Each morning Gak and I went to have coffee together at an open-air market near the temple. People wandered by from stall to stall, buying produce, meat and dry goods as we sat on stools at a folding table – one of many that looked like it could collapse at a moment’s notice. I tried not to put more weight on it than was absolutely necessary. Gak would order for us, although I am sure I could have mustered the Thai word for coffee. “Song cafe,” he would say to the vendor. Two coffees. We would take a seat in the busy open-air market and warm our hands on the outside of teacups while the coffee was being made.

When it arrived and we took our sips, he would ask, “Dee mai?” Is it good?

“Dee mak,” I would respond. Very good. Gak would slap the table with amusement and laugh. I worried about being covered in scalding liquids, figuring that eventually the table would fall.

This interchange went on every day for almost a week and Gak never tired of the amusement I seemed to bring merely from my attempt to speak his language. Between sips of coffee and the occasional verbal interchange, we sat and read the newspaper. Actually, Gak read the paper while I looked at it, its pages covered in a beautiful yet mystifying script whose meanings and tones I had yet to master. The pictures were interesting and always told stories in their own way. Despite the repetition and rut we must have been in, Gak and I felt comfortable with each other – brothers in faith and coffee, twin Buddhists who sat among the busy market workers, drinking coffee, only yards away from a butcher’s shop, where pig heads, organs and cuts of meat were on prominent, unrefrigerated display.

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We meditated there under a blanket of heat, the air thick with moisture and heavy like wet gauze. The sun drilled into me and I felt the heat intensely. Sweat beaded on my body and my shirt clung, wet and heavy, to my back after only a few minutes.

I sat tall, legs crossed beneath me and focused on the in-out of my breath. Sitting and breathing like that made me think of Jack Kornfield, the meditation master and former monk, who taught about following the breath. He said to inhale and to feel the cool air stream enter through the nose and to exhale, feeling the warm air from the body pass through the same orifice. That guided meditation he delivered was apparently geared toward people who were not sitting in the midday heat of Thailand. What is a person supposed to do when the air coming out of his body is cooler than the air going in?

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So I guess I am handing out literary pink slips. It’s a tough job to make these cuts but ultimately an important one. As good and fun as it seemed when I wrote it, when I was having my mental vomit through my ticky-tappy fingertips, some things had to go.

The flight to Chicago was uneventful, which is often a good thing when it comes to air travel. Boring is good, if annoying. The types of things that make air travel exciting and riveting are the types of things best left handled by professionals and not even thought about – things like safety issues or equipment maintenance concerns. Thank goodness the airlines employ people to keep not only terrorists but also things like snakes and panhandlers away from the friendly skies.

Yeah, editing really is an important step.

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From the book:

Jet lag was still haunting me and I woke up to the darkness of my room, shades drawn tight against the outdoor fluorescent lamps. The air conditioner had cooled the room to what felt like almost freezing and had sufficiently cooled my sweat-soaked bedclothes. The air conditioners at Lai Thai Guesthouse have two settings – on and off. At night this meant the difference between a stuffy 85 degrees and a breeze cool enough to freeze your kidneys to the mattress. At least the AC units are efficient, if a little more powerful than necessary. It seemed like the large, industrial size unit you might use to cool a whole suite of offices.

I read the clock. 5:30 a.m. The traffic outside was evident and sounded above the din of the air conditioner. Chiang Mai is a city that knows no rest. All day and night cars, trucks and motorbikes make their loops around the city, feeding the air with smoke and smog, noise and vibration. The appeal of a tropical country, I decided, was not due to its city life. I longed for countryside. It was time to leave.

It was still hours before offices opened, so I could not simply stroll down the street and find a ticket to wherever lie ahead of me. I showered and dressed and left my room at that early hour for a convenience store near my hotel. I bought a couple bags of drinks and snacks, stuffed a couple bottles in my pocket for later and brought the rest to a Buddhist temple across the street.

There I met a monk who was busy sweeping leaves from the temple paths. The other, younger monks must have already gone on their morning alms rounds, as there were no others in sight – a strange thing that early in the day. I greeted him and offered my packages. He took them, set them aside and motioned for me to kneel. I obeyed, kneeling in the fresh-swept dirt, hands pressed together reverently. The monk said some words I recognized as a blessing in the Pali language. As I kneeled there, the monk touched my head and I could practically feel the dirt of the city – and of my life – lift from my being and blow away in the morning breeze. The cleansing of my spirit was more than I had bargained for; I just thought it would be a nice gesture to bring something to the monks.

Progress so far: Working backward through the chapters, currently editing chapter four.

(Holly Burns will be proud of me for using a semicolon in that last paragraph, despite claiming to dislike them previously.)

Technorati Tags: cleansing, redemption, traffic, Chiang Mai, Buddhist temple, monk, dirt

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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

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While in Thailand I traveled to Prachin Buri and got wrangled into some impromptu teaching. Read on:

After the communal lunch, Phramaha Nattapong came to get me and took me to the school, where classes were in session and rows of uniformed children sat obediently, listening to their teachers and taking notes. We walked upstairs and approached one particular room. The teacher came out and I was introduced to her. We both made wais and greetings and I was invited to speak to the class. Phramaha Nattapong said, “You teach them now.”

“Teach them what?” I asked.

“Teach English. Talk to them. They like you.” Then both the teacher and my friend disappeared.

I was not prepared for what to say to the class, not having many words in common with them. I reviewed the English alphabet, which they already knew, and translated the few phrases I could think of – hello, goodbye, how are you, where is the train, you are very beautiful, and a few others I thought might be useful to them someday.

After about ten minutes of forced conversation, the teacher finally came back and thanked me for visiting the class. She then led the children in singing American songs, beginning with “Can’t Smile Without You.”

“Barry Manilow number one,” someone said after the song. How could I argue?

The singing continued as the children began to sing “Happy Birthday.” About the time the song ended the students began singing it again. The gesture of singing to me was very sweet and these children, all very cute, had made me feel welcome in a place where I was out of my element. However, I started wondering how long I could keep the smile on my face from sailing away on the winds and pictured myself having to bear hours of pre-pubescent kids singing in thick accents. It had its charm but not so much that I wanted to prolong the event.

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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

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I never intended to have this type of practice during the trip I made to Thailand three years ago but for most people it’s not something they plan for. When the threat of death comes, that horrid vision and realization of our own mortality, what do we do? Running toward danger is not a very smart action but running away from what we perceive to be dangerous may lead us to other dangers.

Here is a taste of what I did while in Old Sukhothai and finding myself among dangers I had not anticipated:

At other ruin sites the paths and lawns were clear, but at this one the paths I trod had me wading through ankle-deep leaves. The clearing where grass could conceivably grow was so covered that nary a blade showed itself if any were there at all.

I had recently stopped at a temple whose very large fire ant population kept me from staying long, so I was delighted to be among tall-growing hardwoods without obvious fruit that might support a healthy colony of little stinging creatures. Yelping and dancing a jig to get the fire ants off me was not a reflection of my best self.

The idea of encountering the dreaded king cobra or other death-giving creature had not crossed my mind when I noticed the leaves around my feet rustle with such vigor that my neck hairs stood erect in the still air.

I looked and could see the leaves moving among the fallen pillars and overgrown weeds at the edge of the clearing. Something was crawling in the underbrush. I didn’t know what type of creature it was and did not care to find out. My first thought was to leave at once, bidding adieu to my ground-dwelling companions. At some point, though, you have to figure that if you are halfway through the woods, you still have halfway to travel. That is, trying to extricate myself hastily would not prove any more effective if the same distance would be traversed regardless of speed. Any snakes that might be in the leaves and ready to strike would be there whether I ran or strolled.

Then comes the matter of strategy in walking. Do I walk noisily and hope to scare the snakes into slithering away ahead of my feet, or will that simply anger the gutsier of them into staying and attacking? Would a stroll, feet padding along silent and catlike, be more effective in trying not to scare the snakes, or would that ensure their complacency instead of their flight? Such are the thoughts of a man who would prefer to avoid certain death but knows that the number of fangs will likely remain unseen and unknown, and unknown even if seen.

So how did I walk? Slowly and noisily. Did I get bitten? No. By not running from danger and instead having a walk in the woods, I was able to enjoy what could have easily been my last minutes.

In the end, it is not avoiding death that matters. The quality of a life is not measured in time but in substance. If I were to get bitten and die there, I think I could have called my life and experiences quite full. Or someone could have, on my behalf. All the same, I am glad for the opportunity for future richness.

Technorati Tags: ascetic, monks, death, Thailand, mortality, danger, Sukhothai, ruin, snake

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Here is a brief paragraph taken from the section of my book about staying in Prachinburi. Read on:

So there I was, trying to sleep on one of the hardest surfaces ever discovered. Unlike a traditional western bed, marble does nothing to hug the curves of your body or provide crucial back support. Although I have never been so ill as to experience bedsores, I could certainly imagine the feeling as my skin got pressed against the floor under the weight of my body.

What? You have never slept on concrete or it’s harder cousin, marble? Well, bless you for that! Don’t start now just because that’s what I did. I am here to tell you, friends, that I describe in detail just how pleasant and comfortable concrete can be.

Phramaha Nattapong and I had stopped once in Khon Kaen and I tried to take a nap on a wooden platform porch. No luck. It was hard, lumpy and just plain uncomfortable. That night, and for about a week after, I slept on a concrete slab in Udon Thani. While the concrete never got to feel comfortable by any means, I got used to it after a couple nights.

On the way back south, we stopped at the same place in Khon Kaen. This time, I was shocked that the wooden deck felt absolutely luxurious. I knew intellectually that there was a hardness difference between wood and concrete but I had never expected to experience it so vividly.

So is sleeping on concrete good for the soul? I couldn’t tell you with any certainty but it does give a person an appreciation for other sleeping surfaces. And that, as a lesson, is good for the soul, without a doubt. Thanks, Thailand!

Technorati Tags: sleeping, concrete, Prachinburi, bedsores, Phramaha Nattapong, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani, Thailand

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In the daytime, mosquitoes zoomed around my head, although they rarely bit. My mosquito repellent was 100% DEET, which is about three times stronger than anything I have seen recommended for regular use. Slathering this stuff on my skin made me wonder whether I was better off getting dengue and malaria rather than being exposed to such chemicals. The trade-off was between a damaged liver and spleen from the diseases or else possibly chemical-induced cancers. Who’s to know which would have the more serious implication in the long run?

I have read that the daytime mosquitoes apparently spread dengue, while the nighttime ones spread malaria, so even if you want to limit your exposure to chemicals by applying them for only half a day, you still do not have a very good chance of timing it right to avoid the type of mosquitoes you want to avoid. When I think of malaria, the first thing that pops into my head is the image of a sweaty, lethargic Humphrey Bogart from “The African Queen.” How bad could the disease be, I wondered. Bogart was cured in ten minutes, nursed back to health by a young, beautiful Katherine Hepburn. If that’s malaria, then sign me up.

I had met a man in Udon Thani who had gotten dengue twice – once in Guatemala and once in Thailand. He was staying at a temple and studying Buddhism, on the path to ordination as a monk. “I’ve never met anyone in Thailand who had malaria, but dengue is a different story,” he said.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Dengue is pretty common, but it isn’t that bad. All your joints ache for a couple weeks and you get a bad headache, but you only really want to die for about a day.” Thus my comfort with mosquito-borne disease was ever weakened and I made sure to apply my carcinogenic salve more diligently, even compulsively at times.

So that’s that. Enjoy. Current count: about 45,000 words.

Technorati Tags: Thailand, mosquitoes, DEET, dengue, malaria, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, Udon Thani, carcinogen

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