Return to relearn, remembering to re-member. I'm back bitches!

Anticipation must be the stuff of mind.

It’s been 9 months since I left the sunny shores of Thailand, hurled into a contrasted Western world filled with the pace and stresses we all agree are necessary. To accomplish what is unclear, in truth I’ve never understood the totality of the point. The ability to watch a doctor singe genital warts on "Embarassing Bodies" whilst I ride the exercise bike is not something I’m totally sure I require, but it’s there and I guess every day I am able to take it for granted.

It’s a curious response in others eyes when I tell them I’m off on holiday again. Sometimes the thought is almost audible, screaming through the tiny nuances of body language that say infinitely more than words ever could. I guess at the end of the day my contribution to the GDP is not totally obvious, that I’m opting out for 3 months is the spoilt privilege of a circumstantial lottery I won that enables this freedom. And yet, I still believe the answer to the question of “why” is, “why not?”

If pressed to say what I’m searching for, I guess the answer would be “peace”. But what does that even mean? What is peace? Children of the enlightened world placard with signs begging for it, frustrated mothers consider shaking their children to accomplish it, and fat people reach for another one of it. Wait, is that peace or piece? I’m not even sure what is what, it’s midnight and I’m on a low carb diet having just got back from 90 minutes at the gym working it. On a school night. And I think therein lies the reason I need to get out of all of this periodically.

There is a feeling that I get in the absence of the 1^st world that seems tangible. None of us are born with an instruction manual on what to do with our lives, and yet in the same instance there is a feeling we get about actions and reactions that couldn’t be misconstrued as anything other than guidance. It is tangible that helping others is rewarded with happiness, that hurting others is punished with something empty inside, and watching any media about Kim Kardashian will absolutely ruin your soul. It is an evident dichotomy, that there is no guidance and yet there totally is. It is part of being human.

This is what I’m searching for, the assembling of the true nature of how to be a fully expressed human. I believe that the fulfillment of society’s promise cannot guarantee that we shall find our peace, even if there is an inadvertent opportunity to find it along the way. I don’t even see this as a goal or intent of what we are trying to accomplish as a people or society, and for this we are punished. With stress, with disease, with a feeling of loss and separation and disillusionment.  Though it is important to note, we are punished by these actions, not for them. We are the judges, and nobody lays down a harsher sentence for ourselves than us, ourselves. If anyone asks, I’m off to steal the judges gavel, and maybe set fire to that terrible wig.

And so once again, I’m off to Asia. With my beautiful girlfriend Jelane, to knock down the Jenga tower, check each piece and put it all together again. Just because. To reconnect and reinforce the part of me that loves and laughs and runs into the future, arms outstretched and ensured of fulfillment. And have a bloody good laugh along the way.

Follow me on my travels, I promise to make it as enlightening and enjoyable read as I can.

June 26^th. Roll on, the anticipation conjures swells of mind. Oh peace, where art thou?

Soon.

Beer Lao, Tear Out the Here, Now

Crunch and there goes the propeller. As cause and effect set us adrift on the Mekong, with no propulsion we found ourselves a pig of a vessel helplessly skating on a shiny brown rink, up shits creek without a paddle, so to speak.

The Mekong River is a phenomenon in Asia. I was glad to get up close and personal, as Hollywood had given me all kinds of misconceptions about it. One does expect Rambo to swish past with a machine gun barreling out rounds and slurring incomprehensible punchlines at puzzled village folk. I kept a keen eye and ear out, but to no avail. Guess he’s getting a bit tired in his old age.

Most passengers stood in stunned silence as we floated helplessly with the current, the sense of cautious unease before something tragic thick in the air. Me, I was laughing my tits off, and how could I not? Watching our Laos friends jumping out of the boat in their underwear in a frenzied attempt to secure us to the side and get the propeller repaired was too funny for me to keep quiet. Little light brown bodies nuding about in the water with ropes in a race against time. I imagine the view from above, a travelling Alien maybe, and his musings on the proceedings. We are just monkeys scratching our asses, caught on a raft by the turns of fate. Probably not how Darwin imagined evolution, but what can you do?

Adrift

Villages in the shadow of giants

We arrived in Luang Prabang with little incident barring our propeller once again relinquishing itself from duty and causing a chain of events that eventuated in us T-Boning another boat. A boat crash is something I will highlight on my resume, along with being in the Laos mountains surrounded by opium smoking villagefolk. What a trip, Laos is what people seek when they imagine the Wild East.

Luang Prabang is every bit a small quiet oasis from the busy rest-of-world. The pace is unhurried, the villagers are content and their movements are smooth. And as the Utopia bar closed and we barged into the tuk tuk, in this tiny isolated part of the world I was unexpectedly re-introduced to the extreme pleasure of drunken ten-pin bowling.

As we wound out of town and onwards into the early morning, I was sold on the fact that the mornings light would find me minus my kidneys and possibly chastity of my back doors. Swinging open the doors like a glaze eyed cowboy into the saloon, the light and sound gives way to a spectacle; Laos youth and travelling Europeans cheering their ten pin triumphs and defeats, embracing each other and exploding with sound and body language. What a magnificent turn of events. We went two nights in a row, it was magic.

The next day, we jumped in a mini van and spiraled up into the mountains. Clenching my jaw to hold back the nausea, I was drinkers remorse manifest in flesh. Action and reaction is not always positive, curse you Jesus. In hindsight, I look back on this innocence as an elder reflecting on the naivity of youth, for our next top was Vang Vieng to go tubing, and the unease of a hangover would be a spindly talon around my neck I would soon know with great intimacy.

Rollin

Vang Vieng is in a bubble from the rest of the modest Asian world, a bubble burped in a bathtub of culture by the insane lungs of a submerged Charlie Manson. Or maybe it is a cocoon from the world, a cocoon in the closet of your morals and standards that mutates and bursts forth a moth that destroys your regular weekend clothes. Either way, it takes a mallet and smashes your notions of Saturday night live.

For the uninitiated, you start at one end of a long river that floats downstream back into the town, occupying a large tyre tube as you make your journey onward. Along the way, lines are cast to pull you into awaiting bars, in full swing with drunken revelry, laughing gas hilarity and sexual decision tainted with post-coitus remorse. It was some of the most fun partying I have ever had.

The normal fear based social defense of human interaction did not apply here, we were unified in the fact that we were all strangers, and the only attempts at pre-status were by the staff who all did an excellent job of convincing everyone that they were nobheads. In the face of this contrast it was so easy to make friends, from bar to bar the crews grew larger and larger, lubricated by buckets, free shots and loose limbs on bamboo dance floors. Avid weekend veterans: save it and get over to Vang Vieng, I promise it will be better than a years worth of those 11 dollar beers you pound every weekend.

Some of the bars had tyre swings and high platforms to jump into an uncertain torrential river. I’d like to say I was smarter than to attempt such idiocy, with a death toll that averages 1 every fortnight. I’d like to be able to say that, but I would be lying. Sorry Mum. I not only attempted it, I loved it. It was like the watering holes of my childhood, only a bit more shit-face-ier.

Brennan, Liam and I decided to jump in at the same time, and as we surfaced from the fall downstream I realized I had swallowed half of the river. After numerous buckets my stomach signaled there was not enough room for this new introduction and I began vomiting. My two chums, affected by the vulgarity of the spectacle and perhaps some primal kinship, began to follow suit. Every time each of us thought we had finished expulsion, we were spurred on again by the proximity of each other in full swing.

Picture this, a trio of grown men bent over facing each other in a river, laughing through chunks of chunder, caught in an infinite loop of stomach contraction. We are the three wise men of an age gone wrong, and somewhere in the back of my mind I felt we may have to stay in this river spewing until we grew old, hoping that maybe the years could make us wiser. I’m smiling as I write this, as out of context it sounds insane, but in the moment it was as normal as the sky and earth.

The immediacy of something serious jerked me from the loop. Into my field of vision drifted a wayward angel. We three wise men bearing gifts of pizza chunks, vodka bile and second hand Laos whiskey stood to bear witness to our savior.

I’ve never looked into the eyes of death. I’ve only ever seen where death has been, the aftermath, a lingering vibe or scent of something ultimate. Here and now, there was something sobering as I innately remembered it written across her face and in the depths of her eyes. This woman was drowning, that reptilian part of my being told me so. The wide eyed meeting of our maker, the gentle and yet violent movement from fighting for life to forgiveness of fate. I jolted forward and gripped her by the shoulders, delivering her spluttering limpness onto the shoreline and into safety. She gazed into my soul as she said thankyou, holding back tears and most probably her registration of the event to her memory as she was quite clearly intoxicated. I wonder if she remembers how close she came to being just another phone call to the worst fears of her parents. The experience bore many strange fruits.

For instance, I had always assumed fake breasts would aid in floatation, and after this event realize that such thoughts are just an unchecked understanding of an 8 year old mind justifying the world. Watch out for those, I’ve been deep and found there is more in your reality from before you knew of yourself than you could ever know. But am I a better person for this understanding you may ask? Who cares, it’s all just a big playground. Stop being so serious all your life. And whatever you do, don’t get a breast enlargement with the assumption that it will make you more buoyant.

So after a week in Vang Vieng we travelled down to beautiful Vientiene, transitory as it was time for my crew and I to part ways. As the morning came I embraced my friends goodbye and flew off into the morning sun, back to Thailand and back to the Permaculture farm in Nong Wyang I had grown to love for a bit of peace and rebuilding. Alone again, but never truly alone. My post-breakup partying was complete, and as the date of my return to the West loomed ever closer, it was time to get my soul in line. More next time.

Amen to the cavemen

Hustling and weaving through the impregnable wall of attentive touts hawking bungalows we force our way out of this flesh prison, birthed unto the Phi Phi islands finally. Bungalow secured, we were keen to explore the hype.

I don’t know a man alive that didn’t see ‘The Beach’ and dream of island paradise, though I was instantly skeptical. To be fair, we had arrived during the wet season, evident in the streets paved with water and, of course, that peculiar moist substance falling from above. Derp. Obvious references aside, it seems there was a pattern developing. Wherever there are too many Western tourists, our vices and exclusion from our societal norms tend to incentivize the locals into situations that don’t benefit them long-term. Again, we could not get a packet of crisps without being accosted by prostitutes, the sea was awash with plastic bottles and walking the streets was a breathe-through-your-mouth exercise.

It’s hard to believe it was only 7 years ago that a tidal wave came through here and washed it all away. Men, women and children, pets and houses. Dreams, or at least memories. Though if you were not told about it you would not know, as it had only taken the industrious Thai’s 3 years before they had rebuilt their infrastructure and begun the upswing back into a tourist hotspot. Now all that was left for us was to judge first impressions for ourselves by becoming part of the problem. We grabbed a few bottles of Thai rum and whiskey and began our experiments.

Thai spirits are an experience unto themselves. They taste like they have been bootlegged in a bathtub out the back of a shack illegally, after Prajuk and his 4 kids have all bathed in it. The 2012 bathtub vintage, a hearty flavor, full of rich aroma and brewed in only the finest Thai porcelain. I swear I seen a pubic hair once, but such testimony cannot be relied upon, with the alcohol content being unregulated in these cheap bottles of muddy delight. Smeared memories, a panorama of echoing laughter, booming bass, sand, strobes and sexuality, plus the insecure feeling of not knowing where my pants had gone.

We didn’t meet too many people we didn’t already know in Phi Phi, despite the heaving droves of drunken youth in a dizzying nightlife spectacle of unbridled puberty. This extreme inequality of a male/female ratio necessitates deployment of an intense social defense. Males revert to a cave-like state with clenched fists and short tempers, whilst the girls scrum together in closed circles, tactically blocking the advances of potential suitors with effective collaborative body language. Necessarily, as the intoxication of the whole event leaves the males a side step away from clubbing women on the head and dragging them back to a cave. Play by play analysis of the whole spectacle is tiresome when all you want to do is sit around a table making new friends and laughing about life.

A visit to the beach where Leo pranced about stealing girlfriends and murdering marine life was an obvious inevitability. I counted 27 of us in a teak longboat, packed as sardines, juddering over the chaos of the ocean channel. Mounting obstacles into the cove itself, it’s obvious what all the fuss is about. Man could not dream of such things, our slumbering imaginings could never compare. I hope there is such a thing as in intelligent creator, just for the wide-eyed awe she may garner from admirers such as I in her creating something so beautiful. I’d definitely throw a few pennies into the hat.

But like most tourist traps, there is consequence for too many humans in one space. I had to remove myself from the water soon after we had begun snorkeling, the decimation of the ocean ecosystem cutting me deep. Snapped coral is such a shame. And then there was Monkey Island.

I don’t traditionally like monkeys. At best, they are nimble, inquisitive marvels of nature’s evolutionary process. At worst, they are angry little humanoid idiots capable of malice without remorse or compassion. Plus they throw their shit at each other. That’s psychopathic, and these island monkeys have been shaped by humans as such. The meeting of man and his evolutionary forebears was heralded with flying sand and rocks. Not without provocation, as the monkeys grew angrier and more bashful the more time we spent in their dominion. I stood close to Laura on the boat in a silent protest against this sort of thing, praying for our side to lose the war. I longed for a cause and effect that would leave one of these cruel boys riddled with bite marks. Is that sadistic? Maybe so. Mess with the bull, you’ll get the horns. Or more appropriately, mess with the monkey, you’ll get the rabies.

So that is my experience of Phi Phi. Sorry if it sounds a little pessimistic, but it wasn’t the most fun I’ve had, and I’m okay with that. The paradise lost destinations that guidebooks and internet message boards steer us away from are built on secure foundations of experience. One would be tempted to run head first into the place with the most people to be social and meet friends, but this is just not the way life works. Villages are friendlier than cities and pubs are friendlier than clubs. Maybe we lose a piece of our humanity with the over stimulation and poorly administrated gathering of multiple social tribes, too many animals competing for a wide range but limited supply of different objectives and resources. It’s probably quite a lot for our primal brain faculty to compute at one time; so many assessments of friend or foe in the darkness of a place unfamiliar. And all whilst intoxicated by freaky Thai bath whiskey…… Lord, the body truly is a marvel.

Blue Rooms, Goons in Lagoons while the Tunes Boom

The catamaran rocked gently against the rolling water. Teary eyed performances played on the DVD screen of America’s Got Talent unlikely underdog stories. Simon from American Idol is a nobhead, but I have to admire him; he played us all for idiots and won. His character is almost believable.

My thoughts are as a shiny ball rolling from side to side of the insides of my skull. It’s been a massive few weeks emotionally, but as the ferry pulls into port at Koh Tao, I feel old loops being untied. I’m here to get healthy in body and mind.

The first week passes by without much ado. I have little to no interaction with other island patrons, as I just hit the gym and the water and try and piece myself together. I am aware I am just a weirdo in a room on an island in the middle of nowhere, so far from home. Is this how the homeless start off? I don’t care to find out, I quite enjoy sleeping in a bedroom instead of a bathroom, and egg in a beard is not a good look for anyone. Lest we forget.

I drew up a list of things I’ve been meaning to do for awhile but have lacked motivation or life situation to complete. Top of the list is learn how to freedive, which is descending down into the ocean deep on a single breath. Moving into a more social accommodation, I book a two day course.

Freediving is all about the preparatory breathing. Bobbing at the surface, cycling deep long breaths, I grab the line and gently pull myself down into the deepness. The nerve that safeguards breathing function begins to scream at around 8 metres, though I have been trained to ignore it. At 10 meters it is quiet. And then before I know it, I am at 20 meters, lost in an expanse of weightlessness. I hold the line gently and observe my surroundings, a single white speck in another world. If a scuba diver is the astronaut of the ocean, then I must be some sort of space angel, drifting through the ether, gliding through the cosmos. In reality though, I’m just a pasty white guy with no shirt on getting punished for his hubris by stinging jelly fish. Maybe a worm at the end of a twenty meter fishing line? It must be humbling existing anywhere other than at the top of the food chain, and it’s been about twenty seconds in such a foreign place without oxygen. The surface is far, but I am at peace. What an experience.

I had started the friendship momentum, engaged and interested in people again. The homeless ethos begins to subside. People are actually good, and life begins to turn itself around. I hit bars with my new friends, dancing on the beach with enough enthusiasm to get hit on by at least two homosexuals per night. I resolve to be a bit more cooler. My gaydar calms its beeping and I reach equilibrium, interested and firey without looking himterested and fairy. I imagine the ‘beep’ sound on a gaydar would evolve to be a bit more camp. Probably a fem-sounding “hayyyyyyy”, or “mmmmm” or “darrr-ling”…... but I digress.

The full moon party date looms closer and it’s been awhile since my insanity has been sanctioned and validated by thousands of others. And with that, I book a room at Coral Bungalows. Again. And here I am, surrounded by youth a side step away from comatose, covered in fluro paint. Again. That side of it is a bit of a drag as I realize I’m not 18 anymore. I have to be told about Instagram and Pinterest by people that are younger than me, like it’s such an inconvenience for them to visit me in the old folks home and teach me how to work the DVD player. I resolve to never eat butterscotch candy just in case I accidentally slip into my twilight years whilst chatting to these kids.

The upshot is I befriend a crew who are cooler than frozen polar-bear-flavored icy pops. Brennan, Charley, Emily, Nick and Laura shine an affinity I could only find in my bestest of friends. Love is people accepting you for who you are and not wanting you to change. So when we sit around the war table playing drinking games, my stories make people laugh as I don’t feel the need to muzzle who I am truly; an eccentric weirdo. We all laugh and make merry, and as usual, the days after the madness of the Full Moon Party are the most fun. The ladyboys have garnered enough validation sexually from unsuspecting English alcoholics to stay at home, the pickpockets sit atop a pile of swag in their tin roof shacks and the hippies on mushroom shakes have enough room to dance like water flowing through a maze without upsetting the steroid swelled Australian dudes with their shirts off. Peace in the shire.

Despite the monsoon season we decide to move over onto the West side of the peninsula to visit the small island of Railay. A rock climbing mecca, we find ourselves freeclimbing into the middle of a mountain, slip sliding down vertical ropes in the wet with too many close calls to count.

To the victor the spoils, for in the center of these rock walls lay the most beautiful lagoon I have ever seen. Laying on our backs adrift in the huge pool, we all realize how awesome it is to be alive. Descending into the pool was a baptism of pure peace. I laughed heartily, overcome with emotion. It was good to clean the mud off us, three sweaty shirtless men in the jungle covered in a mysterious brown substance. The picture is suspect if you think about it.

Backstage at a Freddie Mercury concert.... Jokes

What heaven may look like

Goons in a lagoon

Railay was the island getaway we needed. The bars rocked at night, but were friendly enough for even the drunkest amongst us to wo/man the DJ booth. My memory is stained with Laura up on the decks, playing two hip hop songs at the same time, out of time. The dancefloor dispersed faster than even the worst flatulence ever could. Who even cares, we run this town.

Next on the agenda; the Phi Phi Islands. ‘The Beach’ had made these islands famous in the nineties, appealing to mans sense of island adventure. The ferry pulled into port as the rain fell down lazily. ‘Save as’ for next time.

Land Ho

Change, Rearrange, and Feeling Strange

When everything changes, change everything.

The mantra rings out in my mind, echoing off the walls in a reverberant shudder that dominoes its way down the bones of my spine. Lost in a whirlwind of feeling, the actions of an emotion suppressed, the chaos and fury of something pressurized. A painful release. I’m in Saigon in Vietnam, and it’s time for change.

Earlier that week I had been in Cambodia, marveling at the wonders of Angkor Wat and contemplating the plight of desperate innocence in Phnom Penh. Now, despondent and disheveled, I boarded a plane alone. Now as the gentle keystrokes of a soft piano, the sad tones of a story sung through trauma. Let us retrace our steps, as it has been quite some time and quite some change since I last blogged.

Last time we chatted, I had just left Myanmar, swollen with an experience that was equal parts entrapment and enlivening. I felt ensnared by the plight of a people who had lost a genetic birth lottery. I had tried to give where I could, but to no actual improvement for those concerned. It’s an exhausting concept I hadn’t prepared for. I felt as a matchstick burnt out, the light extinguished to leave a warm ember.

In lieu of these feelings, I decided it was important for my development to go somewhere a bit more temperate and comfortable and regain some sort of self control. We flew into Samui, where I adopted a natural foods diet, pumped weights at the gym and started in-roads into changing the old tapes that have been playing in my head since childhood.

Setting up positive habits and change was an important step, as up until that point I felt scolded by life like a sad preteen chastised by mother for touching his wee wee. Through my growth, I now felt I could grip my manhood triumphantly in the face of criticism, with self belief and with minimal ego. It’s uplifting. When everything changes, change everything. It’s not easy growing a pair.

Flying into Phnom Penh in Cambodia was an intense culture shock. The easy smiles of the people there shone beyond the violence of their political history. It must be a heavy cross to bear. I visited the killing fields just outside of the city, where thousands of innocent men women and children had been murdered systematically in the night by torchlight to the musical backdrop of traditional Khmer music and the slow rumbling of a diesel generator to power the speakers. It was chilling. On the way to the fields, my driver had taken me to a shooting range where I could fire a rocket propelled grenade if I saw fit. I couldn’t justify the expense, and in any way I looked at it the whole exercise seemed a tad inappropriate. It’s like playing obvious air guitar at a funeral as they belt out the final tragic song. In my mind, it’s a Bon Jovi song on the speakers, so the sadness of the situation deepened in me. My poor tortured brain, but more so these poor tortured people.

Escaping the desperation of a tortured past and, in some cases, a tragic present (I had never seen so many prostitutes) we travelled up to Siem Reap, which borders the magical temples of Angkor. My childhood dreams had long been filled with imaginings of these temples ever since my father had read to me the Readers Digest Book of Facts. The fact that it was a book of facts and not a book of Spot the Dog Goes to the Circus goes a long way to explaining why I am such a sniveling nerd. I still remember the picture in the book clear as day, and here it was right through the scope of my vision, the smirking mug of a popular old king from a moment long passed. I saw the need us men have to be famous, to have something live on after we are but ions bouncing around in an aerated earth soup. Us men, what vain idiots. Stop worrying about the time after your time, you’ve either got loads more stuff to worry about or nothing at all depending on how you were raised and what crazy hat you wear in the weekends. There are way too many life insurance ads on the box, let us fight this terrible daytime television menace with the voices of our non compliance.

Phallic

More Temples

Angkor Wat

Smiley Kings

With Angkor Wat crossed off the bucket list, our next stop was Vietnam, specifically Saigon. I’d heard great things about Vietnam, with its beaches and coast and traditional ways, its history and tales of adventure. Turns out it was not to be, there were other things developing.

Life is the combination of many small things, but every now and then these things culminate into a single moment, and the weight hangs heavy in our throats. This was one of those moments, and with a heavy heart, one single unit ripped and crackled into two separate components. We boarded separate planes at the same time, parting ways at the airport for opposite gates like the low emotional point of a chick flick minus the Dawson’s Creek theme song. No laughter, no smiles, just the incomprehensible weight of sudden and immediate change. I could not forget the experience if I tried, nor would I want to. My memory shall treat that love fondly, and I know this as much as anything else.

So to truncate and summarize these past couple of months, it’s change. When everything changes, change everything. I haven’t written in a while because I have been too busy searching and contemplating, hurting and laughing, putting one foot in front of the other and changing everything.

I had an old acquaintance tell me the other day that my experiences are no more special than the next guy, that I have not accomplished anything different or amazing or helped in any way. As she is extremely well traveled and seemingly level headed, I respected her opinion enough to pursue the question. Am I wasting my time feeling what I’m feeling in a situation that is mundane? Do I think I’m special or better or more of something than the next guy? Am I just another wayward soul, running and fleeing the inevitability of my own unhappiness?

It didn’t take me long to realize that even the most amazing adventures are mundane for someone. The guides that have toured me round these amazing scenarios have just had another day in the office. They too punch the clock at the days end for after work drinks sharing trial and tribulation. I saw in some of them the same contempt as the kids working in KFC on a Sunday, nursing others in a cushion of gravy-like magic to blunt the hangover they were too undoubtedly suffering from. How could this be that my guides were not awed every day with an office that includes the tree tops of Thai rainforests, or the temples of Angkor or Bagan, sitting in the embrace of implausibly large elephants or fishing the waters of Inle Lake with the majestic mountains as their backdrop?

And then I saw an infant in a simple food court, sitting on his father’s lap flicking a piece of plastic from a water bottle on the table with more excitement and joy than a pasty faced Korean teen with the new World of Warcraft expansion set. I realized then that everything is amazing in life if we can hold onto or remember that childlike sense of wonder. I am forever trying to see the beauty and magic in it, and hope that I am able to convey that at least at times to you through this blog. If anything, I’m doing this simply to get better at telling the story because that’s a part of who I am becoming.

My travel is secondary to the conclusions I find in myself and the lense from which I perceive the events that shape them. You can travel the whole world and it will widen your perception, but the only control you have if this is your only avenue to enlightenment is the next adventure, the next trip, the next destination. In this way, travel can become addictive, and the ever changing scenery and experiences make it easy to become cynical about the mundane, the normal, the average, even though it is just as amazing as the plastic wrapper from the water bottle. We're all just big babies at heart, "growing up" in this way is a great tragedy. I’ve seen it lots on this trip but bless them all, because it’s better than nothing.

Sad Face

Thanks for coming along, I’ll keep writing if you will keep reading. xo

Burmese daze

I didn’t know what to think as the plane descended into Yangon. The Thai faces I’d become so accustomed with seemed to have morphed into something a little more rounder, and a lot more unfamiliar. Through the porthole window lay dry fields as far as the eyes could see, with an occasional sprinkling of white oxen, like coconut shavings on a brown Myanmar cake baking at 40 degrees Celsius. A red smile welcomed me warmly at the airport, and after he tied the boot shut with elastic band and spat red beetle twice onto the warm pavement, we barged out into the traffic, heralded by the sound of angry horns and screeching tyres.

It was sweat and culture shock that rolled down my spine in this strange world far away from home as we followed our guidebooks direction into the wrong part of town. Through the taxi window I spied two people beating each other with sticks atop a rubbish heap, frustrated in their desperate outlet as bystanders barely slowed their expressionless march onwards.

The street outside our hotel

Advertisements seeking help for starving Africans would be more effective if they could capture even a small part of this experience. I gave up on politics a long time ago, and when I’d see the latest scandal of yet another MP using our tax dollars like a credit card for his own personal prostitute penis puppet show, I’d just laugh it off as a causality of an imperfect system and the fact that the nerdy kids in school didn’t get laid enough.

But this was something different. When democratic free elections resulted in a landslide civilian government, the military shackled the opposition in prisons, and when monks protested for religious and autonomous freedom, the military showered them with bullets. I’m not accustomed to such blatancy. In context, when hippies rightly protest GM crops, we shower them with water cannons, as if the rudeness of the implication that they are stinky and need a shower would deter them from their dirty protests. Our ineffective policies and politicians are miniscule in comparison to ignorance that leaves a country enslaved and starving.

Still, visiting the Shwedagon Paya was something else, with its pure golden towers erupting out of lush green gardens, and more statues and monks than you could shake a machine gun at. I was awed by the careful detail of the carvings and statues, the unsaid life efforts of ancient men. And as thick lightning clouds rolled ever closer, we booked our bus ticket to Mandalay, screaming off into the stormy night.

The Shwedagon Paya

Stupas!

I awoke in the daylight to find the bus still speeding through the countryside. When the English ruled Myanmar, they used their economics to transform it into the largest exporter of rice in Asia. In the vacuum of power that followed the departure of the Empire, this age of prosperity had long gone. Looking out the window at these dry empty fields, I couldn’t be sure if the top soil was blowing away in the warm breeze because of irresponsible economic growth, or the imposition of economic sanctions from the international community in response to oppressive governance. Either way, the bare cracked earth screamed a tragedy of lost opportunity to feed the people I saw so often malnourished.

Mandalay passed by without incident as we tired of the disparity between classes in Myanmar cities, and we booked another bus to the ancient splendor of Bagan. We boarded a taxi at the bus station in Bagan to take us to our hotel, and were not surprised when the taxi shat itself en route. Literally. This only makes sense if you realize that the taxi is a horse carriage, and this pretty much explains the pace and technological evolution of Bagan. In hindsight, it was amazing to be in a village of such heritage, history and simplicity. In the moment though, it was becoming frustrating and painfully red-raw staying in expensive hotels where nothing is as it is advertized, the electricity is intermittent and the toilets require seatbelts to stop the levitation experienced when diarrhea provides jet-like thrust after every meal.

The decision to hire a horse-cart and guide for the day proved fruitful. When I asked Maz why she had decided on this mode of transport, she said it was because the driver was “such a cute little man”, a statement which reflected all the ways in which I adore her beautiful soul. Her insight flipped the state I was in upside down, and in breaking the tradition of my thus far pessimistic review of Myanmar, this was the moment I fell in love with the Burmese people. Away from the traffic, away from the plight of the downtrodden in the city ghettos and away from the reports of mass rape and murder by military forces in the restricted areas, the everyday Burmese are amongst the most gentle and warm people I have ever met.

Our Chariot

To see the temple complexes rising into the mirage of distance like a giant chessboard is truly one of the most amazing sights I have seen. Some of the temples had perfectly preserved artwork that was over a thousand years old, visual tales of days faded just as sure as the paintings had themselves.

One of four Buddha statues in one of the temples

The chessboard of temples

The approach

It was probably the heat that kept the paintings so pristine, though it was having a taxing effect on our sweat glands, so with that we booked a flight into Inle Lake for something a bit more temperate.

Inle Lake is the unspoiled traditional paradise one might imagine the rest of Myanmar to be. The surrounding green mountains hold the lake in a gentle embrace while the thankful waters lie prostrate at the feet of these towering giants. Fishermen weave in and out of quiet reed beds, balancing on the ends of long teak boats and slapping the surface of the water with their oars, frightening fish into their nets. Being nestled amongst these ranges muffled the noise of the rest of the world like earplugs.

Villagers getting their fish on

We hired a boat and driver to take us around the villages that lived on and around Inle Lake. It’s quite an experience speeding down the main street in a teak boat, traffic seems far more tolerable when the streets are paved with only liquid. It’s suburbia on stilts, where even the tomato gardens bob calmly on the surface. I couldn’t find the exact words to describe the joy of it, maybe there is something relieving deep within us to be close to water.

Rolling down mainstreet

The main street post office

For the equivalent of $2.40 each we also attended a Burmese puppet show. Although the skill involved in maneuvering each puppet is something no less than amazingly skilled, the whole spectacle was intensely confusing for us Westerners. I liken it to the feeling of being asked to write the answer on the board in school amidst an uncontrolled pubescent arousal, with equal parts confusion and shock. Looking around the room I could tell this feeling was not mine alone, as each puppet bounced us into an ever-deepening state of insanity, to the tune of music that sounded as if an array of cymbals had been granted life on the condition their communication would be riddled with Tourettes Syndrome. I loved it so, so much.

Learning from the puppet master

Insanity creeping over me at the puppet show

Monkey Dance

So what did I learn from Myanmar? When I asked the host of our guesthouse if he thought Myanmar opening up its borders to mass tourism is a good thing, he wholeheartedly replied that for him, it is not. In spite of the terrible electrical supply, the shocking roads, and the poor food preparation standards amongst all of the other things that inconvenienced my stay in Myanmar, it was the quaint simplicity of the place that I loved the most. The experiences I enjoyed were valuable because of their differences, not in spite of them, and an ever improving consumer experience promised to erode all of it faster than you can say the word ‘Starbucks’.

In the face of such monumental economic change, I hope a thought is spared for the people of Myanmar and their way of life. I hope the everyday Burmese has a place in the dollar-sign dreams of our seemingly well-intentioned governments and entrepreneurs, even when our past experiences of such economic promises prove otherwise. In failing that, I am both grateful and deeply saddened to have experienced the land the world forgot before it was rediscovered, redefined, restored, revamped and revolutionized.

Very Daring Weary Volunteering

Sitting at Chiang Mai bus station, we couldn’t help but feel slightly abused. Five days of waterfighting and partying had left us feeling like a couple of drowned rats. I wasn’t sure if it was alcohol or moat water that I had drowned in, or which of the two had left me with such a terrible headache. My shutter speed was on slow, with human beings complex in both their intentions and movement reduced to simple streaks of color across my smudged eye pallet. I had the drinkers remorse, cue the violin.

A small Chinese man approached from my left, and with a voice as soft as his feature asked if we could watch his bags. His manner was so eloquent I hadn’t course to consider his request, but in hindsight I wonder how many of the evening news stories began like this, with a well intentioned simpleton in a transit station watching bags for a strange man.

His name was Dr. Sun, and he was travelling to the border between Thailand and Myanmar to freely volunteer his experience as a surgeon in aid of the displaced refugees that have accumulated there. Exuding a humble gratification about himself which piqued my curious nature, he happily answered my stampeding inquisitions into his practice in America and the trappings of comfort that would have come with it had he not given it all up to help these desperate people. Expecting underlying smugness from people with stories like these, I was surprised when Maz told him he was a good person for his efforts and he shrugged it off as if we had misunderstood the whole point.

“No, no, no” he said with a chuckle. “It makes me happy.”

His response set my balance off kilter, as I suddenly realized my envy of his knowledge of himself. I wondered if money even mattered at all once one has found his true calling. In context, if my only job was to deliver a Mentos to the Queen on a satin pillow biannually for a handsome reward, it’s quite possible I’d ask for an invoice so I could write the packet and the pillow off at tax time as a business expense. And even though I love and believe in the Mentos freshness and how it makes you full of life, I’d still complain about my job at the after work drinks.

With the memory of Dr Sun’s selflessness throbbing through my love muscle (my heart, before you get any ideas) we delved into the touristic delights of the Chiang Rai province. Twenty scooter minutes out of Chiang Rai lies the life’s work of one of Thailands most famous artists, Chalermchai Kositpipat, and his famous White Temple.

Chalermchai and his team work tirelessly on this complex every single day. Chalermchai finances all of the operation independently, believing that once an outside investor or benefactor inserts money into a project he expects some measure of say in the proceedings. His vision was a young sapling that had already bore healthy fruit, safe in the knowledge it would grow into a magnificent tree. I envied him so much I wanted to scratch his eyes out.

Creating balance with all this white purity is the Black Temple, located on the other side of Chiang Rai. Whereas the White Temple seemed to focus on rebirth and light, the Black Temple’s art and exhibits focus on death and darkness, with large collections of bone inspired furniture and enough taxidermy for a PETA volunteer to fashion a rope out of his own dreadlocks and hang himself from the rafters.

Having contemplated the nature of my giving, or more specifically the fact that I give bugger all, we decided to volunteer at The New Life Foundation. Founded two years ago with an aim to holistically heal addicts through counseling and spiritual practice, we were off to a great start. As a volunteer, we found ourselves fully integrated into communal life, cleaning and cooking and improving the site as a whole incrementally throughout scheduled tasks for the day.

The combination of meditation and interaction with heroin and crack addicts at the end of their rope was a confrontation. The more interaction with the residents I had, the more I related much of my internal thought process to the helplessness of addiction. They were all here because they had reached their low point and decided the only way to go was up, and such has been the ebb and flow of my life in the past also. I listened to their stories with a focus and peace that had long eluded me, even when the subject matter was raw and unforgiving. Through their pain and my full attention, I was at one with people again.

On our last day at the retreat, a monk arrived at the foundation to participate in one of the courses. As I grappled with writers block at a table alone, he quietly sat down next to me and answered his cellphone. I was thrown from my ignorance, eager to understand how this monk had found time to use up his anytime minutes in between training with his nun-chucks and disemboweling himself and others with his samurai sword.

Fully ordained, at the age of 21 he exuded more wisdom than most people I have ever met. He told me of the joy of having but the belongings he carries in two bags slung round his shoulders, and that where most people have cares and worries, he has peace and tranquility.

But the question that had burned inside me so desperately since I spied his little orange robe could not stay buried for long. When I finally asked him if he was happy, his patient reply was that happiness was just a state of mind. I hung on his every word, excited with the prospect of an answer to my midnight prayers tailor made with me in mind, gift-wrapped with a bow and a scented note signed “Love, your Funky Monky. Xo”

He said that as long as one is seeking happiness, one cannot attain it, which seemed disheartening, but do read on. In any given moment, there are feelings going on inside of all of us, and if we are striving for happiness outside of ourselves it is likely we are not acknowledging the feelings we are having inside of ourselves. He finds peace in the simple observation of the thoughts and feelings that he is having right now.

The cause of misery in many of us is our habit to condemn and judge our internal thoughts and feelings as invalid or unacceptable, using the same internal voice to judge ourselves as the voice that created the thought and feelings in the first place. This non-acceptance leads to chains of thoughts about thoughts in a spiral that becomes a prison, cascading down into the depths of our despair. Seeking distraction or solace instead of observance and acceptance of this spiral seemed to me the nature of my addictions, as well as with many of the addicts at the foundation. We forget that a large dark room needs but a candle to render it light enough to move forward.

If happiness is but a color on an infinite spectrum, then peace is the white light, the inclusion of all colors. It was the peace in Dr. Sun that showed so obviously, and his giving to the disadvantaged was an extension of this internal state. Monks and their apprentices probably seek more peace than happiness then, but that does not render happiness invalid.

Happiness is an elusive but reasonably predictable choice. To have happiness in our lives, we must simply experience more of the things in life that make us feel good whilst experiencing less of the things in life that make us feel bad. This moment to moment accounting puts us in touch with our feelings as they are right now, and is the beginning of the journey out of that darkness. It’s a no brainer, and any misunderstanding to the contrary is just the hollow voice of that spiral seeking to pull us down into our own murky depths once again. With this new understanding, I resolve to light my candle when the room seems almost too helplessly dark to continue onward, knowing that darkness is but the absence of light. It has no substance lest fear make it so.

Feeling empowered by our giving and enlivened by our new experiences, we were ready to move on. Once more into the horizon we vaulted, shooting up into the sky in a cloud of swirling smoke…… Just make sure the smoke is non narcotic and the shooting up isn’t into a vein and I’m sure we’ll all get along just fine. Badoom boom.