A Book is a Beginning

Everyone has a different style when it comes to travel preparations. Some prepare for a trip months in advance, studying the language and planning the exact route and itinerary that includes alternatives in the case of cancelations. Others make no plans. By throwing themselves into the mouth, they hope the swallowing will provide answers and life lessons into the self. I’d like to think I stand somewhere in the middle. I appreciate a sprint towards fear. I also like to say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ when needed.
More...No matter how the preparation goes, certain things are not in books. A book dazzles the reader with celebratory festivals and awe-inspiring sights. Books seduce. After the words coo to the imagination, the pictures suck on the ear lobe, whispering to the reader that the journey will be nothing short of revealingly marvelous. And for the most part, the reader will be right in their delusions. But those words were not spoken from your mouth or from the mouths of native Thai people. Those pictures are not your eyes. Nothing prepares the senses, the eager essence, for the absolute stripping of familiarity.

The book warns not to touch Thai people on the head. This is a grave offense. The top of the head represents the top, most pure part of the spirit, and is not to be touched unless one is invited to do so. Equally, it is deeply rude to show the bottoms of the feet. They represent the dark parts of the spirit. What the book does not tell you is that the Thai people in your life will gladly invite you to partake of anything they have and do, often times offering you the first to try something Thai because you haven’t already. Embedded in every one of their smiles is the pleasantness of pride, a love and respect for home.


I had forgotten such a feeling. Years ago the government, the news, those with power and those who sought it took my pride and all its purpose. Coming here, I found that pride is nothing so trivial as governmental occurrences. Secure pride remains forever in a smile. To be proud is to know love and to know you can create it. True pride is always in love, and in love.

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Another thing the book offers as a precaution is the torrential rain. I have been here for a month now and I have seen rain in the sky like milk thrown on a windowpane. It falls with the suddenness of a heartbeat. At this point, I can predict rain quite accurately and have twice. The book mentions the streets’ inadequate drainage system causing pervasive, but temporary flooding. It doesn’t mention the flip flops. For days, I wondered why everyone wore such vulnerable footwear in such weather. Then I realized the extent of the flooding. Waves crashed up against side walks and stores. In a matter of minutes, Thailand becomes Italy. One night, I skillfully maneuvered through alleyways and high steps to get to a bar for a beer and some journal writing. I made it fairly dry. The bar had become an island, completely cut off from the street.



I sat and made efforts to remember that moment: a vendor had his food cart of fried meats were under a red and tattered umbrella lit and attached to the sidecar of his motorcycle, another island out in the sea of the street; the trinket-like waterfalls scintillatingly eroded their testament into the concrete; the cockroaches uncertainly scurried to avoid the impending murky water. It all became my muse in the shadows of drunken laughter.

It should be noted that a street flood sounds like fun. I remember playing in the country during floods when I was a child. These are not puddles for splashing. These are the same waters that floated the bag of three-day old chicken bones out into the middle of the street. This water drowned the street rats. This water came up from the sewer. It is your urine, only not sterile.

No amount of reading is enough and, honestly, looking back to when I thought I was ready, I wasn’t. Nothing prepared me for seeing the countless rats as big as kittens running in the night from my footsteps into restaurants. The words from other tongues forgot to tell mine of the heavenly pleasures of Thai spices and cuisine. I had never heard the pleasures of Thai society. No picture, book, admonishment—nothing—can sufficiently train a traveler for the world. But the true reciprocity of a traveler’s delight is realized when the traveler starts to become the picture, the book, the admonishment, attempting to coo your imagination, sucking on your lobe and whispering everything is revealingly marvelous.