Escape From Bangkok!

Finally, after almost 2 weeks in this hell that is Bangkok I'm on a train north to Chiang Mai. I know I recently said I loved this city but that was on Christmas Eve and I was enjoying the melancholy of loneliness and the amazing night lights that can intoxicate. But Bangkok is draining. I wake up tired, I eat tired, I walk tired, I ride tired, I drink coffee tired, I refill the cup with a double espresso and still I remain exhausted. Ten million people are all rushing around in the deafening roar and the hazy thick air. Ten million people struggling to get by, to eat, to get to school, to make ends meet, to make love, to find peace in their surroundings and to find peace within, to get to the end of another day. I know that I will never understand how it all holds together without the wheels flying off. The jostling to get on to a crowded skytrain with bodies pressed on all sides. Or stuck on a bus in traffic that hasn't moved, literally, for 45 minutes. The ear peircing roar of constant internal combustion engines...how do people live like this without going ballistic? The only answer I can find is that they are all too tired. All this shared frenetic energy is too much to take and the mass consciousness is worn down and worn out. How else can you explain the rate at which civil servants do their jobs? Or the fact that I pass out the second I get on the water taxi (no, I'm not trying to avoid paying the fare! Tried that already...they wake you up.) and upon waking notice about 30% of the passengers are immitating dash board bobble-heads too. There is just too much of...everything... here. And the human brain wasn't wired to deal with all of this mass buzzing. Maybe that's why I haven't blogged in a week...just too tired. But now I'm on a train north with my girlfriend Sheryl who just flew into Bangkok for a visit and already I feel better. Except for the ringing in my ears that appears to be a permanent souvenir from Bangkok. A constant reminder of where I don't want to retire. I can trace some of this white noise to a few Tuk-Tuk rides I've been on recently.
How can a small three-wheeled vehicle make so much noise and pour out so much blue smoke? Every one of them has a muffler. I know this because I look, wondering how many hearing-aid-free and oxygen-tubing-in-my-nose-free years I'm being robbed of when one drives by. And there every single Tuk-Tuk is...mufflered. Wet with oil dripping mufflers that spew smoke and scream out painfully. And I wonder why they even bother putting them onto the exhaust manifold in the first place. (Disclaimer: I just had to ask Sheryl if a muffler attaches to a thing called an exhaust manifold. She nodded instantly and probably wondered how I could ask such a stupid question. As if I'd asked her if we breathe something called air. But you'll be glad to know that this in no way has caused me to question my sexual orientation...really.) Because to my ears and lungs the "mufflers" only seem to direct and amplify the sound and smoke. Maybe that's what they are disigned for in Thailand...pushing the choking smoke and blasting "Tuk-Tuk-ing" away from the drivers and toward the sidewalks. But that doesn't make any sense, or isn't working as all the Tuk-Tuk drivers are deaf. That or my pronunciation of Thai is worse than I feared. Because usually, after a third attempt at stating my destination and the accompanying third look of confusion, I'll either give up and walk away or get taken to the wrong destination. And believe me, that is no treat because then the re-negotiation of fares starts all over. And this time the driver has the upper hand because now I am hopelessly lost in a city of ten million people of whom the vast majority speak less english than my hearing challenged driver. And try saying this in Thai..."OK, we agreed on the fare from Siam Square to Soi Rambuttri. The fact that we are now on The Last Place I Want To Be Street, and YOU drove me here, shouldn't change that fare" (go ahead, try it, I'll wait). I don't, and instead I pull out a map and a finger ( no, not THAT finger) and we haggle out a newer and more painful price. But that's not what I wanted to blog about...at all.
Sitting in the train station tonight while waiting for departure I thought, with some concern actually, what a perfect bomb target this would make. Not a normal thought for me but quite understandable after last nights multiple explosions throughout Bangkok that killed 4 and injured dozens. Sheryl and I were just blocks from one explosion sitting in a movie theater eating popcorn. An anouncement was made that the movie was cancelled tonight and we had to leave. In the lobby were soldiers with helmets and we knew something wasn't right. We didn't know what to think when the entire mall and then the entire downtown shopping core of Bangkok began evacuating. We finally got a Tuk-Tuk out of there (they were all asking three times the going rate...except for the one we took that got lost!) and when we got to our guest house the mood was subdued. All celebrations and fireworks shows had been cancelled. Everyone was glued to CNN which looped images of Saddam Husseins body over and over again. I became incredibly sad as James, the inn keeper, toasted us with a weak "Happy New Year". What kind of year is this going to be? What new world order are we creating? Violence begets violence. We can not have war and expect peace. Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Afganistan, Darfur, and now Bangkok? As much as I'm glad to be leaving this city I grieve for it. The people have showed me nothing but kindness (that, and a monster instinct for haggling). They are so gracious, and especially so, given the pressure cooker of overcrowding, pollution, noise, grime, heat, humidity and the struggle to survive. The last thing they need is the added stress and anxiety of random terrorist attacks.