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One of the things I dig most about travel is how it forces you out of your comfort zone. It’s all too easy to fall into patterns when we’re living our normal lives– waking up, working the 9-5, eating dinner, watching a favorite sitcom, and going to bed. Maybe you go to the gym, or mix it up by trying out a new bar rather than the same old haunt. Patterns are good. Patterns bring order into our lives, and with order comes comfort. Patterns are built on meaning: to strengthen relationships, our bodies, to decompress after a long day. We visit the places and the people that have brought us happiness time and again, because we expect that they will continue to bring us happiness. Patterns become patterns for a reason.
But sometimes we can get stuck in our patterns. This is where travel comes in: the “When in Rome” factor. Surrounded by new people and sights and sounds and tastes; aware of the transience of the moment, we become braver, more open-minded versions of ourselves. We recognize that we have, if only for a short time, broken out of our comfort zones and patterns, and we embrace the moment for whatever it is.
I consider myself an adventurous eater– a human garbage disposal, if you will. I will try just about anything. Even so, at home in Boston, I wouldn’t eat a maggot if you double-dog dared me. But one night out in Bangkok was all it took. On my third day in Thailand, I was exploring a BKK night market with some friends when we stumbled upon a bug-vendor. We deliberated and giggled and squirmed about it for a while, but in the end it was a unanimous “When in Thailand!” We came here to have new cultural experiences, and we committed to doing just that. We touched our wee beasties together in a toast and popped them into our mouths.
a la carte
Cheers???
I can’t say it was the most delicious treat I’ve tasted here in Thailand, but it didn’t make me gag, either. In fact, I followed my salty fried maggot with a pan-seared larva. Slimy, yet satisfying. I wasn’t brave enough to go for one of the giant cockroaches or scorpions this time around… but I will. Oh, I will… when that creepy-crawler least expects it.
My friend Holly was a real champ this past weekend, courageously noshing a meaty, leggy, gold n’ crunchy grasshopper on Khao San Road. It’s Holly’s last week in Thailand before she jets off to volunteer in Cameroon, so we all bore the summer heat on Saturday, hopping a van to BKK to help her bid farewell with the ultimate Thailand tourist’s weekend. When you’re doing as the Roman’s do, you get to indulge in cheesy delicious margherita pizza and wash it down with red wine. When you do as the Thai’s do, it is vermin a la carte… bonappetit! Our friend Alex chose the creme of the crop for Holly, and we cheered her on as she devoured it… nearly painlessly. She was a great sport about it.
Our W.I.R (When in Rome) weekend continued to break from the norm as we hitched a ride in a tuk-tuk for a little rendezvouz in a seedier part of town. Let it suffice to say that this was underground Bangkok in all of its degrading, graphic, and chauvinistic infamy. The experience was vaguely interesting, but mostly just disturbing. I couldn’t detach myself from the situation enough to be entertained by the surreal and ridiculous performance that was thrust (pun intended) before my eyes. I’m not saying it wasn’t an impressive display, but between shaming my inner-feminist and wanting to be asleep in my bed, I just wasn’t having it. If I never experience this part of Thailand again, it will be too soon.
The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed, chugged some water, and prepped ourselves for a workout in the park.
Enter: Muay Thai Max.
AKA: Muscles Max. AKA: Thai-Man-Candy Max.
Max is a professional Muay Thai fighter in Bangkok and a friend of a friend who invited us to Lumphini Park for a Sunday morning Muay Thai lesson. Anyone who knows me knows I am a lover, not a fighter, and certainly not much of an athlete. But, W.I.R.! You probably wouldn’t catch me hurrying myself to the Boston Commons on a sleepy Sunday morning to learn how to box, but here I am- in Thailand- and this was an opportunity not to be missed. We worked out with Max for about an hour and a half, dripping with sweat in the blazing Bangkok sun. We learned to find our fighting stance and the basic offensive moves: the jab, elbow, kick, knee, and foot thrust. As you can see, I am now an expert:
By the end of Max’s workout, I was drenched in my own sweat. I could barely lift my arms. Then, he congratulated us on finishing the warm-up. For Muay Thai Max, who runs for an hour, then jumps rope, then runs tires, then cools down with some shadow boxing and partner training (totaling a 5-hour gym stint), this was kid’s stuff.
Grasshoppers, “special shows,” boxing in the BKK summer heat, taking a 12 hour overnight bus ride just to spend two days in a distant rural town, or pulling yourself away from Facebook on a Tuesday night to walk to the night market because, well, you live a mile away from a Thai night market. The point I mean to make is that travel inspires new adventures. Some of these episodes, I’d never want to repeat again. Some are perhaps not even really “doing as the Thais do”… more like the dirty old Western men. But these and plenty of other experiences here in Thailand are ones that I might not been motivated or bold enough to try if I weren’t in Thailand. Other “When in Rome” instances, such as local festivals, learning Thai, or getting down and dirty with the squat toilets have afforded me broader horizons and changed perspectives. I think that, in this sense, breaking my patterns becomes both a chance for adventure as well as for personal growth.
But, sometimes you can burn out on the W.I.R. factor too. That’s, why after burning the calories in my Muay Thai “warm-up,” I decided to really do as the Romans do: treat myself to a cheesy-delicious pizza. Thank you, Bangkok 🙂
If you were to ask me to name one quality that teaching has honed in me, I think I’d go with “adaptability.”
People are unpredictable, the adolescent breed even more so, and in a room full of twenty-odd unpredictable, hormonal teenagers, your lessons are never going to come to life in exactly the tidy procedure that you mapped out. You learn to adjust. To expect the unexpected.
One quality that living in Thailand promotes?
Same answer: Rolling with the punches, going with the flow. Expecting the unexpected, and remaining jai yen. As a teacher, this is something you work at. You begin to plan for the unexpected. You learn who each of the precious little gremlins in front of you is and you try to develop strategies to cope with their different learning styles and shenanigans. As a farang teacher in Thailand, adaptability isn’t just a skill, it is a way of life.
As with teaching, travel in Thailand requires you to be patient, flexible, and easy going.
How many hours I’ve sat idle on a bus– watching the rice paddies and concrete cities and 7-11′s zoom by… I couldn’t begin to guess.
You get dropped and abandoned at the side of the road at 4:00 in the morning in a torrential downpour, the driver assuring you that your ride to island paradise will arrive shortly. Bed bugs share your guesthouse with you. Maybe you find yourself up north in the Golden Triangle, playing the role of “midwife” to a mama pig in labor. Or, you finish your “tofu” dinner only to learn it was actually congealed blood. You’re carted along with your tuk-tuk chauffeur as he detours to the market to procure a raw fish, haphazardly flopping it down on the seat beside you. I wish I could claim ownership of all of these stories (especially the piglet-birthing) but they belong to my friends as well. There is no avoiding it for any of us. In a developing country where we don’t know the language, we’re often at the mercy of strangers and strange circumstances. Hilarity, frustrations, and unpredictable absurdities ensue.
And it is no different in school. Well, that’s a lie… there are no baby pigs here. If only. But my efforts to remain zen when I am totally clueless stay the same. Having taught in a pretty unstable urban public school district in Massachusetts, I am no stranger to the unexpected. But, while my well-mannered Thai pupils present fewer challenges in classroom management, the language barrier and my own Western schooling/ teacher’s training render an entirely different need for adaptation.
At the moment, I’m sitting in the school office with my fellow farang teachers, half an hour into the school day, and it’s occurred to us that none of the Thai faculty are here. None of us know where our co-workers are, but we’re not all that concerned. As foreign teachers we’re used to going about our usual business until it becomes clear we need to pivot.
We’re nearing the end of the semester, and right now our students are studying for their Thai exams. Again, we’re along for the ride. I was told that exams are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, while another English teacher heard Monday and Friday. Will I be teaching at all next week? I dunno. Will I find out before I am supposed to be in the classroom? Not likely. Is this frustrating? Yes. But, I’ve learned to accept that I’ll never understand what’s going on in this country until it’s already happening to me. Timely information is not to be trusted– it always changes, anyway.
My boss said it yesterday as he informed us we’d be audited today… “I just found out ten minutes ago. But, this is Thailand!” in line with the nationwide “mai bpen rai” philosophy– a Renaissance-man of a phrase, meaning “You’re welcome,” “No problem,” ‘Nevermind,” “Fahget about it,” and “Hakuna matata,” Thai culture embodies the Buddhist Middle Way principle of emotional-moderation. You’re encouraged to remain calm and relaxed and just go with the flow.
As with our many travel misadventures, living in the dark makes each school day a little more exciting. Like when I signed up, perhaps against my better judgement, to participate in the school Sports Day Fun Run. One person told me that the run started at 8:30 am, someone else said 9:30 am. Yet another source told me 3 pm.
So, not knowing when it would begin, I arrived at school dressed in my usual teaching attire– my sneakers and oh-so-official racing outfit packed in my L.L.Bean backpack. I was busy planning a finals review game when I heard the horn sound, marking the start of the race. I hurdled over some desks, long-jump-ed my way into the bathroom, and changed into my running clothes in record time. I sprinted down four flights of stairs and by the time I finally arrived at the starting line, everyone had already left, and I was already winded.
But the man with the megaphone shouted at me to “Chase after! Chase after!” So, I chased after. I chased the entire Sa-Nguan Ying student body down the street until I caught up and joined the run. (But this is where Thailand and America become same same: I caught up to them within minutes because the kids had all started walking the second they were a block beyond the school gates.)
In a profession that is unpredictable to its core, in a country where the popular belief is just to roll with it, I never really know what’s going on. As a participant in a foreign culture, I think there is not much more I can or should do but accept and adapt.
Sometimes adaptation does become more of a challenge, though. As the school year comes to a close, I’ve found myself struggling with some of the expectations for assigning marks here. I can’t say that I am proud to have set aside some of the professional ethics I have internalized as a teacher in the States, but as a guest in this country and institution, I don’t think it’s my place to judge or try to change the system. So, right or wrong, frustrations aside, I’m just gonna keep going with the flow.
I said that I’d take a break from contemplative posts. Well, true to my word, I think that this is about as far from contemplation as you can get… and I do mean that in the physical sense.
Warning: not for the faint of heart, or stomach. If you just ate, do not read this blog. If you are easily nauseated, don’t read this blog. If you wish to have another pleasant thought for the rest of the day, do not read this blog. Honestly people, what little dignity I have left is about to go down the shitter.
This is a little ditty about something we call the “squatter toilet.”
In Thai public restrooms, you’ve got about a 50/50 shot of landing a seater or a squatter. What is a squatter, you ask? Basically, it is a porcelain hole in the ground upon which you stand and literally squat while you take care of business. Luxury travel is a different story. If you can afford nice hotels, nice restaurants… if you stick to places that keep it clean, comfortable, and Western, you might be able to manage a couple weeks’ stay in Thailand with few to no encounters with squatters. But, if you are a budget traveler- forget it. Embrace it (figuratively of course)! Because squatter toilets are here to stay.
During my first week in Thailand, I managed to avoid squatters the entire time. It wasn’t purposeful avoidance, but I moved from one niceish, three-star hotel in Bangkok to some even nicer digs in Pattaya when my orientation group was evacuated from the city to escape the flood waters. I never happened upon one. It wasn’t until my second night in Suphanburi that my luck turned around. Cafe Art, a favorite Suphan hotspot, offered a pleasant lead-in to the world of squatters. Surrounded by soothing grey-blue walls, a pebble-covered floor, soft-lighting and the tintinntabulating sound of the faucet trickling into the toilet-side water bucket… the experience felt akin to relieving myself in a Zen garden.
[That water-bucket is not merely meant for ambiance, however. Oh, no. It serves the dual purpose in all Thai bathrooms of a sort of manual-flush. Once you’ve finished making your deposit, you have to scoop a bucket-full of water (or two, or three, or four… depending on said “deposit”) and dump it into the hole to incite the disappearing act.]
A few days after this first “go” a discussion ensued among my friends (only natural in such a mix of squatter novices and pros) that made me realize I had been doing it wrong all along! First line about to be crossed: I am a hoverer. Even with seater toilets. If it is a public restroom- be it Thailand or in the States- I refuse to sit unless in dire circumstances, like stomach cramps. I assumed that they were called “squatters” simply because of how much lower you had to go to hover. Blew my mind to learn that I had to stand on the thing. It also turns out that you’re supposed to face the wall. Now, this may seem obvious to any men out there– you guys are used to facing the wall. But for us women, this is new and uncharted territory. Never in my life had I gone to the toilet while facing the wall, and I never dreamed that I would. Just goes to show you the kinds of great new experiences traveling can create. Mind. Blown. Again.
Since these first few couple of weeks, I’d mostly gotten used to the “squatter” thing, though a trip to the hospital back in November did throw me for a loop. My teacher buds Kaitlin and Megan and I took a field trip to the Suphanburi Hospital together– a necessary step in obtaining our work permits. The hospital waiting room was crawling with people, and while we waited for our turns to complete our chest X-rays and urine samples (you know, to check us for meth and syphilis), we were instructed to administer our own blood pressure tests and check our own weights. When it came time for the urine sample, we were given plastic cups and pointed toward the bathroom. And what did we find? You guessed it– stalls of squatter toilets. The hospital bathroom was filthy. And it was quite a strange experience to pee in a cup over a squatter toilet and then walk back town the hall, holding my own cup, to deliver it to the nurse in reception. I’m just glad I didn’t trip.
In our hospital robes, posing in front of the flood-prevention sandbags
I must say, though, unsanitary though it may seem, the squatter toilet in the hospital makes a lot of sense. My shoes touched the same surface that some other presumably sick person’s shoes touched before me, but that was the worst of it. From the perspective of a “hoverer,” that isn’t so bad.
So, yes. For better or for worse, this is the squatter toilet. If only I could end this story right here. But, alas, I haven’t entirely mortified myself yet. The story goes on, and if you decide not to be my friend anymore after reading, I will understand.
The lack of toilet paper is yet another point about Thai bathrooms that takes some getting used to. Then, there is the issue that so many travelers face in whatever country they may be visiting, due to changes in diet and the water. The issue that I speak of, of course, is diarrhea. There- I said it. Crossed the second line. And I’m about to put about a mile more between this line and me. In my defense, this is one of the inevitabilities of foreign travel. A friend of mine here recently had to poop in the crystal clear waters of the Phi-Phi islands (ironic, no?) during a snorkeling venture, surrounded by a boat-load of friends. I know nothing can make this okay, but I am just trying to give you an honest recounting! Like I said before, it isn’t all baby tigers and fish heads. Things can get pretty shitty, too.
Imagine, if you dare, that you ask permission of a friendly Thai islander and restaurant owner to use the bathroom, and that you grab yourself a tissue before you head in. Imagine, now, that you use the squatter, and toss said tissue away, and begin to exit the bathroom only to be suddenly overcome with a feeling that you know will later require Imodium. So, you climb back on the squatter. Aim is of the utmost importance in this situation, but also rather difficult due to the height in squat-position. And time, it turns out, is of the essence. So, you miss. But there is no tissue, and you can’t very well leave the poor unsuspecting Thai folk to take care of the situation. You have very few options.
I had to scoop. And then toss. Scoop, and toss, and scoop, and toss, and then dilute what remained by throwing the water from the flush-bucket all over the floor. I am sorry! I know you didn’t really want to know this, but I kind of think that some stories, embarrassing and disgusting though they may be, just shouldn’t be kept to yourself. Or should they? Either way, you can’t say that I didn’t warn you. Oh, the joys of travel! I practically bathed in Purell for the full next week.
This has gone too far. I’m cutting myself off from contemplative journal entries for a while. After this.
I think that I’ve overcome the worst of my shlump, and that is in a large part thanks to the the positive energy so many have sent my way. It was a jarring attitude shift- to feel so suddenly exhausted. I am so often overcome with a deep sigh of gratitude here; a feeling of being so insanely and unfairly lucky to be here. It was easy to berate myself for feeling down because, honestly, I am living in Thailand, man! Why should I be anything but enthused? But, the truth is, it is natural to have your ups and downs, no matter how lucky you are, and I am thankful for the words of empathy and encouragement and insight that have reminded me of that.
Meandering around TESCO Lotus last week, having basket-ed all of the items on my shopping list, I started wondering if the exhaustion would be permanent… if I would ever regain that same sense of awe and gratitude that I felt during “the honeymoon.” But it occurred to me then that that is up to me. It’s okay to be with my emotion and ride it out for a while– necessary, even– but it is also within my control whether I choose to dwell on it or move forward. So, that’s what I’ve done. I took a small break from studying Thai and I treated myself to a nice and relaxing Suphan weekend, involving yoga with friends,a riverside wander, and a less-than effective Thai massage performed by a woman smaller than my pinky finger. Still, I’ve readjusted my attitude and recharged my battery and I’m feeling okay.
Among other lovely folks who reached out to me after having read my emo blog post was a friend who I met in Ecuador, Jenna. She closed her email, asserting that “We travel, not to be happy all the time, or even satisfied, but to really, truly live. And at least what you’re feeling now means that you’re about a million times more alive than you would have been if you had stayed behind.” These small words of wisdom reminded me of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, as he speaks about joy and sorrow:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Jenna and Khalil have it right, I think. The potential that something has to bring you happiness is directly proportionate to its capacity to upset you. A place that can overwhelm me with excitement can also knock me right out with exhaustion, in the same way that the thing that brings the most laughter can cause the most tears. But we have to go after these things. We have to be willing to take the risk, because, as Jenna said, that’s what living is about. And, if you are like me, you believe that you only get one shot.
The greater the risk, the deeper the gain, the greater the journey.
More fun entries soon. Peace!
Chronicles of a Travel-Bug 