Tuesday 9th February 2010, 2.15am, D&D Inn - Bangkok
'And all the roads we have to walk are winding,
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding.'
'And all the roads we have to walk are winding,
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding.'
- 'Wonderwall', Oasis
'That's why God needs us. He loves to feel things through our hands.'
- 'Eat Pray Love', Elizabeth Gilbert
For the first time since being away I have returned to somewhere I've already been before. At 5am on Monday morning, after no sleep on a cramped 9 hour bus journey with a French guy lolling and snoring on my shoulder, a sore tattoo, a heavy bag (why is it heavier every time I pick it up?! I've not even been shopping... much), dripping with sweat from the sudden slap in the face of Southern humidity, I strolled down the Koh Saon Road to begin the arduous and too familiar early morning hunt for accommodation. I'm back in Bangkok.
It was hard being back here today, I think I expected it to feel like some long-awaited homecoming, a reunion with my first Asian citadel, the prodigal daughter makes triumphant and brave solo voyage back to the motherland. What I really felt though, was vulnerable, and lonely. The last time I was here I had friends around me to share the experience with, today, without the reflection of my joy mirrored in their faces, my one pair of tired eyes put everything into blunter focus. Bangkok is an incredible city, one I would urge everyone to visit in their lifetime, I say wholeheartedly and with complete conviction that I could quite happily live and work here for a while. What I was blinkered to before, or maybe what I was just too excited to spend any time noticing, is that underneath the raucous glitzy surface, this is a city of many vices, of underground ugliness.
It's probably easier to see this when at 6am, having still found no place to sleep after an hour of being told that there's no room at the inn, you wander into an overpriced, sub-standard hotel to find the pinched face, pouty little receptionist caterwauling at an American couple checking out that she doesn't care if they think they've been conned into extra charges because they're not at home now, they're in Thailand, and what are they 'gonna fucking do about it?'. Clearly she hasn't graduated from charm school just yet, or indeed any form of customer service training. The angry receptionist, her of too much lip liner and not enough manners, seemed thankfully to like me more than the unfortunately harassed Americans, and so I was spared a verbal bashing, but by this stage I already felt bashed around enough.
Lager louts, mascara-smeared drunk girls, con artists, taxi drivers with dodgy meters, drug pushers, pimps, ladyboys, prostitutes, rent boys, thieves, addicts, tramps, beggars, gangsters, fat, white men over the age of 50 looking for cheap thrills and sex, by the hour, with a price tag. I wish I could tell you that I'm exaggerating, that in the space of one hour in the early morning you can't see every one of these things unashamedly on display on the streets here, that one of my favourite cities in the world isn't so miserably failing to hide the colossal pile of smut and sin that pollutes it. There it is though, that's the truth of it, nightfall in Bangkok brings darkness that permeates deeper than that left by the mere setting of the sun.
Feeling in need of sanctuary, yearning for some comfort and solitude, I retreated this evening to a courtyard restaurant garden mercifully shielded from the monstrosities of the main streets, and a place I have been to before, with my friends. I also retreated to the safety of a good book, my lifelong foolproof method of escapism. For 4 hours I sat reading Elizabeth Gilbert's incredibly beautiful 'Eat Pray Love', devouring it from cover to cover and so thankful for the abundance of human goodness it breathed back in to my life when I so desperately wanted some restorative thoughts. The first third of the book is entirely dedicated to stories of how she began the healing process after a messy divorce by moving to Rome and gorging herself on pasta and pizza for 4 months solid - what a woman.
Just as I was about to pick up my pen to start writing a blog dedicated to Ms Gilbert and her moving literary testament of humanity and redemption, a fellow lone traveller sat at the next table asked if she could join me for a drink. I'm going to change her name, just because I'm about to tell you something which she told me which deserves protection of confidence. In May of last year, Julia was at a housewarming party for her best friend Rachel (who is also not really 'Rachel'). Rachel had just moved out of her family home, bought this flat, and was celebrating this new beginning in her life with her nearest and dearest. Julia told me that lots of the people at the party were frequent cocaine users, and this occasion was no exception. Rachel in particular had a practiced coke habit and set about enjoying herself. Everyone stayed over at the flat that night, probably too drunk or high to make it home.
In the morning, Rachel's pregnant sister rolled over in the bed they were sharing to find her younger sibling stiff and cold. Rachel had choked on her own vomit and died in the night, in a room full of her friends in their early twenties, who had to wake that morning and realise no amount of screaming or shoving was going to rouse this 21 year old girl with the new flat, with her whole life ahead of her. The family blamed the friends; of course their darling baby daughter wasn't a drug addict, it must be these girls who brought it to the party, who didn't hear her dieing while they were sleeping next to her. Julia herself was subjected to numerous abusive and threatening phone calls, had blame firmly placed on her already guilt-laden shoulders, and was banned from attending her best friend's funeral. Rachel's family hired police to keep all her friends away from the church and the cemetery.
Julia obviously wanted someone to talk to about this. Within 10 minutes of sitting at my table I innocently asked her why she had come travelling. Only 15 minutes later , after a mojito, an emotional book, a hard day, and her story about Rachel's tragic death, we were both sat weeping. She is here because she needed to leave her sorrow and her guilt behind her, because she wouldn't allow it to destroy her, and because a week after Rachel's death when all her other friends who had been there that hellish morning went on a big night out with the white powder and snorted through their grief, Julia looked at them, and realised she couldn't go back to that, she owed Rachel more.
So now she's doing something she never dreamt of before, removing herself by half a world's distance from this catastrophic event, determined to use it as a lesson and positive force in her own life rather than trap herself in the memory of the aftermath of that party, leaving herself in that brand new flat, abandoning herself to a dangerous and disgusting drug. Just as she had finished talking, Oasis' 'Wonderwall' began to drift out of the speakers. 'Now if anything can cheer us up', I said, 'it's a song written by a genius, performed by masters of their craft, sung with conviction.' (Oasis 'til I die). 'Yeah', she answered, 'this is kind of apt. I never got this song before and I couldn't understand it because of his weird English accent.' Julia is Canadian so we will forgive her for this blasphemous travesty against a Gallagher brother. She went on, 'He's talking about how the path to happiness is hard though isn't he? Like, the roads are windy or something. Damn windy road that brought me here sister.'
I was sadly reminded today of what an awful world this can be sometimes. How there is so much wrong with us, so much wrong with the planet, more tragedy and destruction, corruption and grief than we should be able to cope with as mere mammals. But we do cope. Sure, there's plenty of reasons to be depressed, many excuses to wave the white flag, curl up under the duvet and refuse to ever again leave the mattress or the foetal position. What the world does give us though, is ways of surviving it, tools of defence, means of slowly but surely saving ourselves. Eating plate after plate of Italian food with no thought as to the calorie contents, prayer, even when you're not sure anyone is listening, a book that touches your heart, a garden courtyard. A trip abroad to places you never needed a year ago, a new friend, someone who has to talk and someone who wants to listen, hearing another person say 'this was not your fault', and forgiving yourself. Strangers consoling strangers, feeling things through each other's hands, because sometimes, God just seems so far away.
'That's why God needs us. He loves to feel things through our hands.'
- 'Eat Pray Love', Elizabeth Gilbert
For the first time since being away I have returned to somewhere I've already been before. At 5am on Monday morning, after no sleep on a cramped 9 hour bus journey with a French guy lolling and snoring on my shoulder, a sore tattoo, a heavy bag (why is it heavier every time I pick it up?! I've not even been shopping... much), dripping with sweat from the sudden slap in the face of Southern humidity, I strolled down the Koh Saon Road to begin the arduous and too familiar early morning hunt for accommodation. I'm back in Bangkok.
It was hard being back here today, I think I expected it to feel like some long-awaited homecoming, a reunion with my first Asian citadel, the prodigal daughter makes triumphant and brave solo voyage back to the motherland. What I really felt though, was vulnerable, and lonely. The last time I was here I had friends around me to share the experience with, today, without the reflection of my joy mirrored in their faces, my one pair of tired eyes put everything into blunter focus. Bangkok is an incredible city, one I would urge everyone to visit in their lifetime, I say wholeheartedly and with complete conviction that I could quite happily live and work here for a while. What I was blinkered to before, or maybe what I was just too excited to spend any time noticing, is that underneath the raucous glitzy surface, this is a city of many vices, of underground ugliness.
It's probably easier to see this when at 6am, having still found no place to sleep after an hour of being told that there's no room at the inn, you wander into an overpriced, sub-standard hotel to find the pinched face, pouty little receptionist caterwauling at an American couple checking out that she doesn't care if they think they've been conned into extra charges because they're not at home now, they're in Thailand, and what are they 'gonna fucking do about it?'. Clearly she hasn't graduated from charm school just yet, or indeed any form of customer service training. The angry receptionist, her of too much lip liner and not enough manners, seemed thankfully to like me more than the unfortunately harassed Americans, and so I was spared a verbal bashing, but by this stage I already felt bashed around enough.
Lager louts, mascara-smeared drunk girls, con artists, taxi drivers with dodgy meters, drug pushers, pimps, ladyboys, prostitutes, rent boys, thieves, addicts, tramps, beggars, gangsters, fat, white men over the age of 50 looking for cheap thrills and sex, by the hour, with a price tag. I wish I could tell you that I'm exaggerating, that in the space of one hour in the early morning you can't see every one of these things unashamedly on display on the streets here, that one of my favourite cities in the world isn't so miserably failing to hide the colossal pile of smut and sin that pollutes it. There it is though, that's the truth of it, nightfall in Bangkok brings darkness that permeates deeper than that left by the mere setting of the sun.
Feeling in need of sanctuary, yearning for some comfort and solitude, I retreated this evening to a courtyard restaurant garden mercifully shielded from the monstrosities of the main streets, and a place I have been to before, with my friends. I also retreated to the safety of a good book, my lifelong foolproof method of escapism. For 4 hours I sat reading Elizabeth Gilbert's incredibly beautiful 'Eat Pray Love', devouring it from cover to cover and so thankful for the abundance of human goodness it breathed back in to my life when I so desperately wanted some restorative thoughts. The first third of the book is entirely dedicated to stories of how she began the healing process after a messy divorce by moving to Rome and gorging herself on pasta and pizza for 4 months solid - what a woman.
Just as I was about to pick up my pen to start writing a blog dedicated to Ms Gilbert and her moving literary testament of humanity and redemption, a fellow lone traveller sat at the next table asked if she could join me for a drink. I'm going to change her name, just because I'm about to tell you something which she told me which deserves protection of confidence. In May of last year, Julia was at a housewarming party for her best friend Rachel (who is also not really 'Rachel'). Rachel had just moved out of her family home, bought this flat, and was celebrating this new beginning in her life with her nearest and dearest. Julia told me that lots of the people at the party were frequent cocaine users, and this occasion was no exception. Rachel in particular had a practiced coke habit and set about enjoying herself. Everyone stayed over at the flat that night, probably too drunk or high to make it home.
In the morning, Rachel's pregnant sister rolled over in the bed they were sharing to find her younger sibling stiff and cold. Rachel had choked on her own vomit and died in the night, in a room full of her friends in their early twenties, who had to wake that morning and realise no amount of screaming or shoving was going to rouse this 21 year old girl with the new flat, with her whole life ahead of her. The family blamed the friends; of course their darling baby daughter wasn't a drug addict, it must be these girls who brought it to the party, who didn't hear her dieing while they were sleeping next to her. Julia herself was subjected to numerous abusive and threatening phone calls, had blame firmly placed on her already guilt-laden shoulders, and was banned from attending her best friend's funeral. Rachel's family hired police to keep all her friends away from the church and the cemetery.
Julia obviously wanted someone to talk to about this. Within 10 minutes of sitting at my table I innocently asked her why she had come travelling. Only 15 minutes later , after a mojito, an emotional book, a hard day, and her story about Rachel's tragic death, we were both sat weeping. She is here because she needed to leave her sorrow and her guilt behind her, because she wouldn't allow it to destroy her, and because a week after Rachel's death when all her other friends who had been there that hellish morning went on a big night out with the white powder and snorted through their grief, Julia looked at them, and realised she couldn't go back to that, she owed Rachel more.
So now she's doing something she never dreamt of before, removing herself by half a world's distance from this catastrophic event, determined to use it as a lesson and positive force in her own life rather than trap herself in the memory of the aftermath of that party, leaving herself in that brand new flat, abandoning herself to a dangerous and disgusting drug. Just as she had finished talking, Oasis' 'Wonderwall' began to drift out of the speakers. 'Now if anything can cheer us up', I said, 'it's a song written by a genius, performed by masters of their craft, sung with conviction.' (Oasis 'til I die). 'Yeah', she answered, 'this is kind of apt. I never got this song before and I couldn't understand it because of his weird English accent.' Julia is Canadian so we will forgive her for this blasphemous travesty against a Gallagher brother. She went on, 'He's talking about how the path to happiness is hard though isn't he? Like, the roads are windy or something. Damn windy road that brought me here sister.'
I was sadly reminded today of what an awful world this can be sometimes. How there is so much wrong with us, so much wrong with the planet, more tragedy and destruction, corruption and grief than we should be able to cope with as mere mammals. But we do cope. Sure, there's plenty of reasons to be depressed, many excuses to wave the white flag, curl up under the duvet and refuse to ever again leave the mattress or the foetal position. What the world does give us though, is ways of surviving it, tools of defence, means of slowly but surely saving ourselves. Eating plate after plate of Italian food with no thought as to the calorie contents, prayer, even when you're not sure anyone is listening, a book that touches your heart, a garden courtyard. A trip abroad to places you never needed a year ago, a new friend, someone who has to talk and someone who wants to listen, hearing another person say 'this was not your fault', and forgiving yourself. Strangers consoling strangers, feeling things through each other's hands, because sometimes, God just seems so far away.
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