Yes. That is correct. I currently reside on Bumrung Bury Road. Alley 2.
That. Sounds obscenely dirty.
...
hehe
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The wall in front of me is covered with patched together flower wallpaper, the air conditioner blows quietly behind me, and mosquito netting hangs above me. The blue bed on which I recline is the firmest since Nepal, but it is still significantly more forgiving than wooden planks with a thick blanket tossed over. Like an afterthought.
Which was Nepal. The land of afterthought mattresses.
A land in which "The Princess and the Pea" would make zero sense to anyone.
I listen to a Roo Panes compilation on YouTube, which is all I seem to be playing these days. The hostel itself is quiet, but I've cranked up the volume to drown out a certain cantankerous rooster who doesn't seem to care that it's two thirty in the afternoon.
I suppose it's unfair to roosters to just assume that all are fond of mornings. Just as all people are not fond of mornings. This Bumrung rooster. Is not a morning rooster. He's a decidedly not morning rooster who has yet to drink his coffee.
My blog has been woefully neglected lately. As has the book I'm reading by Thomas Mann. As has the play I'm writing for my writing club. As has my French lessons on Duolingo.com. I've been falling behind in all these areas because my already topsy-turvy life has capsized rather suddenly into a turbulent sea of "SHIT HAPPENING ALL THE TIME".'
My days start bright and early. I groggily roll out of bed (which my top bunk at Nature's Way turned into a perilous maneuver that didn't make me many hostel friends...), pack my bag for massage school, tip-toe to the bathroom and then scamper off to the nearby market. A market at which I've discovered the most glorious fruit salad in the robust history of fruit salads.
I've also discovered an elderly British Canadian chap named Jerry. I'm not well-versed in the history of elderly British Canadian chaps named Jerry, but I'm quickly becoming attached to mine. Jerry has been dutifully obtaining his glorious fruit salad from the very same market stall every morning for the past five months.
"It's just the best," Jerry said as he took a bite of passion fruit. "Believe me, I've tried other fruit salads. And this is just the best."
"It's so good!" I crowed. Less cantankerously than my Bumrung Rooster.
Passion fruit, dragon fruit, banana, pineapple, avocado, watermelon, mango, strawberry, yogurt and muesli all make themselves well acquainted in my legendary buck fifty fruit bowl.
"I asked her if you'd been here already," Jerry's eyes lifted to the fruit woman (I must ask her name) the morning I was ten minutes late.
I experienced the sublime sensation of simply being missed.
Ten minutes late and Jerry missed me. Gosh. I love Jerry.
On school days, I haven't much time to linger with my British Canadian. I hastily sip a frothy cappuccino as the Thai woman skillfully peels and slices our fruit and Jerry and I chat about the former Yugoslavia. Then I take my bag o' bliss to go, and skip-hop to the pick-up point at the nearby Burger King.
I hate everything America has done to the world. Blanket-statements for the win.
The red truck with two benches in the back is scheduled to arrive between eight o'clock and eight twenty every morning. So I, of course, book it to be there by seven fifty-five.
Because that is how I do.
The red truck (known as a songthaew) usually pulls up around eight twenty-five.
Because that is how nearly the rest of the world do.
A Japanese Berliner named Maki is usually the first to arrive at the Burger King (after me, of course. Not even residents of Germany are as neurotic as I am about time). She holds a cup of hot coffee and tells me about a bakery down the road wherein she recently experienced a surprising emotional reaction to the first decent bread she'd found in Thailand. An Australian Berliner named Mickey is next amble on over, often carrying his breakfast in a small Styrofoam container. Then Carolina and her husband walk across the street from Tha Phae gate. Carolina is from Saudi Arabia. I don't know much of her story, but I love looking at her cheerful face with its dark eyes and deep laugh lines.
I like to imagine all the moments that must have transpired to create such lines.
Elke from Berlin and Juliana from Berlin also pile onto the benches of the songthaew.
There will... errr... not be a SHORTAGE of Thai Massage in Berlin...
Sometimes we pick up another Coloradan named Wyatt, who has the most exuberantly fluffy mustache I've ever seen. I like Wyatt for his extroverted stache, but feel ever so slightly intimidated by his lifestyle. Mostly because he appears to be living one of the many lives I'd enthusiastically set out to live, but have since abandoned.
Wyatt chose the life of the traveling barefoot hippie, with no working phone, no facebook account, no real home. He chose to live close to nature. He sleeps outside when possible and avoids big cities like the plague. Wyatt is a chap who, when I ask about how long he's been traveling, stares deeply, unabashedly, quietly into my eyes and says,"I've been traveling all my life."
I think one reason I abandoned this life is because it feels so inaccessible to others. Wyatt may not (and probably doesn't) have a pretentious bone in his body... but when I ask people on this kind of hippie path seemingly straightforward questions and I get floofy answers, I just feel condescended to. Like I'm asking a stupid question.
I remember asking a fellow in North Devon how long he'd been practicing yoga, and he made that same sort of eye contact and asked, "in this lifetime?"
YES. THE LIFETIME THAT APPLIES TO ME. I DON'T GIVE A BUMRUNG ROOSTER ABOUT ALL THE OTHER ONES YOU MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAD.
Anyway.
It's uncomfortable... prickly... to witness people happily strolling along paths I've abandoned, even though I know I had reasons for abandoning them. Seeing happy hippies and horse girls and actors makes me question the validity of the path I'm on now. Which is a terrifically useful and terrifyingly disconcerting sort of thing to question.
And since I've tried out and abandoned so many paths, I'm confronted with this terrific terror on nearly a weekly basis. Which results in rather a lot of "WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?" moments.
We pull up to our massage school around eight forty-five, remove our shoes and don our Thai Massage uniforms. Trousers and tunics so baggy, they make me feel like a walking, massaging refrigerator.
Well... at least I'm a comfy refrigerator.
Eight of us file into a small classroom. A Frenchman named Francois, a Polish fellow named Marcin, a Bostonian named Kristin, two of the Berliners, a San Franciscan named William and me.
Two teachers, eight students. Well, that's promising. When I did my yoga training in Spain in 2011, there were about fifty students and two teachers.
Which wasn't quite as intimate as I'd hoped for. Blurgh.
Unfortunately, a small class size in no way compensates for lamentable use of the English language. When teaching a class in English to native and non-native speakers, anyway. Oh and New, our instructors, seem like sweet young women, but their accents are as thick as the mattress at the Best Western Hotel in Puerto Princesa.
I can work through the accent and piece it all together. But for people who already struggle to understand English?
Good luck, guys.
"Praya to the Buddha! Face the Buddha!" New directs.
So we all turn to face a portrait of a solemn, scrawny fellow on the wall. Then the monotone chanting commences. And I close my eyes and quietly wait for it to be over.
If Buddha is the type of chap Buddhism makes him out to be, I don't believe he'd much care to hear people chanting, "The Lord, the Perfectly Enlightened and Blessed One, I render homage to Buddha, the Blessed One." Just seems a bit pompous.
But perhaps I'm just being pretentious.
"Okay! Yoga exercises!" Oh demonstrates a couple of basic asanas.
At around nine thirty, we finally split into partners and New demands, "Volunteeyuh! Who will be volunteeyuh? Aimee? Okay, you come volunteeyuh."
Then New or Oh demonstrate the techniques on the volunteer or voluntold.
I do my best to keep my laughter trapped inside. As a pretty, plump Thai woman jabs her fingers below my armpit and tells the class, "Push the poi below the armpi. UH! Righ heyuh."
When the demonstration is complete, I return to my partner and attempt to recreate my instructor's movement.
"Fi the li of the spi, okay? Uh."
Li of spi... li of spi... OH! Line of spine. That's right.
"Sit DOW!"
Oh shouts at me as I administer pressure to a poi of the ouder li of the leg.
I giggle.
Oh looks at me, pleased that I am sitting down, but perplexed by my laughter.
"Uh. Wha so funny?"
"Hehe... nothing... I just... no. No, nothing is funny, Oh. Hehe..."
While Oh and New are capable of demonstrating techniques, they are both completely lost when it comes to answering questions.
So we don't bother with too many of those.
It's like they have a script. And anything off-script isn't an option.
"Huwy up! I hungwy!" Oh rubs her stomach and groans as the clock ticks closer to eleven forty-five, which is our break time. "Rear! What you do? UH."
Rear... rear... rear?
"I'm doing the inside line," Will responds.
Will understands the accents of Oh and New significantly better than I do.
Much to Oh's delight, eleven forty-five finally rolls around.
"Beautiful pillows!" New orders. "No beautiful pillows, no lunch!"
So we dutifully arrange our pillows into neat piles and file out of the classroom. We grab our wallets and dash across the busy intersection, teeming with homicidal Thai drivers.
Pedestrians get no respect in this country.
We pop into a market, where we separate and seek out our respective lunches.
Being vegetarian in Thailand would be the worst, I think as I look at the bountiful piles of seafood and pork.
I usually settle on Khao Soi, a spicy noodle soup most commonly found in Northern Laos and Northern Thailand.
Then I guiltily purchase some variety of iced Thai drink.
I'm learning that when the word "Thai" is inserted in front of a beverage, it really just means, "added condensed milk".
I've visited this Thai iced beverage stand so many times that I, Aimee Bourget the vagabond, have acquired a punch card.
Having a punch card with more than one stamp just... feels homey. Like I'm a part of something.
We return to school at one o'clock and begin our afternoon session with yoga exercises. We take a fifteen minute banana break at two forty-five and then continue to press, twist, jab each other until three forty-five.
"Finish! We finish!" Oh yells. "Beautiful pillows! No beautiful pillows, no go home!"
It's four thirty by the time I'm dropped off in front of the Burger King. I'm exhausted. My body aches from giving and receiving massages.
Thai massage can be gratuitously painful.
Like a Mel Gibson film.
I spend the rest of my evenings ambling through markets,
-- visiting parks,
-- laughing at funny signs,
 |
| Almost people. Like, not quite people, but mostly there. |
 |
| I want to know who provides the sexy dance. |
 |
| Because I need clarification about what "extra" means. |
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| But what does "Pink" taste like? |
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| I will live in a perpetual state of not knowing whether or not I know. |
"Ca t'a fait mal quand tu es tombée du ciel?"
Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?
"Tu es si chaude que j'ai attrapé un coup desoleil."
You are so hot I got a sunburn.
"Il fait chaud ici, ou bien est-ce juste toi?"
Is it hot in here, or is it just you?
"Je ne suis pas saoul, je suis juste ivre de vous."
I am not drunk, I am just intoxicated by you.
"Meme sans gravité sur Terre, je tomberais amoureux de toi."
Even without gravity on earth, I would still fall in love with you.
Francois is a good sport, and doesn't condemn my abysmal pronunciation. But he does say that these cliché lines sound better in English.
Maybe they sound better when I say them in English. 'Cos I can't speak French. But in general... God, no.
I return to my bed by eight or nine. Sometimes I skype, sometimes I netflix, sometimes I online scrabble.
Sometimes I absently wonder where my spontaneous Russian roommate/classmate has run off to. She always seems to be getting lost somewhere. And enjoying herself immensely.
While Skyping, netflixing or scrabbling, I occasionally receive messages from Francois. With pictures of my Russian up a tree at ten o'clock at night near one of the main markets.
"Okay, you definitely live with a crazy Russian girl."
The BEST crazy Russian girl.
Tomorrow starts week two of my Thai massage training. I'll try to pay more attention to my neglected blog, but I can't promise much.
I may or may not spend my free evenings playing in the park, eating street food and locating my happily lost Russian.
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