If That's a Ping Pong Ball, This Must be Bangkok

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  Bangkok, Thailand
Monday, June 23, 2008

Ahh Thailand - land of a thousand smiles, 100 000 lady boys, and 1 000 000 knock off Rolexes. After 11 years, I was back in the land of Siam.

Back in January 1997, I left on my first trip overseas. Growing up, overseas vacations were never an option. With summers full of camp grounds, dirt bike riding, and childhood mayhem this was never something I worried about. Life was full.

But always in the back of my mind, and often in the front, were the possibilities of the world OUT THERE - wherever there was. Reading stories of adventures in far off places only whetted my appetite to see what was in the world outside Nova Scotia. (In fairness, I used to go to summer camp next door in New Brunswick, and there were at least two car trips as a family to Ontario, filled with the usual threats of turning this car around right now, and "WILL YOU STOP TOUCHING ME!" and fighting over who had an inch more bottom space on the car seat.) I was the kid who rode his bike to the town library to travel the world by flipping through old National Geographics (and no, not JUST for the pictures of naked African women, although at an older age I used to sneak over to the paperback racks to read the dirty sections of trashy romance novels. Damn, my secret's out. I'm glad the town's old librarian isn't around to read this, although I'm sure she wondered what a 12 year old boy was crouched over reading by the "Flowers and Gardening" and "DIY" section. On second thought.... Never mind.)

Coming from small town Maritimes, the usual route for most was finish high school, get a job, start a family, and die about 40-60 years later. Or go to university, get a job, start a family, and die during a similar time frame. Jobs were hard to come by, and once you got one, ANY job, you held on tighter than a drunken prom date. I had finished university with a degree in History and Sociology, which qualified me to make interesting conversation while in the unemployment line. Eventually, through a bit of manoeuvring and nepotism, I landed a job working as a sales rep for TNT International selling Coca Cola for the Annapolis Valley region supermarkets of Nova Scotia. For almost two years I sleepwalked my way through this job. It veered between mind numbing tedium, frustration from being the person shat upon by both customers and higher ups when something went wrong, and the feeling that at the end of the day, the only difference I was making in the world selling sugar and water was to make dentists happy. This is not to say it wasn't honest, good work. It just wasn't for me.

Around summer to autumn of 1996, I got a post card from an old friend, Peter Grant who I had fallen out of touch with. It was of Abel Tasman National Park on the south island of New Zealand. I remember wondering how water could look so green and blue at the same time, and immediately feel a desire to be there. I started planning my departure. Eventually, after a break up, a quitting, and a moving out, I was ready to go. January 1997, I left Canada and spent the next 6 months or so traveling around South East Asia and the Pacific. It was the beginning of a love affair with travel that has continued to this day.

Now I was going back to the region that began it all.

There were more reasons than simply nostalgia and curiosity over how things had changed in South East Asia exciting me about returning to Thailand. It was where I would be reunited once again with Danayi. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while should remember Danayi. We met and hit it off while I was in Malawi, continued to develop over hundreds and hundreds of hours over the internet in the following 5 months, and she eventually came out to spend a month with me in India over the Christmas holidays. This intense and constant exposure to me, unbelievably, did not seem to sicken her, and eventually it was decided that after she finished her Masters in Public Health (from Columbia University in New York - she's so smart), she would fly out to join me where ever I happened to be and we would see what happened. The future was wide open.

Well, 'where ever' turned out to be Bangkok.

I arrived about a week earlier than Danayi, and renewed my acquaintance with Bangkok, a city I had spent quite a bit of time in so many years earlier. My days consisted of fruit shakes, street food, massive amounts of mango and sticky rice, walking, and spending all my time in internet cafes, sorting out last minute details and trying to do my best to keep Danayi sane in the last days of assignments, money worries, anxieties, and everything else that comes from a radical change in life.

Finally the day came. I took an evening bus out to the airport and tried in vain to find a place near the arrivals gate. The Bangkok airport authorities, in an apparent effort to drive people insane, had placed bizarre regulations on which escalators could be used and which areas could be reached for 'security reasons'. In my mind, all these did was to increase the risk of a passenger or visitor going insane and going "Muay Thai" over everyone's ass. To reach an area within 30 feet of the arrivals area (which was on the same level I entered the airport on) I had to go up and down three different levels, umpteenth escalators, and squeeze between a concrete pillar and a small army of sharp elbowed Thai grandmothers.

Finally, 5 months and 9 days, or 23 weeks, or 161 days, or 3864 hours since I last saw her - take your pick - Danayi walked through the doors.

I was very happy.

Thus began a new chapter in my trip and my life.

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Wat Pho

Evening by the River

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