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A
Tourist in Thailand
Published
in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, 1998 around-the-world-series
The
tourist authorities plug "Amazing Thailand" as a
happy land of smiles and beaches; the press likes to paint
it as a deadly refuge for sex and drugs. I see Thailand as
a fascinating mirror of our motives, desires and defects as
travelers. In the tourist capitol of Asia, these reflections
are impossible to avoid: they're in the visitor's brochures,
the shop windows, even the con-men's hooks.
The journey starts at Khao San Road, Bangkok's backpacker
slum. Everyone doing the Asian overland this year has bottle-necked
in Bangkok, filling nearly every room in town.
Desperate for rest, I end up staying in the Sawasdee Guest
House "dormitory," a massage room without a door
and with just enough space for a queen-sized mattress. A Thai
lady in tight jeans is rubbing a handsome, nearly-naked man
from Pittsburgh. She pulls his limbs together like a cradle,
then twists and cracks his back.
I lie on the bed beside them. "I love Thailand,"
the man sings out in a gay drawl. He gets massages twice a day here, sometimes
two. "They made me up as a lady-boy," he tells us,
recounting a night out dancing with some Thai guys. I giggle,
feeling like Alice in Wonderland dropped down the chute into
a David Lynch movie. A flirtatious security guard comes around,
promising to watch over me or at least watch me sleep.
Waking at an afternoon hour, my jet-lagged head spins from
the American music and action movies pumping from Khao San's
open-air bars. I weave between shaggy guys in sandals and
short-skirted girls hard-bargaining cheap hemp bags. The combination
can be pathetic. Two likely impromptu couples waver in the
street, their faces red from sun and booze. "Don't waste
it," slurs one mate, as the grinning girl kisses liquor
into her friend's mouth.
I scan the travel agency windows, which offer to put anybody
anywhere on the globe, or on Thai tours to:
** Floating Market
** Crocodile Farm
** Bridge Over River Kwai
** Three Places in One Day
The worst, though, are the hill-tribe trekking agencies. Their
signs promise "NEW non-tourist remote area" and
"two days visit long necks." Many of the hill villages
have been turned into human zoos, a situation unlikely to
improve as agencies look for virgin stomping grounds.
I settle on a trip to Khao Yai, the oldest of Thailand's 66
national parks. The park is promoted as a vast rainforest
of rare plants trampled by bears, tigers, and elephants. Thailand
has carefully conserved such natural habitats, recognizing
them as a reservoir of tourist dollars, both international
and domestic.
At the bus station, a motorcyclist aggressively offers me
a free ride to Khao Yai Garden Lodge. I know from experience
that if I don't pay for it, somebody will. That somebody is
Klaus. This short, paunchy, squinty-eyed German botanist runs
the lodge with his Thai wife and kids.
I have to walk in to see "the boss," who is working
on a new wing to his nature-complex-on-the-highway. En route,
we pass a mini-waterfall, big mesh cages of birds, plants
and turtles, and hanging pots with umpteen varieties of Thai
orchids.
"Ah, a room? I've got only one left -- it's vewy crowded
wiz the holiday {the King's birthday}," Klaus says, furrowing
an anxious brow. I ask about accommodation on-site. "No,
no; no tents in the park now, nothing!" he yells. Klaus
launches into an itemized description of the tour: 1.5 million
bats in the bat cave, a drive to this waterfall and that viewpoint.
"Uh, but I came to walk," I interrupt. He eyes me
suspiciously, as if most park visitors oppose a simple stroll
through nature.
I wanted to run from all this, seeing it was not my reflection
but someone else's. I knew didn't belong on the tour bus, in the
pick-up bars. I sought and found my vision of Thailand in
Burmese border towns, chewing betel nut with cackling old
ladies, and in Buddhist forest wats, meditating on the impermanence
of my journey. I learned Thai cooking in Chang Mai and rock
climbing on the cliffs of Krabi. Not that I didn't ever disappoint
myself, like bingeing on coconut cream and failing to tithe
in the temples. But at least I tried to do good, too, by bringing
supplies to Karen refugees and only hiring tribal guides to
trek in Thailand's hills.
My last act of mercy is setting free a nuthatch. At many Thai
temples, women peddle birds in tiny straw cages, which buyers
release for good karma. I think of the irony of the bird's
liberation as I prepare for the plane ride to San Francisco.
The modern bird that has always symbolized my freedom swivels
around to show its backside, returning me to captivity.
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