On a flight and I'm wide awake on less than five hours of sleep in the last 24 and compounded hangovers (lite versions). Woke up at 2:30am to catch the fastest taxi ride I've ever taken across Bangkok. The weekend has been one long party. Friday I found out I was a full page pic in the Bed Supperclub monthly happenings and style mag, just in time to get dressed and head to the 38th floor of the Continent Hotel and sip a Hello Kitty cocktail while discussing coffee with a Kiwi, the bar open to the warm Bangkok night. The view was unparalleled the DJ spinning good music, and only a small group of folks invited. This was followed by a long stretch of dancing in the dark, low-ceiling Glow club.
Saturday had some last-minute errands and a shopping trip with Nurze at Siam Paragon. We ended up there for over four hours total and again I got back in time to shower, change, and head to Tapas for their three-levels of raging electronic music. Sunday was a late start and a beach-like party at Flowhouse - a roaring wave pool of not-surfing/surfing at the center and two levels packed with 3000+ partiers. I stayed for three beers and headed back to the apartment to catch some zzzs.
Yesterday was marked by "you're-leaving-to-Bali-for-45-days" conversations. Aaron mentioned I could put it off and then we discussed him coming to Bali for a week in late April. As much as I love Bangkok and am blown away by its cosmopolitan life, phenomenal clubs, food, culture, and street life, I'm also looking forward to a more natural and laid back lifestyle again. Bangkok chased out the latest visitor pretty quickly. He arrived in BKK, stayed two nights, then hi-tailed it to Hua Yin in an air-con minibus after recovering from a collapse from jet lag and the heat.
The people I've been meeting have been mostly a lot better off than I am. I'm walking past Lamborghinis and drivers idling in air conditioned beemers just in case their employer decides to leave the club. The children of international schools are marked by their American-Australian-English-French accents. I thought I'd moved around a lot as a child, but these folks grew up in places like Bangkok and London. At these clubs, there is a core group that goes to all events. Their lifestyle looks exhausting. Standing in the middle of the dance floor or in the VIP section and guzzling vodka shots straight from the bottle, following that with a proseco chaser.
I'm projecting a lot into the future these days, ever since I calculated my return home date-range. There's a lot of changes in Portland, just in the brief time I've been away, and a huge shift in my perspective of the world as a whole. Sometimes I think about renting a place, or what to do with all of that stuff sitting in Randy's shed, basically how that would look/go to be back to that life. The last two years have felt like a rapid shedding of objects, relationships, and identity. What was vital to me then isn't now, and what wasn't even in my frame of reference is my daily experience.
This is what I was seeking when I left, this shifting, widening of point of view. In Portland, I found myself running in the same circles, doing the same things with the same people and thinking the same thoughts. Now Thailand is a bit extreme as a method of shaking myself out of the routine, but combined with the very-powerful reasoning that I CAN, well...
Expect a lot of photos and essays of Bali in the very near future.