12.28.01  6:15am

It's still too dark to write, but I'm die hard.  I'm thinking about our budget and it's running really low.  Down to 800baht a day between 2 of us.  Less if you count transportation back to Bangkok from the beaches.  But there really isn't that much to spend money on in the beaches (I hope), but one backpacker told us that accomodations are really expensive on Ko Phi Phi, our island of choice.  Well today will be a cheap day in Bangkok.  If we can ever get there.  It is so hot and stuffy on this bus.  The ride up to Chiang Mai was much smoother.  We paid for VIP but this certainly isn't it.  No leg room, dead air conditioner, no food and drink.  Oh well, can't win 'em all.  It does kind of look funny to see all the North Americans and Euros who were too cheap to buy plane tix crammed like grumbling sardines on a vehicle with the Thai bus driver from hell.

It's still so damn cheap and I just remembered that I have an extra 15,000yen that I could convert (I think).  Must check when we arrive.

Beautiful country.  I can't wait to head south to see the vegetation and tropical beaches.  Very touristy this time of year, but as long as we can afford to stay, I don't care.

I hope I travel to other parts of SE Asia.  Well next year it's the Philippines and hopefully a stopover in Vietnam.  No southern stopover on our NA visit next summer.  There are so many spots I want to see.  Hongkong, Beijing, Shanghai, Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam.  and for more than a few days...

I don't want it to be that I'm running from responsibility, but I'm really loving the travel.  I want to study more (of the library/book variety) but the thought of staying put in one place in Canada while I still have legs to carry me, is just deadly.   Truth is I am just beginning, so I should relax and enjoy it.  I have finished my university degree and there's no rush to get a Master's.  Of course we could always go home, get the Master's and head off again.  This time not for the money, but sheerly for the experience of helping others and travelling.  Maybe back to SE Asia.  Back to Thailand.  I am in love with this place.  I think Rod is too.  Chiang Mai maybe.  Bangkok is too polluted and busy.  Even a 6 month stint.  Fuck the west.  And IT competition and call centres and corporate bullshit.  Of course this country is also striving for all that, but there seems to be so much pure beauty and spirituality so long as it doesn't reach the capitalist goal.  Amidst all the bargaining of course ;)

In Japan, however, the salary and perks are great.  We are government-planted dummies.  Internationalization at the grass roots level.  My ass.  Ain't nothin' "grass roots" about that big power-house of a country.  Thailand is full of Japanese companies.  The Western-style pigs of the east (in big time denial about their buta status, can't sumimasen everything away).

We shall see where the day takes us.  And where this Bangkok day takes us.

Thank you God for this glorious life.
 
 

12.29.01 (6:45am)

We have at last arrived in the steamy jungles of the south.  It is hotter here and more humid.  Periodically the vegetation gets sprinkled by rain.  Our destination is Krabi, a small fishing village, where we will catch a ferry-boat to KoPhiPhi.  The bus is once again (and even more so) loaded with farang from all parts of Europe, America and Australia.  The coveted jewel:  some yet clear (holding on to that fragile ecological string) water and diving delights (ready to take their chunk out of the coral while the fish say:  who the fuck are you jackass?)

This vacation is becoming so much more than I imagined back in Japan.  The charm of Thailand is powerful and enters quite deeply into your being, so that you are left wondering how you could have lived all this time without knowing the place.

We visited the National Museum in Bangkok yesterday.  Not exactly the nouveau design of Tokyo, NY or even  TO galleries with perfectly adhesed frames of displaced art gawked at by sleek snobs who prefer the perfect frames to any actual concept of art and its connection to life and especially to death.

The Bangkok exhibit was housed in 200 year-old buildings that appeared to only have underwent repairs, in a patch-up fashion, once or twice since their inception.  Surely a Western curator's nightmare.  Paintings, murals and sculptures left undusted, in buildings without air conditioning to swelter in the 33 degree celsius temperatures of Bangkok.  Yet still thousands of old pieces remained intact.  I read through the life of Buddha, from his time as Siddharta to his death (through rotten meat?).  The story which would surely have been inscribed on metal plates in the West was typed on yellowed paper which had since become spotted by dirt and moisture.  The corresponding tapestry was completely faded in some spots, but I certainly absorbed more of the story, standing in the heat of that musty building where the teachings are sacred and the people believe, than I would have in an immaculately quiet museum in the West.

And so we're on another bus from Surat Thani to Krabi and then a boat to Ko PhiPhi.  The street markets are already in full swing in this town.  Fruits, veggies, chickens and the like laid out on blankets ready to be bargained for.  And the King's photo, encircled in gold, standing in the town square.  Thick, thick trees in these parts.

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