Next Life in the Afternoon

A friend of mine is a big hulk of a man, ex-soldier, ex-military police, currently a police officer in a nearby town. The man is a giant, big and strong as an ox, and one of the toughest-looking people I have known. However, one day when we were talking about traveling, he admitted to me that he was completely traumatized when the Army sent him overseas and he encountered his first squat toilet.

We both shared the same reaction – it seems like the most unnatural thing you can come into contact with. If you have never used one, count yourself among the blessed. It’s really not a big deal but if you are unprepared for this experience, it can be a bit shocking.

From my book:

Squat toilets really do take a little getting used to. For something as natural as squatting and shitting, most westerners find that squat toilets are quite uncomfortable because of what they are used to. We Americans, anyway, are used to sitting as long as we like, book in hand, or looking like Rodin’s Thinker, taking our time until our feet fall asleep and then slowly making our way out of the chamber. In the rest of the world shitting is a purely utilitarian affair rather than a pastime to be relished as if it were an opera or a fine wine. You go, you leave, you forget about it. Very quick. When you have to squat to make a movement, you will not tarry quite so long and may find it difficult to stay perched long enough to fully contemplate the existential feelings brought on by a madeleine or appreciate the craftsmanship of the latest issue of The New Yorker.

Have you ever had to use a squat toilet? Tell us about it!

Technorati Tags: travel, squat toilet, unnatural

A big myth about Thailand is that the food is all spicy. In fact, most dishes are served rather bland and spices are provided at the table so each diner can adjust the flavor according to his or her tastes. Sometimes, though, social pressure wins out and consuming too much spice is unavoidable. Here is an example of just such and instance, when I had lunch with my friends in Nakhon Ratchasima:

Phramaha Nattapong sat by himself and was brought a number of plates of food, as is the custom for feeding monks. Nut, Gak and I sat together and ate rice noodle soup. Nut took a spoonful of dried chili peppers and added it to his soup, smiling. Next Gak did the same thing. They smiled at each other and looked at me.

I am a big fan of spicy food and am not afraid to try something new that might be a bit on the hot side. At the same time, I am not the type of person to simply eat something for the sake of burning my palate. This was more than a matter of culinary preference, though. Everything hung in the balance – national pride, masculinity, ego – as I looked at the smiling faces before me.

I reached for the hot peppers and took an equal amount as the others did, adding it to my soup. They laughed with excitement, knowing the challenge was just beginning. We each took a mouthful of soup and swallowed it, the two of them watching me intently, waiting for this strange farang to completely lose his shit.

The soup burned me and I could no longer distinguish between temperature and spice. Each exacerbated the other. The overall heat was overpowering but I managed to swallow, thinking of the cooking process happening to my trachea and stomach from the steaming liquid as it blanched my gullet. I wanted to drink something cold but did not want to show myself as weak. I fought back the tears and recalled my karate practice from years earlier, which was at times much more painful than this, especially on the rare occasions that I missed a block and took a fist in the face. There were no tears then. Why start with all that now?

My comrades were duly impressed and slapped my back in an accepting way as we got down to the business of finishing the soup. I ended up having two bowls just to dilute the fire in my belly and try to wash the spice out of my mouth, innards, pores and eyeballs. The spice had become systemic in my body, possibly even my soul, and I was not sure if it felt good or not.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, spices, tastes, social pressure, Nakhon Ratchasima, chili peppers, spicy food, hot peppers, farang

I have been living in two worlds for three and a half years. When I left to go to Thailand, I knew to expect a little culture shock. It was a three-week trip and I had been there before, so I more or less knew what to expect. It was a little stressful to adapt while I was there, but not too bad.What I did not count on was the transition of returning to the States. I had spent three weeks taking bucket showers, scrounging and hording food and sleeping on the floor. Suddenly, when I came home, I had things like hot water anytime I wanted. I heard English spoken almost all the time and had a structured job to go to.

It was familiar but it wasn’t so comfortable. I wanted something else – something different – but I didn’t know what. I never really felt accepted in Thailand, mostly because I was very obviously a foreigner, and while most people there were friendly and welcoming, nobody wants to invest too much emotionally into someone they know will soon leave their life.

When I got home, I knew I did not really fit there either. The thing about travel is that it changes you. Your experiences and insights alter your very being, almost like a chemical reaction. You can’t undo that change. Maybe you can learn a new or different way of being so you can better adapt to your circumstance, but that experience will always be with you.

For a long time I lived like this, remembering Ajahn Kamtan’s words on meditation. “Breathe in, think, ‘Bud.’ Breathe out, think, ‘dho.’ In-out, you think, ‘Bud-dho.’ You do that. You meditate on Buddho.”

Meditation helped. It calmed my mind, put out the fires of my passions and let me see the world as part of a cycle, both on the macro and micro scale. Just as the world is impermanent and in a grand cycle, I am the same way, as are my thoughts and emotions. Everything arises, exists and passes away. This feeling of confusion and culture shock will also pass. This, too, is impermanent.

The confusion has faded over the years but still sometimes rears its head, especially since I am writing about my experiences and reliving memories on a daily basis. One moment I am in a remote jungle monastery, surrounded by the sounds of animals – monkeys, insects, birds – and the next moment I am jarred out of it by a cell phone’s ring in the coffee shop where I do much of my writing.

Sometimes it is hard to make the distinction between here and there, especially as I dive deeper into the stories, fleshing out dialogues and storylines with memories of travel and excitement. At times it seems so far away, so long ago, but I need only make an attempt to recall a precious interaction, a meal, a shared laugh, a gift. Those things are always in my heart and mind and will not change, even if the moments in which they occurred have long passed.

To recall the present moment – that most important of all moments – I need only recite what Ajahn Kamtan told me. Buddho. It brings me to that still point in my mind, the warm place in my heart, the deepness of the connection I share with all people regardless of culture. It brings to the place I call home.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, culture shock, travel, Ajahn Kamtan, Buddho, Meditation, writing, present moment

As I said earlier, a farang is a foreigner in Thailand. While visiting with my friend Phramaha Nattapong, I had the honor of meeting his family and visiting their home in Nonthaburi, an hour north of Bangkok. One of the younger brothers in the family took this picture. I just thought it was humorous, the way I obviously don’t blend in to the family portrait.

What do you think? Thai on the inside, maybe?

I’m the white guy with the pen in his pocket. I still look like that, except with less hair, more gray and a different pen. The others in the front row are Phramaha Nattapong’s nephew and niece and his older sister. In the back row are Phramaha Nattapong, his father and mother and younger sister.

This younger sister, Chikoo, was almost a problem between us. Phramaha Nattapong kept warning me not to be a rooster with his sister. “She very beautiful but she my sister. Don’t be a rooster.”

The talk of roosters, it turns out, is a Thai phrase about promiscuity, referring to a rooster’s sexual behavior and appetite. If you have never seen how roosters act, go visit a chicken farm and see how loyal they are. They madly hump their way across the yard, going from one bird to the next, with no thought of anyone’s needs but their own. Such selfish humpers they are.

Phramaha Nattapong was afraid I might take advantage of his sister and was being a good older brother by protecting her. She was very beautiful but not enough to be a match to the loyalty I felt toward my wife and marriage. Once I vowed not to be like a rooster I was finally allowed to meet his sister. The two of us visited a nearby temple and then went to see the giant catfish in the Chao Phraya.

All the people at the river urged me to stick my hand in the water and touch the fish heads for good luck. I smiled and said no but was polite about it. I had smelled what flows into the Chao Phraya and was certain I didn’t want to come anywhere near it.

The whole family was warm and friendly, welcoming me and trying to talk to the strange, huge forigner who had arrived with their son. We had lunch, visited, took the picture above and left. No fuss, no muss, no roosters.

Technorati Tags: farang, Thailand, Phramaha Nattapong, Nonthaburi, rooster, sex, catfish, Chao Phraya

We recently lost our beautiful, loving cat Molly. We had her cremated and spread the ashes in a swamp near the Potomac River, where she could be near wildlife and reenter the food/fertilizer cycle. She has returned to that from whence she came. Such a sweet kitty. We miss her dearly.

This all reminded me of Thai funerals. Almost every temple is equipped with a crematory and smokestack so the locals can be cremated when they die. This practice really serves two purposes. First of all, it reinforces the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment by stressing that clinging to the physical is fruitless, as it becomes a small scattering of ashes relatively quickly.

The other functional purpose for cremation in Thailand is that it takes care of the typical body disposal problems. This is a country that has many floods each year and much of the land is close to sea level, so burial can be quite a watery process.

Cremation reduces the public health hazards associated with dead bloated bodies, freshly popped out of their graves by floods, floating down the river that used to be a street. If the cemetery, full of cremated remains, gets flooded, it just looks and acts like mud. In fact, that’s really what it is. No extra disease on account of rotting corpses and no psychological trauma from seeing such things.

Funerals in Thailand are strange affairs from an American viewpoint. The family may have monks come and chant for the deceased person, spreading blessings for all to hear and absorb, especially the decedent. The one funeral I got to attend was held at Wat Thep Surin in Bangkok and had four or five monks in attendance to chant the blessings.

While it was far from being a festive occasion, it was also far from somber. There was no expectation to show grief and many people carried on conversations during the ceremony. Young boys brought around refreshments – water, orange juice and steamed buns – and made sure that nobody sat too long without something to consume.

After all the blessings, the body was cremated. I did not stay that long, although I have to admit that I was curious. The heat from the crematory was evident and the fire glowed from around the door to the furnace.

I once read an account of a Thai funeral that was more of a bonfire with a body on it, likely for a less wealthy family who could not afford to rent the crematory. During the cremation, the body’s muscles constricted in such a way that the body sat up. The monks in attendance thought that was a sign of good luck and an indication that the person was going on to a better life. I think it’s a bit creepy, myself.

Technorati Tags: Thai funeral, crematory, cremation, Thailand, monks

Farang means something on the order of “honkey,” had the term honkey caught on. Let’s be honest – beyond those two years sometime in the 1970s, nobody has heard or used that term with any seriousness or regularity.

Farang is the designation Thais use for most non-Asian foreigners. More specifically, a stereotypical farang has light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. Ironically, as I pointed out to my Thai friend Nut, those features are the same as you see in Siamese cats.

That brought no end of hilarity, it seemed for a little while. Farang cat, not Siamese cat. Good times.

What does it mean to be a farang in Thailand? It is like a sword with two edges. On one hand, Thais love for farangs to come and visit, spend their money and generally have a good time. On the other hand, Thais don’t particularly enjoy having farangs around for too long, thinking of us as rather uncultured, smelly people.

The smelly part – well, I hate to admit it, but that’s true. Farangs go about Thailand sweaty from the heat and don’t take the two or three showers a Thai person might take each day. For most Americans, one time is enough. And we stink.

As far as being uncultured, almost all cultures see almost all other cultures this way. We might look at Thai people and remark on their lack of proper sanitation, their open-air butcher shops and their fried insect snacks and call them backward or unhygienic. On the other hand, they see us as people who don’t shower enough, don’t remove our shoes when entering buildings and don’t bow properly in Buddhist temples and think of us as dirty and uncultured.

Which side is correct? That’s not the point. The problems with these labels are obvious and it’s easy to see how they can lead to a lack of cultural understanding on both sides. Seeing differences between cultures is not the problem. When we get into trouble is the moment we apply a value to a cultural difference.

It’s like measuring the world on a Cartesian plane in which you are at the origin – the (0,0) point. When we put ourselves in that spot and don’t see where we are on someone else’s map of the universe, it is very easy to assume that person is wrong or misguided. Just like we were told since first grade – not to judge another person before walking a mile in his shoes – we should not judge another culture before stepping into it and examining it for what it is and not necessarily from the basis of how it is different from what we are used to.

Certainly, our own point of origin is where we start from and our only real point of reference. But what we have to do, so that we can function properly in another culture, is to try to find our spot in a different Cartesian plane. We have to at least try to understand things as they are, adopt local customs as best we can and not judge the differences we encounter. We have to realize that we are no longer at the origin but at some other, less familiar point.

Understanding each other is the cornerstone to finding a meaningful dialogue, no matter the point of conflict. We have to find the humility within ourselves to let go of our point of origin and find our new home in light of the other culture.

Technorati Tags: honkey, farang, Siamese cat, Thailand, Thai, cultural understanding, cultural difference, Cartesian plane, dialogue, humility