Why Thai?

Yes, it's all her fault.  Amira's.  She wasn't quite ready to knuckle under in the graduate program in psychology at Antioch and she needed an adventure after her year of working at an adolescent treatment center following college graduation.  So last fall she boldly chose a UK gap-year program, and has been here in Thailand since then.

Thus we're here on Koh Samet, with our sweet girl, and we're in utter bliss.

We weren't entirely sure we would make it, in between the insanity of Thai land travel and the insanity of its water travel. The 20-minute motorboat ride we took at warp speed was piloted by a very cheerful but evidently 14-year old Thai boy who only should have been at the controls of a video game. The ocean seemed to be as pocked with cavernous potholes as the roads; the boat shuddered as if it was about to disassemble. It was so jolting and thunderously loud I was convinced we were transporting an entire quarry's worth of boulders below deck.  

I would include the video but you might get seasick.  Here's a photo,  however.

Sheer but exhilarating terror, and then suddenly it was over.  Before I knew it we were sweetly drifting toward what appeared to be the shores of Paradise. From monster truck mayhem to utter tranquility in a heartbeat. The engine was cut, the anchor was thrown on the beach, and we disembarked, stepping right into an ocean so warm and gentle it immediately brought to mind amniotic fluid (an analogy to which Meresy said, "Ewwww.").

But we were reborn. Safe in the sweet harbor of Ao Prao, at Le Vimarn Cottages and Spa.

It is Paradise, but you haven't heard the half of how hard it was getting here.  For that we shall have to go back in "thaime."

Bangkok - City of Life

Yes, there it is, as seen from the Skytrain:  Bangkok - City of Life.  Life in all its beauty and squalor.

But back to the very beginning.  

We took a United flight from Seattle to Tokyo, then on to Bangkok, at 1:30 Friday afternoon. The first leg of our flight, the longer of the two (11 hours) was, to our surprise, a piece of cake.  It probably helped that we got upgraded to seats with six inches more legroom because my previous seat's video screen was on the fritz.  As it happened, I seem to have unintentionally jinxed the new seat's video screen as well, but it didn't matter since at least in our upgrade we could cross our legs and move our elbows.

However, the subsequent (mere) six-and-a-half-hour flight from Tokyo to Bangkok (3,000 miles away, to our surprise), arriving at midnight the next day (there's a 15-hour time difference), was more like a piece of... I don't know... last year's fruitcake. Nonetheless, thanks to Deborah's advice we took the usefully named homeopathic remedy "No Jet Lag," and thus we felt fairly okay once we arrived in the architecturally quite remarkable Suvarnabhumi Airport.

Ahh, Thailand.  Land of exotic beauty. I have several evocative Thai figures and puppets at home and at my office.  I was thrilled to actually be here (once I had gotten over my insistence that I wouldn't fly anywhere that a plane might crash).  And as soon as we arrived at the airport, I was instantly in awe of the way Thai beauty was incorporated into so many details, this etched glass doorway and a mural (as seen from the motorized walkway) my certain promise of the beauty to come.

The plan was to pick up a rental car and drive to meet Amira at her home-stay family's in rural Thailand.  Instead, she and Mark conspired to give me a heart attack, and as Mark and I trudged along with luggage that weighed more than the plane we flew on I suddenly saw a familiar face - hers. Of course, I immediately burst into tears. I think the last time I was that happy was the moment after I delivered her.

We all promptly proceeded to pick up the rental car and then on to the sheer insanity (I am not exaggerating) of Bangkok traffic.  

Ah, Bangkok

Ah, Bangkok.  Our trip from the airport to the Sabai-Sabai Hotel, where we planned to stay one night until heading to Mira's host family in Rayong Province, was equal parts sheer luck, genius GPS navigation by Meresy, and a tour de force by Marko.  It is challenge enough that in Thailand one drives on the left hand side of the road with the steering wheel on the right; how Mark could actually do it, following an 18-hour flight, a toothache, no sleep, no useful directions, and its being 1:00 a.m. in Bangkok is a complete mystery to me.  That man is super-human.  

Before we proceed, let me note that Bangkok traffic is insane.  I say this as a mental health professional. There are evidently NO traffic regulations, and a two-story speeding bus as well as a gerrymandered truck piled to the rafters with randomly stocked tree limbs (on top of which sit a platoon of field workers) can be found competing for the same lane as a family of four chugging away on a motorbike for one. All at speeds above 80 mph.  Not to mention the countless random stray dogs wandering along aimlessly in and out of traffic or lying nose-to-asphalt in what appears to be either oblivion or a suicidal impulse.  There is a decided bias against traffic lights, or turning lanes (or even using turning signals), and making any right turn across four lanes of traffic without getting obliterated (or obliterating, since no one uses seat belts) is like playing Russian roulette. 

But make it we did. Mira had reserved two rooms for us at the Sabai-Sabai, her first "home" in Thailand (where she stayed so often that they just stopped charging her and made her a member of the family).    

The Sabai-Sabai, owned by the generous and glamorous Lek, is a small, six-story hotel in central Bangkok.  It is alternately decorated in either tones of rust, gold, and browns, with art that is equally subdued, as shown below, 

or in welcome-to-a-completely-different-world colors - phosphorescent oranges, impossible pinks, lime greens, blue morpho butterfly blues, and garish golds.

Across the street from this classy little establishment, however, is a building so abandoned and dilapidated it appeared to be disintegrating as we looked, 

with the exception of one tiny little patio where there was a lovely teak deck and potted plants. 

At the end of this block-long health hazard, to my great amusement, is the optimistically named

This was Thai optimism at its finest, a trait I have increasingly come to value.  Wherever they are now, may the Prosper Company's workers truly live well and prosper (channeling Dr. Spock here).

This juxtaposition of the elegant and the dilapidated has been...to put it mildly...disconcerting for me, particularly since the squalor, unfortunately, appears to prevail.  My compulsivity where beauty and order are concerned is seeming like a neurosis (when I had thought it was a basic human need).

The squalor, though, is quite beyond imagining.  Heaps of trash surround every dwelling; buildings are in perpetual states of disrepair; there is no organization of materials whatsoever anywhere, 

though there are occasional and startling exceptions.

But in general it appears to be a principle that visible reality is simply, utterly, inconsequential. 

I like this concept, but I'm too beholden to my senses to live it. 

Bangkok in general is a crash course in giving up any sense of control.  The streets are lined with multiple strands of electrical lines bundled together with what appear to be baggy ties just barely above our heads; reportedly some taller people have had unfortunate encounter.  The shops along the street look post-apocalyptic (which, sadly, given the recent flooding, they probably are) and everything appears to be under construction, with no visible indication of progress.  It is a total dystopia, as Mark was wont to comment repeatedly.  Despite the beauty of Thai culture in art there appears to be no contemporary aesthetic whatsoever either in the city or the country.  

And I can't even talk about the hygiene factor.  Only the most fortunate (and the farang - the foreigners) get the benefit of microbe-free food and drink.  And even for us, unless you're at a high-end resort it is a benefit without the option of any paper products except... I am not making this up... toilet paper.  That particular consumer good is available in rolls everywhere for every possible purpose except (to my frustrated discovery at public restrooms) for the purpose for which it was intended, where evidently it is seen as superfluous to the occasion.

Nearly all aesthetic impulse in Thailand seems to be directed solely at religious representations, and those are spectacularly beautiful.

I have also been repeatedly reminded of the soulfulness of Thai culture in the countless elaborate, astoundingly beautiful spirit houses that honor the ancestors in even what appear to be homeless encampments.

Perhaps this is a reminder that all of reality is just illusory.  The details as I see them - life/death, beauty/squalor, compassion/oblivion, comfort/oppression - seem not to matter so much in the larger scale of time, which the Thai seem to understand so much better than I.

Bangkok, continued

We had about four hours to explore Bangkok before we needed to leave for dinner with Amira's home stay family in Rayong Province, about 3 hours away.  It was just enough time to visit the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre and the Mah Boon Krong (MBK) shopping mall.

So, in the interests of supporting public transportation we took a tuk-tuk to the Skytrain. (I like saying that phrase - took a tuk-tuk - it's kind of onomatopoeic, don't you think?) The tuk-tuk is a small truck with an open rear bed and a couple of benches.  It proceeded to take off at the speed of light amidst what appeared to be an emergency evacuation of the city.  Hordes of vehicles of every description jockeyed for position in the four lanes of traffic, jerking in and out of lanes with total oblivion as to what already possessed that particular spot on the road.  Those 20 minutes in the tuk-tuk had me holding on (well, sitting there, since there was really nothing much to hold on to) for dear life.  I could not envision that we would survive without collision - the odds, as I saw them, were completely against it.

The Skytrain was a kick, however - clean, timely, and efficient.  The stations were like mini-malls themselves.  Every conceivable consumer product was offered, including a Victoria's Secret-type of lingerie boutique catering to the "lady-boys" that Thailand so admirably accepts and even esteems.

It was a quick train ride to the Art and Culturel Centre, a 7-story building that seemed largely vacant and uninhabited except for the sixth floor.  Featured there was a contemporary Thai art exhibition that could have stepped out of MOMA.  There were several pieces I would have gladly spent a small fortune on (if I had one, of course, and if they were for sale) but one piece in particular was to prove so beautifully and painfully prophetic of Thailand's dilemma that I include it below.  It was called, "Memory of Country II" and is by Tinnakorn Kasornsuwan.

The poignant pertinence of this particular piece of art was immediately evident to me.  Chiangmai, where we had intended to go after Koh Samet, is in an emergency state owing to the air quality from the smoke from slash-and-burn fields in the north.  The air is so compromised flights are being cancelled and the city is supplying 600,000 air masks.  Thailand is a paradise being paved (to quote Joni Mitchell) - a paradise that is being deracinated.

But enough pathos (the cure for which is, evidently, to judge by the West, shopping).


Before I continue, let me note that however much consumerism is a purported palliative, I do not go to malls.  If I managed to hit the Tacoma Mall twice last year it was two too many.  The MBK was Mall to a factor of 10. It was six stories of mayhem - a vertical madhouse.  Every floor was a cacophony of color, sound, and action.

 

Every square inch of the entire six warehouse-size floors was packed to the gills with consumer goods.  There were hundreds of small stalls, tables, stands, and cubicles, my favorite being the one below, where the owner's darling (and very patient) children were happily occupying themselves with a TV so tiny it was nearly unidentifiable.  

Shopping finished, it was time to hie ourselves in the direction of Rayong Province to have dinner with Meresy's home stay family.  With a sigh of relief we left Bangkok. Our relief was  short-lived, since, of course, in order to leave Bangkok we had to...drive on the roads, in traffic.  It was an obstacle course that once again I was not certain we would survive.

Farangs, and Farang

Although Amira originally went to Thailand with the intention of teaching English at Bangkok Thonburi University, the devastating floods that region suffered in the fall kept many schools closed well into the semester, including BTU.  After about six weeks it was clear another plan would have to be made, and Amira settled on teaching at an elementary school in rural Thailand in a province called Rayong.  There was one teacher, Pueng, at the school who spoke English, and Amira lived with Pueng's aunt at the family compound in what appeared to be the middle of the jungle.  

To thank them all we hosted a dinner for about a tenth of Amira's host family's immediate extended family (even including the great-grandmother in lime green jacket - see below)

at an outdoor restaurant and resort in a beautifully landscaped lagoon, complete with black swans, peacocks, and moonlit ponds.  The individual gifts for the sixteen family members scheduled to attend that I had hastily gathered before the trip were received with great hilarity, given that most of them were items they had never seen before (and were regrettably unlikely to ever use), but it was nonetheless great fun. Only Pueng spoke any English, but there was such jolly good will and endless smiling on everyone's part that it didn't appear to matter in the least that no one had any idea at all of what was being said.  We all just babbled away obliviously, nodding like bobble dolls and laughing at the cheerful absurdity of the occasion.

Earlier we had, at last, met the real reason for our trip to Thailand, Farang.

Farang means foreigner in Thai (originally referring to the French, who were the first colonizers of Thailand).  The puppy above, while indigenous to Thailand, is somewhat ironically named, but that's our Mersey - ever the quick wit.

It was shortly after she had despairingly noted she had seen 52 stray dogs on her way to school one morning, and only 50 the following day, that she began to talk of one particular puppy she couldn't get off her mind.  He looked curiously like our beloved Karma, who died last summer at the dignified age of 13 but whose loss was among our most painful.  Karma himself resembled a puppy Mark had found in 1975 while traveling in Turkey and had, with great effort, sent from the Shah's Iran home to Long Island. 

Karma is pictured below.  You'll no doubt see the resemblance to Farang.

Evidently there is a gene for adopting stray puppies from foreign countries beginning with the letter "T", because Amira quickly began hatching her plans for a repeat performance of the canine rescue her dad had so successfully orchestrated 37 years ago.

Mira's rescue was its own tour de force, requiring finding a Thai veterinarian who spoke English; countless phone calls to those who didn't speak English regarding regulations for transporting a dog out of the country; and a series of vet visits for health checks, immunizations, and micro-chipping.  

Then, just when it looked like all was well, Farang came down with parvovirus.

Half of all stray dogs in Thailand get either parvo, distemper or rabies.  As you might guess, they don't get treatment and thus live and die wretchedly.  Farang's odds were not good.  Amira spent hours and hours at the vet while he was given IVs.  She fretted and anguished as if she was his mother.  

But he survived.

We met Farang only briefly at the hut of his current "owners," who had coincidentally become attached to him in the meantime and who were only able to relinquish rights to him for 5000 baht, about the equivalent of $165.00.  Well, money is no object where our family's pets are concerned, and besides, the couple were infertile and were trying to adopt a child.  We figured it was a ransom well-spent.

Mark had previously ordered a canine carrier which we brought on the flight here, and Farang is now scheduled to arrive in Seattle on March 16th on a KLM flight through Amsterdam.  We will greet him at the airport and bring him home, Buddha willing.  For now, we were slated to stay overnight at the Novotel Rayong Rim Pae Resort and then hop a ferry the next morning from the Ban Pe pier in Rayong and repair ourselves to the tropical paradise that is Koh Samet.

The Rim Pae Resort in rural Rayong was intended to be the equivalent of the bridesmaid to the "bride" of our Koh Samet resort, but we were pretty blown away by its loveliness even if it wasn't the main event.  It was situated on beautifully landscaped grounds,

right near the ocean,

in addition to having a lovely adjacent pool,

being investigated by a familiar fellow who appears to believe he can walk on water.

From our hotel room we had a very lovely view of the surrounding attractions,

and in the main it was so lovely we seriously wondered why we wouldn't just stay there for the duration of our visit.  However, somewhere even more beautiful awaited us at Koh Samet.

O, Koh Samet!

Koh Samet, formerly a home to pirates (it is still believed there is treasure buried here) is a five-square mile island in the Gulf of Thailand, designated as a national park in 1981 by the Queen.  Much of the central part of the island is in its natural wilderness state, but the coastline is lined with various small villages and resorts.  Amira chose our accommodations at the Le Vimarn Cottages & Spa on Ao Prao beach, the quietest and in our opinion loveliest of the beaches.


Our cottage, pictured below, was a spacious, airy, tree-house-feeling dwelling.

It was every bit as lovely inside,

with divine views from our porch.

We were simply surrounded by beauty, with exquisite attention to every detail of the landscape, from numerous ponds and fountains,

to gardens of lush foliage.

Our first day here was concluded with one of the three subsequent sunsets from heaven we experienced.  I don't think it's possible for the sun to set here without being transcendentally dazzling.

I'll spare you the approximately hundred other photos we took of sunsets (so smitten were we by the occasions), but here are a couple of the many postcard-perfect daylight views so sublime that even our iPhones were able to produce Google images-quality photos.

The beauty of the beach was only enhanced by the father-daughter duo thereupon.

Le Vimarn felt quite like what I felt in Juneau when I first saw a humpback whale breach in a float plane (it occurs to me to add that the whale was in the water, not the plane).  I realized that it wasn't until I actually saw the whale that I truly believed they existed - I had such a sense of awe that they were...real.  The Ao Prao harbor has had a similar effect - this kind of paradise was  only a fiction until arriving here, even though we had honeymooned on Bermuda, I had lived in Waikiki (when I was 19), and had swum in the Bay of Naples.  It was the tropical isle of my dreams - sheer tropical bliss.  I didn't know how we'd ever leave.

Although we did try on our second day here, with rather unfortunate results.  Stay tuned.

Uh-oh, Koh Samet

Amira is a brave and bold young woman, yet even she was persuaded not to hop on a motorbike in either Bangkok or rural Rayong.  Three friends of hers in Thailand had already had motorbike accidents, and a close friend of ours, Mudita, has struggled for years from the ankle injuries sustained in 1973 in a motorbike accident in Bali. Mark and I had rented motorbikes in Bermuda without any vehicle accidents (although I did get a third-degree burn on my ankle from the exhaust pipe) so we knew motorbikes had a bad rap.


However, when we were told we could rent motorbikes here on this idyllic island and make a circuit of the adjacent beaches, heading to Koh Samet village, we were game.  At least Amira and Mark were. I was game for being Mark's passenger.


We should have had some clue when we reached the motorbike rental...place, not quite a stand. More like a shed.

It's true they offered motorbike and ATV rentals,

and they also, with no evidence of running water or electricity, offered laundry services.

But what they didn't offer was any notification that the "road" going around the island was, at best, a dirt path consisting of a series of ruts, rocks, potholes, and embankments that was impassable unless you were in a Humvee, or were plastered out of your mind thanks to one of the countless open air bars lining the beach road.

We were neither.  Before we had proceeded 200 feet up the path we had skidded and fallen to the dirt, legs trapped under the motorbike.  Amira had merrily tootled along ahead of us, oblivious to the imminent orphaning she might endure, and unaware her two parents proved no match for the tinny little bike and the obstacle course of a "road."

I like to invoke the notion of the little accident that prevents the big one, which seems to me to work for most occasions short of nuclear winter, and this was no exception.  Mark and I rose from the dirt, bruised, contused, abraded, and bleeding, but it was nothing like the accident we might have had had we persisted blithely on our way at the top mph Dr. Speedhill seems to prefer.  But at least there were no broken bones, although I will have to forego the Vogue shoot I had scheduled, what with a left leg that made even the "medical attendants" grimace.  I took photos, but perhaps this isn't the place (and you might be eating).

We refused the offer of a motorbike ride to the International Clinic half an hour away (and who in their right mind would have offered it at that point?) but, undaunted, after a perfunctory cleaning of our wounds we instead took a "taxi," otherwise known as a pick-up truck on Red Bull.

This truck, although marginally safer, was not an improvement in comfort.  The dirt road on the way to Koh Samet village, beset with passing motorbikes, oncoming trucks, and random dogs, was nothing short of an accident waiting to happen (which evidently, according to locals, does with some frequency).

The road to the village was another reminder of the abject poverty that coexisted with the luxury resorts.  Even the least luxurious of the latter offered greater comfort than any of the homes we saw, presumably the homes of those who served the tourists.

On one side of the street there were virtual hovels - living conditions that were utterly third-world.

On the other side, the beach side, were all the tourist amenities, chiefly in the form of lots of alcohol and shaded eating areas.

This displacement of what I imagine to have been village community with western consumerism is a tragedy to me.  Rather than maintaining self-sustaining traditions of communal living, communities and villages were abandoned in favor of providing services for the farang.  The trade-offs of capitalism and globalization never seem worth it, although, as Amira points out, the Thai are supremely Buddhist in their world view and accept Whatever Is.  Ironically, Trusting What Is has been one of my mantras, but  in Thailand I realized that's easy for me to say.  I'm not sure how I, as a comfortable tourist, can make that assumption for those who were born here, and I took a bemused sort of comfort in seeing a fairly ramshackle accommodation called, The Lost Resort.

Perhaps all the Koh Samet luxury resorts should be "lost resorts," at least until there is greater equality in the distribution of income in the host country.

Koh Samet "village" (see below) is itself a bit of a euphemism,

since it appears to consist solely of a street full of buildings waiting demolition, or construction - it isn't entirely clear which.

The beach at Koh Samet was clearly the most popular one on the island.

It also seemed much more authentically Thai than our upscale resort, with traditional peddlers,

and the ubiquitous stray animals, breaking our hearts.

The return back to Le Vimarn went quickly.  We were even more grateful anticipating the sweet, slow sanctuary of our little beach.  At one point on the way back we noted what appears to be a large and pointless clear-cut of the jungle.  It may have been intended as a water reservoir, which is curious since all water on the island must be imported.

It was another reminder of how the tourist industry so often defaces the natural environment.  I suppose that is true everywhere, but it makes me sad.