I’ve forgotten more than you know: the end of home and the beginning of Tokyo - October 17

Planes would be the perfect setting for limbo. I’m on one again, this time headed for Tokyo. I went home for the semester break and spent most of it with Emily in East Lansing. Actually, most of the time I wasn’t with her because she was either studying or in class. It wasn’t very fortuitous that she had a midterm on my departure date, so I extended my ticket two more days so that we could spend a little bit of time together when she wouldn’t be so stressed. It wasn’t meant to be, though, as she had another test to prepare for, and as they usually tend to do in law school, the professors just piled on more work. Last night I decided to go to Red Robin (the casual dining restaurant best known for its gourmet burgers and bottomless steak fries) because I had a free burger coupon to use that my aunt got me for my birthday by signing up for their online burger club or something. Emily was busy stressing, which in turn was stressing me out considering it was my last night and all, so I grabbed my book and set off for Red Robin by myself around 9:15pm in pursuit of a burger, cherry coke, bottomless fries, and some good ole’ peppy Americana atmosphere. Sporting the same dirty sweatpants I’d worn to the gym several hours earlier, I hopped into the borrowed Lexus from dad and made off into the night with my trusty mapquest directions. The trip should’ve only taken 15 minutes, but the directions weren’t as trusty as I’d hoped, and when faced with either getting onto N. Creyts Rd. to make a right onto S. Creyts, or to just get off at S. Creyts, it gets a little hairy, and the next thing I knew I was lost. It was a challenge working up the motivation to go to Red Robin in the first place since it’s a lonely experience eating out by yourself, it wasn’t exactly around the block, and most of all, I’m lazy, which is ironically what prompted the decision in the first place since it seemed like an easier alternative to cooking for myself. The trip wasn’t 15 minutes at all, and as the clock clicked towards 10, Red Robin’s bedtime, I started to get nervous I wouldn’t make it and that all would be in vain. Somehow I wound up in the boonies, doubled back to civilization, but accidentally turned the wrong way onto a poorly labeled Saginaw Rd, and when unbeknownst to me I was a mere one block away, I called up the restaurant to check my coordinates. By this time it was 9:46pm, and to my devastation, a callow male voice on the other end of the line informed me they’d already broken down the kitchen since nobody had been in the restaurant for the previous half hour. It didn’t help matters that my gas needle was now resting on empty, gas for under 3 bucks a gallon is impossible to find in Lansing, and I was too cheap to eat anywhere else.
Back on the plane, I attempt to doze off, but my body and mind are periodically overcome with sensations of acute awareness that I could die at any moment. This plane is but a man-made creation and therefore fallible like man himself. My sense of smell becomes strikingly clear, there’s a tingling in the bridge; my ears get lighter and capture sounds ordinarily beyond the sensory, and my heart rises a few millimeters in my chest. What kind of life would mine turn out to be if it were to end now? How would I stack up? Clamoring through the clouds as close to heaven as I’m ever gonna get in this material body of mine, my thoughts at times transcend a capacity for words, hovering around abstract unfathomables like the infinite - too great for my humble brain – before plunging back down into the reality of the paltry; things like Red Robin, gas prices, and 8 more hours to go on this stinkin’ plane.
I’m sitting next to a married couple in their mid-70’s also from Michigan, but the western part of the state. Sure enough, they’re conservative, Catholic, and somehow I’ve got them convinced I’m a good Christian boy – maybe it was my innocent question about the saint who stands guard at the gates of heaven (I knew it was Nicholas, I just couldn’t remember at the time). The man pats my leg whenever I say something that amuses him so, or maybe it’s when he thinks of something funny to tell me. At 76, he still works part-time as a dentist and doesn’t look as old as a 76 year old would through my eyes just a few years ago. Funny how as my parents age – they’re only in their very early 60’s – it makes older people not seem so old anymore. The man’s wife refers to her profession as “executive homemaker”. At some point she says to me, “And I’ll tell you what I say to my grandsons, I say, ‘I’ve forgotten more than you know.’” Then her husband chimes in, “I don’t think that’s the case with this boy, he seems like a rather intelligent young man.” Maybe a bit of an overstatement, but he’s probably right in this instance.
At some point after the hours have already been melding together for quite some time, I start to crack. My grip on reality loosens to the point of severe discomfort. Unable to sleep, my mind starts obsessively swirling in thoughts of death and other such unappetizing topics: the fear of never truly being happy, the inevitability of aging, and how anything with an end can be viewed as short when stacked up against eternity. Still, why does the slow motion button for life always get pushed during the most undesirable moments while something like ejaculating lasts only for a few fleeting seconds.
The plane eventually touches down, but not before the cabin crew serves us a final meal of what seems like reheated sausage egg mcmuffins from McDonalds. I’m not sure why they’re serving breakfast at 4 in the afternoon, and my internal clock gets all the more confused after I deplane, make it through customs in a snap, and step out into the afternoon light which gives off an early morning feel by the way the sun is oddly hanging in the sky. It gets dark soon afterwards as I ride the airport limousine bus to the Shinjuku Hilton where I rendezvous with Rino and Alexis. Rino treats us to a nice dinner before we set off for her parents’ apartment (or more like 3 apartments joined together) in Chiba near Disneyland.

Dear Leah - October 16

Dear Leah,
I've made you wait two weeks for a response, and that's not right, but frankly, I just got scared. I remember you telling me how Dave wrote you such good emails (along with others), and while I'm not exactly your boy toy looking to get some play (or love for that matter) out of this, I still felt intimidated. And if the truth be told, I also got distracted, more so sucked into an abyss of inactivity and lounging around which after a while can get mistaken for some degree of busyness. By this time it does not matter, though, as you are undoubtedly trekking through the backward third world jungles of Cambodia or Laos where computers don't exist and the people have never seen modern marvels such as "Dude, Where's My Car". Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you were in an internet cafe at Angkor Wat right now (if not inside the temple itself) talking to your sister in Israel on Skype. They just don't make the third world anymore like they used to (although Cambodia would probably be something more along the lines of the second world, but who's counting).
So I'll be back to the ole' stomping ground in just one short week. Today is my last day in the States before setting out for Tokyo tomorrow and I don't have the slightest clue what I'll do there. After I get done writing this email, I'm gonna make my way over to the book store and grab a Lonely Planet guide to Tokyo, but not to buy of course - we all know I'm too cheap for that - rather just for ideas.
As time wore on during my stay at home, it increasingly felt as if I'd never gone to Thailand at all. I didn't have any new stories to tell my family or friends because they all kept updated through emails and my blog, plus all my photos are posted on Snapfish. As for the rest of America, I reduced my experience to a mere cliche of "It's hot, cheap, and I don't just have to eat Thai food because there's every kind of restaurant there you can imagine." My eyes are no more clear, no details of home are any more salient, I've been creatively defunct, but I am 23 now with shorter hair and less of a sleep deficit because sleeping here goes a lot better than over there. I ate a lot of pizza and mexican food, saw my girlfriend for about 5 minutes a day due to the fact that's all her frenetic schedule could allow (ok ok, maybe a bit more than 5 minutes), though those five minutes were pretty damn nice, and I'm just about finished with this book called "Indecision" which I've got mixed feelings about. Somehow over these last few weeks I've forgotten most of the tiny amount of Thai that I knew, so I only remember 3 words now instead of 4; and no Leah, we're not tan.

The Brothers Robbins (at 3-way family birthday celebration)

Only two more days of Satit

the superhero unit

Getting Bullied Again Like a Helpless 8 Year Old in Grade School - September 3rd & 4th

9/3 - I'm supremely restless right now. I want to focus on writing, grading, or reading, but I can't for some mysterious reason (maybe because I looked at too much internet porn as a youth). You'd think that I'd have gotten out all the restlessness at Muay Thai this afternoon, but no. I forced myself to go work out there today and somehow wound up in the group of people that ran 5km because they were too big of dicks to tell me where to turn off for the 3km route. The worst part about the run was the boredom. Their pace wasn't that fast, but it just got so incredibly tedious. I don't like running at all. By the time I started shadow boxing, my body was completely drained. Everything at Lanna Gym is done at your own pace, so whenever you feel like being done with shadow boxing (which doesn’t take long for me since I feel silly at this point with my novice technique swinging at the air and losing my balance), you can move onto hitting the bag. With this being my third day, I’m starting to feel a bit more comfortable hitting the bag. After the bag, then it’s time to jump in the ring with one of the trainers to hit the pads. Each trainer offers something different, and as I learned the hard way on my second day, the craziest looking trainer doesn’t so much let you hit the pads as make an ass out of you by parrying out of the way every time you swing only to pay you back with a smack to the face or kick to the stomach. Supposedly this is to teach the individual how to get angry, feel like they’re a helpless 8 year old getting bullied again in grade school, and maybe teach them how to take a hit and build up some endurance in the process. I wore a nice red line across my forehead from the pad as a souvenir all weekend.
Ben and Mark had already eaten dinner without me tonight because I didn't get back until after 6. Oh yes, good ole' Mark. I saw that guy around 7pm yesterday evening and he was in his room for the night watching Six Feet Under in the buff. Mark has an obsessive personality, and since being turned onto the HBO series last week, has purchased every season (bootleg of course, but still pricey nonetheless) and finished all 63 episodes (clocking in at approximately 53 minutes each) in under 12 days. It's amazing that he wonders why he had a migraine this morning.
Anyway, he said he wasn’t going out again for the evening, but as it turns out, on his way to fill up his big water bottle at the H20 supply place down the street, he bumped into two male tourists asking him if he knew anything about Chiang Mai. Only in Mark's world would they turn out to be gay partners with a propensity for threesomes. I think the conversation went something along the lines of, "You know Chiang Mai? What, you’re gay? How about we go back to our guesthouse and consummate this wonderful newfound bond!" And the rest is history.
I was left to my lonely self eating at Smoothie Blues. I ordered a tuna melt with avocado along with a mango/passion fruit/banana/yogurt smoothie to wash it all down, though I needed some water as well since smoothies aren’t exactly ideal for washing shit down. I did a little bit of grading that should’ve been done weeks ago, but it’s just so damn interminable that I have to spread it out like vegemite (very, very thin). Back in my room I made some more progress in “Kafka On the Shore” while listening to music (albeit only certain music is satisfactory for focusing – in this case it was Mirah). I'm liking the book, especially since reading the scene in which the 15 year old protagonist gets jerked off by some twenty-something year old girl, in the middle of which she suggests something along the lines of how great it would be if they were brother and sister.
Lights out. My restlessness extends well into the night – another day gone in the march toward infinity.

***

9/4 - There’s no Satit tomorrow for some reason, so I decided to try and have an enjoyable Tuesday evening, first by ordering a vanilla Kit Kat banana milkshake at Smoothie Blues in addition to a ham and cheese sandwich with added avocado. I ate with Ben and Erica while Mark came along for the ride and settled for a smoothie as he had already eaten earlier in the night. Not only had he eaten, but he’d just got done making sweet passionate love to one of the guys from the threesome while the partner was out shopping only to return a bit later as the passion was waning. Needless to say, the partner wasn't exactly thrilled to find that he’d been left out of the fun. I tell ya, Mark's got enough drama in his life to fill a country's worth of soap operas (I hear Bulgaria is knocking down his door).
Later on, Erica and I hopped on my mobile deathtrap (aka the Honda Dream circa 1992), weaving in and out of traffic without lights and a broken speedometer on our way to the North Gate Jazz Bar in the old city where we met up with Leah and her "friend" from Yale visiting for about 10 days. I also told this guy Joe that I work with (and who gave me the motorbike) I’d stop by the jazz bar. He’s been at CMU for almost four years now and it’s obvious he’s spent more than a healthy amount of time in Chiang Mai for a young American boy of 25. He’s leaving at the end of this semester, because in his words, “It’s time to finally grow up.” Joe’s friend Zero (yes, that’s his real name) was the MC for the night at the bar, as he is every Tuesday. The first thing that Zero ever said to Ben went something like this:
"Whuddya mean you're not drinking?"
"I'm pretty exhausted" Ben replied.
"Are you kidding me? It's not like you're poring over the Torah here."
We weren't sure if we heard Zero correctly because it was such an unusual thing to say. For some background on Zero, he's supposedly a half-Jewish, half-Polish, self-loathing anti-semite (at least in the words of Joe). As for Ben, when people meet him for the first time, they often make the mistake of assuming he's Jewish. He very possibly could be the most Jewish-looking non-Jew in the history of the world, though to his credit, he has been to a seder (and maybe Rosh Hashana dinner).
Tuesday nights at the jazz bar are supposed to be open mic night, but tonight wasn't so much an open mic night as a freestyle jazz session courtesy of the club's fairly talented regular performers. The crowd was comprised of mostly Westerners plus some 3rd and 4th year English students from CMU, who as it turns out, all think I'm gay with Ben because we're always seen together on campus. "What a shame," they said. "You're too sexy." I wasn't gonna argue.
The night got all the more interesting when Leah’s boy, Dave, decided to sign up as the only actual open mic performance. He had even brought along his guitar from home, but opted instead for the electric one offered by the venue’s regular guitarist for whom it successfully belted out adroit renditions of Herbie Hancock and other jazz greats. After some wisecracks from Zero about Dave hailing from Maine, “Yes Ladies and Gentleman, there is a state located north of New York” – Dave was made to promise he didn’t like Phish and wasn’t liable to start “jamming”. It was clear from the start that Dave was in trouble, especially when some of the regular musicians tried to back him up on drums and piano, only to massacre any iota of rhythm. The crowd wasn’t very amused being they wanted to hear the cool and familiar sounds off the jazz band, and some people even went as far to laugh raucously. It was pretty awful, but at least he’ll never have to see any of these people again, not to mention Leah was totally won over by his bravery. I give the kid props, though, because he was a super good sport and didn't seem to have a mean bone in his body. As Zero concluded while sending Dave offstage, "Here's hoping the kid at least gets some action out of it." And that he did, ladies and gentleman. So alas, the story ends happily after all.

Here's hoping Jared's second book is a bit more mature - August 29

Dear Jared,

Looked at ZINE WORLD. [The] review [of your zine, Jared's First Book] was not too complimentary:

"This isn't really my cup of tea - there's no narrative, and I'm having a hard time seeing this as 'art'. Here's hoping Jared's second book is a bit more mature."

I sent a stink bomb to Andrew the reviewer.

Love Dad

Is This About a Girl? - August 27th

Got another letter from Lane today – Lane, that great constant in my life: you can always count on him for consistency knowing that he’s not going to have a whole lot of updates living in a Zen center baking bread everyday. Somehow, though, he’s a lay monk that happens to be girl crazy. It’s a crazy oxymoronic situation trying to live a celibate life when you’re as horny as him, but what is Lane if not a paradox? I’m actually going to see him and the rest of the family, in addition to Emily, in just a month’s time. Yeah, I decided to head home during the semester break.
“What the hell are you doing that for?” everyone always exclaims more than asking. It's a line I often hear in my life. “Are you crazy? Is this about a girl? Don’t do it man, you’re all the way over here so you might as well travel as much as you can.”
But then there’s level-headed Alexis who offered some allegorical tale involving a little girl who buys three games of pool before quickly deciding she doesn’t even like pool in the least. The girl can either keep playing pool even though she hates it, or recognize that the money is already gone and move onto something else. In retrospect, the moral of the story is a bit hazy (being that I don’t hate traveling by any means), but it has something to do with people getting caught up in these notions of having to do something because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do. In actuality, people should really do what they want to do, and while I want to travel, at this point I would rather see my girlfriend more (along with my grandpa, mustn't forget Auntie, BJ Tucker, Tucker Carlson, and so on and so forth). There are some things I gotta iron out and make sense of, and no it’s not just a $1500 booty call, though I wonder if my girlfriend would be flattered thinking of it in such terms…she’d probably think she’s worth more. Plus, I’m stopping off in Japan for five days on the way back, so I am getting some traveling in, not to mention that I plan on geographically tramping all over the region next midterm break and once second semester ends. The ticket price wasn’t bad at all, especially since I’m getting a lump sum of over $1000 at the end of this semester for having taught a “special” class at the university (which is just a “special” way of saying that the kids were absolutely atrocious). Kind of funny that I’ll be seeing my parents in the States and then a week later they’re coming to Thailand, but considering they booked some frenetically paced tour that doesn’t really include me at all, hopefully it won’t be overkill.
Working the job that I do and living in Chiang Mai could really be the absolute high-life if only I had the people I really cared about over here (though sometimes that seems to change like a fickle Shakespearean mob). Still, in spite of the policeman that blows his whistle while pretending to direct traffic when there’s no need for him to be there in the first place; in spite of the semi-prevalent sneaks-up-on-you-when-you’re-not-expecting-it gloom that comes with monsoon season and the everyday rains; in spite of the fact that most Thai grow out their pinkie nail – especially the guys – so as to be more efficient pickers (use your imagination); in spite of the fact that I can’t catch a good night of shuteye here to save my life; in spite of the student who puts infinitely more work into complaining about her grade than doing the actual assignments; in spite of the fact that I can’t tell if I’m going mad or going mad thinking about going mad – in spite of all these things, life ain’t exactly awful.

Me and My Motorbike - August 25th

When you want them, they don’t want you, and when they want you and you don’t want them, they honk at you like a two cent whore. Hopefully my days of riding the songtaews regularly are over now that I got a motorbike, but we’ll just have to wait and see how trusty the old machine – which has passed through more than its fair share of owners and renters – will hold up. I don’t want to have to crawl back to those red truck mobsters like an ex-lover on my knees (not that I know what that’s like). And now for 2 questions:
1. Why does every restaurant in Chiang Mai insist on playing Shakira and Savage Garden every day on repeat?
2. Why is there a creepy old Western man in my apartment building swimming laps with snorkel gear on?

Borneo: July 27 – August 7

So guess where I am? If you guessed Idaho, then you're incorrect. I'm in the city of Kota Kinabalu in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the greater island of Borneo, and guess what? It's not half as crazy as it sounds. Kota Kinabalu is a city of 270,000, and while the downtown doesn't exactly have skyscrapers – well, maybe a few – it does have a Starbucks, Esprit, plus at least a few Mercedes Benzes that I saw. The downtown is situated along the waterfront over which the sky is populated with crazily shaped clouds. Ben and I took a bus into the city from the airport, which took about 15-20 minutes. It didn't take long to walk to our hostel - a rather modern and clean environment with hot showers (not that I've taken advantage of them) and free internet. We're in a dorm room with six beds, though we only met one of our sleeping mates so far, a Dutch woman whom we walked around the city with this afternoon. We stopped by the office in town to check on the status of us being able to hike Mt. Kinabalu tomorrow and it's not looking promising. We have accommodation at the bottom of the mountain, but everything at the middle of the mountain is completely booked and has been for months in advance. I know what you're thinking: why don't we just hike the mountain in one day and cut out the middle man (being the mid-mountain accommodation), but the problem is that you must have accommodation booked on the middle of the mountain before you can get a climbing permit, which is necessary to hike the mountain. Regardless, Ben and I will try anything and everything to make it up that mountain tomorrow, keeping our fingers crossed that maybe somebody will cancel and open up room for us. It's sad because Mt. Kinabalu was the initial attraction that drew us here in the first place, so I'll be damned if I don't get to see that sunrise at 4,095 meters overlooking the edge of the world.
In our wanderings around the city, we passed through a massive food market serving all varieties of fruits, smelly fish, meat, and countless other inexplicable things. I'm struggling significantly with some of the food so far since everything has meat in it and it all looks like it was just slaughtered in the backroom before they serve it to you - bones and all.

Even though we're closer to the equator now, the weather is surprisingly bearable, maybe because we're near the water and it rained a bit to cool things off, though luckily it didn't rain on us.
Last night, Ben and I had to sleep in the Bangkok airport. It's amazing that such a modern and massive airport has such little options for sleeping and with chairs that couldn't be any less ergonomic, but luckily Ben and I were permitted to sleep on the only somewhat isolated comfy chairs supposedly being reserved for some special group that wouldn’t need them until the morning. It's not like it was a decent sleep by any means, though the alternatives would have been excruciating. I'm pretty beat right now and it's only 8:40pm here. It's probably a wise idea to try and rest up before heading off to Mt. Kinabalu tomorrow, even though our prospects of hiking it aren't looking so great, probably due to the ubiquity of 16 year old British school girls on organized trips here sporting hoodies that read, “Borneo 07”. Who would've ever thought?

We showed up at the mountain on Sunday morning, and spent the whole day unsure about whether we'd be able to hike the following morning. The odds weren’t looking so good, but there were several other people in the same boat lacking the necessary accommodation near the top in order to obtain a climbing permit. Monday morning rolled around, and after some back and forth wheelings-and-dealings, we were able to obtain a permit on the condition that we hike it all – up and down – in one day. After seeing all the other puds, older seemingly unfit women and their little children managing the climb, Ben and I figured “how hard could it be?" So with our own little Malay guide Nordan, we started up the mountain at a brisk pace - a pace that would soon prove to be quite unmanageable.
“How are we doing, Nordan?” we asked our wise guide.
“I think, maybe (pause) too fast.” He muttered back in his limited English.
After a few kilometers, we were fucked.
“How bout now Nordan, how are we doing? Are we gonna be able to make it all the way to the top?”
This time, the answer was tweaked. “I think, (pause) maybe not.”
The rest stop (where they have the accommodation and restaurant) was located 6km up the mountain, and that's the point where all the normal people complete their first day of hiking. At around 4km, every additional step for Ben and I was hellishly grueling. We were alternating between carrying my backpack, but it didn't matter - backpack or no backpack, my legs were barely moving. The hike to the top is very steep and consists of thousands and thousands of steps (which straddle the line between natural and humanly groomed) that made my previous hikes seem totally laughable, plus the air is quite thin up there at an altitude of well over 10,000 feet. Every time you round a corner, you pray that there will be a stretch of flat terrain. Needless to say, Ben and I made it to the rest stop and couldn't move anymore. There was absolutely no way we were going any further, up or down. Meanwhile, we made the hike to the rest stop in stellar time; a rate which placed us at the top of times relative to other hikers. Still, we were left with the dilemma of what to do at the rest stop being that all the accommodation was booked and we were entirely spent. As fate would have it, the one day hikers are no surprise to the mountain staff, and they knew perfectly well that our chances of making it to the top were about zilch. So for more than a few extra Malaysian Ringit, they allowed us to sleep in this contingency shit-hole shack for the night and required us to pay Nordan a few extra ringits as well. It's not like it was much of a night sleep, though, because everyone wakes up at 2am in order to hike the last 2.5km to the summit in order to see the sunrise. We slept (or more accurately lied awake) on dirty beds without sheets and pillows without pillowcases in sleeping bags which God only knows when they had last been washed. It didn't really matter much because I slept in all my clothes with my hood up. It's pretty crazy going from the heat of Thailand and Kota Kinabalu to the damp penetrating chilliness of Mt. Kinabalu.
During our seven hour comatose stint in the rest lodge, we managed to make friends with a British guy named Matt who'd been in the same failed one-day hiking situation as us, so he was in the shack with us as well as a German dude somehow paying a lot less for the accommodation, and this annoying British guy and girl who chattered away the whole night. At 2am the annoying British couple woke us up before our alarm time of 2:30, and at 3am we were off for the summit. You can't really pass people as easily during the final leg of the hike because it's super dark, slippery, and too narrow at some points; plus there a few stretches where it’s necessary to grab onto a rope tied into the side of the mountain and pull yourself along so that you don't tumble all the way down treacherous rock faces. Like I mentioned before, all sorts of people (e.g. obese computer programmers from Kuala Lumpur) who don't seem to have any business hiking the mountain clog up the route, and some individuals were even throwing up off to the side while the bulk progressed forward at a rate of -2 km per hour. Ben, Matt, Nordan and I pushed ahead, and 3 hours later of muddling through the dark over ominous mountainside, we reached the summit. Waiting for the sun to rise, it was insanely cold. Coming from Thailand isn't exactly great preparation for hiking Mt. Kinabalu, and so I shivered in my soaked knit gloves (purchased cheaply in Thailand), t-shirt, thermal, hoodie, and Addidas windbreaker jacket. Peering off into the heavens, the sun rose, but in obscurity to us as it was shrouded in clouds. We still bore witness to a numinous sky illuminating before our eyes as various surrounding peaks gradually highlighted in ethereal light as if E.T. himself were touching them individually. And then, during our initial descent, the clouds receded, the sky cleared, and all those questions of whether hiking Mt. Kinabalu was worth it were put to rest. It was a divinely august beauty.

So after the beautiful views and the 2.5km hike back down to the rest stop, it felt like we were done, and then we realized we still had another 6km to hike down. Many people had told us the hike down would be harder than the hike up, but I disagree. The hike down was infinitely easier, though incredibly taxing on my joints. The trauma of going down rugged trail has left my knees experiencing an arthritic sensation previously unknown. The last stretch of the descent was particularly boring and monotonous, as by that time I was ready to be done.
Now I'm back at a different hostel in Kota Kinabalu that some friends of ours from the mountain, Ron and Carmen, are staying at. We actually met them several days prior – which in Borneo backpacker time is an eternity – on the ride over from Kota Kinabalu to the mountain and they climbed the same time as us. Ron is a 31 year old Psychology lecturer originally from East Germany but now considers New Zealand home. He’s also a very unexpectedly sill man. Carmen is a 29 year old Singaporean girl (I consciously eschewed ‘woman’) who is a former student of Ron’s at Victoria University in Wellington and just recently graduated from there. They both came over here with other members from Victoria's psychology department to attend a symposium on...surprise, Psychology, being held in Kota Kinabalu. Carmen hiked at a slow pace up the mountain and miraculously made it to the top, while Ron was the only person to put Ben and myself completely to shame. He absolutely breezed up that geological wonder, making it all seem so effortless. He looked like a fit guy, but who knew climbing mountains back in New Zealand, doing salsa, running, and practicing Capoeira makes you into a regular mountain man. Ron actually tried to make it to the summit of the mountain on the first day with plans oof going up again the next morning, but had to turn back due to bad weather. Anyway, we might hang out with them for the next few days being that they're following a similar itinerary hitting up the beaches and then heading off to Brunei for a day.

***

Sadly, I'm not gonna make it to Brunei - it will forever be the one that got away. Ben wasn't as committed to the idea of going as much as I was, so I fault him for that, but regardless, I don't think it would have been feasible because of time constraints. In order to get there, you have to take a two hour ferry to an island and then another hour long ferry to a port 25km away from the capital city, so by the time we got there we would’ve had to turn around immediately and come back. It basically boiled down to traveling all that way and paying all that money just for a stamp on the ole’ passport and not being able to see anything at all. Not that there's an exorbitant amount to see in Brunei being that it's so small, but it would've been cool to check out the elaborate mosques and hotels and take a water taxi along the river to behold the stilt villages. Brunei is an interesting place because it's only been able to remain the autonomously strict Islamic monarchy that it is because of rich oil deposits, which propelled the micro-sized country into the upper echelon of the world’s richest. The country has an incredibly high standard of living, and every time the Sultan has a birthday, the entire population receives a gift. The sad part is that once the oil runs out in 30-40 years, they'll be royally fucked. Everyone knows how the Sultan of Brunei was once the richest man in the world, but not everybody is familiar with the infamous tale of how his younger brother - while appointed as the minister of finance - managed to blow 16 billion of the country's reserves on gambling debts, cars, hotels in Beverly Hills, not to mention gold-plated toilet-roll holders. So no Brunei for us, and I don't know if I'll ever be back here again, but it turns out that Royal Brunei Airlines flies all over the world, and if you fly with them, there's a good chance you'll have a layover in Brunei. Still, I feel incomplete, and now we have this extra day in Kota Kinabalu with nothing to do.
Yesterday we went to one of the islands off the coast with Ron and Carmen. It was an extraordinarily choppy boat ride with Ben nearly bouncing overboard up front, fearful that at any moment he would break his boney butt. The island we visited was called Mamutik; not exactly the kind of place you see pictured on postcards, plus the beach was pretty small and the snorkeling wasn't so great because of the overcast weather, though I did manage to get attacked by a whole school of fish (and get bumped by some floating rubbish that sent me into a panic because I thought it was a jellyfish). On Mamutik we also met up with the rest of Ron and Carmen's psych crew from New Zealand - of which none were actually from New Zealand, but rather places like Estonia, Germany, and the Philippines - and they weren't especially warm to us. Thus, it was mostly just Ben's hairy shoulder patches and I left to our own devices. We had planned on camping out on the beach that night, but the horror stories of torrential downpour and inadequate shelter convinced us otherwise, and so we returned back to Kota Kinabalu and had dinner at the market I described previously replete with all sorts of puzzling and alien food. I tried some chicken on a stick for starters, but immediately the bone inside the first piece made me cringe, so I tossed that aside and went for the veggies. I threw something on my plate reminiscent of tortellini, though after my first bite of that, I quickly realized that it was in fact not vegetarian at all, but instead a very unfamiliar type of meat; a type of meat that comes from the wattle of a chicken. At least the desserts were good. I also attempted shopping for some fake Nikes at a night market nearby, it's just that a 9.5 shoe size in this part of the world is considered gigantic and therefore in rare supply. I know buying Nike is the worst of the worst when it comes to being a responsible consumer, but what about fake Nikes?
We said our goodbyes to Ron and Carmen a little later, for today they are making their way over to Brunei (those wretched philistines), and Ben and I retired to our dorm room. The previous night we lucked out in getting a private room with twin beds made up like a little kid's bedroom, but last night we had no such luck and once again I was given a sheet only managing to cover 1/3 of my body. The air con was blasting so fiercely throughout the night that I awoke with icicles dangling from my patchy beard. Now we have no idea what to do with ourselves today. This morning we ate breakfast in the hostel with two kids from Malaysia, and guess what, I was the first Jew they'd ever met, so of course I had to field all sorts of questions about whether all Jews are smart and ridiculously good looking (I took some creative license with the latter), yada yada yada.
The plane to Mulu was quite small, with a capacity of approximately 25 people (give or take 25, I’m not so good at guesstimating). Everyone aboard was a tourist, mostly British, though we only filled up about 1/10 of the seats (the math is really starting to get complicated here). Looking out the window fro my seat, I saw mostly undeveloped blankets of green below interrupted only by the squiggly lines of brown rivers, making the earth look as though it were various puzzle pieces neatly fit together. How long could I survive if dropped into this middle of nowhere?
During our two days in Mulu, we explored the four major caves there. For some unknown geological reason to me, there are tons of caves in the region, but only a few are open to the public, one of which is Deer Cave, the most expansive cave in the whole wide world. While the caves were really cool, it was a weird part of the trip for me because I'm not exactly sure how to properly enjoy myself sightseeing caves. I found myself struggling to understand how exactly one seizes the enjoyment in cave viewing. It’s not like we were spelunking or doing any adventure caving (though that is an option if you’ve got the time and money). It didn't help that I found it incredibly challenging trying to capture the caves in photos because of their vastness and darkness, and capturing for me is often times what makes sightseeing enjoyable, maybe because it adds some meta dimension. Regardless, the caves were most impressive. Being there reminded me of that horror film, “The Descent,” in which a bunch of girls go caving in Appalachia and come face to face with subterranean monsters. It was all the more eerie when I wound up walking one-on-one with our guide who’s indigenously from the area and he told me about a great many weird things that go on in the caves. In a manner of total honesty he said, “I’ve been in this cave and others before when no tourists were here and nobody else was around, and you can here vivid voices and laughter coming from what sounds like a large group of people. It is believed that many people have died in these caves, but we’re not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff. Even the scientists who come here to do geological research and other studies have witnessed really bizarre things, but they keep it all very hush hush because it could seriously damage our tourism.” It sounded all the more spooky hearing it in that fantastic cave as we lagged behind all the others.
Mulu is totally in the middle of nowhere. There's no way to reach it by road, so you can either fly or take a boat. There's also no town in Mulu, just the national park and villages of the Penan tribe, which is an indigenous group of Malaysia that used to be known as the head hunters. It’s weird because the only people who go to Mulu are tourists, and so there’s a strange dichotomy that exists between them and the indigenous Penan. In all, it was a good time, and the second night Ben and I got plastered on locally produced rice wine. There wasn’t really a whole lot else to do there once darkness descended.

It would’ve only been $17.50USD per person for Ben and I to share a bed in the airport hotel, but $17.50USD could afford us five meals or more at Smoothie Blues in Thailand (the Western food joint five steps from our apartment), and probably ten meals if we got them anywhere else. We’re trying to be budget travelers, so we just slept in the airport itself on the floor. For some reason, most airports don’t provide anywhere to sleep, and Kuala Lumpur’s Air Asia terminal is no exception. They made their chairs as uncomfortable as possible, hard plastic ones lipping up at the edges so you can’t lay down on them unless you want an indented spine. By comparison, the floor was our best bet, even though I felt the eyes and stares of strange people burning into me all night. It was freezing as well, and on numerous occasions I was awakened by multifarious pieces of trash hitting me from the hands of people who’d either missed the nearby trashcan or just plain mistaken me for one. The airport sanitation worker also insisted on sweeping up by my head every thirty minutes like clockwork.
We’re going home. Two days ago we were relaxing during our glorified layover in Miri for a day, an oil town that’s recently tried to reinvent itself with a name change to “The Resort City”, which seems a tad oxymoronic (if not just moronic) because there’s nothing resort-ish about it. We didn’t do much there other than deal with our perpetually disgruntled and acerbic guesthouse owner, though rumor has it that she’s actually very nice and just can’t help her caustic demeanor. Yesterday was spent milling about the fair city of Kuala Lumpur with its Western skyscrapers and Islamic flare. My friend Stephanie from the glory days of International House at Melbourne Uni was kind enough to play host for the evening and I showed my gratitude by staining her shirt with some laksa lemak after bumbling with my chopsticks and dropping a giant piece of tofu that sent the curry splattering. She took us on an abridged car tour of some of KL’s highlights, like the Sydney Opera House knockoff and the campy technicolored ferris wheel known as “The Eye on Malaysia”. We’d already covered the Menara Kuala Lumpur and Petronas Towers earlier in the day, so don’t go gettin’ your panties in a bunch. It was amazing how well Steph, such a meek and innocuous lass, could maneuver so aggressively through the city’s crazy traffic, in a manual transmission no less, and she got us back just in the knick of time to catch our bus to the airport.
It’s 5:30am right now and the airport is bustling with people eating either McDonalds or standard Nasi Lemak as they bustle to and fro with little regard for anyone else or personal space. People probably bustle like this in every airport, it’s just that in other airports I haven’t had the luxury of living like a bum and awaking to such a terrible a case of irritation. At least I only have to take my malaria pills for another seven days while Ben has to suffer through thirty more.
Goodbye Borneo (and the tad that we glimpsed of Kuala Lumpur), you were a good lover. I’ll try and spread the good word.

Checklist for 10 days in Borneo - July 28th

Malaria pills – check
4 t-shirts – check
4 pairs of underwear – check (why it’s called a pair of underwear is beyond me)
4 pairs of socks – check
1 bathing suit – check
1 hoodie – check
1 pair of shorts – check
digital camcorder – check
digital camera – check
lots of plastic bags for rain – check
positive attitude - check
Ben – check
poncho – no check
umbrella – no check
accommodation at Mt. Kinabalu – no check
accommodation in Mulu – no check

Back in Chiang Mai – July 23, 2007

Back in Chiang Mai, things were pretty much the same. My job was still there and it was easy to jump back into routine, because in Chiang Mai, nothing ever really changes.
Today Ben and I rented motorbikes after we finished up with class and took off all over town trying to take care of bureaucratic visa shit. As soon as we pulled out of the rental place, Ben grabbed the accelerator too hard on his bike, sending him crashing into the curb and flying off like a disabled bird with tourettes. Surprisingly, he emerged relatively unscathed, but it put him on the skids a bit.
When I got back to the apartment, I found a letter from Lane waiting in my mailbox, which is ironic because he should be receiving my postcard around the same time. That means we both waited exactly the same amount of time before attempting legitimate correspondence since parting ways four months prior, though he had to wait for my aunt to send him pre-addressed and stamped envelopes before he sent his. He did say he tried to call me several times but had the wrong number. In the letter he talked about having sparked something romantic with a girl who came to stay at the Zen center for a week and whether anything will come of it, even though she had to go home and he's committed to a life of celibacy for another several months there before heading over to Thailand in October. Turns out he's already researched a respectable monastery to live in, Wat Pah Nanachat in Ubon Rachathani, several hours from Chiang Mai in a totally different province. So much for coming over to see me. He'll have to shave his head and his eyebrows as well. It's such a shame that he always has to be so extreme about things – either dreadlocks or baldness, celibacy or incorrigibility, John Denver or Catharsis.
In the afternoon Ben and I took off on our motorbikes once again, this time for some leisure riding up the mountain past Doi Suthep (the famous Temple overlooking the city) and off into the Hill Tribe villages about 20km away from where we live. It was a pretty ride, which got a little cold as we sped higher up with the wind slapping against our bare arms and legs. The Hmong tribe village was not exactly what one would expect from a tribal people as it was comprised of the same kinds of craft and purse and jewelry shops as you encounter all over Chiang Mai. They didn't live in huts or anything, but rather tin shacks with corrugated roofs decorated with satellite dishes. It was a town obviously struggling to maintain part of its traditional lifestyle in the face of modernity while apparently not having the best go of it. The people there spoke better English than most of my university students. Supposedly there are less touristed hill tribe villages further away.

Our afternoon exploits left us feeling like we got the most out of our motorbike rental. We ate dinner with Leah at this restaurant called the "Art Cafe", which turned out to be much more expensive than what was listed in the guidebook, and while my turkey burrito (with Thanksgiving style turkey) was pretty good, it definitely wasn't worth 165 baht, plus they didn't even give us free water which is a total sham when you're paying that much for a meal in Thailand (conversion: $5). On the ride back it was torrentially downpouring, even though we had already waited half an hour for the storm to lessen, but no such luck. I couldn’t see and was sure I might die since my glasses were completely spotted with rain drops and fogging up pretty bad. Guess it's back to the trusty ole' songtaews.

The European Interlude: July 11 - July 20

I should’ve known they wouldn’t let me leave Chiang Mai without a fight. As a little bird informed me after the fact, in Thailand, you should always get things in writing. People like to say one thing and then say something completely different shortly afterward. Such was the case with my boss, who when I went in to hand her my substitute schedule sheet, reacted as if I was completely insane.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The schedule and list of people who will be subbing for me while I’m gone, just as you asked.”
She retained a look of confusion on her face. “What is this for? Where are you going?” My boss always talks in a very fast and abrasive manner, like a machine gun, whether she’s happy or not, so it can be difficult to read what she’s thinking.
“I’m going to a wedding in Austria. Remember, I came in here just under a month ago and we talked about this and you gave me the go-ahead.”
“I don’t remember any such thing.”
I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg.
“Are you serious?” I inquired. “I came in here a few weeks ago and told you I had a wedding in Austria and you said as long as I found the necessary subs that it was fine.”
There was a long pause in which she just stared at me dumbly.
She broke the silence. “You’re supposed to be representing Princeton, right? You knew you’d be working here this year, right? I don’t know. I don’t know. You know that other girl, T___? She just decided to take off for two weeks with barely any notice. That’s not appropriate at all.”
The supply of oxygen in the room felt like it was rapidly depleting.
“But I told you about this as soon as I arrived, which was a month in advance, and you told me it was fine.” I meekly protested.
“Well, when T___ gets back, she’s going to find that she doesn’t have a position for next semester. Do you plan on just taking off like this next semester?”
“No.”
“Well, I hope not. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“So is everything all right then?”
“Fine, fine” she said in a tone that would have left complete doubt in anyone’s mind that anything was remotely fine.

And so I left Chiang Mai unsure about my job security. I flew Turkish Airlines from Bangkok to Vienna with a stopover in Istanbul. My first impressions regarding the airline were particularly drab, as were my later ones, but at least I had a whole row to myself during the 10 hour stretch from Bangkok to Istanbul. There were no individual TV screens, it was impossible to see the community screen for my section, the food was peculiar (no Pork, are you kidding me?), but it was a-ok because I pretty much slept the whole way excluding the particularly turbulent stretch a few hours into the flight which sent the drink cart lurching and the flight attendant diving. She was in a perpetually bad mood for the remainder of the flight. Such a scour on such a pretty face, and as I discovered, it seems that in order to be a flight attendant on Turkish Air, you must be pretty and wear a constant scour. Another thing I can’t figure out is why they always play “The George Lopez Show” on international flights in far off places of the world, as if it’s some kind of universal television program. It wasn’t well received in America and it sure as hell isn’t received any better anywhere else. It’s awful.
I arrived in Vienna on the morning of the 12th where I met Daniel the Swede at the airport. My flight landed slightly before his, so when he emerged from luggage claim, I was there waiting for him with a silly little sign that I’d drafted up in the interim. It was a passionate reuniting that saw us fondle each others’ balls a bit and rub facial gruff together in hopes of creating fire, then it was time to explore Vienna a bit. We walked around the city on foot, breezing past all of the churches and various other minor architectural feats because Daniel and I are such jaded travelers, though I guess the Parliament building was nice enough. Maybe it’s because people don’t know how to walk properly in Vienna, but we were accidentally bumping into someone every five minutes, to which they would meet us with harsh words and pumping fists.
On the train to Graz, Daniel and I both fell asleep, awoke to picturesque Alp scenery, dozed off again, and finally awoke in Europe’s 2003 cultural capital. Rudi greeted us on the platform, and like Daniel, didn’t look any different; still the same old Austrian Kenny G doppelganger.
Q: What did Kenny G say when he walked into an elevator?
A: Man, this place rocks!

Rudi had set us up at a really nice bed and breakfast of sorts down the road from him and right next to the church where the marriage would take place. Our room looked like a quaint version of a sample room right out of an Ikea catalogue, though much of the furniture was actual Ikea. We dropped off our bags and headed over to Rudi’s for a meal “not very representative of Austria” consisting of wraps, pute (what we call Turkey), and various “add to your liking” vegetables and condiments. There was an attempt at guacamole, so I was a very happy camper. Also in attendance at the dinner were Rudi’s fiancée Bianca, a girl named Chelsea, and her psychic mother Lori. Chelsea was once a camper of Rudi’s when he was head counselor and choir master seven years prior at Austria’s very own “Sound of Music Camp.” How Bianca wasn’t disturbed by the Lolita-esque dynamic is beyond me. On the walk back to the B&B, Daniel and I found ourselves asking the question of how we even wound up here in the first place. How well did we even know Rudi after all?

The wedding was held at a fancily architected Catholic church.
“Do you think we’ll incinerate at the entrance for being Jews” Daniel asked me.
“Who knows?” I responded. “Maybe.”
God was on our side that day and we miraculously failed to spontaneously combust. The bride entered down the aisle of the church to Bach’s eerie Toccata and Fugue – the song that’s famously used in horror movies and Tales From the Crypt (if that gives you any idea of the kind of mood it sets). This was no ordinary wedding: it was a music laden modern day opera courtesy of Graz’s own acappella choir and various tattoo-ridden and uniquely hair styled musicians wearing some bizarre-ass attire. The bride’s grandpa, a small silver-haired old man, bawled throughout the entire service, even when it seemed like things couldn’t get any happier. At some point the priest made a joke (in both German and then English) about the irony of Australians in Austria – an issue that has long confounded the world in which neither the twine shall meet or else the world might spin off its axis – which was relevant being that several people from Australia were in attendance and that’s where we all first met. After the service there were drinks served outside and I learned that “gazuntite” is actually how they say “cheers” in various parts of Austria. They had no idea that we often use it in place of “bless you” back in that hodge-podge country known as the USA. The wedding reception was held at a castle in the countryside of Feldbach. I guess it was pretty typical as far as Austrian weddings go. The first dance is always the waltz – that’s the only thing you gotta know when it comes to European weddings. Know how to waltz or face the music, that’s all there is to it. Oh yeah, for all the Austrians out there, if you’ve never been to the States before, don’t make Newark, NJ your first and only stop, otherwise your experience could be a little disappointing. This guy Philip I met still had a sour taste in his mouth over his trip to a place where he swore “they don’t have grocery stores, all the men have gigantic muscles, it always rains, and everyone eats at the International House of Pancakes.”
I left early the following morning on a train back to Vienna before jumping on a plane to Rome. Emily and I had some last-minute email swapping that left a most ambiguous meeting point in Termini Station, but luckily, amidst the five million people scurrying around frantically like insects, she found me, even after wandering to and from the hostel and waiting by the train arriving from Milan, because somehow she crazily thought I was taking the train all the way from Vienna to Rome and that miraculously it would only take a few hours. Since the reunion happened so suddenly and only after much endured stress on both parties, I didn’t get to run toward her in slow motion, pick her up and swirl her around. It was even a bit strange seeing this person, this girlfriend of mine; a girl who in two months time now came off as a stranger. To me she looked skinnier in the face. To her, I looked skinnier in the muscles. To each other, two confused people trying to find reason behind the surface. It took a while before all those old feelings rushed back, just like at the beginning when I used to get so excited around her that I could lose my food at any moment. In actuality, I did lose my food several times in the beginning, and after the beginning, and all the way up until the present.
After some cleaning up (on her part, not mine) we went out for a bite to eat with some friends she and Patrice had made from the hostel: a chronically clammy-handed Brazilian and a guy who very well might’ve been the real life Bubble Boy from Nebraska. The next two days, we did all the touristy things one does in Rome, though I missed out on the Coliseum and Roman Forum, which they had already gotten out of the way before I arrived. I had arranged for Emily and I to have our own hostel each of the two nights we were there. The first night we had a really nice room somehow obtained on a fluke, so the next morning we had to move to the hostel’s other location – confusingly enough, the hostel had three locations, all located on opposite ends of the city. They weren’t even really like hostels, but more like rooms rented out in a private flat. Both nights it was ridiculously loud outside our window. Why the city of Rome chooses to empty its dumpsters at 3am is perplexing, and why it takes an hour to do so is an even greater mystery. Our bed at the second location was elevated in the middle, so every time Emily and I came close to embracing, like a modern take on the chastity belt, the peak would hurl us down our respective sides. Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. The bed in the first hostel location wasn’t comfortable either, and the following few nights, our bed at the campsite in Sorrento was even worse. The bed in Sorrento was actually two beds squished together with vicious protruding springs on the attack against our vulnerable backs and sides and stomachs throughout the night. There was also the nuisance of being sandwiched between the noisy restaurant/drinking area and our cabin cluster’s community picnic area. All this talk of dolorous beds made me forget to mention that between Rome and Sorrento, we stopped off for some pizza in Napoli where it was born. The dough tasted like Naan and the men in Napoli tend to make gross amphibian-like faces with fluttering tongues at passing by females. I’d take a slice of NYC style over Napoli’s finest any day, but that’s not to say Napoli doesn’t make decent pizza, it’s just that I prefer Pizza Hut. Sorrento was beautiful, just like Ems, so it had that much going for it. During the days we took trips to Capri and Positano. On the boat to Capri, it was reassuring to learn that Europe has its share of white trash as well. It was also reassuring to see people with BMW’s camp out in Sorrento at the same place as Contiki tour constituents, and doubly reassuring to see that Australians – with merely a population of 30 million – are still taking over the world. As the Australian backpacker I sat and ate Kebobs with in Istanbul said, “Oh gosh. Do you think we’re worse than the Japanese?”
“Eh” I began, “At least you guys don’t always throw up the peace sign in photos.”
That’s about all I remember from Istanbul. I saw Turkey’s equivalent to the Sistene Chapel in the Aya Sofya and got a stamp in my passport. Five hours in that city were a total whirlwind.
That whole day was kind of a whirlwind. I left Emily at 4am in order to walk the 3km to the train station for a 5am train in order to be on a 6am train leaving out of Napoli that was crucial if I wanted to make the perfectly timed train out of Rome to the airport where my flight was set to depart at 10am. As rough as that was, it wasn’t as rough as saying goodbye to Emily, but I’ll spare you the sentimentality.

It's Olive from Little Miss Sunshine

Truly, we're from Positano; no tourists here.

The Thai Must Think They’re Under Attack – July 4th one day in hindsight

I waged war on the ants tonight. I’d given them more than ample time to leave my apartment peacefully, but they remained defiant. I couldn’t stand to watch my desk move with them anymore, so I took back the Raid from Ben and went to town. Those strip things would probably be more effective as new ants continue to pop up where the other ones had been wiped off the Earth just minutes earlier.
Yesterday was July 4th and a bunch of us attended the festivities put on by the US Consulate. It was a pretty surreal spectacle – some might even say a freakshow. Who knew that there were what seemed like a 1000 Americans in Chiang Mai? We also musn’t forget about the few pretty little Thai girls in attendance on the arms of various sleazy old Yanks. The shindig cost 50baht to get in and got you a raffle ticket to boot, but sadly I didn’t win anything – not the jade necklace, nor the 2 night stay at the Four Seasons, nor the airfare for two to Taipei or Laos, nor the membership to the American University Alumni library with books as current as 1950. Within the walls of the consulate, the party was held in the outside courtyard. The Thais walking along outside must have been completely confused about the weird patriotic karaoke blasting from inside and the fireworks display later on must’ve led them to believe they were under attack. If I do say so myself, the fireworks were rather impressive considering my expectations consisted of a solo firecracker smuggled in from Kentucky. Speaking of Kentucky, a lot of the people in attendance looked right out of the “Bluegrass State”. I still can’t figure out what so many hickish families are doing in Chiang Mai. Of course, there were the expected missionaries, some meatheads, disenchanted twenty-somethings from the NGO’s or fake Reuters knockoffs, and so many little kids that seemed to come out of nowhere. Many people had on patriotic shirts and donned flag-painted faces. One odd woman had cat whiskers painted on instead for some enigmatic reason. As for food and drink, there was Subway, McDonalds, Starbucks, and some other random stations, like the hotdog one that ran out within the first hour. If the food stations and Coca Cola sponsorship ads abound weren’t American enough, there was always the watermelon eating competition. Maybe it was the inner mom inside me, but I was worried that someone could easily choke on the seeds. On a side note, I just learned that “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “God Save the Queen” are the exact same song with different lyrics. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

Life of Pai (not that I even like the book), June 30th – July 1st

On Saturday morning the PiA crew took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Pai, a small little hippie town hidden in the mountains and unlike any other place I’ve been in Thailand so far. It used to be a mecca for all sorts of traveling artists and the sort, but according to modern cynics, it’s now a played-out getaway overrun with lame Farang. For me, while there were plenty of beer-guzzling Westerners abound and dreadlocked Thais who still act like Bob Marley is alive and well, Pai was an awesome weekend respite, though many of its occupants consist of once-travelers who never managed to escape the town’s laid-back allure.
We took a mini-bus to get there on a road that had plenty enough of dips, climbs, and curves to make me nauseous. Accompanying us in the bus was a quiet Australian and an obnoxiously affectionate and big-schnozzed Israeli couple who couldn’t keep their hands or lips off of one another. Ben and I had a good chat to help pass the time, though at one point the Australian said to himself but loud enough for us to hear, “Americans are funny.”
I turned around and went, “Huh?”
“You Americans are funny” he continued. “You guys talk so much and you talk so fast.”
He pantomimed with his hand some kind of yapping motion. Yet another remark that I just had no idea what to make of.
“In my town, we have this competition” he went on. “You know that show Gilmore Girls? Well we have to listen to this 50 second sound clip of Gilmore Girls and guess how many words were said. It’s always somewhere around 50 million or so.”
Go figure. People from four hours outside of Melbourne in the country must have a lot of time on their hands.

Nell, Alexis, & Leah

Once in Pai, we set out for our guest house, which turned out to be located on the main river in town – the kind of muddy river that you think of when envisioning a stereotypically bucolic Asian landscape. While walking along a quaint little road, we passed a sign that read:
"Laundry
20baht
monkey"
I was confused, but not for long. As I turned my head around, I came face to face with a baby monkey tied to a post and looking me in the eye. It scurried around within the available slack, futilely reaching for bananas that must have seemed within range to the tortured soul.
We rented motorbikes and set out exploring. We were gonna go with bicycles, but the guy at our guest house advised against it, saying that the roads would be too steep. Sure enough, he was right. There was no way we would’ve made it on bicycles.
In Chiang Mai, Ben and I don’t really find it necessary to own motorbikes because of the availability of song-taews, not to mention we’re both little woussies, but riding on the motorbike for the first time would be like a paraplegic one day waking up to discover a newfound control of their legs(not that I can say what that's like). It gave us a new found mobility previously unfathomable. And let me tell you, it was exhilarating – riding out of town into the countryside of fables and zipping around on those little death traps of ours. It was probably the act of riding the motorbike itself that proved to be the highlight of my trip. It reminded me of going out on Jetskis when I was younger and rules didn’t exist on the wide-open seas (or in my case, semi-contained lakes). When you ride on a jet ski, there isn’t really a destination, it’s just the act of speeding aimlessly around that makes it so much fun, and thus was the case with the motorbikes, except we had super cool destinations available as well (like the waterfall and Temple on the Hill). Did I mention that Ben was my passenger? There wasn’t really much debate as to who would be the driver. Sounds eerily like a metaphor for our relationship…
After an afternoon of motorbiking in and around Pai, we’d seen ourselves a Chinese village, the waterfall (at which only a chubby nine year old Thai boy had enough balls to go down the ad hoc waterslide created from a section of smoothed out rock as an entirely all Western audience looked on in amazement), and the solo landing strip in the middle of a field that is officially known as Pai’s airport. Oddly enough, there were a few times I turned my motorbike on and it would then turn off immediately (yeah yeah, I was giving it enough gas). Luckily this was during the downhill portion of the journey, so I was able to coast even with the engine off like Kerouac in “On the Road.”

Retardedly spelling out PiA in the countryside - a sad attempt to make the newsletter


As darkness settled, we grabbed dinner at an Italian restaurant, making it something like the fifth time in seven days that I was gorging myself on pizza. The restaurant didn’t seem to be doing so well on this particular night as every party that came in after us subsequently wound up leaving within a few minutes. Maybe there was some correlation between that and the fact that they never got around to bringing us the goat-cheese salad that Nell ordered (note: Nell is one of the PiA girls). They did wind up bringing out Leah’s goat-cheese salad though, and ironically enough, their goat cheese tasted like nothing of the sort, but rather more along the likes of Mozzarella.
With our stomachs full, we moved onto a bit of boozing, first at some entirely Thai afterwork-type hangout blasting a dubbed version of “Bean” on TV, and then a series of entirely Farang infested watering holes, several of which request taking off your shoes before entering. While that’s all good and nice, it didn’t seem like particularly shrewd policy after I accidentally shattered a glass and everyone was precariously walking around barefoot.
My buzz didn’t actually kick in until we got ourselves a bucket of SangSom and coke. SangSom is this cheap Thai liquor that tastes pretty similar to rum. At some point while in transit between bars, someone drunkenly rode their motorbike into a ditch right in front of us. There were plenty of people around to aid in his rescue, some of whom we got to chatting with. They were a crew of British kids, and after the girls headed back for bed, Ben and I were left in their care. Most of what I remember involved ranting about my cultural inferiority complex that tends to spill out after a few drinks whilst in the presence of people with seemingly fancier accents. I’m pretty sure Ben and I also offered up our best Cockney impersonations which were passé even before we began.

Cut to scene: Ben and I made it back to our room and the conversation went something like this:
“Whoa” I said, laying my head down on the pillow. “I think I’ve got the spins.”
“Really?” he responded. “I don’t really feel that drunk.”
“I didn’t either, but now that I’m lying down I feel it a lot more.”
Ben hit the lights. A few seconds passed.
“Ok” he said. “I’ve got the spins now too.”

The Best – June 22, 2007

There was an earthquake here a few days ago, a 4.5 on the Richter scale, but I seem to have been the only one completely oblivious to its occurrence. My first earthquake and I didn’t get to feel it at all. It was small, so most people just felt a little tremble, but I missed it and don't know how.
As it turns out, my dad isn't closing down his office, I just happened to have slightly misread the email from my aunt. He's just closing it down on Wednesdays to try and cut costs. Auntie is now in search of another job for that one day and inquired about working at BRL. I let her know it was probably the worst idea I’d ever heard.
This afternoon I worked for two hours in the self access center on campus sitting in an air conditioned room waiting for students to approach me with questions. Nobody did, so I just read and wrote for two hours and got paid the same as what I get for teaching; easiest money I ever made, though it was hard not to fall asleep. My stomach was grumbling, so I grabbed a bite to eat at Boat, a diner just down the road from CMU. The club sandwich served to me was undoubtedly the weirdest club sandwich I've ever had. I don’t know if it could even be considered a club sandwich. Instead of turkey and ham, it contained egg and hotdog and some other questionable ingredients. Luckily I was hungry enough that it didn’t matter too much.
Back at Baan Thai, “Best” came to pick me up on his motorbike before heading off for Muay Thai practice. Several weeks back Song-Si tried to set me up with someone knowledgeable about Thai boxing, and through a series of completely random introductions, “Best” and I were introduced.
“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?” I asked struggling to understand through his accent.
“Best.”
“Bass?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you spell that?”
“B-E-S-T. The best.”
“Wait, your name is Best? Are you serious?”
“Yes. My name is Best.”
“Best” is obviously his English nickname, but he doesn’t even pronounce it properly. So after several weeks of failed attempts to coordinate a training session, today was finally going to be the day. We drove back to the university gym and he introduced me to this 40 something year old Italian guy who's supposedly sweet at Muay Thai and happens to be earning his Bachelors Degree in philosophy from Payapp, a Christian university in Chiang Mai where the other PiA girls teach. It made me a little curious wondering what a 40 year old Italian man is doing studying Philosophy at a Thai university, but I decided to let it go. As I later learned, there are even English-speaking Europeans that come over to Thailand and major in English.
I tried to put such nonsense out of my mind before Best and I entered CMU’s gymnasium replete with badminton nets, a corner designated for the ping pong team, and another corner occupied by a boxing ring. We proceeded to work on fundamentals, which somehow I never seemed to have learned back in the States – things like upside down push-ups against the wall and various leg strengthening exercises while maintaining proper hand positioning. These proved quite challenging as anyone who knows me has seen my rare breed of chicken legs. I tried to make a few excuses and attributed my lack of balance to being flat-footed. That didn’t stop me from letting loose on the punching bag when Best asked me to demonstrate my skills. Everyone in the giant gymnasium watched as I threw a mix of coordinated and uncoordinated jabs, crosses, uppercuts, and wild kicks.
Best was nice enough to give me a pair of hand wraps to keep for good, and we practiced the ancient art of “Bong, Bat, Bit, Bo”, which roughly translates into something along the lines of block, move, something, something. We finished up with some general stretching, more bizarre push-ups, and some weird spider-man crawl type thing in order to "rid the chest of its lactic acid." Afterwards we went into this kid's room who lives in the back of the gymnasium and watched bare-knuckle Muay Thai matches on dvd until Best's girlfriend arrived with his motorbike and he took me home. Before saying goodbye, he mentioned that for next time I must gather together three lotus flowers, three sticks of incense, and a candle – something about an offering for the Muay Thai spirit. (note: It’s now a week and a half later, Best has since been AWOL, while the three lotus flowers, three sticks of incense, and candle are all still sitting in my fridge)

The Dinner Party - June 18th

I came home and couldn't sleep, so I did the logical thing: went insane for a bit. I couldn't bear to eat at the university today either. One can only handle the canteen food subsidized at 15 baht per meal – the equivalent of 40 cents – so many times in a row before reaching a nausea plateau. At least that seems to be the case for me, who knows about everyone else.
So after my failed nap and general restlessness, I went downstairs and took two steps before reaching the biggest Farang hangout in town, Smoothie Blues, where I ordered a chicken quesadilla, which always tastes a little funny. Probably something to do with the cheese (or whatever imitation stuff) they use. I brought along my “Southeast Asia on a Shoestring” travel book and tried to plan out a trip to Cambodia and Vietnam for the midterm break at the end of July/beginning of August. Once I had some food in me, I took a trip to the gym with Mark and had myself a workout.
We walked back amidst a torrential downpour, which left me the most soaked I’ve been in my life, but it felt good after working up a sweat. On our way, we picked up a cheap bottle of wine (that wasn't so cheap being that Thailand isn't exactly famous for its wine) to bring to the dinner party we were invited to over at Titi's - the 50 year old Indonesian woman who works at the Asian feminist NGO and happens to like dancing as if she was 21 again. Ben, Mark, and myself all know Titi through Joof, a fellow teacher at CMU that’s 37 but looks like he’s 21. 21 seems to be the magic number here. (note: Joof actually looks more like he’s 27, but then my line about 21 being a magic number wouldn’t have worked so well. Sorry if anyone feels betrayed.)
So the three Americans made their way over to Titi’s place. We arrived to find that she had prepared quite the feast. The spread included things like Tandoori chicken, eggplant lasagna, salad, Chinese-inspired doughy things with bean paste in some and pork in others, cheese covered grapes, and real Mi-Goreng specially for me (because I told her about being obsessed with the instant kind, to which she was floored), and to tell you the truth, I prefer the instant stuff more, though I could never have admitted such a thing. Maybe it’s the MSG in the instant stuff, or maybe it’s the absence of real fish sauce (which I blame for subsequent stomach ailments later that night), but instant Mi-Goreng is just unbeatable.
The three of us were the youngest by far at the soiree, and it was kind of strange how everybody acted completely stand-offish to us. I've never felt that incapable of socializing in my life.
We also happened to be the only Americans, except for this twice-divorced 62 year old insane red-headed woman from California. She loved to ramble on and on about this banana farmer 25 years her junior from Dominica that broke her heart. Daphne was her name, and she owns some natural beauty products company. We were grouped with her by default because nobody else at the party was really interested in talking to us and Daphne proved to be inescapable.
There were a couple of women from Indonesia and the Philippines, a Thai astrologist, a Kiwi man with a wild-west type moustache, this Aussie couple that was “too cool for school”, and an ethnically Fijian/Indian woman from Fiji who had lived in Australia, thus accounting for her twinge of an Aussie accent.
“I’ve been to Fiji before” I mentioned. “But I spent a little less than a week there and only got to do the touristy things.”
“Typical” she muttered.
“I wish I’d gotten to see more, it’s just that I was bounded by time constraints. I wanted to visit while my friend from Fiji was there, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. His dad is actually a professor at the university. University of the Pacific, or something like that.”
“Oh really?” Her interest was piqued. “What’s his last name?”
“Narsi.” I replied. “He’s a professor of economics, I think.”
“Uh huh. I know who he is.”
“Really? That’s crazy. There must be hundreds of Narsi’s in Fiji.”
“Fiji’s not that big, you know.”
“Isn’t there around a million people?”
“No, about 900,000, and most people know of each other.”
“Still, that doesn’t seem too small.”
“Oh, it’s small.”
“Whatever.” I thought.
And that’s where the conversation ended. She just turned abruptly and started talking to the person on her other side, leaving me to my own devices for about the millionth time that night. At some point I briefly entered into conversation with the Aussie guy (of the aforementioned “too cool for school” Aussie couple). As it turns out, his wife has worked for the feminist NGO over the past three years in Chiang Mai while he’s passed the time as a “domestic engineer”. In case you’re not familiar with the profession, it’s just a fancy way of saying that you’re an unemployed bum just piggy-backing off your significant other’s salary. I love to be lazy, but three years of hanging out doing nothing while your girlfriend goes to work everyday? C’mon, man. And then he had the audacity to take needless potshots at me for being American (note: one would think that international NGO workers in Thailand would be above such puerile nonsense, but then one would have to think again). After taking the higher road for a few minutes, I caved and offered up the most pathetic retort I could think of while on the spot, something along the lines of “It's only the people that come from small countries with napoleon complexes that feel compelled to take potshots at people from other countries." I instantly felt supremely lame. I took another potshot earlier in the night from this seemingly nice and innocent Filipino woman that didn’t even make any sense. When I was complimenting Titi on her amazing cooking and expressing my gratitude, this Filipino woman said, “Are you saying that cause you mean it or just because you're American?" I still don’t even know what that means, but I guess I was just saying it because I was American after all since I lied about the Mi-Goreng, though I wasn’t lying about being sincerely grateful and impressed. That’s more than I can say about any of the other people.
Later on in the evening I had another run-in with the woman from Fiji. She was busy comparing bellies with the Aussie guy and said "At least I've got an excuse being 5 months pregnant and all." Not too long after I stepped outside to find her puffing on a cigarette.
"Aren't you pregnant?" I asked.
"Yeah, so what" she fired back.
"Umm, well, isn't smoking while pregnant not supposed to be the greatest idea?" I stammered.
"Who says, western medicine?"
I started to feel very uncomfortable and not really sure what to say because she was so adamant.
"I don't think it's just western medicine that says smoking while pregnant is bad. I think it's kind of a universal understanding."
She shot me a quizzical look.
"I'm not judging" I said, obviously judging, "but isn’t that cigarette you're holding a Western cancer stick?"
Silence.
“Ok, whatever you want to do, that’s fine.” And then I excused myself really awkwardly.
The night progressed, and right as we were leaving, the woman from Fiji was smoking another cigarette and said to me, "I have a secret to tell you."
"What's that?" I asked.
"I'm not really pregnant" she said. "I was just saying that to make Derrick [the Aussie] feel worse about himself. Just thought I'd let you know."
At that moment it became all the more awkward because if it wasn't a baby we were talking about, then we were just simply discussing her belly fat at that point. I wanted to stare at her belly and separate fact from fiction, but then that just would have been too weird. And then we had to walk the crazy red-headed kook home.