Tripping Through Thailand

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

April: Drink
The heat is numbing. You accept a volunteer research project and spend your evenings at your computer, sweating, sipping whiskey and ice, reading about abuses against Burmese migrant workers. See your students' faces behind the numbers. Feel an ache below your ribs.

Later, you are dragged away from your work for Songkran, Thailand's weeklong anarchic water fight in celebration of the New Year. In your first field trip with the students, they are all drunk before 9 a.m., hanging out the sides of the speeding pickup truck, hollering pop songs to the wind. Get sloppily drunk yourself and spend the day throwing water at strangers.

Realize when you get home, sunburned and dehydrated, that you can't pity these students. You know they've suffered, but today all you know is that they laugh harder than anyone you've met.

May: Annoyance
Ants. Flying. They come out as the sun goes down, pelt against the plastic face guard of your helmet as you drive home. In your kitchen they swarm to the light while you cook your curry in the near dark, raising the lid for furtive stirs. Waxy flutterings tickle your ankles, your earlobes. Swipe at them with disgust, then retreat under your mosquito net with your bowl of rice. The heat keeps you sleepless.

At school the next morning, the students tell you that they ate ants for dinner. Waited at their holes with chopsticks, snatched them one by one. Fried them up in a big pot. Maybe this makes more sense.

June: Release
The first big rain comes like a temper tantrum, hitting your roof like frustrated fists on a mattress. Everything living stretches limbs and tentacles toward the rain, reveling. The smell of rotting wood emerges, your house reliving years of being wetted and dried. The dank of rainy season--this will be the next four months.

Aht comes crashing up the jungle path, her umbrella catching on palm fronds and banana leaves, water splashing up her ankles. She is laughing as she hands you a blue plastic tarp and a ball of twine. For the rain, she tells you, pointing at your stairs, which are uncovered and already soaked. She stays for tea and then leaves, hopping through the puddles like a child.

Suddenly you remember the cacti you left out in the sun. Dart out to rescue them. They are already shocked and soaked and looking at you with reproach. The only ones not glad.

July: Seeing Things
Pom hands you a joint. Through the cloud of smoke you take it, thank him. The bar is full of Thai guys you recognize, artists from the college up the road. Some of them work here. Some acknowledge you with a nod. You pass the joint to Gee, who accepts it reverently. One of the guys swaggers to his motorbike. 'Going for whiskey,' someone says, and they laugh, raise their glasses. Gee tells you he has a tattoo and pulls his shirt up to show you. Elaborate, it covers his whole back. A dragon. You trace the pink lines with your finger. Time passes. One candle goes out. And then there's the crash, metal scraping concrete, piercing the quiet night. Remember: the guy who went for whiskey. The guys are out in the street before you can think. Then you too are running, following. Heart pounding. Scenes of wreckage play through your head.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print