This blog entry has been taunting me for some time now. I have foreseen the difficult task of transcribing the Songkran days adventure since the first of twelve hours sitting in a straight-backed hard plastic seat on a double-booked train from Bangkok to the Laos border, and the challenge has only grown more apparent since. But with a 90-some degree thunderstorm spilling from the sky, I figured my only option was to channel the epic situation into inspiration, pick some epic music and take care of business*. This journey will take us across international borders, into villages and rivers, and to the front lines of Songkran’s aquatic battlefield; it will reminisce upon eruptions of song and dance, the smells of hotels, and the passionate cry of the rooster; it will juxtapose puppies, communism, and ghosts.
The train chugged out of the station at sunset into a tunnel of unlit night sky, every now and then stopping at a remote train station to pack its full aisles with more travelers. Time passed quickly for the first few hours. A determined salesman traversed the body-ridden aisles to deliver us overpriced Chang and water, while we attempted to entertain ourselves or sleep. At one point, I was put to the task of improvising a story—an occasional reoccurrence over the past few months—comprised of three riveting chapters including musical numbers and sensual sound effects (provided by the multi-talented Mr. Samsonov). Toward the end of the third chapter, we noticed ourselves as an island of obnoxiousness among a sea of sleeping Thais. In an attempt to join them in slumber, I descended into the aisle, sleeping in three-minute increments interrupted by passersby. Somewhere in the delirium we arrived at our stop, a short tuk-tuk ride from the Laos border.
Our thirty-five member group split into a four-van caravan due North, following the narrow, windy roads of Laos’ picturesque countryside. The jagged mountains, humble villages, and herds of noble goats made for a warm welcome back to my favorite Socialist Republic. These goats also inspired my Story of the Goats (alternately, The Tragedy of the Goats), which found its first audience a few nights later. In the last few hours of our van ride, darkness, heavy rain, lightning, and thunder all added to the surrealism of our sleep deprived thirty hours of travel. We spent the night at a nice guesthouse somewhere in Laos where they sell tasty baguette sandwiches and nice t-shirts, among other things. The next morning, we were off to our home-stay village.
About thirty or forty minutes from the village, we stopped at an elementary school. A perfectly formed, endless line of Laotian children greeted us. It was both a perfect photo opportunity and a humbling first glance at their poverty. I felt strange and disconnected as we were all standing there taking pictures, proceeding to walk down the line waving and exchanging “Sabai Dii”s, the Laotian hello. I (and I think we all) gain comfort from relating to other people, but clutching my couple-hundred dollar camera, I felt unable to relate and guilty for my privilege. Simultaneous with these uncomfortable inner-processes, I was innately happy in the presence of the kids. They are beautiful, goofy, and wise all at once. I also realized how the rest of the world gets past that feeling of being unable to relate—Soccer. On our side we had about twelve young adults from America, Japan, France, and Thailand, and on the other side they had about sixty young Laotian boys. The Laotians won 7-2. After the game, our group was called into a little room where we participated in a ceremony involving chicken, boiled unripe plantains, hard boiled eggs, homemade Laotian rice beer, moonshine, and bracelets of white yarn bestowed upon us by the village elders. After some mingling and farewell photography, we boarded the vans once again.
I can’t say what I imagined our home-stay village to be like, but I do recall the reality exceeding my expectations. We could not drive right up to the village, rather the dirt road stopped at a wooden walking bridge that led us over a river (our bath for the next couple days), and into the village. The whole area was secluded, with thick foliage and palm trees lining the riverbank. The river looked invitingly cool and refreshing, and the late afternoon sunlight enhanced the whole picture, as it so often does. We walked up to the village, gathered at one of the village leaders’ homes. We were introduced to the village leaders and the host families, briefed on the plans for the evening and following morning, separated into pairs, and sent off with our hosts to settle into our homes. My home-stay brother was P’Pol, one of the Thais in our group. P’Pol is a graduate of Thammasat, now a talented freelance photographer with a great sense of humor. After dropping our stuff off at the house, we went down to the river for a swim/bath. As we were fully engaged in a splashing battle with some of the local boys, someone pointed out a decorated raft floating towards us on the river. P’Pol asked the boys what they thought it was, and they all responded with an enthusiastic “ghost! ghost!” We eventually gained the understanding that the raft was carrying an urn. About fifteen minutes later, the raft hit a bend in the river and the urn toppled over into the water a few meters away. We shared a bit of uncomfortable laughter as the circle of life entered our bathtub. A little later, P’Pol and I went for an evening stroll around the village, but returned to the news that our host father had taken a minor spill on his motorbike, and we would be moving to one of the neighboring houses. Although our first hosts seemed nice, their two-month-old baby girl vocally demonstrated her potential to ruin a good nights’ sleep, so the housing switch came as a relief. We ate with our new family, sitting on floor cushions around a low table. A virtually endless supply of sticky rice accompanied vegetables cooked with meat, soup, and a salsa-esque spicy dipping sauce. The five meals we ate together were all close variations of that combination, ‘Sep Lai Lai’ (‘very tasty’ in Laotian). Meal times were really the extent of my interaction with the family, and even those interactions were limited greatly by the language barrier. Laotian and Thai are close enough that I could manage some small talk, but I mostly just tried to make sense of the conversation between P’Pol and the father. When I wasn’t in the mood to strain my mind for translation, I would just surrender my brain to the Thai Soap Opera playing in the background. As Thai soaps are simply reincarnations of the same plot lines and characters with hyperbolic expression, you really don’t need much knowledge of the language to know what’s going on.
I woke up in the middle of that first night to the sounds of a drum circle. Although I was exhausted and slightly irritated to be woken up (I thought I had escaped the crying baby…), I was more curious that this kind of loud celebration was acceptable in the village at such an hour. The next day I asked P’Pol if he heard it, and he told me I was dreaming. I took his response with a pinch of salt, assuming that he just slept through it. The incident didn’t really concern me over the next couple days, and I was surprised when P’Pol brought it up shortly after we left the village. According to P’Pol, I did not dream up the sounds of a drum circle, but rather I was hearing ghost drummers. Apparently ghosts have a major presence in that village, and drumming is not an uncommon form of their interaction with people. He had to tell me I was dreaming while we were still in the village, because one who sees or hears a ghost should not be aware of it while they are still in the ghosts’ territory. I am not superstitious, and yet I maintain absolute faith in what P’Pol said to me that day. The supernatural just seems more possible when you’re in the middle of rural Southeast Asia.
I rewind to the morning on which P’Pol told me I was dreaming. We were walking to the school, where we would attempt to teach the children a bit of English. I walked into my classroom of third graders, where the rest of my teaching group had been going through the numbers one to ten. We eventually moved on to eleven through twenty, and then split up into smaller groups to practice some greeting phrases. I sat my little group down on the grass outside, enjoyed a few moments of awkward silence, and proceeded to read the five Laotian phrases we received with our visas upon entry. I said each phrase followed by its English equivalent, hoping they would catch on. I intended for them to practice saying things like “Hello, what is your name? My name is ___” but soon realized that I didn’t know how to explain what I wanted them to do. While some of the group lost interest, the rest were amused by my helplessness and frequent bouts of apologetic nervous laughter. Watching some of the other groups, I stole the idea of abandoning phrases and just teaching them words for actions or nouns—things that I could point to or demonstrate. We had some fun playing games such as follow the leader and “this is grass, this is stick, this is trash, etc”. We reconvened in the classroom and played a big game of heads-up 7-up (I wish I could remember why that game was so fun ten years ago…) and then had a school-wide trash pick-up “contest” on the field. Most of the kids filled their bags with grass and sticks. I didn’t know how to tell them it wasn’t trash, so I just gave them high-fives. We returned to our homes for lunch and naps, and then back to the field for another huge soccer game in the afternoon. Motivated by our devastating loss the day before, we fought hard and came out on top this time around. As the game wound down, the sky filled with a mixture of storm clouds and smoke from a nearby fire. The rain started on the walk home—a welcomed rinse after a sweaty match. I spent some time watching the rain and playing with the PUPPY in Jack and Haruki’s yard, followed by a peaceful and surreal swim in the river under the rain. A few of the village families decided to put together a little dinner/farewell party for us that evening. Our host family wasn’t involved, so after a dinner at home P’Pol and I walked back over the school, following our ears to the sounds of celebration in one of the classrooms. We found ourselves in the midst of international merriment; one of the village leaders was providing percussion as he invited groups of various nationalities to sing songs from their culture. We sang Stand by Me, the Japanese boys sang Sukiyaki, and I can’t remember what the French or Thais sung, but they were all great performances. This was all followed by dancing, more Laotian beverage, and an eventual return home and to sleep.
The ghosts spared my sleep from their interruption, and the next morning we packed up, ate, said our goodbyes, I photographed some more roosters, and we were on the road again. This was a long, bumpy, and rainy ride. We faced a river crossing at which we had to drive onto a ferry that transported our vans across, that was fun. Since it was too late in the day to cross the border, we spent a final afternoon and evening on the Laotian side of the border in a guesthouse. Maybe it was the free coffee, or the access to warm showers, but it was a giddy and comedic afternoon—the kind where everything is more entertaining than it should be. This mood lingered into the night, as dinner table conversations transformed into Thai TV interviews, which were then overpowered by an outbreak of Broadway medleys, and the exposure of P’Mike’s impressive knowledge of Fiddler on the Roof lyrics. The singing turned into a trilingual freestyle rap session (English, Japanese, and French!), and eventually I garnered the (liquid) courage to bestow The Story of the Goats upon its first audience. My sadistic comrades were critical of the fairytale ending, so I replaced it with a bloody and tragic conclusion, and changed the title to The Tragedy of the Goats. At some point the guesthouse employees instructed to return to our rooms; we were approaching the hour of Laos’ curfew, a friendly reminder that we were still in a Communist nation.
We crossed the border in the morning, waited for our new Thai transportation, and took off for Chiang Mai. We stopped in a town for food, greeted with buckets of water hitting the windows of our van—our first exposure to the Songkran festivities. After lunch, we stocked up on weapons (two water pistols for me), and exchanged a few squirts before completing the drive to Chiang Mai. A few of us settled in at the B.R. Santitum, a cheap hotel with moist and funny-smelling rooms, painfully uncomfortable lobby seating, and the occasional centipede in the shower. It was really a lovely place; I stayed there every night. We heard Chiang Mai had the best Songkran celebrations in Thailand, but I could have never fully anticipated what I experienced the next day. It started slowly, with small squirt-gun fights, and the occasional bucket thrown upon us by a passing pick-up truck. As we neared the city center however, the true gravity of the situation hit us from all directions. Pickup trucks lined the street, their beds filled with whole families or groups of teens prepared with enormous tubs of ice water, dousing pedestrians as they wished. The sidewalks were lined with vendors or entertainment booths, armed with buckets, squirt guns, super-soakers, etc. Every nook and cranny in between was filled with pedestrians, armed with their own buckets or guns, able to re-load with water from vendors or from the canal parallel to the other side of the road. We walked and walked, squirting and splashing our way through the crowd for a few hours. While the idea of a water-fight holiday is genius and unique, I really doubt most places in the world could celebrate it in such an age-inclusive, wholesome, and sober fashion. Everyone is out on the streets, from toddlers to grandparents, and everyone is fully clothed. No shirtless guys, no bikini-clad girls, just people in normal, sopping wet, clothes. And I say with confidence, I had ten times more fun that day than I’ve had at any Californian half-naked Halloween shit-show. We slowly made our way back to the hotel, soaking and exhausted.
The next morning we embarked on a multi-destination day trip—thanks to Hong and Kristy, the organized and future-oriented members of our group. A couple of tuk-tuk trucks picked us up at the hotel in the morning, taking us first to a Butterfly and Orchid farm. It was very nice. Our next stop was a Hill Tribe Village; we perused their selection of trinkets and jewelry for sale, and our guide gave a brief tour of the village. It was interesting to see, and in a beautiful location, but there wasn’t much opportunity for interaction with the villagers. We stopped for a quick lunch, and then hiked up to a waterfall. I try to savor these little encounters with nature out here…I love Bangkok but there’s no quick escape to the beach, the redwoods, or the mountains like I’m used to. To those of you in SB—do the Playground, Seven Falls, or Cathedral Peak this weekend! Santa Cruz—go become one with the cosmos in the Pogonip! Anyway, it was a great little hike with a refreshing swimming hole under the falls and a nice area to take a nap, of which I took full advantage. On the way down from the falls, we had a view of some grand mountainsides completely covered with jungle; I couldn’t help but mentally zoom in and imagine how much was happening under the canopy at that very moment…Probably some crazy animals eating and fighting and pooping…Definitely some disease-carrying insects and major anthills going on too. After the hike we had an Elephant ride. This time, I sat on the neck. It was a gratifying experience during which I truly felt connected to the gentle beast beneath me, but the skin was like sandpaper on my thighs and every once in a while it would raise its trunk back and blow a nice lungful of hot breath into my face. I could have really used one of those minty addictive nasal inhalers right then. It was also a scenic ride; we walked along the riverbed, stopped for a drink, enjoyed the surrounding nature, and watched the other elephants poop (very entertaining). This was followed by a mellow river-rafting trip—not a thrilling ride, but a fun and refreshing way to end the adventures. As we drove back into Chiang Mai, we were brutally reminded that it was still Songkran, as grinning locals threw buckets of water into our truck. Although helpless, wet, and cold, there was no choice but to smile and accept the Songkran.
For our final day in Chiang Mai, we took advantage of the dry streets and explored the city a bit. Outside one of the Temples, there was a store with a great big gong sitting outside. The accompanying mallet was also available, so we gave it a go. We delivered a couple soft hits at first, which emanated soothing, deep sounds. We figured, it sounds so good, and no one seems to be objecting—why not give it a little more oomph? So P’Mike, with his great big muscles, gave it a NICE HARD WHACK. The gong responded with a voluptuous vibration, radiating throughout the temple area. Satisfied with our work, we walked away and took some pictures nearby. Shortly after, we noticed a long line of novice monks walking towards the gong, then standing around it with a look of great confusion. Did P’Mike summon the monks? We’ll never know.
One of the nights in Chiang Mai, we went to a club called Discovery. I could have never guessed what I would discover there. As soon as I walk up to a urinal in the men’s restroom, an employee comes up behind me and places a warm washcloth upon my neck. I know he expects a tip, but it feels nice, so I don’t argue. He then proceeds to give a little shoulder rub, and walks away to let me finish my original business. As he notices I’m finishing up, another guy comes up and gives a more thorough neck and arm massage. I am then led to the sink where yet another warm washcloth is placed on my neck as I wash my hands. A third young man comes up, instructs me to place my hands behind my neck, and he cracks my neck and my back in several ways I never knew were possible. As I told the other guys what happened, I expected funny looks. Instead, I received understanding nods and “yeah, that was awesome.”
That about wraps it up for the Songkran trip. It was by far the best side trip/adventure I’ve had since coming to Thailand, and as always, even 3000-some words and a hundred pictures can’t do it justice. I have to give a shout out to Masaaki and Manami, my Japanese friends who took the time and energy to fully organize this trip for all of us. It was an opportunity to make many new friends, and to share time and experiences with those I already knew. I also apologize for the lag on this entry (we got back from the trip three weeks ago), but I have good excuses like schoolwork and hot weather and laziness.
I’ve been here a day over four months, and time only moves more quickly towards the end. The next couple weeks bring finals, papers, and presentations. The forecast predicts a bit of stress, not so much sleep, but still some showers of fun. The real forecast predicts intensely hot days and random thunder and lightning storms when sky feels boring. I’m still very happy here, but my go-to stir-fry vendor hasn’t been open for the past few days and I’m slightly concerned. I feel like these long play-by-play accounts of my travels only reflect one side of my time out here, and I’d like write more on everyday life and cultural matters. However, we’ll both fall asleep if I get into that now, so I’ll save it for next time.