PADI certified diver

A short note on what I've been up too lately. The past four days I was taking a course in Patong to achieve PADI certification as an Open Water Diver. The first two days I was in either a classroom or swimming pool fron about eight in the morning until six at night, and the last two days was on a boat for the same amount of time. It was an incredible experience, and at some point I hope to write some more about it. I especially want to write about Martin my dive instructor as another sign along the way. But for now suffice it to say that I am a PADI open water certified diver.

Last night was another crazy Thailand night. These things are both addictive and expensive, and, again, I hope to write more about this.

In any case, I made the decision not to pursue the Peace Corps Indonesia option. My excuse/rationale was the fact that the book is supposed to come out in the fall and I had promised my editor that I would be available for publicity at the time. But the truth is, once that got put off in the fall, that ship had sailed. I just had a strong sense that this is not the path to pursue. But like Socartes' daimon, although I can often determine what path not to pursue, the daimon never seems to point out anything constructive.

Leave for China tomorrow, and not even sure if I will do that, much less for how long. A month there and three weeks in Nepal seems about right. But there is still the possibility of the semester in China consistent with the Wisdom for All Seasons book project. All I know is that decisions don't get any easier by putting them off.

No place like home?

The owner of the Pineapple Guesthouse is Steve, an affable, rotund Englishman, who runs the place with his Thai wife Lek and two small children. He came over the first night we were here and introduced himself and since has been incredibly helpful, offering flawless advice on everything from fish restaurants to tours to massage shops. Karon Beach is a laid back little place, and we leave today for the much more intense environs of Patong Beach.

Decisions loom ahead, the first of which is weather to do the Peace Corps Indonesia program, which now looks like it will depart in either April or June. My guess is that an April departure is simply impossible to pull off. While a June departure is a possibility, given the fact that the book will be coming out in fall, this is a fading possibilit at best. What does that leave then? I just don't see spending more than a month in China. And then I see the possibility of going to Nepal. But (and I may have mentioned this before) I don't see anything beyond this.

This trip really is like my last Asia trip--a lot of aimless wandering that will just leave me physically and financially and spiritually exhausted at the end. I can really feel my physical condition deteriorting, but it is nore or less a canary in the coal mine for the other parts of my being. Several times I have wanted to click my heels and declare, "there's no place like home." Except that I don't hve a home.

Tiger and Me

The Tiger Woods apology is all over the televsion right now, even in Phuket. While I find the whole thing pretty ridiculous, the one thing I did find that salvaged the pathetic performance ws the references he made to Buddhism. Many in the media were speculating that Tiger might make a move to Christianity where he could more easily invoke an idealogy of forgiveness. Instead, he stuck to his guns and Buddhism In particular he invoked the Buddhist claim that the cause of suffering is desire, which he changed slightly by declaring that 'craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security'. I have no problem with this rephrasing. It captures the spirit of the sentiment, and in any case it caused me to reflect on this insight. Coincidentally (not ironically) being in Thailand certainly has me focusing on the futility of desire.So far, thought, I haven't been doing anything more than reflecting.

Sickness and Decisions

Sick, or at least not feeling well in the words of George Carlin, a condition which caused an early retreat last night. Not really sure what I am doing here anymore. There is the energy of the night, but there is not much more than that. You should not be surprised that you do not find romance in the bargirls or satisfying sex in massage parlor hand jobs. Many frustrations, one of which is not keeping track of how much anything costs, a metaphor, of course, for not keeping very good track of time. Time and money slipping away without making a very good account of either.

Currently, I am debating whether to do a trek in Nepal in early April. Probably need to make a call pretty soon, although there is always the possibility of just showing up in Nepal. Still, if I am serious about the trek, I should probably go ahead and make the reservation. The trek gets me to the end of April and after that I am just not sure. My physical condition is deteriorating. Gaining weight and out of shape. Not sure what to do once May rolls around. Can’t just sit in Tucson. If I go back, I know that will be it, I mean, I won’t soon take to the road. So I don’t want to end this journey too early, though in truth, as I said, I am not sure what the point of the whole thing is.

Printable excerpts from the weekend

Friday
When I arrive at Spicy around one thirty a.m. it is fairly packed. I had earlier sampled Foxy Lady's, which I didn't know is a go go bar with the dancers on the bar and if you want you buy them drink and they come sit with you and if you like them you take them short time there, two hours. Not cheap. Six hundred bar fine and two thousand short time, although I was not clear if it was two thousand all together or two thousand with the bar fie. I learned all this talking to one of the dancing lady's who I bought a drink for and asked to explain how things work.. They are quite liberal with their affections for one drink, obviously hoping to get more. Some beautiful ladies, definitely a cut above the bg crowd, which might explain the prices. Anyway, then went dinner at Riverside and to see Tuk again and then headed over Spicy. As I said, it was pretty packed when I go there and I spent some time surveying the grounds and trying to figure out what to do when this woman walked past me and smiled. What intrigued me about her was that I could not figure out what nationality she was. She didn't look Thai nor did she seem to be an American (incidentally, there seemed way too many young foreigners in the place). Anyway, something drew me to her and I asked to buy her a drink. Well, if you can't figure out that someone who grabs your ***** within the first fifteen minutes is not out for love, you probably don't deserve to be out in the game. We danced and groped for a couple of hours. In the meantime, I noticed Spicy had become wall to wall. I do not think you could have squeezed five more people in the place. Looking around it was Sodom and Gomorroh, the sequel. When she signaled she was going to leave I signaled for us to go together and she said "how much," I demurred.

Sat

It turned into another strange night; it certainly didn’t start out like it was going to be a strange night. In fact, after the previous evening I had planned on taking it pretty easy. Actually, I did not even have a plan. By the time I got up and got going on Saturday it was past noon. I am not sure where the inspiration to rent a bike came from, but in fact it turned out to be a pretty good idea. I can’t say I made any major discoveries, but I did develop a little better sense of Chengdu. It was hot, really hot and at some point I got a gelato and a massage. I had been told that there were to be festivities for the Chinese New Year, but when I went to the location where the alleged celebration was supposed to occur, in fact it turned out there was nothing going on—at least nothing that I could see. So I ended up walking back to the hotel, which turned out to be quite a bit more distance than I imagined. But it turned out to be the basis for at least one act of kindness. As I was walking back, I was pretty sure I was close to the hotel but thought I still had a little ways to go, so I decided I was going to bite the bullet and get a tuck tuck back to the hotel. When I approached a driver, he informed me that if I turned around it was only a couple of hundred more yards to my place. Clearly, he could have drove me around and charged me something for the trouble.

When I got back to the hotel I decided I really needed a sauna, even if it was going to be 200 baht. Unfortunately, going down to the sauna room I discovered there was only 45 minutes left. Nevertheless, I made the best of my time and enjoyed a pretty good sauna. But when I got back to the room it was, I think eight p.m. and I was exhausted. I knew I needed to lie down, so I put on the only thing I could find on tv and set my cell alarm for nine p.m. By the time nine rolled around I was still exhausted and opted against getting up. When I looked at the clock it was 9:30 and knew it was either get up or go to bed for the evening. But as I had rented the hotel room just to be near the action for the weekend, I forced myself to get up and headed to (where else) LaKroi Street. Out of force of habit, I wound up going to the two familiar places, B&B and #1, By the time I left #1 it was almost midnight, really too late to even see Tuk. I was planning on headed to the third place where I am a familiar face, Cherry Club, when I veered into the bar right before the Cherry, which I will refer to as the bar right before the Cherry. There I ended up sitting next to am aging bg who spoke non-stop about Burma, I think, though in truth I was not sure what the hell she was talking about much of the time. Whatever it was, she seemed fairly passionate about it, and I think it had something to do with politics. But it was two beers—or rather, a beer and a Johnny Walker—before I could get out of there, and already past one’ a.m.

I decided at that point to make my way to Spicy, although I was not quite certain about what direction in was in. I was fairly confident and figured I would walk in the direction I thought it was and that if all else failed, get a tuk tuk. First, however, I had to veer into a couple bars. The first was the corner bar on LK, where I got a beer and realized pretty soon I was going to have to drink it alone and so got up and hit the street and veered into the next place, where I at least had company although it cost me a 150baht maitai. When she asked for another, I got up to leave.
Fuel, I kept thinking, recalling Mickey Rourke’s line from Barfly, Fuel. However, my favorite burrito stand was shut down. Fortunately, the hamburger place next to it, Mike’s Burger, was still open. That’s when it started getting weird. There was a row of four or five seats parallel to the street and another four or five seats at a right angle to these. He sat katty korner from me while another young man sat next to me. The two of them struck up a conversation. My sense was that they were both from the same country—if I had to guess it would be England—and they started comparing notes. Actually, it was mostly the guy across from me talkinig. He had been in Pattaya seven years he said and began to regal his mate with stories designed to show his knowledge and experience of the country. Somehow, though, when the guy working the counter told him a Pepsi was 200 baht or about six dollars, he handed it over without question. The two rookies across from him could both tell the guy was just shitting him. So how experienced was he really? In any case, it turned out he was headed to Spicy and we decided to go together. On the way, he told me a story how the other night he and his friend were involved in some huge fight, except I had been there last night and had witnessed no altercation. In the bar, he kept saying how everyone knew him there but he did not know them, and how he was a champion at seven classes in Thai boxing. So I followed him around for a while because he did seem to know people. After a while we got separated and I ended up with some Eastern European chick, buying her and her friends a drink and then getting propositioned. For a while, I actually thought this was the girl from the other night. But this one it turned out spoke good English, or good enough, and when she propositioned me I decided I was too drunk and tired to do anything.

Last night

LeCroix Street, Foxy Lady, Riverside, Brassiere, Spicy...not the way I would want to spend my last night on earth, but perhaps the next to last

Notice Things

I am thinking that it would be good to travel with the notion that it did not matter so much where I travelled; rather, the important thing would be to write in a concrete and specific way. To notice things, as it were. A good antidote to the abstraction of philosophy. Notice the rows of chairs across the street, which is not just a street but is La Croix street. And the chairs are not just chairs, they look like lazy boy loungers. And of course they have a color, which is blue, almost a bright blue, a sky blue. And there are about fifteen chairs lining the sidewalk against a six foot white wall. Right now there are five masseuses there. At one end a middle aged man with short hair is sitting by himself under an umbrella meant to shade the sun which now has an electric light shining underneath the rim. At the other end a young man and woman sit side by side and chart. In the middle are a couple of foreigners getting massaged. In front of the chairs are parked a row of motorcycles perpendicular to the street.

Coffee Day Patio, LeCroix Street 5 p.m.

It's nice to have a spot to view the world from
Sitting here with a cup of tea gives you some license to look
Throw in the laptop and you can seem downright legitimate
Of course, the old guy sitting on the sidewalk holding a cup in his upraised hands, asking for change from all comers, has the right idea
I don't ever want to move from this spot
Beyond this secure little patio is confusion and chaos, dealing with demanding bar girls and argumentative tuk tuk drivers, shopowners who snarl at you, witresses who don't understand your order
But to sit at the Coffee Day cafe on Le Croix street and look out at the world as evening descends on Chiang Mai and the afternnon heat becomes the evening cool
This is why we travel

Thailand, part 1

Seated on the patio of Coffee Day coffee shop. A cup of Earl Grey tea, a big chunk of banana bread and free wireless. Behind me two Thai guys--at least I think they are Thai guys, they may be Indian--shout on cell phones and smoke cigarettes. Lakroi street--bar girl street. It's five p.m. The heat of the day is just beginning to wear off. This I think is the best time to be here: the days are sunny and warm, the days pleasantly cool. La kroi street--street of lost souls. Middle-aged and up men wander up and down in a dazed state, old Thai guys with young girlfriends. Of course it is a violation of nature. But then again so is penacillin.

It's time to recap the last couple of days. Strange days indeed. Nothing paricularly remarkable about them, but certainly different. Where to begin. We can list and describe a series of distinct events and then try to put them together in chronological order, although chronological order is invaraiably the least interesting way to view things. I mean, we could classify an event by its impact, its uniqueness, its location. Mostly we choose time as our marker, which I guess is as good as any. And even when we use time, we can always choose to tell the story backwards rather than forward, as in the Seinfeld "India" episode.

Well, I've just finished a message. After an event I will report on in a second, I was feeling particularly out of sorts (now I see a reason for sticking to chronology, somee vents need other events that occured prio to them in order to fully explain them). and decided to make my way to LeCroix street for the express prupose of getting a message, figuring that would help calm some of the agitation I was feeling. The queston then becomes, which massage parlor to choose. I mean, I wandered around for at least ten minutes this afternoon because I couldn't determine what I wanted for lunch. How to choose which massage place. I had been to the first massage parlor on Lecroix previously, and it was alright, and I might have gone there again, but no one was outside hawking business. It was around three or four p.m. and still extremely hot and the staff of this massage parlor had taken refuge inside. Usually, the girls line the stret in front of their business and call out "So wa dee ka" as you walk buy. But not today.So I wandered a little further and still no one was hawking business. Across the stree there were a couple of women setaed outsde one massage parlor who glances back expectantly when I looked. But, in turth, they were not very good looking. Finally I began to walk past the Yin Yang massage parlor and a woman confonted me with a "You want massage." "How did you guess," I said. "What kind? oil massage?" "Thai massage. one hour." "You want oil too, very nice." "Well, if you say so," I reply, and then kick myself for not asking how much extra it would be (it turned out to be the same price as a regular massage--sometimes traeeler's suspicions can get away from them.

I was assigned to a little girl (rather a small youngish loooking woman) in a purple t-shirt and jeans who led me up two flights of staris, telling me to watch my head. The third floor of the Yin Yang massage parlor consists of a series of clothes hanging from near the ceiling to the floor tha are separated into five or six separate massage areas. Gan (her name) led me to the end of the rows and drew back the cloth and told me to step in. I wasn't sure how much of my clothes. So I stayed in my boxer shorts until she walked in and then made a motion of taking off my shorts and she laughed and said yes like she was speaking to an idiot (which in a sense she was) The big towel was more used to rub off oil from the body than it was to cover any particular organ, although generally spaeking it served that function as well. A Tha massage sarts from the feet and works its way p the body, ending with a workover of each of the arms. The hour went by more quickly than her than for me, I'm sure. At one point she asked me if I wanted a pedicure and I called to mind what a struggle everything is over here. Everyone seems nice but they are alwasy trying to seel you something. It'sneither good nor bad; it just is. The smiling bar girls want you to buy them drinks, dinner, buy their friends drink, pay a bar fine, take them home. Even the tuk tuk drivers don't drive more than a mile without asking you if you want a massage (yes, it is a metaphor; theirs, not mine). It's a salesman selling you an extended warranty. The smiling massage girl trying to get you to come back tomorrow for another massage. Wel, you know, as long as you are aware of it and don't let it throw you off your game, it's alright. In fact, it's better than alright. Putting up with a little salesmanship to pay six dollars for a massage is a bargain I can live with.

Before I end this post, let me talk about the event that preceded this and provide the impetus for the massage, though in truth I had been considerring getting one anyway. I had gone to the gym where my friend Glen belongs. Even though he is not in town, you can pay 150 Baht and gain entrance. SO I had run five k on the treadmill, did some stretching and was headed to the shower. GLen had told me he dries his shirts in the sauna and I was going to do that but wanted to look insider first to see if anyone was in there. As I was about to look, a burly, barrel chested man with long, wavy grey and brown hair came stomring out. He spoke in an Austrailian accent so I ddin't get everything he said, but the gist of it was telling me in a threatening tone not to go sneaking around and [peeking into saunas. I wasn't quite sure how to respond, so I simply looked at him and said, "right, o.k." It's best, I thought, not to provoke the guy. Afterwards, I was stewing, like th Underground Man thinking of all the ways I should have responded. I was vowing not to go back to that gym in any case. And I was wondering why the hell I took this trip in the first place. The think about being in a stranger in a strange lad is that you always have to be on guard. You can never really relax and let your guard down the way you can when you are among acquaintances and familiar surroundings. And, as Jim Morrison put it, people are strange when you're a stranger. Everyone's motives become suspect, you sijmply don't know who you can trust. Then you start to think, man, I take a wrong step and get run over and who the hell is going to claim the body. And you wonder why you came to a place where you could die in this unknown and unmarked fashion. So with all that weird stuff floating around in my head, I knew I had to get a massage, because the head stuff is connected with the body as well, and loosening the body, I knew, would allow me to gain some perspective. Which hopefully I have.
"Don't go


But to end this on a good note--the chatting Indians or Thais or whatever have jus left and I am able to move to the premier spot on the patio, looking out on Lakroi steet watching the parade go by. Itis the perfet time, the perfec temperature. Seriously, this has to be one of the premier spots in the world. The second cup of Early Grey tea is steeping; ther is stilll banana breat left and a thousand stories will stroll by.

Travel thought of the day

Although there are certainly exceptions, pretty much the trip you plan is the trip you take. So be very careful in your planning

Meeting of the Minds

So I am in Chiang Mai staying at my friend Glen's place. It's always interesting to meet people you feel a sort of instant connection to. B. is about ten years older than me and graduated with a Ph.D. (I think in English) in the seventies from Boston College. Unable to find a job in the States, he got a position in Montreal, where he taught for twenty eight years. I did not know these details when I met him with my friend Glen and another ex-pat at a Buddhist wat for dinner. A hot day was becoming a cool evening as we sate at a stone table to have dinner and talk. What Glend did tell me was that B. had been teaching in Chengdu for the past three or four years, at Sichuan University. Iwas curious how he ended up there, and he gave me the short version, which we all have to be able to produce, which was that he taught in Montreal for 28 years and decided to do someting different and took early retirment and got this position teaching at Sichuan University. He had a young Chinese girlfriend who also worked in Chengdu and who he was planning to marry. In a year or two he would leave the job and they would travel around the world for a year. He was carrying around a biography of the first Western woman to make it to Tibet, and related the fascinating details of her life story, Alexandar David-Neel. He was clearly captivated by the extraordinary tale of her life and exploits, noting especially that she had undertaken this epic trek to Tibet when she was near fifty. It was good to see someone still that passionate, still searching. B. was in his early sixties but looked at least ten years younger He himself seems to have lived a full life, having fathered three children and had a career and now was embarked on another adventure at a time when most men would have sat back and called it a life. After dinner the four of us retired to a nearby outdoor cafe to drink some beer and B and I continued our converstaion ranging over everything from Camus to contemporary Chinese literature to theories of human rights. Tomorrow morning he is off to Chengdu, where if all goes as planned I will meet up with him. In any case, I feel incredibly fortunate to have met him. One needs such glimpses along the way.

travel tip of the day

Think twice before going to any country where the Lonely Planet phrase book includes the sentence, "Can you please use a new syringe?"

A parable

So I came across an interesting post in one of the China blogs I regularly follow. The posting was from a blogger known as Acosta, supposedly (for I have to take others words on this) one of China's most popular young bloggers. The essence of the post is to relate a short story where a man wanders through the desert dying of thirst. In the distance he sess a lone tree and struggles to make his way to it. Upon reaching the spot he finds nothing elsd around and, in a nearly dehydrated state of frenzy, the man starts to dig wildly. Remarkably, the man finds a jug of water. On the jug is a piece of paper that reads, if you pour the water into this hole, a spring will pop out of the ground. The man struggles with what to do but at the end decides to pour the water away--and the spring does indeed come.

An act of faith. An act of giving away what you have in order to attain some hoped for bounty. At some moments, I like to think this is what I have done, having emptied out the secure jug of academia into the sands of time in the hopes that something will spring forth. Of course, I can't just sit around and wait for water to pour forth from the ground. I know that ain't going to happen. But I like to think that I have at least set out the conditions for such an event to occur.

http://cnreviews.com/blogs/the-desert-spring_20100201.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CnReviews+%28CN+Reviews%29

One Road

Sometimes it seems like every road except the one you are on is the right one. Now is one of these moments. I am thinking first that I should have at least tried to do the MSW in Denver. That might have led to me doing international social work, plus they had a program established in China. Next, I think I could have stayed teaching and pursued interests--such as cooking and an MSW--that would have led to alternate careers. It is only the path I have chosen that seems the wrong one. There's a line in Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam's) latest album: "There's but one road, and that's the one you chose." Need to remember that

Another morning Kawagoe

The gauge on the kerosene heater reads 5 degrees when I turn it on. I'm better at converting from farenheit rather than into it, but I think that means it's around forty degrees in the room. Given the fact that I can see my breath, that seems about right. Thankfully, Paul has turned on the toilet seat, which means not only am I greeted with a toasty, cushy foam seat, but afterwards, with a push of a button, a warm jet of water comes on and squirts up to finish off the job. One could get addicted to going to the bathroom under such circumstances.



In my school e-mail account, which they will let me into until the end of the year, I receive notice about a philosophy conference in India on March 6th. It is truly a good thing that you have to get a visa before entering India, otherwise I might just have ended up there, such is the plasticity of my plans

Soul Harmony

So Paul's boss Mr. Ijima bought us a couple of cards with our names written in kanji and with the kanji translated in the back. He bought these about five years ago, I think. Paul only just gave it to me now because he is clearing out his belongings, having been exiled from his wife's place. Supposedly, Paul's name means "wealthy" and "treasure" while the back of my card reads "soul" and "harmony." Interesting, because it clearly captures what each of us is after but have miserably failed to achieve.

Japanese cafe

This, to me, is good. I had left my friend’s Paul’s house hoping to find someplace I could sit and do a little work. We had just eaten lunch and I wanted to find a place to sip some coffee or tea and write. I knew where a Starbucks was, but not only was it a bit of a walk; more to the point, it was a Starbucks, and I did not want to be in the interchangeable environment of a Starbucks. Now, Paul happens to live near a very fashionable shopping street in Kawagoe, and I was reasonably certain I could find some place to sit down. But there was nothing really available. A lot of places to eat lunch but no place to sit and sip a little coffee or tea. I mean, technically speaking I could have done this at a restaurant. But not without drawing attention and feeling out of place, and for someone as self-conscious as I am, this is not a good situation.

So I had resigned myself to Starbucks and was strolling in that direction when I cam across THE PLACE. A honest-to-God little Japanese Café with tables set aside just for drinking coffee. It was as if physical reality had created the place I had had in my imagination. Although the main area was obviously set aside for lunch, there was a little nook, off ot the side, with a few tables set up, perfect for sitting and working in an unobtrusive manner.

The glass doors of the place slide open. As you walk in you hear soft jazz play over the radio, see coffee products piled on the counter. You head to the little table and take a seat There is a menu sitting at the table and thankfully a picture of exactly what you want: a cup of coffee. The price is steep—450Y—but it is what you would have paid at Starbucks. You turn to you left and there is a glass divider between you and a couple of Japanese business men in suits and serious conversation. The waitress walks over, carrying a menu with a couple of pictures of sweets on it—disgusting looking things actually, they don’t do sweets well here—but you already have the menu with the picture of coffee on it and can point to it in your limited Japanese, and at least think you are saying “this please” (koday kudasayi). And the coffee arrives in a small cup but you don’t care about the size because now you can sit in a café and know you are in Japan.

Tuesday Kawagoe

Snow covers the ground. An unusual but I am told not completely unexpected phenomenon this time of year. We were up late last night, not eating until after 11 p.m. Paul cooked an amazing comgination of pork and tuna tacos, along with picante and refried beans. It was a true feast, probably the best one so far. Indeed, the meals are the most memorable part of this trip. I can remember every one. Salmon steaks the first night, two nights in a row with a seafood pasta, then steaks the night before and last nights Mexican feast. After dinner we have been watching movies, working our way through the extended versions of Lord of the Rings trilogy, although with the lateness of the dinner and the jet lag, I have been falling asleep during most of the showings.

It is so cold here, I really don't feel like exploring much. Having been in Tucson so long, it is easy to forget that it is still winter in much of the world. So I usually go out for a short morning run, except not this morning--and not only because I left my running shirt hanging outside last night. And then try to take a walk in the afternoon. But much of the time is spent in the tatami room seated like now on the floor and working on the computer. As of late, a lot of energy has been put into planning the Nepal trip, though I would still put the possibility of that at around fifty percent, especially due to the fact that I would have to buy all of my trekking gear over here.

Paul has a meeting at ten, so I will head out with him and probably spend the day at Starbucks