As you have all realized by now, this blog took me almost a year to complete after my return home. I wish I had a good excuse for this but the only excuse I have is that while I was traveling, writing about my experiences was like writing about a person sitting next to you every day. When I returned home, I left that person behind and it was not only difficult to write about it because part of me missed it so much but also because the memory faded fast, much too fast.
Because it has been so long, let me remind you that my last blog was A Lesson From the End of My Rope. So if you'll scroll down to Diving Off the Deep End and read up, you'll read them all in the appropriate order. This is, obviously, the last entry.
Now I'm about to start a new adventure. As fate would have it, I'm returning to the only country not covered in this blog - Cambodia. It was a place I found difficult to love and hard to enjoy for several reasons. A) The country is very shocking to a person's soul. There are deep and lasting scars from an era I don't remember and don't understand. B) The last step on any journey is really the first step on another. And I was headed home. My mind was back in Texas so my heart naturally followed...
In just over a month, I will pack my bags once again but this time I'm no longer a backpacker but a volunteer. I'm not sure it's a move up on the evolutionary ladder but it is a move in a different direction. Please keep me in your thoughts as I attempt this journey. It's a big, exciting step through a door God opened for me. So even though I feel a bit like Jonah being spit up on a land I didn't want to go to, I know it's where I need to be.
I leave you with the following poems which were written in Cambodia.
When a traveler grows weary of travel
He will find some place he can stay
He’s not looking for a home
He’s just tired of being gone
He feels his soul has some debt to repay
So he will cross both time and distance
On a map of his own restless soul
Maybe all he needs
Is a glimpse of the sea
He’s a rolling stone that’s forgotten how to roll
So he heads back to from whence he started
Or he searches out some tropical shore
And under the shade of tree
He suddenly sees
He’s ready to travel once more
And the finale ...
She sailed to distant, hapless shores
And walked down trails never travelled before
Just as a scientist must discover
So an explorer has got to explore
In the end you follow your heart – nothing more
Be on the look out for the next instillation of Tales of a Modern Day Gypsy - The Phnom Penh Parables!
Forever from the Road
Charlsea
Monday, June 15, 2009
A Lasting Souvenir
July 2008 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Distances, times, movement, transportation, expenses, weather…These are things that they have learned to plan for, to predict, to react to. They can judge the quality of an accommodation based on the furniture in the lobby. They can recognize good food by the ratio of Westerners to locals in the restaurant. They can predict the weather based on weeks and months of patterns and experiences – it will always rain when they have to walk anywhere; it will always be hottest when there is no air conditioning available. Now, though, they face a new set of challenges: space, separation, and returning. Soon they will trade newness for normalcy and foreign for familiar.
There is a line from a song that says, “You can go back but you can’t go back all the way.” It will ring very true as they face a familiarity rife with rules and regulations that no longer make sense. “Why does that meal cost $15? I got twice as much in Laos for $2!!” “Why do you need to leave the water running? Turn the shower off while you soap up!” Little things, small details that in their former life they never questioned or considered. Travel is eye-opening, they say. They don’t say how disturbing some things are when you open your eyes for too long. Will they learn to close them again? Or to see this world – their world – in a new way? Only that slippery demon of time can answer that.
Lessons learned, miles traveled, experiences, memories, stories – all together. Six solid months of seeing and doing things together. It strikes them as odd to consider a future on their own. It isn’t frightening or intimidating – just odd. They might not even miss each other all that much. In the way that they cannot take their travels with them when they return, so they cannot keep this friendship – this travel companionship – intact as-is upon their return. A new and different friendship will develop. Its foundation will be this trip and it will be different and stronger for the memories.
No, nothing will be the same. But that’s why they left, isn’t it? To avoid the “sameness” that plagues a “normal” life. They came here looking for the different – and they will return with the knowledge of how to see things differently. A kind of souvenir that never loses its value.
So they go their separate ways. To the ocean or to the prairie. The sea or the shore. But these two friends are forever linked by the memories made of the places no one else saw and the voices no one else heard.
Distances, times, movement, transportation, expenses, weather…These are things that they have learned to plan for, to predict, to react to. They can judge the quality of an accommodation based on the furniture in the lobby. They can recognize good food by the ratio of Westerners to locals in the restaurant. They can predict the weather based on weeks and months of patterns and experiences – it will always rain when they have to walk anywhere; it will always be hottest when there is no air conditioning available. Now, though, they face a new set of challenges: space, separation, and returning. Soon they will trade newness for normalcy and foreign for familiar.
There is a line from a song that says, “You can go back but you can’t go back all the way.” It will ring very true as they face a familiarity rife with rules and regulations that no longer make sense. “Why does that meal cost $15? I got twice as much in Laos for $2!!” “Why do you need to leave the water running? Turn the shower off while you soap up!” Little things, small details that in their former life they never questioned or considered. Travel is eye-opening, they say. They don’t say how disturbing some things are when you open your eyes for too long. Will they learn to close them again? Or to see this world – their world – in a new way? Only that slippery demon of time can answer that.
Lessons learned, miles traveled, experiences, memories, stories – all together. Six solid months of seeing and doing things together. It strikes them as odd to consider a future on their own. It isn’t frightening or intimidating – just odd. They might not even miss each other all that much. In the way that they cannot take their travels with them when they return, so they cannot keep this friendship – this travel companionship – intact as-is upon their return. A new and different friendship will develop. Its foundation will be this trip and it will be different and stronger for the memories.
No, nothing will be the same. But that’s why they left, isn’t it? To avoid the “sameness” that plagues a “normal” life. They came here looking for the different – and they will return with the knowledge of how to see things differently. A kind of souvenir that never loses its value.
So they go their separate ways. To the ocean or to the prairie. The sea or the shore. But these two friends are forever linked by the memories made of the places no one else saw and the voices no one else heard.
The Best Part of the Day
Luang Prabang – Laos June 23
My granddad used to be fond of saying that I was missing the best part of the day by waking up at the ridiculously late hours of 8 or 9 am. Sitting here this early morning in the cool calm of a deserted garden over looking the muddy Mekong River, I know that he was right.
The cloak of green that seems to be draped across all of Laos is prevalent here. From my vantage point on a simple bench I am overshadowed and surrounded by bamboo, teak and frangipani.
Below me a city comes to life. Luang Prabang is no bustling metropolis but like any good city by a river it supports commerce and trade for an entire region. But at this hour the heat hasn’t yet baked the streets to an uncomfortable dirty brown or driven the locals far into their homes and shops. Dogs bark and the ever-present tuk-tuk motors kick into life. Even as I write this, the peaceful ease of a moment ago fades away.
At times like these, more accomplished individuals would contemplate life and it’s meanings but instead I contemplate things like why God made mosquitoes and whether or not ants get a day off. I take a look at myself - the thin-soled broken-then-super-glued sandals, the cheap and ill fitting Thai fisherman pants, the used-to-be-white shirt and the unprofessionally bandaged finger – and I feel I’m in real danger of becoming the typical Southeast Asian backpacker. After 5 months on the road, I suppose it was inevitable.
A hammer starts up in the distance and a Japanese family strikes the standard tourist pose on the stone wall beside me Watching the lazy brown water of the Mekong in the distance being traversed by longboats, I know that the ‘best part’ of the day is dying fast. So I tip my hat to the morning Nature gave me, lather on some more sunscreen and turn to face the day.
A walk along an old stone wall
In a land I’ve never known
Its familiarity grows on me
Like the dates carved in the stones
A trodden path, a fallen flower
A leaf painted all in green
Little ants march to and fro
Such simply, forgotten things
After a million miles and stories too
Its here today I stand
I’ve traveled so far, you see
Just to find I’m home again
My granddad used to be fond of saying that I was missing the best part of the day by waking up at the ridiculously late hours of 8 or 9 am. Sitting here this early morning in the cool calm of a deserted garden over looking the muddy Mekong River, I know that he was right.
The cloak of green that seems to be draped across all of Laos is prevalent here. From my vantage point on a simple bench I am overshadowed and surrounded by bamboo, teak and frangipani.
Below me a city comes to life. Luang Prabang is no bustling metropolis but like any good city by a river it supports commerce and trade for an entire region. But at this hour the heat hasn’t yet baked the streets to an uncomfortable dirty brown or driven the locals far into their homes and shops. Dogs bark and the ever-present tuk-tuk motors kick into life. Even as I write this, the peaceful ease of a moment ago fades away.
At times like these, more accomplished individuals would contemplate life and it’s meanings but instead I contemplate things like why God made mosquitoes and whether or not ants get a day off. I take a look at myself - the thin-soled broken-then-super-glued sandals, the cheap and ill fitting Thai fisherman pants, the used-to-be-white shirt and the unprofessionally bandaged finger – and I feel I’m in real danger of becoming the typical Southeast Asian backpacker. After 5 months on the road, I suppose it was inevitable.
A hammer starts up in the distance and a Japanese family strikes the standard tourist pose on the stone wall beside me Watching the lazy brown water of the Mekong in the distance being traversed by longboats, I know that the ‘best part’ of the day is dying fast. So I tip my hat to the morning Nature gave me, lather on some more sunscreen and turn to face the day.
A walk along an old stone wall
In a land I’ve never known
Its familiarity grows on me
Like the dates carved in the stones
A trodden path, a fallen flower
A leaf painted all in green
Little ants march to and fro
Such simply, forgotten things
After a million miles and stories too
Its here today I stand
I’ve traveled so far, you see
Just to find I’m home again
Good Intentions
Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang, June 21
Laos
The old rolling mountains are seemingly infinite in number and covered in an unfathomable coat of green. The foliage and plant life grow almost on top of each other, crowded close like rioters at a demonstration. It is as if God accidentally overturned a basket full of assorted trees and ground cover and the contents tumbled directly down from the sky to the tumultuous landscape of Northern Laos. Bamboo shoots drape their young sapling arms between teak and rubber trees and the tall grasses encroach on the road as if threatening mutiny.
All this uncontained, uncontrolled life stands in stark contrast to the increasing eyesores of slash-and-burn agriculture popping up throughout the region. This land is inhabited by Hill Tribe people whose relocation to the low lands was so recent that no one – not the people, the government, or the land – has had time to adjust accordingly. The eradication of the opium trade – or eradication effort – has had cultural and environmental consequences unforeseen by the well-wishers abroad. It leaves one feeling desperate. This disruption in culture and livelihoods was well intended but the results were less than encouraging.
All a traveler can do is buy the arbitrary village souvenirs and not on paper the loss of virgin land to yet another road paved with good intentions.
Laos
The old rolling mountains are seemingly infinite in number and covered in an unfathomable coat of green. The foliage and plant life grow almost on top of each other, crowded close like rioters at a demonstration. It is as if God accidentally overturned a basket full of assorted trees and ground cover and the contents tumbled directly down from the sky to the tumultuous landscape of Northern Laos. Bamboo shoots drape their young sapling arms between teak and rubber trees and the tall grasses encroach on the road as if threatening mutiny.
All this uncontained, uncontrolled life stands in stark contrast to the increasing eyesores of slash-and-burn agriculture popping up throughout the region. This land is inhabited by Hill Tribe people whose relocation to the low lands was so recent that no one – not the people, the government, or the land – has had time to adjust accordingly. The eradication of the opium trade – or eradication effort – has had cultural and environmental consequences unforeseen by the well-wishers abroad. It leaves one feeling desperate. This disruption in culture and livelihoods was well intended but the results were less than encouraging.
All a traveler can do is buy the arbitrary village souvenirs and not on paper the loss of virgin land to yet another road paved with good intentions.
Farewells and Acknowledgments
Men created maps. They shaped the living, breathing, three-dimensional world into a flat, calculated, controllable image on a sheet of paper. They drew lines to separate, created scales to approximate, and named landscapes to categorize. Men created maps for the same reason men do everything: to create a sense of control in a world of chaos. But deep down all men know the truth. That drawing lines, building fences, and marking territories has never solved any problems or created any control. The world is chaotic and will be as long as men are around.
During my travels I crossed many lines – country borders, date lines, international lines, regional lines – but I never saw them except on a map. The Mekong looked the same from one shoreline as it did from the other. The trees were as green in Laos as they were in Thailand. The land does not acknowledge maps – but people do.
The longer I travelled the harder it became for me to describe the people around me. In many ways, they had become less foreign to me so I stopped noticing those qualities that had, at first, seemed so exotic and mysterious. The experience itself took on faded shades of grey where once brilliant hues had shone. No longer were the foreign tongues, the endless heat, the unique Asian smells so vibrant, intense and impressive.
As unwilling as I was to let it happen, it happened all the same. I had become calloused, dull and indifferent. My time was nearing to return home. My thoughts began wandering home more than to the next adventure. And so I learned one fo the most difficult lessons for a traveler to learn: Even the Road gets old. All things new will tarnish and all things dreamt of will fade. And at the end of each journey, the soul returns home.
The remaining entries were written while I traveled through Laos and Cambodia. I recorded most of them in an old blue notebook and reading them now, they sound like the final notes from a bittersweet song.
These are my farewell to the trip that had been shaping my life for 20 years. But they are also my acknowledgment that traveling was, for me, more than a one time affair. It is my livelihood. It is me. I am a modern day gypsy.
During my travels I crossed many lines – country borders, date lines, international lines, regional lines – but I never saw them except on a map. The Mekong looked the same from one shoreline as it did from the other. The trees were as green in Laos as they were in Thailand. The land does not acknowledge maps – but people do.
The longer I travelled the harder it became for me to describe the people around me. In many ways, they had become less foreign to me so I stopped noticing those qualities that had, at first, seemed so exotic and mysterious. The experience itself took on faded shades of grey where once brilliant hues had shone. No longer were the foreign tongues, the endless heat, the unique Asian smells so vibrant, intense and impressive.
As unwilling as I was to let it happen, it happened all the same. I had become calloused, dull and indifferent. My time was nearing to return home. My thoughts began wandering home more than to the next adventure. And so I learned one fo the most difficult lessons for a traveler to learn: Even the Road gets old. All things new will tarnish and all things dreamt of will fade. And at the end of each journey, the soul returns home.
The remaining entries were written while I traveled through Laos and Cambodia. I recorded most of them in an old blue notebook and reading them now, they sound like the final notes from a bittersweet song.
These are my farewell to the trip that had been shaping my life for 20 years. But they are also my acknowledgment that traveling was, for me, more than a one time affair. It is my livelihood. It is me. I am a modern day gypsy.
Simplicity, Serenity and Peace - A Lesson from the East
I suppose one of my primary hopes is that one or all of these stories will become the cornerstone for a highly publishable book someday but despite my earlier and repeated declarations, that isn’t the driving reason behind my putting down in writing these travel tales. Steinbeck writes that “a journey is like a person in itself; no two are alike.” And so it is that I write about this journey for I do not wish to forget my recently departed friend. So each chapter of this greater journey meanders through a different characteristic of the trip like describing the physical and mental attributes of a companion in an attempt to create an introduction from me to you of my journey. To endear you to my experiences and give you a personal connection with them. Because honestly what more is a story that one person’s attempt to find connection with another person’s soul?
I have so enjoyed introducing you to my journey and sharing with you the characteristics and personality of my time abroad that I often neglect the lessons this journey taught me. Perhaps the greatest gift a journey gives you is the insight into yourself. It acts like a mirror showing you what you most enjoy and what you most despise.
I despise rudeness, for example, and laziness. My eventual bitter aftertaste from Cambodia was a direct effect of the overwhelming presence of both of those characteristics in that country. But as surely as those characteristics drive me to distraction, simplicity, serenity and peace flood my soul with a childlike joy. Most of what I knew about those three things came from the Good Book and Mother Nature prior to this trip. I believe that no matter what your religion, there are two types of sanctuaries in this Earthly realm: those built by the hands of man and those created by the hands of God.
Before venturing to SEA, I had experienced many of God’s handmade sanctuaries from golden ocean sunsets to mountain top perfection, all of which felt natural and comfortable. But never had I set foot in a manmade sanctuary without a Christian cross affixed atop it. This was soon to change.
During our travels we met Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and more. I saw idols of old adorned in gold and glass and covered in moss and decay. I walked in awe through wats that put our most elaborate chapels to shame and stood in the shadows of statues whose presence eclipsed the birth of Jesus by several hundred years.
This isn’t a story of religion or a debate on the rights and wrongs of the universe. This is a story about a lesson. A lesson about three things I assumed were introduced and perfected by Western Society: simplicity, serenity, and peace. It turns out that I was very wrong. These are three gifts that God saw fit to share with all mankind.
A wat is a funny name for a place of worship and can so easily be used for a reader’s amusement by any semi-creative writer. Wats it to you? Wats it all about? Wat to see and wat not to see? But the essence of what a wat really is, is not so easily manipulated into words.
I visited wats that were solely Buddhist, solely Hindu, and an elaborate mixture of both. I saw wats that were modern and ancient, empty and crowded, glitzy, poor, crumbling, manicured, hidden, advertised, and incomplete. I walked the halls of stone at Ankor Wat in Siem Reap, so massive and majestic that one’s mind can no more comprehend its enormity than one’s mouth can describe its beauty.
I climbed ancient stairs and touched carved stone recently reclaimed from the forest trees. I rode around the garden of Sukotai in Thailand whose endless pillars and enumerable lotus flowers echoed the very principle of serenity.
I watched as monks draped in brilliant orange robes humbled themselves and their benefactors as they walked crowded streets collecting the daily alms or gifts of food that would feed them that day.
In silence, I watched peace and serenity working as a common laborer bent over in the sunlight cleaning the ancient image of a simply smiling Buddha in a lost corner of a Sukotai temple.
And I watched as man’s pride overtook godly worship as it so often does in religions around the world. In Bangkok’s overcrowded Royal Palace Grounds, I saw royalty build ever more elaborate wats under the guise of worship but driven by the principles of bragging rights and pride. I saw again how true it is that God always desires man’s heart – not necessarily his gold. For I stood at the feet of the world’s largest reclining Buddha adorned entirely in gold and detailed with Mother of Pearl and precious gems and felt only the depressing, crowded feeling one gets at any overly-touristed sight.
But as I wandered without direction through a small but well maintained garden whose trees held hand-painted signs proclaiming the timeless and borderless truths like “Every honest work is honorable work” and “There is no saturating the fire with fuel,” I felt again the simple smile of God and heard His whisper in the rustling of leaves and monks robes. He seemed to say, “I am bigger than your religions, your divisions, and your decisions.”
It was there that I learned that there is no simplicity save what we sacrifice for daily, there is no serenity other than that we discover anew each journey, and there is no peace aside from that which we find within.
In Luang Prabang, Laos I gazed with a calloused eye at the minute detailed mosaic of small glass tiles depicting scenes of daily life in the surrounding area and watched with an untouched heart as the monks walked to and fro. But as I turned around, I saw one wall covered entirely in a picture that was immediately familiar to me. I have since showed a picture of this wall to many people back home and they all inevitably say the same thing: “Ah, the tree of life!”
And so it was – a large mosaic built by foreign hands in a distant place depicting a universal concept: A beautiful tree rooted deep in eternal love and feeding mankind with the fruits of compassion and kindness and hope.
And so my journey taught me that principles are bigger than theories, that people are more important than places, and that simplicity, serenity, and peace feel the same in every place and to every person.
Like any lesson learned from a good friend, it is one worth repeating and like all of life’s lessons it is one you cannot truly comprehend until you learn it yourself on your own journey home.
I have so enjoyed introducing you to my journey and sharing with you the characteristics and personality of my time abroad that I often neglect the lessons this journey taught me. Perhaps the greatest gift a journey gives you is the insight into yourself. It acts like a mirror showing you what you most enjoy and what you most despise.
I despise rudeness, for example, and laziness. My eventual bitter aftertaste from Cambodia was a direct effect of the overwhelming presence of both of those characteristics in that country. But as surely as those characteristics drive me to distraction, simplicity, serenity and peace flood my soul with a childlike joy. Most of what I knew about those three things came from the Good Book and Mother Nature prior to this trip. I believe that no matter what your religion, there are two types of sanctuaries in this Earthly realm: those built by the hands of man and those created by the hands of God.
Before venturing to SEA, I had experienced many of God’s handmade sanctuaries from golden ocean sunsets to mountain top perfection, all of which felt natural and comfortable. But never had I set foot in a manmade sanctuary without a Christian cross affixed atop it. This was soon to change.
During our travels we met Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and more. I saw idols of old adorned in gold and glass and covered in moss and decay. I walked in awe through wats that put our most elaborate chapels to shame and stood in the shadows of statues whose presence eclipsed the birth of Jesus by several hundred years.
This isn’t a story of religion or a debate on the rights and wrongs of the universe. This is a story about a lesson. A lesson about three things I assumed were introduced and perfected by Western Society: simplicity, serenity, and peace. It turns out that I was very wrong. These are three gifts that God saw fit to share with all mankind.
A wat is a funny name for a place of worship and can so easily be used for a reader’s amusement by any semi-creative writer. Wats it to you? Wats it all about? Wat to see and wat not to see? But the essence of what a wat really is, is not so easily manipulated into words.
I visited wats that were solely Buddhist, solely Hindu, and an elaborate mixture of both. I saw wats that were modern and ancient, empty and crowded, glitzy, poor, crumbling, manicured, hidden, advertised, and incomplete. I walked the halls of stone at Ankor Wat in Siem Reap, so massive and majestic that one’s mind can no more comprehend its enormity than one’s mouth can describe its beauty.
I climbed ancient stairs and touched carved stone recently reclaimed from the forest trees. I rode around the garden of Sukotai in Thailand whose endless pillars and enumerable lotus flowers echoed the very principle of serenity.
I watched as monks draped in brilliant orange robes humbled themselves and their benefactors as they walked crowded streets collecting the daily alms or gifts of food that would feed them that day.
In silence, I watched peace and serenity working as a common laborer bent over in the sunlight cleaning the ancient image of a simply smiling Buddha in a lost corner of a Sukotai temple.
And I watched as man’s pride overtook godly worship as it so often does in religions around the world. In Bangkok’s overcrowded Royal Palace Grounds, I saw royalty build ever more elaborate wats under the guise of worship but driven by the principles of bragging rights and pride. I saw again how true it is that God always desires man’s heart – not necessarily his gold. For I stood at the feet of the world’s largest reclining Buddha adorned entirely in gold and detailed with Mother of Pearl and precious gems and felt only the depressing, crowded feeling one gets at any overly-touristed sight.
But as I wandered without direction through a small but well maintained garden whose trees held hand-painted signs proclaiming the timeless and borderless truths like “Every honest work is honorable work” and “There is no saturating the fire with fuel,” I felt again the simple smile of God and heard His whisper in the rustling of leaves and monks robes. He seemed to say, “I am bigger than your religions, your divisions, and your decisions.”
It was there that I learned that there is no simplicity save what we sacrifice for daily, there is no serenity other than that we discover anew each journey, and there is no peace aside from that which we find within.
In Luang Prabang, Laos I gazed with a calloused eye at the minute detailed mosaic of small glass tiles depicting scenes of daily life in the surrounding area and watched with an untouched heart as the monks walked to and fro. But as I turned around, I saw one wall covered entirely in a picture that was immediately familiar to me. I have since showed a picture of this wall to many people back home and they all inevitably say the same thing: “Ah, the tree of life!”
And so it was – a large mosaic built by foreign hands in a distant place depicting a universal concept: A beautiful tree rooted deep in eternal love and feeding mankind with the fruits of compassion and kindness and hope.
And so my journey taught me that principles are bigger than theories, that people are more important than places, and that simplicity, serenity, and peace feel the same in every place and to every person.
Like any lesson learned from a good friend, it is one worth repeating and like all of life’s lessons it is one you cannot truly comprehend until you learn it yourself on your own journey home.
An Elephant Tale
So much of travel – and for that matter, life – has to do with expectations. Your initial desire to travel is often based on the expectation of adventure or freedom. Many of your destinations are chosen based on expectations real or imagined. And many of your decisions on the road – where to go, where to stay, where to eat – are based on expectations obtained from information given by fellow travelers or handy guidebooks. We’ve all heard or told the classic ‘did not live up to my expectations’ tale: the temples that were simply old instead of excitably ancient, the restaurants that were crude or flavorless, the guesthouses infested with nightmarish inhospitalities. But rarely do we take the time to tell the tale of expectations exceeded. This is such a tale.
It’s an elephant tale really. A tale of larger than life proportions. It’s the tale of two travelers who happened upon an extraordinary place with some extraordinary inhabitants. It is a tale of knowledge gained on the banks of a muddy river. And, like all of my modern gypsy tales, my limited talent does it little justice.
It is a tale that begins on an early morning in Chiang Mia, Thailand. Like so many excellent travel adventures, it starts with a long ride out of town and off the beaten track. But, unlike many of my adventures, this one included a stop at the local market to pick up food for one of the world’s largest – and apparently hungriest – creatures: the Asian elephant.
Now most every traveler (or Discovery Channel enthusiast) can tell you that there is an epic and ancient link between Thailand and elephants. They adorn temples and royal seals. They wander the streets of Bangkok and roam freely in the jungles and mountains. Like America and its symbolic bald eagle so Thailand loves and reveres these majestic beasts. And beasts they were in my mind. Docile and dumb like cattle with a Dumbo-like goofiness and a humorously long memory. I had thus put little thought and assigned very unimaginative expectations into our trip to the Elephant Refuge Camp. I figured we would feed a few old decrepit animals and maybe see a few carnival tricks. How did I ever underestimate these lovely creatures?
Well, to begin with, they aren’t must to look at. Upon arrival at the facility, we were introduced to the staff and then led to a viewing room to watch a heart-wrenching video about the mistreatment and abuse of these animals before being led out to a “feeding platform” to meet the stars of the show.
Seeing an elephant face to face is always shocking even if you did pay $80 and boarded a bus labeled “Elephant Camp.” The dang things are enormous! Their legs look like the trunks of age-old trees. Their skin is a bulky armor of dusty, grayish pink. Their ears are oddly small unlike their famous African cousins, and their trunks are an absolutely ingenious tool unmatched in all of nature. Their eyes are kind yet mischievous, their smell unmistakable. And all around there is an air of intelligence and commitment. These are no docile creatures, awkward or lazy. These are individuals, wonderful and beautiful in a ‘boulder-esque’ kind of way. Their enormity, their strength, their movement was expectation shattering. But we did much more than meet face to face.
Mealtime at the Elephant Camp is a happy occasion. Each elephant, I discovered, had a mahout or owner/caretaker. A mahout is with an elephant for life – an intimate friendship that lasts longer than many we have with our fellow man. Twice a day, the mahouts call and lead the elephants to the platform where sweet, unsuspecting tourist like myself hand feed them whole watermelons, entire bunches of bananas, and various other fruits. Their dexterous trunks easily pluck each gift from your hands with pinpoint accuracy. Occasionally you move too slow and they simply reach over and grab an entire basket of food. Hey, the creature weighs several tons! It can take whatever it wants!
Feeding time also allowed us to “meet” the elephants. The organization was started by a tiny Thai woman named ?? who began rescuing mistreated and malnourished elephants in ??. She started out with one elephant and now houses and feeds over 30. Each member of this herd has a story and each story is one of sorrow and despair That large male, for example, was hit by a semi-truck and both front legs were badly broken. That’s why he stands so awkwardly. And that little female with the weeping eye? She’s blind. Both eyes were poked out or otherwise mangled by her owner as punishment for not working. Her constant companion, an older female, guides her everywhere. They are seldom seen apart. No, no one taught her to do that. It’s instinct. Or, as we human’s call it, kindness.
And on and on it goes. Gentle giants mauled, mistreated, and made to beg in Bangkok’s streets. Like slaves of an era past, their majestic shadows cast sorrow across a once proud legacy.
And so amidst the “Elephant Rides” and Bangkok begging there stands one woman fighting for an animal who cannot fight for itself. She feeds the hungry, cares for the sick, educates the masses and she does it all out of love for one of God’s greatest creations. Now if that isn’t saintly call me a sinner.
Our day was far from done. Following a wonderful lunch of our own, we wandered down to the river accompanied by the bulky masses of our happy hosts. It was bath time and an undeniable excitement filled the air.
I have had the pleasure of doing many things from swimming in glassy waters to catching amazing waves by beaches I felt certain only existed in surfer’s fairytales but that humid afternoon sharing a river with those bulky beasts will always hold a special place in my heart. It was the kind of experience that just reeks of happiness, that drips joy and wraps you up in a big blanket of amazement. Bathing an elephant is like flying back in time when absolute joy was nothing more complicated than a run through your mom’s sprinkler on a hot summer day. I sprayed – and got sprayed. I laughed and smiled until my smile muscles ached. And I realized after the bath was over that I hadn’t helped them at all. After all an elephant can bath himself. No, it was that big hunk of skin and muscle that had helped me. His slow movements and easy manners had erased at least a year of stress from my mind.
We would meet the two newest additions to that lovely family – a 15 week old and a 2 week old – a little later that afternoon. As their mommas corralled the tiny creatures (if you can call an animal the size of a cow tiny), I would smile knowing that the traditions of love and kindness was continuing in the form of this new generation.
It was, by all accounts, an expectation shattering day. A good dose of knowledge will do that for you – and so will a 2 ton animal with enough brains to leave behind a hopeless past and enough heart to continue into a bright future.
It’s an elephant tale really. A tale of larger than life proportions. It’s the tale of two travelers who happened upon an extraordinary place with some extraordinary inhabitants. It is a tale of knowledge gained on the banks of a muddy river. And, like all of my modern gypsy tales, my limited talent does it little justice.
It is a tale that begins on an early morning in Chiang Mia, Thailand. Like so many excellent travel adventures, it starts with a long ride out of town and off the beaten track. But, unlike many of my adventures, this one included a stop at the local market to pick up food for one of the world’s largest – and apparently hungriest – creatures: the Asian elephant.
Now most every traveler (or Discovery Channel enthusiast) can tell you that there is an epic and ancient link between Thailand and elephants. They adorn temples and royal seals. They wander the streets of Bangkok and roam freely in the jungles and mountains. Like America and its symbolic bald eagle so Thailand loves and reveres these majestic beasts. And beasts they were in my mind. Docile and dumb like cattle with a Dumbo-like goofiness and a humorously long memory. I had thus put little thought and assigned very unimaginative expectations into our trip to the Elephant Refuge Camp. I figured we would feed a few old decrepit animals and maybe see a few carnival tricks. How did I ever underestimate these lovely creatures?
Well, to begin with, they aren’t must to look at. Upon arrival at the facility, we were introduced to the staff and then led to a viewing room to watch a heart-wrenching video about the mistreatment and abuse of these animals before being led out to a “feeding platform” to meet the stars of the show.
Seeing an elephant face to face is always shocking even if you did pay $80 and boarded a bus labeled “Elephant Camp.” The dang things are enormous! Their legs look like the trunks of age-old trees. Their skin is a bulky armor of dusty, grayish pink. Their ears are oddly small unlike their famous African cousins, and their trunks are an absolutely ingenious tool unmatched in all of nature. Their eyes are kind yet mischievous, their smell unmistakable. And all around there is an air of intelligence and commitment. These are no docile creatures, awkward or lazy. These are individuals, wonderful and beautiful in a ‘boulder-esque’ kind of way. Their enormity, their strength, their movement was expectation shattering. But we did much more than meet face to face.
Mealtime at the Elephant Camp is a happy occasion. Each elephant, I discovered, had a mahout or owner/caretaker. A mahout is with an elephant for life – an intimate friendship that lasts longer than many we have with our fellow man. Twice a day, the mahouts call and lead the elephants to the platform where sweet, unsuspecting tourist like myself hand feed them whole watermelons, entire bunches of bananas, and various other fruits. Their dexterous trunks easily pluck each gift from your hands with pinpoint accuracy. Occasionally you move too slow and they simply reach over and grab an entire basket of food. Hey, the creature weighs several tons! It can take whatever it wants!
Feeding time also allowed us to “meet” the elephants. The organization was started by a tiny Thai woman named ?? who began rescuing mistreated and malnourished elephants in ??. She started out with one elephant and now houses and feeds over 30. Each member of this herd has a story and each story is one of sorrow and despair That large male, for example, was hit by a semi-truck and both front legs were badly broken. That’s why he stands so awkwardly. And that little female with the weeping eye? She’s blind. Both eyes were poked out or otherwise mangled by her owner as punishment for not working. Her constant companion, an older female, guides her everywhere. They are seldom seen apart. No, no one taught her to do that. It’s instinct. Or, as we human’s call it, kindness.
And on and on it goes. Gentle giants mauled, mistreated, and made to beg in Bangkok’s streets. Like slaves of an era past, their majestic shadows cast sorrow across a once proud legacy.
And so amidst the “Elephant Rides” and Bangkok begging there stands one woman fighting for an animal who cannot fight for itself. She feeds the hungry, cares for the sick, educates the masses and she does it all out of love for one of God’s greatest creations. Now if that isn’t saintly call me a sinner.
Our day was far from done. Following a wonderful lunch of our own, we wandered down to the river accompanied by the bulky masses of our happy hosts. It was bath time and an undeniable excitement filled the air.
I have had the pleasure of doing many things from swimming in glassy waters to catching amazing waves by beaches I felt certain only existed in surfer’s fairytales but that humid afternoon sharing a river with those bulky beasts will always hold a special place in my heart. It was the kind of experience that just reeks of happiness, that drips joy and wraps you up in a big blanket of amazement. Bathing an elephant is like flying back in time when absolute joy was nothing more complicated than a run through your mom’s sprinkler on a hot summer day. I sprayed – and got sprayed. I laughed and smiled until my smile muscles ached. And I realized after the bath was over that I hadn’t helped them at all. After all an elephant can bath himself. No, it was that big hunk of skin and muscle that had helped me. His slow movements and easy manners had erased at least a year of stress from my mind.
We would meet the two newest additions to that lovely family – a 15 week old and a 2 week old – a little later that afternoon. As their mommas corralled the tiny creatures (if you can call an animal the size of a cow tiny), I would smile knowing that the traditions of love and kindness was continuing in the form of this new generation.
It was, by all accounts, an expectation shattering day. A good dose of knowledge will do that for you – and so will a 2 ton animal with enough brains to leave behind a hopeless past and enough heart to continue into a bright future.
Diving Off the Deep End
Oh the difference a page can make. The last time my pen touched these pages I was a million miles away – figuratively and literally. Now my possessions are no longer contained in one backpack. My lunch no longer costs less than $5 and my biggest decisions have nothing to do with where I’ll lay my head down tonight or how I’ll get there…Well, maybe they still do.
Between the flights, the catching up, the unpacking, the rearranging, and the readjusting I’ve had time to do everything but write. Someone commented after hearing of my travels that I must have ‘itchy feet’ which is probably very true but I think I also have itchy fingers. They keep wandering back to these pages and these old inkblots. One of my long-term dreams has come true – I’ve taken my concept of travel to a new level. I have seen and smelt and touched the things that my best daydreams were made of. How fitting then that my subject today is the stuff of my oldest dream.
Scuba diving has a lot of technical jargon involved with it. There are depth charts and gages and tank readings that can easily erase all the romantic and mystical attributes that this activity holds. But I have a love for the ocean that is equaled only by the depth of that selfsame entity. It should obvious that I didn’t enroll in our Scuba Certification Course on the island of Ko Toa for depth charts or gages.
But those things were a part of it. Turns out getting certified is a lot of work. There are textbooks and classes and tests. Of course the result for those things is much more rewarding than most grades or report cards I ever received.
The whole process is a tease. They show you videos with skills and lessons vital to your success as an underwater diver. Each film has tantalizing shot of gorgeous coral and beautiful fish life which managed only to distract my easily wandering mind.
Then they equip you just as you would to dive in the open ocean and once you have donned all of that cumbersome and enormously unflattering gear (if you have been through a course you know what I mean), they lead you to a pool. A pool which in our case was dead center in the middle of a very nice resort which was populated by normal tourist wearing very flattering suits. It’s kind of like that dream where you are standing before a large audience completely naked. I am now convinced that naked is actually better than neoprened.
And the humiliation is far from over. Once in the pool you are asked to do seemingly simple tasks like float without shooting cork-like to the surface or sinking rocklike to the bottom. They ask you to remove your mask and replace it or take out your mouthpiece and put it back without drowning yourself in the process. After a while I thinking that these exercises were solely for the entertainment of our dive instructor.
But then you find yourself aboard a rickety dive boat in the China Sea with ripples of early morning sunlight waving up at you from the warm turquoise waters and you realize that the teasing is over, the waiting is done. You are about to take the plunge in the most literal sense imaginable.
The surface of the sea looks different from underneath. It’s like the back side of a mirror – a silent, silvery window to a world that feels somehow real and dreamlike all at the same time. My bubbles chased each other up up up as I sank down down down. Here was another world, another reality filled with a deafening kind of silence, with a shadowy, foggy clarity and with inhabitants who cast unblinking stares your way.
Was it the brilliance of the coral colors or the oddity of the little boxfish? Was it the endless and liquid movement of the large school of barracudas? Or was it the minuet detailed saltwater slugs and tiny rockfish that opened my eyes the widest and distracted me so completely that thoughts of depth and oxygen disappeared with the tiny bubbles heading to the surface? Whatever it was, it became easy, effortless, interesting.
Dreams are funny things. We spend so much time thinking about them, planning for them, moving toward them, that their arrival catches us y surprise or, in this case, we can forget to realize that they are coming true at all. We are too busy living them, learning from them, and loving them to label it as ‘accomplished.’ And some dreams grow and change and adapt so that we are continually accomplishing them – with every different dive, with each new location, and at every depth definable.
Between the flights, the catching up, the unpacking, the rearranging, and the readjusting I’ve had time to do everything but write. Someone commented after hearing of my travels that I must have ‘itchy feet’ which is probably very true but I think I also have itchy fingers. They keep wandering back to these pages and these old inkblots. One of my long-term dreams has come true – I’ve taken my concept of travel to a new level. I have seen and smelt and touched the things that my best daydreams were made of. How fitting then that my subject today is the stuff of my oldest dream.
Scuba diving has a lot of technical jargon involved with it. There are depth charts and gages and tank readings that can easily erase all the romantic and mystical attributes that this activity holds. But I have a love for the ocean that is equaled only by the depth of that selfsame entity. It should obvious that I didn’t enroll in our Scuba Certification Course on the island of Ko Toa for depth charts or gages.
But those things were a part of it. Turns out getting certified is a lot of work. There are textbooks and classes and tests. Of course the result for those things is much more rewarding than most grades or report cards I ever received.
The whole process is a tease. They show you videos with skills and lessons vital to your success as an underwater diver. Each film has tantalizing shot of gorgeous coral and beautiful fish life which managed only to distract my easily wandering mind.
Then they equip you just as you would to dive in the open ocean and once you have donned all of that cumbersome and enormously unflattering gear (if you have been through a course you know what I mean), they lead you to a pool. A pool which in our case was dead center in the middle of a very nice resort which was populated by normal tourist wearing very flattering suits. It’s kind of like that dream where you are standing before a large audience completely naked. I am now convinced that naked is actually better than neoprened.
And the humiliation is far from over. Once in the pool you are asked to do seemingly simple tasks like float without shooting cork-like to the surface or sinking rocklike to the bottom. They ask you to remove your mask and replace it or take out your mouthpiece and put it back without drowning yourself in the process. After a while I thinking that these exercises were solely for the entertainment of our dive instructor.
But then you find yourself aboard a rickety dive boat in the China Sea with ripples of early morning sunlight waving up at you from the warm turquoise waters and you realize that the teasing is over, the waiting is done. You are about to take the plunge in the most literal sense imaginable.
The surface of the sea looks different from underneath. It’s like the back side of a mirror – a silent, silvery window to a world that feels somehow real and dreamlike all at the same time. My bubbles chased each other up up up as I sank down down down. Here was another world, another reality filled with a deafening kind of silence, with a shadowy, foggy clarity and with inhabitants who cast unblinking stares your way.
Was it the brilliance of the coral colors or the oddity of the little boxfish? Was it the endless and liquid movement of the large school of barracudas? Or was it the minuet detailed saltwater slugs and tiny rockfish that opened my eyes the widest and distracted me so completely that thoughts of depth and oxygen disappeared with the tiny bubbles heading to the surface? Whatever it was, it became easy, effortless, interesting.
Dreams are funny things. We spend so much time thinking about them, planning for them, moving toward them, that their arrival catches us y surprise or, in this case, we can forget to realize that they are coming true at all. We are too busy living them, learning from them, and loving them to label it as ‘accomplished.’ And some dreams grow and change and adapt so that we are continually accomplishing them – with every different dive, with each new location, and at every depth definable.
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