No Shoes

My way of travel involves my own limited understanding of mankind's role in this universe. It involves a heaping spoon of randomness stirred lightly with mobility. Being in the right places and making decisions as you go. Finding the right guest house and bar is infinitely important in my line of work. It's not just about finding the cheapest or the cleanest, it's about finding the right kind of people. Monday night I knew I needed to camp out at the Rasta bar in front of our guest house. I knew I needed information from those more traveled than I am in this region.

So Lyndsey and I ordered our drinks and drew out a calender and began visualizing all the options in front of us. My gut kept leading me to Pai, a village three hours away on the Burmese border overrun with bohemians. We were both still interested in Laos. There were also a million posters in the open-air lounge of the Banana Guest House showing downhill mountain biking, white water rafting, a million courses on all things Thai, and trekking. Trekking is the main thing here. Locals take you into the woods to see waterfalls, ride elephants, and gawk at the hill tribes - particularly the "long necks" you see in National Geographic.

Serendipity stuck as I walked back to our room to grab the Lonely Planet. A man around my age and looking much more traveled was standing about after asking the inn keeper a question.

"You! Have you been in Thailand long?"

"A month."

My prayers. Answered.

"Have a beer with my friend and I?"

Thus we sat and chatted. They had just come back from a trek and were raving about it. Campfires, bamboo rafts, waterfalls. It sounded great. We decided then and there to do that. Then something even more curious arose. My new friends girlfriend mentioned going to a meditation class on Tuesday. It was 24 hours long, in a temple, run by monks, and was funded through donations.

Something clicked in my head. I've long joked that I ought to be a Buddhist monk when in the depths of indecision about my life. I've also long had that Western fascination with the non-divine religion of Buddhism, the philosophy as lifestyle. And here it was, a glimpse into a monks life at one of these ancient Wat's lying about.

After motorbiking around earlier in the day trying to find a rumored Chinese-speaking community and their mosque somewhere in Chaing Mai, we met back up with Isabelle to go to the temple.

We were piled into a classroom with 20 other foreigners in the local Buddhist university and given a quick run down on the tenants of Buddhist. For those not in the know, basically we have 1) all life is suffering, 2) suffering comes from desires, 3) to end suffering you must be liberated from your desires, 4) the Enlightened One has a path full of meditation to relieve you of the unfulfilled desires wreaking havoc on our souls.

I can perhaps agree with all four Noble Truths. I have issues, however, with the core assumption that we need to be liberated from suffering. Perhaps I still have that old Christian outlook that a little bit of pain can be good for you in the long run. I still believe that emotional pain is how we grow. Not that we should bring it on or shouldn't avoid it, but I'm also hesitant to believe that we need to make a life running from the attachments that bring us pain and suffering. Those attachments have also brought me the greatest joys in life.

Back to the program... and, man, it was a program. We were boarded up in trucks and taken half an hour out into the countryside to a new facility they had build.

We begin by getting to our [big, clean] rooms and change into white monkish linens. One-size fits all garments that are as comfortable as they are freaky. It looks precisely like what you'd think someone would wear right before committing ritual suicide with 20 other "open minded spiritualists" in a jungle compound.

We come together for tea after that. Little did I know that this was to be the last time we were supposed to speak until lunch the next day, so I cracked jokes about when the Kool-Aid was going to be served and doing Karate Kid poses.

After dinner we sit and first learn how to bow in front of the Buddha. Somehow I didn't expect this. I really, really didn't like bowing down in front of a picture of Buddha. We then chant. I have no idea what I'm chanting. We then try our first meditation.

I think meditation, I think sitting cross-legged and spacing out. I'm all about that. When Buddhist monks think meditation they have a few more tricks up their sleave. They like walking meditation. Imagine the slowest choreographed dance ever. Without dancing. You're walking. At a set pace. In a very set way. Very. Very. Slowly. I think we covered one meter in five minutes. Three feet. Five minutes. Over and over again. And then again.

Peace did not come to your humble fair narrator. My ADD-wracked mind wanted to tear my eyeballs out. Everything was annoying me. Even the calm, peaceful whisper-voices of the monks leading the way. "Visualize turning. Turning. Turning. Turning. Lifting. Treading, Stepping, Lifting, Lifting..."

After we left that session I ran up to Lyndsey. In Chinese in told her that we needed to speak. I hate this program. I want to go back to Chiang Mai. She turned around and looked at me. Deep meditation had changed her into someone else other than my travel companion. I went to find the real Lyndsey who wouldn't speak to me. She merely pointed to her name tag that said, "silence." Did I forget to mention the "silence" name tags?

Once everyone else was away she gave me her blessing for me to find my own way back to town. I chickened out at the prospect of walking down unknown Thai roads looking for a willing motorcyclist to pick up a silly foreigner.

Things lightened up when I got back to my room. My roommate was cool. We ignored the silence rule and laughed about the program. Making fun of it quickly made it far less serious. It gave me the courage to face another day. And thus that day came at 5am with the ringing of bells.

The "master" came to us this morning. The other monks were around my age and just out of monk university. This man had been there and done with everything except the things I do everyday. His inner peace was almost too much. He spoke in barely a whisper about peace and happiness and monkey brains.

I kind of liked the term. It was his contrast to a peaceful, meditated brain. The monkey brain wanted to jump around everywhere. The meditated brain was focused. We did yoga, which was a lot more relaxing than I expected, then broke for breakfast. Afterwards, In the mountain fog and soft life of northern Thai morning, I think I actually learned to meditate. They gave us a Buddhist rosary and told us to do the same things we did last night, except in a chair and counting beads slowly instead of trying of thinking about the tip of our nose or abdomen.

I lightened up considerably. I kind of enjoyed the rest of the program. We were able to speak after lunch and everyone in the program was really cool. I ate with an Irish singer who's mixing traditional Thai and Celtic music together for a CD. There were only three Americans in the whole mix. I guess in the end, it was nice not wearing shoes and I kind of want to find a set of prayer beads somewhere.

Chiang Mai

The train to Chiang Mai was an all-night party. It was exactly unlike the Chinese train in that our car was filled with foreigners and the Thai crew were partying with us on the way up. We sat next to an exceedingly cheerful bald Amsterdamian in his late thirties who was to trek through the jungles with his father. His father, a good man with a mustache curled at both ends, gave me a small pouch of quality Dutch tobacco. He had been to the Indonesian jungles eight times and is exactly what you'd expect an 18th century colonial safari sojourner to look like.

We arrived at around ten in the morning and tuk-tuk'ed to the Banana Guest House. It's the first time I've never had to pay up front for a room. Even my lunch was put on a tab. We spent the first part of the morning wandering around looking at Buddhist temples. We struck gold with Wat Chedi Luang, a 700 year old temple half ruined 500 hundred years ago by an earthquake. A sign to side read "Monk Chat," so we spent the next hour with a 21 year old monk talking about infinity, faith, science, and Buddhist rituals. I bought a book from him, exchanged email addresses [he also had a cell phone {to call his mother}], and I intend to keep the conversation alive.

I upped adventure up a notch after that. I rented a motorcycle for roughly $3. I've never ridden a motorcycle before, or even ridden on for that matter. I thought it was a moped. It was not. I spent the next hour struggling to keep on the left side of the road, shift gears, and figure out where the hell I was. Luckily the core of Chiang Mai is walled in making it truly difficult to get meaningfully lost. My legs are still shaking from that little party. I'm not sure if I have the testicular fortitude to continue learning this particular craft. It feels as dangerous as it is. I've never wanted a seat belt more.

Don't know where we're going now. There's a lot of "trekking" near here... to village tribes, to elephant riding through the jungles, to white water rafting, downhill mountain biking, even cross-border visa runs to Myanmar and Laos. My gut is telling me to take the three hour bus ride through the mountains to Pai, a hippie hide-out on the Burmese border.

It's an object of curiosity what exactly all these hippies are doing here. We're not talking young dread-locked experimentalists you'd catch a String Cheese Incident show. We're talking mid to late twenties, sometimes older, guys and gals with dreads and very free flowing clothes. They're dressed more native than the Thai's. Sometimes I feel like I'm back at a Rainbow Gathering.

It's also of curiosity my reaction towards them. In America I have a bit of admiration for the legitimate counter-culturalist. But these guys are in Asia. My new neck of the woods. I place where I try my best everyday to adopt to cultural norms. I'm not so appreciate of white counter-culture here, but that could change if I knew how the Thai's felt about it. I think there's a strong chance that this is, indeed, not China and the Thai's really are as non-judgmental as they appear. This is the land of the "girl-boys", the only thing a Chinese person can tell you about Thailand.



UPDATE: The hippies are kind of real, kind of fake. The wear the light, flowing clothes because two pairs can last you until they fall apart. They're comfortable, dry quickly, and pack tight. You can get around with just a normal backpack if you pack light enough. I don't think it's about trying to make a fashion statement.

The Bangkok Scam

"We drive you everywhere you want. 3 hours, 4 hours, 5.... OK," a Tuk-Tuk driver said as he unfurled a map. He pointed to four or five temples and asked where we wanted to go. "I take you for 60 bat [$1.25], OK?"

It sounded too good to be true so we asked more questions.

"We take you to the Thai Center. You go in, look around, no have to buy anything, we get coupon for free gas."

"We don't have to buy anything? We can just browse for a minute, walk in and walk out?"

"That is fine."

We confirmed with the tourist sitting near us that this wasn't too good be true. So we hopped on and spent three hours looking at three or four temples. One of them, built on top of a hill, gave an amazing view of the Bangkok skyline. In the distance a few skyscrapers clung together. All around us were the Hershey-kiss styled Wak temples reaching into the sky. There are over 300 such temples in Bangkok. From their my first impression was confirmed: Bangkok really isn't that big of a city. At least not by the Chinese standards I'm used to. It was also flush with culture, especially if religion is used as a relative index. My fear that the rest of Asia looks like China is luckily falling apart.

We got dumped off at at the Asia center, really just two stores. The first was full of fluent Indians trying to sell expensive suits. I only last two or three minutes before bolting out.

"No no no! You must spend 10 or 15 minutes inside!" He grabbed me by the arm and led me into a jewelry store. I figured I could spend ten minutes there working off my taxi fair by looking at shiney objects.

Inside there were six workers in kiosks doing nothing. At the far end of the store in a display case was a box of rocks next to another box with the polished counterparts. I spent a good six minutes staring at the box of rocks before Lyndsey had to bolt.

Our driver didn't get his coupon but still took us to another temple.

"We try again. We to TAT now."

TAT worked out much better. It was a travel agency. They had wonderful maps and were more than happy to answer all of our questions about transit options and activities in different towns. We were almost sold on a $25 three day hiking and camping trek through a national park outside Chiang Mai.

The driver got his coupon and dropped us off at the big mall [so I could buy another memory card for my camera {2gb, $17}]. He left us there though because he wanted to catch the Thailand - Singapore soccer game. He only wanted 20 bat for three hours of travel. 50 cents. 50 cents and fifteen minutes, anyway.

Thailand

So Lyndsey and I pulled things off perfectly - three border crossings in one day. Shenzhen to Hong Kong to Macau to Bangkok. The flight was smooth and we wound up sharing a cab and dinner with a Surinamese expat living here. Suriname is north of Brazil and east of Venezuala, for all those who didn't know - including every customs agent.

There's a little backpacker district we're hanging out in now. I've come to stay away from other white people and touristy areas, but this place rocks. Last night I sat in resteraunt of my hotel stipping beer, sharing travel stories with an Aussie, and feeding a small elephant celery. Today we zipped across town in the Tuk-Tuk's, little three wheel hybrid motorcycle-rickshaws.

We decided yesterday to visit northern Thailand instead of Laos. As much as we want to visit Luang Prabang, it takes too long to get there and there's not a lot of infrastucture there. Like, you know, ATM's. So we'll be heading up to northern Thailand tonight on a sleeper train and spend out time around Chaing Mai.

I'll write later. Times out.