Part 1: Soledad
It's been a while since I've published a blog entry. I've been keeping a running text document, but it's on Aaron's machine and that's no longer available to me. There are several days I want to share, great experiences most of them, some harrowing, but the details are going to be dodgy, and for that I'm regretful. For me, to have those experiences fading behind the skipping record that is my current fear-based thought processes seems a damn shame. So much of my life feels as though it has slip streamed into nothingness, a Buddhist sand painting of colors in the wind.
I will try to summarize then...
Since I last wrote, I headed out of town with Aaron for a Christmas holiday. We were staying in a room where you could see sunlight peeking between every wall. The world had relaxed from the Bangkok intensity, less input, less heat, less stress. The second day in Kanachaburi involved trying to replenish Aaron's supplies and his friend, Nop, knew where to get more. Heading out of town, we raced behind Nop on his motorbike, the odometer tipping 120 km/h through a winding road.
When we stopped, we pulled up a short drive, to a nice concrete home of two stories. There was a large porch with a pond filled with huge catfish, a living room the same size as the one in the Bangkok apartment, and two guys hanging out on the newly-mopped living room floor, cutting up buri tobacco to combine with what Aaron was after. Apparently the water pipe wasn't working any longer, so Nop took my water bottle, dumped out the water, and with a lighter and hollow piece of bamboo, fashioned a new one in less than five minutes. This kind of efficient craftiness I imagine even Martha Stewart could declare it "A Good Thing".
We sat around, exchanging niceties, the TV blaring a Thai comedy show, and hung out for an hour. When business was concluded, we were invited to tour the grounds, so we walked around outside, admiring the abundance of greenery. Much to the Thai's amusement, Aaron climbed a skinny fruit tree to fetch out what looked like an oversized grapefruit to eat at the end of a dangerously flexing branch. I admired a hammock built from one large piece of bamboo split down the center and woven with fabric. We took tons of pictures, but those will probably never be seen again by me.
The rest of the day we spent exploring a tourist attraction, a beautiful waterfall with caves, man-made pools, shrieking children and huge picnics. Evening was another trip to the Chinese temple, more pictures taken, beer drank, and a night market trip to grab tons of food we greedily ate.
The next morning started at 3:30am, picked up by a motorbike taxi driven by a boy that looked 13 but was probably 15. He had his buddy on the back and Aaron and I rode in the sidecar with our luggage. We met up with the bride and groom dressed in their wedding finery and caught a ride with the bride's aunt and uncle to a small town where the wedding was.
This was a traditional Thai and Hmoung wedding, done country style and attended by half of the town. When we pulled up there were already 10 women attending huge woks and steaming pots for the wedding feast, the house lit up by a rainbow of neon lights as it was only 5 or 6 am. Thai weddings start damn early and its because the monks have to perform it before breakfast and then be served breakfast. A line of guests arrived, each carrying a woven basket filled with single-serving snack foods. A bizarre gift, in my opinion, but later I saw that each snack was divied up as a gift to each monk - a monk's halloween haul of cakes and shrimp-flavored savory crackers all handed over in a .... you guessed it.... plastic bag.
Probably the two highlights of the wedding were the actual ceremony and the parade. The actual ceremony was narrated by a very animated elder man of the village on a microphone amplified to ear-splitting volume so no one in the village could miss the happenings. He seemed to find himself very funny, so the whole affair was punctuated by his laughter. The monks, over eight of them, sat in their orange robes, chanted and sang, and got served a gorgeous meal of spicy pork, even spicier tom yum, ginger chicken, and some other dishes lost to my faulty memory.
The groom, an American, had a Thai family adopt him for the day and carried out the business which is a wedding here. All of the guests brought money, handed to the bride's family in pink envelopes. Later, I saw an accountant sorting through the haul once the guests had left. The groom's "parents" presented his gifts, carefully laying out leaves on a gold platter, three layers deep before fanning out the 100,000 baht for display with a diamond ring in the center. Both sets of parents then sprinkled it with toasted rice and nuts, waving a broom made of baby bamboo and dipped in blessed water over it.
After the monks had left, filled and with bags of rice and treats, the groom and his party were taken to the end of the drive. We climbed into a tiny pickup and were driven down the road quite a ways where the rest of the parade was already waiting for us. The parade was led by four people carrying baby banana and bamboo plants, followed by women carrying platters of roasted duck, slabs of raw pork meat, boxes of incense, and uncooked rice noodles. Behind them was a group of women dancing and I was invited to join them. The dance was a nice two-step with stiff hands waving and I enjoyed laughing with them as I tried it out. Again, the photos are gone, gone, gone. For some reason this really sticks in my craw today. Yet another loss, after what feels like a year of losing...
But I digress...
Behind the dancers was the band. A group of men banging on drums so fast and hard the leather tops danced continually. A very old and very small man wailed non-stop on what I've dubbed the Thai saxophone, a set of bamboo bound together and notes played by blowing into it. This guy was wired too, three fabric-wrapped wires led to a tiny cart pushed by woman his size and age, a car battery and four old-school megaphone-shaped speakers mounted on it.
On top of a horse rode the groom. The horse was tall and slim and not too long from front to back. He had a rainbow neon horse blanket and wore a two-layered head dress from which neon pom-poms were hung. The parade lasted quite a while and we were greeted back at the house by folks holding gold chains in the way, the groom bribing each set to gain entry to his bride. All in all, the wedding lasted until about noon. Aaron and I ate last, with the family, the villagers had split, leaving all of their trash littered around the yard.
We borrowed two bicycles and took ourselves out for a spin, stopping along the train tracks in a rice field. We lazed about on simple structure that was a cobbled together roof held up by four wooden pillars and a raised floor of rough slats of wood. There was a gentle breeze that waved the rice, white heron grazed in the emerald field, and it was a great way to spend an hour.
When we returned, the bride and groom had already departed. There was just a few family members left, but at least four bottles of whiskey and a young man that kept the bucket of ice fresh as we drank and chatted away the evening. Aaron and I got to use the guest quarters, aka where the ceremony was on top of the house. We slept on a hay-filled mattress and enjoyed the western bathroom that had just been added.
I'm finding it hard still to continue to recall this part, mostly because it was a part that was, for me, largely defined by enjoying the company of Aaron. We had a relaxing day after the wedding day, pretty much alone, adventured on bikes again, and were escorted to the train station by three of the male family-members who pressed bags of snacks and hot dinner into our hands as we boarded an overnight train.
The train ride was great too, loud, very much a train, and I slept very little, choosing to spend my time hanging off of the stairs of the car, or poking my head out of the window and watching the night pass by. We were headed to Koh Lanta, which involved the train, a shady bus company that made its living from herding confused and tired tourists to "stations" outside of the major cities and then charging them more to get them into town, often collecting commissions from dropping them at hotels. Frustrating, for sure. The view, however, was of the iconic limestone formations rising high above a jungle landscape in the morning light, topped with even more jungle.
Arriving in Krabi, Aaron and I rented motorbikes and I learned finally how to ride by weaving through traffic, and following him closely all of the way to two ferry rides and finally onto the island just as the sun set. Dropping our bags off and doing a quick unpack, we ran down to the water and jumped in. It was warm, clear, and when I moved my hands, small bits of phosphorescence would sparkle. Truly magical.
In the morning, we walked down the beach and collected shells and bits of coral that sparked our fancy. We swam and spent our day hanging out at a bar owned by Aaron's friends. This was where Aaron had ran a bar for two years and he knew lots of folks. Everyone was gracious and the day passed nicely. I logged into work that night and hung out in our room until my work day was done at 1am. At this point my trip once again went sideways. And when my skipping record keeps looping back to, replay, replay, sorting through that fuzzy hour to try to figure out how it went so wrong.
I remember getting very heated about what I thought was Aaron being upset with me using his computer. I guess I should have realized how upset he was by the fact that one of the most talkative people I've hung out with went suddenly silent. After a few minutes of me expressing my frustration at having had all of my electronics stolen and trying to both accomodate him needing his computer with the demands of my work as well as getting his computer working properly, he left on his motorbike to cool off. Unwilling to sit on the porch and fume, I locked up the room, putting the key on the front step, and took off on my own night ride.
I half-expected to run into him as I drove about twenty minutes down the length of the island. I stopped to pee and dropped the key to my motorbike. I dug through the grass, cursing at myself, until I found it again in the moonlight. When I got back to the room, Aaron was in the hammock on the porch and I was so damn relieved to have made it back, I told him what had happened. He asked for the door key. I showed him that I had left it right in front of the door (semi-hidden in the shadow, but right there...). He went inside and closed the door. I sat and smoked.
Suddenly the door flies open and my stuff is being unceremoniously deposited on the porch. I force my way inside as he tries to shove me back out and sit on the bed as my pulse as taken on a deafening new life as I realize he's kicking me out. I ask him why and he says he doesn't want to play my games. I genuinely have no idea what he's talking about but his anger is very, very clear. He tells me to get the fuck out and I find myself gathering up my things, stuffing them into bags, and getting on my bike. It's after 2am, I'm exhausted, homeless, in a totally unfamiliar place, and once again I have little to nothing. No passport, half of my clothes are being laundered (lost forever), and no idea what to do now.
Naturally the bike runs out of fuel. When I walk back to the room, miraculously Aaron has left the keys to his bike on the porch. I take the bike, find the last place selling liters of fuel in a whiskey bottle and get my bike running again.
I decide I should find that ferry stop again and I headed down the main road, looking for it. But it's night and I'm in no frame of mind to figure out anything. As I found out the next day, I was within a half kilometer of the ferry when I decide I absolutely have to get some sleep to even begin to sort this out. I pulled over at a construction site, thinking that it would be a safe place to crash for a couple of hours and it was, other than the cloud of mosquitos that found me and feasted regardless of the mosquito spray and coil I used. When I woke, it was still dark out and I could hear chickens near by. I gathered up the purse and bag of snorkling gear that comprised my belongings other than a small bag of clothes tucked into the seat of the bike, and headed back to the room.
I had left my external hard drive. I knocked, he answered, I told him what I wanted and he shoved it into my hands and slammed the door again. I walked down to the beach as the sun was coming up. My hair was still sticky with salt water from the day before, and I curled up for another nap on a plastic sunning chair, while the morning beach joggers ran by. I was woken up what seemed like just minutes later by a guy who needed the chair. Unbelivable.
There wasn't a whole lot of brain power left for me at this point, but I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do. Aaron had told me to get a room last night as he threw my money on top of the pile of my things. All I could think of was needing to get back to Bangkok, get a computer that had just arrived there, and get what was left of my stuff. Especially my passport.
This time when I looked for the ferry, the sun was up and tourists were boarding boats to go diving and snorkling when I found a dock at the end of the main road. But there weren't any locals, or a ferry. I backtracked and found a sign. When I boarded, I was the only foreigner. Honestly, I was pretty freaked out. There was no help, and when I had dug through my stuff in the night, I hadn't found my phone, so I couldn't even call for help. I wasn't sure if we'd made any turns to get to the ferry from Krabi, but I thought it was a straight shot. I got lucky, and after 20 minutes of driving through tiny towns, rubber farms, banana farms, and passing locals starting their day, there was a sign for Krabi, in English (up until then, all signs were in Thai).
I stopped for gas, slammed an espresso drink and a M-150 and hit the road again. When I was 20 kilometers outside of Krabi, I realized just how sunburned I was getting, despite my thick application of sunscreen on the ferry. And then I saw the airport. What the heck, you know? I pulled in, found a ticket counter, waved my Oregon driver's license at the gal, and she seemed to indicate that would do for identification. I was painfully aware of my state, sunburned, mosquito bitten, unshowered, bleery with exhaustion. When I tucked my ticket away and found a bathroom, I was stunned at the reflection in the mirror. I didn't look half-bad, I just stunk.
I needed to return the bike and I had three hours in which to do so. Heading into Krabi, I finally found where we had rented the bikes, across the street from one of Aaron's friend's bar. The bar was locked up, so I sat down in front and wrote four notes that were basically this: Aaron kicked me out, I have to catch a plane. Leaving bike at airport, key under kickstand. Please call Aaron and let him know as he has my phone.
A local watched me tucking these notes around and crossed the street to ask if I was looking for the bar owner. He called up Aaron's friend, who looked alarmed when I told him Aaron had kicked me out, had my phone, and I was going to park the bike at the airport if I didn't get a ride. He told me where to catch a bus just as I found my phone in the bottom reccesses of my snorkle bag. Aaron had texted me at some point, asking me to leave his train ticket with a buddy back on Koh Lanta. I replied that I had returned the bike, was in Krabi, and just found the phone. A minute later Aaron called. I told him I'd leave his train ticket at his buddy's bar. He asked what my plan was. I asked incredulously if he cared. Then I realized he just wanted to know how much longer I was going to be in his life. I told him I was headed to Bangkok, would get my things, and be gone before he got back.
I fought sleep for hours, waiting for the plane and caught a few neck-cramping minutes of nap on the flight. When I landed, I found that the taxi stop had a flood of over 200 tourists waiting in line to buy a ticket to get a cab. Bullshit. I started walking, until I'd cleared the airport and flagged down a cab in minutes. I fought for consciousness on the cab, on the BTS, and finally, finally got to the apartment. One would think I'd sleep at this point, hell, even I think I should have slept, but my fear and anxiety was so high I packed. I sorted through my things, packed my bags, and ate a few bites of instant ramen soup, my only food for over 36 hours. I'm amazed at how fear works. I have this overwhelming feeling that somehow Aaron is going to reach out to Bangkok and have me kicked out of the apartment just minutes after I've arrived. Even though he's posting about diving and drinking on his vacation still, beyond logic, I'm freaked out.
When I did sleep, it was for 12 hours, deep, uncomplicated with dreams that were of the normal bizarre variety.
I found UPS, they dug out my work computer, and when I left there I felt the tears that couldn't fall hit me, dry-eyed and gulping, clutching a Lenovo ThinkPad as though it was a life-preserver. I ran back to the apartment (key still worked) and jumped every time I heard a noise in the building. My bags are packed still too. I've been migrating files until I've filled the 300GB hard drive. Now I'm needing to venture out again. I'm hungry and I need a smart phone and another external hard drive. Hope my key works when I get back.
It doesn't make sense, this fear. But it's reigning supreme in my chest, keeps me from napping, from eating, from leaving for more than an hour.
I'm working on my "what now" plan. I'll let you know how it unfolds, but I wanting to scoot as soon as possible, maybe even tomorrow . My parents have offered to fly me home, although I'm wanting to get in more of Thailand and maybe more countries before I go back to the US. My brother is very supportive and we agree this break from Aaron is what needs to happen (as evidenced by reality), no matter how jolting. I'm processing, for sure, and considering taking an Ativan when I come home tonight for the night. I can't wait to work again, and if all goes well, I can stick here and work out my plan before I leave tomorrow. We'll see.
Part2: Night in Bangkok, locked in an apartment...
I'm inside again. Made a quick journey out to the Emperial mall - crazy place with Gucci, Coach, all manner of luxury goods one block away from where I bought a two-dish lunch for 30 baht - $1. I bought an external hard drive and am migrating over all of my files from my last external hard drive. The last drive was formatted for Mac and I'm using the hell out of 5-day trial software that allows my PC to read it. This process will take all night and my new computer is crawling along, preventing anything more than the most simplistic of programs (thank you notepad for bringing me this stripped-down emotional vomit place!).
Buying a smart phone is complicated. It needs to cost enough to allow me to put in any cell company's sim card so it truly travels, instead of being a $500 Thailand-only phone. iPhone 5 fits the bill best, but it's $800 US, or $25,000 baht +. Le sigh. I spent an hour researching, reading forums, searching for my best option. Now I'm down to either a cheapie that does wi-fi/skype/3G and pick a company ($100-$200), or blowing my cash and praying the iPhone 5 is 1. working in every country including the US 2. not stolen or lost 3. cheap enough that I can buy it and still get out of Bangkok and not end up in another compromised position for housing, wi-fi, etc, etc, etc.
The apartment is silent. I'm walking softly and closing doors softly, cringing at every sound I make. When I left earlier, I ran into neighbors who gave me a friendly hello. I was practicing acting like I belong here, so I returned the greeting and smile, rushing off on a motorbike taxi and rushing back. The key still works and I recognize the lock as being old and exposed to the elements. Guess I'll notice if that changes, but what really amazes me is how paranoid I am. Perhaps between the burglary and being summarily tossed out, I'm having trouble relaxing here.
I miss music, I miss conversation. I miss semi-security and recognize that it's only me that thinks this is any more or less secure than any other time in my life. I debate who I'm more angry with, Aaron, for tossing me out for no reason I can fathom, or me, for sticking around when I saw all of the signs that this guy ends up being angry at others a lot, and I was the one closest to him (aka, "next"). I try to excuse myself by arguing I needed a computer to keep working and he had one I was supposed to be able to use, but that's not really the truth. I try to excuse myself by arguing I was a stranger in a strange land and he was the one who was showing me the ropes. But I'm still pissed at myself for the underlying truth beyond those very logical reasons for sticking close: for wanting and enjoying companionship even if it's less than (apparently), for leaning on someone instead of charging out on my own, for enjoying those little moments when he'd reach back on the motorbike and touch my leg, or reach for my hand, or wake me with a kiss on my back. I accuse myself for being foolish, for caring, for sliding into semi-relation when my broken heart is still, well... broken. Love? Sure. Being in love? I don't know if that's even a remote possibility ever again. What's the difference? Well, I thought I knew once. But perhaps that is all I will ever be capable of and what I think of when I think of being in love is not really being in love at all.
I just read over the last five days in my 2011/2012 journal - exactly one year ago. When I was torn between marriage and affair, friends and loneliness, being in Mexico and wanting to be holed up with my lover. That really worked out well now didn't it? I even wrote that he mentioned a year ago that he wanted to be with someone that everyone was excited about - that he could talk about, that everyone could celebrate his new-found happiness. Predictive, isn't it? When will I start to listen to myself?
Which brings me back to Aaron and my being angry most of all for trusting. Even that much. Trusting another over myself, my own internal warnings and trusting what I've learned already in life to help me now. Have to trust sometime, right? Well, when am I going to start with trusting me? Maybe I'm still hoping someone else has more wisdom than I do. And I can forgive myself that innocence. At least in this moment.