TuuK-TuuK Playground
Unexpectly, I find myself vegemiting to cool and tranquil places today (the pool is next) after getting my ass beat by a girl, small and Thai at that, under the guise of what has been repeatedly sung to us in pestering yet mellifluous voices--the call of the THAI MASSAGE... oh lordly lord... and somehow, i find myself even more knotted up and sore than after the aches of last night's contorted midnight bus ride, the very aches which drove me to the massage house in the first place in hopes that the tuuk-tuuk missooouses could ward them off.... no such luck
But more importantly, today is the first of its sort, as have been each of the previous days that mark my entry into Thailand... a country which is a runaway storm of sensory discombobulation and juxtaposition.... smells of sewers are met with smells of roadside skewers, perplexed faces turn into aanoold-flexed smiles and welcoming visages, chaotic streets transform into tuuk-tuuk playgrounds that are as splintered just as much by carnage and road death as they are by whooping laughter and arbitrary waves.....
Thailand reaffirms that travelling can be a full-body effort, one to which a wallet is hardly even attached, and that Asia was waiting for me just as much as I had aspired to be with it....
A quick log log update.... started of on the wrong cheek and woke up on the wrong side of the toilet my first day - the fiery bowel movements induced by a party of red peppers (tragically drown in a liquid that poorly passed for soup broth, especially considering the volcanic way it exited) seemed to build callouses in my stomach lining, because my quest for the most mama made motorcycle kitchen has proved to be an ongoing parade not lacking in loin-longevity, which from now on i will deem lo(i)ngevity.... but happy times, how thai tuk-tuk mamas love feeding us.... we have now been fed by a series of thai(ron) chefs, from family food flops that were really only for english practice, to waterfall mamas with skewers in her smile, to random roadside stall seamstresses teeming with kiwi green golbuldy-gloop, and so many more unmentioned and as of yet unencountered, ALL of whom refused to let us pay them or give them something in return.... food is conversation here.... and its my favorite kind, the more nonsensical and tangential, the better.... families crowd around us, share whatever little they have brought for themselves, and turn tourism on its head as we find ourselves the main attraction....
i supposed we dont help the situation much, especially when you consider thanksgiving, when we transformed our feast to flood, boozed ourselves passively but massively, as though it were an IV after surgery, and wailed on guitars that refused to be tuned, perhaps in solidarity with our drunken melodies (if you could call them that), until the majority of the restaurant found itself magnitized to us, even though they persistently pretended not to notice the madness of us (a few hippies and bogans aside)... nor did we shy away from the spotlight two nights ago when a brief reprieve from a live band at a bar left a gaping hole that somehow eric, igor, and eventually i decided was our responsibility to fill, and perhaps bury, with renditions of friend of the devil, carress me down, and creep with aims of providing the thai watering hole with some "real american" tunes!
so yup, now there are three.... eric has been a synergetic addition to the madness.... thailand has been the perfect venue for euphoria (without its large junk problem), the people have been the perfect stimulant, and the food and TAMARIND CANDY has been the ideal fuel.... god the food is sooo good.... and soo much of an adventure, especially point-and-shoot untranslated menus that boil into a pot of tuk-tuuk
(in case you were wondering, not that my explanation is going to ellucidate anything, tuk-tuuks are thai motor rikshas which have become nothing short of an obsession and long running joke with us)
as for the laundry list:
life is good.... we've done a lot. snake farms with drunken black bears and equally intoxicated snake handlers, canal rides into the crevices and intestines of thai life, screaming scooters woven through thai road death on the path to ruins (thankfully and safely someone elses and not our own, though i have found the occasional fallen scooter on my foot quite uncomfortable), piling up as many non-sensical friendly encounters with locals who seem to want to babble to us as much as we to them, numerous visits to temples (wats they call them, which has morphed and entered into our vocabulary as "WAT PHO(r)?"), great stays in lush guest houses, mo(re)tor bikes buzzing into national parks with the same reckless abandon as the bugs that shared the road with us buzzed into our domes, and dripping and enfuriated sleep in midnight buses while clawing at our mosquito bites and bed bug bonanzas, all interrupted every few hours with meals and mamas.... and so much more of the little things that Thai me down
Coming next- trekking into the bunghole of thailand...
But more importantly, today is the first of its sort, as have been each of the previous days that mark my entry into Thailand... a country which is a runaway storm of sensory discombobulation and juxtaposition.... smells of sewers are met with smells of roadside skewers, perplexed faces turn into aanoold-flexed smiles and welcoming visages, chaotic streets transform into tuuk-tuuk playgrounds that are as splintered just as much by carnage and road death as they are by whooping laughter and arbitrary waves.....
Thailand reaffirms that travelling can be a full-body effort, one to which a wallet is hardly even attached, and that Asia was waiting for me just as much as I had aspired to be with it....
A quick log log update.... started of on the wrong cheek and woke up on the wrong side of the toilet my first day - the fiery bowel movements induced by a party of red peppers (tragically drown in a liquid that poorly passed for soup broth, especially considering the volcanic way it exited) seemed to build callouses in my stomach lining, because my quest for the most mama made motorcycle kitchen has proved to be an ongoing parade not lacking in loin-longevity, which from now on i will deem lo(i)ngevity.... but happy times, how thai tuk-tuk mamas love feeding us.... we have now been fed by a series of thai(ron) chefs, from family food flops that were really only for english practice, to waterfall mamas with skewers in her smile, to random roadside stall seamstresses teeming with kiwi green golbuldy-gloop, and so many more unmentioned and as of yet unencountered, ALL of whom refused to let us pay them or give them something in return.... food is conversation here.... and its my favorite kind, the more nonsensical and tangential, the better.... families crowd around us, share whatever little they have brought for themselves, and turn tourism on its head as we find ourselves the main attraction....
i supposed we dont help the situation much, especially when you consider thanksgiving, when we transformed our feast to flood, boozed ourselves passively but massively, as though it were an IV after surgery, and wailed on guitars that refused to be tuned, perhaps in solidarity with our drunken melodies (if you could call them that), until the majority of the restaurant found itself magnitized to us, even though they persistently pretended not to notice the madness of us (a few hippies and bogans aside)... nor did we shy away from the spotlight two nights ago when a brief reprieve from a live band at a bar left a gaping hole that somehow eric, igor, and eventually i decided was our responsibility to fill, and perhaps bury, with renditions of friend of the devil, carress me down, and creep with aims of providing the thai watering hole with some "real american" tunes!
so yup, now there are three.... eric has been a synergetic addition to the madness.... thailand has been the perfect venue for euphoria (without its large junk problem), the people have been the perfect stimulant, and the food and TAMARIND CANDY has been the ideal fuel.... god the food is sooo good.... and soo much of an adventure, especially point-and-shoot untranslated menus that boil into a pot of tuk-tuuk
(in case you were wondering, not that my explanation is going to ellucidate anything, tuk-tuuks are thai motor rikshas which have become nothing short of an obsession and long running joke with us)
as for the laundry list:
life is good.... we've done a lot. snake farms with drunken black bears and equally intoxicated snake handlers, canal rides into the crevices and intestines of thai life, screaming scooters woven through thai road death on the path to ruins (thankfully and safely someone elses and not our own, though i have found the occasional fallen scooter on my foot quite uncomfortable), piling up as many non-sensical friendly encounters with locals who seem to want to babble to us as much as we to them, numerous visits to temples (wats they call them, which has morphed and entered into our vocabulary as "WAT PHO(r)?"), great stays in lush guest houses, mo(re)tor bikes buzzing into national parks with the same reckless abandon as the bugs that shared the road with us buzzed into our domes, and dripping and enfuriated sleep in midnight buses while clawing at our mosquito bites and bed bug bonanzas, all interrupted every few hours with meals and mamas.... and so much more of the little things that Thai me down
Coming next- trekking into the bunghole of thailand...
posted by Ashwin Sodhi at 5:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home