appreciate if you do it and hate yourself if you don’t. Believe me. I wrote this whole blog post to avoid finishing a grad school application.

Later!

Moses

What I’m Reading: America Again: Re-Becoming The Greatness We Never Weren’t by Stephen Colbert

What I’m Writing: Everything but grad school apps

What I’m Listening To: Life is Good by Nas

A Little Travel Poetry

I’ve accepted that I won’t be a particularly good poet until I’m old and mustached, but I try to write one every now and then to practice wordplay and what not. I wrote this poem back in October when I went to visit Cade in Vegas and it wasn’t at all about travel, but now that I’ve left the country, I realize that it’s entirely about travel. So there (or here, rather) you have it:

All The Things You’ve Forgotten

Remind me

 

Of your left hemisphere brain

Its long and lovely attitude

River grooves, tributary thoughts

And the continental drift of your countenance

 

The way your ears flushed

And your cheeks perked up

And your upturned teeth filtered tropical

Rain from the thunderous Brazilian sky

 

Your eyes were a summer in Greenland

Roads from the coast

To the national interior, teeming

With lilies and hyacinth

 

Mozambique swept your hair

In strips of willow bark, in flashing firelight

Drum circles by the watering

Hole in step with your shadow

 

Electronic billboards, concerted flashbulbs

Our Korean weeknights

And your karaoke lips a warm inch

From the microphone

 

You are my work desk, my pain

grotto, summer CD full

Of anthems, my inside

Joke, tribe and chieftain

 

You are my rent-week paycheck, my go

to dance move, escape route, dead

End, terminal wellness, my holiday scarf

The only memory I need to keep

 

Till next time!

Moses

What I’m Reading: America Again: Re-Becoming The Greatness We Never Weren’t by Stephen Colbert

What I’m Writing: Songs and Novel and the last few Grad stuff

What I’m Listening To: Blunderbuss by Jack White

A Little More Conversation Vol. 3 – Part of Your World

I find it hard to be narcissistic out here.

Lemme explain.

Back home, as I go about my day, there’s a feeling in the very back of my head that, in some strange, impossible way, the word revolves around me. It’s possible that this is a #mosesproblem and that anyone reading this is judging me as delusional, but I don’t think I’m quite that unique. I have this impression that my life is like The Truman Show or that I’m the main character of some ongoing narrative like in Stranger Than Fiction (the only Will Farrell movie I can tolerate, btw). When I wait at the train stop to go to work, I’m in my own head and the other people around me – even though it is very obvious that they came from somewhere, are going somewhere, and have their own lives independent of mine – feel like extras. When I accomplish something that I consider “important,” I feel like it is some pivotal scene in The Book of Moses that will change the plot from here on out.

Admittedly, parting the Red Sea was a pretty big deal.

In some ways, I guess, the feeling is valid; our lives are indeed stories. But, realistically, the things that I do on a day to day basis are pretty unimportant. Even the things Barack Obama does on a day to day basis are pretty unimportant in the scope of human history. That’s the nature of the mundane.

Out here, though, I’ve come to realize that I feel incredibly, wonderfully unimportant. Part of it likely has to do with the language barrier; it’s pretty difficult to assume you play an important role in reality when you’re sitting at a table full of conversing people who don’t – and couldn’t, even if they wanted to – say a word to you. And part of it likely has to do with how much history I’ve learned about a place that I only knew existed in theory. American history almost comes off as mythology due to how ingrained it is and how few of the actual locations I’ve been to, but when I’m learning about the Kings of Siam while looking at their ancestral palace, it’s kind of hard to deny that there has been and will be quite a bit going on, whether or not Moses is around to see it.

Moreso than the two above explanations, I subscribe to the belief that this denarcissification effect is due to the abundance and diversity of life I interact with out here, and I don’t just mean wildlife. As far as animals go, the only ones I see on a daily basis are dogs, cats, geckos, cockroaches, and various flying things.

Flying sharks are pretty common around here.

What I mean is, literally, the diversity of life. I see life in all it’s forms every single day. The various packs of street dogs finished birthing season a month or so ago, and there were litters of puppies chillin close-eyed on the roadside on my way to school. Those puppies have since opened their eyes and learned to cross the street. There’s a young pigeon couple that lives [and shits, relentlessly] two feet above my front door. The mosquitoes bite me, the geckos eat the mosquitoes, and the neighborhood cats fight each other to the death every night. With regards to humans, I wave to babies, instruct children, co-teach with adults, and receive all my services (food, laundry) from the elderly. In a one mile radius from my house, there are one room wooden shacks, two story houses, and expansive mansion compounds, and the people in that radius are just as varied as their living economic conditions. On the same day that I saw a newborn, my coordinator went to three funerals.

There’s so much life that I’m witness to that it seems absurd that my tiny handful outweighs any other. There’s a whole system that’s moving and flowing very visibly and very independent of me, like a Circle of…things living.

This comes up for a reason. I was waiting for the bus the other day and, after about fifteen minutes, it came by. The bus stop is on one side of the highway and the bus picks up at the highway median. By the time I looked up from pausing the song on my phone, the bus was already leaving.

So I whistled for a cab and when it came near…

I got up and waved frantically, but the only person who saw me was an old lady in the back of the bus. She gestured “You supposed to be on this?” and I nodded “Yeah!” The bus drove away, then came back two minutes later to pick me up.

Despite this seeming intuitively like it should’ve made me feel even more central to Thailand’s workings, it instead made me feel very, very insignificant in the best way possible. If my life were a book, then me missing the bus would’ve been simply a part of the plot. I didn’t pay attention, so I missed the bus. But the bus coming back made me feel like just a cog in the clock, a small part of the system. The old lady was the main character in that exchange, not me. It was her agency that turned around the whole bus to pick up one inattentive foreigner.

I like it. I like the world being so big and me – and the insects and the birds and the other people and the mountains – being so small.

Moses

2012 to 2556 – Hua Hin and The Story of Hot Richard

From Phanomsarakham to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Hua Hin, my conclusionary weekend of 2012 began like any other.

After that, though, it got awesome really, really quick. I didn’t take many pictures cause I was busy having an amazing time (and taking video, but that takes forever to upload), so I apologize in advance.

The first full day of our stay in Hua Hin, Liz had the brilliant of idea of taking a 6km walk along the beach from the Hilton to Khao Takiab (a temple in Hua Hin on a hill). I say brilliant sarcastically because a long walk sounds awful, but it actually turned out to be one of the better ideas any of us had that weekend.

At one point during the walk, we went inland to stop at 7-11 (the American Moses in my head recoils at how casually and frequently I say that) and came across a small dog (we’d seen him earlier harassing horses on the beach). There are more stray dogs in Thailand than there are Bieber fans on Twitter, but he had been chillin outside and looked at us curiously as we came out so, instead of ignoring him, some of us gave him a pat on the head.

Strangely, when we got back on our journey to the temple, the dog seemed to be leading the way:

Our spirit guide animal thing.

He then proceeded to lead us for several miles, stopping to look back at us when he got to far ahead (four legs are faster than two). I wasn’t sure if he was leading us to some dog wonderland, or if he had decided to join us on our journey to the temple, or if he was a mafia-trained assassin dog until he turned down a street that wasn’t the way to the temple. By now, Taylor had given him the name Hot Richard, so I said to him, “Hot Rich, that’s not the right road. We’re goin this way, dawg.”

So he came back onto the main street and continued leading us.

At this point, I knew that he could understand English, was actually named Hot Richard by his birth parents, and was very likely from a different planet where dogs speak English and are named for British kings (kinda).

Me and the Dog himself.

We continued along the beach. We walked, Hot Rich led. When we stopped to take pictures, he’d stop to chill in the shade. We eventually got to the temple, where Hot Rich left us. He said he had a meeting to get to.

 

The temple was full of monkeys, which I didn’t get any pictures of for some reason. Also, monkeys, at least these ones, are jerks. I saw about four people get mugged  by the monkeys at the temple and a number of attempted robberies. The man that ran the ice cream stand had a sling shot that he kept at the ready, and he sent an overly bold monkey scurrying off when he aimed for it.

On the second day of our trip, we went to get ice cream at a place called Eighteen Below, which was owned by a Belgian chef and his Thai wife. Some of the best ice cream (and apple juice, curiously enough) that I’ve ever had. Then we went into this guy’s house/music store/bookstore  (called Rhythm & Books) and met a Thai writer/photographer who was incredibly inviting and opened his life up to us. A very very remarkable man. He also recommended to us a better, more secluded beach than the Scandanavian tourist-filled main beach.

That beach is where we had the most epic of sand castle building competitions. I ended up winning, Taylor took [a distant] second, Liz kind of got third and Jeff absolutely lost. Only mine and Taylor’s had the proper moat and walls to survive the incoming tide. Jeff’s washed away almost instantly and Liz’s washed away twice. Amateurs.

For a more entertaining, but less accurate recounting of the event’s, see Liz’s blog posts at:

http://lifeisnotacasserole.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/the-fellowships-quest-to-khao-takiab/

http://lifeisnotacasserole.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/sandcastle-wars/

Anyway, that night was New Year’s Eve night, so we went bowling then hit the beach for the midnight countdown. There were fireworks and Scandinavians everywhere, the former of which were exploding about fifty feet from us because Thailand doesn’t bother with nonsense regulations. The result was the most dangerous and spectacular firework show I’ve ever seen.

So here’s to 2013 (Or 2556, to tie in the title. Thailand doesn’t use the Gregorian calendar). With all the memories and progress and happiness that 2012 brought, this new year has a lot to live up to. I’m looking forward to enjoying the remainder of my time here in Thailand and getting back to my family and friends in the States.

Thanks for reading. Miss and love you all!

“May we all live long, may we all be brave, may the bridges we burn only light our way.” –  From Candles in the Sun by Miguel

Moses

What I’m Reading: The Once and Future King by T.H. White

What I’m Writing: Grad Stuff/Songs

What I’m Listening To: Kaleidoscope Dream by Miguel

Ten Days with Animals Part 3 – BUAKAW

This last post covers the most dangerous and elusive of all Thai animals. No, not a tiger. I’m talking about the Muay Thai Master, The White Lotus himself, Buakaw Por Pramuk!

On December 16th, the last leg of a several month international Muay Thai tournament, hosted by Thai Fight, was held in Bangkok and it would’ve been foolish of me not to go. Also it was free, because Thailand is better than every other country on Earth.

So we go over to King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) Plaza where the fight is being held:

The famous statue of King Chulalongkorn on his horse. The inspiration for the Gangnam Style dance, true story.

They had a sign up on Facebook for the event (it was free, but they had sign ups to guarantee a spot if the place filled up), but since it was all in Thai, it was difficult for me to navigate. Ajarn Sompit (Ajarn is a term for teachers. She’s our coordinator, as mentioned in previous posts) is a huuuuuge muay thai fan, so she’d been keeping me updated on things and mentioned the sign ups. When we got there, my name wasn’t on the list, but I told them that maybe it should’ve been, so they gave us tickets.

The plaza was pretty incredible and whatever White House-looking building they have there made a beautiful backdrop for the ring.

While it was still sunny out, they held the prelim bouts. There were fighters from Ukraine, Belarus, Ivory Coast and a few other countries participating. There was a heavyweight tournament that took place and, while it was fun to watch, Muay Thai requires a precision, coordination and speed that really only looks right when the smaller guys do it.

So anyway, it gets dark and the main card starts. This is when the theatricality of the event was on full display. Smoke, laser lights, giant LCDs, and 30 foot tall image of the king, etc. Thai Fight knows how to put on an event.

 

And they gave us all these inflated clapper things, which was cool.

My phone is a phone and not a camera, so I wasn’t able to get any particular brilliant pictures of the event, but it was too awesome for pictures anyway. You had to be there. I’ve been to a number of fights back in the States and while its always fun and awesome, the density of drunk, muscled, testosterone-filled, douchebags tends to limit how much I can enjoy the event since I have to spend part of my energy avoiding drink spills and blocking out the shouts of ignorant fight advice from armchair quarterbacks.

In Thailand, or at least for this event, though, this was not the case. The audience, like everything else in Thailand, was diverse. There were old people, there were kids, there were young women who clearly were there to watch the fight and weren’t just accessories to their boyfriends. There were Thai celebrities and regular folk. There were plenty of young men, but few were drinking (which was a bit surprisingly, actually. Thai people love their whiskey) and the ones that were only had enough to have a good time and not to become belligerent. There was a group of Belarussians there to cheer on Buakaw’s unfortunate opponent who would chant “Belarus.” At first, the Thai fans were responding with chants of “Thailand,” but when they saw that it was several thousand Thai fans against six Belarussian dudes, some of the Thai fans started chanting “Belarus” to make it more even. Lolz.

Part of this, I think, is due to the cultural component of Muay Thai. While it is a combat sport, and one of the more brutal ones, actually, they don’t seem to view it, primarily, as a legalized, regulated street fight. The fighters bow to the King’s image on entrance, they do a traditional dance and bow to their trainers beforehand. Traditional Thai music is playing throughout (well, a Thai band with Thai instruments. They played Jingle Bells at one point). The audience seemed pretty educated on the sport and revered the technical brilliance of the main event and co-main event more than the bombastic violence of the undercard bouts.

But, anwyay, on to Buakaw. I only took video of his entrance cause I didn’t want to be looking through a phone for it, but it was pretty bananas. Before he entered, there was a several minute video highlight reel of his journey through the tournament and when he finally came out, to his epic theme music, there was smoke and lights and fireworks and angels playing trumpets and they released wild lions into the audience and Chuck Norris flew in on Silver Surfer’s board…absolutely insane. He’s basically a superhero out here and his entrance definitely showed that.

The fight was pretty tame as far as spectacle, but wonderful as far as tactics and execution. His opponent, who was very, very capable, used his longer reach and frame to mess around with distance, which made it hard for Buakaw to go to work with his obscene kicks. Instead, Buawkaw worked his clinch grappling and scored six or seen throws and takedowns.

In the end, Buakaw took the unanimous victory and is the 2012 Thai fight champion.

It was a pretty cool night and my students went nuts when I told them I was there live. Most of them watched it on TV.

Good times, good times.

Moses

What I’m Reading: The Once and Future King by T.H. White

What I’m Writing: Grad Stuff/Novel

What I’m Listening To: Off the Wall by Michael Jackson