Force fed Understanding in a Sunburned country?
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2006
1
19
94
Trip End
Jul 15, 2007
Ko Pha-Ngan,
Thailand
Thursday, June 15, 2006
We all head out at the start of our journeys with big plans of "adventure" and the quest for "understanding." We even fly to the far ends of the world in search of it! Yet we all end up in the same "hedonistic wastelands?" We find comfort in what is familiar. No matter where we are in the world it always ends up in the same bar with other travelers, speaking English, watching some dull wanna be Tarintino indie film, trying to impress each other comparing "exotic" places that we have been in the world? Best case scenario you end up the next morning with a painful suntan, a cheap hang over, and a bad tattoo! Wondering what the F-happened to me last night?
I have been a bit of a "lull" the last few days lacking any sort of motivation. I woke up after just 3 days in Bangkok to a sense of drowning? I needed to get out! To any one reading this who has been to Thailand they might be able to relate to this feeling. I was staying in the "tourist ghetto" called Khao San Road. It is descried in the novel "The Beach" by Alex Garland as "a halfway house between the East and the West. A decompression chamber for travelers entering or leaving Thailand." Bangkok is a lovely place but this street is not. It is a gross street of obnoxious loud foreigners. Many of which are starting or ending there journeys here by topping it all off with a few nights of cheap drugs and pay by the hour sex. I was not sure where I was going I just needed out. I got on a bus a few hours later and did a 15 hour bus/boat journey to the tourist island I am on now writing this called Ko Pha-Nagan. I got here the day of the famous "full moon party." I am not going to pretend that it was not a good time. The best way to describe it was about 7-8000 chemical induced travelers dancing on the beach until the sun came up. It was good fun but could have been anywhere in the world. The fact that it was on a beach in Thailand had nothing to do with it. It was a tourist party! I am not going to complain that there are too many tourists here. I am at ground zero of the backpacking world. I knew this before I got out here! In an all BLUE world COLOR does not exist? Maybe I am just over the whole backpacker scene? Might have something to do with I have been playing "Mr. Backpacker" for over 2 years now? The pointless conversations are really beginning to bore me! I really just need to move on and find something that gets me excited. For some reason I am just sitting around waiting for something to happen. I spend most of my day lying in the hammock of my $2.47 love shack on the beach scratching my newly acquired "bed bug wounds"..................................
Interesting fact I read today:
"OK" is the most widely understood word in the world followed by "Coke" as in Cola!
Prisoners of the Sun signing out -Johnny Nomad D.B.A. (BA Baracus)
Comments
Yo! Johnny No!
Hey, who's got baah-beans? (you know what that is Cher'?... pouty lips in cajunland) Sounds like you need a good night's sleep in a cool room, sleeping on Downy-scented sheets to recharge your engine. Then, tomorrow, you'll be ready to roll. Every journey has pot holes.
I know what you are talking about.
After so much time on the move, on the go, and seeing so many things, there comes a point where that feeling comes along where you just have to move, where remaining idle is boring and you are always looking for the next best thing, but when you get there they don't live up to the expectations because you have seen so much that it can barely compare as to when you first started traveling, or something like that.
Thomas Fertel
LSU