Thailand: The Rose Garden Cultural Show

The last leg of the tour finds me in the Rose Garden where I will get a chance to see some traditional Thai cultural events and activities.

I see silk being made from silk worms. Cool and cruel...they boil the worms to separate them from their silk.

Elephants are shown in their traditional use as beasts of burden...I feed a little five month baby elephant tiny bananas. I hope that the animals here are treated better than the snakes.

Then the cultural show begins and I see traditional dancing, sword fighting, a traditional wedding, and Buddhist monk ordination, as well as some Muay Thai boxing - some fast and powerful head kicks!

I am with two other Korean girls at this point and at the end of the show the performers invite the audience to come on stage and dance. I drag the laughing and protesting girls on the stage and we learn how to spin our fingers, arms and hands into some semblance of Thai dancing arms.

A weird aside: The tour is done and we're all back in the van. Paul to my right is an Englishman in university who says he funded his 7 week trip by submitting himself to scientific medical experiments. The last one he did required him to take experimental pills for the treatment of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) for 5 days and in return he made 5000 pounds (~$10 000?). "Just a bit of blood, urine and semen is all they need." That's how he makes most of his money. His pal on the other side of me is completely hung over and thinks that Paul is crazy for always doing this. I tell him to drink lots of coconut juice for the hangover and he feels better in no time.

5 pm - Back in Khao San and I drift into a jetlagged nap in my room.

9 pm - I eat street meat. This time instead of chicken or pork (which I heard may be rat) it's fried grasshopper. I am completely grossed out but I can't leave Bangkok without eating at least one insect. I have to overcome my gag reflex and overactive imagination. I can't do it on my own so I force the vendor to eat one with me. He is exasperated with how long I'm taking to do it, but eventually I put it in my mouth and crunch down. I am worried that I will throw up if it tastes juicy, but instead it tastes like crispy chips and the wings and leg pieces get stuck in my teeth. Yuck, but not as yuck as I think eating the fried larva or giant water bug would have been. I imagine them being more juicy.

11:20 pm - Ramsey and So (his wife and also a director at the school) just arrived. I tell Ramsey his hug sucks, and I show So what a good hug should be like. The Laos people don't hug or ever touch in greeting therefore I need to show her that the Ramsey Hug is not indicative of a good one. I think I will introduce a new tradition at the school. May the cultural disruption begin! I am happy to see them. Neat! A new adventure awaits.

5:30 am – Damn it’s late and I’m just getting to bed now. This jetlag thing, is weird.

Thailand: The Cobra Show

After the Floating Market I am taken to the Cobra show, I don't know what to expect exactly, but three things were of interest.

1) Mongoose fighting cobra - mongoose always wins. It's amazing that this tiny furry, vulnerable looking creature with its beady eyes can be so vicious and take down a cobra and eat it.

2) 40kg well fed boa constrictor drapes over me - it is remarkably heavy and beautiful. I wish I could examine and touch it for longer.

3) This weird blond snake man who catches three very fast hissing, snapping poisonous snakes. Now this might not seem like such a remarkable feat, but he first catches one with his left hand…then one with his right hand…that doesn't leave many limbs left to catch the last extremely fast snapping snake…use his foot you think?...no...he uses his freaking MOUTH! Crazy crazy.

I love snakes, and I couldn't help going to the show, but this stuff always comes with dubious ethics. The animals are not treated very well, and the spectacle aspect of it doesn't give them much dignity. I am not happy with the way they were so rough with the snakes, and with the cramped quarters in which they keep the animals. The Toronto Zoo in comparison is like a paradise for creatures in captivity. There is no aspect of awareness of snake conservation or ecology in the show. The show really functions to feed on the fear people have of snakes and to titillate. And the unbelievable kicker is this - the gift shop is full of snake skin handbags and belts. I rush out of there. I feel a bit sickened in the end.

Thailand: Van Ride and Floating Market

I had booked a tour of the Floating Market and Rose Garden.
After a rushed rice and pork vegetable breakfast, the tour van picks me up at 7am. The bus ride is 1.5 hours and then there is a ferry to the Market.

I am in the shotgun seat of the rickety van. The driver drives really fast and doesn't use his seatbelt. I have images of going head-first out the window and so I put my loose seatbelt on. He looks over at me and laughs. After a rest stop we all get back into the van and the driver buys some garlands to put on his mirror. He put his hands together in a prayer. I ask him what the garlands are for and says it's for the Buddha to bring us good luck for the van so that there would be no car accident. I then feel like it would be an insult to put on my seatbelt after that, so I just nervously go on without it and hope that the garlands work. The lovely fragrance of the jasmine blooms fill the entire bus and brings me some peace.

On the van ride there I notice two things.

One, that the streets and highways taking us out of Bangkok look much the same as the ones I saw in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Cuba. Concrete, straight lines, traffic signs on a backdrop of banana plants, coconut trees and palms. In fact, the motorways don't look much different than the ones in Toronto except for the vegetation. There is just something about motor vehicle infrastructure that tends to homogenize the spaces around it. Before the car, cultures looked much more distinct from one another. I guess on a broader scale, this is Westernization at work causing an overall homogenization of landforms, ideals, norms and expectations. I am jarred when I see large billboards advertizing the next great teeth or skin whitening product. Many of the models in the ads here are of mixed raced tending towards a more white complexion and feature set. The large chain fast food places are also a bit weird. Somehow the same as ours, but slightly different enough to be disconcerting. My closest reference point is Chinatown meets McDonalds.

The second thing I notice is that the general culture of risk taking in Thailand is much higher than in Canada. I see many motorbike riders without helmets - one couple has the woman on the back holding onto a sleeping newborn. I see an overcrowded bus with its door open and a child hanging from the side of it holding onto a rail. I see lots of people packed into the back of pickups. Again, this reminds me of my trips to Central America and Cuba where personal risk taking is much higher, and many situations are much sketchier. I know that we are coddled in Canada. There are institutions and organizations that regulate safety and acceptable behaviour to keep us safe, and to prevent us from being too litigious. In some ways I am happy for this protection, but I also fear it breeds a quick-trigger overreaction to innocuous things and a lack of resourcefulness and adaptiveness in our population. Our children are overprotected and not very self-sufficient. Drop them in a Banana Republic and see how they fare.

After the van, a motorboat ferry takes us to the Floating Market. On the way I see monkeys and the waterway life for some Thai people. I am jealous of their plants! Though they have greenary all around them, they still prize growing ornamental plants outside their decks and yards. At home I try so hard just to keep them alive! Here, where ever there is sunlight, a plant will be placed there to take advantage of it and thrive. I see lush overly green trees and tropical plants everywhere. They are so healthy and abundant, and again, I am awed by the tropics and the amount of vegetation this ecozone can support. The sheer biomass, the amount of chlorophyll production every second of every minute of everyday is astounding! In comparison, our Canadian seasons have a lull and a sleep where the plants stop producing. I love that too, the cyclical change of our seasons, the little death and rebirth every year that makes spring and summer all the more sweet for its brief stay. I love you Canada!

We reach the floating market and three Korean girls and I share a boat ride within the market. Everywhere we are paddled there are boat venders selling all manner of goods and food. Boats grind up against other boats as we all jockey for position. I can understand now why our only instruction for the ride was to "keep your hands in the boat, never on the outside".

Of course only the food interests me. It becomes a surprisingly fun game to try to yell down food from boats that are passing opposite you, often two or three boats away. Everyone in the intervening boats has to help you pass along your food, pass on your payment, and pass back your change.

It all works remarkably well. I end up buying more than any other person on the boat. Coconut, mango, lichee, grilled chicken and some marshmellow pastry.

The tropical fruit in Thailand is delicious! The Korean girls are incredulous and delighted cause they love food too. Of course I can't eat it all so I share it with them and with other tourists on passing boats. My hands are sticky and I'm happy.

The Calm Before the Storm

Tomorrow I leave for my summer vacation. I’ll be gone for 7 ½ weeks. The majority of my time will be spent in Laos at a school my friend Ramsey has helped found and build. Its mandate is to help educate poor Laos youth within a philosophy of environmental, social and cultural sensitivity and sustainability. I don’t really know what my role will be there, or how my presence will impact the ecosystem of the school, its teachers, students and surrounding community, but I am sure I will find my niche when I arrive. My presence will disrupt, but hopefully add something positive as well.

As well as experiencing Laos and the school, I also intend to travel to Cambodia and Vietnam, and a bit of Thailand. On the surface, this seems a commonplace enough vacation, but things have taken an unpredictable turn as of this morning. My mother has just phoned and given me the contact information of someone in Hanoi - capitol of the north of Vietnam - who might be able to help me find my father. I haven’t seen him since I was two years old, when my mom divorced him, and took her and me out of the country. All I have is a light bulb/possible fake memory of him throwing me up into the air as an infant. Evidently, I also have a half brother. I have never seen or talked to either of them and my mom has never wanted me to contact my father. She doesn’t talk much about him, but I know things went down really badly between the two, things she’ll never forgive him for, but she agrees now that I have a right to know him and my brother. I don’t know what to feel really. The worst thing will probably be to look for them and not find them. We’ll see.

I’m hoping to not trip off any landmines and avoid the more treacherous of the parasites there. I haven’t taken any shots nor any preventative pills with me - just some mega garlic pills and some grapefruit seed extract that is supposed to create an "unappealing intestinal environment" for the parasites. You can say I told you so if I come back with malaria, dengue, or if I just don’t come back. This trip is going to be fun and intense. I can’t wait. I am beside myself with excitement, nervousness and a bit of fear. Wish me luck. I miss my bike already!